Ordering Props

Today Alana, Laura and I sat down and ordered the masks that we needed for filming. We did this by going onto the Amazon website and put into the search button plain masks.

We have settled upon the following masks for the Clan leader and the killer. We though that these stood them apart from the rest of the uniformed masks that would give the audience the indication that these characters would be more important and play a larger role in the film. However we have not decided as to which character would wear which mask, but i think that the killer should wear the smiling mask shown below:




For the plain masks we have decided to use these white half masks that will cover half the face for the rest of the clan members. this give the impression of hidden and joined identities.

Casting Issues

As I have posted previously, we were planning to use Laura as the killer within our horror film and Paul (Milly's Brother) to do some of the more active parts such as dragging Alana through the mud. Unfortunately due to unforeseen circumstances Laura had broken her foot and will not be able to physically do the role of the killer. This means our trailer will not have the spin of a female killer, but we hope the conventional male killer will still be effective enough.

Our group has therefore had to re-think some of the casting, and have decided to make Paul the Killer throughout shooting the entire footage for the trailer. We will have to therefore plan more to fit into dates that Paul will be able to film and hopefully the costume that we have designed for killer will be flexible enough for a different person to wear.

Shooting Schedule

Here Alana, Laura and I have created a shooting schedule. Within the shooting schedule we are able to observe the caste, props and location needed for each scene that we have decided to shot on each particular day, due to the location needed for each scene. I feel this helps us become more organised in finding the props need to be purchased and the preparation for each scene needed as we have a goal set to work towards.

Filming Schedule Update

I have just discovered while planning my filming schedule, we have realised that Paul (the man who will be doing some of the more active scenes in the teaser trailer, such as holding Alana up in the tree) will be away for when we wish to film, which will be in the febuary half term the 18th-27th.

We may have to try and do the scenes with out Paul, film it and then see what the footage lookes like or if it does not go accordign to plan, we may have to re-shoot some of the scenes that did not go well.

Pearl & Dean Comparisons

I have looked at some of the films that I have used previously used to research teaser trailers that have been successful. such as 'The Strangers', 'The Blair Whitch Project' and 'The Uninvited'. By looking on the Pearl and Dean website it has given a rough comparable profile of the type of people that went to go and see each of the films.

Below is the univited I have looked at the audeince porfile of who went to see this film at the cinema. no suprisingly the larger percentage of was a male audeince but only just and the majourity of people that went to see the film were between the age of 15-24. There is very little difference in the percentage of males vs. female which I thought the male would be slightly higher.

I had looked at the teaser trailer for the strangers in a lot of detail and feel that it was appropriate to look at the audience that saw this film. Surprisingly the larger majority of the audience that saw the film was female (60%) which I thought would have been in fact male. however as I suspected the majority of the audience were aged 15-24 which really is the main target audience for a horror film and again who we are trying to aim our teaser trailer at.

Here I have looked at 'The Blair Whitch Project' however there was no audience in which this film could be compared. This meant that I could not look at the audience for the film and could not relate to my own film and the audience that we wanted to target for our teaser trailer.

Overall I feel this has been really useful in what I have found out with our target audience and think that this has also been reflected in our own questionnaire that we had conducted. I think that this will effect us in the poster, magazine cover in who we aim this at and also our teaser trailer and how we should edit it together.

Questionnaire continued- Audience Preferences

Here in this section we asked the audience more detailed questions about horror films and their preferences.

I found this particular question very interesting as there was a great difference in the choice as to what people want to watch. the most popular was the supernatural closely followed by psychological thrillers. I think that people have become more immune to the slasher/gore films and are now scared by the unknown and so I think that we are able to create some form of thrill with of religious cult idea.


The majority of people watch films at home. This gives people the flexibility to stop, pause, rewind and fast forward parts of the film and to even re-watch films. This freedom means that we are in control of what the watch. it also means it is a lot cheaper than going to the cinema and really people will always choose the cheaper option.

I think that for our generation I predicted this would be the norm. I think that people can really only watch films this regularly because of the large emotional response that it evokes, is so intense.

Questionnaire continued- Audience preferences

Here we decided to go into detail as to the types of horror films that our audiences like to watch.

Our teaser trailer we plan to be a mix between a religious aspect and horror. shown in the results a large percentage say that they would indeed prefer to watch a horror film mixed with another genre. This good news for us as we to wish to combine our teaser trailer genre. I think people prefer this because it is not constantly tense and waiting for something to happen, but dramatic scenes seem more intense but again the audience are allowed to breathe through some of the film.



I am glad that the majority said that they find hand held footage frightening. I believe this will gives us an edge as we will be doing some of our camera footage as hand held. I think people find this so frightening because of the realistic edge and so people find this more relatable to themselves, putting them into the film.


Here I found a slight issue as we plan to do a cult theme but most people do not find this scary, however I believe that if we can create a dramatic, tense and scary piece of the teaser trailer as
scary we can then make a successful horror teaser trailer.
We then asked if people enjoy contemporary trailers and again this was positive where the majority said yes, with the story line and the modern day setting of our own teaser trailer I think ours should be fairly successful.




This was a clear choice in the what people want. The main attraction of a horror film is that you become scared, I feel that people find things based on true events more scary and so therefore wish to watch them more, than other more fanciful films.

It suprised me that people wanted a stereo typical character, where as I thought that someone new and unpredictable would have an audience more intrigued and amused as the character would be new to them.

Questionnaire on the horror genre

Here Laura, Alana and I decided to conduct a questionnaire as to the effectiveness of teaser trailers and the audience.

We first decided whether to ask if a teaser trailer could influence the audience into going to see a horror film. Looking at our graph the immediate response would be yes. I think this is due to the intense mood set that forces audiences attention and engages them in the story lines. Lots of montages and information allows the audience to respond in a curious way making them want to know more about the film and therefore go and research it or at least create awareness of the film itself.

We then asked our participants about where they heard about the teaser trailers. The most popular response is the cinema which is choice that I felt this would be the most common point and that if we were to advertise our own teaser trailer then this would be the place to go. the other option was the Internet and around 1/3 said they would be exposed to teaser trailers.

Music and Soundtrack

Here I have found some free play non- copy right music, that we would be able to play over our teaser trailer. We have previously used the following webiste:


http://freeplaymusic.com/

I have also researched some more websites that i feel again we could find something more suited to our atmosphere and mood that we want to create:

http://www.akmmusic.co.uk/index.php

http://www.nvmdigital.com/nvmusic/featuredcdframe.html

I will show these websites that I have found to Alana and Laura. I think they may be harder to use thant than freeplay which we have used in previous years, but if we cannot find anything on the freeplay website than atleast we have a back up. I hope that we can uses these websites when it comes to the editing process and fitting the right music to give the desired effect.

Casting Changes

Today was our first day filming and we had some casting issues.

Paul was running late and so we could not wait for him to come therefore we had to adapt our casting. Alana will now be playing the killer she still has short hair and so the sex of the killer would still be unknown to our audience which is what we wanted. Alana is also strong enough that she is able to drag the victum (that will now be played by Milly) through the mud.

Milly will be playing the main victum now which will still work as she will be the more conventional horror victim as she is blond and has blue eyes which is seen in horror films such as 'Scream'.

Milly's role of the Clan Leader will now be played by Laura as her face is not shown (as she will be waeing a mask). There is also no need for Laura to be moving around and this will not effect her broken foot.

Props for our Teaser Trailer

Props for the scenes:

Here I have created a rough draft as to what we need to prepare and bring onto each scene the right props in order for filming to go smoothly and to make sure the filming looks believable.

The (–) mean that props are not needed for this shot.

Scene 1: Laura’s mask ( hockey/plain undecided yet), Laura’s black costume ( black uniformed top and dark trousers)

Scene 2: Alana, Hannah(me) Pyjamas, Bedroom objects- already found in my bedroom where we will be setting the bedroom scene, Laura mask & costume.

Scene 3: Clan costumes (uniformed mask and costume e.g. cloak), materials for fire- already on set location.

Scene 4: 1 piece of paper (‘We want to join’ written on it), Table.

Scene 5: Alana, Hannah pyjamas. Laura costume.

Scene 6: Head clan leader mask and uniformed costume.

Scene 7: Alana pyjamas, Laura costume, Knife (pretend), Fake blood.

Scene 8: -

Scene 9: Clan costumes (uniformed mask and costume e.g. cloak), materials for fire- already on set location.

Scene 10: -

Shot 11: Alana pyjamas, fake blood, tree- on set location, make-up for bruises.

Shot 12: -

Props Images

Here I have briefly gone through some of the images of props that we will use just to give an idea as to what we can use.




The clan's masks will be the uniformly thing that will make the united feel to the clan and give the audience the idea of theme and the context of the scene.



Here I pasted a picture of a hockey mask, where I feel we will use a mask along the lines of this for Laura's character. It is a different look to the clan and I think it looks slightly more aggressive, which I think that we are aiming for.



This is an example of a fake knife where we wish to use it in one of the scenes. (plastic-so it could not hurt anyone)

How woods can create affect

As we have decided to do some of our filming in a wood scene I felt it would be appropriate to look at how woodland areas have been used in horror films to create the nail biting and heart racing atmospheres that a horror loving audience set out to experience, this I feel is what creates the USP of horror films. I have watched these following horror films where I have discovered each had a wood element to it and then discussed it below.

The Ring 2:



This end scene in the ring sets the tone for the following scene. The woods have been clearly distorted on set to give the white/grey smokey effect, that sets the tone of unease and an unreal sense if simulacra where the reality and dream are blurred. This creates the tense atmosphere where the scene can then play off of to then create a more tense atmosphere.


Shrooms:




Shrooms is a perfect example of a film that does not use to much special effects or CGI to create an effective and tense scene. The setting of dark woods, where everything is in the shadow opens the prospect for the imagination to run wild and interacts with audience and uses them to imagine the 'scaryness' of the situation. The woods play a pivotal role in how the events play out and the mood radiating to the audience. I think this is definitely one film that we should look at in more depth before we film our own wood scene.


The Strangers:



Probably one of the scariest films I have ever watched, The Strangers mangers to terrify their audience with the impeccable timing,eerie sounds and twisted characters. The Strangers is truly horrifying purely because it is so real, where there is no happy ending, supernatural element and when someone dies they stay dead. The woods isolate the victims, no where left to run flashes through the audiences head as they figure out this is where the events are set. The film is entirely shot through the night and so the darkness really give the ominous feel to the woods, making this the perfect place for the murderers to hide away.

In conclusion woods really do play a significant role in setting the mood for horror film and can help effect the audience's expectation and opinion of the film and effect the way they approach the film. I feel that this is something that we have to get right when filming our scenes in the woods for our trailer.