2. SETTING - Our film is set in an abandoned, haunted house which is overgrown and in the middle of no-where. The untidy bush, faded window frames, door with a torn up sign on it and smashed window all give this impression and the establishing shot of the house shows what a great setting for a horror movie it is. The house has a lot in common with the setting of other popular horror movies such as the Amytiville horror and the shining. Although we conformed to many of the conventions and clichés of horror location, the establishing shot of the house could have been more effective in a different light. If the shot was darker, it is likely that the connotations of the house would be too. We had problems with trying to get a clear shot of the house later at night because the camera we had at our disposal was not suited to dark lights, and we did not have access to lighting sufficient to create the perfect degree of light. Our setting fits the the conventions of the horror genre, some of the most successful and famous horror films have been set in an isolated, spooky building.
3. CAMERA WORK AND EDITING - Typically in horror films and trailers you would see low angle shots of the antagonist to make them look big, scary and powerful. You would also expect to see high angle shots of the victims to make them look weak and defenceless. We conformed to the high angle shots, although we only had one character, there is multiple high angle shots of him which often make him look vulnerable. Making the antagonist look powerful with angle of shots was difficult because we cannot see it, although we developed our own technique. The shot of the character getting pulled up the stairs is a steep low angle shot which shows the protagonist clearly having no control which gives the idea of power to the invisible force which is pulling him; this makes it carries the connotation that the invisible force is too powerful for the Human victim. Scenes which show the antagonist clearly overpowering its victims are common in horror films and are often the most memorable scenes; the end scene of paranormal activity 3 is very memorable when the possessed woman tosses another across the room. In almost every trailer the audience will witness a change of pace, in action and horror movies the pace often starts off slow and calm but gets faster and faster, and often louder as the trailer progresses. This is something we have conformed to in our trailer, at the start of the trailer the shots are long and some have slow fades, this sets the pace and keeps the audience calm, although later on in the trailer the shots are lasting less than a second and are shown in quick succession of one another. This gets the audience’s hearts going as the pace builds as does their attention, then the climax hits them and the title is shown which is very effective as the audience’s interest and concentration is at its peak during the action, so showing the title afterwards makes it much more likely the audience will take notice of it and increases the chance of them remembering the name of the film. The increased excitement that the audience experiences at the end of the trailer makes it much more likely they will go and see it. We have conformed to the conventions of horror trailers with our camera work and editing although in most horror trailers there would most likely be a wider variety of camera shots and angles.
4. COSTUME - Unlike the opening 2 minutes of films, trailers are rarely set in chronological order, this meant that you can expect to see a character in numerous costumes. In our trailer the character wears several costumes which suggests to the audience the time frame of the trailer. Having the character wear more than one outfit conforms to the norm of trailers as you very rarely see a trailer where the characters are dressed in same outfit all the way through, this is probably due to the fact that the huge majority of films are set over an extended period of time. The costume generally fits the setting in the trailer which is common but not necessarily a cliche. In the first shot of the character and the house he is dressed in black jeans and a grey jacket; dark, dull colours which have the connotations of horror and match the state of the house well. Similarly the shot of the character in the kitchen he is dressed in bright colours which matches the brightness of the shot. The more dominant costume cliches and conventions in horror films are based on the antagonist, this makes it more difficult to show conforming or subversion as our antagonist is not visible, although the costumes of our protagonist fits the conventions. We set the costume for the character to look like a normal guy, dressed as many would daily. We did this in order to enable the audience to relate more effectively and gives them the idea that no matter what you're doing the evil can still get you.
5.GENRE AND HOW THE TRAILER SUGGESTS IT - The genre of the film is obvious form the start of the film, Blumhouse Productions is synonymous with horror films, and the font of the Brain Damage films title further suggests this. The gothic red font with a black background fits the horror conventions and stereotypes perfectly. Once the clips start going we see a slow pan of an obviously run-down house and later on we see shots of some very spooky things happening but the lighting and camera angles also suggest the genre. The run-down house with smashed windows is a favourite location in horror films as seen in films like Amytiville horror. dark places are very common in horror films so the shots we have in a dark room are effective at suggesting the genre. The slamming doors and characters being dragged about are things you see in the paranormal activity films, these films are extremely popular especially with the current horror target audience, this means that seeing clips like this show the audience this film is a horror. Many horror trailers feature an establishing shot of where the film is set, this is a convention that we conformed to during our trailer but, those trailer also likely to show more footage from the film especially of the scariest bits happening. In our trailer we didn't show as much footage from the trailer so this was a subversion of the conventions.
6. HOW CHARACTERS ARE INTRODUCED - Many film trailers show and introduce multiple characters, ours only introduces the protagonist, this is because he is the only character that has any significant role in the film and as we only needed to show him in our trailer for it to come together as we had hoped, there was no point in introducing anyone else. The establishing shot of the trailer is a pan on the house where the film is set, the character is first introduced walking towards that house. Having the character walking towards the established point of importance suggests that the character has a main role in the film. In the next clip we see the character talking about noises in the house and we see him going to the source, this shows him to be a mixture of brave and extremely stupid which i what the audience love. there is always a character that looks in the closet, opens the door or goes into the dark room in search of the bad guy, these are the characters that get the audience saying the famously cliche "don't go in there" Although these character generally have a very short lifespan, they are responsible for a large amount of the action. The character is shown to be in the middle of the action as well as in a large risk of danger especially in the scene with him being dragged up the stairs. The way the character is introduced is similar to how 'Katie' is introduced in the paranormal activity trailer, they are both shown to be targeted by the evil. This shows the conforming to the genre's conventions.
7.SPECIAL EFFECTS – Special effects are used in the huge majority of films and you will see these in their trailers and it is often huge very effective scenes that cost huge amounts of money to make, especially in action films. Being a horror film there will still be special effects and although they are often nothing compared to the special effects seen in a film like Avatar, they will be expensive. We didn’t have access to a big budget allowing us the luxury of amazing special effects so we had to work with what we had. Getting the shots that conform to the horror genre would not have been possible in our case without special effects, a great example of this is the scene with the character being pulled up the stairs backwards. Using ropes or stings to pull the actor could be painful as well as very difficult to edit out on our budget and/or skill level but we used easy cheap methods. For that shot the actor went down the stairs on his stomach and then we reversed the clip in Adobe Premiere Elements. This was easy and extremely effective as it looks like something you would see in a big budget movie. In other shots where spooky things happened such as doors slamming and blankets being ripped off were done by us ourselves, to do this we just placed people in the right spots so they weren’t seen but could execute the job. We decided against ropes or wires as we thought it would look more realistic doing it with our hands. Although we didn’t have any blood or gore which you see in a lot of horror movies in would not really fit into our sub-genre very well so in all we conformed to most of the conventions and clichés of horror trailers as far as special effects is concerned.
8. STORY AND HOW THE
TRAILER SETS IT UP - Looking back at our trailer this is one of the things we
should have concentrated on more, being a teaser trailer we should have had more
of an in depth introduction not the story, using a vice over or more dialogue/monologue
we could have achieved this fairly easily. From the trailer you get a good idea
of what the story could be but you are not told about it too much. From the
order of the clips the audience knows that there is a derelict house which the
character ends up spending time in and that strange things happen to him, but
with a voice over or dialogue/monologue we could tell the audience that the character
had bought the house and these things started happening, letting the audience
know this would make the film make more sense to them. Having uncertainty could
be effective at peaking audience interest as they will leave the trailer
wondering what the story is behind it but it is a very risky tactic. Starting
the trailer of slow and without spooky events helps give the connotations that
everything was fine until he entered the house. The numerous things that happen
such as doors slamming and the character being dragged up the stairs gives the
audience a taste of the horror that will be in the film.
9. TITLE FONT AND
STYLE - We used 'Garamond' font for all titles except for the film title, we
chose this font because it's not too fancy and it is the perfect thickness.
Having a really intricate font can distract the audience from what the title
says as they are concentrating on the font itself, another reason for having a
fairly basic looking font is brings the audience back to reality much less, it
preserves the audiences engrossment in the trailer as they aren't being
reminded that it s a film, not reality. The thickness of the font added appeal
to it as it made it more predominant compared to similar fonts like times new
roman. We used a red font with black fade as red is synonymous with the horror
genre but the black fade made it blend in with the background, much like the
antagonist. The font for 'The Paranormal' is completely different from the
others, it is white, not red and has a glowing effect, this adds a ghostly feel
to it which fits in well with our film. Although all sorts of fonts are used in
horror trailers they are often more fancy and intricate compared to the ones we
used, but equally there is films that use even more basic fonts than us as well.
Having red font is an extremely popular cliché in the horror genre to which we
have conformed. As there is such a massive range of fonts used in horror
trailers its hard to say whether or not we have conformed.
