Trailer Music Influences
This is a youtube video of the theme song from the film 'Requiem for a Dream'. Although the movie is not a horror but a thriller, the music still has the capacity to scare or bring fear to audiences. It is the key piece of music from the film and perhaps one of the most known soundtracks from any recent film. The video has over a million views alone and is composed of strong piano sounds as well as a high pitch violin.
It was influential when choosing our horror music as we wanted something similar but obviously not this exact piece because of copyright laws. Instead, we wanted to keep the piano sounds but slow down the tempo so that the music would fit more in time with the action within our trailer.
Trailer Music Poll
This is a poll we created using http://www.polldaddy.com/ it asks; 'What type of music should be used in our horror trailer?'. The options are; fast and exciting, medium and synchronous, slow and emotional or other.
The most voted for option soon became Medium paced music, and as a result this is what we ended up choosing for our overall trailer.
Horror Film Poster Analysis
THE AMITYVILLE HORROR
FRIDAY THE 13TH
ONE MISSED CALL
The correlation that all of these posters share is the use of colour. This use of colour connotes the themes of the film. Red was a colour used in all three posters to connote blood. Another correlation all these posters include is having very dark backgrounds and an image in the middle to highlight its importance.
With the information we gathered from these three posters we have a general idea how to layout our own horror themed poster.
The Title
When choosing a title for our overall product, we went through a series of ideas.
As we already knew the trailer had to be within the horror genre and therefore somewhat fit the conventions of a horror, we started brainstorming words of a scaring nature. For example:
Eventually, we chose Friction, as it defines the theme of our story and as a word provokes feelings of tension, conflict, resistance and contact.
This is shown below in a dictionary definition of 'Friction':
As we already knew the trailer had to be within the horror genre and therefore somewhat fit the conventions of a horror, we started brainstorming words of a scaring nature. For example:
- Tension
- Robbery
- Blackout
- Friction
Eventually, we chose Friction, as it defines the theme of our story and as a word provokes feelings of tension, conflict, resistance and contact.
This is shown below in a dictionary definition of 'Friction':
1. The rubbing of one object or surface against another.
2. A state of conflict between persons, those having dissimilar ideas or interests; clash.
3. A force that resists the relative motion or tendency to such motion of two bodies or substances in contact.
Above we've created a mind map using Inspiration 8 IE to illustrate the meanings behind Friction and the synonyms that derive from it. They all help establish the feelings of audiences when they hear the title and thus what to expect from it.
Initial Ideas
When beginning to shape the narrative of our trailer, we brainstormed ideas that we wanted include or hint at, these were either from similar films, inspirational media or suggestions by ourselves:
- A split or fragmented screen
- Black and white scenes
- Grey or silver graphics
- Dark silhouette figures
- House robbery
- Characters pulled out from underneath a bed
- Use of car inside and outside
- Montage scenes
- Violence that is implied not shown
Prop List
Props are crucial to the narrative of a film, for they are useful in deepening understanding of a character or situation to the audience. For example:
"Many props are ordinary objects. However, a prop must read well from the house or on-screen, meaning it must look real to the audience."
Props are common themes of the horror genre, to create fear, emotion or even excitement, for example 'a prop weapon such as a stage gun or a stage sword can read well but at the same time lack the intentional harmfulness of the corresponding real weapon.
"Many props are ordinary objects. However, a prop must read well from the house or on-screen, meaning it must look real to the audience."
Props are common themes of the horror genre, to create fear, emotion or even excitement, for example 'a prop weapon such as a stage gun or a stage sword can read well but at the same time lack the intentional harmfulness of the corresponding real weapon.
In our trailer, we will use a variety of props:
Questionnaire Examples
To help us decide themes and features we wanted to incorporate in our horror, we created a questionnaire which has helped us to break down key features such as audience feedback for how long they would expect horror trailers to last and what themes (eg. gore, introduction to characters) should be highlighted in the trailer. To make our questionnaire reliable, we specifically handed them to the target audience that we aimed for through our Pearl & Dean research.
Below are three examples of the randomly picked questionnaires that we handed out.
Questionnaire Analysis
We then handed out our questionnaire which had three options to choose how long our horror trailer should last. With the results, 27 people felt an ideal trailer should be around 30 seconds to 1 minute. We now have a better insight for the length of our trailer.
Our questionnaire is nearly even in terms of men and women who answered them for us.
Our final question in our questionnaire was going to help us give an estimate to what the audience expects to see a horror trailer. Out of the people we questioned, the pie chart shows that more than half of them would like a horror trailer to have a plot which narrates the story along with action scenes.
The correlation we found in our graphs is that many of the people who expect action in horror trailers were between the ages of 16-19. Where as people who want to be introduced to characters are between the ages of 28-32+.
This information could possibly explain that the younger demographic who watch the horror genre want to see action and less of the story, yet the older demographic from the age of 28+ want more information.
Trailer Elements Poll
This was a poll we conducted to see which elements appealed most to horror audiences. To question a fair sample of the population we used an equal number of males and females and asked which trailer elements would you most like to be in a horror trailer. The individual elements included: storyline, fear, suspense, monsters, killer, supernatural, good director, good characters, gore, sex, memorable scenes, mystery, death, jumpy bits, scary setting, weapons, psychological, good use of music, twist, darkness.
Horror Conventions
From our research into horror films and the horror genre, we discovered that some conventions and codes were more popular than others.
For example, below are the ones most used for each micro feature:
For example, below are the ones most used for each micro feature:
Camera angles and movements: Low angle, High angle, Extreme close up, Extreme long shot, point of view shots, tilt, pan, arc, push in, pull out and close ups.
Mise-en-scene: Profile lighting, under lighting, low key, back lighting, dark clothing, intense make up, eerie environments.
Sound: Eerie and scary music, stabs, ambient, contrapuntal, demonic laughs, nursery rhymes, incidental music, sinister music, high pitch music.
Editing: Long takes to build up fear and suspense, sharp cuts, graphic matches, jump cuts, black fades, fast graphics and scary text.
Friction
This image is a montage of all the ideas we wanted to exhibit in our own horror trailer. For example, the photo on the right is taken from 'Signs' where an alien figure comes out of nowhere and causes fear to almost all audiences. Another idea is the split screen effect we may use when editing, we thought it was effective in films such as 'Taken' and allows the camera to focus on more than one thing in a scene.
Teaser Trailer Vs Theatrical Trailer
A teaser trailer is specifically that - one which is meant to tease. They are short and tend to last between 30-60 seconds and contain little actual footage from the film being advertised. Hence they do not reveal any significant content or plot details and are meant only to give a minor glimpse of what is to come. This literally 'teases' the audience for they are often released while the film is still in production or the editing phases and only disclose small information such as 'coming soon'.
Teaser trailers are usually only made for big-budget and popularly themed movies to add to the hype and buzz of the release through word of mouth. Thus, today they are increasingly focused on internet downloading, blogging and the convention circuit.
Example Teaser Trailer:
A theatrical trailer, on the other hand, is more detailed and longer, it normally lasts between 60-120 seconds. It may provide plenty of information as to what the plot is about and is shown in theaters right before the film's release date. Many modern trailers, in fact, seem to give away too much content ahead of time and thus ruin part of the surprise of the film.
Example Theatrical Trailer:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
