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.