Day 3 video diary

This was our last day of filming and redone some shots that ended up not working earlier on in the process. We were able to do a wide variety, by filming different stages of the trailer.

Painfull Male Scream with Effects

This is one of the most effective screams I found during researching scream sound effects. This is effective because there is an undertone of a squelching of what we presume to be is flesh which would be ideal for our trailer as it is a horror therefore following the conventions of this genre. This tells me when we are producing sound effects for the diegetic music; we should involve more than one effect. 

Man Upset / Raging Screams

This scream is very effective due to the scream building up in power and anger. This creates many images, such as, him realising the pain he's in or it could come across as if he is going mad. This scream may be good within the fast pace editing at the end of the trailer as when the shots increase in speed, this scream can be editing over, revealing the last shot of him finally screaming. Due to the effectiveness of this scream we may create one similar to include within our production. 

Group of Children Screaming

This is scream 2 which is a group of children screaming. This would not be ideal for our trailer as it comes across tacky and more suitable for a comedy. However, it may have been suitable for a demonic horror film as if the pitch and the tones were altered into a higher pitch it would create an unnerving noise, which does not sound human. We could create something similar to this, by using older voices which would provide us a deeper tone, as they are young adults. However, due to the plot we have for our trailer this is not suitable for our trailer, therefore we would not produce something like this. 

Horror Sound Effect - Woman Terrified Scream

This scream was the first one I researched. This could be ideal for our horror film trailer as it can be edited in during our fast pace editing as it would reinforce the tension filled horrifying atmosphere we want to create at the end of the trailer. This scream is powerful and emphasizes how frightened or in pain she is due to the strain of her voice. This tells me when producing our diegetic music, if we use a scream it should have feeling within it, so it would make the trailer seem realistic, therefore the audience actually believe this could happen to them.

Soundtrack

To make our soundtrack more unique and special we have decided to create our own music. The sound will be created using a ukulele and will be played by Charlotte C's brother. Making our own sound track comes with both benefits and disadvantages. The benefits mean that we are able to base our music on our plot, but making it also means that we need to right the music but also organise the time to make and edit it. The main reason we want to create our music is so that it works well with the pace of the trailer. This means we are able to finish the trailer without the music then base the music around the pace of the clips on the trailer ,if we hadn't made our own we would find it hard to find music that would match the trailer well. We are planning to make the soundtrack so it has a variation in speeds and pitch's to create tension.


Not only will we have a creepy soundtrack we are also planning to start our trailer with a typical teenaged pop song. This music will be played by the protagonists ,therefore is diegetic music, and will be put on over clips of the teenagers driving to  the common, this will reflect their excitement and eagerness for the days ahead.


The juxtaposition between the two type of music will also put an emphasis on how they were feeling before and what's going to happen to them. It help to make the trailer more interesting and not bland.

Our Film Treatment - Betrayal

Betrayal animated titles

Title One -  We created all the titles on IMovie as we felt it had the right effects and tools to create a title we would be satisfied with. Our first idea is to incorporate the settings and location of the movie with the titles so the theme is consistent, by cropping one of photographs we took when creating the shoot for our poster, it left us with a sinister background that was good to experiment and work with. We then changed the this image to black and white by double clicking on the shot and adjusting the saturation to -100%. We then added our title on top with our chosen font; the title stands out well against the white cracks between the trees but is still camouflaged against the trees. To make the entire word stand out we decided to make the background image blurred. We then added the sound effects of the gas mask and the sound of a broken TV. The end transition we used is fading to black as it leaves an effect on the audience but also finishes the trailer in a conclusive way.

Title Two - This second edit was more complicated to achieve as we decided to incorporate one of our favourite shots of the less dominant antagonists. The reason we didn’t use our main antagonist (gasmask) is so we could hide his/her identity to create enigmas on who they are, allowing the audience to question the characters and plot. The natural lighting takes away the tension from the shot as it is idyllic; however we have edited it to invert the colours to increase fear. We only used this effect for seconds at a time to create a flashing effect; this also allows the title to stand out as we didn’t show the text in the whole clip. We decided to create the flashes increase the tension as it links into pathetic fallacy as it connotes the shock of a lightning strike. We used the same sound effects for each title ending as it relates to our theme of the gas mask and hints the main antagonist without actually showing him/her on screen.
Title Three - Edit three is effective because of the simplistic visuals which makes the sounds more noticeable, creating a more lasting effect on the audience. Again we used the same sounds as the other two titles because we feel they link best with our theme. To create this title we first made the background black with no image which connotes mystery and the unknown. We then decided to make the font white as it stands out against the black and also connotes the slight innocence we see in the trailer of the protagonists. The transition of the text links to one of the sounds (the static TV) as they both show the bad communication between where the movie is located and the "outside world" because it is known that there is never any good connection when you're located in a forest especially in a horror movie. The text also zooms forward towards the audience slowly, this is to create suspense even when the trailer is over.  

Prop research - Weapons

   

Props research- antagonist weapons in films

Freddie Kruger- The knife claw

This is the prop which is used as a weapon in ‘A nightmare on Elm Street’. As you can see the clawed glove consists of four blades which are curved. Having numerous blades makes the weapon terrifying especially when the blade sharpen next to each other, as the noise they create is frightening. The brown leather glove makes the glove look old and ancient, suggesting that the antagonist has used this crop numerous of times. This prop could be effective as we could use a prop similar to this, as we can have close up shots of where the blades shine in the light.

My Bloody Valentine- Pickaxe

This prop is used in the film ‘My Bloody Valentine’, which the antagonist uses on his victims. This is an item we could use as in public it wouldn’t

scare people, in comparison if we brought the glove with us. This, however, doesn’t come across as scary which we would like to have, meaning this may not be the best prop we can base our antagonist murder weapon on.

Friday 13^th

This is the prop which is carried by the antagonist ‘Jason Voorhees’. This, as you can see, is a machete, which is a very violent weapon to have due to the length and sharpness of the blade. This is a very effective prop to use as no one would want to ever be chased by someone carrying this. However, as it is a very dangerous prop, if we used something similar like this; it means we would have to make or find a plastic one, so it looks the same as a real one but is completely fake. 

Influences on our film production

. There have been many influences and inspiration, which has aided us into making our theatrical trailer in this certain way. Through extensive research involving analysing trailers from various genres, watching horror films, seeing behind the scene exclusives, we have decided  that our theatrical trailer was going to be a horror. this research phase was one of the important elements into directing what path our film trailer should go.

The concept of our idea; a group of friends within a wood, camping, came from many influences primarily from horror films. Friday 13th is one of the main influences due to the appearance of the antagonist wearing a gas mask and the primary location of where the film is set, in a wood. We develop this idea by making the antagonist more relatable and realistic, by the use of mise en scene, through clothes. We achieved this by using black hoodies, and trousers, which connotes to evil and death, but using such an everyday piece of clothing makes the audience feel as it could be anyone. We decided our antagonist should wear a gas mask similar to the one used in 'Friday 13th', as it hides their identity which would create an enigma but also add the scare factor for the audience as they do not who it is behind the mask. When using this gas mask we would add diegetic music of  someone heavily breathing, which could become the iconic sound for our film, as when you hear it, you know the antagonist is around. We decided to use a location similar to 'Friday 13th' film as the woods is also very relatable; therefore would make the audience feel frightened whenever they go into a forest or wood after seeing this film. We also chose a wood as there lots of scary places which we could film, which we discovered through our research and planing stage.
Another influence was the film 'The Strangers', which is where three antagonist victimise a young couple. We used the idea of having three antagonists as it creates a sense of no way out, so 'unescapable'. It also means that we could use different masks for each antagonist meaning they have their own identity, which could possibly link to the type of weapon they use as well. Have numerous numbers of antagonists would create an eerie atmosphere as they could come across as a family- scary. This film, 'The Strangers', also builds lots of tension by using many meduim and long shots, with the antagonist's hiding in the background. We have decided to use a similar technique as it would make the audience want the protagonist to look behind them, therefore making them feel on edge and unnerved.
Our protagonist's was inspired by horror films such as 'The Cabin in the Woods' and 'Scream'. This is because both of these films involve using a group of protagonist's which are getting hunted down the murderous antagonists. Having a large group of protagonists would enable there to be lot of suspense and tension due to many murders occurring; which follows the conventions of a horror film. Some of the protagonists also wore white clothing within these films, which connotes to innocence and purity. This inspired us to have some of our protagonist's within the film trailer to wear white as it would make the audience sympathise with the characters. These films also have mixed gender groups, which we decided to do aswell. This is because it would make it more realistic and relatable as a group of friends does not always involve just boys or just girls. It also makes it relatable as both male and female can relate to both gender of characters. 

Titles and Pace

Generally most horror/thriller film start with slow paced editing to build tension but also to give the audience a better idea of the plot then half way through or two thirds through the trailer there is a sudden change in music and pace of the of the editing. The titles stay at the pace of the editing therefore keeping the original pattern.We also found that in some trailer they have their text over shots and some have separate plain background for their titles, for the effect we are wishing we have chosen that the plain background is more effective and works best with the theme of our trailer.From this research we have worked out whats best for our trailer and found that different music works better with certain types of editing.

Targets

Complete Research and Planning as soon as possible.

Include graphs and a summary of your questionnaire findings.

Create practise titles.

Soundtrack research and analysis.

Evaluate your storyboard and sound effect post - strengths, weakenesses - what you will change/edit for your final production.