Planning for Film trailer
Initial planning
Storyboard
Storyboards 1 & 2:
Script
Shot list
Call Sheet
Shooting Script
Organisation of Location Planning
We have chosen a very ordinary location to give a sense of realism. The house is located in an ordinary road, in order to allow the trailer to relate and be relevant to the largest possible audience. This technique has been used in the successful Paranormal Activity movies, and with the use of a handheld camera, this gives the more realistic effect. Critics often say that films such as Jaws are not effective as horror films as the audience can just 'stay out of the water', our product aims to be successful by creating a lingering horror that follows the audience home. It is proven that similar locations work effectively in horror movies, and, as this location is perfect for our extremely low budget, It will hopefully achieve the best possible outcome for our product.
Organisation of Props/Costume
Costumes
- Casual wear - Victims will be purposely dressed following typical horror conventions. The protagonists will be wearing casual everyday clothing to keep the look of the characters more realistic and closer to reality.
- With the antagonists, their clothing will be darker and preferably black or dark shades of grey to keep make the mask in their costumes more visible and makes it stand out more.
- A mask may be included in the antagonists costume, the mask will be plain to keep it simple yet frightening hiding the identity of the antagonists.
- There will be many props used for symbolism and hints for the plot.
- Knife will be the choice of weapon for the antagonists, we chose a knife as a weapon because we believe that it keeps the plot and killing of the victims more realistic rather than using an out of the ordinary weapon.
- Candles will also be used to symbolise strength, passion, love and survival. Candles also have a deep symbolism in religion.
Antagonist's masks. The masks will be influenced by 'The strangers' antagonist masks, the appearance of them is quite simple which brings the element of strange and mysterious, almost creepy which we would like to evoke to the audience.
Organisation of Actors
- First Protagonist - For the protagonist we decided to use a female to represent the 'Final Girl Theory', this can also show a theme of 'battle of the sexes' as we intend to use a full male cast for the antagonists. For our first protagonist we decided to cast a student, her name is Vicky Ahmed, we aimed to cast a female character to be the protagonist because in more modern horror films, the films use a positive female in the horror genre are seen defeating typical male villains and exhibit strength and intelligence hence moving from being a female victim to heroine. Also by casting Vicky as the main girl, she allows us to tap into a wider targeted audience as she represents a more diverse cast. This link shows an article by Steven Casey Murray - BellaOnline's Horror Movie Editor which reinforces the representation of women portrayed in horror films.
- Second Victim - For our second victim that will be acting alongside with Vicky will be student Luke Elliot. We decided to cast a male to emphasise the male dominance over the female protagonist and to portray the break through and overcoming of power in the female character and to show his role as the male to be the protector. The Luke will be seen to be attacked or threatened by the antagonists whilst Vicky stays scared but untouched.
Evidence of meetings
Planning for Posters
Initial planning and sketches
- For our teaser film poster, we have decided to research a number of 'The Strangers' teaser posters to help inspire our own work as the poster for The Strangers typically use the antagonist with a mask which is similar to our characters.
- Here are some examples of the teaser posters of 'The Strangers' that include the antagonist's mask as the central image.
We decided that for our film teaser poster will include just the antagonists mask for the central image. Inspired by the posters above, especially the Scream 4 teaser poster, we believe that we need to keep the simplicity of a teaser poster with the use of one large image, title, small credits and date or release.
Photoshoot
Firstly, we began with the format and layout of the written texts on our teaser poster....
Construction and drafts
Photoshop Poster 1 and 2
With our first 2 poster drafts, we used a photo of our antagonists mask, using photoshop we edited the mask, creating shadow and blending the mask into the black background. Following the conventions of a teaser poster, we also added the 'coming soon' title and the year of when the film will be released. With the second draft, we added a blood effect on the credits at the bottom of the poster to convey the conventions of the horror genre. The smudged and blood effect we have used for the written texts will be used throughout our media products to show continuity between each different product. This will reinforce our marketing campaign.
Poster 3 and 4
With these two other drafts for our movie teaser poster, we added in the title of our film. Again with the title we used the smudge effect to create a slashed effect. This is done to connote possibly a slasher type film. We also experimented the size of the 'Coming Soon' to see whether the size of it will distract from the actual film title. We decided to keep the 'Coming Soon' to a moderate size smaller than the title. We added the month and year of the release as to keep to the teaser poster conventions, usually teaser posters do not confirm the actually day of release but just the month and year. Then we added a small 'Twisted Pictures' distribution logo because we believe that this logo and distribution title fits in more with the horror genre.
Choice of magazine
Our Chosen magazine is 'Empire Magazine'. We chose this magazine because we prefer the title logo rather than the title logo of 'Total Film Magazine', we specifically appreciate again the simplicity of the magazine and the focus on the central image in front of the magazine title. The colour scheme again is simple yet attention grabbing and keeps the layout of the magazine tight and clean therefore giving a more sleek professional look to it. The red will be ideal for us to use as our film title in our teaser poster is also red to connote blood for the horror genre. 
For example, the 'HellBoy 2' cover on 'Empire Magazine' edits the title of the magazine to show a relationship between the film that is advertised on the cover and the title of the magazine. By doing the same with our film magazine, it will show continuity between our media products.Initial planning and sketches
Our chosen central image for magazine cover...
We not only used Photoshop for our magazine cover but we also used Microsoft office Powerpoint to create smaller images that can be uploaded to Photoshop and added in separately. For example, we created our puff on Powerpoint and then just uploaded it onto Photoshop to add onto our magazine cover. FIRST DRAFT- Our first draft only includes the written text on our cover, as you can see we have edited the 'Empire' magazine logo title in the same style as our film title to show a relationship between the magazine and our film. This also shows continuity.
We chose a red, black and white colour scheme, to keep the colours neat and tidy. Also the red colour can connote the genre of Horror.
This is our edited central image, adding a more darker tone to the actual image and enhancing the shadow on the mask to create strong contrasts of shadow. In our final product, we will merge the written text magazine cover and the edited central image together therefore creating a final magazine cover.
