Construction on teaser Trailer

My Film’s PLOT

It’s about a serial stalker who follows and watches his victims before kidnapping them and killing them. In this film he stalks a girl to her house kidnaps her from her house, she breaks off then kills her.
I kept the plot basic to make the audience understand the plot easily. However at the same time I did not tell why the stalker chose her because I want the audience to wonder whether she is actually being watched.

Editing & Music:
Editing is an important aspect of teaser trailers, once the raw footage has been filmed it needs to be cut and sequenced smaller to advertise the film correctly. Horror trailers use transitions and cuts to build tension and create the ideology of the film. Music is usually played throughout or for a majority it. The music is also accompanied by heavy sound effects like added screams, spooky sound, laughs etc. also in horror films the editing starts with a slow pace but around the middle the pace increases till the end of the trailer.
• Fade in and out to black/white, generally black. This just makes it smooth between scenes and flow to the next.
• Shorter shots and quick cuts show the exciting moments which build tension
• Sudden moments accompanied by sudden sound effect used to add effect.
• Fast paced or dramatic music compared with eerie quite discord music portrays genre
Narrative Text
Narrative text is used to draw in the audience and talk directly to the audience. Narrative text is a popular tool in trailers/teaser trailers. They are also short and sharp and can be used to portray a characters feeling or tell a brief synopsis of a film. Usually they draw in audiences to be like the victims in the film. They also usually pose questions to the audience too.

Below is an example from House of Fears.

Voice-over
Voice-over is a production technique where a non diegetic voice is used in this case a teaser trailer. The voice-over may be spoken by someone who appears elsewhere in the production or a specialist actor. The sound of a human voice-over voices are placed over images shown on the screen. Voice-overs are sometimes used to create irony. However Voice-overs are often used to create the effect of storytelling by a character/omniscient narrator. This is extremely popular technique in Teaser Trailers.

YouTube link of video with voice over Halloween 2007 trailer

Film Title

The film title is other aspect of the trailer I will consider, after researching Horror/thriller teaser trailers, the title is an important and creation of the trailer needs people walking away remembering what the name of the movie is called. The title credit portrays the genre and type of film it is therefore I will show the title of the film in the creation of my trailer when editing. I am also going to be using the same title text and font and colour for the trailer, poster and on the magazine cover. This is because I want these promotional pieces to relate together.

Below is an example from a horror trailer A nightmare on elm street:

Evaluation

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media texts?

The teaser trailer that I created used a lot of different conventions similar to different horror trailers like the Seed of Chucky, Freddy Vs Jason and also used transition in the horror House of Fears.  

The use of some darkness mise-en-scene, the use of knife, red font representing blood.

I also had the distributing companies logo and my production companies logo at the beginning of the trailer just like the real media texts.
The characters i also used an innocent victim and a vicious stalker as the antagonist like typical horror films/trailers. 

Also during my research i discovered that most real media text in this case horror teaser trailers start with a low pace then in builds up as the trailer goes on creating tension. This is a convention i used in my trailer to make it have that realism.

the use of different shots and scenes was another challenging form i had to face in the creation of my teaser trailer. this is because real horror teaser trailer already have a film to cut the clips from unlike mine had to be created without a film therefore i had to create a short film in order to have similar effect as a real teaser trailer (a story line).

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary task?

My main product and ancillary all have kind of similar creation. this is because they are all dark in terms of presentation giving it the horror feeling and they. they all impress the audience and attract them in similar manner.

Below are the combinations of the main product and ancillary task:

• The creation of my films title was similar to on all three promotional pieces (trailer, magazine and poster.
  

  

• The colour is also the same on all pieces on the work both on main product and ancillary task.
  
• On the magazine front cover (ancillary) and the main product/teaser trailer both feature the actress and the killer.
  

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

From my audience I leant different things that I used and could have used in the production of my teaser trailer. These things included the voice over, high and low angle shots, fast pace music etc. this was through the use of questionnaire and normal conversation about what people like in horror trailers.
The voice over was to guide the audience through the teaser trailer accompanied by some sound effects and non diegetic sound.
I also leant that the audience like shot fast trailers that go straight to the point so that they can understand what the film is about and also so that they do not get bored.
In addition I also got that the audience like to have horror teaser trailers with spooky scenes, violent and a bit scary just like typical horror teaser trailers.

Above is the audience questionnaire research results on whether they like my trailer, magazine and poster. the results show that they did like them as there is more good that bad.

4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

In the production of my trailer, poster and magazine cover as well as my research I used numerous media technologies like the internet, final cut pro, Macromedia Fireworks 8 and livetype. I also used technology in terms of gadgets like the cam coder I used for the recording of the film, the equipment accompanying the camera like the tripod, the video cassette from Maxell.
The internet was for the use of research and the blog. The blog (http://mediastudieshorrortrailer.blogspot.com) was to upload all my research, planning, and production of my whole advanced portfolio work. I also used the internet for my research on different horror teaser trailers, posters and magazine covers.

Below is an image that shows how I was using technology in the construction of my poster. This is macromedia Fireworks 8. i used Macromedia Fireworks was used to create the poster and magazine front cover.

 

Above is an example of final cut pro that i used to edit my whole teaser trailer.

Above is an example of the livetype that i used to create narrative works and my production company's logo.

Above is an example of the camera that i used to film as part of my technology.

Above is an example of the tripod i used as part of my technology during my filming to support the movement of the camera.

INTERNET

Above is the blogger website that  i used for the uploading of my advanced production work.

Above is the logo of YouTube, the website that i used for my research and uploading my teaser trailer.

Final Magazine Front Cover

Trouble Film Magazine

Above in my final magazine cover. the front cover is like any other magazine cover. it has the title of the magazine in a very visible font and colour as well as the title of the film in big red font. it also has plus features a bar code and information about what's also featured in this issue.

Final Poster

above is my final poster a piece of my promotion. it shows a very dark image of the antagnist the killer with very red eyes to give a scary look.

the title of the film is shown at the top in very big block letters to make visible and draw in attention. The poster also has a tag line 'he's watching you' to make the audience feel part of the film. at the very bottom is the film's website so that people can visit it for more information about the film. The poster also has the production company on the left bottom corner and the distribution company on the bottom right corner. On top of the 'coming soon sign is the credits of stars featured in the film, the producers and other.

Final Trailer

below is the final teaser trailer that i produced. 

Organisation

Mise-en-scene

The Mise-en-scene refers to everything the audience view in the film or my case trailer. It is everything that the camera records and also included in the editing. This includes things such as location, props, actors, the positioning of characters; costumes and lighting and the time (daylight or nighttime).
I have drawn a storyboard which will roughly be showing my trailers mise-en-scene. My trailer will be a horror therefore I considered the presentation of the location, costumes and also how the actors will be portrayed and props. The location I chose to give the good mise-en-scene that I want in my trailer. This is likely to be a typical horror film location like the Haunted House which will make the suspense easier to build. The location is also good because the whole filming was at one location my house and so it saved me traveling and time.

Props:
• Knife
• Bed
• Door
• kitchen work surface
• Plates
Location and costume:

For the filming location I used my house. This was because I know the location very well so creating the shots was easier and also I reduced the hassle of looking for locations like after peoples house that might have changed their mind in the last minute which would ruin my filming schedule. As soon as knew I was going to use my own house the pictures of how the film was going to be like was easier to generate without having to go look at the other locations that I do not really know about and this saved me good time.
Location
The main locations were Elisheba’s bedroom, our conservatory, the backyard, study room, and the kitchen. Having different locations made the trailer and filming more interesting because this broadened the creativity and the storyline would be more interesting than just watching scenes with the same location through out the whole trailer. I would call this versatile filming location.
Costumes

Costumes where an important part of the trailer Mise-on scene Elisheba wore normal items of clothing to make the trailer realistic and authentic, she did however have messy hair just to add to the ideology of the trailer and represent the craziness of the trailer and also to show that she might have been fighting or struggling in some physical manner like typical horror films.

Lighting:
The lighting was generally partly natural lighting as I did the most of the filming in the house, so I took advantage of the light provided by the home lighting. However for the dark scenes I had to use night vision recording provided by the camera. This was because I did not have any lighting to use, so this was the best way I could create easy visibility of the props and characters. When I was outside the lighting played in our favour and didn't ruin or disrupt any shots. When filming inside scenes, I had to manage excess lighting that was not necessary like television light to obtain some darkness and eerie shots just by simply turning the lights off and drawing curtains to cut of the lighting from outside the house e.g. street lighting.
Actors:

Elisheba was my main actress in the whole of the trailer and I was acting as the killer the antagonist. We both had a balanced appearance in the trailer. This was to show that this was about mainly the killer and the victim. By having the trailer just all of Elisheba and me(Daniel) it adds to the isolation I wanted to portray and also plays along with the ambiguous message of the plot. Having few people acting also made it easier to direct the movie and also to get the trailer to point without confusing people by having a lot of characters which will jeopardise the storyline of what the film is about.

Planning

Layouts

-Poster layout

Above is the layout of my final film poster which i am going to use to produce 'The Watcher's' poster.

-Magazine layout 

Above is the magazine layout that i am going to use in the creation of my magazine front cover for my film. 

Script

Scene 1
The antagonist walking up and down then point of view shot of him looking the protagonist.

Scene 2
The protagonist walks out side checking who is there and gets grabbed from behind by the antagonist.

Protagonist/Elisha: Hello

Scene 3
The protagonist doing the dishes then looks out the window into the dark


Scene 4
The protagonist suddely jumos in a shocked manner


Scene 5
The protagonist getting attacked

Scene 6
The protagonist is in captive and the antagonist kind of abusing her.

Storyboard:

Above is the scanned storyboard i used for the filming of my teaser trailer.