The importance of codes and conventions should not be underestimated because they help directors and the audience into understanding what is excepted from the film. Normal conventions of a horror film include a beating heart, people screaming and chase scenes. The pace of my trailer will appeal to the target audience because it builds up as the story unfolds and the music matches the intensity to the clips.
I followed the normal codes and conventions of a horror film by having the killer as a tall man who makes the killer seem much more menacing and intimidating. In today’s society, young males are seen as the most violent and having this type of person as the killer makes it more believable that he could go on a murderous rampage. Many classic horror films villains like Freddie Krueger, Michael Myers and Jigsaw all share common traits in their appearance and demeanour. All the characters I just mentioned were voted some of the most terrifying horror characters ever, in film history, voted by the public. Due to this I have based my killer’s appearance on some of the most memorable horror villains in history to make my horror trailer a truly frightening experience.
His clothing is black which follows normal codes and conventions for a killer because his dark clothing makes it obvious he is trying to stay hidden. His total black clothing makes him a scary object to look at because he looks like the grim reaper and many other evil characters in popular culture. These subconscious thoughts of other scary characters will have a greater impact on the audience and will make the public’s perception of the killer much stronger if they can link him to other frightening people. Also, the killer is wearing his hoodie the whole time masking his identity which creates a fear of the unknown which will make the killer much many horrifying because your mind naturally thinks of the worst. Hoodies have received a lot of bad press over the past few years because people are using them to commit crimes. This increases the aura around the killer because being a tall man wearing black clothing and a hoodie means these factors combined will make the audience very fearful of the killer. All of these factors are following the codes and conventions of a horror film.
As you can see from the film poster the killer (circled) is difficult to spot but on second glance he can be seen standing beside a tree. This gives the poster an eerie feel to it because it seems like no-one is there but then you suddenly see him and it scares you a bit.
My horror trailer follows the standard course of a trailer by showing the trailer in chronological order only showing snippets of the film to tease the audience into watching the whole film. Nearing the end of the trailer there will be a rapid flash of several clips to mirror what professional trailers achieve to sum up the intensity of the film in its climax. The quick cuts at the end help signify the chaotic scramble for survival as the killer becomes more reckless in his struggle to find and kill the entire group. I feel that showing the trailer as the story unfolds makes it much easier for the audience to understand and enjoy, otherwise the viewer will be left confused as to what the film is actually about, and will therefore be unlikely to want to watch the film.
In my horror trailer I didn’t include any females because I feel that women are generally only used in horror films for their attractive figures. So for this reason I decided to only use males in my production so that when people watch the trailer they might notice this fact and will think it is a serious horror movie with a solid storyline and not a tacky horror movie. Films with good-looking women often have a weak storyline and only feature attractive women to lure in the core male target audience.
Take a look at this image above of Paris Hilton, from the film 'House of Wax'. Her bra is on show and she is wearing an open jacket showing off her chest. She was not picked to star in this film on her acting skills but on her looks alone. Check out the trailer for 'House of Wax' below to see how females are portrayed.
I also didn’t use any blood in the film because I felt that it could make the trailer look tacky so I stayed away from using blood. Also this could mean that I attract a new audience to the film if I broke a few conventions because normally slasher films are heavily gory and so the lack of blood could encourage people who would normally avoid horror films to see if they like the film for themselves.
Very little dialogue was used in the trailer which also goes against the codes and conventions of a horror trailer because the dialogue makes it easier to understand the storyline with the help of the tag lines. I made the decision that I would create an air of mystery about the film’s storyline and ending.
In the ancillary tasks I followed the standard layout for a magazine front cover by having the masthead across the top of the page and the main image being the focus point of the magazine being centrally located. I used the effect of heavy rain in my magazine main image because many media productions utilise the weather to express the mood or atmosphere of the film. Rain means sadness and misery so the audience should understand this film involves a lot of suffering and pain. I used keywords like ‘World Exclusive’ and ‘Free’ to encourage a potential reader to buy the magazine.
I decided to create a horror trailer over a music video because I was inspired by films like Jeepers Creepers and Wrong Turn which both created a sense of fear in the audience because of the appearance of the killers and their unstoppable will to kill the characters in the movie. I also thought that the creation of a film trailer would be more fun than the production of a music video because you have more scope with a movie trailer. If I chose a music video I would have to stick to the songs rhythm and wouldn’t be able to use much sound whereas in a horror film I could make up my own storyline and decide on location and characters etc.
The trailer lasts 2-3 minutes which is normal for a full length trailer, this amount of time is sufficient for the audience to get a good understanding of the storyline of the film.
Effectiveness of Trailer and Ancillary Tasks
The overall look of the magazine and poster pieces send a strong message of horror and twisted thoughts into the mind of the killer through the heavy rain, the font used and the depressingly dark images used. The main sell-line of the magazine has been tilted slightly to give an impression that something isn’t right with the killer’s mind, that he only has one thing on his mind, to get revenge on the people who bullied him as a child that left him scarred, both physically and mentally.
I believe I have created a very professional promotional package because I have followed the code and conventions set out by experts in this field of work. The majority of the film poster is just the main image of the killer hiding in the woods waiting for the perfect moment to make his move on the group he wants to get revenge on. The other images on the film poster features a lonesome street late at night, with only two street lamps illuminating the road. A large oak tree with its scary looking branches dominates the bleak skyline. I laid these two images over each other to give the impression they are one image. The film’s name increases in size as you read with an ellipse at the end which hints that the story isn’t over and there is unfinished business to attend to (meaning that the killer needs his revenge on the group so he can settle the score.) The tagline is hard hitting because it plays on the well-known catchphrase ‘revenge is a dish best served cold’ and I changed the last word to dead to make it more relevant to my horror film.
I have included two film companies logos on the poster because fans of the genre will identify successful film companies and will trust them to create a good film. The audience will be more likely to see the film if it is made by a famous production company. The trailer then continues the theme of the woods to match with the film poster and magazine front cover. The killer's identity is never revealed in the ancillary tasks which increases the readers hunger to find out how is responsible for the killings. The magazine front cover shows the killer in the pouring rain, representing misery. Rain is always seen as a sign of depression and this will give the reader an understanding of how the killer is feeling.
The title of my film ‘What Goes Around…’ will immediately make people think about revenge and the fact that people will eventually get their comeuppance for their wrong-doings in life. One film that inspired me to follow this storyline was a little known horror film called ‘They’ in which these creatures would take adults who were scared of the dark as children. This is similar to my film because it uses a fear that if you bullied someone when you were younger there is a chance that they will want revenge on you for the years of misery you caused them.
I believe my use of music at the right moments will have a very powerful effect on the audience because it will give the image on screen a lot of meaning when it is coupled with sound. One example is when one member of the group is hiding underneath a car and the killer walks past. As the killer stops at the car the music stops to build up a moment of suspense in trailer as his fate hangs in the balance, and obviously the trailer doesn’t let slip the fate of the character. Another example is when a member of the group turns around suddenly when he hears something in the woods, as he turns his head and loud crash is heard, similar to a lighting strike. This represents his heart skipping a beat because of the shock of recognising the killer.
The font used in my ancillary tasks is the same font from ’28 Days Later’ because it gave the promotional pieces a creepy feel to them. The font is rough and looks like it has been scratched. This will immediately tell the audience the film is a horror because this type of font is synonymous with horror films. I used the same font for both ancillary tasks to gain brand identity for the film so that people will make a connection between the film poster and the magazine front cover.
Both ancillary tasks together paint a strong picture of what the film is about. They help the audience get an understanding of the film's content and storyline which will help them decide whether to watch the film. Although, there is a lot of mystery surrounding the ancillary tasks because of the dark settings and spooky figure hiding in the darkness.
At the end of the trailer the name of the film appears and then increases and decreases in size to mimic a heart beating. The red tint around the text hints towards the horror genre of the film.
Below is one of the songs I used in my film trailer. I only used the instrumental section of the song which plays at the start of the video. I used this song to sustain a sense of uncertainty about the outcome of the trailer and also to use it as dramatic irony because we know that something is about to go wrong in the film but at the stage of trailer where the song is used, the fate of the group is still unknown.
Watch my trailer again and listen out for the song which begins playing at 46 seconds.
The film trailer includes many common traits of a horror film. This includes the chase scenes, the deserted shots of the playground creating an eerie feel, heavy breathing with heighten suspense as a character's fate lies in the balance. These are just a handful of the different scenes in the trailer that will appeal to the target audience. These are the types of things they want to see in a horror film to put them on the edge of their seat. My use of youthful music like 'Chase & Status - Pieces' and 'Breakage - Hard' (listen above)which young people will know and love will attract the right target audience because they will enjoy the trailer more now that it features popular songs.
One of the first shots in the trailer is of the empty playground with a swing, swinging by its self. This already gives the trailer a creepy feel to it, this shot also pays homage to the 'Goosebumps' opening sequence whereby a swing moves in the high wind.
Audience Feedback
My target audience consists of University students who have some spare time on their hands. They are mostly male and are aged between 18 and 26 years old. Their favourite sub-genre of horror films is a slasher film because of the exciting chase scenes and the gory loss of life.
I created a post-production questionnaire in order to see whether my target audience thought my trailer was effective and whether they would watch the whole film after seeing the trailer. Their thoughts and feelings would tell me whether my decisions to follow or invert the codes and conventions of a horror trailer actually paid off or not. I only asked people who fitted the target audience of a horror trailer because asking people outside of this bracket would give me misleading answers.
Here a sample of the questions and answered I received from my post-production questionnaire:
Would you want to watch the whole film after seeing the trailer?
Yes definitely, the trailer was fast paced and the tag lines made the story of the film really interesting.
What did like the trailer?
Yeah it was a good trailer with a good use of sound but I wasn’t that scared by the trailer. For a horror trailer there weren’t many scary clips to convince me to want to see the film.
What was the most impressive part of the trailer in your opinion?
I loved it how the beat of the drum & bass song was matched with the edits of the clips; it really gave the trailer a professional feel to it.
I also gathered a focus group together to have an exclusive preview of the trailer to get their opinions on it. None of them were studying media and so wouldn’t necessarily know or understand why I included some of the clips I did. None-the-less, their opinions mattered because the average audience member won’t have an in-depth knowledge of the code and conventions of films trailers or mise-en-scene elements so their feedback will be similar to that of the general publics’.
I also gathered feedback from Facebook because I uploaded my film trailer to YouTube and then put a link to it on Facebook. The feedback was very positive although one person commented that ‘the storyline was hard to follow’. This made me think that if I had a strapline overlaying the flashback clip saying ‘5 years ago’ it would make it clear that the film had jumped back to a memory of the killer. I could have used some narration to accompany the strap lines to paint a clear picture of the story of the film to the audience.
Whilst watching the trailer the focus group commented about how the music really made it clear that this was a horror trailer. The sinister music that plays as the killer crushes the flower was an effective shot to include in the trailer. They liked that the music always suited the clips, e.g. at the start of the trailer the music had a slow tempo but near the end of the trailer when the group were running the music becomes much faster to match the clips. One person didn’t like the fact there was no blood in the trailer although another didn’t mind this fact and still wanted to watch the full film. I understood that because this was a slasher film people would be expecting a lot of blood to be featured in the trailer but some trailers don’t have any blood in the trailer and a lot of blood in the actual film.
Utilising Media Technologies in my Project
I created a questionnaire to find out who my target audience were and decided to give my sister a copy of the questionnaire to hand out to her friends to complete. She was at University at the time in Leicester so I emailed her. After a week she emailed me back the results which I incorporated into the results I had gathered. Using email meant that I save a lot of time because otherwise I would have had to post my sister the ten copies which would have been time consuming.
I took the pictures needed using a Sony digital camera. A fairly simple piece of technology that I’ve used on holidays before so I knew how to operate it and get the most out of the camera by adjusting the settings to harness the capabilities of the camera. In order to create my magazine front cover and film poster I used a program called Adobe Photoshop CS4. This is a complex program to get my head around but I had used this program before in my Year 12 coursework for Media Studies so I already had the skills needed to create my Year 13 ancillary tasks. I used Google to search for special effects that I could use in Adobe Photoshop which paid dividend. I was able to recreate the effect of heavy rain and the ‘pull focus’ effect just by following an online tutorial.
I filmed the horror trailer using a Sony Camcorder. My family had a camcorder for a while a couple years ago so I had some experience using a camcorder but not for the purposes of a film trailer. I needed to think about the composition and angle of camera to achieve the correct message. I pieced together my horror trailer on Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 which was a new program to me but after experience on Windows Movie Maker I had some knowledge of how these programs and after a quick lesson on how Premiere Pro works I was able to make the most of by using overlapping scenes and music to achieve my desired trailer.
I found using Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 very stressful because of a number of reasons. Firstly, some of the clips wouldn't load up properly, the audio I was using wouldn't play until 10 minutes after opening the program. The program would run very slowly during school hours because the school server wasn't powerful enough so I frequently said after school to get the editing done when the server ran faster. When I finished editing my trailer it took me five days to export the trailer because it kept saying there was an error in the trailer. I finally mananged to export the file but then I had to convert it at home in order to play it and upload to to YouTube.
I used the Windows Movie Maker program to harness its narration function to try and record some voice over pieces for my movie. After several attempts I was able to recreate to infamous ‘movie guy’ voice but I feared it might make the trailer sound laughable. I also used this program to learn the basics of video editing, these practice attempts made using Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 much easier to use.
I used blogger.com to construct my blog as of part coursework. Last year I used a scrapbook to catalogue my coursework through the year but this year I had to use a blog instead. Using a blog meant I could include various multimedia components like embedding videos from YouTube and uploading pictures from my digital camera; this made my blog more engaging. My blog was always accessible due to it being online whereas my scrapbook could only be viewed in one place at one time. There was also no chance of losing the blog because it was always online.
Embedding videos from YouTube made it easier to get my point across. These videos also made my blog more interesting.
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