Time-Lapse effect

This is a 30 minute time lapse that may be included in our trailer near the beginning, it was done because it seems like a clever idea to include special shots that are harder to execute but with a great outcome. Music can be added ontop to enhance the scariness.

In the Proccess of Filming

We have now been filming for over two days in total and have gathered vital footage for our trailer.
We have played around with camera angles and camera shots. Not only this, but we have also been using the weather and natural noises to our advantage. Such as trains passing by or alarm bells. The lightness and darkness of the sky is also useful as we could experiment with different lightings and how it can be made better.

Character Profile: Curt (Typical Jock Name)

This is Curt, one of the boys amongst the group and will be featured in the trailer and shown the death of him. I think that introducing a few characters in the trailer would be good, but, not showing all of them. This way it will make the audience think that all the main characters are shown, however, they are not, which will make the film much more interesting. The trailer will not actually show his death, but will show him running away into the dark until he is no longer seen or visible. What could this mean? It will be up to the audience's imagination.

Curt is a typical 'Jock' type of boy in college and just like all horror films, he is into sex, drugs and disobeying rules. In a lot of horror films, jocks and their girlfriends are known to die first, however, my trailer will not be shown in a narrative order, so he may be shown later on in the trailer.

Prop List

We do not need many props as we want to keep our trailer as minimalist as possible and leave the scariness for the audience to imagine. However, I believe that there is no harm in using some props for the trailer.

Such as:

• SlenderMan Notes
• Torches
• Mobile Phones
• Matches

SlenderMan Notes are notes known to be left around by either him or other people in the woods. They are often seen in games about SlenderMan. Here is what some of the notes look like and well will try to recreate them.

Wrong Turn and Slenderman

Upon doing research, we had decided that our film would not be a sequel and would be a new original film. We had decided this because I had research films that have many sequels and came across 'Wrong Turn'.
The film 'Wrong Turn' has 4 more sequels to it, making the last film, 'Wrong Turn 5'. However, when reading up reviews of the film, they just seemed to get poorer and poorer. Many people claim that the original Wrong Turn was the best and the others were just 'pure rubbish' and 'not scary at all'. This made my group and I think that, sequels are not the way forward.

Though our trailer will not follow some conventions of a new original horror film, such as revealing who the villain is, we are still aiming to make this trailer seem as scary as possible even though our villain is revealed. I think, in a way, this will be effective as the audience will be aware of who the villain is and will have an imprinted picture of him in their heads because of the way our trailer will be filmed.

Here is a comment about the overall 'Wrong Turns' from a review website:

Test Shots - Conversation

Another practice shot with use of over shoulder shots, medium shots and two shots of people in conversation.

Non diegetic sound is put in to make it seem like diegetic sound, too. For our trailer, I think our editing skills will be improved much more.

Test Shots - Running Scene

We recorded some test footage to try and improve on how we film and how we shoot.

The Hills Have Eyes Trailer 2006

The trailer above is for the film, 'The Hills Have Eyes' it is about mutated people due to government nuclear tests in New Mexico. Due to this, they have become mutants and feed on humans that pass by their town. In this case a family are stranded in the dessert and the mutants plan to capture them and eat them.

From watching the film, I had realised that the trailer is not played out in order and plays parts of the ending however, if you had not seen this film, you could not tell which part played what part of the story narrative. Also, they go out of the way with conventions and does not include a final girl, however a final 3 but, as we are told that 3 of them survive, they cleverly remake a similar scene from earlier in the film which informed us that the mutants were watching them. And at the end, they did it again to close the film, which leaves us to think that, are they safe? Isit actually over?

Methods like this could be used in my trailer to enhance scariness.

Edited Trailer Location Pictures

These locations are the same as previous however, I have manipulated them on Photoshop CS3 and have made them look scarier and darker. This was people will have a better understanding of what the locations will look like if it were to be darker or at night.

Possible Trailer Locations

Here are some possible locations that I plan to use for my trailer as they look remote and abandonned which would be good for my trailer.

Film Name: SlenderMan

As you may have noticed, we have be very indecisive about the name of our film. We have had various ideas for the names but they have all been very eye catching and it has been hard to decide. However, we have come to a conclusion that we will be calling our film, 'SlenderMan'. This is because simply by asking audience for feedback, 'The Man' sounds a bit boring and sounds like an old persons film.

'Slender' was said to sound like a blending machine or some sort of weight loss program (which we agreed to)

We also had a lot of names that were really hard to pronounce, such as:

• Schlanker Mann (German)
• Der Ritter (German)
• der weiße Mann (German)
• Slimum (Old English)
• Slima (Old English)
• Slimas (Old English)
• der schwarze Mann (German)
• albena (Old English)

So, in the end, we had decided to keep it simple and pronounceable. For the audience to actually be able to talk about the trailer (word to mouth) and for them to know exactly who the film is about even though it is not a sequel. I say this because I think that going away from the normal conventions of not letting the audience know who the villain is will not work for our film as it is directed at young adults and it is quite common for young adults to of heard about SlenderMan.

Slenderman Trailer Ideas

I have had many ideas for what to include in my trailer to scare the audience.
One of them is that, to include a split second image of children and a possible sighting of Slenderman found all over the internet. Whether it may be a hoax or a real legend, no-body knows.

Here are some images that I have found on the internet that I could use or recreate:

See if you can spot Slenderman in any of the images above.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre Trailer (2013)

The trailer has an unusual music to it. Usually, horror trailers have some sort of scary music with really upbeat and sudden noises. However, in this trailer, it starts off with a melodic tune, some sort of relaxing music and does not seem like it should be in the trailer at all. But, as the trailer proceeds, and the lyrics are understood, you can hear 'the beast in me' sung which can imply the mask chainsaw killer. I think this is an excellent idea for the song to have some sort of relation to the film itself. This can be experimented in my own trailer.

Finished Storyboard, Camera Shots and Angles

Incase the description, shot list and angles are not clear, I have included a shot list in my previous few posts.

The Making of our Story Boards

Here are some pictures to show how our story board was made:

Whilst drawing up our storyboard, we watched out spoof trailer to have a better understanding of what camera angles and shots to include. We also observed other trailers and opening scenes to acknowledge what we have to include in our storyboard.

We added colour as we thought it would give people a better understanding of what is going out and what certain objects are within the pictures instead of just a simple and dull black and white drawing. We did the drawings as detailed as possible and clearly thought through the scenes we want to include and what type of angle and shot we will include them with.

First Shooting Schedule

Day 1 of shooting

Shots	Location	Duration	Cast	Props	Description
Shot 1	Woods	20 mins – 3-3:20pm	Trees	No props	Long shot To show audience where the location is
Shot 2	Woods	30 mins 3:20-3:50pm	Michael	No props	Long shot/ Handheld Running from Slenderman
Shot 3	Woods	2 hours 3:50-5:50pm	Taylor (final girl)	No props	Zoom shot Her running away
Shot 4	Woods	20 mins 5:50-6:10pm	Diegetic noises	Vocals
Shot 5	Woods	20 mins 6:10-6:30pm	Slenderman	Suit, mask	Long shot/Extreme Long Shot Him waiting and stalking

Costumes

For my research I had visited the V&A Hollywood Costume Exhibition to have ideas of what sort of costumes are used within certain horror films and films that can relate to my trailer.

http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/exhibition-hollywood-costume/about-the-exhibition/

Whilst visiting the exhibition, I noticed that a lot of the costumes seem smaller than they actually are on film so I had decided that hiring possible actors or using friends, height would not be a problem as they will look taller on camera.

I had noticed that all the villain costumes are really dark and mysterious and you can tell that they are the villain just by looking at the way they dress. I found this really interesting and will apply this to my own trailer.

Pictures of the exhibition can be seen here:
http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/exhibition-hollywood-costume/inside-the-exhibition/

Shot List

We have come up with a shot list in out story board and they consits of:

• Establishing shot
• Pan shot
• Long shot
• Two Shot
• Reverse Shot
• Close up shot
• Handheld shot
• Mid shot
• Extreme long shot
• Extreme close up shot

My group and I have good experience with camera shots and agles as we have all created front covers for magazines and developed further knowledge into how to take pictures and pose it.

Trailer Roles

I believe that in our trailer our groups should have certain roles.

Trailer Narrative

For my trailer narrative I have come up with some ideas such as

• Starting off with a brief introduction with use of text and a voice over. e.g. 'This Halloween'
• A long shot, establishing shot of the woods with tall shady trees and a remote looking surrounding
• Blacked out screen
• The same shot, but with slenderman seen slightly behind or in front of a tree revealing his tall shady body and faceless white head
• Blacked out screen
• During all of this music with suspense will be played over it (similar to the beginning of our spoof horror trailer)
• We are then taken to a bunch of teenagers kicking down a door and breaking into an abandoned home
• The attic is then shown and old films are seen half falling out of a cardboard box
• A machine is ready to set up and watch the film
• They watch it
• 2 teens suspect something is not right
• Cuts to an argument and laughter of the scared teens
• As night falls when they return home
• Quick 0.1 second shot of slender appears with a sharp psycho string like noise with it comes and disappears
• Running and screaming is heard and shown through handheld
• Blacked out screens then screams and thumps

This is just a rough idea of what it may be like, my group and I have been working on a story board and will have a clearer understanding and view of what to do soon

Action upon feedback

Now that I have received feedback from my tutor and students I know have a clearer understanding of what to include in my trailer and what to improve on.

I should have more footage of other scenes as it adds variety and does not give away where my story is set or the main location. More natural sounds should be included such as running and footsteps. If the original footage has bad natural sounds, then I should always re-record it on the spot.

More text will be added and better fonts instead of simple fonts.

What I have learnt from my spoof trailer

I have learnt that attepmting to film everything all at once would be ideal as you do not want to keep going there and back with loads of equipment. Also, whilst filming pictures should always be taken so that it can be used for references or upcoming posters and magazine covers that we need to create at a later period.

We made a spoof of out original narrative because I think that it would be easier to do that so we can have a rough idea of what to do for our real one and we could also just have some fun before we get down to doing the real trailer that goes towards our grade.

General Feedback

I have recieved feedback from students and teachers about my spoof trailer.
Overall, everyone was pleased with it and liked the way it had been edited and shot. However, I did too recieve some constructive criticism. One teacher said that I had not included enough natural sounds as I had muted it because it was not professional, I now know to film sound professionally and learn to record sound another time if neccessary.

Also, I had needed more non digetic sounds as throughout the whole trailer most of it was taken up with a heartbeat. I was suggested that I include more sounds such as heavy breathing/panting and running footsteps. They had said this because it will emphasise more information and detail about what is going on in the scene.

Overall, I think the feedback was good and I know that I could touch up on some key parts of the trailer to make it much more effective for the audience to watch and scare them a lot more with tense, scary and loud sounds.

Feedback 3 - by Keira Stanley

"Did the trailer scare you?
Yes.
If yes, how?
There was creepy flashing images of the masked man throughout the trailer.
Did you notice any unnatural sound effects?
No.
If yes, where?
-
Did the teaser make you want to watch the film?
Yes.
Overall, did you like the trailer and why?
I was 50/50 about it because it seemed a bit too scary for me to watch but I still wanted to see it as it kept me interested!

Thank you for your time in filling out our questionnaire, Keira. Your positive comments and input is appreciated.

Feedback 2 - by Mohamed Suleman

"Did the trailer scare you?
Not really.

If yes, how?
-

Did you notice any unnatural sound effects?
Yes, I noticed that the heartbeat was not a real sound as a scared heartbeat would beat faster.

If yes, where?
Throughout the trailer.

Did the teaser make you want to watch the film?
Yes and no because it did interest me, but it could be even better.

Overall, did you like the trailer and why?
I did, I especially liked the quick flashing images of the masked person."

Thank you for your time, Mohamed. Your feedback and constructive criticism will be noted.

Feedback 1 - by Sasha Lashkariani

"Did the trailer scare you?

Yes.

If yes, how?

At the end when a sudden loud noise interrupted the heartbeat.

Did you notice any unnatural sound effects?

No.

If yes, where?

-

Did the teaser make you want to watch the film?

No.

Overall, did you like the trailer and why?

I did like the trailer, however I think it should have been longer and show more parts of the film as it seemed like it only showed scenes in the park/forrest."

Thank you for your time in filling out our questionnaire, Sasha. Your input is appreciated.

Feedback Questions

Hi, I have done a quick teaser trailer for my A2 Media Studies and would appreciate some quick and short feedback, it will take up 2 minutes of your time and will be much appreciated. Thank you.

The Man Teaser Trailer - http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=batPkXjuBls

Did the trailer scare you?

If yes, how?

Did you notice any unnatural sound effects?

If yes, where?

Did the teaser make you want to watch the film?

Overall, did you like the trailer and why?

Thank you for your time.

Spoof trailer Narrative

Our spoof trailer narrative was a parody of our real narrative, based on a 'true' story of Slenderman.

• Starts off with Slenderman turning the corner revealing himself
• Text comes and says 'This Halloween' with editing which makes the text shiver
• We are then taken back to the slenderman scene where you will see him just standing
• Cuts straight away to a handheld shot of a person running and looking down at their feet
• A quick 1 second text slide is shown saying 'HE'S BACK'
• A 0.1 second clip of slenderman's mask is shown sort of as a glitch or effect to scare the audience
• We are then taken back to the running scene and shows the person turning around to see the house he is running away from and slenderman is juxtaposed into the middle of the footage
• 'FOR REVENGE' text is shown and another 0.1 second image of slenderman is shown again for extra scariness
• A 3 second shot of running appears again
• The person turns around and Slenderman is suddenly behind them and attacks
• Just as they are attacked 'RUN FASTER' flashes past and another image of slenderman is shown quickly right before it all goes black
• We are then shown a struggle and everything becomes blurred
• Non digetic sound of a metal door closing (thump like) sound is heard and 'THE MAN' is shown and the heartbeat fades away to insinuate that the person has died.
• Credits are shown with action music in the background

The parody of this is that Slenderman usually does not run and has not been seen running.
Also, the end text where is says 'RUN FASTER' is part of it, too, as in a lot of horror films, they will tell you to do certain things such as 'DONT LOOK BACK' or something scary. We decided to tell the audience and the person to run faster, but however, just as that is said, slenderman catches up with the person and they are 'killed' (we do not know what happens to him, the audience must use their imagination).

The Apparition Trailer (2012)

The Apparition released on August 24th 2012 is a new horror film and implies that ghosts and spirits are all based on your imagination and if you believe it to be true, then it will. I think this idea is extremely clever as it plays on the audience's imagination by telling them that the characters are just imagining the ghost itself, too. This puts the audience in their shoes and could scare them even after the movie has ended because of the film's main plot, imagination.

From watching the trailer, I can see that this film has taken a scene from 'The Grudge'. The famous 'Crawling out of a TV scene' is seen but done with a washing machine (I think).

Overall, the trailer was frightful and was done really well, with use of both scopophilia and handheld shots. It uses a voice over at the beginning and text, too, which is unusual and could be looked into further for my own trailer. Another unusual thing about this trailer that stood out for me was the fact that they went straight in with it rather than showing the production company and delaying it until near the middle of the trailer.

Spoof Horror Trailer - The Man

This is our finished spoof horror trailer of 'The Man' uploaded on YouTube for anyone to watch and give feedback!

Spoof trailer camera shots, camera angles and editing

For our spoof trailer we had focused on including as many camera angles as we could to practice for our real horror trailer. For example, we had a low angle shot of the villain to make him look superior and have more power against the victim. This was purposely done by using a handheld shot and pretending to fall over (like in all horror films, the victim MUST fall over at some point) which then lowers the camera and looks up towards the villain.

As for camera shots, we tried to include all types of shots that we had learnt during our AS Media class. We had included shots such as:

• Long Shot
• Handheld Shot
• Extreme Long Shot
• Medium Close Up Shot
• Close Up Shot

We had included all of this to show that we are aware of the camera shots and will be using them in our final horror trailer. I think that using different camera shots shows variety within our shooting and makes the trailer much more interesting rather than just having one or two shots.

With editing, we edited our video on iMovie on the Mac, which I think is much easier than using Adobe Premier on Windows. It was my first time using it, however, I had managed to get used to it within half an hour and started properly editing our footage. Digetic and non-digetic sounds were added or enhanced to emphasise certain parts of the footage. We had added a heartbeat in the background which could be seen as both digetic and non digetic as we wouldnt normally be able to hear a person's heartbeat however, we still could.

From previous research, we knew that the trailer should not be played in a narrative order so the footage had been mixed up to give the audience a teaser of what the film could potentially about, we aimed to give them enough information to let them know what it is about but not enough to give away the storyline.

Between the scenes, we cleverly cut a fraction of a second of the villain's mask into random parts of the trailer to shock the audience as they would not expect it. Text was also shown before the mask is shown to emphasise on what they are here for.

At the end of the trailer, credits are shown with music in the background. Though I like it, I think it can be improved by making it more realistic by making the text smaller and adding a copyright symbol at the end.

Narrative So Far

The Man

The man is a horror scopophilia film. It is based around an urban myth of a creature called ‘Slender Man’.

The film is set in the present day; however, it will be based on a home film that was recorded 60 years ago which was owned by the recorder, Margaret. She had passed away recently and her house had been abandoned. A group of 4 teenagers decided to break into the house at night for fun and discovered the home video in the attic. After watching the video, 2 of them were scared of the video. The others were calling them names and said there was nothing to worry about. Then they proceeded to wreck the house.

They all go home. The next time they meet up at the house, one of the teens looks out of the window and sees slender man. None of the others believe him and make fun of him. The teen becomes hysterical so the others lock him out of the house as a joke. He bangs on the door hysterically as the others laugh before suddenly falling silent. The others think he is messing around but when they go to let him in he is nowhere to be found. They come to the conclusion that he must have found another way into the house and is hiding potentially trying to scare them. They split up and look for him in the other rooms, one of the boys, Jeffery, looks out the window and see’s a tall shady black figure underneath the street’s lamp, he is unusually tall and lanky, with extra long hands. Jeffery immediately realises that he just saw slender man and ducks under the window in shock; he then calms himself and looks again. The figure is gone. Jeffery tells the others but once again they do not believe him, thinking he is in on the joke. They soon realise that their friend is genuinely missing and the whole group begins to panic.

They decide that the safest thing to do is get away from the house and return to their own homes. They make their way down their usual route down an alley but are cornered by Slenderman. They run away in the opposite direction, towards the woods, Slenderman’s preferred domain. The leader urges the group on, saying if they can make it through the woods they can escape through the other side. They run from Slenderman but every time they reach the end of a path he is standing waiting for them. All they have to light their way is the light from their phones and these soon stop working leaving them in complete darkness (Slenderman interferes with technology)

The group have no choice but to use matches to keep Slenderman away (he doesn’t like light) but these don’t last very long. The film ends with the group desperately grabbing matches and trying to keep them alight for as long as possible, but they eventually run out and are taken by Slenderman. The audience think that all the teens have been killed but it is revealed at the end that one of them managed to escape as they had a torch in their bag. The screen goes black. Dot of light from torch gets bigger and runs past the camera.

Start of Comedy Trailer.

My group and I have started filming parts for our trailer. At first we had started off with collecting ideas from current films and trailers and attempting to re-create scenes for practice.

Today, we filmed a youngster urinating (acted) in a public area and therefore suffers great consequences (mockery of films and how teenagers should suffer or die because they are doing wrong/bad things) from a masked villain that watches from behind.

I am currently editing the video footage and will post it up as soon as it is of a good standard.

The Slender Man Documentary

Here is a short documentary about Slender Man and his origins.

Trailer Research

With the use of the internet I have been researching other A2 horror trailers I have found, I have done this to see how others from previous years have attempted to shoot theirs, focusing on camera angles, editing and non-digetic sounds.

The Man: Ideas for our trailer

For the past week, my group, Cleo, Hafsa and Mahek have been coming up with several ideas for our trailer. We have had to think of the whole story so we would know what parts to include in our trailer and when to add them in.

My group was influenced by the film 'The Blair Witch Project' in which uses a lot of the audience's imagination to scare them instead of using CGI and overly exaggerated effects in films such as 'Cabin In The Woods'.

Our film/trailer will be about an urban myth/legend 'Slenderman'. He is a creature of the unknown and has a tall shady dark figure. He has been known to abduct children and has been allegedly caught in 'photographs' of children playing in a park.

Slenderman has been around for hundreds of years but only recently people are noticing him and has been circulating the internet scaring those with weak minds. It has been said that if you fear him, he will come for you.

So, my group and I want to base our film on him and we have already arranged costumes and designs for the character itself. We are hoping to film once the story has been written up and the actors and actress' have been chosen.

The name of our film is called, 'The Man' this is done because I want it to be mysterious and let people think, 'Who is the man?' When a film title sounds mysterious it gives off the impression that it is scary so this would be a good film name overall.

Here is a short extract from the story:

‘…She had passed away recently and her house had been abandoned. A group of 4 teenagers, decided to break into the house at night for fun and discovered the home video in the attic. After watching the video, 2 of them were scared of the video. The others were calling them names and said there was nothing to worry about. Then they proceeded to wreck the house.

However, after the group disbanded one of the boys…’

Conventions within a trailer.

The film itself and the trailer has completely different conventions. A trailer will never tell you what the film is about, but only parts of it, which will leave you wanting to know more.

A few conventions of trailers could be:
- The title of the film will always show at the end
- The story line of the film will never be shown in order
- There are ellipses within a trailer
- The non-digetic sound (music) should be in-sync with the clip being played
- Voice overs
- Action is interspersed
- Should build climax
- Showcase the stars of the film (usually before the title is shown)

Why Are We Becoming Desensitised to horror Movies?

Today's horror movies are majorly based on gore and computer generated imagery, they are used to 'scare' the audience, however, it all seems too fake sometimes and unreal. Things that we see in horror may rarely happen or apply to real life scenarios. gore and CGI may have scared the audience when it was newly developed and new to horror, but as the years pass, we get the same plots and same outcome, lots of gore and CGI.

I do not think the audience is desensitised to true psychological horrors that can happen to anyone in the audience in real life. Films like 'Paranormal Activity' leave people so frightened that even after the film, they are scared. 'Cabin in the Woods' a horror film which has too much gore and CGI and so much horror is involved, it makes us think that non of it can happen to us in which we do not really have a fear for it. Paranormal Activity is shot within someone's house, using poltergeist like effects which do not use much editing can scare people and using people imagination to conjure parts of the film. 'The Blair Witch Project' also does the same and it has no special effects at all and was filmed with an extremely low budget.

Audience Theory

Audience theory is wondering whether or not there may be a link between screen violence and real life aggression.

There have been assumptions that Rambo was the cause of the Hungerford Massacre and that Child's Play 3 was the cause of James Bulgar's murder.

It can be argued that media and horror films can influence real life actions, however, it can only be agreed to a certain point as the human body responds differently within each person, I think that if you were to be sane, nothing that the media portrays to you can differ your sanity and cause you to do something harmful to another human being.

Genre Theory

Genre theory is used to categorise films into a certain category of composition characterised by its similarities in the film or the style of the film. Things such as, directors and story lines, titles and point of sale displays.

An easy way for dummies to identify a specific genre is to analyse a set of films placed in the same genre, for example, horror. In many horror films, we sense danger and fear within the advertisements as they are usually dark and mysterious and does not inform you much about the story line and often has one big picture juxtaposed in the middle, a slogan and the title.

The director of the film. Directors often produce films in the same genre as they start of with, directors such as Steven Spielberg will always produce, fantasy, action packed, thriller films.

The titles of the films also represent genre, such as 'Friday the 13th', 'Psycho' and 'Halloween'. All three titles suggest that the film itself is about something bad as everyone knows Friday the 13th is known to be an unlucky day, halloween is a day where ghosts and devils are talked about and Psycho, psycho defines a person that is ill in the mind, a psychopath and suggests that the film is about a psychopathic person or people.

Knowing what genre a film is can benefit the film itself as it makes the audience aware of what they are watching and aware of what they want to watch. However, as we progress, genres are mixing into each other and creating hybrids which can cause problems as people may argue that some genres should not be changed or merged together.

The Blair Witch Project

The 1999 released $25,000 budget film is one of the turn around films in horror. This film bought the horror genre back in the game and changed cinema completely. A film with such a low budget could not possibly be successful we must think? However, without all the sound effects and special effects, the viewers are still scared by the film and would continue to be scared for a period of time after watching it.

It is based around three students 'filming' themselves staying in the woods for a few days to find out information about the Blair Witch. All film footage is recorded by the three students and an unmounted handheld shot is used throughout.


One of the students go missing the day after he discovers some sort of goo slumped onto his backpack and clothing and the other two go looking for him. The two end up in an abandoned house in search of their friend because his voice is heard, the two then separate by accident and a camera we are viewing drops on the floor. The final girl starts running and looking for her friend and her camera, too, drops on the floor. Just before the second camera drops, we see a man standing back towards us and looking in the corner, this refers back to earlier in the film when a man said the witch would abduct children and make them face the corner of the room as she kills another child.

This film is highly influential to my horror trailer as I now have a better knowledge of how to create fear and horror within a film without using special effects and/or sound effects. I will focus on scaring the viewers from their own mind and imagination.

Masks

Masks is used and seen a lot throughout horror films. They are used for hidden identities and often it is the villain that uses them.
In Friday The 13th the villain, Jason, uses a cloth to hide his identity until later in the film, he kills a victim and finds a hockey mask which becomes his trademark for the film. Masks are often used in the horror film posters or would be featured in it as it gives off a scary vibe.

In Scream, the stretchy ghost mask is used and if we were to see it, we would know who it is straight away.

I think using masks in horror films are extremely effective as this can really spook the audience and hide the villain's identity until later on in the film in which the 'final girl' somehow whacks it off the villain's face for a brief moment..

The Monstrous Feminine

The book 'The Monstrous Feminine' about Jaws, Alien, Little Shop of Horrors and Poltergeist that plays on men's fear of women.

There is a quote about Carrie within the book in which the writer claims that the director of Carrie portrayed women as pigs. This is done by using menstrual blood and the beginning of the scene to represent women and at the prom scene, he drowned Carrie in pig's blood. These both happen after Carrie has her few moments of pleasure. Woman's blood and pig's blood flow together signifying horror, shame and humiliation.

Often directors that are similar to this are White, middle aged and middle class.

I agree with the book's quote as it may be true. But only to a certain extent. We as an audience do not know what the directors are thinking unless we are actually them. What the writer see's is the own interpretation of the film and I also see it in her view as well, however, this is only because in the film, Carrie is seen as nothing and the 'others' by the characters in the film, which is why she is compared to a pig and not necessarily all women in general. We see pigs as nothing just like how characters see Carrie as nothing.

Sinister - Official Trailer [HD]

The title of this movie could suggest that it is a horror film. The word Sinister suggests that something evil or harmful is or will happen.

From watching this trailer I can decipher that the film is loosely based around a man discovering old films recorded by the previous family that lived in his hosue and he suspects that they were serial murderers. He also discovers that there is a pattern with all the killings, as a symbol is discovered which later on we find out that it is a satanic symbol. However, he then finds out that it was a some srt of ghost or soul that adbucts kids. He is informed that once a kid sees the ghost they would be abducted, too. The man tries everything to save his kid and he attempts to leave the house but isit too late?

The film has a lot of conventions of horror such as use of shadows, minimal light, a lot of digetic and non digetic sound which creates a scary atmosphere for the viewers.

Timeline

Texas Chainsaw Massacre 1974 and 2003

Texas Chainsaw Massacre 1974 is an american exploitation horror film directed by Tobe Hopper. This film is a good example of horror as it includes many conventions of horror such as an isolated location, a killer, hidden identities.

The remake of the film really adapts to the modern generation, a lot more violence and detail is included.


Also, from looking at the two posters for the films we see a difference, too.

In this one we see a really dark and scary looking poster. The poster is taken up by a person's face with scars. The colour is really distorted and old which fades in with the black background and underneath the title of the film is placed in the bottom centre. This creates a really simple yet intriguing poster for the film in which I think, would attract the modern audience.

However, in this one, we see that the poster is really plain and bright. As if it is a poster for a theatre performance or a play. The background is white, which is not a colour that the horror genre would generally use to induce fear. The rhetorical question takes up a lot of the poster and we are straight away attracted to that first. I do not think it is effective because the use of font and style does not have any horror included.

Nosferatu

Nosferatu (1922)

Nosferatu was the first expressionist horror film.

It was an unauthorised adaptation of the 1897 horror novel Dracula.

Names such as Dracula were changed to Count Orlok and Vampire was changed to Nosferatu.

The Famous Shower Scene From "Psycho"

This is the famous shower scene from the film Psycho. Psycho is the first ever slasher film to be made and was directed by Alfred Hitchcock. This scene runs for about 3 minutes long and a lot can be deciphered from this.
Comparing this film to a film like Nosferatu, the villain in this film is just like us and could be amongst us. Whereas in Nosferatu, we are shown he a tall shady figure, that resembles a monster.

Resident Evil: Retribution

Resident Evil: Retribution is a 2012 science fiction thriller film written and directed by Paul W. S. Anderson.

This is the new and upcoming film Resident Evil: Retribution. A lot of the Resident Evil films are known to be in the horror sub genre of zombies. However, this one is more of a thriller and less on the horror where it focuses on the Scientific side of mutation and change in zombies. After watching the film I did spot some conventions of horror such as darkness taking over, an isolated location and how the characters are made to stick together and some dying of horrible deaths along the way.

Resident Evil - Trailer

This is the trailer to Resident Evil. It is one of my favourite Horror films of all time. It falls into the sub-genre of Zombies. I especially like this film as I am always drawn to zombie films and I am always fascinated with the make-up and modelling of the zombie characters.

Firt post. Introduction to A2 Media.

This is my blog for my A2 Media Studies and you will be able to keep up to date with anything I do or create for the passsing year. My aim is to make a horror trailer and to design a poster and a magazine cover for it.

I have looked into one of the very first horror films which was Dracula. Horror was created through literature - mainly gothic. The two main books were Frankenstein and Dracula.

The 1922 Dracula film by Bram Stoker is a very good example of an horror film. It was one of the first ever horror films to be made and it had no sound and it was just visual and background in the music.