Editing the Preliminary Task

We have begun to edit our preliminary task. We spent the first part of our time watching the footage that we have been able to film to see as to whether any of it was particularly exciting or would enhance the mood that we were wanting to create.
After we had looked through the footage we began to try and edit it. We first looked through as to what we think would look good at the start of the trailer as an opening image, we settled on an eire shot of Suzi's eye that had a white contact in it. Lora had said that it would be effective if we used a 'flash on-flash off' type of shot. She then used some of the shots from the teaser trailer from 'super 8' to display the effect to Alana and I. I thought that this was a really good idea and had thought of something similar myself, however Lora had explained it far better. I also suggested whether it would be a good idea if we could add in some white noise to make the trailer seem as if it were made in a sort of documented style. Alana and Lora again thought this could work very effectively as seen in the films 'White Noise' and 'The Blair Witch Project'. We believed that if we did fast flashes of the same image of Suzi's eye but from different shots and angles this would look very distorted and scary. One of the shots were the shot was blurred turned out to be a very impressive and effective shot meaning that we will use it at some point in the teaser trailer.
After we had ordered the shots that we wanted the trailer to run in we decided to look at the effects that we could use to enhance the mood and create a effect of verisimilitude. I pointed out an effect called 'Ghosting' we found this distorted the images of Suzi's eye further and thought it would become visually captivating to the audience. We also used some of the brightness balance on some of the shots either creating them darker of lighter depending as to whether the actual shot was to light or dark for the mood we were trying to create.
We also tried to find some non-copy right music that would fit into the theme and effect of our trailer but have not found anything yet, we hope to continue this next lesson.
We have not yet added into the trailer the narrative on a black screen between the shots due to the shortness of time, but we intend to continue this in our next lesson.

Preliminary Task

Yesterday we began to film our preliminary task. Our topic was 'Therfield'. As we are leaning towards the idea of doing a horror teaser trailer for our main task we thought it would be a good idea to begin to get to grasps with filming the horror genre on camera to try and adjust to the angles and movements in order to create a effect on our audience.
We decided to go along the lines of a simple 'Stepford Wives' theme where everything seemed to perfect, we then looking back on the super 8 trailer and also 'The Unborn' decided to break up the footage into smaller clips with narrative on a black screen to set the plot line summary and hint to the audience the relevant information and also the tone of the film. We have thought up the title 'The haunting of Therfield' very much like 'The haunting of Connecticut' the almost documented effect of the title makes it seem all the more real. I also came up with the idea of a catch phrase for our teaser trailer for our priliminary task, as by watching 'Super 8' realised it stuck in the audiences head and would get the curious about what they had just seen and would want to know more. My own idea was that we use the phrase 'The lesson has started' as it relates back to the title 'The haunting of Therfield' but also through a simple phrase becomes more eiry and alarming to the audience.
We only did a small number of shots as we wanted to keep the teaser trailer short as that seems to be almost a trade mark of teaser trailers. We used some classic images of a spooky school effect such a writing on a white board and canted angles of signs representing the school departments such as maths. However we used a very spontanious idea, as our friend Suzi had a white contact lense in her eye and we realised how eirey it was and asked if she would not mind appearing in the trailer. Watching back seemed the most effective after shotting 3 or 4 takes we saw one of the takes was rather blury and thought that it was rubbish but looking back at it, it looks rather effective and we could possibly use it in the trialer. We have started to translate the footage onto Adobe Premire. We plan this afternoon to look at the footage and begin to edit it into the teaser trailer which I am thouroughly looking forward to.

Super 8 Teaser Trailer

Here I have decided that it would be appropriate to look at many other genres and types of teaser trailers to allow my group and myself to gain a wider knowledge of the variety of teaser trailers and how they can be shown to the audience in a way to evoke different responses.



Here I have posted the teaser trailer 'Super 8' introduced with very little information not only from the marketing campaign but the teaser trailer itself.

The trailer begins with the logo of 'Paramount' however the entire screen has been darkened and so hints to the audience already the genre of the film, before showing any of the film. Hinting the darker more sinister the target audience are hinted, ranging for older teenagers- to the more 40-50 year old audience.

Plunging the audience into darkness of the night the audience are left feeling disorientated and curious as the the setting of the scene immediately asking questions to themselves. By showing only small glimpses of film, puts the audience into the question of what is the trailer about and what is going on? The film is broken up by sudden blackouts with minor parts off information displayed in a military fashion, suggesting the footage that the audience are seeing is classified.

The audience are also plunged into action, showing the mix of genres that the film is encompassing. With the train exploding, resulting in a secret almost monster type creature denting the turned up carriage. The audience can also interpret from the narrative shown that there is some sort of monster involved from the quote 'It arrives.' which almost becomes the catch phrase for the film. The titles also show the directors Steven Spielberg and J.J Abrams. BY doing this more hype is created about the films and audiences begin to have high expectations of the films as such big names are mentioned in the trailer.

Overall I feel the trailer is very effective and uses great parts of the film without revealing the plot line, stars involved or characters or even what the audience is supposed to be afraid of. The only thing that i would comment on is that the length of teaser trailer is over 1:30 mins and so this is pushing on the cliches of teaser trailers.

Up Teaser Trailer

Up perhaps serves as an excellent starting point as to what a teaser trialier should include. First before running into the action of the film, the production companies are annouced being PIXAR and Walt Disney. Even from the these production comapany the audience understand that the trailer most likely will be aimed towards children as the past films produced by these companies such as Monsters Inc. (PIXAR) and Finding Nemo (PIXAR & Walt Disney). Both of which were huge successes.
The vivid colours used on the screen allow the younger audeinces to be attracted into the trailer. Ballons also connotate a chilidish aspect. The audeince also realises that the trailer and most likely the fillm is animated and so much of reality is substituted for the fanciful imagination. As the simple action of the house floating upwards through the sky and revealing the main character the audience understand the gist of the film without revealing any of the plotline, making the audeince want to know more.
Also the audio on the trailer is very simple, with no non-diegetic music. The only sound is of the ballons bouncing off of eachother and Mr Fredrickson (the main character) with a simple phrase of "Afternoon" exagerates the normality of the sitiaution, which appears comical not only to the younger audeince but prehaps the older audience, making parents also want to go and see the film.
After the comical event has happened leaving the audience wanting more the more specific details fade in from behind a cloud, revealing the title 'Up' with the production companies above it. Following this there is a fade to the release date at the cinema and also the revelation that the film will be shown in 3D showing its unique selling point, making higher quality picture and a more immersive experience for the audience.
All of this happens within the space of just over a minute keeping to the conventional time of a teaser trailer.

I feel that this trailer is a great success showing all the necessary elements to attract the right audience without giving to much of the plot away and I feel that my group can bennfit from taking some of the elements into our own teaser trialier and hopefully add our own twist to whatever genre and film we decide to create.

The Unborn Trailer

Here I have posted the clip of 'The Unborn' this was a very successful film at the cinema especially with the younger audeince. I love the dark camera shots within the trailer and the fast snippits of action leaving the audience wanting to know more, however the timing is impecable as the audience are left in suspence as they do not know the end of each scene or how the plot will end. This also leaves the audience almost thirsty for more and wanting to know the unexepected and expereince the thrill of the tense atmosphere created by the trailer. I think this is something that we perhaps want to encorpret into our trailer as it provoks a large emotional response from the audience.
I think that I will show Alana and Lora the unborn as it gives a series of horror connotations that I think we would like to portray in our film.

What is a Teaser Trailer?

We have now begun our A2 course in media. For our first class we were asked to list what is a teaser trialer? what are the conventions of a teaser trailer?

• Not much information is given away- making the audeince interested
• The name of the film
• The genre of the film is given
• The release date
• The target audience the film is aimed at
• Usually less that 1 minute long
• Generally non-sequential

To understand the conventions of a teaser trailer i have decided that i will analyse some teaser trailers from different genres to see in what aspect the obey these conventions and also the effect of them on the audience. I beleive that the teaser trailers are vastly more effective than over some other forms of advertising an up and coming film as the show a taster of the film in order the leave the audenice thirsty for more but also with many questions around the film forcing them to want to go and learn more of the film, leading them to look the film up on the internet leading to more advertising for the film.

In order for the teaser trailer and the extended trailer to be judged successful depends on the amount of people attracted to watch the film at the cinema. If the film does not matched up to the trailer than the trailer has obviously been successful in getting an audeince to see the film.

Genre Mind Map

Today Laura and I created a mind map as to what we would perhaps consider to do for our teaser trailer. We divided the genres into five that we really wanted to do. These were all horror based genres and we really believe that by doing a horror genre we could make it really effective and would create something quite dramatic and immerse for our audience. We had previously done a 'chick flick' genre for the opening scene and we enjoyed doing this genre and found we could really relate to the genre and made something quite believable.

However we now think that with the skills and techniques that we have learnt and acquired through the previous year of media studies that we could perhaps make something more skillful and dramatic with greater and bolder filming angles and shots. We have also created a better association with the editing software and the effects that it can supply us with, I feel that we could make a really effective teaser trailer through using some of the effects on the Adobe editing software.

We have listed some of the films that we have been inspired with and the genres that they fall under and the successful trailer and teaser trailers that they have been able to produce. One that is not listed however was the 'Blair Witch Project' which is one of our main inspirations form the documentary feel and the hand-held effect really gives the impression of an authentic film.
We have written some other documentary style films such as 'Paranormal Activity' and them the more big budget films that have made an impact on the audience due to there captivity and immersing experience e.g 'Inception'.

I feel that by doing a mind map it has helped us see clearly the options we have and to also allow us to reflect on what would be effective but also manageable. I think we will refer to this mind map frequently and will be a good way to know of films that we can analyse and look at different ideas shown by them.

Early Brainstorming of genres for our trailer

At the moment Alana and Lora are on holiday. So with out a group discussion I am not very close into finding what we are planning to do for our trailer. We have been brain storming as to what genres we would like to look at, but the two main genres which have caught our attention were horror and chickflick.
We have already accomplished our interpritation of the chickflick genre in our year 12 corse work, when we decided to create an opening two minutes of a film.
While Alana and Lora aer away I am limited as to what I can decide and blog as no decision has been made. Therefore I am going to look at trailers of both the horror and chickflick genre.

Our old Blog adress from year 12

Here I have posted our old year 12 blog address this allows a link between both my old and my new blog. My old blog allows me to reflect on what I have done before, so I can apply what I know and have learnt to my new blog. My old blog also allows me to see the structure inwhich I set out my old blog allowing me see the detail and depth i need to go into to achieve the best possible trailer that I can make and also where my written blog posts may be able to be as detailed as possible so readers find my posts easy to understand and follow the porgress throughout the process.

http://hannahlauraalana.blogspot.com/