Character - Darius JB

Ed Warren

This character stars in a film called The Conjuring. He is a kind of hero and saves all of them from the witch haunting their house. He is very similar to our character and like our character he doesn't die at the end. He is also brave and fairly strong as well as being smart at dealing with ghosts. The only noticeable difference from our character is the fact that he's a bit older and maybe our character wont be religious. He will have a completely different costume and look as well. We've taken mainly the tone and personality of this character to apply to ours.

John Hartigan
This character is from a film called Sin City. The thing i've taken from this character is his costume. His costume is pictured below. He wears a suit and a leather jacket which is mainly what I want my character to wear. However the actor will be much younger in our film.

Curt Vaughan
This character is from a film called The Cabin in the Woods. He is the jock type character, well built and young. The part of this character we're applying to ours is the general look, fairly young and strong. Looks brave and tough. He is pictured below.

Darius
The character I'll be looking at is the Ghost Hunter. His role in the film will be the hero. You see him near the start of the trailer as he's called in by the police as they can't find any evidence in the death of the man in the woods. When he says something supernatural killed him none of the police believe him and he is mocked. He is sent away from the crime scene and he goes home. Later on you see him again go to the crime scene late at night to see if he can find some new evidence, this is when he hears a scream of the main girl after the group of teenagers have been attacked by this supernatural being in the woods. He goes in to help them and the rest of the movie is about them trying to survive and in the end it's just the Ghost Hunter and the girl who survive, who perhaps have a bit of a romance going on throughout the film. His type of character will be someone who isn't taken seriously because not many people believe in the ghosts but he turns out to be right in the end. This character usually dies in these films but in an attempt to distance myself from the stereotypical horror films i'm going to keep him alive. We shall name him Darius because it sounds like a strong man's name but also that he might have a softer side, like with the girl.

Darius's costume will be very stereotypical of a detective type character. For the part where he's at the crime scene with all the other policeman etc he will be in a suit, trench coat and possibly a trilby with smart black shoes. Pictured below.

 

His costume when he goes back to the crime scene to investigate more will be more casual. This is the part when he hears the girl scream and runs in, to help and to save them. His costume will be jeans, t shirt and maybe a leather jacket or jacket of some sort with casual trainers, fairly casual and normal. Pictured below.

 

Plot ideas 2 EA

I have decided to use the horror genre, the sub-genre will be either a thriller or a psychological horror. We have researched into a few horror trailer plots and I have come up with some new ideas which revolve around the trailers.

1st Idea: Psychological Horror.

The film would be about a girl coming to terms with her dark past through a series of psychological ordeals which she thinks she is imagining however it turns out to be more than that. Eventually she ends up killing herself to find peace.

Trailer
-A girl is walking through a dark house
- There are quick flashbacks so a happy memory of her playing with her family in the pace of a heartbeat
-You can hear banging and screaming on all of the doors in the corridor
-The flash backs get more violent and more dialog is exposed revealing her background of abuse and become a montage
-There will be a low shot of just her dirty feet and the floor down the corridor
- Display the title of the film
- Jump scare with a creepy face and a scream.

2nd Idea: Horror

A man is being hunted by a serial killer, the film is about the police catching the serial killer and about the man overcoming the difficult situations he is put in. Eventually the serial killer kills the man's wife and is then stopped by the man.

Trailer
- The man is walking through streets and the killer is always in the corner of the shot
- Deep breaths increase tension.
- When he gets home there are loads of little changes to his house he does not notice to shock the audience
-Pace increases between cuts and you see a woman die
-Title displayed
- jump scare

Post by Eliot Ashton

Audience Focus Group EA/JB

Our focus group is 15-21 males so I will ask them the questions below.

- What is your favourite genre of horror?
- What are your three favourite horror films?
- How often do you watch horror films?
-show film trailer below-

- What aspect of this film would make you want to watch it the most?
- Explain the plot to us, do you understand it, are you reading the words on the screen.
- Is the age of the actor part of the selling point
- How important is gore, do you need gore or just frightened by suspense.
- Do you like comedy with horror
- What TV programs do you watch regularly
- Do reviews or awards mean a lot to you? If so which one matters more and why?
- What similarities between your favourite horror films have you observed?

Below is the Audience focus group interview. We use two males aged 18 and 17. We asked them the questions above and got some good feedback.

Most of what they said was what we expected but some of the things gave us very good information we wouldn't thought of. They didn't seem to take in the words on the screen, however we think that we'll still put words on the screen as they added to the trailer's effect and split up the scenes well. They noticed the stereotypical characters in most horrors.

Audience Prezi EA/JB

Plot Ideas for trailer JB

The genre I've decided on is horror, with the sub-genre either being thriller or psychological. Therefore I've researched some of this genre's plots and come up with some new ideas inspired by some of these. A lot of psychological horrors contain things like possession and ghosts/ demons.

1st Idea:
- A troubled old man rocking backward and forward in his rocking chair, smoking and drinking, quietly humming to himself.
- You see hints that something is with him in the room, or outside through the window.
- There's some build up then it eventually kills him and leaves him there, still rocking.
- Police investigation scene about the murder. They find nothing.
- Cuts to a family moving into the house and them being happy they got a new house.
- Then fast edits through different scenes in the house where the family get terrorised by this demon.

2nd Idea:
 - A man is walking in the woods listening to his iPod, you see hints that something is following him and he is getting a bit nervous and keeps looking over his shoulder.
- Eventually he stops and turns off his iPod, shouts out something like who's there and then it kills him.
- A police investigation scene the following morning and they can't find anything, a special ghost hunter is also there and concludes it's supernatural.
- They ward off the forest to keep people safe just in case it is supernatural even though the police don't believe it.
- Teenagers sneak in at night to drink. It's all happy until one of them gets pulled out of the circle from the shadows and havoc ensues.
- There's 6 of them and they die off one by one with perhaps one survivor. During the last bit of the trailer there's jump cuts and fast edits between different bits of action and tension alike.

Horror Trailers Techniques and Coventions essay JB

Explore the genre and conventions of your chosen media text. How do you plan to adhere to or develop these conventions?

The genre I have decide on is Horror. The sub-genre of this being either a thriller horror or a psychological. I'm going to focus on 5 trailers; The Ring, Grave Encounters, Paranormal Activity, The Cabin in the Woods and The Purge. Each of these trailers have many different conventions and techniques that I will explore in this essay and how I plan to adhere to or develop them.

One of the main conventions i've noticed in these 5 trailers is the use of words on the screen to give the audience an idea of the plot. This is used in Grave Encounters, The Ring and The Purge. The Cabin in the Woods and Paranormal Activity also use words on the screen but they use it more as a way to introduce extra selling points and less to tell you the plot. The pictures below are examples of these. I could adhere to this convention by explaining my plot broadly to the audience in this way and possible introduce an extra selling point such as "From the director of -insert movie name here-".

Another technique I saw used widely was the use of fast paced short shots cut together with straight cuts. This was used to increase tension and keep suspense and the feel of action. It was used in every single one of these trailers an example being in The Ring at 0:56 until around the end of the trailer. This trailer is shown below. I would adhere to this technique fairly easily by increasing the number of shots I take and editing them together very quickly one after another in an attempt to copy this and keep tension and suspense/the feel of action.

One convention I didn't see much use of was a main actor being in most shots to bring in an audience of his or her fans. However one of the trailers did use the producer as an extra selling point as he was presumably particularly famous, this part of the trailer The Cabin in the Woods is pictured below. This would help because if people have seen another one of this producers films and they liked it it would work in the same way a famous actor would and bring in more audience. Another example of this is in The purge in which they again mention the producer, but instead of mentioning a name they mention he's the producer of paranormal Activity, which might help more as more people would know the film than the producer behind the film. This too is pictured below. I could adhere to this convention by using either an actor or a producer as an extra selling point, bringing his name up on the screen perhaps at a pivotal moment in the trailer.

Another technique used widely in these 5 trailers was the use of a tense soundtrack. It was used in every single one of these trailers and i'm pretty sure it'd be hard to find a trailer for a horror in which there is no soundtrack whatsoever. Most of the music is not just a soundtrack but tense music with a lot of effects of for example people breathing heavily and screams thrown in with it to increase tension. The soundtrack is used to help the trailer be more effective by increasing tension and suspense. It's designed to create an ambiance and make it scarier for the audience. I could adhere to this technique by using the sound effects available to me on my editing software or perhaps by recording my own and using these combined with a music track I find or one I could make that creates tension. The trailer with the most notable tense soundtrack is linked below and the track is played throughout.

A very interesting take on a horror film is Grave Encounters. The trailer makes it seem like the film is a true story. The film itself is filmed in a documentary style but it's fiction which it's fairly unusual. They've pulled this off by creating a trailer that one would see on TV for a documentary which immediately pulls the audience in as it's something they've never seen before. It would be very difficult to pull a trailer like this off without it seeming as though you've completely stolen this films idea and so because of this and the fact that it would be fairly hard to do I'm not going to do something like this although I might use some of the films other convention that don't like to the plot of the film. The trailer is shown below.

One convention most film trailers use is the introduction of the people behind the film. They usually do this by flashing the names of the producers, directors, actors or institutions on the screen for a second or two. In Grave Encounters this is mentioned at the end very quickly after the title of the film. I think this is because they want to still give the trailer the feel that it's a true story and therefore there wouldn't be things like a director. In The Cabin in the Woods one institution is shown on the screen, Lionsgate, when the trailer goes from a happy start and then it turns dark at this point. This is pictured below. The use of introducing things like the institution at pivotal moments in the trailer is used widely in trailers everywhere and is a convention I could definitely adhere to. 

In conclusion there are many different conventions and techniques used in each of these trailers each one being used in a way to sell the film or increase tension and suspense or the feel of action. I could adhere to most of these techniques in my product and perhaps develop a couple if I had the resources, for instance a better soundtrack would require a better sound producing software. It would be fairly easy to adhere to them and would help my trailer look like the real thing and if it were the real thing they would definitely help bring in more audience.

The remaining trailers that weren't linked during the essay are linked below.

Essay on trailers JB

Explore the genre and conventions of your chosen media text. How do you plan to adhere to or develop these conventions?

My chosen media text is a film trailer. There are many conventions in this area as there's so many trailers available to see. During the research stage i focused on 8 different trailers. The genre of these trailers where either comedy or action, with one being a mix of both. These genres are the most widely used in the film industry and so have the most conventions.The trailers I watched and analysed were Kick-Ass 2, Fast & Furious 6, Oblivion, After Earth, World War Z, The Internship and The English Teacher.

Throughout all of these trailers I saw many conventions that were very vivid. The main one I saw was the use of the main famous actor as a selling point. The two trailers that this was very obvious in was After Earth and Oblivion. Will Smith in After Earth was in pretty much every shot shown and was used to attempt to bring more audience who are fans of him in. The same technique was used in Oblivion with Morgan Freeman and Tom Cruise, them both being shown in almost every shot. This technique was also used in World War Z and a few others. This technique is very effective in the way that it brings in more audience because if the actor is very famous then all of his fans would come and see the film he's in. This works quite well not in just getting people to come and see it but in reviews as well because most actors take on similar roles to their previous ones so the fans coming to see the film would enjoy the film as it would be similar to ones they've seen before with the actor in. In my product I could adhere to this conventions by using one of my actors in most of the shots and having his name enter the screen on it's own at a pivotal point in the trailer.

Another way in which they sold the film was mentioning the institutions behind it. They usually try and mention the biggest ones behind it to bring it the most attention. An example of this is Kick-Ass 2 in which they mention Universal is behind it in the trailer but it isn't until the end that they also mention about Plan B and Marv Films, who are less well known and there isn't point mentioning them earlier on. World War Z also mentions it's institutions but decides to put them all up one by one after another during the trailer at a key turning point. The idents are usually shown right at the start or right at the end. This helped sell the film because a lot of people know about institutions such as Universal even if they don't really know what the company does beyond making some famous films. Mentioning that institutions such as Plan B and Marv Films are behind the film as well could be beneficial because some film goers might want to help out less well-known institutions and some frequent indie film goers might already know these institutions and like the type of films they produce. It gives the audience a sort of idea as to what kind of film it's going to be just by looking at the institutions behind it. In my product I could develop this conventions by having my own institutions flash up at the start or at the end of the product mentioning a variety of indie-type institutions to appeal to that type of audience and give an impression to what my film is going to be like.

A more obvious way in which they sold the film was by making the plot line clear and explaining the story background well. They all did this in different ways all of which I could adhere to. The trailer of Kick-Ass 2 and Oblivion establishes the storyline through the use of the voice-over. Where as Fast & Furious 6 and World War Z tells it via the use of dialog and scenes. I could have either of these techniques in my product however as it's harder to do a voice-over I think I would be leaning more towards telling the story via dialog and scenes.

A convention that seems simple but was part of every single film was establishing the genre. This was done by for instance the use of jokes in the comedy genre, an example of this being Kick-Ass 2 in which the genre is shown by the music stopping then the punchline of a joke is heard and then the music starts again, which is used in many films. Another example is the use of scenes with explosions and fast cars in the action genre for instance in the trailer for Fast & Furious 6 which contains many scenes with fast cars and explosions. One final example for establishing the genre in this kind of way is in Oblivion and After Earth which establish the genre of both of these as Drama/Sci-Fi by the use of props that look futuristic and the use of space scenes and tense close ups.

Another convention which they use in some of the trailers is adding extra selling points by for instance saying "From the director of -insert a successful film here-". An example of this is in Oblivion in which it says "From the producers of Rise of the Planet of the Apes". I could adhere to this convention in my product by saying something similar to this however because of copyright reasons would have to make up the title of a film that's meant to be successful.

In conclusion there are many different conventions used in these trailers that I could adhere to the main ones being the use of main actors and the introduction of the institutions behind the film. It would be easy to adhere to these conventions and would definitely help my product look like a normal film trailer and potentially bring in more audience if I were to release the trailer properly.