Rate our trailer! What would you rate our trailer out of 5? 1 2 3 4 5 view results

Evaluation link

please see our evaluation blog here for our evaluation.

Trailer finished and complete!

After the feedback we got last week, we altered lots of things, fine tuning the trailer and adding finishing touches. We are really happy with what we produced and have tried to get as much response from our target audience as possible, so hoping what we have made is successful.

Trailer feedback

In today's lesson we showed our media class our trailer on the projector screen. We handed out a questionnaire [pictured above] for everyone to fill out and collect some feedback in order for us to know what needs improving.  We are going to take these remarks on board and edit our trailer, hopefully producing the final cut.

What is the name of our film?

The majority of people left this answer blank as the trailer doesn't actually feature our title. We know this is probably the most important thing to be in the trailer which is why we are going to get it in asap. We are going to use the handmade watery font which colleen produced herself, we hope it will be one of the iconic features of our film.

What's our production name?

All but a few people answered this correct, its featured at the very beginning of our trailer. In one of the later questions someone said it could be shown for longer, so we may slow it down by a second or two.

What Genre is it?

Everybody said the film genre was horror which is correct. This shows that our trailer has lots of horror connotations and links to the genre well.

What makes you think this?

The most popular answer given was the fast, jolty editing. People said the long shots built tension and contrasted well with the jump cuts. The fast flickering gives a sense of instability and fractured personalities. This was our purpose and therefore has worked well as nearly everybody commented on this. A few people said makeup and costume added to the horror genre, dark colours which also worked well with the dark lighting.

What do you think of the backing track?

We had a good response to our music, people said it was eerie and fitted well with our editing. They said it built tension with the calm music at the beginning and the loud bangs at the end. We were really happy with the music and are glad the audience felt the same, we intended for the loudest bits to be at the end on dramatic parts of the footage.

What could be improved?

- an apostrophe needs to be put in

- possibly more dialogue 

- title text

- the text to be on screen for a bit longer

These are the main points which came up, we are going to take them all into consideration when editing the trailer next time.

What didn't you like?

People said the ending was an anti climax, and ended suddenly. We do already know this and intend to add a scream and fade to black to finish. They also felt the storyline could have been clearer, so we need to work on this and make it more clear.

What did you like?

We had similar answers here to the 'what makes you think this' question which in my eyes makes it a success. The music and editing were popular answers again and people said they work well for the genre  which means we have a good horror trailer!

Some people also liked the unconventional setting of the beach and pier. They said it wasnt expected but worked in its own creepy way.

Rating out of 10?

the average rating was an 8 which is pretty good, hopefully we can get this up to a 10 after some more editing and our final trailer.

Trailer

This is our trailer, the first finished edit which we are now going to show people for feedback. enjoy.

Final Trailer week 1

Following on from the last post, we have been working more on our trailer. We have changed and added a lot but kept the basic structure from before.

To start with we added a green preview screen which instantly made the trailer look more professional. This is then followed by a group of establishing shots, which pan and fade into each other, similarly to before. The shots create a sense of familiarity with the audience, getting them to know where the trailer is set. Using an overlay we have added text which backs up the idea of our killer being dazed and confused as shown in our poster [here].  We have added the music we chose (Seme) which helped our editing dramatically, there was a drop in the song so we switched from calm editing to quick cuts of the killer and a sink, linking to the water theme.

We have added in lots of footage of tom, one of the victims, looking into mirrors which have the infinity effect. This shows his feelings, scared and afraid but duplicates it over and over, highlighting it to the audience. It shows his fractured being which is added to by the 2 super quick jump cuts of the killer - seeming like its in his mind and he is thinking about her. The trailer ends on a shot of the pier with a mysterious figure, the camera zooming in bit by bit which seems quite stalker like. This gives a sense of being watched and fits well with horror conventions.

The trailer is coming on quite quickly now, hopefully just a few weeks until it is done and ready for feedback.

20seconds

This is our first attempt at editing our actual trailer and taking it seriously. We have only produced 20 seconds but believe it has potential and could be made longer for the final outcome.

We have used some establishing shots to start with which fade into each other, creating equilibrium which horror films usually do, making the viewer feel comfortable. We have then put in a close up of a couples hand, which reinforces the equilibrium and introduces the victim characters. After this the tempo starts to speed up with a scream from one of the characters we have just seen. We used a hand held camera shot on a canted angle to create disorientaion - contrasting the previous shots. This is one of our favourite shots but maybe it could be moved further through the trailer to have more impact on the audience.

Next we have introduced a short, sharp shot of our villain in the water. The quick editing adds to the mood of the film and the jump cuts create panic. Using a shot of her in the water links the film back to the title and makes the audience want to know why she is there and wahts going to happen. We then added in a close up of her face as she snaps open her eye which is freaky and makes the viewer jump.

The music cuts in and although not typical horror music, it definaltey helps the trailer along. In the real trailer we will use the music we have researched and picked [here] but for now this is just an experiment. We then added in some quick, simple text on a black backgroud - following horror connotations and following on from this we have a clip of Tom looking over his shoulder and 'watching his back' like the text suggested.

We are happy with this so far and think with some more film added in and some slight alterations we have a good start!

3D Poster

3D seems to be very popular in the cinemas at the moment and we decided to give it a go, making our poster look 3d when wearing the special glasses. We followed the following steps on a photoshop tutorial:

- Put your image in Photoshop

- Duplicate this layer, creating a new layer

- Create two blank layers and place then in-between the artwork layers

- Colour top layer to Blue

- Colour next layer to red

- Turn red and blue layers to 'screen' in blend mode

- Merge down the top two layers

- Convert this layer to 'multiply'

- Finally move this layer and look through your glasses to get the right position for it to be 3D

[please put on 3D glasses now]

This is the outcome we got... 

Although the 3D idea had potential, we don't think it works very well and therefore have decided against using it! For the 3D image to work you need the red and cyan shadow layers, but due to the colours in our image the cyan layer didn't seem to work. I think with some further development maybe just having the title text in 3D could work better. This would be a more subtle version of 3D but would mean the title would really stand out and capture audience attention. I have proeduced an example of this below which would then be placed onto the poster, replacing the current title. We think the simplicity of only one element being 3D has much more power and effect on the audience,

Music

Today we started editing our trailer and realized we need to find some music in order to edit in time with the soundtrack. We started by searching for horror music on the internet but everything seemed to cheesy and more comical horror than realistic. We then decided to look into real horror soundtracks for music that is professional and fits the genre. Dark Water, The Strangers and The Grudge had some promising tracks which were dramatic and suitable for our trailer, we narrowed it down to three tracks: see below.

We have chosen to use Seme, from The Grudge score as our trailer music. We liked all the tracks but felt this had the most potential and worked well with our storyline. The other two tracks have some good dramatic parts within the music but we feel Seme had the best tune. The song has a good amount of low music with some dramatic drops that are well spaced apart. This will be good for when editing the trailer to the music, we can use the quiter parts to build tension and the louder bits for shocking the audience.

Briony's Poster

This is my poster which i produced using adobe photoshop. I have used an image that we took whilst at the beach (our location) which we felt had the most potential. The image itself is quite light and airey but Colleens body language is quite odd and almost disorentated which gives the viewer a distressed feeling. We felt this work well with our film, being more of a physcological thrill than gory horror. The image doesn't reveal much about the character so the audience is left intrigued... who is she?... whiy is she in the sea?... why is she looking into the distance? This is the type of hype we want our film to create and we think the poster does this well.

Title

We experimented with lots of downloaded fonts from www.dafont.com and got feedback from others in our class as they are the age of our potential target audience. We got a lot of positive feedback, especially on the more simple fonts with slight water effects which link to our name 'Shallow Water'. People expressed that some of the fonts we had chosen were a bit too 'cheesy' in the theme of horror and became more comical than scary. Although we did have some good digital fonts, we thought we could do better so decided to use our graphic skills and produce our own title. Colleen hand painted some lettering with watercolour which has a blotted feel, reflecting our movie Shallow Water. She used black and white paint, blending it and watering it down which made it look quite dark and creepy. After some further comment's we realised this wasn't overly scary so wanted to play with the idea of blood and dripping. Using Photoshop Colleen added drips to some of the letters, but only a few so that it wasn't over done. This looked creepier than before but still didn't communicate the idea of blood. We then altered the colours, hue and saturation to give it a red tint. This automatically became a lot more striking and gave the image of blood in water, symbolising death, danger and horror. I am really pleased with what we produced and think it's an idividual twist on our trailer

Font Ideas...

The font is very important for a movie poster, one of the main recognizable features which is why we are taking time to carefully select our type face. We have used www.dafont.com to source a selection of fonts which we like and are going to ask our fellow students which they think will suit our horror film best. The fonts we have chosen are mainly quite simple, with fractured, erroded and splattered effects. We decided against a type face which is too elaborate as it can become cheesy and after some research found that most other horror films use simple type.
The font which got the most amount of votes was number 4. People said they liked that it was quite a traditional font which is recognisable, mixed with splatters of paint which reminded them of blood. They also said the splatters were like water and the sea splashing...which links well to our water themed film.
Number 2 was also popular, very simple sans serif font with a brushed eroded effect. The audience said it was very clearly readable and bold with a hint of scary.
Number 5 was the least popular, people felt it was slightly to over worked... the stroke and the splatters were a bit too much. Also someone said the font was very rounded which made it very friendly looking.
I think these are all valid points and have helped us with making the decision.

 

Magazine Covers

These are our magazine covers, both quite similar. On colleen's version of the magazine cover (left) although using the same main image, she has edited the brightness and contrast of the image to crate an apparent paled face killer - a typical image you'd expect to see within a horror. The image is more spooky than Briony's (right). Both covers have used the black red and white colour scheme, these are traditional horror colours - sticking the genre conventions.  The tag lines on both are also quite similar, main one being about our movie itself... Briony's linking with the name 'Premiere' with the idea of first look and seeing it before others. We have both made the magazine a horror special because after some research we found that movie magazines dont often have horror films on the cover, we believe this is to do with age rating and it appealing to a smaller audience. So by creating it a special, the audience will know its just a one off. We have used words such as 'exclusive', 'win', 'behind the scenes' etc as these are all things which appeal to the audience, making them feel like they are getting something extra and involving them in the magazine.
We are both happy with the two posters and are submitting both of them for the exam, we think they look quite proffesional and work well with our other media products!

Photoshoot

We have taken a range of images for our film poster and magazine cover. We experimented with a range of shot ideas which could be edited and developed. These were inspired by other movie posters we researched - we hope the images represent our film well and give the audience a sneak peek into our trailer itself. Photos can be found at our flickr or by clicking the photos below. We want the poster to be quite scary, featuring the killer and maybe a weapon or some blood (making her look like a killer). But we don't want it to be over the top creepy as this may put some viewers off and give to much away! I think the photos we have taken have potential and could look good after editing :)

Film Title Ideas

In today’s lesson we came up with a list of Movie name ideas:

- Downfall
- Manic Water
- Shallow Water
- Red Tide
- Black Tide
- Murky Water

 We then passed this list round the room on a tally chart for people to vote on their favourite, to see which titles would be most popular. This worked well because the people in our class are the same age as our target audience (teenagers and young adults) and therefore we got a clear representative of what our chosen audience like. The title which came up most popular was 'Shallow Water'.
The feedback we received:

"It's simple and intriguing name with a catchy ring to it."


"It tells the audience it's a water related film - something everyone is familiar with and therefore becomes a lot more scary"

"The idea of shallow water is creepy and gives a sense that someone/thing may be lurking in it"

Storyboard Roughs

Storyline Finally

Although taking a while to decide, we have come up with a rough idea on our story line following the theme of number 4 shown on the Facebook note.
- 'Jane' is washed up onto a beach, no idea who she is, and know idea how she got there. deranged and crazy she sets out to find who did this to her, killing whoever gets in her way.' A basic storyline, however we plan to include a twist somewhere to add an exciting and intriguing element to the trailer to tease the audience and leave them wanting more.
Time for storyboards.

Facebook Feedback

This week me and Colleen posted 4 storyline ideas on a Facebook note so that we could get some feedback from our target audience on what storyline they liked.
See Below:

We thought Facebook was a good place to get opinions as the majority of people on their are students around our age range. This is who we want our film to appeal to and thought they would give us an honest opinion. The majority of feedback we got was positive, we found that they mostly liked number 1 & 4.


Comments:
"I like the first one the best :) but you could do it a bit like paranormal activity - ish, like instead of her actually coming back, bad things could happen to the student, or the student could unwillingly do bad things to other people, like her friends. Or number 2, instead of the dead person coming back, someone else who knew the girl could do the killing it'd make the film more realistic."

"I like number four the best, looks intriguing :)"

"I think number four is the best because its an original and unique idea. Im excited to see the story unfold and the synopsis makes me want to see more"


"Number 2"

Hi Youtube

Today we sorted out all our filming which we did a few weeks ago - testing shots and location ideas. We then decided to try some simple editing techniques just to get a feel for imovie. We put a few different clips together, as well as using a sound bridge and cross dissolve. These are all very basic and the outcome isn't brilliant, but it's our first go!

Snap Happy

Despite having little idea on our storyline still, we're set on having it based around water and with living in Portsmouth, the sea is our greatest natural backdrop. With ideas in mind, we set off to Old Portsmouth - a part of the city which seems to have been captured in time where the streets are lit with old fashioned lampposts, cobbled streets and a sense of being in a state of disrepair; ready to be modernized.


View Larger Map

Above shows the stretch of beach we covered with the Round Tower just seen in the north of the map. Photo's and videos to follow soon!

Mise-en-scene

The mise-en-scène can be described as the 'arrangement of scenery and properties to represent the place where a play or movie is enacted.'
The mise-en-scène of our trailer is mainly situated upon the beach. However due to it being a public place, we had to ensure that the beach was particularly empty as a person walking in the background of a scene would've have ruined a shot. We were quite lucky as we found a secluded area of the beach in which to film, out of the way and only really popular within the summer - a problem we wouldn't be having within November time. Additionally, due to the majority of our shots being filmed outside, props weren't that essential in building our scene into a realistic representation, as everything was already there

Storyline Ideas

Since we have completed preliminary tasks such as analysis, we plan to move forward into the production process. We have started thinking about story lines (see post below) and plan to narrow them down into three main contenders. We are going to publish theses thoughts on Facebook - a top social networking site and get people to review our ideas. This will be good research as our target audience is young adults, the main users of Facebook. We will then consider people's reviews and votes, helping us decide which idea will become our storyline.

Idea Generation

We have produced this quick brainstorm to get some ideas flowing & help us move further in our project:

Three Become Two

From being a team of three for this project, Tom has been separated and now the trailer shall be produced by myself and Briony.



Maybe it's for the best, not.

Costumes

Costumes are a big part of the film and can make or break a character. Some films take different approaches to their costumes depending on the storyline and can have their killer/victims dressed in ripped, bloody clothing to portray a sense of chaos. This can be seen within the film,The Strangers when the victims are killed, however the killers themselves are dressed in everyday outfits, suggesting that they are normal people too, with the difference of a mask covering their face, dehumanising them from their seemingly normal clothes and taking away and emotion that would be seen upon their faces.

For the victims of our killer the costumes aren't as key as they are portrayed as just normal everyday people, so jeans, jumpers, leggings are easily appropriate. However the clothing for the 'washed-up' killer need to be thought out more carefully to portray the idea of her being a bit darker. 

For our killer we have chosen the clothing to consist of black leggings, a ripped up grey t-shirt and no shoes. This suggests the worn down, scruffy look of the killer and as if she herself has been attacked before by somebody else.

Magazine Cover

One of our tasks was to find and analyze a scary movie magazine cover, but we found it difficult to find one. We think this is because scary movies is a specific genre with a select audience, which doesn't appeal to everyone. Editors will have this is mind therefore choosing bigger, blockbuster movies to put on the cover which appeal to a broader audience in order to get best profit.
When we come to make our magazine cover we will take this into consideration, choosing our images, tag lines, layout etc carefully. We want our cover to appeal to a wide variety of people in order to promote our film.

Trailer Analysis

COLLEEN TO DO
The Grudge:


The Ring:


The Strangers:

Film Posters

As part of the tasks we were set to do before film making, we had to analyse three film posters. I had to do this in terms of their style, colour, imagery, text, layout etc. I chose three quite similar films which all had different styles of poster in which we could compare. I have uploaded them to Scribd in order for you to view the full documents:













Briony

Trailer Research

There are two types of trailer - A teaser trailer is a short taster of the film whereas a full length trailer is more of a longer preview, revealing more ideas and insight into the film. Teaser trailers usually contain very little footage and are often created before main filming begins, their job is to let viewers know that the film is around and in production; coming soon. Full trailers are shown nearer the movie release date and on a much wider scale.

Teaser Trailer:                     

Full Trailer:
   

Day One - Pre Production

TRAILERS

In order to create our teaser trailer production piece, background research is a must. This includes looking at other trailers and media products within our genre: Horror/Thriller

A trailer is a preview of an upcoming feature film which will be shown in the cinema in the near future. Trailers can be seen in a multiplicity of formats.

- Cinema: This is where most people would view film trailers, especially older viewers as they aren't as tech savvy as the youthful 'youtube' generation. When viewing films you are shown trailers of a similar genre, therefore targeting the right target audience, creating more hype and awareness. Also many films are viewed as better on the 'big' screen, giving it a bigger more exciting preview than just watching it at home.

- Youtube: Ideally aimed at the younger audience, Youtube and other websites are easily accessible to young people as well as being free. This therefore potentially enlarges the target audience and is easy to be done by the film companies, quickly and cheaply.

- DVD: This is a less mainstream way of viewing trailers, but similar to the cinema in the way that when watching a DVD you will see trailers within the same genre of your chosen film. The producers know that the viewer is more likely to be interested in the new film, if they have enjoyed a similar one.

- TV Adverts: Most people watch TV therefore trailers shown during adverts are broadly viewed. Different trailers are shown at different times, to target a specific audience e.g cartoons and films for kids are shown during childrens programs and throughout the day whereas scarier, more adult films are shown after the watershed.

- Social Networking: Sites such as Facebook, Myspace, Twitter etc are great places to view trailers, especially the younger audience where 93% of teenagers use online social sites. A trailer can be watched online and then sent out to all the viewers friends giving it huge popularity and lots of hits.

Genre Conventions: ""specific settings, roles, events, and values that define individual genres and their subgenres." These conventions, always fluid, are usually implicit, but sometimes are made into explicit requirements by publishers of fiction as a guide to authors seeking publication." - Sourced from Wikipedia