Music

The music we want to have throughout our trailer is going to be spooky but at the same time, simple and not too over dramatic. We watched a few examples of trailers where we thought the music didn't really go with the clips/genre of the trailer and so we want to work hard on the music so we make sure ours doesn't do the same. We think pianos sound the most spooky and eery when it comes to instruments because they're quite simple but at the same time, slow and mysterious.

Examples of scary Piano Music

We also like the idea of scary childrens music being played occasionally. As our main character is a teenage girl, we think the 'childs music box' type music would blend in really well with our chosen genre/plot and give it an extra spooky effect. It also creates a contrast between the happiness children receive by playing with the music box, to the reality of the trailer we are creating and how it doesn't represent happiness at all.

Example of spooky children's music

Magazine Cover Influences

 Here are some influences we found when looking at different magazine covers.







































We want our main character, Ella, to be standing on the front our magazine covered in blood holding a balloon. We liked this magazine cover because it related to what we wanted to do and thought it looked really effective and creepy. However, the girl on the front is too close and for our magazine cover, we want our main character to be standing further away so you can see her whole body. We also want the background to be more interesting and the font to be less colourful to relate to the chosen genre of horror.

This is the second magazine cover we liked. We really like the idea of the girl standing in her night gown in the middle of the woods as we think it looks really scary and unusual. It also gives the audience an idea of what type of genre our film is or what it could possible be about. We also like the use of the rhetorical question underneath the film title "WHO IS MARIA SWEET?" we thought this was really effective and make the audience wonder about 'Maria Sweet' and what she has to do with the story and what her role is in the film. 

The final magazine cover we looked at was 'Showreel'. Again, we like that the girl is the main subject of the cover. We love that the eyes are blacked out, making it look really creepy and disturbing so we are thinking of definitely using this effect for our magazine cover. We also like the use of the teddy bear as a prop because it shows how young the girl is, but then contrasts with her face as it's covered in blood. Finally, we like the colour scheme of this magazine. We think the colours go really well and relate to the clear genre of the film as the colours are quite dark and contrasting.

Title: Extras finished

In this post we show our finished title with the added extras, music, transitions and picture.

Title: Extras

After creating the title, we needed to add 'extras' to make it more interesting.
We added a black screen at the beginning of the title. We wanted this to create a dramatic effect at the end of the trailer before the title appeared.

Then after the title appeared, we inserted a second black screen to create more tension for the viewer and we also wanted them to wonder what was going to appear on the screen next.

After the second black screen appeared, we had a 'scary' face appearing on the screen. We wanted it to just seem to appear out of the darkness and be quite plain but creepy. 

Above is the picture we chose to come after our title. We edited it using Photoshop, decreasing the saturation slightly and also the contrast to seem like it was appearing out of the darkness. We like the way the hands are a big part of the photo, and gives the effect that the person is almost being 'taken'. We also like how the eyes are blacked out with blood and other effects around them to make it look more thrilling and also gives the effect that there is nothing inside the body but darkness. 

After inserting the photo, we added an effect called 'simple' onto it. This slightly disfigured the photo and also made it slightly blur/colour around the edges. We liked this because it made the photo look more disturbing and also unclear which we thought would frighten the audience and make them wonder about the movie. 

Finally, we added an effect called 'static' at the end. We thought this looked like a TV had broken or something similar to this,  and so wanted to give the feeling that the photo that had appeared beforehand had somehow 'broken the screen' that the audience are watching the trailer on. We also know that a lot of trailers have used some sort of effect similar to this and so we thought it was a good idea and looked really effective and really related to our chosen genre for our trailer. 

Music

Finally, we added music onto our title. We added this at the end so we knew what part of our chosen music would fit best with our title and also the extras that came after it. We wanted the music to be quite calm at first and then, when the scary face appeared, become increasingly tense with some sort of loud, sudden sound appearing. We managed to do this and we think it sounds and looks really effective and scary and fits well with our title and relates well to our chosen genre. 

Poster Influences

We looked at different horror movie posters and decided that we wanted to have a 'scary' face as the main subject of the poster like the ones shown below. When looking at film posters for the genre 'Horror' we saw a pattern of all the posters having a black background and also a 'scary' aspect from a character.

The first poster we looked at was 'Shutter', in this poster the colours are quite dark which gives off a what type of genre this poster is for as a chick flick would usually have bright colours eg white. The 'scary' face is quite deformed as it doesn't have clear features like its eyes or mouth they are just plain black which gives off the effect that this person is either possessed or dead as it doesn't have normal human features of a someone that is alive. Also the 'scary' face has pictures of people or parts of the story from the film covering her face. This suggests that these images covering her face are significant to her the story/the person in this poster's life, as they could be related to how she died or scenes that slowly built up to her death.

'The most terrifying images are the ones that are real' we liked this slogan as it relates to the poster well as it explains why the person on this poster has images all over her face, gives off a mysterious effect and shows the audience what genre it is straight away.

We want to do something similar to this poster as we want our main character (Ella) to look as if she has been possessed and so have features like her eyes blurred out or all white to give off this effect. Just like this poster we want features from the characters face on the poster to have a creepy possessed look and so when looking at this poster influenced us to experiment with the characters face, eg adding events in the film to her face.


























The second poster we looked at was  'Mirrors', again in this poster the background is dark and there isn't much colour. In the genre 'Horror' we see this being similar with al posters, by doing this it contributes to showing the audience what genre this poster is for. Just like the first poster the 'scary' face doesn't have clear features and is quite dark. Again this poster has a character that looks possessed which is a feature we aim to have on our poster. The use of a black background emphases the character in this poster but as well the title of the film 'Mirrors' as they have used a red font which could represent blood and therefore death. We liked the how the character looked in this poster and how they've edited out some of her face so that it fades into the background. By editing the bottom of her face to make some her mouth fade into the background suggests that the character is trying to scream but is unable to as she is being taken over.

We like the idea of how the character is edited and this influences us on how we want to edit it our poster. We like how you don't see her whole face, this gives off a scary effect and clearly shows the audience what genre this films poster is. When making our poster we can either show her whole face or edit it like similar to this poster to look as if she is fading away, which suggest she is dying or being possessed. As our film is about a 'monster' taking over someones soul we think it might be a good idea to look as if she is 'fading' into the background like this poster.

The third poster we looked at was 'Lovely Molly'. Again, the background of this poster is dark and we wanted something like this for our poster because it's creepy and typically, films that are horror generally have a dark background. We really liked the effects that are used on her eyes, making it look like she doesn't have any eyes which is something we'd really like to include in our poster. We also like the pattern used on the background. There is clearly a lot going on in this poster but as the audience, you can always tell that the girl is the main subject because of her size on the poster. We think the colours used are really different and contrasting and relate well to the genre because they are dark.

Finally, we really like the title of the film. The use of the word 'lovely' in 'Lovely Molly' creates a huge contrast within the poster because, by looking at her face, we can see clearly that she isn't lovely and something has obviously happened to her to change her from how she was before. 

The fourth poster we looked at was 'Host'. We think this poster relates to what we want to do on our poster the most.. We really how it' simple, but at the same time has a dramatic affect on the audience and this is what we want to achieve with our poster, but maybe with a bit more of an interesting background. We really like how the girls face is, again, the main subject of the poster. The make-up that has been used is very effective and again, we also love how the eyes have been black out and we hope to achieve this in our poster. The background we think is quite plain, and we want to do more with our poster. However, we think it creates a great contrast between the red and the black and makes it look as though the girl is 'coming out' of the darkness. The use of the films slogan 'They prey on the innocent. Then they prey on you.' also has a big affect on the audience.

We think it's a really good idea putting some sort of slogan on the poster and we are thinking of also including this in ours. It just presents the films genre really well and scares the audience slightly. Finally, we really like how the title is presented and the font that is used. We think it's really simple but at the same time, has a affect on whoever is looking at the poster and also doesn't really say much about the film which keeps the audience wondering and wanting to watch it.


























The fifth and final poster we looked at was 'One Missed Call'. Again, the background is dark with a face as the main subject peering out of the darkness which we really liked. The face that has been used is really effective and different and we really liked it. It makes the audience wonder what it is and keep them scared and in suspense. We also thought the prop use of the mobile phone was a good idea as it related in with the films plot and gave the audience an idea of what it could be about. We thought the title is again, very simple, but at the same time extremely effective and creepy looking. We also liked the way it's sort of blurred/smudged at the bottom, giving a ghostly looking effect, presenting the genre of the film. Finally, this film like 'Host' and 'Shutter' have included a slogan in there poster.

"What will it sound like when you die?". We really like the idea of this and are thinking of having a slogan on our poster. We also like how the font for the slogan is in a different colour, making it stand out more and look more effective to the audience.

Title: Creating The Title

When creating our title, we knew that we wanted it to be quite simple but at the same time, relate to the genre we have chosen for our trailer. We researched different film titles on youtube that were Horror films and we saw that most of them were quite simple and either bold or unbold. We liked the appearance of this and thought for creating our title, less is more. However, we al
so wanted it to be animated because we thought it would look too boring otherwise and we also thought that there were many different things we could do to it rather than just keeping it as a still image. For the creation of our title, we used Motion and Final Cut Pro. Originally we were only going to use Motion, but we found that the animations for titles were more effective and interesting on Final Cut Pro, so we decdied to use that as well.

Firstly, we opened a new project on Motion and chose which font we wanted for our title. We chose the font 'Georgia' because we liked the look of Serif fonts as it looks very old-fashioned and quite creepy. You would also typically find a font like this in horror films.



Then, we decided to make the background black and the font white because we wanted it to stand out more and sort of 'glow' to make it look more creepy and obvious.

Then, we felt that our text could be slightly more interesting so we experimented with Photoshop and decided to use the 'smudge tool' to blur and warp the letters slightly to make it look more interesting and 'ghost like'.



After using this tool, our final title came out like this:

Then, we added different effects to our title. We added 'Projector' to it because it makes it look 'old' and more creepy. It's also quite similar to our production logo and so we wanted both of these to relate. 

Title: Finished

This is our title for our trailer. To create this we used Photoshop and Final Cut Pro.

Target Audience

Here are our target audiences. We show the ages, gender and groups of different people who we think would want to see our movie and why.

We looked at the statistics of three horror films, Sinister, The Possession and Insidious. We thought it would help us decide what age and gender are most likely to watch our film and also who enjoys horror films more.

The first statistics we looked at were from the films Sinister. From the picture above we see that on average males enjoyed the film most and that people aged between 18-29 gave the most positive rate. Over double males aged 18-29 than females aged 18-29 gave a higher rating, this could suggest that males are more likely to watch horror films than females. As suspected aged 30-44 and 45+ votes were half of what aged18-29 were.

The second statistics we looked at were from the film The Possession. We got the similar results from Sinister except the males votes were a bit lower and female's were higher. We thought that this could be because the main character is a girl and in Sinister the main character is a man. In every age group for females we were able to clearly see an increase in votes.

The third statistics we looked at were from the film Insidious. Again, on average males preferred the film over double the amount that females liked it. We thought this because the main character is male and so it typically would have drawn in a male audience more rather than a female audience. Also because generally, males prefer horror films more than females. Finally, we can see that viewers aged 30-44 were lower than viewers aged 18-29. We thought this was probably because the more younger generation prefer to watch these types of films because they find them entertaining. 

Overall, we think that for our film our audience are most likely to be males because they enjoy horror films more than females from what the statistics have shown. However, because our main character is a female, we think this would attract girls as well as boys and so we should have quite a high amount of female audience as well as males. Typically, the age range for our film we think would be 18-29 as the statistics show that on average this age range is most likely to watch a film with the genre of Horror. 

1. What other age ranges would be interested in watching your film?

We think females and males between the ages of possibly 30-44 because the statistics show that this age range are interested in horror films too and it doesn't just have to be young people.

2. Would your film be limited to a UK audience or would it have a global appeal?

We think that our film would have a global appeal as well as a UK audience because it is quite a popular genre that most people enjoy watching and people all around the world can understand it. 

3. What types of people would be likely to watch your film?

Stereo-typically, we think people that enjoy media/film studies would be interested in watching our film as they enjoy watching a variety of films and are interested in the different story lines that are used. Also, young groups of friends would watch our film together because groups enjoy watching films together, especially horror films as they may not want to watch one on their own or like the thrill they get from watching it. 

4. What types of audiences would not be likely to watch your film?
We think male and female children 14 and under would probably not watch our film because they would probably be scared to watch it as it's a horror film. Although we think males 14 and under would be more likely to watch it then females. Also, we think people over the age of 50 would probably be less likely to watch our film as stereo-typically, older people like different types of films e.g. comedies etc. However, we again think that males over the age of 50 are more likely to watch it than females.

Casting Shots

Laura Potts - Ella Roberts

Laura plays the character of 'Ella'. We thought that Laura would be best to play the main character of our film because her personality suited the personality of the character well and we felt that she was the best at acting out of the two of us. We also thought that her appearance was suited to the character well as we wanted Ella to have long blonde hair to add to the contrast of the girl she used to be to the girl she becomes after she is 'possessed'. 

Faye Speed - Sophie Wright

                    The 'Demon'

Faye plays the character of 'Sophie' and The 'Demon'. We felt that she would be best to play 'Sophie' as we are friends in real life so we thought that our acting would look more realistic and it wouldn't look forced. Whereas if we had two people playing Ella and Sophie who weren't friends, it may look like they were acting and not real friends which we didn't want. Also, we felt that Faye fit Sophie's character because she has the same sort of personality that Sophie has and Faye can portray this. We also felt that Faye should play the part of the 'Demon'. We thought this as Faye is quite tall which we wanted the 'Demon' to be. We also knew that we were never going to see the Demon's face and so we didn't feel that it would matter if we used the same actress for the friend and the Demon.

Danielle Lall - Alice Jones

Danielle plays the character of Alice. We felt that Danielle would be a good actress to have playing Ella's second friend because us and Danielle are friends in real life so we thought our real friendship would look more realistic for the audience when they watch our film. Although Danielle is completely different from the character she is playing personality wise, we felt that because she is a good actress she would be able to act this way and make it look realistic. 

*However, the character of 'Alice' isn't shown in our trailer. This is because we were originally going to have a different scene where Ella is pictured with her friends. We decided not to include this scene because we felt that it didn't really present the plot of the film very well and we also felt that the scene was too long to be included in a trailer.

Location Shots

Laura's Bathroom
These are shots from Laura's bathroom, we used her bathroom in the scene where Ella is starting to go 'crazy' and the 'monster' is taking over her mind. We show this by when she washes her face the 'monster' takes her to where she died and once Ella comes back to reality there is blood in the sink and also the 'monster' is behind her, we show this by using a P.O.V shot of the 'monster' taking it's hand off of Ella.

Lauras Bathroom Sink
Here we filmed an over the shoulder shot of Laura with the demons hand coming up behind her. We thought this was really affective as the camera also had Laura's face in the reflection of the mirror which we thought was a nice feature to have in this scene as lots of horror films contain mirror reflections from behind.

Faye's Cupboard Under The Stairs

We wanted to use Faye's cupboard under the stairs to show Ella hiding from the 'monster'.

Faye's Bedroom
We decided to use Faye's bedroom because it is quite girly and her wardrobe is in a good place when filming the point of view shot of the 'monster' creeping up on Ella (Laura) when she was sleeping. We use Faye's bedroom when Ella is being followed by the 'monster', in the shots from Faye's bedroom we show that the 'monster' is following her and wont leave her alone.

Faye's Wardrobe

We used faye's wardrobe because it is close to the bed but also it makes a creepy creaking sound when its opened. We liked the idea of the door creaking once its opened so that it scares the audience more.

House Near School

We needed to use a scary old house to feature in our trailer we found a big old house close to school and so decided to use it. The house is where the 'monster' lives and is where it finds Ella (Laura). Ella's attention is caught by the 'monster' and so she enters the house innocently not knowing what is inside. We show Ella's attention being caught by the 'monster' as the gate opens by its self and we show her looking at the gate in confusion then walking into the house.

We start off our trailer with an establishing shot to show the old house to set the scene and to show where it all started, we show Ella walking to the house then up to the bars on the gate and then walking into the house.

Harvington Woods

We used Harvington woods as we thought that by the little river it would look creepy as its usually got a darkish lighting as the trees block the sun. We use the woods to show the 'monster', we thought it was a good idea to film here as it makes the shots look scary.

The bridge

Harvington Playground
We wanted to use the playground when Ella was with her friend to show innocence and provoke sympathy of what is happening to Ella.

Eden Park Station
We really liked the idea of filming in a train station because we saw it on a previous A Level students trailer and we thought it looked really good and different! Rather than just filming Ella on the platform, we filmed her on the CCTV cameras because we thought this would look really interesting.

Eden Park Avenue Alley 
We really wanted to film in an alley because we felt it was really secluded and looked really creepy and gave the impression to the audience that Ella was 'alone'.