Planning for production of the trailer.

So far, these are the two scenes that I will be directing and producing. It is important that we all have a scene to direct as we can all add our ideas into the trailer so everyone will be happy with what we are going to produce. The whole group will have sheets like the ones in the pictures so we all know what scene we are directing, who will be directing it, which actors are involved and any added props or costumes needed.

Planning: Storyboarding our trailer.

Here are our storyboarded ideas. It is important to story board ideas for the trailer as we are able to follow a structure to filming. I have chosen to do my story board on a computer as I feel that I will be using my laptop for the production stages more than paper and it will be easy to refer to. Using a computer makes it easier for me to communicate my ideas, rather than pictures and drawings.


Story boards also make it easier for filming. It enables me and my group to know what we have for the trailer, and what we may need to add to it.

Planning and Research stages,

Planning: Horror Mood Board

Research: Horror Trailer Pitch

http://prezi.com/cvu92c2rsybd/media-pitch/


This is a link to our pitch for our horror trailer.
Press the arrows to go forwards or backwards in the presentation.

Planning: Quick sketch of a poster.

This is quick sketch for an idea of our poster for social killer. I wanted to do a quick sketch to get my ideas down on paper. We don't necessarily have to include this, but I felt it was important to do a sketch, just so I understand what will be going on the poster. I will also add an age rating to the proper poster, so the audience are clear on what age rating the film has, and have a vague idea of what the film may be like according to the age range.

Ideas for magazine font titles.

These are some font styles I have come up with for my magazine and poster ideas for the film. I felt it was important to research different styles of fonts to get a better understanding of the types of fonts we can use and which one would look best on our magazine cover and poster. I personally like the 3rd font, as it can be edited to look like blood and look even scarier.

Theories to consider.

Todorov: Equilibrium > Disequilibrium > New Equilibrium

*Characters need to have learnt something to change equilibrium.*

Vladimir Propp:  He developed a theory arguing that all fairy tales were constructed of certain plot elements, which he called functions, and that these elements occurred in uniform sequences.

Claude Levi-Strauss:  He argued that narrative tension is constructed by binary oppositions. For example:

Christian > Pagan

Weak > Strong

Good > Evil

Ideas for a "social killer" spirit.

These are our brainstormed ideas on the idea for our spirit that is killing the students in the trailer. We want to make our spirit relatable,  so that the audience find it scary, but we also want it to be something new, something that our audience haven't seen before, which would be our USP (unique selling point)- We want to create our own spirit which will incorporate elements of a wide variety of different spirits.

"Social Killer" scenarios.

Death chainmail

Death chainmail has been round since mail has been sent to mailboxes, unresolved murderers happening around the world everyday with no evidence or cause. As technology advanced, people were able to communicate over the World Wide Web in the 1950’s and ever since, it is allowing us to socialise, nearly every household owns a computer. But ever since technology has advanced so has death chainmail, from letters it moved to emails and then onto instant messages, but now onto socialising websites and thousands disappear, with no cause or evidence, and is put into a top classified folder. 

Character speaking

It was only a joke, someone I knew from another school sent me it everyone in school read the message after I sent it to five people, and them five sent it to twenty five until everyone had read this message, there are 568 students, 565 have forwarded this message to other schools, leaving three students to face their most feared, death. But can they escape death?

Ideas on actors.

We will maybe use ourselves as actors, and we will require maybe a few more, depending on the situational issue of our actors in the trailer. 


Our actors will be both genders and real life students again, showing the reality side of what we want our trailer to be.

Research into props.

For our props, we will use many of our clothes, laptops and phones as we do not have a high budget to buy all new things. We will also buy some fake blood as it is getting close to Halloween, this will be easy to get and will be quite a lot cheaper if we buy it after Halloween. Fake blood will be important as it can show the blood and gore that the audience like, we obviously won't want to use real blood, as that will be unethical.
Some other props we will want to consider using are knives, to really state that the film will be a horror and there will be violence, killings and even death. Hopefully, this will help target our audience too. We will need a lamp, for practicality to shine on a white wall for a shadow of our killer, this will also not reveal the killers identity, just a shadow.

Research into audience.

This is me (Tasha) - I am a 17 year old student. This is who we would like our horror trailer to appeal to.
The horror trailer will appeal to both genders. Typically, the audience would watch horror films on a regular basis.


In a horror film I would like:
- Suspense
- Horror
- Gore
- Blood
- Death
- Music to suit a horror


In general, I like all types of music (indie, hip-hop, pop, rock).


I like all types of films aswell, but horror just has the edge on my all time favourite genres. I like the 'SAW' films as they are puzzles and require the audience to keep attracted to the film.




Our audience will be aged 15 and over as this is the BBFC classification we have chosen. We want it to appeal to people 15 years and older as we feel that most people of this age use social networking sites and would want to watch this film as it would really appeal to them.

Research into location.

We have several ideas for locations for our trailer. As we don't have a high budget, we will use public locations and our own homes and our school. As this is a pseudo-documentary and we want it to be as real life as we can and using public locations and our own homes will make it real life and possibly even scarier.

We will use our school as location as we don't have a large budget. Our school will be a good place to use as it is big and spacious. Also, it will give our audience more of the 'scare-factor' as it is a real life school with real life students.

We will use a bedroom, where a girl could be looking at a social networking site, with a flashing blue screen which could show that bad things will happen to her. This will also show the reality of it all. Using a bedroom is important as it shows that the horror of this 'spirit' haunting the students can even get you in the privacy of your own home.

The garden could be used as at night, it is quite scary at night which will also show that our film is a horror. We do not have to use the garden it just could be a good idea for it. The garden could be used during the day to show any friends socialisng possibly.




























This is quite an open space and quite quiet. It can again be used for social scenes, leaving the house into the unknown world. This doesn't have to be used, it is just another idea.

We will also have another location which is a party scene, where teenagers are hanging out and just generally enjoying their selves at a Halloween party, not realising they have ignored the chain mail and it will now become a living reality. As a group, we liked the idea of a party scene but our focus group liked it too.

We will also use our local park (Burgess Park) to film a part of our trailer where am actor will be using our created social networking site "Social Book" This location can be quite scary, quiet, dull and dark, which is why it is a good location for a horror trailer to be filmed.

AS OF NOVEMBER 2011 WE WILL NOT BE USING THIS LOCATION AS THE PARK IS SHUT DUE TO REFURBISHMENT.

This white wall will be used to shine a lamp on so we can film a shadow of our killer. 

We will also be using our school hall for loud footsteps and students sitting in assembly, we will also be using the coridoor outside the hall to show students walking down.

Furthermore, we will be using school toilets for a death scene and local surroundings to show people walking, using social networking sites and devices and one death scene. We will also be using the atrium of our school to show the normality of students but to also build up tension in the trailer.

Outline of our trailer (so far)

At the moment, we are toying and playing with ideas for our genre, but we want to have chain mail being the cause of death. Students will be using a social networking site (made by us) which they will be invited to a Halloween party (as Halloween is this time of year) - if they decline the invitation to the party they will inevitably be killed. We are certain that we want to use the idea that if they ignore the invitation then they will be killed one-by-one. We are still playing with ideas and thoughts but we are becoming closer to being certain on props, locations and costumes.

Our inspiration came from the film One Missed Call, where people find our their fate from a phone call. We want to call our film "Social Killer" so that our audience know straight away what the film is, and as it has a killer they will probably know that it will be a horror. 

So far, these are basic ideas, but they will be developed when we come together and start to story board our ideas fully.


Our film will be a 15, as there will be some blood, gore and death, but not strong enough to be a rated 18 film. 

Questionnaire analysis/focus group feedback

To ensure we knew what our audience wanted to see in a horror trailer and what they liked about horror films, we felt that we should carry out a questionnaire and run a focus group for a select few to find out in depth what they liked, what they didn't like and if they had any suggestions for our trailer ideas.


These were the questions from our questionnaire:

1) Do you like/dislike horror films?

2) What do you like/dislike about horror films?

3) If you watch horror films, how often on a weekly monthly basis do you watch them?

4) What are your fears (eg, what makes you jump) in a horror?

5) What are your favourite aspects of a horror film.

6) What do you like to see in a horror trailer?

7) What do you like to see in a horror trailer? 

8) *brief outline of trailer* What do you think of our idea, would you see the film?

Sample:

We gave our questionnaires to 7 females & 4 males, this was an opportunity sample of people who were in our sixth form common room, it was a mixture of students in year 12 and year 13.

3 of 4 males said they liked horror.

6 out of 7 females said they liked horror.

Male’s favourite aspects of horror were:

-          Portrayal of scary scenes

-          Gory Stuff

-          Sound Effects/Music

-          Blood

-          Suspense

-          Thrill and Rush

-          Death scenes.

-     Tension

 Some answers were given more than once in the questionnaire..

Fears were:

-          Spiders (1)

-          Rats (1)

-          Silent scenes

In a trailer they liked..

-          Scary stuff

-          Parts of a scary scene

-          Blood (2)

 Female’s favourite aspects of horror were:

-          Jumpy scenes (2)

-          Sound Effects/Music

-          Action (2)

-          Death (2)

-          Violence

-          Tension

Fears were:

-          Jumpy Scenes (3)

-          Scary faces

-          Devils and Demons

-          Unsuspecting scenes

-          Music

  

In a trailer they liked..

-          Jumpy scenes

-          Appropriate music

-          Action (2)

-          Something that is worth watching in cinema

-          Blood

-          The general idea of the film

2 out of 4 females, after hearing about  the trailer would watch the film.

4 out of 7 males, after hearing about, would watch the film.

Focus Group:
We ran a focus group on Wednesday 5th October to gather some research from an exclusive group of year 13 students to research about their ideas on horror films and what they liked/disliked, and what they thought of our initial trailer ideas.


In our focus group we had 4 females and 2 males. 


The name "Social Killer" appealed to the group as it was a contemporary issue, social networking and connecting with friends, and the killer part made them know instantly that it was a horror film. 


The focus group liked our idea of it also being a social issue as they felt that it was scarier, because it was dealing with a real life issue and would be a pseudo documentary


We found out that the focus group liked suspense, music, jumpy scenes and cliffhangers to make you want to find out what happens, in film trailers. 


The group suggested that we have:


- A flashing blue screen in darkness, to add to making it scarier suggesting that the computer is alive?
-Having computer key noises when flashing up facts on screen.
- On our draft film poster created, we could have a pool of blood under the hand on our next one, to make it look really effective and look like that there is a large amount of blood loss, to show the audience that the film will be gory and scary as there is lots of blood.

Classifications from the BBFC.

Universal - Suitable for all.
- It is impossible to predict what might upset any particular child. But a 'U' film should be suitable for audiences aged four years and over. 'U' films should be set within a positive moral framework and should offer reassuring counterbalances to any violence, threat or horror.


In horror films, scary sequences should be mild, brief and unlikely to cause undue anxiety to young children. The outcome should be reassuring.




PG - Parental Guidance.
-Unaccompanied children of any age may watch. A PG film should not disturb a child aged around eight or older. However, parents are advised to consider whether the content may upset younger or more sensitive children.


Frightening sequences should not be prolonged or intense. Fantasy settings may be a mitigating factor. 

12A/12 - Suitable for 12 years and over.
- Exactly the same criteria are used to classify works at 12A and 12. These categories are awarded where the material is suitable, in general, only for those aged 12 and over. Works classified at these categories may upset children under twelve or contain material which many parents will find unsuitable for them.



Moderate physical and psychological threat may be permitted, provided disturbing sequences are not frequent and sustained.
























15- Suitable for 15 years and over.
- No one younger than 15 may see a 15 film in a cinema. No one younger than 15 may rent or buy a 15 rated video work.


Strong threat and menace are permitted unless sadistic or sexualised.












18- Suitable only for adults.
- No one younger than 18 may see an 18 rated film in a cinema. In line with the consistent findings of the BBFC's public consultations and The Human Rights Act (1998) at 18, the BBFC's guidline concerns will not normally override the principle that adults should be free to choose their own entertainment.












Classifications of films are important as they give a clear indication of the type of film it is and what the the film will include depending on the rating. Our film would fit in the 15 category, as we want it to appeal to our audience, there will be nothing sexualised and there may be some gore and threat.