Trailer analysis suited to our genre

1. Panning shot - key location this sets the scene and allows the audience to automatically create a connection and its significance in the plot. 
Music - deep creating mystery, the rumble makes the audience feel uneasy. 
Voice over from a priest.

2. Voiceover.
Mise-en-scene - messy, hectic atmosphere perhaps suggesting that he is a weak individual and has a lot to handle which is later revealed when he seeks assistance from another male who is not a priest.

3&4. Very similar in terms of their colour palette and minimalistic style.
 Powerful - waiting for something to happen as it seems too basic.
Sound - The whispering from the wall is unsettling.
The way the mother responds to it creates confusion as you would expect her to be scared.

5. Detailed and is the first dramatic part of the trailer as it is unexpected.
Sound - window smashing
Mise-en-scene - blood. This is likely to have an effect on many people who watch the film and also it is partially relatable with the idea of a bird flying into a window but not as extreme.
High angle - bird could make the female feel threatened by the bird especially as it appeared whilst she was discussing demonic possession.
Sound - the increasing pace of the beating builds tension and cuts out when the bird hits the window.

6. Cinematography - man through the door way indicates the idea of being watched by something (which is revealed to us) but at this point you are unaware and fear for the male due to the previous shot.
Shaky so again creates verisimilitude and enhances the idea of being watched.

7. Close up - male’s eye is a quick shot with the eye flickering, more intense than the shots it is surrounded by such as the child tied to a bed with a male figure towering over him.

Mise-en-scene - dark colour palette and creates mystery and the effect emphasises this too as it slightly distorts the girl’s face. However, the face is fully revealed once the effect has finished.

8. Mise-en-scene - dark colour palette continues when the titles appear on screen
Cinematography - spotlight on the cross shows the importance of the church throughout the film.
 The font is typical for a thriller/horror and the silver colouring helps it to stand out.

Foley Sound Experiment

Storyboard

Health and Safety

Shooting Schedule

This was created by Rhiannon which allowed us to know exactly when we were filming different scenes, where and which actors we need.

Shooting Script

I created the shooting script as a full copy for the order of the whole trailer which includes the speaking parts as well. However, this is only a rough guide for lines as we are likely to change what is going to be said as we have to consider the language that would be used by expectant parents.

Audience Expectations

Collage of Iconography associated with psychological thriller

Above is a moodboard of inspiration and locations we liked. It also includes a selection of colours that we would like to use in our piece. 

Test Shots

These are some test shots that were taken in order to allow us to realise which shots would work or would not work. 

Codes and conventions of psychological thriller

History of Psychological Thriller

Iconic Horror Directors

Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock is a well known horror director, famous for “Psycho”(1960) and “Notorious” (1946). Also known as “The Master of Suspense” he uses a device called the “MacGuffin” which is an object used to keep the plot moving. Not only did he produce horrors, he produced comedies and musicals using his techniques across each genre.

Hitchcock's first nine films were all silent movies meaning he had to create a visual language, so that he could be successful without dielect. Once sound was introduced in 1927 many directors felt that something was lost in cinemas. Therefore the mise-en-scene became very important to Hitchcock as he wanted to continue having no sound and using it only when it was necessary. For example, when we think of "Psycho" we generally remember the famous shower scene before we think of any quotes from his other films or "Psycho".

Wes Craven

Wes Craven is another director who has directed a number of films such as “A nightmare on Elm Street” and “Scream” which won MTV’s 1996 Best Movie Award. He wanted the films to be as realistic as possible by having the characters quote already made films shown in “Scream”.

Wes Craven has worked with horror making it innovative and challenging audiences with bold visions. Craven has shown to audiences that he is a filmmaker with heart, guts and humour.

"A lot of life is dealing with your curse, dealing with the cards you were given that aren't so nice. Does it make you into a monster, or can you temper it in some way, or accept it and go in some other direction?"

Iconic Thriller Sounds

Initial ideas

Trailer Analysis

I explored two trailers looking at how multiple genres are present in a trailer for a film. The timelines below show shots from the trailer and how each scene could suggest a different genre for the film. 

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Interstellar

Minimalist and Traditional Poster for The Grand Budapest Hotel

Minimalist poster for The Grand Budapest Hotel Film

Minimalist design is basic and has  no fancy patterns and includes simple shapes, textures and colours. The point of minimalist design is to be to the point and calming. It normally refers to something which is spare or stripped down. It originated in New York in the 1960s as artists discovered geometric abstraction. 

Above are two posters that are a minimalist design to advertise the film being mentioned. The one on the left is one I found on Google and is very basic and reveals very little about the film, only stating the Wes Anderson produced it. The poster on the right is what I created using Canva an online service. My poster is simple and contains the names of the actors within the film at the bottom and the release date of the film below the film title. I chose to use the keys as they are key within the film and represent a society of multiple hotels that unite.

Traditional poster for The Grand Budapest Hotel

Above this text are two posters one of which was used for professional marketing purposes and the other on the right created by me again using Canva. Both of the two posters include more information such as the actors and actresses listed at the bottom of the poster to not obstruct from key information like the release date. The two posters both feature the hotel centrally in the poster. However, their shapes vary such as one is landscape and the other is portrait suggesting that the orientation of the poster is irrelevant. 

Trailer for The Grand Budapest Hotel

The Grand Budapest Hotel Teaser Trailer from jasmine poynter on Vimeo.

Storyboard for a Theatrical and Teaser trailer of The Grand Budapest Hotel

The Grand Budapest Hotel was released in 2014 and had a BBFC rating of 15. It is a drama comedy directed by Wes Anderson and distributed by 20th Century Fox Films.

Trailers as a Promotional Tool

A trailer is an advert for a film that will be shown in many cinemas. The aim of them is to engage with the audience and encourage the number of people going to see it. 

Theatrical Trailer

Teaser Trailers

Theatrical and Teaser trailers

Research And Planning

As individuals we closely investigated the horror genre and the thriller genre understanding how they have changed over time. We decided that both these genres were quite broad and needed to be looked further into, so we looked at the sub-genre of psychological thriller which appealed to all of us. We found artofthetitle.com to be particularly useful as we could look at different openings which were broken down and analysed. I took this exercise further by exploring se7en which closely related to our idea, below is the image I created which I used to create a detailed response to through three key concepts; mise-en-scene, cinematography and editing.

Iconic directors showed real conventions that exist among genres for example Todorov’s narrative theory shown in psychological thrillers is still used now.


For our group we explored conventions more for our opening task as we had to select a genre and apply these conventions where as in our preliminary task we did not explore this because we did not have a specific genre and we only aimed to meet the requirements. One main convention was the impact that music has on the audience, we all discovered that music builds tension and puts the audience on edge making them want to watch more. This was our main aim and so this inspired us to create a horror piece that will have this impact.

Real Media Conventions

I created an emaze to show the development from the preliminary to final opening.

Digital Technology

Digital technology is related to the equipment we used and how modern it is. 

In our preliminary task we used an older video camera that lacked in quality meaning our piece did not look as flawless as it could have done. We did use an Apple Mac computer to edit our piece together which we could all access and as the camera was the schools it did not matter if someone was not in because we could still reach it. 

Where as in our opening we did become slightly restricted as we used my phone, an iPhone 6s, because of its high resolution and so if I was ill and could not attend a filming day an alternative camera had to be used which may not have had the same resolution. Fortunately, I did attend all the filming days and even if I had missed it we could easily colour match or could change the resolution in order for all our clips to match. 

We chose to use the iPhone in our opening as it was lighter and could correct the lighting, one disadvantage though was that the phone did not have an SD slot so we could not transfer the videos immediately over to the laptop. The change in filming equipment automatically improved the standard and quality and allowed us to use the tripod more smoothly as there was a lighter weight on it.

 In both the preliminary task and opening Facebook proved to be very useful as it allowed us to communicate frequently and meant if someone could not attend a filming day they would be kept up to date with what is happening and possible changes to the storyboard if the original idea appeared not to work. 

Pixlr.com was an excellent site for composing our production companies logo as it is an online site that did not needed to be downloaded and our designs could be reached by each of us by logging in via a group account. Not only was that a benefit but it gave us access to multiple tools which some sites did not do unless you pay a subscription fee. 

I think overall our range of technologies used has stayed the same but we just changed the quality, also I think next time it would be beneficial to experiment with more technologies such as artificial lighting. 

Post-production

Post-production is the key stage for a final piece as it involves editing the sections which were filmed to combine together for a final outcome, for us this was making the opening. 

Our post-production was really good as we all in-putted ideas that were considered to lead to a successful opening but some ideas were declined as they appeared inappropriate as they headed away from our original idea that we had agreed on or they made the opening look mismatched. 

Our editing was completed predominantly by one person as they had access to a portable Apple Mac which they could use at both home and school, this meant that we could not all input. The use of one computer made sense as it meant all our work was in one place and was not being moved multiple times across lots of computers but this meant there was a lot of pressure of this individual. 

Although we had this one person editing a lot, myself and the other two candidates researched copyright free music tracks to add to our piece to create tension and improve our psychological horror based opening. 

However, for our trailer I believe it would be better to use a school Apple Mac as we can all access it and edit it equally, which will remove the pressure of having one person edit it all. I would also stick to the use of iMovie as this provides a range of editing tools such as colour corrector, multiple fonts and effects, whereas Windows Movie Maker is portrayed to be more basic and does not necessarily result in a very professional piece. 

Our preliminary task may have appeared to be suitable for a younger audience from the transition at the end. The post-production of it was a bit basic but we did experiment with different transitions through the entrance of the text at the end. 

Our progress from the preliminary task to our final opening evidently shows a huge improvement, not only in the quality of the clips but also the sleekness of the cuts and transitions. 

Creativity

In my preliminary task, my group were rather creative as we came up with an innovative idea that was different to the other groups as we thought of a unique story line to create “The Snack Exchange” which involved the use of props and not just people. The music track we used led to a fun vibe and also illustrated mystery to the story line of two snacks being swapped. Our creativity could have been raised by using an alternative medium to people such as a stop frame animation using Playdough or Lego. We were slightly restricted with our camera angles as we had to meet the mark scheme’s requirements, we did struggle with the 180˚ rule at the beginning as we crossed the line so it did not match up properly. 

In our opening we explored effects available on iMovie such as the glitch used during the appearance of the masked figure, I really liked this effect as it showed a range of skill and that we had looked into effects and not having simple transitions. We used a wider range of camera angles such as the dutch angle present during the second kitchen scene, this was a particular favourite of mine as it created disorientation and the audience would feel sorry for the girl, “Evie”.

What would you change for A2 and why?

I think overall there has been a clear development from my groups original work at the beginning of the year to now which is shown through the advancement of our story and our more challenging story line. With our preliminary task we did not have a clear genre or idea that we were following so we could not compare to any other similar videos.