music ideas

Being a horror film to fit conventions we would need to have to have some scary or creepy music. The music should be slow at first but build up and become increasingly fast paced leading to a climax at the end of the trailer. This will give the audience a heightened sense of excitement towards the film and when pairing this excitement with increasing scary, fast paced clips the audience should be excited to watch the film, if this is not the case the trailer is not a very good one.

Institution research

Our film is going to be very similar to the films in the paranormal activity franchise, so it makes sense to look at the institutions used for these films. all of the paranormal activity films have been distributed by Paramount pictures. It is not common for a film with such a low budget to be distributed by such a massive company. Paramount have produced and distributed huge films including Justin Bieber: Never Say Never, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Thor and Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol. These films have a budget range from $13m all the way up to $195m, this is very different to the $15,000 budget of the first paranormal activity film, for this reason it is unlikely that we use paramount. Blumhouse Productions is the production company behind the franchise and is much smaller than mega companies like paramount, this makes it a good choice to produce our film. Blumhouse Productions has produced other horror films such as Sinister, a film that falls into the same sub-genre as paranormal activity and uses the same methods to make the film scary, this makes Blumhouse Productions perfect for our film. BrainDamage Films (BDF) is a good option for us to have as a distribution company as it specialises in Horror films, and is low budget. This isn't a company that pumps money into big blockbuster films that will gross well over $100m but invests into low budget films.

Font analysis

 The font of the title stands out massively compared to the rest of the writing on the poster. The title font is red which sticks out on the black background, this is effective as it draws the attention to the name of the film, doing this is a great way of drawing attention to the trailer and to the name of the film. In our film we plan on having a font similar to this, although when used in our trailer it will not bne constant title in one place, it will appear and will possibly have some effects to go with it.

Horror films

In a good horror movie we expect to see it set in a scary location (usualy in the middle of nowhere) and loads of silly mistakes that dump the characters in trouble, but their are many more cliches used in horror films, some are obvious whereas some are a little more subtle. I used the opening couple of minutes of  'jeepers creepers' and straight away the most obvious cliche is used, the main characters are in the middle of nowhere, and to make things worse the characters themselves are cliched, they are both defenseless teenagers. People love watching teenagers get into these situations mainly because a large proportion of the horror market is teenagers, it is much more effective for a teenager to watch someone they can relate to getinto these situations than watching an old lady get into the same ones. 'Did i just see that?' moments make the viewer extremely nervous and scared for the character, a good example would be a zombie darting across an aisle in an abandoned super market, they make us want to shout out to the charcater in a pantomime fashion they're behinf you but we just cant and we know that the character is totally oblivious and will proabably die as a result. In the opening of jeepres creepers we see the camper van turn off the road through the cars back window they do not notice however and we as an audience are wondering what they know that we don't. After seeing the caper van turn off we see a truck in the distance speeding toward the car but it takes a while to reach and every second that goes by without a reaction, suspense is building and then finally the protagonists notice the truck. This is a good example of a climax/anti-climax. In alot of horror movies we expect to see lots blood and gore, films like saw show massive amounts if this and this helps us get involved in the film as we are now feeling a bit ill and scared of the people responsible. One of the biggest cliches in horror is the lonely situations, like when your car breaks down in the middle of a spooky woods adn nowhere but a creepy house you could find help, these really make the film scary as all of us have been to a woods we find spooky and the thought of being stuck there at night al alone is a freaky prospect. With our film being similar to paranormal activity and following some of the same conventions we need to make sure that our film is full of jumpy seens that will really freak out the audience. We will also have to ensure that our trailer reassures the audience that our film will be packed with these type of scenes, but we must be careful that we don't ruin it and that we keep the audience guessing.

Title analysis - Resident Evil Afterlife

The title of this film gives us a lot of information and suggests a lot:

• The use of the colon tells us there is more than one film in the resident evil franchise.
• The E in evil is much bigger and more pronounced than any other E on the poster which draws attention to the type of film it will be and also makes it obvious that 'evil' will be one of the themes.
•  The fact the title is in a different, much more interesting font than the information about the release takes you away a little from the fact the film in fiction, and tells us the film is not just ordinary.
• The fact the character on the poster is leaning on the title and it is slanted gives us the idea that she can combat the resident evil in the film, and that she is potentially the protagonist.
• The backdrop is dark and it is raining which gives us the idea the film is not set in a nice place.

Dark Knight poster analysis

Although 'The Dark Knight' is not a horror film, this poster is a great example to follow for our poster. There is a little bit of writing at the top which says ' Welcome to a world without rules' on it's own it doesn't really mean anything, combine it with the sky filled with smoke and the decaying building, it adds a huge amount of connotation. Giving clues but no answers like this poster does is very effective, it makes the posters audience question what is going to happen, and whats gone wrong, even people that aren't particularly fans of batman will still be interested to see if batman can handle his next challenge. The poster doesn't just get the current audience excited, it gets others that have not seen the films interested (which is a great way to increase sales). The flaming bat on the collapsing building makes the audience think maybe batman is responsible for the destrucion, this again is very effective as it gets the audience asking questions and therefore interested. The main attraction to the batman franchise is the hero himself, so having him standing strong, infront of a collapsing building with his fists clenched adds a huge amount of buzz to the film as people essentially want to see how strong he is. Although 'The Dark Knight' is not a horror film

Questionnaire results

Q1) 6/8 people said yes.

Q2)  3/8 people said supernatural
2/8 people said Comedy
1/8 people said Teen
2/8 people said Monster/zombie

Q3) 5/8 people said Paranormal Activity

1/8 people said Texas Chainsaw Massacre

2/8 people said Dawn Of The Dead

Q4) 3/8people said 26-50

3/8 people said 51-75

2/6 people said 76-100

Q5) 5/8 people said up to £10
1/8 people said £8
2/8 people said 'between £12 and £15'

Q6) 5/8 people said 1
2/8 people said 2
1/8 people said 3

With our questionnaire we found that only 6 of the 8 people we asked were fans of the Horror genre, this was not suprising as the nature of Horror films is often too intense for some people. Despite this we found that most are fans which made the questionnaire results more reliable as 6/8 of the people are likely to have experience with the genre and be able to make comparisons.All the favourite films mentioned are huge as far horror goes, all of the three movies grossed more than $100m in the worldwide box office, but luckily they did not all have huge budgets. 2/3 of the favorite films had $millions at their disposal, which isn't great for us as our budget is tiny in comparison, but despite this the most succesful film of the three was Paranormal Activity grossing over $193m at the box office globally, but interestingly had an astonishingly low budget of $15,000. Our budget still comes nowhere near to that but it shows with a low budget you can still create a very successful and profitable peice.Only 3/8 (37.5%) of our sample group stated the supernatural subgenre of horror to be their favorite which is quite low, however we are not concerned as 5/8 (62.5%) said that Paranormal Activity is their favorite horror movie, and considering our film is going to be quite similar to Paranaormal Activity it is a reassuring statistic.

Questionanaire

Media Questionnaire 

Are you a fan of Horror films?   YES/NO

What is your favourite sort of Horror film? 

• Supernatural
• comedy
• teen
• monster/zombie

     

What is your favourite horror film?____________________________________________________

How many dvd’s do you own?

·       1-25

·       26-50

·       51-75

·       76-100+

How much are you prepared to pay when you buy a DVD? £_______

How often do you visit the cinema a month? ___________________

                                                                      

Analysis of trailers

From my research into movie trailers I have realized they exhibit similar qualities to the opening couple of minutes of films, they both give a taste of what is to come in the rest of the film e.g. an action sequence or comical situation. Another feature they share is the questions; in trailers it is very important to get the audience asking questions as the urge to find the answers will convince them to go and watch the film, similarly if questions pop up in the opening couple of minutes the audience is immersed into the film and the experience of watching that film is likely to be enhanced.

Movie trailers can have a big part to play in a films success therefore producing a good, interesting advert and broadcasting it correctly is very important. To make a good advert you should give a taster of the scenes to come, with an action movie trailer you expect to see a bit of a punch up, someone in distress and a few explosions, as well as this there needs to be suggestions into the plot of the film but its important to make sure too much isn’t given away. With the previously mentioned the audience should be interested in the film but may not be convinced they have to go and see it, this is where questions become effective (especially if the film is a sequel or prequel) as they take it from a film trailer to a film from which you can learn the answers to the questions you as an audience member have asked yourself; a perfect example of an advert like this is The Dark Knight Rises, the advert featured clips of action and gave us an idea into the plot, although many of these ideas we were questioning as there were no answers at all. Broadcasting a trailer correctly is extremely important and many factors should effect when and where the trailers should be broadcast, the two main factors are budget, and target market. There is very little point in broadcasting a trailer for An 18 cert movie on a kids channel; the audience of the trailer would not be able to see the movie if they wanted to but its likely they would not understand concepts of the trailer, equally if you advertise a kids film at 11 o’clock at night the chances are kids (the target market) aren’t going to see the trailer. Budget effects how your trailer is broadcast also, if you have made a film with your mates on a budget of 10 pounds then it is pointless in putting an advert out on prime-time tv for the film, but if your film has a huge budget and is projected to gross millions worldwide then advertising in a small town newspaper probably wont cut it. Avenger Assemble nailed this by broadcasting the trailer for the first time during the superbowl, which over 100m people where watching, the thirty second slot reportedly cost $6m, which is a huge amount of money but not a lot to invest when the film grossed over $1.5bn worldwide.

Certificate analysis

texas chainsaw massacre- 18
paranormal activity - 15
paranormal activity 2 - 15
paranormal activity3 -15
28 days later - 18

we're almost 100% certain that we are going to do a peranormal activity style trailer, although we may do a zombie style horror. Finding out the certificates for films similar to the one we wish to create has helped us decide a rating. If we do the paranormal activity style trailer the rating will be 15 as it is not too violent or explicit and being 15 leaves us with a wider audience. If we do a zombie style horror the rating will have to be an 18 as it will be violent and explicit, with blood and gore.

texas chainsaw 3d trailer - analysis

The trailer starts off introducing the cast, they are a group of late teen or early 20's people, and are all situated in a horror favourite, in a vehicle that looks like it could give up at any moment. The young Adults also conform to other conventions as they are portrayed as stupid and idiotic, when asked if she knows anything about the place they are going the girl says "just the address" This is perfect for horror fans as they want to see a female get killed, especially one that is prepared to go on a trip without any idea on where they are visiting. Now that the setting and the cast has been introduced they start showing the action and horror that entails throughout the film. The girl that doesn't know anything about where shes going is soon shown to be at the mercy of the chainsaw massacre. Tied to a tree and duct tape over her mouth she is unable to scream, shout or break free, the chainsaw massacre is toying with her and connoting he is going to cut off her arm. This is exactly what the audience wants to to see, a horrified teenager being terrorised by a nutcase who is likely to caus e huge amount of blood, gore and terror.