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