Film Trailer Title

The title that we chose for our film is 'Final Deadline'

My group and I decided that this title was a clever title to use since it is a play on word. For instance,the first meaning is literal, the students have a deadline to hand in their media coursework. The second meaning is expressed in the word 'Dead' which links into the title. This relates to the trailer where all of the students get killed by one of their fellow students.

Our title relates well to our target audience since it's about the final piece of coursework that's needed to be handed in. All of our target audience can relate to the meaning of this title, which makes it quite successful.

In our research we found that lots of Slasher/Horror movies related to a specific time on the calendar. Such as, Halloween, Friday the 13th, Black Christmas, Valentine's Massacre. Moreover, further research into the texts showed that these dates relate back to an event that causes the killer to be out for revenge. For example, Halloween is the exact time Michael Myers the 'psychotic killer' , gets institutionalise and comes back 'for a mindless rampage'.

Our Synopsis

Synopsis for 'Final Deadline'

Four media students in their final year of sixth form, have to make a film production for media. The grade that they receive for this production determines whether they go to university.

The filming production is taken place in a mental institute.

The only person taking the project seriously, is grade A student Jessica Woods.

She is the wanderer of the group and separates from them to explore the mental institute to finish the project on her own.

Whilst Jessica is exploring, the 'Jock' of the group, Dan Moorse decides to play tricks on his girlfriend, Josephine Khemet who is the popular girl.

The last of the four; Jacob Roper gives up on the media project and decides to relax in one of the rooms in the institute with a beer and a cigarette.

All the characters slowly begin to get killed by one of their fellow possessed students. This killer has been possessed by the lost souls of the mental patients.

Jessica (the killer) returns to school with the footage of her fellow students' deaths to receive her A grade.

Planning

Mental institute- Planning

My group and I thought that it would be interesting to set our horror trailer in a mental institute. We have been researching into settings and West Park mental institute is one of the setting that we might do our filming at if we get permission. I have also taken some of my own pictures which I will upload onto the flicker website.

http://www.abandoned-britain.com/index.html

Lu

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Researching Horror Magazines

Horror Genre Magazines:


http://www.dreadcentral.com/fangoria

The main image is a close up head shot of a zombie. The image presents to the readers/audiences what the magazine is about.

The font of the title 'Fangoria' symbolises fangs of a vampire which links to the horror genre of this magazine.

Concepts in horror trailers

Themes/Motifs/Ideology:

'Chain Letter'

When watching the trailer for this film I straight

away realised that mobiles where in most of the shots therefore would be a motif during the film. Having mobiles as a motif

informs the audience that the target audience are people who are accustomed to using technology like mobile phones.

These images are the motifs:

This motif of the mobile phone also links well with the title as it plays on words with it. The title is called 'Chain Letter' which you also receive through text messages.

The audience are also introduced to the weapon(a chain)that is used by the killer in the trailer which also links well to the word 'Chain' in the title. The theme being the chain also, in a comical way it plays on words with the plot of the film.

These are the examples:

Researching Characters and Costumes

My group and I were asked to research a range of horror films and link our own conceptions to it. The concepts that we were asked to look at were props, locations, settings, mise en scene, characters, costumes, plot lines, summary, narrative, themes, motifs and ideology.

Characters and Costumes:


blog 2 - picture slideshow

Researching costumes and characters I have found that in most horror genre based films they don't usually use human looking killers. For instance in the film 'Chucky' they use a doll creating more thriller and alluding the audience, making them think that the doll is just a doll and harmful. However, once the character Chucky starts to kill it has more of an effect on the audience and shocks them in a much more dynamic way. I have also realised that if the killer (protagonist) is a human and not a creature or monster they usually where masks to hide their identity. For instance in the film 'Strangers' the characters who are the murderers all where masks this type of costume gives these characters a superior feel meaning that it makes their characters even more intensely scary and since we the audience don't know who's under that mask it keeps mystery and therefor superiority.

However looking at so called killers who are human and don't hide their identity also can be quite thrilling and have a major effect on the audiences emotions. For instance looking at the trailer 'I spit on your grave' the protagonist of the film ends up being the killer and tortures the men that hurt her. The protagonist who is a woman creates a dehumanised character within the actions she does during the film (torturing). The protagonist creates the tension and puts in on the audience without having to hide her identity. The fact that she doesn't hide her identity makes her character even more scary since it makes the film so much more realistic almost saying anyone can be a killer to get revenge.

Iconography and Ideology

• Horror Iconography and Ideology:

horror posters - slide show

I decided to use a slideshow to show the images of the posters to make my blog less boring. Since I haven't used a slide show like this before I thought it would be interesting to experiment with. I found this slide show very simple to use but found that I couldn't put text on the slide show, which would have made it less confusing.

Saw:

T The title that we can see on the poster is quite small but effective since it merges with the gruesome image.

The title ‘Saw’ is in a white colour to make it stand out since it’s quite small.

The font of the title look as though they are the man’s teeth, this makes the title very effective.

In the poster we as the audience only see the image of a man’s moth wide open and a bit of the bottom half of his face. Like many horror posters they try not to show a lot on the poster so that the audience are more intrigued (as this poster does).

In the image it is very obvious to an audience that the man is in pain, we can tell this because most of his teeth have been pulled out and there is a hook in his mouth.

Even though we can’t see most of his face we know that this character on the poster is being tortured. Like most of ‘Saw’s’ posters they always show someone being tortured so if a ‘Saw’ fan you can tell what is going on in the poster without giving away too much of the plot of the film.

The tag line ‘ Opening wide this Halloween’ is very humorous and relates well to the image.

The Last Exorcism:

The font of the title ‘The Last Exorcism’ is quite Gothic this relates to the time that the film is set and creates a spooky atmosphere to the poster.

The colour of the font is black which contrasts with the bright off white background.

The use of the bright background creates shadows from the image of the girl on the wall, this makes the poster more effectively scary and informs the audience of the genre of the film.

The image of the girl on the wall is very haunting and the position of her body makes her look unnatural or inhuman; the positioning of her body is quite spider like. Since the image of the girl is in the corner of the wall it could be said that the photographer decided to position it this way so that it would look as if the girl is ready to pounce out of the picture. This makes the image more thrilling and makes it a must see.

30 days of night:

The main colours of the poster are black and red. These colours are associated with death, night, blood and fear. This meaning that the film might consist of these themes.

The Blair Witch Project:

The title is written like you would see witchcraft written. This could be a link to the title being ‘The Blair witch project’. The letters are very spaced out from each other, representing isolation, which links to the image of the woods.

There is then a short paragraph on what the film is going to be about, the word ‘disappeared’ makes the audience curious and adds to the effect of horror.

The image is of a wood, this gives an insight into where the film will be set, and also it is written in the small paragraph.

The image looks like a negative Polaroid, which adds to the found footage. This makes the tree’s stand out and look ghostly and have a spirit feel to them. The colours black and white remind us of death.

From analysing both of these horror film posters I have noticed that they both have some similarities. The font styles of both titles are in capitals this could be that they want their audiences to be drawn in by the title and remember the name of it. Both images don’t reveal too much of their characters faces, this technique that quite a lot of horror posters do is to intrigue the audience and really make them think about the film and what it might be about. The colouring of both images are quite interesting. They’re both similar in the sense that the lighting is quite light to exaggerate certain elements of the image. For instance ‘The Last Exorcism’ uses quite a light background to create and exaggerate the shadows on the wall. In the ‘Saw’ image they have used light lighting to emphasise the man’s mouth to create a gruesome feel.