1. Title- we named our film ‘Writers Block’ because this is a not-so-common state that writers find themselves in resulting in a lack of inspiration for content writing. The title hints at a problematic plot line, and so gives the audience an idea of the genre of the film straight away. In our case, the ‘writers block’ is coupled with supposed visions of haunting images, and the image we used to front this idea is the apparition of a slightly odd looking doll. In our trailer the titles appear right at the end, as this is common form for any film trailer. It contains all the common conventions: a 3 act structure building up to a final montage of shots followed by the end titles and a final slate. This allows tension to build to audiences are intently watching when the main titles appear. We used a red font on a black background as this looks sinister to tie in with the genre of our film.
2. Settings and Location- The first shot in the whole trailer is one of the house in which the film is set, yet does not particularly conform to the horror stereotype as the trailers starts off with the story in a state of equilibrium. The colour and lighting for this was not edited, but for scenes later on in the film, a day to night filter was used to create a darker scene which results in there being more of a feeling of suspense. This is used for all the scenes outdoors which lead up to our main character finding the doll. The outdoor scenes are set at the back of the property, in a small stretch of woods.
3. Costume and props
Our costumes are of a very standard nature; clothes that you would see in every day life. Our main character is a work-at-home author, and so his dress is very relaxed. He wears pyjama trousers, a t-shirt and a dressing gown as his demeanor means he has little motivation to get dressed in the morning, and this he wears outside as well when he goes searching for the doll. Our wife is a business woman who wears a suit, and the doctor wears semi-smart clothing.
The doll is a green knitted item with eyes and a nose, but no mouth which adds to her sinister nature. The author has a laptop on which he is writing when he notices an apparition outside. The couple use boxes to show the act of moving in to their new house, and the box in the woods which contains the doll is put so that he trips over it as he stumbles around searching for something which he believed he saw.
4. Camera work and editing
The trailer is laid out in the usual format of 3 acts - locational shots, character and story development, montage of non-chronological shots - followed by the titles and final slate.
The actual camera work is not particularly complicated, as we merely recorded a lot of footage.
Editing was probably the more complicated part, as cutting the footage down into a trailer length feature required us to be extremely selective. We used Final Cut Pro, an editing software for Macs, which also allowed us to use certain features to create graphics. We used editing to create suspense and create unease for the viewer, as this is the intended aim of thriller films. We had a few plain black shots which, coupled with a musical feature, gave the impression of unease as well. For most shots we used the camera on a tripod only, but for one shot, specifically of him walking through the woods, in order to give the audience a feel that they are with him, the camera is hand held and focused on his feet. filming horror films in the POV camera style is used in ‘The Blair Witch Project’ and ‘Paranormal Activity’, as this fully immerses the viewer in the film. For sound recording we used a microtrack, as it gives a better sound quality.
5. font- the font we used for our graphics was ‘Typewriter 1942’ as it has a classic feel to it, as well as being relative to our story line about an author. On certain letters the font is so that the whole letter is not 100% complete and this has the effect of looking like it’s been done in a hurry. Most psychological horrors include graphics which are more low key, an example being ‘The Shining’ where the graphics are very plain as bolder and more obvious graphics would be out of place and unfitting with the film.
6. narrative
The narrative of the film is simple- we starts off in a state of equilibrium with the happy couple moving in to the new house and settling in but then as things begin to go wrong the film descends into supposed chaos as the main character begins to be affected by certain happenings that go on around in his environment. The film will then end up once again in a state of equilibrium, but this is not featured at all in our trailer, as is the way with horror films. The trailer focuses around the character of the Author, played by Reuben Turner, and his struggle for sanity.
7. Genre
One common theme in horror films is mystery. This is particularly important in the psychological horror films. The first mystery- inducing technique is when we first see a definition of writers block, coupled with the first chords of the music, which has its own haunting qualities to it- it is the lower string section playing sinister chords. We then see him trip over a box in the woods which contains something but we are not shown what until we have ‘…and other mental illnesses’ displayed on the screen which links writers block to what is in the box. The perhaps strongest technique used to create mystery is the sequence of quick shots at the end showing the doll gone from her box and the man leaving his chair.
8. Character
We meet the characters early on, and see them together so as to understand their relationships. It is often the case that in horror films we are introduced to the characters and their back stories at the beginning of the film, unless this is kept a mystery for effect as seen in ‘Saw’, this helps the audience relate to the characters as they do not seem so much like strangers as we may have some understanding of why they act the way they do during the film. This also results in character development as the trailer ensues- we begin with them happy, moving in to a nice new house, to seeing a man become worried by problems and even visions that seem to be affecting his sanity.
9. Special effects
We used a minimal amount of special effects, as there are no special effects featured in the film itself. Yet we did use a filter on the outdoors scenes to make the scene look darker, which also added to the idea of mystery.
Poster
we have decided to stay with the normal conventions of a film poster, including all aspects normally included in posters, with a main heading in font associated with the film, used in the titles in the film itself, and a catchy tagline on top of a main image which is a reference to the content of the film. The poster includes the billing block at the bottom, and website references as well as a Facebook group so that people can interact and watch our trailer. The names of our actors appear at the top, which does conform, as it would be in their contracts to have their names in the top line.
We have not got a picture of an actor on our front cover which maybe does not conform to a stereotype which challenges conventions, but instead we have an image which while not featuring significantly in our trailer, would take great significance in our film. The image itself is a picture taken of a man standing behind a door, which we have edited in photoshop by taking out a chair that was next to the door, and adding a smudge effect to blur the contours of his body, so that it is less clear as to what is there. All the text was put on, coloured and sized on photoshop, but the font we downloaded from dafont.com. We have not included any secondary images, as we want the focus to be on the main image.
We hope that our image is clearly in the style of a thriller poster, as a shadow of which it is not clear what lurks behind creates tension and mystery, as it looks ominous and threatening. This can be seen also in the poster for the dark knight, even though this is a much more mainsteram film, the same idea of looking through glass is presented, to good effect. One film poster for another horror called 'Tony' is again similar to our poster, but with some key differences. For us, the title is near the top in a big font as we wanted it to naturally be the first thing people looked at after seeing the main image of the shadow.
The billing block is in the conventional font that is obligatory for film posters, and this lends a professional look to our poster. Our tagline is in the center of our poster, and we used a panel in the door as a base for where to put the tagline, so as to not obscure the main image, but so that it was still there for people to read and remember.
There is a lot of information included in the top third of the cover as when people look at the magazine on the shelf of a shop, this is the first place they look at after having caught a glimpse of it. there is the masthead of 'PREVIEW Screening,' that people will look for when selecting magazines, there is the date line and overprice, so that people who collect can have a referencing point, a tagline which is a self proclaimed statement of excellence so that people will choose it over others. The website is clearly displayed so that people will go online and see for themselves the other great articles that the magazine has to offer, maybe from the past but also that aren't included in the magazine.
The main image on the front cover is that of the main character in our film, actor Reuben Turner. He is holding the object that becomes famous in the film as the haunting doll. Most magazine covers will have the main characters or group of characters as they are the people who the public will recognise quickest.
Often the puffs at the side will be just text, but we have used images as well as it is more interesting to look at.
One way in which our front cover does not conform is that of the cover line being at the bottom; usually just beneath the main cover line of 'writers block,' this time it's at the bottom, yet stands out just as much as it is a contrasting colour to the maroon behind it.
JT
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