Our film trailer is conventional in the way that the film
trailer begins with the name of the company that has produced the film “Scream
Studios” and ends with a billing block and the name of the film “Two Faced”
along with the release date. Other conventional aspects such as the sound
affects of screams and the heavy background music are also used in our trailer
as well as blood these are all iconic images
of the horror genre that our film
was based on, Our main character suffers from schizophrenia this and other
sorts of mental illnesses are also shown in other films of the psychological
thriller/ horror genre which our film is based in .An unconventional aspect to
our film trailer is the use of video diaries to tell the narrative of the
trailer. Other aspects of our trailer that could be seen as unconventional are
having a vulnerable male lead character who is constantly getting bullied
throughout his time in school , The framing of the female character as the
villain in our trailer could also be seen as unconventional along with the use
of the cricket bat as the weapon used. Of the functions of narrative
transformation created by Vladimir Propp in the 1920’s of film trailer our film
has a villain which is the main character Harry, Harry could also be described
as a false hero, in our trailer we got a “helper” however our film trailer goes
against the conventional “helper” that Vladimir Propp described, In our trailer
the helper is the mother who helps cover up the crimes that her son has
committed, in Propp’s character roles the helper was the person or group of
people who help the hero. A definition of the psychological thriller saying
that the characters do not rely on physical strength when they overcome there
much stronger enemies, if going by this definition our film is conventional to
the genre of a Psychological Thriller as the main character Harry is not a
physically strong character and his enemies (the bullies) in the film are
mostly of a much bigger/stronger build to Harry.
An audience would consume the film trailer that we have
produced on adverts on the television as well as pop ups of the trailer on the
internet and on you tube, the trailer we have produced can also be seen before
a film in the cinema. The audience would consume our trailer in magazine with
specific articles about the film or with the film’s actors, Posters of the film
trailer could also be found inside or on the back cover of the magazine they
could also be found board’s around public transport for example at a bus stop,
other ways in which an audience could consume our film trailer is with
promotional objects such as toys and video games.
I think that our film trailer was a fairly successful
product. On the first showing of our film to our target group the trailer got
positive feedback, successfully pointing out the main character in the trailer
(Harry) they also were of the opinion that the character of the mother was the
villain of the trailer, deceiving the audience into thinking that the villain
was the mother and not the main character, we framed the mother as the murderer
by the use of a ring that was given to her by Harry early on in the trailer as
a birthday present, and after the death of the third victim the ring is scene
on the hand of a female dragging the body away and then the close up of her washing her blood covered hands in the
sink, these scenes were identified as key shots in the trailer by our target
audience after the first screening , other shots that were noted by my groups
target audience were the shots of the bat being dragged across the floor after
the murders of each of the bullies, however the target group were quite
critical about the blood on the bat being there before the first murder had
been committed. We showed the group the trailer for a second time after we
revealed the actual plot to them and they were then able to see how the
murderer was actually the character of Harry by pointing out props such as the
male shoes warn by the person dragging the bat away in the dark. After the
first viewing of our film trailer the audience feedback on the plot of the film
was that the main character was getting bullied in school and that his home
life was considerably better than his life at school, and that the mother was
the villain of the trailer murdering the bullies that had caused her son pain
through the school day.
The main character of our film trailer was called Harry.
Harry is 17 years old and has been raised in a single parent family where he is
also an only child, we decided on this to suggest that Harry might struggle
with not having a fatherly figure in his life, the idea of having the mother of
as the only family figure associated with Harry made it easier to frame the
mother covering up the murders that her son had committed as the mothers maternal
side would want to protect her son from harm this even more so as Harry is her
only child. At the start of the trailer it is highlighted in Harry’s first video diary that he portrays himself as normal
this is further highlighted in the inter tittles “Just a Normal boy” “Just a
normal Family” and “Just a normal school”, The scenes in the school then show
Harry getting bullied in different ways from being thrown into a locker to
being ignored and forced to sit on his own during lessons, this showing that not
everything is normally this also made the audience have sympathy with the
character which was also another reason why they believed that the Mother had
killed her sons bullies as the character is weak and didn’t have the physical
strength to hurt the bullies, the idea of the weak vulnerable male lead
character is another example in the way in which are film goes against the
codes and conventions normally associated with horror films and psychological
thrillers. The clothing that Harry where’s during the trailer has nothing
linked to sports which also made it hard for audience to link harry to the
murders as the weapon used was a cricket bat which is a piece of sports
equipment.
In our film trailer there are to indoor settings of the home
of Harry and the school. In the trailer we tried to make the home a safe place
to Harry where he feels safe and nothing bad happens and the school as the
place where he is on his own and vulnerable, with the pace of the film trailer
getting quicker when the Harry and his mother are watching the news in the
living room when its revealed that people from the school had gone missing this
also makes the character believe that he is not away from the bullies even in
his own home. For the murders we used different locations outside examples such
as the 2nd bully gets murdered whilst he is running on the bridge.
In our trailer we used sound effects such as the screams of
the bully getting murder and a thump sound of the murder hitting its victim
with the bat, these were indentified as key sounds by our focus group as we
didn’t show any images over the top and turned the volume levels of the music
down which made the audience focus on the diegetic sounds for them to
understand what was happening. The music we used for the trailer was also well
received by the target group, the music started of very slow paced and quite in
volume and got heavier and faster as the trailer went on.
The key themes in my group’s film trailer are the theme of
isolation, the main character in our film trailer struggles to fit in with a
group of people in school getting bullied because he is seen as weak and
vulnerable by other people of his own age in the school. Where Harry is
isolated from the other people in his age group when he is at school when Harry
out of school has got a strong relationship with his mother this is also
strengthened by Harry not having a father figure in his life, in the trailer we
see that the relationship between Harry and his mother is good with the scene
with Harry giving his mother a ring that he brought for her birthday.
If we put Claude Levi Strauss’s idea about the binary
oppositions in our film trailer, we cover good vs. evil in our film trailer in
the school day, the character of Harry is portrayed as good and the characters
that bully Harry are portrayed as evil, good vs. evil could also be argued in
Night and day, the murders in the trailer only happen at night. Our film
trailer conforms with the Narrative structure that the narrative theorist
Tzvetan Todorov suggest, our trailer begins with a state of equilibrium with
the main Character Harry talking in his video diary about being a “normal” boy
who seems happy about being in the school environment, the trailer then has a
disruption in of the equilibrium this is seen in the bully events such as Harry
being smashed into a locker in school after being asked for money and the
following deaths of the characters that have bullied Harry. There is then
recognition that there has been a disruption this is seen in with the news breaking
the story of what’s happened to the people in the school Harry goes to as he
sitting down with his mother. This is followed by a second video diary entry
where Harry finds out the identity of one of the people who have gone missing.
The mother character in our film trailer tries to repair the disruption caused
by her son by hiding the evidence this is seen with the close up of the
mother’s hand wearing the ring that Harry had got here dragging the body away
from the murder scene, as what we produced is a film trailer and not a short
film the last point of the structure that Todorov created would give away the
identity of the character who is the villain of the film and the plot to the
film would be easy to understand meaning that many people wouldn’t want to go
and see the film meaning that money would be lost.After the animatic it was clear to us that we didn't involve enough of Harry's mother or the mother covering up her son's murders this making the plot of the film very easy to predict
The target audience for our film trailer was 15-25, when we
set up our target group of eight people ranging from the 15-25 having and
having an even split of boys and girls. The target group mostly had a positive
reaction to the film and could identify the main character and select what they
thought what was the most iconic shot in the trailer. When asked to identify
who the murderer/villain in the film trailer was they all selected the mother,
even thought this wasn’t the killer we tried to frame the mother as the villain
trying to tease the audience into watching the full length film. We created the
plot of the film and discussed the age of the film at the same time, the film
trailer couldn’t of been an 18 certificate as there was no strong violence/
language or many images of blood, in our research most of the films we have
studied of the Psychological Thriller genre are of a 15 certificate for example
“Paranormal Activity” .
I thought the strengths of our film trailer were….
·
The use of video diaries to tell the narrative
of the film, these video diaries made the audience attach emotionally to Harry
also made them more sympathetic towards Harry when he was getting bullied. The
use of static during our trailer was also affective it was a good way of
breaking up scenes in the trailer and made the trailer easy to follow, the
static also links in with the video diaries. We wanted to use the static to
suggest that the video camera was new to Harry and he didn’t understand how to
use it properly linking in with the diegetic dialogue in the first video diary
“This is my new video camera thought I should learn how to use it”
The film poster I created for our film trailer uses the
iconic image of the film (the cricket bat) as the key image of the poster, with
the bat resting on a cricket bag covered in blood; the film poster is used to
promote the film displaying iconic images of film to its audience outside of
the cinema screen. My magazine front cover promotes the film by having an
interview with the actor that plays the character Harry interviewing the actor
on what it was like being involved with the film, Magazines are an important
way of advertising film’s as people who read articles in film magazines will
most probably want to go and watch the film in the cinema. I think that my
three products are effective as all three link in with each other using the
iconic image in the film of the cricket bat.
In our media product we have used
·
The internet for all the research of film
posters, trailers, codes and convention of film genres and for sound effects as
well as for blogging
·
Digital camera for taking photos for our
animatic and for our film poster and magazine cover
·
Adobe in Design for the creation of our film
poster and magazine front cover
·
Adobe premier to put together the footage for
the film trailer and edit the trailer together including sound effects and
other music, we also used this software to create/ edit our animatic
·
Video Camera and tripod- we used the video
camera to film all our footage for our film trailer as well as for some of the
sound effects of our animatic , the tripod was used to keep the camera still
whilst filming some of our footage
