There were elements within our final production that were greatly influenced by other trailers to which we consulted in order to give off a more professional look. We were influenced through a variety of aspects, such as mise en scene, camera shots, editing and sound. Which all work together in order to give off the correct representation of a horror film, and therefore the most professional look.
One film trailer that we took inspiration from was "IT", which with our initial ideas being to involve a clown within the trailer, it seemed essential to watch this trailer as this stands as arguably the most famous clown horror film. This is where our group liked the idea of the clown's physical appearance, to which we took the inspiration to have our clown have a bright white face, with red lips, nose and Afro styled hair. Although we separated ourselves from the film "IT"'s clown by showing a demonic looking face with fang like teeth and an extremely wrinkled face, which deters from the before mentioned film, which focuses on making the clown appear like a regular human in clown makeup. We also took a sense of how we structure our trailer from the "IT" trailer, as we liked the fact that we didn't actually see the clown harming any of the children or protagonists involved, which therefore adds to Barthe's enigma codes theory, which shows the mystery to what the clown's intentions are with the protagonists, leaving the audience to decode what this could be.
Another film's trailer that we took inspiration off of in the sense of imagery and camera shots was the 2016 horror flick "Ouija 2", which displayed a shot that our group particularly liked of a record playing in a Birdseye view close up shot of the record spinning slowly, which showed the idea of tension building, we took our own twist on this idea, so we continued to cut back to this shot in order to have the atmosphere be continuously changing from scary and fast paced, to calm and relaxed. We paired these shots of the record player with calm and soothing jazz music, in order to continue this idea of the atmosphere continuously changing, in order to unsettle the audience. This is also paired with the sound of our main soundtrack as a piano and strong based, eerie and creepy some, which conforms to the main genre of horror which is what our group wanted to get across to our audience most importantly. But the idea of having the jazz music also unsettles the audience due to the quick change in moods, making the audience feel as though the mood will never be settled, which never leaves the audience the opportunity to become uncomfortable.
For our editing style we looked towards The conjuring 3, for which we took both element of camera and editing style off of. We particularly liked the first initial shot that we saw, which was candle being blown out, we decided to incorporate this type of shot, but instead we reversed the placing of this shot, we placed this at the end of our trailer as we believed that it made a more tactful end to the trailer, to show an end to story, and that there will be a conclusion, but we leave the fact of how as a mystery to the audience. We also liked there was of constant "dip to black" transition, which we thought successfully creates tension and built up an eerie and jumpy atmosphere, hence why we incorporated this style of transitioning especially into the climax of our trailer.
Friday 31 March 2017
Thursday 30 March 2017
Evaluation 9:Questionnaire
1) How is the antagonist/clown represented to you?
Entertaining Scary Eerie Mysterious
2) Are our binary oppositions appropriate for the horror genre? (Good&Evil)
Yes No
3)Do you feel our princesses (victim's) are represented as vulnerable and innocent?
Yes No Mostly
4) How could we change the costume of the clown to conform to the horror genre even more?
5) Our trailer is in a non-linear order, do you feel this is successful for the horror genre? Why?
6)Do we include enough enigma codes? Do you feel the unanswered questions keep you engaged throughout?
7)What would you change about the mise en scene to connote fright and conform to our chosen genre?
8)Do you feel a state of equilibrium from the outset?
9)We haven't included any dialogue in our production, we used non diegetic sound including soundtracks and sound effects. Would you prefer dialogue? Why? Do you feel you would get to know the characters more personally?
10)We supported Tessa Perkins theory of representations changing and evolving. How do you feel interpretations and stereotypes of clowns are changing?
Entertaining Scary Eerie Mysterious
2) Are our binary oppositions appropriate for the horror genre? (Good&Evil)
Yes No
3)Do you feel our princesses (victim's) are represented as vulnerable and innocent?
Yes No Mostly
4) How could we change the costume of the clown to conform to the horror genre even more?
5) Our trailer is in a non-linear order, do you feel this is successful for the horror genre? Why?
6)Do we include enough enigma codes? Do you feel the unanswered questions keep you engaged throughout?
7)What would you change about the mise en scene to connote fright and conform to our chosen genre?
8)Do you feel a state of equilibrium from the outset?
9)We haven't included any dialogue in our production, we used non diegetic sound including soundtracks and sound effects. Would you prefer dialogue? Why? Do you feel you would get to know the characters more personally?
10)We supported Tessa Perkins theory of representations changing and evolving. How do you feel interpretations and stereotypes of clowns are changing?
Evaluation 8: How have you established genre across your three productions ?
Magazine cover
Within our magazine cover we believed that the less exaggerated our piece was, the more impacting it would be on our audience. By focusing on one aspect and trying to unsettle the audience intensely with this, we believe that it would victimise and intimidate the consumer effectively into showing the correct tension we were trying to build, therefore this would show our receiving audience the genre of our film effectively. The imagery that we used within this cover was a full scaled image of our antagonist, the clown, standing in from of the camera holding the gimmicked balloon in his hand, as he stares scarily down the camera, almost as if he is staring straight at the reader, therefore creating the most effective intimidating tone over the reader, and therefore showing again the films genre the most effectively. We decided to have this image displayed in black and white, which shows the tones as very dark and eerie, which have negative connotations to the film in the sense of happiness, which clearly shows that this isn't a family friendly film, and not appropriate for children, clearly setting the correct audience we want purchasing our film and attending in the cinema. Also by using the character of a clown, rather than any of the protagonists, shows the character as dominating, powerful and very significant within the film, with the idea of knowing that the phobia of clowns is a very large phobia globally, and therefore many who want to be scared who indeed have this phobia may be attracted to this type of film as they know that they are likely to be frightened.
Film Poster
The film poster was a very important factor within effectively portraying the films genre, as this is the main factor of which the public would be viewing in terms of whether to look further into the film in terms of seeing the film. We developed this idea by having many ideas o who to involve within the poster, but in the end we settled on a bold but simplistic look. So therefore we only used our antagonist clown within the poster much alike our magazine cover, but we wanted the film poster to be the most unsettling and disturbing, so with this in mind we decided to use a close up image of the clown, to which we only used half of the clowns face in order to show the sinister intentions of the clown, by showing him lurking and luring out of complete sight and showing a smirk that unsettles the receiving audience. Setting the perfect atmosphere for a horror film by involving a frightening and unnerving sense of imagery that would effectively show the audience what they are getting themselves in for. We had the films title shown vertically, in order to show a distorted effect and stand separately out of the clowns way, so as to not take the main focus off of the clown's face. The idea of having a slogan beneath the title also further shows the genre of our production. This slogan reads, "Whats the matter ? you look as if you've seen a clown", which hangs off the plot of the clown being a main sense of plot and the main course of tension and distortion within our protagonists lives, But also takes from the famous slogan of "looks as if you've seen a ghost", which shows that clowns are going to be the most frightening thing to all viewers after watching this film and ghosts are nothing.
Final Trailer
Our trailer stands as the main aspect of our productions of which will give the viewing audience the notion of whether to watch the film or not, showing through snippets and scenes of the film, which we needed to show the sense of equilibrium within this trailer, we wanted to show the type of life the protagonists had before the clown disrupted their lives, and to see what they are fighting to get back. We felt by involving this it would show the problem more severely. We focused very much on building the tension up with showing the clown being disturbing scenes of the clown stalking the girls and looking into the camera breaking the sense of realism and focusing on luring in the audience into watching the film and finding out what the clown is capable of and what his intentions towards the girls are. Although we didn't want to show the clown as completely harmless, which is why we involved the clown chasing the girls when they are seemingly alone in a large field, and also when they are in their car desperately trying to get away from the clown, and we see the clown magically appear being the girls in the back seat, also due to the disappearance of one of the protagonists this makes the audience question whether the clown harmed her/killed her, or if she got away ? The clown showing up magically behind the girls also sets the style of genre we have as a paranormal style, and hints to the audience that the clown isn't all he seems to be, due to him showing these supernatural characteristics and demonic clown like appearance.
Within our magazine cover we believed that the less exaggerated our piece was, the more impacting it would be on our audience. By focusing on one aspect and trying to unsettle the audience intensely with this, we believe that it would victimise and intimidate the consumer effectively into showing the correct tension we were trying to build, therefore this would show our receiving audience the genre of our film effectively. The imagery that we used within this cover was a full scaled image of our antagonist, the clown, standing in from of the camera holding the gimmicked balloon in his hand, as he stares scarily down the camera, almost as if he is staring straight at the reader, therefore creating the most effective intimidating tone over the reader, and therefore showing again the films genre the most effectively. We decided to have this image displayed in black and white, which shows the tones as very dark and eerie, which have negative connotations to the film in the sense of happiness, which clearly shows that this isn't a family friendly film, and not appropriate for children, clearly setting the correct audience we want purchasing our film and attending in the cinema. Also by using the character of a clown, rather than any of the protagonists, shows the character as dominating, powerful and very significant within the film, with the idea of knowing that the phobia of clowns is a very large phobia globally, and therefore many who want to be scared who indeed have this phobia may be attracted to this type of film as they know that they are likely to be frightened.
Film Poster
The film poster was a very important factor within effectively portraying the films genre, as this is the main factor of which the public would be viewing in terms of whether to look further into the film in terms of seeing the film. We developed this idea by having many ideas o who to involve within the poster, but in the end we settled on a bold but simplistic look. So therefore we only used our antagonist clown within the poster much alike our magazine cover, but we wanted the film poster to be the most unsettling and disturbing, so with this in mind we decided to use a close up image of the clown, to which we only used half of the clowns face in order to show the sinister intentions of the clown, by showing him lurking and luring out of complete sight and showing a smirk that unsettles the receiving audience. Setting the perfect atmosphere for a horror film by involving a frightening and unnerving sense of imagery that would effectively show the audience what they are getting themselves in for. We had the films title shown vertically, in order to show a distorted effect and stand separately out of the clowns way, so as to not take the main focus off of the clown's face. The idea of having a slogan beneath the title also further shows the genre of our production. This slogan reads, "Whats the matter ? you look as if you've seen a clown", which hangs off the plot of the clown being a main sense of plot and the main course of tension and distortion within our protagonists lives, But also takes from the famous slogan of "looks as if you've seen a ghost", which shows that clowns are going to be the most frightening thing to all viewers after watching this film and ghosts are nothing.
Final Trailer
Our trailer stands as the main aspect of our productions of which will give the viewing audience the notion of whether to watch the film or not, showing through snippets and scenes of the film, which we needed to show the sense of equilibrium within this trailer, we wanted to show the type of life the protagonists had before the clown disrupted their lives, and to see what they are fighting to get back. We felt by involving this it would show the problem more severely. We focused very much on building the tension up with showing the clown being disturbing scenes of the clown stalking the girls and looking into the camera breaking the sense of realism and focusing on luring in the audience into watching the film and finding out what the clown is capable of and what his intentions towards the girls are. Although we didn't want to show the clown as completely harmless, which is why we involved the clown chasing the girls when they are seemingly alone in a large field, and also when they are in their car desperately trying to get away from the clown, and we see the clown magically appear being the girls in the back seat, also due to the disappearance of one of the protagonists this makes the audience question whether the clown harmed her/killed her, or if she got away ? The clown showing up magically behind the girls also sets the style of genre we have as a paranormal style, and hints to the audience that the clown isn't all he seems to be, due to him showing these supernatural characteristics and demonic clown like appearance.
Evaluation 7: How have you established a brand identity?
Our brand identity was something that we wanted to show a strong and powerful message. We wanted to make sure that we incorporated the correct style in our productions, otherwise we wouldn't portray our genre correctly. We wanted to make sure that our production was as professional and legitimate looking productions as we could create.
This is shown within different aspect of our work, such as our production title's. Our production company was called "purple lake productions", which we thought connoted the correct atmosphere for our genre of the productions. Showing the idea of a "purple lake", shows the mystery and ghoulish connotations off of this idea.we wanted to make sure our production company showed that it was a company that specialised in dark and horrific style of film. We edited the image that we used in photoshop, were we edited our simplistic image of a lake, into a darkly lit and spooky looking setting, and most importantly changed the colour of the water within the lake into the colour purple. This did not prove to be a difficult task, as photoshop is a simple piece f software that is very flexible and easy for first time users, although in our group we did have previously experienced photoshop users, which helped with making sure our imagery for the production company looks professional, and accurately represented the genre of our film and ultimately our brand's identity.
Within our actual ancillary texts we establish a brand identity. This was through our magazine and film poster. Mainly through our film poster, to which we portray ur brand through our film's title "joke's on you", not only does the title fit to the brand of our genre by saying that a "joke" is going to be at a victims expense, but also our clowns character, as clowns are stereotypically joyful and happy making jokes and playing tricks children and teens. Therefore successfully conforming to both our genre and the professional image that would create our brand's identity. The balloon also achieves a professional look to our brand, as it shows the link to the clown within the trailer who always is seen with a balloon, and also shows the impression of violence and blood due to the electric red colouring we used on the balloon. Within our magazine cover, we showed our brand effectively through the magazines title also, showing through the magazines title, "diverse", the correct type of title that shows our production within, that the type of films that are advertised within their covers shows diverse films, that are unique and show a sense of a stand alone plot. Which shows our brand as a serious and powerful styled brand.
We also had a large factor contribute to our brand, was those we were attracting to our production. Our target audience varied for a while between the ages of 12-15, then ultimately through the imagery we decided to target 15+ viewers, as we found the the frightening and intense scenes, would prove to be too much for our younger viewers. In this case we thought that the main group that we would attract is 15-22 year olds, as this age group tends to be the most wanting to seek thrills and want to be scared, also due to the protagonist cast being within the late teen bracket, this will make the audience put themselves in the protagonists shoes and this will further impact the scare factor within this age group.
Evaluation 6: How do you establish a narrative in your trailer ?
The narrative within a production shows the structure of which is used through the different aspects of the plot. This is usually through the characters, settings,sound and camera shots. Within our trailer we decided to consult other horror trailers in order to install the correct narrative within our production. This is usually following the same style of structure throughout this genre. The idea of having a cast of protagonists happily living their lives, whether they re innocent or not, Then the ideology of Todorov's equilibrium distortion is brought in. A major threatening act is then taken, which distorts the equilibrium and causes issues for our protagonists, and through this issue they try to solve this problem and whether they remain to live or not usually the equilibrium is restored and the evil force is overcome.
Through our trailer structure we present our film in a chronological style. Which furthermore shows Todorov's theory of equilibrium as we show our protagonists walking along in broad daylight, chatting and laughing without a care in the world. But then suddenly this all changes when we see them running in terror, away from a petrifying clown in a park at night. This therefore shows the distortion within the plot breaking the equilibrium, although we do not obviously show the restoration of the equilibrium, we show a sense of calmness over the trailer, which breaks the tension for which we built up through our editing process of showing the darkness of both the setting and the overall atmosphere of the chasing of the clown, this is where we show a candle being blown to, to show a sense of something coming to an end. This also hints to the narrative of how the girls try to and solve the problem. As due to the time of which the film is set, in modern time, Candles aren't used as a source of light, as electrical lighting is used within houses. So when we see this shot of a candle being blown out, it hints at the possibility of a seance in a bid to rid the clown from their lives. Therefore reinforces the paranormal style of horror that we are trying to show.
Barthe's enigma codes theory, is also shown within our production. We use this concept in order for our audience to decode certain mysterious aspects that we have involved within the trailer. For example our clown's purpose in trying to reign terror over the girls and cause fear and tension over their lives. We don't show the clown being violent in any way at all, only showing the clown chasing the girls, which leaves the audience to unravel why the clown may be trying to mentally torture the girls. this leaves the audience to question whether the clown wants to harm the girls. or gain something from them. We also show the enigma of whether the girl fight back or not, and whether they survive from the clowns clutches, as we only show the girls being fearful, but not actually harmed. In one of the scenes were the girls are trying to escape within their car, we see that only two of the girls have made it to the car, leading the audience to question whether the third girl managed to escape alive.
Through our trailer structure we present our film in a chronological style. Which furthermore shows Todorov's theory of equilibrium as we show our protagonists walking along in broad daylight, chatting and laughing without a care in the world. But then suddenly this all changes when we see them running in terror, away from a petrifying clown in a park at night. This therefore shows the distortion within the plot breaking the equilibrium, although we do not obviously show the restoration of the equilibrium, we show a sense of calmness over the trailer, which breaks the tension for which we built up through our editing process of showing the darkness of both the setting and the overall atmosphere of the chasing of the clown, this is where we show a candle being blown to, to show a sense of something coming to an end. This also hints to the narrative of how the girls try to and solve the problem. As due to the time of which the film is set, in modern time, Candles aren't used as a source of light, as electrical lighting is used within houses. So when we see this shot of a candle being blown out, it hints at the possibility of a seance in a bid to rid the clown from their lives. Therefore reinforces the paranormal style of horror that we are trying to show.
Barthe's enigma codes theory, is also shown within our production. We use this concept in order for our audience to decode certain mysterious aspects that we have involved within the trailer. For example our clown's purpose in trying to reign terror over the girls and cause fear and tension over their lives. We don't show the clown being violent in any way at all, only showing the clown chasing the girls, which leaves the audience to unravel why the clown may be trying to mentally torture the girls. this leaves the audience to question whether the clown wants to harm the girls. or gain something from them. We also show the enigma of whether the girl fight back or not, and whether they survive from the clowns clutches, as we only show the girls being fearful, but not actually harmed. In one of the scenes were the girls are trying to escape within their car, we see that only two of the girls have made it to the car, leading the audience to question whether the third girl managed to escape alive.
Tuesday 28 March 2017
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