Original Idea Storyboards

Here are our original storyboards which we used in conjuction with our shot lists to help us plan out our trailer. Things from these storyboards and the shot list alike did end up changing when we got to making to actual trailer.

Analysis of Film Magazines

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Please view the video for the main part of my answer. 

Although (as I mention in the video) I think the products work well and individual publications, upon further reflection I am not sure that they work together as good as they could. The main focus on the poster was of course the gas mask, as this is what is out main 'monster' is wearing in the film (If there was to be a film). The trailer did have moments of this - most noteably the jumpy part near the end, but as I have mentioned in my audience feedback post, we did not include enough of the monster as we would have liked, nor as much as we orignally planned due to certain shots just not turning out as good as we imagined. The magazine cover did not really fit the gas mask theme either, instead focusing on a main actor. The font used was also different from the poster to the film - but the main title text was the same from the poster to the magazine. The magazine perhaps fitted with the trailer more than the poster did - the main actor on the front (Presumably if this was a real film this would be a well known actor) was also the actor who gets the most screen time in the trailer, so people would easily be able to relate the magazine cover to the trailer.

Overall I feel like my products do all link to each other, but in too many different ways. The poster and magazine share the same font, and the magazine and trailer share the same showing of the main actor. But then the poster and trailer link by having very dark colours, whereas the magazine is more of a red colour, rather matching the main actors outfit. Whilst I think they work very well as individual products, if I was to embark on a similar task again I would ensure that all three products linked in to each other in a much clearer and more coherant way.

In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventional of real media products?

 Here are two images complied of screenshots from two film trailers: The Blair Witch Project (Top one) and my groups trailer, Crash Site.

For the most part, we found that Crash Site supports and develops horror conventions rather than challenge them. The reason I have chosen The Blair Witch Project as a comparison is because it is also supposedly filmed with cameras held by the characters within the film rather than traditional 'cameraman' shots, essentially it is a sort of documentary horror.

I only watched The Blair Witch Project after we had finished our trailer so it was interesting to see how many similarities there were. The top left hand corner of the BWP shows a screenshot of an old women talking - she is talking about the Blair Witch and it dangers, similarly, we have a shot in our film in which one of the main characters says "We've heard bad things about this place." These are interesting pieces of footage as they both show an awareness of danger about the place which the Characters will be going, before they get there.

There is also an interesting similarity in how the trailers are set up, and how this specific genre of film tends to build up the trailer in general. In the top right of the BWP poster, you can see a woman talking from inside her house, and this is also apparent in the top right of the Crash Site poster to the left. Other trailers with the same horror sub-genre such as paranormal activity also have this nice, peaceful home footage in the build up of their trailer, so our trailer certainly supports this stereotypical build up technique.

Another fairly stereotypical convention which our trailer supported was the use of simple, black and white inter-titles used to give a small backdrop on the story, which you can see on both posters to the left. The main difference here is that the titles on the BWP trailer tended to have more information on them, whereas our inter-titles tended to have less information, but there was more of them.

Shots of people running are another popular convention within this sub-genre. The second screenshot down on the right represents this in my Crash Site trailer, whilst the screenshot at the bottom of the BWP poster shows it there. This seems to be a very conventional shot used in this sub-genre, that of running away with the in hand camera. Another similar thing which is represented in both the BWP trailer and our Crash Site trailer is the dropping of the handheld camera (Bottom left on CS Poster, mid-right of BWP poster). In fact in our Crash Site trailer, a running shot was combined with the dropping of the camera to create an effect of panic and fear, as you don't really see in either trailer why they are running or why they were presumably forced into dropping the camera. Obviously, this would not happen in a normal film with standard cameras, but it is very common in the with films such as these with handheld cameras.

There were however a few shots in our film which break the conventions of these type of films. Usually, these films (Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity) are filmed by the characters handheld cameras the entire time, with no camera shot seemingly being a normal camera man filmed shot. However, our trailer broke this convention by doing a mix between the two, which seemed to work quite well. The top left and mid left screenshots on the Crash Site poster show two different shots which offer a sort of point of view shot - or at least it is meant to suggest that someone is looking at them - but crucially this is not supposed to be a handheld camera.

Our trailer also makes us of more general horror conventions which you see across the board in horror films. For example, Horror films are often very dark to give the impression of a certain fear of mystery. We deliberatly kept to this convention to ensure that our trailer looked like a horror film - we darkened the vast majority of our shots, including adjusting the saturation and brightness levels of the shots of the main characters in their home before they even leave. This is because we did not want any of our trailer to appear to bright or 'happy' since it is supposed to be a horror film trailer. The setting is also a very typical convetion, being in a sort of woods/forest area. These are typical of the Horror genre because they seem be isolated from civilisation and from normality, and thus instantly give the viewer that feeling that something bad could happen - which in turn is letting them know it's a horror without them even thinking about it. Again, this is something we deliberatly kept to so that we could ensure our trailer looked like a horror film trailer.

In conclusion I would say our Trailer heavily supports and uses conventions typical of its genre and sub-genre rather than challenge them. This is evident in everything from the way the trailer is built up, right down to very specific shots mentioned previously. The only main challenge to the convention of these Paranormal Horror/Home video/Documentary style films we have is the fact that only some of the film is supposed to be 'home footage' rather than the entire film being constructed of it like it is in popular portrayals of this genre such as paranormal activity.

Original Photo's for Ancillary Texts

Analysis of Film Posters

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

We showed our trailer to our media class (who of course fit our target audience) and the trailer seemed to go down pretty well, with plenty of positive comments and only a few negatives. However, it is the negative comments which are the most important as they are the ones which we can learn from.

To the right is an image with some screenshots representative of some of the positive comments we got. Generalised, the comments were as such:

•Music is good, in time, pick up at the right points, worked well

• The Crash Site title at the end was good, fitting font/smoke

•Conventional Setting

•Good range of shots

•Isolation of words in intertitles, eg 'Vanishes'

•Specific shots such as night vision shots, camera drop were good

•POV shots were dark/distorted

•Good effects/colour correction

•The fuzzing/static shots worked well.

•Used something from the past, masks/planes etc (See my Freud-  return of the repressed piece)

It was very nice to see many of these things picked up on, all of which were discussed as a group at various points - none of these positive points came from accidental things or luck. There were certainly a fair few horror conventions which we stuck too - the fact that our trailer was part 'documentary' style, supposedly with the characters cameras meant that we tried to make the quality a little grainy for those shots, and made use of the static and fuzzing on certain shots which you often see in films such as Paranormal Activity. As already mentioned, we also stuck to a more conventional setting - that being a sort of wooded area.

The music was also something that we worked hard to find - whilst real horror movies will often compose their own score specific to their film, we were obviously left trawling through royalty free websites in order to find suitable music and sound effects which would fit the style and feel of our trailer. Whilst of course it could have been better, I feel that our sound worked out very well with the resources we had. Many of the positive comments related to the music.

The negative comments we got were a lot shorter list and thus I can list them as individual, un-edited comments:

•Could be more jumpy sections

•Was only a couple of jumpy parts

• Inter-titles could be longer

•Narrative lost with all the different build up shots

•Music was fitting but could have differed at some points

•Not enough close ups

•Too many running shots, not a lot happens

I feel that there are some very important comments there, and if we were to go back and re-film and edit our trailer, I am sure we could vastly improve it. First of all, the first two comments:

"Could be more jumpy sections"
"Was only a couple of jumpy parts"

This is something which I very much agree with. During planning, we had 3 different 'jumpy' parts, but it was difficult to shoot and edit them as we could imagine them in our head (In our head we obviously imagined very professional versions) which ended up leaving us with only one main jumpy bit right at the end of the trailer, whilst other bits were only slightly jumpy, or just tension building. Upon reflection, the trailer needs to be a lot shorter with a lot less build up, and there needs to be at least 2-3 jumpy parts to make it more of an entertaining trailer.


"Inter-titles could be longer"

After watching the video countless times during editing, it can be hard to judge the length of inter-titles because you know exactly what they will say, allowing you to read it quicker that anyone who see's the trailer for the first time. I especially think that the first inter-title was to quick for some people to read. As for the production company titles, I personally don't think that these were a problem since you often see trailer in which the production company's flash on and off the screen really fast, as people are not interested in the companys - they want to see the trailer - and so spending to long focusing on the people who made the film can really distract from the trailer itself.


"Narrative lost with all the different build up shots"

This is a comment which I think I actually learnt from once we had a small discussion afterwards, where it was mentioned that not enough of the 'monster' was shown. Whilst I don't think any narrative was lost because of the build up shots (Other positive comments included "Very clear narrative - chronological" and "Story telling was good") I do feel that we did not show quite enough of the story because we did not show enough of the enemy/monster. This meant that some people were left feeling a little lost about what was actually happening, and what the characters in the trailer were scared of. This is another thing which can bypass you in editing - since we knew the story so well, this didn't occur to us - but to other people who had no idea about it, we did not make the main monster clear enough, and that meant that some of the narrative was lost there. Of course, this is only a trailer so there is a fine line between giving to much story away and showing the right amount, but we were just on the negative side of showing the right amount.


"Music was fitting but could have differed at some points"

I think possibly this comment tells me more about the length of the trailer if anything. They mention the fact that the music is fitting - but as I mentioned earlier, I think our trailer build up is too long. If the build up was 45 seconds less, then the slower paced music would be playing for 45 seconds less which would make it not so much of a drag, and then it may not feel as if the music would have needed to differ any more than it did when you factor in the fast paced music at the end.


"Not enough close ups"
"Too many running shots, not a lot happens"

The comments about the close up is something that I definitely agree with, and the second comment relates back to multiple things I have mentioned already such as trailer length, 'monster' shots and 'jumpy' shots. There were a few close ups which we made sure were in the trailer - such as when one character is looking around the woods by himself, and near the end when the gas mask monster is in the tent, but this clearly was not enough, and this perhaps contributed to the lack of 'jumpiness' mentioned.

Overall I think that I have learnt a lot from these comments. If we were to go back and re-vamp the trailer, I think it would be much shorter and snappier, with more close ups, more attention on the monster and those things combining to create more jumpy shots. I think that this would make our trailer a much more professional and cinematic experience to watch.

Ancillary Texts

Here are my two ancillary texts - My Horror Poster and my Film Magazine.

Main Product

Here is my groups main final Product.

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

Here is a list of some of the technologies I have used:

•Youtube
•Blogger
•Adobe Photoshop CS5
•Adobe Premiere Pro CS5
•Adobe After Effects CS5
•Royalty Free Music/sounds websites
•Sony Handycam

And of course various other standard hardware and software such as the Windows and Apple operating systems, the PC's and Mac's themselves, microphones for when we re-done some of the sounds, and survey monkey as part of our audience research.

In terms of the construction of my project, this was largely down to Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Pro - although pretty much all of the technologies I have listed link in at some point. Although everyone else in our group used Final Cut Pro to edit their video, my group and I chose to use Adobe Premiere Pro. This was largely down to the fact that no-one in our group was experienced in Final Cut Pro, but I did know how to use Premiere Pro - which is just as good. Therefore I took it upon myself to teach my other group members how to use it, and they picked it up pretty quick as it is farily simple to use. Premiere pro is a very professional video editing tool. Whilst more basic video editing software  such as Windows Movie Maker will allow you to import, cut and add transitions to your clips, Premiere Pro offers far more detail and complexities so you can get your video looking exactly how you want it to. This is mainly down to the use of keyframes for effects and fades - but also the vareity of effects on offer and how you can be specific with any effect you choose - for example selecting a colour to tint your video, and furthermore the percentage which you want it to be tinted.

Other things such as multiple tracks in the timeline help, especially with things such as music, as it allows you to have music and  multiple sound effects used at the same time, something which basic video editors will not offer. Without Premiere Pro, our video would have been very basic and would have failed as a product due to a lack of more professional editing techniques.

Another Adobe video editor I used was Adobe Afer Effects CS5. Once again this was a program which I already knew from self teaching and watching tutorials. After Effects is a program which allows you to go more in depth with effects, and is only used to create small clips, not edit an entire video. it was used to create the intertitles in our videos, and also the 'Crash Site' title at the end. The title system in premier pro is limited compared to after effects, in which you can do almost anything with any  specific letter or word, whereas Premiere Pro tends to restrict you to one basic title and basic transition. The 'Crash Site' title at the end of our video would also not have been able to be achieved in Premiere Pro. It made use of a mask which moved across as smoke moved across the screen, revealing the titles of the film as the smoke went past it. Complex titles like this could not have been achieved without a specific effects editor such  as After Effects.

The third and final Adobe product I used was Photoshop - this was used to create my movie poster and Magazine Cover. Photoshop is an industry standard image editor, which I had previously learnt during my AS media course, and had a small amount of experience with previously. Photoshop allows you to manipulate  images in almost anyway, changing their position and looks as you wish, and splitting every different Item on your image (Eg one piece of text, one image) into layers so that you can specifcally edit each item. The windows Movie Maker Equivlent here would be Paint, which is far to basic to create anything more than one single image and offers next to no image editing tools compared to photoshop. Without Photoshop or anything  of equivalent standard, I would not have been able to create the professional and effective products that I think I have made.

The HD Sony Handycam camera we used also helps to create a professional look as it offers much higher quality than DV or standard definition camera. Using a poorer quality camera such as those would have made our Trailer look very amature right through the whole trailer, but the Sony Handycam allowed us to have a professional looking trailer.

The websites that we used also helped us greatly. Survey Monkey helped us a lot during our planning stages as it allowed us to carry out our audience resreach over the internet, collating our results in to one easy place and giving us percenatages. Using a website to conduct our survey also meant we were able to share our survey with people across social networking sites such as facebook ad twitter in order to get results, which proved successful. Without all this, we would have had to hand out seperate sheets of paper to people fo them to fill in and then hand us back - using survey monkey and social networking is cleary a more appealing and efficient way to do this.

Other websites used are Youtube, Blogger and The royalty free msuic websites. Youtube has us to upload our video for everyone to see so we can gather feedback for it for our evaluation - without this we would have to show it to people individually, and would only be able to show it to people who we could get in front of the same computer as us. Youtube allows anyone in the world with internet access to see it. And of course, Blogger - the very website in which I am now. Blogger allows me to post everything about my work - from my images and videos to text and links, blogger allows me to be creative with my blog, rather than just having nothing but text.

Without websites such as blogger and youtube, would there be any other viable, sensible alternative? Probably not. Questions could be answered via simple essays, but essays on paper are a very boring way to do such things, and exclude all the things blogger offers such as the ability to add images, links and videos. Not only this, but since Blogger is a blog, it allows all your work to be in one placeand have 'labels' so that it is easier to navigate. Essays tend to be standalone peices of work, and huge walls of text with no colour or images certainly do not make your audience want to read and pay attention.Youtube allows the video to be uploaded for the world to see, and then you can simply embed it into your blog. This is a much better method than trying to upload the video to blogger which would have to be heavily compressed, whereas Youtube allows huge files to be uploaded. Youtube also allows things such as comments and likes on your video, as well as the ablity to share it. Without Youtube or blogger, the video would simply be a file which you could only show people in person assuming you had a computer to both watch it on.

The Role of The Distributor

It is the task of distributors to identify and deliver the largest possible audience for every film.

A film distributor has a huge job when you consider the other entertainment options out there, particularly options which are in the same area - for example DVD's and games. Not only this, but a distributor will have to compete against other distributors to try and ensure their film is the one which everyone wants to watch. Despite this, research shows that the vast majority of people going to the cinema know what they want to see before they get to the cinema, which is a potential success for film distributors - although if you wanted to be more cynical, you could say that people just look at what's on at their local cinema and pick whichever sounds best because they like to know what they're going to see. One of the ways a person sitting on a computer might work out if a film is 'for them' or not would be to watch the trailer.

It is important for distributors to creat and awareness of their film, and one of the ways of doing this is via popular websites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. For example, a company could buy a promoted trend spot on twitter and tweet about their trailer on YouTube and link to their Facebook page. If the name of the film is trending on twitter and people are clicking on it, they may well go on to watch the trailer and like the Facebook page. If they like the Facebook page, the persons Facebook friends may see that they like the page and click on it - then in turn they may watch the trailer and follow the twitter feed and so it goes on. This is a great way to create an awareness of your film. Of course though, this depends on your audience, since the type of method I just explained would only really be suitable for a young audience (although it is arguable that most films at the cinema are watched by young people anyway).

Other ways to generate interest and publicity for your film could be posters - posters can be located in places which your taregt auidence are likely to see them such as billboards along busy roads and in busy city's, on buses and bus stops, or inside magazines  and giving your film to magazines, websites, newpapers, radio stations and other media for review. Of course, this could potentially have the opposite effect if they do not think the film is good, but even then, bad publicity is still publicity.

As I have mentioned, distributors have incredibly difficult jobs. This is of course a very competitive business and they need to ensure that their film is a talking point or an option when people talk about what they want to see at the cinema. They must bring films to the market by identifying its audience, estimating revenue potenttial across all sales (Not just cinema, DVD or game releases, memorabilia etc) and deveoping plans and partnerships to build awareness of the film, as I mentioned in paragraphs 3/4. But of course, they also still need to convert as much interest as possible into cinema visits, but before that they need to presuade cinemas to play the film. This may be no problem for large film companies such as Warner Bros, but it could be a problem for smaller companies.

But of course, before the begin the promotion of a film, distributors need to actually aquire the films in the first place. This can be acheived through:

•A third party sales person, acting for the producer of the film.

•The flow of new content from a parent studio

•A production company of studio with whom the distributor has negotioed a deal with covering certain titles.

• A singular title aquired at any stage before, during or after production.

A distibutor will look to the qualities and selling points of the film before the aquire it. It may be something original and different, it may be 'with the times' so to speak, a film about something which people are currently interested in, or perhaps it simply has a famous actor or director whom people always want to see. Of couse how good the film actually is (playability) and how well it can be promoted and sold (Marketability) are completely different things, as a film could have had a lot of money poured into it with big directors, actors and actresses, be very well publicised but actually be a poor film. People are still likely to go and see it because of the way it is publicised with the big names who star in it. A personal example of this for me would be the film "Goon," starring Seann William Scott, which I would class as one of the worst films I have ever seen(See critic reviews rather than user reviews.

Of course when it comes down to it - this is business, so a films marketability will often be more important than it's marketability. A technically great film could be released, but if the distributor doesn't think it will make any money, they are not going to back it.  Every week in the UK, around 10 films are released into cinema so there is big competition not only between different films, but sometimes for distibutors to acruire one particular film - if they think it has good marketability. There are huge risks in distibution, as nobody can be 100% sure what will be a hit and what won't. Market reseach may be conducted to find out what the audience think of their film in things such as pre-screenings. These test screenings and the feedback gained can help the disturbutor guage the prospects of the film, which in turn can help to prepare the budget with their business plan.

 Every film will have a business and distribution plan put in place, which the distributor will develop alongside the producers or studio associated with the film. Of course, the business plan is about recovering the costs and then making a profit - and films are very expensive to make, even 'low budget' films are in the millions - The Inbetweeners Movie was £3million and was considered very low budget. This means that launching films is very risky, and a lot of films do not make a profit during their cinema time alone, but instead roll over into profit upon DVD sales and other merchandising. This means that the distribution plan cannot be based on guesses and general assumptions, research has to be carried out. This brings me back the pre-release screening which I talked about in the previous paragraph.

Results and Analysis of Target Audience Research

The research methodology we used was an online survey, via surveymonkey.com. Survey monkey is a website which allows you to quickly and easily create an online survey and distibute it via the web. Since the main target audience for a horror film tends to be young adults/teenagers, this was a very appropriate method to use as this age group tends to be the group that uses the internet most often. People are also usually more likely to complete an online survey then they are to take a form and fill it out with a pen. Another advantage  of using a web-based survey is the ease in which you can share it via social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter. Overall, doing a survey like this online is quicker and easier in every way - it's easier to create, quick to change and edit, easy and convinent to share, and more convinient for people to complete. The free version of survey monkey also offers basic analysis in terms of percentages, which comes in handy. Disadvanatages are minimal - although perhaps one is that the range of age group that you will find online is not as vast as it could be if you used a 'paper method' of taking the survey. By doing an online survey you tend to limit yourself to to a younger age group unless you are a large company with powerful marketing tools. Overall though, this disadvanatge is no-where near enough to outweigh the vast and heavy advantages.

Before I go into any detail as to the answers we got about Horror Films, it is important to know who we actually asked and if they even like Horror Films.

We first asked : Are you male or female?

35 people answered the questions, of which 60% (21) were male and 40% (14) were female, so a slight majority of our responders were male.

We then asked about age.

Again, 35 people answered, of which 88.6% (31) were ages between 15-24. One person said they were 25-30, two people said 51-60 and 1 person said 61 of older. We suspect these three older people were actually younger people who didn't take the survey seriously, but we do not know that for a fact.

Our Third question before we moved onto more specific ones was about how much the person answering actually likes horror films. We asked them to give us an answer on a scale of 1-5, 1 meaning they hated them and 5 meaning they love them. Once again, the response count was 35, and the average rating was 3.14. We can reasonably assume the a rating of 3 means that they think Horror films are 'okay,' and 4 meant that they found them to be 'pretty good' based on the fact that we stated that '1' was hate and '5' was love. The ratings of 3 and 4 both got an equal response of 31.4% (11) with 1 getting the lowest amount of votes, with just 5.7% (2). 5 also received a low amount of votes with only 8.6% (3). However 8 people (22.9%) voted for rating number 2, which we can assume means that they don't really like them that much, but they don't hate them. This eventually means that over 70% of people who took this survey think Horror films in general are 'Okay' or better.

The fourth question we asked was "What type of horror do you enjoy the most?"

The most popular option was paranormal, with 29.4%, and other popular options were Psychological and Zombie with 23.5% and 14.7% respectively. Our horror Movie trailer is a mixture of Paranormal and documentary. It is interesting to see that Paranormal was the top voted for option, but documentary was included and did not get a single vote. This may be because the two tend to cross over quite a lot, for example the paranormal activity films, and since you could only vote for one, people classed it as paranormal rather than documentary.

Our next question was a simple yes or no - asking whether Directors, Actors, Franchise or companies will effect peoples likelihood to watch a film. Surprisingly to me, 62.9% of our surveyed people answered Yes, that the likelihood of them watching a film would be swayed by one of those things. Whilst it is understandable, I personally would expect most people to have said 'No' because they would simple base their decision on whether they think the film looks good or not. Of course though, if a one particular director makes films that one person always seems to enjoy, it is expected that when this director makes another film, this person will be swayed to see it just because of the director.

We then asked for what reason people would choose to watch a horror film based on a trailer alone. We also allowed people to choose as many as applied for this question.

Scariness was the most popular with 60% and 21 votes, clearly showing that people to tend to watch horror films for the thrills of being scared by them. Actors was somewhat surprisingly 2nd highest 19 votes. Directors received the least votes but with 8 votes it still got 22.9%, and 'previous films' was also high with 18 votes. This means that upon watching a horror trailer, the people we asked (mainly young people) will be influenced to watch a horror trailer by it's scariness, what the previous film was like (If this applies) and what actors are in it. We can use this information for our own trailer - obviously previous films and actors are not something which we have anything to show for, but scariness is something that we should definitely concentrate on.

We then asked about the settings of horror movies, and what settings people tend to prefer.

As you can see, haunted buildings was the most popular option with 38.2% of the voting, with urban close behind. These are perhaps the most obvious choices since they are very common settings for horror films. Our setting, which was already essentially decided was 'forest/swamp' was third in terms of percentage, with 14.7% of the votes. whilst it is interesting to see that the more stereotypical "Haunted House" was the most popular option, it was never a location that we really considered as we wanted something a little less cliche - of course a forest or swamp isn't out of the ordinary for horror by any means, but I think it was an appropriate setting for the storyline that we had.

Out 8th question was asking who you would be most likely to go and see a horror film with.

By far and away the most people option was a mixed group of male and females, which if anything shows that horror is a popular option for both sexes to watch. Whilst a romantic film may seem too "Girly" and an action film too "Boyish" it seems that horror has somehow found itself in the middle in terms of both sexes being prepared to watch it - 54.3% voted for mixed group and a futher 20% (2nd place) for couple. The only other option above 10% was 'group of same sex' with 14.3%. This doesn't really tell us anything about gender but adds a further percentage to people that are most likely to see of horror film with a group of friends.

The final question was the only one which wasn't a vote, and that was because we asked people what their favourite horror film was and why. Some of the more interesting responses were as follows:

"Silence of the Lambs - great film from beginning to end, fantastic acting and true suspense."

"Strangers or the blair witch project both scared the sh*t out of me when i watched them for the first time!"

"Paranormal activity - it was the only horror film I've seen that properly made me want to poo myself. Super scary stuff."

"28 days later - the suspense created is brilliant and the effects on the zombies are very realistic and scary"

"The Grudge, it is on of the only films I found scary and kept me on edge, I liked the thrill of the film and the strory was great :D"

Overall, the responses did seem to be based around scariness, jumpiness, and suspense, and many responses talk of how scary their selected film was and how it kept them on the edge of their seat. This of course still applies to a trailer, if anything even more so, which means when editing the trailer and thinking about sound effects and music, we need to concentrate on creating a suspense leading to genuinely jumpy moments.

Planning - Initial Meetings, Prop and Location Talks.

All of our 'meetings' within the group simply took place within our media lessons, since this is by far the most convenient and appropriate place for us to us be together and talk about our ideas for the trailer.

Our initial meeting saw us come up with the basic idea for what kind of horror movie our trailer would be for (A sort of sub-genre discussion) and who the 'monster' would be. We found it important to get these basic things sorted before we moved onto anything specific. Eventually we decided that we wanted a slightly paranormal/documentary style horror film, with the main 'monster' being some sort of Gas masked villain. Once we had established this, we began to think of specific shots that we could include in the trailer, and also a vague storyline so we could begin thinking about how our trailer was going to work.


From here we decided on a location, a swampy/forest type area would be the main location for the trailer, aswell as one of our houses for some other footage. We also thought about what props we may need, for example tents, metal detector, bags, and of course the gas mask around which our trailer was somewhat based.

Initial Group Idea For a Horror Movie/Trailer

Our group idea was completely different to any of our initial individual ideas. We started off on the basis that whatever we decided on, it had to be realistic in terms of whether we were capable of actually doing it. We then started to think of things which we thought could be scary - eventually we came up with the idea of the 'Monster' being in a gas mask, and developed our story from there. For a no/low budget film such as this, I think it is important that you think of a starting point you can realistically do first, rather than thinking of a great story and realising that we can't actually do it.

And so - the title of the film is 'Crash Site' and it is about 2 boys who are interesting in finding World war 2 artifacts, and think they they have found a crash site. They visit the crash site in hope of finding some rare and possibly valuable artifacts, only to find out that this 'Crash Site,' isn't all what it seems. At this point of course we know that they will be pursued by our scary gas mask villain, but haven't completely decided on what the site actually is rather than a crash site. This part of the story is not strictly necessary to make our trailer anyway, but it is something which we would like to include in our overall story.

Initial Horror Movie Idea

Here is an (initial) short pitch for a new horror movie which I presented to my media class:

                                                        The House
"A normal family realise something isn't quite right when increasingly disturbing things start going on. It starts with moving objects, and gets worse as members of the family find themselves getting injured and bleeding without anything seemingly happening. They soon realise that the dolls house in the attic seems to be a replica of their own, and the dolls are alive. If they try to remove the house or the dolls, the torture gets worse. They must find a way 'in' to the dolls house to fight their fears, and save their lives."

Whilst I thought this Idea was okay, it wasn't one which could be realistically done for our actual trailer, which is why this idea is not the one we have used.

Essay on How Horror Represents Gender

Carol Clover, in Men, Women and Chainsaws, argue that many horror films are interesting in their representation of gender because they provide a female point of identification for a male core target audience. To what extent do you think that horror represents gender progressively?

In “Men, Women and Chainsaws” Carol Clover refers to a film named ‘Carrie’ based on a Novel by Stephen king. Carrie is a girl who is a social outsider, and 2 ’the butt of every joke’ in the film, and she eventually gets her revenge on the bullies who have been tormenting her. However, the story itself is not important – the important thing is that the young males are the predominant viewers of horror films, but in this case – and indeed many others – they are asked to identify with a female protagonist. You wouldn’t think that being pelted with tampons and sanitary towels whilst having your first period would be something that young males are happy to relate to – Carrie also goes on to burn her school with entire high school class in it after being on the wrong end of another prank. But King argues that ‘any student who has ever had his gym shorts pulled down or his glasses thumb rubbed’ can relate to and approve of Carrie’s actions. Now of course we can assume that a very, very low percentage of horror film watchers have had that, or something equal to that happen to them, but the general principle of any sort of bullying or on the wrong end of any “boyish” behaviour (friendly or not) still stands. As Carol Clover goes on to say, it seems that male viewers are quite prepared to identify with females in the horror genre who are scared and/or in pain.

And so we move on to if horror films represent the Women we see, and gender in general, progressively or conservatively. When considering this, there are many factors we may take into account – for example the number of female characters compared to male, (The visibility of females) the roles which each gender play within the narrative and the Gaze (which I will move onto later). It of course worth remembering that by ‘conservative,’ we mean holding to ‘traditional’ values, for example a woman doing the cooking and cleaning whilst the man goes out to work, and progressive is referring a development of ideas within the horror genre – for example seeing the same amount of on screen women as men, or a women saving a man perhaps. It is considered that a film that represents genre progressively is better in the sense that it is less sexist. With that in mind, I will now talk about the “Male Gaze,” which is essentially a suggestion from theorists such as Laura Mulvey that a lot of commercial cinema puts the audience into the position of an ‘appraising heterosexual male.’ This situation arises via technical camera techniques which present women to be objects for the man to look at – so the audience is put into the eyes of a man looking at an objectified female. Mulvey argues that this is further part of a sexist regime that mainstream film undergoes which encourages society to think of women as objects to be viewed for male pleasure and denies women subjectivity.

Three films I have looked at in my Media classes are The Shining, Halloween and Eden Lake. The Shining will be where we start. After watching the Shining and thinking about how it represents gender, it certainly doesn’t sound progressive in the slightest. For a start, there are vastly more women than men, with Wendy being the only female character who is regularly on screen. Wendy it also defined through family – Jack is clearly the main character, and Wendy is just Jack’s wife. They are in fact moving from their house to look after the Hotel because it will be Jack’s job to look after the hotel – again implying that Wendy is just Jack’s wife, Jack’s housewife. The Boss of the Hotel is a man, another Key character Hallorann is also a man, and even the Child, Danny, is male. But there is one particular moment featuring Jack and a Women which will stay in people’s minds for a number of reasons – this is when he meets the ‘Bath tub Lady’ in room 237. Initially this scene may seem to drag the shining down the conservative route even further – a naked women getting out of a bath certainly seems to fit the Male Gaze theory. However, it is fair to say that when the beautiful naked woman turns into a dead, mouldy woman, the whole image of this scene changes. Wendy asked Jack to go in there to see what had strangled Danny, and Jack actually ends up kissing a naked woman, only to find out it’s a dead woman – this highly suggests that Jack – and also possibly the audience – have been punished for objectifying the woman who got out of the bath tub, which of course suggests a more progressive feel to the film. Overall though, it seems accurate to say that the Shining is a more conservative film than progressive.

However, there is one point which I have made against the Shining that perhaps isn’t as ‘sexist’ as it may seem at first. When we look at real life situations, it’s not at all inaccurate to say, that for couples which are together, the man goes out to work whilst the women is the housewife that does the cooking, cleaning etcetera. Whilst this isn’t as true as it used to be, as more women go out to work, it’s not at all sexist to say that – it is the truth. The point is that if a film portrays this, should it really be classed as sexist, and looked down upon for it? Most children’s mums cook their food rather than their Dad. So if we see a woman cooking whilst watching a film, should our immediate thoughts be that ‘this film is sexist?’ In my opinion, no. I don’t think we should get carried away and over think situations like these, because we all know that if we saw a film where the women was a butch, un-attractive plumber, and the Man was a house husband who done all the cooking and cleaning, it would probably be comical even if it was trying to be serious because it’s just not a realistic situation. The main reason that The Shining is conservative and potentially sexist is due to the screen time and amount of male characters compared to female characters – not just that Wendy is Jack’s husband.

Halloween on the other hand is a little different. In terms of on screen characters, it is most definitely progressive in the way that there are just as many female main characters as there are male – if not more. Obviously in real life we see an equal amount of males and females so this is not only more progressive, but more realistic – since realism was something I mentioned in the previous paragraph. But on the other hand, their roles in the film tend to be sexual – this is particularly the case for Linda and Annie – but also Domestic, as we find Laurie looking after children. There is also a strong argument that the women in the film are punished for being sexually independent and doing what they want, as they always seem to be killed when they are about to have sex.  However, the director has since argued that they were only killed because they were distracted, not specifically being punished for having sex. Again, I would have to put it to question here what exactly is making the film conservative. It is seem as conservative that these women’s role in the film is sexual, but then also conservative and sexist when they are punished for having sex, which seems very contradictory. Perhaps the more conservative thing is not that they are having sex and have a sexual role in the film, but more the fact we see several shots of Annie and Linda when they are barely clothed which objectifies them. On the other hand, Laurie is not objectified at all, and goes on to also survive – although she is somewhat saved by a man after she essentially gives the killer back his knife a couple of times in what is a poor bit of storyline. Overall, Halloween does certainly seem to be a more progressive film in terms on gender than The Shining, and this is mainly to do with the screen time given to the female characters, and the amount of female characters there is.

Then there is Eden Lake, which I do find to be somewhat more progressive than both The Shining and Halloween. However, one thing that could be conservative is that there are far more main male characters than female – but in this instance I don’t think it is fair to suggest that it is a bad thing for this film, as the main reason there is more screen time for male characters is because of the gang of youths. I think it is just (once again) more realistic to have a group of (mainly) boys rather than girls, as I don’t think anyone can seriously imagine a group of girls doing such things. Perhaps even that is a conservative way of thinking, but I think the film is more credible by having a group of boys. If this does make the film more ‘conservative’ by definition, I don’t think it is anything worth worrying about.

Jenny and Page are the main female characters in the film, and neither of them are ever really objectified. Page is a tomboy, and she does seem to try to objectify herself at one point when she says ‘Are you looking at my tits,’ but this isn’t really relevant and she (and the audience) know that this isn’t true, and she is just trying to annoy Steve like the rest of the gang. There is also a short seen where the boys are looking and Jenny through their binoculars whilst she is in a bikini, but she covers herself up – and as I said, it is a very short scene. The roles of the women don’t seem to be very conservative either – Jenny is very much her own woman rather than just “Steve’s Wife” and seems very capable of looking after herself, as evident by the fact she survives longer than Steve. Of course, when Jenny finds herself in the house at the end, it is the women looking after her rather than the men, which of course implies the ‘domestic’ role, another stereotypical role for women. Apart from this though, the film in general does seem to be rather progressive. The narrative finds that more men actually die than women, Jenny survives longer than Steve, and at no point are any of the women supposedly ‘punished’ like in Halloween for being independent, making this certainly the most progressive film out of the 3.

Overall, I think trying to find an ‘extent’ that the horror genre as a whole represents gender progressively is very difficult, mainly because it varies so much, and in so many different ways film to film. In some cases which I have mentioned, when a part of a film is more conservative it is sometimes just being more realistic and credible than ‘bad’ or ‘sexist.’ I think the Horror genre probably leans towards being more conservative then progressive – perhaps the best way to express my thoughts may be something like a Sixty-Forty percentage towards conservative – the only reason I wouldn’t say anymore than that is due to Final Girls often outlasting Men, and also the realism factor which I have mentioned several times.

This is my Horror Themed Moodboard. I couldn't think of any specific type of Horror film that freaked me out particularly more than other types of horror films, so I though about what makes me scared when I watch any type of horror film. I came to the conclusion that strange faces that you are not expecting to see are things which are most scary and most memorable to me, so my moodbaord consists of faces which I thought looked scary.

Horror Trailers With Elements Which I May Use (Part 3)

There is a very small shot between about 2:00 and 2:05 where the women sits up in bed, and when she goes to lay back down the "Demon" is laying there next to her instead of her husband. Unlike my other 2 trailer posts which are more editing techniques which I would very much like to include, this is a very specific shot so I am not sure whether I will include it (I certainly won't base the entire trailer around 1 shot). However, if it is something which is relevant and seems to fit, then I think it is a truly excellent and scary shot.

Horror Trailers With Elements Which I May Use (Part 2)

This is (in my opinion) another very good trailer which is very scary. One of the things I particularly like about this trailer is the use of sound (or use of no sound) at about the 1:00-1:10 area. There is essentially no sound at all here whilst we see weird things unfold (The cuts all over the womans body) and then suddenly the woman screams loudly and the music then starts. I think this lack of sound was an excellent tension builder, especially as weird things were still going on - there wasn't just nothing happening while the sound was off. This would be a great thing to combine with the "Pace" which I mentioned in the last trailer.

Horror Trailers With Elements Which I May Use (Part 1)

I think that this Trailer for "The Crazies" is an excellent trailer. It is very entertaining to watch, and gives you a great idea of the story of the film - in fact although I haven't seen the film, my only criticism would be that it seems to give a little too much away. One of the things I particularly like about this trailer is the pace, and how the pace changes. Although my trailer will be shorter and not give so much away, (Since it is a teaser trailer) I really like how the pacing of this trailer is one of the main things that makes it good. At the start of the trailer, when the trailer is essentially introducing itself, the pace is quite slow. This slower pace continues until about 46 seconds, at which point we gave a very long shot, followed by a lot of very quick shots in succession. This sudden change is pace is something I think is very effective in a trailer. The pace then continues to be very fast as the story and action further unfolds. This is something that is definitely achievable in my trailer assuming the plot and camera shots fit.

Narrative Theory

In our media classes we have been looking at 4 narrative theories - these come from Tzvetan Todorov, Vladimir Propp, Claude Levi-Struass and Bordwell & Thompson. We have been trying to apply each theory to the 1980 horror film 'The Shining.'

Tzvetan Todorov's theory is probably the simplest. He suggests that stories begin with an Equilibrium of sorts, which are then disrupted by some event, which sets of a further chain reaction of events. The problems are then solved so that order can be restored in the world of the fiction. In other words, Equilibrium set up, Equilibrium disrupted causing disequilibrium, which is resolved into a new equilibrium. It is in fact the simplest in every manner - there isn't much to it, and you don't have to specialise in film theory in any sense at all to understand it, or even work it out yourself - it's just obvious. The vast majority of films start off essentially introducing you to the narrative, then something different has to occur to make the film interesting, and then it is resolved because that's what the audience are waiting to see - as in what will happen about the "problem."

Of course, there are exceptions - for example a film which ends of a cliffhanger - however, the problem will still be resolved within the narrative, just not this film, so the theory still technically applies. In fact, it still mostly applies to The Shining - a film which is very much out of the ordinary and seems to have a very different narrative structure to most films. The only difference with The Shining is possibly the "resolution," since technically the problem which caused the disequilibrium are the Hotel and Jack - Jack dies whilst Wendy and Danny escape the Hotel, so it does appear to fit. But on the other hand, Wendy has lost her Husband and Danny has lost his Dad, so the new Equilibrium within the narrative is not as good as the original Equilibrium with which the film started - but nevertheless it is still a partial resolution.

Vladimir Propp offered an alternative theory. He argued that in all fiction, there were 8 character roles and 31 narrative functions. While this may be a more substantial and specific theory, it simply does not fit with all narratives like it claims to, and certainly does not fit with the Shining. Of course, some bits do fit with the Shining, and some other bits will fit with other films - but if it's all "bits and bobs, some and some" then it makes the theory a little redundant and irrelevant.

However, what Propp does offer with this theory is the way he mentions "Functions." Since his theory, and indeed all these theories, are looking at narrative fiction, this means of course that none of the characters are real - because of this, we should not think of them as real people, but instead as functions which help the narrative to explain itself and progress. This allows us to look a little less critically at characters actions within the film, and instead concentrate on their effect the purpose of the story.

Claude Levi-Strauss provides us with the next theory, that of "Binary Oppositions." This is basically saying that there are sets of opposite values which reveal the structure of media texts. For example, Good and Evil - you can only recognise Evil, by recognising what Good is, and Vice versa. Others could include, Earth and Space, Normal and Strange, Know and Unknown. Again, this is a relatively simple theory which appears to make sense, but like Propp's theory, we don't really learn anything here. This is because this theory doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. Do we need Black to see White? No, we only need grey. In terms of the Shining, you could say that we knew Jack was going crazy because he was becoming different, but it took a while until he was actually fully committed to killing his wife and child - so where is the line of the Binary Opposition drawn? It is very unclear, and this is why I say that this theory does not teach or anything, and provide any insight into the Shining in particular.

Bordwell and Thompson suggested a slightly more in depth theory, by defining narrative as "A chain of events in a cause effect relationship, occurring in time and space." This may not be a full theory of narrative, but it certainly sparks some interesting ideas. Essentially, they are saying that a narrative begins with a situation, then a series of changes occur according to a pattern of cause and effect, and then a new situation arises that brings the end of the narrative. In a way, this is a perhaps a more detailed version of Tzvetan Todorov's Theory which was mentioned earlier. And again, like Todorov's, it does seem fairly self explanatory - cause and effect just means that one things happens because of something else - and no matter how stupid and silly the cause, you can always find it when you think of what the "effect" actually is. For example, in The Shining, Jack dies in the Maze because Danny confuses him and it is cold. Jack tries to kill his family because the Hotel is turning him insane and persuades him to. These examples could go on forever, and it is very rare that something happens completely randomly within narrative with no apparent cause or reason, as this would appear to be simply a poorly written plotline.

Bordwell and Thompson's Book: Film Art







Freud - The Return of the Repressed, And It's Relation To Horror

The return of the repressed is the process whereby repressed elements, preserved in the unconscious, tend to reappear, in consciousness or in behavior, in the shape of secondary and more or less unrecognizable "derivatives of the unconscious." To put it in more easily understandable terms, Freud is saying that repressed feelings that you have might stay with you sub-consciously, and you may exercise these feelings later in life without necessaries realising why. A typical example of this would be a young child getting bullied, and then later in life he becomes a bully himself; or perhaps acts over-excessively on any power he gains. This is somewhat relative to Freuds theory, since when the young boy becomes the bully or abuser of power, he probably doesn't consciously relate it to his childhood experiences, but the likely is that it does derive from those precise experiences.

But how does this relate to horror? Well, when you think about it, many 'classic' horror storylines feature some sort of childhood anxiety followed up by committing some sort of atrocity (Usually murder). A film which very much follows this trend sis one that I have recently watched in my Media class - Halloween (1971). Near the start of the film, a young boy witnesses his sisters sexual relationship before stabbing her . When the boy is older, he murders several people - all of which are either about to have sex, or have just had sex. The only exception is Laurie, the "Final Girl" who is essentially the only remaining friend in the group of friends being murdered.

Let Me In - Horror Trailer

The settings shown in this trailer seem to be very typical of the horror genre - normal suburban neighborhoods which appear innocent - with most of the main horror action happening at night when it is dark. The main thing here which fits with almost every other horror film is of course the dark - the vast majority of the "Scary" scenes of horror films tend to be in a darker environment - perhaps because it connotes an element of the unknown, or maybe because the film would look stupid if trying to combine a scary scene with bright lighting.

The technical code used in the trailer is also very iconic to other horror film trailers, and partially the full films too. Examples of this would be the video sudden extreme close ups which appear to invade your personal space - usually with a sound effect edited in to create unsettling jumps, which is very iconic and typical of the horror genre.

The iconography of childhood innocence within Horror is also strongly portrayed within this trailer. This is known as a theory of "Binary Oppositions." Often in horror, things which are usually seen as innocent can be transformed into scary things - for example clowns, little girls singing, or Dolls. In this trailer, the Binary Opposition theory applies to the small girl, who seems to be some sort of Vampire who kills off the boys who are bullying her friend. Other typical Iconography from horror displayed in this trailer are things such as when you see blood on a door, and messages on walls.