Horror Trailer Rough Cut

https://youtu.be/j-AngGKqOeE

Diary

When we prepared to film the footage, I bought the makeup we needed to make the actors look like zombies. I asked my friends if they were free on the days that we wanted to film so we used them as actors.

Digital Technology Notes

Culture
how we relate to each other
media
freedom
values

Positives:
- Access to information/influences
- Technology is universal/widespread




Negatives:
- A loss of reality (communication). An anti-social screen dependent (escapism, social autism)
- Human contact (skills, attention span)

Diary

We have filmed most of the footage for the horror trailer that we are creating so we have started to do individual edits with the footage that we have so far. Yesterday I went to London and took some location shots as this can make the grade higher by showing that we have used different locations and it shows the audience that there are zombies everywhere. We need to get some footage in London with actors to show that we didn't just use establishing shots in London.

Research and Planning Essay

Research and Planning Essay from Ellie1133

Creativity Essay

Creativity essay from Ellie1133

Location Recce

Location Recce from Ellie1133

We needed to do a Recce for locations that we will be using to film the horror trailer. I travelled to one of the locations and this was a fancy dress shop. This helped me to see whether this was the right location to use for the trailer. I think that this location would fit well with the story and it looks like the right place for us to film.

Storyboard

Storyboard from Ellie1133

I have created a storyboard because it makes it easier for us to visualise what each shot will look like. By doing a storyboard, it will make it easier for when we do the filming because we already know what type of shots we are going to use. We needed at least 30 shots because the average time of each shot is 3 seconds and so by having at least 30 shots there will be at least 1 minute 30 seconds of footage. A trailer is normally around 1 minute 30 seconds- 2 minutes.

 

Timeline

Scene walkthrough timeline from Ellie1133


I made a timeline because this helped me to know which order the shots needed to be in and how long each shot needed to be for the animatic. On the left is the timing of the trailer in seconds.

Audience Essay

These theories show how the audience respond and why they watch films:

Hypodermic model is where the messages in the media are injected into the audience.

Reception theory is where the text is coded by the producer and the audience decodes the text. There are three types of decoding. Dominant is when the audience decode the text like the producer wanted them to and they agree with the text. Negotiated is when the audience don’t agree or disagree.Oppositional is when they disagree with the text. 

Cultivation theory is that the TV cultivates the viewers of what they think of reality. If viewers watch TV a lot, the media can influence the viewer’s ideas, and choices.

Uses and gratification theory this is where people use media for their own needs. We use the media to find information, for our emotional needs watching TV to relate to the characters, for our self esteem when we watch advertisement, looking at social networking sites helps us with our social integrative needs to see what our friends are doing. We help our tension free needs by watching something we like on TV for escapism.  This theory can relate to the horror trailer, as some people might want to watch it for escapism, as zombies don’t exist.

Desensitisation is where you watch so much violence that you can become immune to it. So if you were to see violence in real life you wouldn’t be uncomfortable watching it as you are used to watching it on a screen. This could relate to the horror trailer because it will appear quite gory when the characters get bitten by a zombie or killed and there will be blood shown in the trailer.

Copycat theory is where the audience copy what the characters do in films and in what happens in violent video games so the media influences how they behave.

Catharsis theory is emotional cleansing where people watch violence and this makes them have less aggression and this theory could link to the media text, as there is some violence involved.

Suspension of disbelief is where you accept that the fictional TV shows/films are real and you don’t think about how they are impossible in reality. This can link because zombies are not real so people watch zombie films because they are something they don’t see in real life.

Two-step flow is how the media text gets more known by telling others about it after you have watched it. This can link to the trailer as someone could watch the trailer and then tell others to watch it if they think it looks good. 

Representation Essay

Our media text shows the typical stereotypes of gender because one of the zombie film stock characters that we are showing- the expert, is a male because the males in the media are dominant and strong.

Another zombie film stock character that we have chosen to use is the sacrificer. In our horror trailer the sacrificer will fall down and slow the others down and we chose to have a female for this as this shows how females are represented as being helpless and clumsy. This also suggests that she is a damsel in distress however we will challenge this as no one is going to save her and we might include dialogue saying, “Leave me, and go ahead!” We will also imply that this character is also a scream queen and we will display this by the use of camera angles and close ups of the character screaming when the zombies are killing her so we will be using the Dobbs theory and this will also support the male gaze theory as it is pleasurable for a man to watch a girl being killed in a horror film.

We have decided to have a final girl in the horror trailer so we will be using the clover theory as this character will be a comparison to the sacrificer- the female who falls down. Furthermore, in the zombie film, Dawn of the Dead, one female character is a nurse but she has some male characteristics so this could be why she is one of the few survivors and this will be post-feminist as this shows that women in society don’t have to be girly.

 I think that our media text is hegemonic because we have chosen the genders to each stock character to what the society thinks they are, for example, the expert being a male as he is the leader, the dumb and clumsy characters being females.

Another theory that we will be using for our horror trailer is the Paffenroth theory because it is all about zombies. The zombies represent a lack of independence and we will represent this in the horror trailer by having a wide camera shot of the zombies travelling in a crowd doing the same thing.

In conclusion, I think that our horror trailer will represent different gender roles very well because we show different stereotypes of female and male roles. There will be two types of male characters. The expert will be strong and the betrayer will be a coward as he is not brave enough to tell his friends that he will turn into a zombie because he is scared of the fact that he will turn into one of them.

                   

Narrative Essay

                  Every horror film has the same narrative theories. The theories are the Todorov, Propp, Levi-Strauss, and the Barthes. We use these narrative theories in the horror trailer.

                  The todorov theory explains how in every horror film there is equilibrium at the beginning (balance, happy part) then disequilibrium (something bad happens, e.g. killer appears) and a resolution (e.g. the antagonist gets killed, problem solved). In our horror trailer, the equilibrium is when the characters are in the costume shop and they are trying on the costumes laughing and talking. The disequilibrium is when the hand of the zombie appears and the zombie bites the character, so this is where it all goes wrong and more zombies start to appear after this. We don’t have a resolution, because in trailers they don’t show the ending otherwise you would know what happens and the point of a trailer is to get an idea of what the film is about to get people to watch and see what happens to the characters so that is why we have decided to end the trailer as a cliff-hanger where one of the characters from the beginning turns into a zombie and one of the other characters has a weapon to suggest that there will be a fight.

                  Propp believes that in every story there are characters that have different roles in the film. These characters are the hero, the villain, the princess, donor, helper, dispatcher and false hero. I think that in the horror trailer, some of the characters fit into these roles. The villains are the zombies, the princess is the girl who falls on the floor, the helper is the expert character that knows what he is doing, and the false hero is the boy who gets bitten by the zombie but doesn’t tell his friends.

                  The Levi-Strauss theory is the binary opposites. In the genre of horror, the binary opposites are protagonist vs antagonist, empowered vs victim and strong vs weak. The binary opposite that we have is human’s vs zombies.

                  The Barthes theory is five codes. These are Hermeneutic, Proairetic, Semantic, Symbolic and Cultural. The Hermeneutic Code is where there are clues dropped but it is not clear what the answers are so this creates mystery and this makes the audience want to know more. The Proairetic code is the action scenes and this adds suspense. The Semantic code is where something has another meaning behind it.  The Symbolic code is where the meaning is shown through opposites together as a contrast. The cultural code is the audience’s scientific, historic and cultural knowledge. I think that the horror trailer shows some of these codes. The Proairetic code is used in the scene where the girl falls down and the zombies crowd around her and kill her. There is another action scene where the characters knock on the door to get away from the zombies and it feels like a long time for the shop owner to open the door for them as the zombies get closer and closer to them. The hermeneutic code is used at the beginning when we show the litter, and someone turning into a zombie after eating a burger. The Semantic code could be used because the zombies represent lack of independence by travelling in a group and gangs from the way they look the same and there is violence with them. 

Animatic

I created this animatic of the storyboard because it gives us an idea of what the trailer will look like with the exact duration of how long each shot will be in the trailer and what each shot will sound like with different horror sounds added. This helps us to decide whether the duration of each camera shot is too long or too short. By doing this, I have learned that there is enough footage as there is roughly 40 shots. The horror sounds that I have used fit with the what is happening in the shot and I think that I have timed the sounds to the shots right for when the sounds start to play for when the next shot appears. For example, when one of the characters scream, I have used a scream sound and when the characters are walking or running I have used footsteps sounds. I have also used boom sounds for the text as when the text appears on the screen, this could make the audience jump. The scream and footsteps sound are associated with the horror genre because someone usually screams in a horror when the character is scared and they are face to face with the killer and the footsteps sound is the part of a horror where the characters are being chased by the killer.

Horror Genre Research Development

Horror Genre Research Development from Ellie1133

I have started the development stage of the horror genre research for homework. At the moment, I have shown iconic horror characters and I have started the mise en scene- props, lighting, and I  need to finish the rest of the research part of the development stage for Friday. What I have left to do is the iconography of horror, the stock characters, stock situations, the narrative timeline and the representation of zombies.
In the lesson, we watched trailers and said what were the good parts and bad parts so we have an idea of what we need to do when we film parts of the horror trailer. We also looked at the theorists of genre (Neale, Altman, Metz, Chandler, Burton) and I wrote an essay on them.

Film Poster

Genre Essay

Genres divide films into categories for example, comedy, horror, sci-fi, romance and action. They are split up into genres because it can make it easier for the audience to know what film they would enjoy to watch because they might have a favourite genre or a genre that they watch more than other genres. Furthermore, films can be split up into genres by the typical conventions that are usually in those genres. These could be someone fighting in an action film or a woman and a man being in love in a romance film. Most films now have more than one genre and these are called hybrids. So usually there are rom-coms and action films that have romance and comedy as well. Horror films are then split up into sub-genres and these are splatter, zombie, vampire/werewolves, psychological/supernatural, slasher, j-horror, thriller and monster etc.  

Theorists have ideas of what genres include. Burton’s theory is that genres have recognisable conventions that are included. So there are always protagonists, stock characters, stock situations (car chases), icons (jaws music, scream movie mask, same actors in film series), and themes (love, revenge, betrayal e.g.) In horror films they usually have a final girl and this is the survivor of a horror film and it is usually a girl who is a virgin and who hasn’t done drugs. In the zombie film, “Dawn of the Dead”, the protagonist is Ana, and the stock characters are the characters who are trying to keep safe in the shopping centre. Ana is the final girl and the film she is a nurse and she looks after the people who get bitten, so this makes her innocent and a good person. The final girl however usually has a unisex name like the character Sidney in the scream franchise. The theorist, Neale, thinks that if there are too many genre conventions in a film it can get very predictable and repetitive so some films try to change it and challenge what we have seen before to surprise us and so it is not boring. Neale says, “Much of the pleasure of popular cinema lies in the process of difference in repetition”. In Dawn of the Dead, it shows a little girl but the morning where the zombies are there, the first zombie to appear is the little girl and I think that this made the film different as you normally see adult zombies and it surprises the audience as you don’t expect her to be the zombie. In the trailer, when the first person was bitten, the editing was quick so this made the audience to continue watching. Altman’s theory is the fact that genre offers audiences different pleasures. One pleasure is the visceral pleasure where there are jump scares, gore and quick editing in the trailer so the audience enjoy being scared and it is like the feeling you get from a roller coaster ride. Another pleasure is emotional where you feel different emotions when watching the film. The third is intellectual puzzles where it makes the audience want to unravel a mystery figure out the “who dunnit” of which character killed the victim. Chandler thinks that there are genres because it helps the audience to identify which film is what genre with the typical conventions that each genre has. Metz has a theory that genre has four stages, and these are classical, experimental, parody and deconstruction. Classical is the stage where the film uses the original conventions and scenes for example Psycho is a film that uses the classical stage with the shower scene as this can be very repetitive in horror films as the female victim is exposed. The experimental stage is where the film experiments with different scenarios. The Parody stage is films that have a comedy side and they have scenes of other horror films but the film is more funny than scary. Examples of these films are Shawn of the Dead, and the Scary Movie. The deconstruction stage is where the horror films are now hybrids and these hybrids are usually thriller/sci-fi and horror/thriller.

In Dawn of the Dead, there is equilibrium where you see the little girl as a human but the morning after it all changes. The sound of the ticking noise builds up tension and the door slowly creaking to reveal the little girl as a zombie shows how the equilibrium has changed. Genres put films into groups so that it is easier for the audience to identify which film is what from the conventions each film genre has.

Pitch

The flesh eaters from Ellie1133