'Obsession' The Finished Trailer

Horror Film Poster

Horror mood board

Initial Film Idea

Our initial idea for our horror trailer that we have decided to pursue is the idea of someone becoming obsessed with a piece of jewellery that we later find out has actual possessed them with some form of demon. The plot of this film begins with transitions between a calm opening scenes and a man who looks troubled and unsteady stumbling up towards a pier with a necklace/pendant in his hand. He throws the pendant into the ocean that he is standing in front of as if it has been troubling him and causing him grief, we see the pendant sink into the ocean and then the man collapses to the ground. We then see one of the main characters pick up the necklace from the beach, it is then that they go back too the house and things take a turn for the worst. There is then sequences of bad events where the character who finds the necklace has been possessed by the obsession of the necklace and has become evil and twisted. We then will bring the final girl theory into it as one of the main girls – Alex – is the survivor of the villains evil rage.

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

The beginning of my work was all about the research and planning. The research into horror film trailers and how they are created and constructed was a very important part of the task as a whole, a lot of the work that I collected for this was type-based, this meant that Microsoft word was very helpful to me when it came to writing and storing my work safely. The internet was my main source of gaining the information I needed in this part of my work, two websites that I found myself using a lot more than any others were Youtube and Wikipedia. Youtube was useful for watching other trailers to analyse and learn more about the genre conventions you can expect to see in a horror trailer. Wikipedia was helpful for learning more about horror films in general and gaining more knowledge about particular films, particular horror characters and the history of horror. To plan my work I had to create questionnaires to hand out to people to know what it is my audience would want to see, to collect these results into an organised and easy to read group I put them onto a graph using Microsoft Excel. When it came to construction for my ancillary products my main use of media technology was Photoshop, where I edited images and created posters and magazine covers to suit my particular idea and genre. To obtain these images I used a digital camera within a studio, from which I then put onto the computer to begin my poster and magazine cover. To obtain fonts that would be considered ‘Horror Fonts’ I used a website called ‘DaFonts’, I then copied the image of these fonts and edited and changed them on Photoshop. The construction of my main product – the horror trailer – began by filming all of our work on a HDR video camera. The work we had was then put onto our designated MacBook where we then used Premier Pro to organise all of separate shots and start putting them into trailer order on the timeline, this program also allowed us to cut scenes, slow them down, speed them up and also edit the actual image of the shot to add special effects. In this stage of construction I also used some sound effect websites, for example: Sounddogs’ and ‘stonewashed’. For the Evaluation stages of my coursework I have used this site, Blogger. Blogger has allowed me to collectively review and evaluate my own work as I have put it all together in an organised way making it easy for me to look at all of it together. Despite using Blogger in the AS year of this course, I feel this year it was a lot more useful too me and I have learnt lots of new skills in how to upload things too it including videos and pictures. I felt it was a very professional way to over-view all of my work to be able to critically analyse all of it.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

From my audience feedback I got a fair share of strengths and weaknesses which I all thought were fair comments after reviewing my trailer myself. One of the main downfalls of my trailer was the sounds used, as when presented one ‘eerie’ sound effect in particular was very distorted compared to what we were used to hearing, this made the sound odd and overwhelming as it was too loud compared to the rest of the sounds and the pace of the music does not pick up or quicken towards the ending of the trailer. This factor then meant that some of the speech used within the trailer was not audible. Another fault was that the trailer itself took a bit too long to build up and starts to create the feeling of fear and start having horror denotations. The fact that it took too long then made it lack the feeling of suspense and surprise and the ending then didn’t pick up the pace enough to create a shocking, unexpected ending. A lot of the shots we used got very good responses, for example the flashback shots where it had been edited to look grainy and blurred was said to look very effective for its purpose. We also had very good responses about the shots where Aaron is picking up the necklace on the beach, the window shot where Aaron is watching the two other characters, the bloody hand shot and the opening draws shot. The blood on the hands was also commented on saying it was a very good horror effect. Our wide variation of shots used was another thing that people said made our trailer good, mainly the opening shots of our trailer. We also used a lot of different camera angles that people appreciated and had plenty of good establishing shots. Despite some of our sound effects being a downfall in our trailer, there were also some that the audience said were very fitting and had a good effect on the trailer overall, for example the clock ticking when on the clock shot and then also again at the end of the trailer.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

When put all together my main product and two ancillary texts make a very good promotional package. I have continued the idea of the film and the villain over to every text so that they are all intertextual to one-another. I have used the same face of the villain in all of my final products and have also continued the themes within my film idea throughout each product. My film idea was all about a necklace that would possess someone with a ‘demon-like’ character, making them very obsessive and violent towards the people that mean the most too them. This character, despite being someone the other characters once knew and loved, becomes an object of fear and violence. A trailer is used to promote and preview a movie, giving the audience a feel for its plot and also making them aware of what people are starring in the movie (unique selling point). Trailers are used to make people aware of what is to come and produce ‘hype’ for the film by using fitting, exciting scenes to its genre and adding memorable moments to ensure it is not easily forgotten. A posters purpose is to further advertise the movie and be placed in particular locations where it will be taken notice of and a magazine cover would promote the film to a certain fan base, which when planned out properly would contain a large amount of this films target audience. Within my 3 products I have repeated the idea of ‘obsession’ over this necklace that turned an average character into a villain/monster. I have continued using the same fear-striking face for my villain so that the representation of my villain is repeated and the audience don’t get confused.