Storyboards

What is the difference between a teaser trailer and a theatrical trailer?

Teaser trailers are normally released very early in the production of a film; it is simply to make the audience aware that the film is being released and to make them look further into it. Teaser trailers do not often explain the narrative and often try to literally tease the audience into wanting to know more about the film.

Normal trailers are released once production has finished, this kind of trailer is used to tempt the audience into seeing the film by explaining the film narrative to narrow down the target audience.

Analysis of several film posters

Analysis of monsters film poster

http://www.flickr.com/photos/76874961@N07/6899151535/in/photostream 

Analysis of 28 days later film poster 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/76874961@N07/6894497743/in/photostream 

Analysis of several magazine covers

Empire magazine cover analysis
http://www.flickr.com/photos/76874961@N07/6903696643/in/photostream

Total Film magazine cover analysis
http://www.flickr.com/photos/76874961@N07/6899266567/in/photostream

Ancillary tasks

Off Campus Trailer

What have you learnt from you audience feedback?

Our target audience was aimed to be between the ages of 16-21, this made it easier for us to collect information, it gave us an advantage because we ourselves were in our age range, plus this made it more interesting in the creation of the trailer because we all had similar interests.

   To my surprise our audience feedback was mainly positive and we had some high marks out of ten which I am very pleased with, there have been a few problems that have been brought forward to us by viewers of our trailer. Not only problems have been brought forward though, some people mentioned that they specifically enjoyed the ending and other aspects of the trailer.  To get these result we have shown our media class in college in a screening of multiple trailers, we got noted feedback on the trailer effectiveness when it came to advertising the film and also how powerful and scary it is as a horror text.

   They liked the idea of a slasher trailer I'm guessing because it was different. A lot of people (if not all) did trailers on paranormal ghost films, and originally we were planning on doing that idea but as we created the trailer I think we had too much fun with the gore effects and the weapons to care about making what was expected in our class so we accidentally created a slasher movie trailer.
   Quite a few people liked the soundtrack, as it built up towards the ending of the trailer and they specifically liked how it suddenly ended with a gory spray when the killer lunges towards the camera.

    It seems that the final scene with the neck strangle seems to have worked, a few people got scared during the screening in college which is very good to see that the jump scene is working. People also liked it because it took used the fast pace that was built up throughout the whole trailer to create a  scary jump scene.

   We found that a lot of people couldn’t understand the voice overs very well, this was a very important piece of information because the voice overs, especially the one explaining the newspapers found in the attic are very important for the explanation of the storyline.

   Some people thought that there were too many deaths in the trailer and that it was giving too much away in terms of who dies in the actual film and what ways they die.

       A lot of people thought that the first title went too quick, they could read it in time and therefore some people simply didn't understand the plot of the film because all the other titles are linked in with the first title, it simply did not make sense, but this is very easy to fix.

    I think that if we were to make any adjustments, I would certainly recreate the voice overs in a more quiet area, perhaps by simply moving the setting of the scene where Andy explains the newspapers he found. I would also work on creating and advertising the story more, I think our storyline was very basic and I was pleased with it, but we needed to relate our trailer to the story more often and make the titles more effective, not only by making them more interesting but perhaps splitting them up more and making them more frequent. If I had another chance on creating the titles I would definitely attempt to link them in with specific parts of the audio to make the overall trailer more professional.

         It’s good to know that people enjoyed the gore as much as we did, it made creating the trailer much more fun and interesting and it created the “slasher” style that everyone liked so it was a very good choice and I'm happy we made it.

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

As well as creating a horror trailer as a promotional package for a horror film, we also created a horror film poster based on our film and a film magazine cover used to publicise our film.

When making my poster, in order to attract our audience, I wanted to show them that this would be a slasher film, but not show them too much to make them think they've seen it all. I had a very cool idea of putting the viewers in the shoes of one of the victims to make them feel more attached to the film. To me, this poster is very obscure as to who the man in the mask is, only people who have viewed the trailer will know that he is the killer. So viewers will see the poster and then research the film to find the trailer and then see the film. I thought of this as a sort of "ladder of knowledge" it will hopefully sift out anyone who really doesn't want to see the film and gain us our target audience.

I think that my ancillary texts and my trailer work very well together mainly because I based my ancillary texts on one particular shot that is shown in the trailer. This has linked my ancillary texts and created an overall picture that represents the film. I think that this could be a very good potential selling point, it would mean that people would see the picture and think of the film like how someone would look at a logo and think of the company. In my opinion my poster does a very good job of advertising the film and linking in with the trailer because the picture used in the poster is from a shot in the trailer that I believe to be one of the main shots because it shows the monster clearly holding a pitchfork as a weapon. One of my favourite parts of my poster is the eye outline that I created to merge the background with the photo and make the viewer feel trapped inside a helpless person, the great thing about this idea is that the helpless person is actually Andrew from the film and you are looking through his eyes at the killer. This links the poster with the film very well in my opinion because it is not only a shot taken from it that shows the monster, but it also puts the viewer into the shoes of a helpless victim of the monster.

In order to combine my poster and our trailer in further detail I used one of the trailer titles to explain a bit about the film, but of course on a poster you don’t want to see a block of text, you want to see pictures and it needs to stand out to its audience. I chose “your house brings back friends from the past” I chose this specific part because it contains vital information for understanding who and what the monster is, not only that but it promotes the use of Freud’s theory of repression (bad happenings in the past return to haunt the current owners of the house). This theory has popped up in many different horror films and to show this in the trailer is a real bonus, because it is said to be a very scary factor in horror movies, it gives the illusion that the monster is unbeatable, unstoppable and this in turn makes the monster much more scary.

I feel that the creation of my magazine cover was very successful, the research that was carried out before hand on one of my previous posts (analysis of film magazine covers) really helped me understand what fonts to use, what colour style, where to place certain information and other general conventions of magazine advertisements. Our work on magazines last year was also a great help, we used Photoshop to create magazine covers, contents and double page spreads. This did very much help with knowledge of Photoshop and remembering certain aspects that make your work look more professional. The great thing about having your film featured on a magazine cover is it gains you alot of publicity through journalists writing, there is a huge range of audiences who respond to journalists writing which means that through this type of publicity we can sift our way through to our target audience. Journalists can also be sent press kits containing information on the film, cast, narrative etc.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Here I have shown two very similar scenes from "off campus" (our horror movie trailer) and the trailer for Halloween 2. Here you can see the final scene which is just before the film name is shown. You can see that the monster is in the shot, attempting to attack the victim, the shot is a POV of the victim and as the shot progresses the monster gets close to the victim until it cuts to the next shot.

These clips are also very useful for comparing the style of the monster, our monster was originally supposed to be a paranormal ghostly monster, but as we progressed through making the trailer he became a slasher monster. Mike Myers (the monster in halloween) is also considered to be a slasher monster so this is very good for comparisons. Here you see that the monster is hooded so you cannot see his face clearly and in this other shot you can see that our monster and Mike Myers both wear masks which is another very common convention when it comes to horror.

One very key convention that we used in our trailer and that we planned to use was the "Final girl", in our trailer we named our final girl Charlie, this is because the name can be used for both boys and girls which connoted towards a masculine feel. A few people thought that the final girl was not as obvious as it could have been, they said that we should add in more scenes of Charlie getting away from the killer. We tried to emphasis the use of the final girl by sticking in a shot of her attempting to escape in her car at the end of the trailer.

Close to the beginning of our trailer we used a POV shot through a gap in a door, looking at the students walking past. This kind of shot is often used in horror films to convince us that there is someone following or spying on the characters. In our shot Charlie (being the final girl and therefore being more aware of the situation) decides to investigate, and then you find that it is simply one of the other characters playing a prank. This emphasises both the use of this shot and also the use of the final girl, everyone is having a laugh and the final girl is taking things seriously.

As a horror trailer, our text for both our titles between shots and the “off campus” text were very important, we had to choose a type of text that would fit our slasher genre, otherwise instead of scaring people; it would put on the wrong mood for the trailer. When we were scrolling through the available fonts in livetype, we found that there were very few horror fonts available. This forced us to use the “bog standard” horror font which at the time we certainly weren’t happy with. However, as our slasher genre strengthened the font stuck and blended in with the rest of the trailer very well in my opinion. The only real problem we had with the creation of the text was the fact that livetype only had 2-3 different fonts that fitted horror which was very annoying, but it did offer us a lot of effects which were very good at making the end product look more professional. Here are some pictures that help to show similarities between our font style compared to other films.

The lighting in our trailer was all (on screen source), we honestly weren’t very worried about lighting when we were creating it, and we had a few problems with a couple of the shots, especially the garage scene, where a night vision option on the cameras would have come in use. Normally I wouldn’t use night vision but there does seem to be an increasing use of night vision shots in the horror genre. There were a few shots that lighting helped with accidentally.This shot is in my eyes very cool! I love how the character below is forced into a silhouette because the light from the garage blinds the camera from seeing him. It gives you a sense of how evil the garage really is and how it relates to the killings that happened there. Here is another shot that worked very well I was debating whether or not to have this shot as my poster because of the amazing way the contrast varies from one side of the gate, and the character, to the other. This shot makes me think that if it was shown to someone who didn’t know anything about it, then they would be confused if she was the killer or not. The huge difference between the light and the dark on the image and the way that it splits right down the middle of the shot is simply perfect, and this also relates to the idea of the final girl becoming scarred during this experience with the monster. In this case the character is half evil and half good, and it’s all just down to the lighting, it’s only now that I’ve realised how influential lighting can be on a situation and I regret that we didn’t think about it more when we were creating the trailer.

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

I used multiple different pieces of software and online programs to create and research my products. I have used Photoshop Cs5 for creation of my poster and my magazine covers I am very familiar with this particular piece of software, and this familiarity allowed me to create these pieces of work easily within a small amount of time, but it still worked out well. I used multiple tools to make my work look more professional, I used background textures by adding an overlay option and a soft rubber to create smooth looking transition between the photo colours and the background. Photoshop is a program that I use in my spare time; I have it on my laptop so it allowed me to complete tasks outside of college which gives me more time to make improvements to my work.

    To research my target audience to find what they like in horror films and trailers we constructed a questionnaire which was handed out to students in our class and friends around the college in paper form. We also linked the questionnaire page on our Facebook profiles and got a few responses from our friends directly through surveymonkey.com. This site was very helpful not only in the production of the questionnaire but also with the collection of results. The only problem that this website had was that you could only create a questionnaire that was 10 questions long unless you became a premium member, this meant that we were limited in questions but it also made us think about what questions would be more effective and useful.

   In order to make our trailer as real and professional as possible we had to research trailers for other horror films, to watch the horror trailers we used a very popular website called YouTube, on this website you can view online videos that people have uploaded so it gave us a huge amount of horror trailers that we could gather ideas from to make our trailer better.

    For the creation of the trailer we used a program call final cut pro, this is reasonably easy piece of software to learn although it did crash a few times which was extremely annoyingl. I liked the way the application allowed you to change the layout because it helped us to view the trailer easier so we could find problems and sort them out. Final cut pro gave us a huge range of tools that were very helpful in the creation of our trailer, these tools helped us edit music files to time certain parts with shot transitions, they allowed us to organise our timeline so that we wouldn’t get lost in our own work. I think of all the tools we used the razor tool was most useful, this allowed us to split up our audio and our shots so that we could make the entire product look more professional by switching between split up parts of one shot (the ghost stepping towards the camera in the garden) and other shots that were taken. The razor tool allowed us to easily create and organise shots that would be used in a professional horror trailer. The timeline on Final cut pro is also a very clever piece of technology, what I found to be very helpful was the amount of layers that were available; this allowed us to greatly increase the professional quality of the audio. By having more layers we could add more audio, and stack tracks onto others, this way we could basically make the audio exactly the way we wanted it.

   Throughout both years of this course we have been using Flickr, this is a very useful website that allows you to upload and manage pictures. I found this specifically helpful because I liked the way that you could add tags onto pictures because it was very easy compared to loading a picture into Microsoft word and drawing arrows everywhere. It is very easy to apply these pictures to blogger, although website links are not the most attractive and colourful things to add to your blog.

    For filming the shots in the trailer we used cameras that were supplied by the college, in my opinion these cameras were very good for what we were doing, they were light, easy to use with computers and management of shots that were taken and it was easy to fix them to the tripods. The overall quality of the shots that were taken were very high although it would have been better if they had a night-vision mode because those kind of shots would have scared people more and they are often used in modern horror films.

    Blogger is the main underlying piece of technology that we have been using throughout the whole of media in college. At first I didn’t like the idea because it was a new piece of technology that I couldn’t be bothered to learn, I didn’t like the old layout, it wasn’t modern at all, simply looking at the pages on the website put me off. However I did like how you could manage your work easily allowing yourself to do what parts of the work you wanted as drafts and then finish it, it made me feel like I had more time to do it. I have had a few problems uploading images which is extremely irritating which is why I like to use Flickr. Recently they have brought out a new version of blogger which is easier to use in my opinion, it fixes the problem with how it looks which made me feel better about using it. I think that I did hate it when we first started using it but then I began to like the ease of management, how many tools it gave you to edit your work and make it more interesting than just a simple block of text and eventually I did like the new layout of the website.

Advanced Portfolio - Ancillary Tasks - Drafts

Planning

Planning - Shooting times, props, locations etc.

So far we have filmed twice, we filmed once over the holidays. We have completed all day time shots and done a few shots in the garage.
We plan to be doing all the gore scenes after we go back to college because then we will have fake blood available to us which is certainly a requirement.

All shooting will be taking place at my house, we plan to be shooting in the garage, in the bathroom with a mirror shot, in the attic and around some other areas of the house if we come up with any other ideas.

Props will include:
 - cans of beer
 - vodka
 - suitcases
 - car
 - pitchfork (borrowed from college)
 - monster clothing - gas mask - overalls - gloves etc.
 - camera

Audience research

Response summary of survey

The total amount of people we got to take our survey was 33; here are the questions we asked with the responses below.

 The information shown from this graph can help us identify our audiences interests in comparison to their ages.Most of the people who completed this question and the rest of the survey were between the ages of 16-20 so we are looking at more or less the prime audience for the horror genre. Teenagers who dare each other to see scary films and see what kind of limits they can reach with gore and other creepy factors in horror films.

 This obviously shows us that either we didn't ask enough women or that they simply didn't wish to fill out a survey on the horror film genre. This could be interpreted to show that women are not as interested in the horror genre, this is another very simple question which is often asked in any sort of survey.

 This question was chosen because it would help us choose what type of horror trailer we were going to make, that way we could talk about how some areas of the horror genre are more popular than others. Here you can see that zombie horror films are particularly high rated along with slasher and ghost films. Sci-fi horror was not particularly favoured, I think this is because of the shortage of these types of horror films, the only of these types I can think of are the alien and predator films.

 This was an important question because we weren't sure if we wanted to put alot of gore in it or not put any at all in it because of what we were thinking of basing our trailer on (quite similar to paranormal activity). Once we found out that our audience enjoyed gore in horror films we budged in a few gore scenes into our trailer which will hopefully satisfy our audiences.

 This was another very important question which was relating towards our liking of paranormal activity. We were sure that our group found hand-held camera work alot scarier than conventional camera work found in almost all films but we found it difficult to put all the scenes together with the camera in each characters hands. So after thinking about it, we decided to leave it up to our survey and it has helped us alot. As you can see we got information that suggests that people like both types which gave us the possibility of using it when we can but not fully depend on it, so from this question we decided that we would do a mixture of both hand-held  and conventional camera work.

This question was put into the survey to try and get some information about particular themes or specific parts of horror films that people are scared of. As you can see there is a large range of answers but there are some patterns that you can see by looking at the chart. Here you can see that a number of people are particularly scared of clowns and that alot of them like gore in horror films, we may be putting some of this into our trailer, we are having a mirror shot and the ghost is going to be wearing a gas mask so we have applied some of this towards our trailer already.

Question 7 - What are your two favourite horror films?

We put this question into the survey hoping for a pattern of films that would help us identify what makes a good horror film, however instead we received a range of answers with no films matching up, we couldnt even fit them together in a specific time range. Here is a list of the results:

 - horror of Dracula

 - Nosferatu

 - 28 days later

 - Alien

 - It

 - hostel

 - The omen (original)

 - The exorcist

 - Ring

 - The grudge

 - 1408

As you can see from the list, we got a huge range of different films which simply shows that people (even from the same age group) are interested in all kinds of horror films, even the ones that laid the foundations of the genre.

 This question was relating to the previous one, this was much more in depth with the horror films that were suggested. From the last question we were going to study the horror films that were suggested and this question would hopefully help us to look at specific aspects of each film, look at them in detail and then perhaps gain some ideas. However here we have a problem, as you can see from the graph there are not really any specific aspects of these films that are especially favoured. This was a set back for us but then it made us think that we wouldn't have to focus on having one part of the trailer specifically great and that we would have to spread our time over all of these areas equally in order to get a good trailer. This question helped us understand what the audience wanted and that was helpful in a different way to what we expected.

 This is a pretty obvious question, the feedback from this helped us to choose what kind of monster we would have. From this question we found that people are most scared of human creatures, these results can be applied to the concept of the uncanny which was developed by Sigmund Freud.This concept brings forward the idea of something being human but not quite fully human, it shows that people are scared of zombies, ghosts, vampires and other monsters because of their biological link to humans and how we are similar. This information that we got from the survey which was backed by the Freudian concept of the uncanny made us choose a human ghost as our monster which we think will work well to scare our audience.

 This is another very helpful question which allowed us to choose where to set our trailer based on feedback from audiences. This question allowed us to choose the most scary environment on our list which turned out to be an abandoned house in an urban area. This is a perfect fit for the chart because it applies the 3 largest sectors into one area which should work very well.

Representation of gender

To what extent do you think horror’s representation of gender challenges dominant representation?

Representation of gender in media texts has changed a lot throughout the last century, women have become more independent and have begun to live their own lives without having to play stereotypical roles such as doing chores or being sexual objects. This idea of women changing roles has both been supported and rejected by different media texts. Jeremy Tunstall argued that women were shown to be domestic workers who cooked and cleaned, sexual objects for men to view, consumers who liked to shop, or marital women such as housewives. These roles are very obviously shown to the audience however male roles are not usually mentioned in media texts. There are also problems with visibility; in a lot of cases men outnumber women in media texts, “in 1992 research demonstrated that on screen men outnumbered women 2 to 1.”Women are shown in adverts to be unemployed, house-dwelling consumers, though less so than in the past. Some people argue that we are moving backwards, giving examples such as comparing the newer character Lara Croft with Ripley from Alien and how these characters are shown differently in a sexual way. In this essay I will be looking at multiple media texts which show different views towards this idea, including three horror films which are may give some information on the change in women’s roles. I think that overall horror has a very broad view of this change of roles for women, I think that what I have seen through the three films that I have studied can be interpreted as women being punished for changing roles, but the final girl can both enhance this idea by making the girl go through all of these horrific events or fight against this idea by saying that she comes out alive whereas everyone else dies. My thoughts are that women are being punished for changing roles in the horror genre, this is especially thrown out there with the shining, because it is obvious that Wendy is taking Jack’s role of looking after the hotel, whereas in the other films these differences can be discrete and if they are present then the whole idea of punishing can be challenged by the death of other characters in the film.

The male gaze is an idea which has been brought forward by a theorist called Laura Mulvey, she believes that “much commercial cinema puts the spectator into the position of an appraising heterosexual male” by using certain camera techniques to present women not as people but as sexual objects. Putting the audience in the shoes of the male protagonist by using point of view shots which are often long shots which tilt up the body of the woman certainly supports the idea of the male gaze. Examples such as Lara croft and Buffy have been brought forward to support the argument that even if the main protagonist is a woman then they can still be shown as a sexual object. John Berger thought that women see themselves through a “loop of masculinity” which is to put themselves into a man’s point of view when they look at how they are dressed, how their hair is, etc. Relating the male gaze to the three films that we studied does make it very obvious that this idea is reasonably accurate. In Halloween there is a significant link between people being murdered being sexually active, this doesn’t just happen to the girls, one guy gets killed in the process but the male gaze does apply to those killings. The male gaze cannot really be applied to the shining; there is only one part which really relates to this theory. There is one scene which involves a POV shot from Jack looking at the bathtub woman, this is a very significant camera shot which is often used when trying to use the male gaze. Apart from that one scene the male gaze cannot be applied to this film, although it does apply very well to the idea of “the final girl”. Through watching the film Eden Lake I have found that there is one scene close to the beginning of the text which shows a male gaze view. After the couple set up on the beach, Brett starts looking at Jenny with binoculars. Here we see another POV shot which is very iconic towards the use of male gaze in films. When pointing out factors which relate to male gaze you could also mention the clothes which Jenny is wearing, she wears a very girly dress, comparing this with some of the other character in other films such as Wendy from the shining. Wendy is wearing work overalls which is a much less feminine form of clothing compared to a dress, this can connote to a higher use of the male gaze in Eden Lake compared to the shining which is fairly obvious as you progress through the film. I think that through these films you can see that the male gaze does play a part (or at least the ones which I have studied) and that it is shown to be a bad thing to look at a woman and see her as a sex object, Laurie in Halloween survives because she isn’t sexually active and is not identified as part of the male gaze. Jack in the Shining is humiliated by a women in the bathroom when she transforms from an attractive woman to an old hag, and Brett in Eden Lake is thought to be some sort of a paedophile as he stares at Jenny through his binoculars. I think that the use of the male gaze to show women as sex objects is challenged in the horror genre to show that this kind of behaviour is sick.

Carol Clover in “men, women and chainsaws” argued that within the horror film media there is often a “final girl” this girl is often the main protagonist or a different important character that plays a key role in the narrative. The idea of this final girl is that she is the one who is left alive at the end of the film for a particular reason, this can be shown through a character like Laurie in Halloween, and she is left alive because she is more aware of what is going on. The final girl often has more masculine properties towards her representation in the narrative; this makes it easier for a male audience to identify with this character and therefore attracting a higher amount of male viewers. Wendy in the shining is another good example of the “final girl”, she isn’t the only character to survive in the film but she does fight back against Jack compared to everyone else. Eden Lake has a different example of the final girl; Jenny obviously plays this role because she escapes, kills a few people in the gang and is scarred in the process. The general idea of someone escaping from this type of scenario would make someone think that a male character would play this role, killing people for revenge, getting transformed from a pretty woman to a mud covered monster. This transformation is especially emphasised with a POV shot after she has killed one of the gang, Jenny is looking into a mirror at herself thinking about what she has become. The difference between these films are the uses of the final girl, in Eden lake Jenny dies at the end which challenges the properties of the final girl because she does seem to contain all of them except that key idea of her surviving. From studying these films and looking closely at the female characters it is obvious that the idea the final girl is evident in each of these horror films and that it does range from mere survival to taking revenge on the monster, and we can also see the abstract example of Jenny’s death. I think that these films use the idea of the final girl in a progressive way; the creators of these films almost rewarded the female characters for being masculine which might promote the change of roles for women into a masculine form.

From looking at these films you can see that the use of both the male gaze and the final girl are evident, but I think that the idea of the final girl is more effective. Although the male gaze is used, it is used in a way to show that it is a bad thing to see women as sex objects, through the deaths or humiliation of characters. Obviously through the use of these events it is shown that females are higher above males, this sort of behaviour is something to be frowned upon and therefore putting the male characters in the wrong. The final girl is used very effectively in each of these films, the characters playing these parts are very obvious and most of them survive except from Jenny, but you could argue that the only reason Jenny dies is because she is overcome by 3 people, in which case practically anyone would be killed. I think that the use of the final girl in each of these films shows that the film creators are going for a progressive view of this change of roles for women, that the old sexist view of women as sex objects or feeble characters who can’t live without their husbands is on its last moments and that this idea is moving in the completely opposite direction. The female characters in this film show that men are weaker than women and that maybe the whole sexist idea could possibly be moving towards men being the weak feeble characters who are the people to be frowned upon. 

Initial idea

Our initial idea for a horror movie was a paranormal based ghost horror, we were thinking of taking camera techniques from paranormal activity such as CCTV camera footage and handheld camera work because we found it to be more scary with this combination of footage. We were thinking of having a story which would revolve around the final girl Charlie and her friends who were students at a university that are moving into an unusually cheap house to buy. When they settle down in this house they find that strange things are happening around the house and that the house is in fact haunted, as two of the student become increasingly scared the others dare one of them to go into the attic where they find old newspapers that are almost held as trophies to the murdering of over 12 people that took place in this house, all of the bodies were found in the shed in the back garden. The group finally came to their senses and managed to shrug off this idea after a couple of drinks and games, this is when Daniel goes into the garage to look for more beer, only to find an evil presence. As the students attempt to fight against this indestructible being with cruel intentions they must flee this house before it is too late.

The role of the film distributor

The role of the film distributor is to "identify and deliver the largest possible audience for every film" the distributors job is to inform the public about the film so that they know which films they want to go and see. Distributors view an earlier version of the film and then decide how it will be advertised and specifically when. If we are talking about a film like Halloween then distributors might have advised that they release it close to Halloween to attract a larger audience.

When promoting a film distributors have to look deeply into demographics and also into psychographics, they have to decide who the main target audience is, who is going to want to see the film, what kind of audiences have recent similar films attracted and quite simply who can they convince to see this film. They do this by carrying out audience research and by looking at the different lifestyles of focus groups and other aspects of their lives. Social sites on the internet can be a very important and large source of this information, they provide information on all kinds of people, mixed genders, ages, races and obviously, this will show information on how much each group keeps in touch with modern technology and the internet. This specifically may show that internet advertisement is now a big add-on to the success of a film.

Competition in the film industry is very obviously present, this can create huge problems for film distributors especially when sequels for famous films are released. This is where distributors have to adjust release dates for films, normally the smaller films will have to adjust because bigger films will overshadow them and there will be no audience available. Of course sometimes this isn't that much of a deal such as if a horror film was released on the same day as a comedy, the audiences wouldn't be as effected compared to if two horror films were released because of the audience's differences.

Publicity
This shows inside footage of films with lots of information for upcoming films often with interviews of famous actors within it giving facts about the film, explaining characters perhaps a vague view of the narrative.
Film critics are often given the chance to see the film before it is released so that reviews can be posted, this can both attract and push away desired audiences, obviously depending on the critics views of the film.
A good example of this would be the hobbit production videos posted on YouTube, these videos show the viewers the production of the film videos with the actors and specifically with this Peter Jackson who was very famous for making the Lord of the Rings trilogy which won many awards.

Promotions
Part of promotions are to reach areas of the market which wouldn't be heavily advertised, promotions advertise in places which would not usually be advertised like in shops and restaurants. Another aspect of promotions is to encourage the audience to get closer to the creators of the film and to build a relationship between them so that when they see advertisements for a film which includes that star or that director they will be encouraged to see it. They can do this through having competitions and by including actors or directors, they can have interviews with the stars which include public choice of questions and other interactive ideas which can link a film lover to a certain actor or director.

Mood Board

Mood board

This mood board shows what particular aspects of horror films scare me the most, here you can see that there is a large amount of different settings on this, most of them don't really involves anything or anyone within them, this is mainly because I'm mostly scared when there isn't anything going on, when there is no one there and mostly when there is potential for something really scary to jump out at you. I am mostly scared of abandoned areas because of this.

As you will see there are no monsters on this mood board, this is mainly because if you don't see the monster then your mind will think of the scariest thing imaginable to you and it makes the film alot more scary in a personal way because that monster is a spawn of your imagination.

Movie Trailers

Paranormal activity 3

I find this trailer very interesting because of its editing, and because of the idea that the shots used are previously filmed footage being watched back in short clips, much like a compilation of different flashbacks.

• I think that very obviously the last shot in this film is the scariest, once the children play innocent pranks on each other after saying Bloody Mary 3 times into a mirror they both leave the room and the camera in it.
• When they open the door and leave, the lighting differences between the other rooms and the mirror room reveales a shadowy figure in the mirror which just stands there. It isnt made clear if the figure is standing in front or behind the camera but either way you cant see it in the foreground, you can only see it in the mirror.
• I think one of the main scary parts of this scene is the fact that the camera is left behind to see the ghost, i think that this makes the viewer feel alone and pretty much helpless against the ghost, its a camera, its not going to run away like a person would.
• The way they cut between the clips with short transitions as if someone is tamperring with the camera could show that someone is watching this footage and it shows that this footage has already been filmed and therefore they know that something must have happened. Most films are based on what is happening, this makes it seem suprising that certain things happen, however this film is based on what has happened and therefore this may make people think that something bad has happened within the footage.
• I think that the shots used in this movie trailer could be used in a trailer which we could produce because it is all filmed with amateur footage which was filmed with a crappy camera. This means that its ok if you filmed with a couple of problems (you can see the camera and the tripod in the mirror, you wouldnt usually see that in any film) because you could justify it by saying that this film is based on a true story which was filmed by kids or teenagers.

Shaun of the dead

This is a comedy horror film which is very well known, I chose this trailer because:

• There is a large amount of editing, what I'm particularly interested in here are the effects, the short, fast transitions which resemble a broken camera, or a false signal on a TV.
• I also like the freeze frames which show you the emotions of the characters, even though in this they show you funny faces, I think this could be very useful for showing background horror which you wouldn't usually be able to see.
• There is also a very interesting shot which starts at 1:06, this shot is divided into three different parts, each bit has significant lines in it which relate to the whole film, Shaun doesn't like Ed called them zombies. This is a basic replacement for titles in-between shots, however it might not put the point across quite as much as titles would because of the differences of a normal shot and a title shot. 

Dawn of the Dead

There are a few different interesting points about this trailer:

• Towards the 3/4 mark, there is a part of the trailer which splits a range of shots into shot - black - shot - black and in-between these shots there are loud violin strings, I think this is a very effective technique for making it more horrific.
• Close to the beginning of the trailer when the girl bites the man, there is a short pause where everything goes silent and suddenly a huge scream scares the crap out of you, this seems like an effective technique which could be easy to use.

Horror movie idea

Open day
A small class of middle school children arrive on the doorsteps of Princeton high school, the school which they will be moving up to in 3 months time. They enter the school only to find that it is deserted, with no teachers or students, the school was left in a state as if nothing had happened, folders were sorted and the registers were taken with everyone attending.
When the class attempts to leave this abandoned school they find the windows and doors bricked or locked, as the class ventures through this disturbing, twisted school they find that reality becomes deformed and some rooms are bigger than they seem. They find corridors which extend beyond possible vision and classrooms with tables on the ceiling. The children act as if this is an interesting dream but the teacher is driven mad by this twist of reality.
As the children experience the madness that this environment can cause through their teacher, they also have to find the true cause of this madness and get out of the school before they become the victims of a murderous, crazed adult.

Return of the Repressed

The theory of the return of the repressed is often used to explain horror film narratives, Sigmund Freud created this theory which is developed on the idea that repressed emotions emerge from our subconscious through ways which can be ranged from unnoticeable to extreme. In the case of horror film villains, this could show that a villain which was previously harmed perhaps mentally through a past experience for example watching their parents die when they were young could have previous feeling which would cause them to kill someone, this particularly happens to someone significant who plays a key role in the narrative.

The Shining

The similarity of the character roles in The Shining and Freud's theory of the return of the repressed fits in very well, there are a few different ways in which you could link his theory to this narrative.

1. You could say that the return of past memories from the hotel and what significantly has happened is returning through visions of gruesome murder victims and hallucinations of 1930's characters including the old janitor who murdered his own family in the hotel.
2. Another link could be that Jack's small violent history which he shares with Lloyd, the imaginary barman, is adding towards his crazed behaviour, you could say that the bottled up hatred for his family is being expressed due to isolation and cabin fever 

Halloween

The villain in Halloween, Mike Myers, is a very fitting example for this theory which fits in well with the horror genre. He killed his sister when he was young which was a very traumatic event, this was followed by him getting sent to a mental asylum and 15 years of silence. This meant that 15 years of bottled up and repressed emotions suddenly burst which caused him to break out of the asylum and go to murder all the innocent people in the town where this traumatic event unfolded 15 years ago. This character is probably one of the best examples of villain where the return of repressed memories from the past causes someone to go crazy and do something awful, in this case killing people.

In conclusion I think that this theory plays a huge role in our understanding of antagonistic characters in horror narratives and why they change into the monsters and commit these horrific acts of murder.

Narrative theories applied to The Shining

Narrative Theories

We applied the theories and ideas of 4 different theorists to The Shining.

Toderov's theory for narrative is not very fitting for this movie, it is not very specific to the events that unfold in the narrative. The changes with a starting equilibrium and disruptions fit with them being a happy family and then the disruption is them moving to the hotel and becoming isolated and Jack going insane. However even though these events do fit the description of narrative according to Todorov the some of the other theories do fit The Shining's events better.

Propps theory includes a unique list of seperate events which often happen in film narratives, through researching the film and comparing its narrative to this list i have found that his theory is mixed up, some events take place before they are set to and towards the end alot of his predictions of narratives are false and do not take place. Propps theory of character roles doesnt fit too well either, for example i found that in the beginning of the film anyone would think that Jack was the protagonist, but throughout the film he goes mad and becomes the antagonist, many of these character crossovers exist in Propp's theory of character roles. Another example would be that there is more than one hero and even chances of 3 heroes, Wendy, Dani and Halaron all show different qualities of heroism.

Another theorist is Levi-strauss, this theory shows that there are binary oppositions in narratives, this theory does fit reasonably well compared to the other ones i have studied. Some of the binary oppositions that we found in this narrative were:

Sanity - insanity

This ties in well between the characters such as when Jack turns mad and when he's normal, the difference between if a normal person or a crazy person had hallusinations. Jack treats these hallucinations as freindly and Wendy treats them as nightmares, this allows us to define a difference of sanity between the characters.

Community - isolation

This ties back to previous comments at the start of the film made by the owner of the hotel at the interview, he mentions that the isolation could make you go crazy (cabin fever). This then takes place throughout the film, as the family moves into the hotel each family member starts to experience hallucinations as time moves on and as they become more isolated from each other as well as from the world with the snowstorm.

Normal - paranormal

The difference between normal and paranormal is obvious in this film, the visions from the past that Jack has are of the 1930's which shows a very obvious glitch in time. These are shown as opposites by the characters, at the end of the film Wendy is the hero (sane, normal) and Jack is the Villian (insane, paranormal).

Past - present

The difference in past and present in this narrative almost completely confused me when i saw this film, the narrative switches inbetween three different time frames, the 1930's the 1970's and the present, these three different times are shown through inferred events, current events and the return of events in the past.

Good - evil

There is a very obvious struggle between good and evil in this narrative, the isolation of the hotel is shown to be an evil force which controls and changes people into monsters, the evil is shown through victims, you could say that Jack himself is not evil but he is possessed by evil, and that you don't truly see the monster, you only see what it has caused.

Bordwell and Thompson defined narrative as " a chain of event in a cause-effect relationship, occurring in time and space". This theory fits in very well with the abnormal twists of time which are used in The Shining to create an abnormal environment of which it would be understandable to have your mind twisted by living in it. Here is a list of how the narrative ties in with this theory of twisting time:
 - throughout the film there are short titles which explain dates, at first they are presented quite far apart but as the story moves on these titles become closer, but even at some points they are at random times. This random displacement shows that time has been warped which could connote towards a paranormal environment.
 - As the story moves on from the very beginning Jack begins to lose track of time and his normal routine, he mentions that he has lots of work to do but he doesn't bother doing anything. This simply shows that Jack is slowly getting more and more out of place and crazy.
 - In some way, an anniversary is shown to be apparent in this narrative, Jack and his family move to the hotel close to 10 years after Grady kills his family, this could show that this is an event which could occur again in the future. If this is correct then this shows one of the key factors in a horror film where the monster never dies because it is too powerful for mere mortals to destroy.
 - Another disruption of time which is shown in this narrative is that the hallucinations are of characters that are dressed in 1930's clothing or have something to do with them that connotes towards the 1930's however Grady killed his family in the 1970's, i have thought about this and i have come up with the idea that this could be linked in with the construction of the hotel. At the start of the film when they are being shown around the hotel they are told that the hotel is built on an Indian burial ground, this might play a hidden but important role in the depths of the narrative which most people wouldn't recognise.

Through watching and analysing the narrative of The Shining and comparing it to all these different theories, i have found that Bordwell and Thompson's theory explains the film very well through its abnormal qualities of twisting time to create a mad environment and to help the audience understand the antagonistic characters in particular Jack and their reactions to this isolated and twisted environment and in turn how they deal with hallucinations, in turn this helps the audience understand what characters play which roles in this narrative.