Pre-production planning

Genres


There are many different genres we could of chose from, but we have decided to that a horror/thriller would be the best genre for us to use. Here are my thoughts on our chosen genres.


Thriller - This is one of our favorites this is because we personally think we would easily be able to connect with a mass audience around our own age when we create this trailer. We would be able to use the typical mise en scene and narrative but with our own twist and personality. We would be able to reach out to the modern audience which watch thrillers and with what is available to us we think we have the right base to create a great thriller trailer.


Horror - The horror genre is also a ideal genre for us to use in our trailer. This is because over the last year we have been taught many different camera angles and the use of computer editing. We would be able to use our own personal skills to be able to create great camera angles whilst filming and then use our editing skills to mix up the filming to create intense tension and atmosphere so the mass audience will be caught up in our trailer hopefully creating a big audience group.


Why we chose not to use they other genres.


Comedy - We chose not use this genre because we thought it would be increasingly difficult for amateur film producers, to write and create a comedy script. We would not be able to use the use of our editing skills to create tension and it will limit our creativity and we personally don't think we would be able to reach the top marks.


Sci-Fi - Sci-Fi would be rather difficult for a us. There are a few reasons, the main one would be that we do not have they technology or facilities to create such a genre, we are not trained in the use of csi (computer imagery), therefor we would not be able to create suitable images. Also I am more of a action/thriller producer therefor I personally would not know what a Sci-Fi enthusiast would be looking for in a Sci-Fi trailer, we would not be able to create they right mood which a enthusiast would be looking for in a trailer. 


Rom-com - A romantic comedy would also be very difficult to create. This is because it is one of those film which you can easily get wrong. I think it is another film which an amateur would struggle to create. I also think it would limit our editing skills which we have been taught over the year, as we want to be achieving those higher marks.


Action - I do like this genre. I think it would be easy to create a trailer with an action genre. So I have no real faults with this genre. As I have a connection with this genre I think we will able to integrate features from an action into our thriller/horror such as the use of many different camera angles and they use of using our editing skills to create tension and a high tempo atmosphere.


Setting

Our trailer is going to be filmed in several locations which are going to be relative to the plot and  the story line. This will hopefully tease those watching the trailer by giving information about the narrative but not giving away the key details, other than the victim and locations. It is important that you don’t give away the narrative and the villain as it will ruin the mystery of the film and will not attract as many views.

The three locations we will be using are, the victims house to create narrative. We fill introduce the victim in the location of his town and there will be a forest where there will be a chase were we introduce the villain and a insight of what the trailers plot.  


Music


We will be using music to help produce the tempo, to create an atmosphere and to concrete the narrative. The music will be created on a program called Garage Band which is on a IMac. We will make the music dark and fast to create the tempo and atmosphere, and most likely create a beat which represents the heart which will be slow like a person heart rate to begin with and at times in the trailer where we wish to up the tempo we will increase this beat as it may subconsciously increase they audiences heart rate and get adrenaline flowing.

Characters

There will be two actors in our trailer, character 1 will be playing the victim and character 2 will be playing the villain.   

Character One - Smart Educated Man

Character 1 - Character one will be White british, with brown eyes and brown hair. Smartly dressed as we want the character to look well educated with a job which endures there education and dress style.  

Character 2 - Character two is a well tanned British. With a scruffy, intimidating look to back up there increasing psychotic back ground. We want this character to look mysterious so that the audience will not know who he is to easily.

Character Two - Scruffy Villian

Audience

Audience

Target Audience Profile

Our group’s film is a horror so we think we should base our film around the elder generation of teenager.

I have created a viewer profile which you we are going to aim our film at, although we are aiming it at a particular group there will always be some interest from other audiences.

Our film will be suitable for both genders male and female; there is a frequent amount of gore to get the males intrigued.

As younger teenagers will always be interested in movies which are aimed and an audience who are a couple of years older so we are going to target an audience from about 14-25 year olds. Although our film is based upon a horror there is a victim so this may appeal to another audience group along with the mysterious plot which may attract another audience.

As we are basing our movie to the elder generation of teenagers and early adults we thought we dress our characters in a more modern look and we will have the killer in clothes with the 21^st century can associate with.

As there is a characteristic of mystery in the plot then we would expect our audience to be educated of some kind to follow the movie and enjoy it to its full expectation.

Our Trailers Classification 

We wanted our trailer to be a 12 classification so that it can be screened on TV at early time in the day and it grabs a larger target audience base.

I would classify our in any way. There is a feeling of horror but is it in moderate consideration, and there are no frequent trailer as a 12, this is because it does not dwell on discrimination at all. The use of drugs is not shown or glamorised disturbing scenes. Imitable behaviour is also a no show in our trailer, there is also no use of weapons in any context in our trailer. There is no need for swearing in our trailer as we are keep the age barrier down. Sex is also a no show in our trailer as it is not necessary. Violence is using the use of silence as a way to build atmosphere. Nudity will not be shown due to us trying to limited as we wanted to get the audience to use their own imagination and we did not want to give too much away.  

According to the British Board of Film Classifications, our trailer would fall into the 12A/12 year’s classification.

http://www.bbfc.co.uk/classification/guidelines/12a12

Film Classification

There are eight film classifications. They are: Uc,U,PG,12/12A,15,18/18R.

There are five big classifications and these are the ones I will explain: U,PG,12,15,18.

U - A "U" classification is a film which is suitable for an audience of  four plus. It will only bring up positive issues and there is no violence. It will bring up moral issues with an positive outcome every time.

PG - A "PG" classification film should not disturb a child around eight or older. This does not mean parents should let their children watch a movie with this classification. It is still there person choice whether they think there child will be able to handle what they are watching.

12 - A "12" film may be watched by a child with its guardian, if the guardian sees fit. A 12 may contain material which some 12 years old will find disturbing or that a guardian will find unfit. 


15 - A "15" may not been see at cinema by any under the age of 15, even if accompanied by an adult. Also any one younger than 15 may not rent or buy a ‘15’ rated video work. It is illegal for a cinema let any one younger then fifteen watch a 15 movie also it is illegal for shopkeepers to sell or rent out the videos to minors.


18 - A '18' may only be see by people aged 18 or over in a cinema or if you wish to purchase or rent the DVD. It is also extremely illegal to let an under aged person watch the film and the culprit may have there license taken away.

For further details on classifications please go to..http://www.bbfc.co.uk/classification/guidelines

Different people take in media text in four different ways, these are the four main theories.

Hypodermic Theory


The Hypodermic Needle Model suggests, as an audience, we are manipulated by the creators of media texts, and that our behaviour and thinking might be easily changed by media-makers. It assumes that the audience are passive. This theory is still quoted during moral panics by parents, politicians and pressure groups, and is used to explain why certain groups in society should not be exposed to certain media texts for fear that they will watch or read sexual or violent behaviour and will then act them out themselves.

Two-step Flow

Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet analysed the voters' decision-making processes during a 1940 presidential election campaign and published their results in a news paper. Their findings suggested that the information does not flow directly from the source it is found, but from the reporters boss who has power over them, therefore this will make the reporter change the source slightly to please their bosses. The audience then mediate the information received directly from the media with the ideas and thoughts expressed by the opinion leaders, thus being influenced not by a direct process, but by a two step flow. This diminished the power of the media in the eyes of researchers, and caused them to conclude that social factors were also important in the way in which audiences interpreted texts.

Uses and Gratifications

In 1948 Lasswell suggested that audiences use the media for a variety of reasons but each individual has their own personal use for the media. Lasswell theory was that the mass audience chose to interpret the media in four different. They four ways they may interpreted the media was for surveillance, correlation, entertainment and cultural transmission.

• Blulmer and Katz carried on from this theory and produced their own in 1974, there research showed that individuals may you use the text for the following purposes:

-          Diversion - escape from everyday problems and routine.

-          Personal Relationships - using the media for emotional and other interaction, e.g. substituting soap operas for family life

-          Personal Identity - finding yourself reflected in texts, learning behaviour and values from texts

-          Surveillance - Information which could be useful for living e.g. weather reports, financial news, holiday bargains

Reception Theory

Stuart Hall's encoding/decoding model stated that an audience could interpret the same texts in a variety of ways, as each are individually influenced by several factors. (gender, class, age and ethnicity)

An individual may wish to interpret the text straight, e.g. the code which the producers are trying to convey is recognized subconsciously by the audience. However some may interpret the same text in a entirely different way.

Target Audience

Target Audience

 Our target audience is going to be from 15 to 20. There a few reason for this. It is starting at 15 as this is where we classified the film and then we went to 20 as we don't think we have enough age under our belt to attribute ideas which the elder generation will link to. We are just hope that the elder audience 30+ will enjoy the film just as much as the younger generation. We will be targeting the mass audience which are interested in thrillers/horror hoping we will get a wide range of people. 

I have created a questionnaire for our target audience to see what they personally think about thriller/horror. These are the questions which will be in a hand out form.

 1. Are you male or female?

2. Please indicate your age? 

3. What is your favorite genre?

4.How often do you go to the cinema?

5. Who do you go to the cinema with?
Friends       Boy/girlfriend        Family

6. What is your favorite type of music?
Hip hop   Rock    Classic   Pop   Soul Metal

7.How would you class yourself socially ?
Sports man   Musician  Indie   Emo   Academic

9. Any further information?

The questions have been specifically chosen so that we are able to create the best trailer possible for our target audience. This is what we found out from our research

- 45% choose comedy as their favorite genre as opposed to the 50 percent who chose horror. The other 5 percent was made up of all of the other genres.

I hoped that this would be the chosen genre. This is becasue it allows us to use a wide range of filming techniques and tension building through out the trailer enabling us to show our camera work and show what we have learnt.To enable us to this we have the chance to use the newest media technology such as HD video recorders and iMac's which had software such as Garage Band to create the back track and iMovie to edit the film.

Asking what social group they belonged to help us to establish the audience by more than just their age and gave us an insight into what would appeal to them in our production.

When we asked what music they listed to.

- 55 percent said hip hop and the other main majority was rock at 40 percent.

So we now know it is important to incorporate both aspects into the trailer and our soundtrack will have a strong mix of both with the hip hop drum beat and the edgy heavy melody.  We will use all of this to help us create the best trailer to possible which will bring in the biggest audience.

Story Board and Animatic

This is our story board, we used this to tame our many ideas. We used to decide on the continuity of the shorts and the angles for the shots, as when it came to editing we wanted to build up the tension and create a chilling atmosphere to get the audience intrigued and invloved in the movie with the mysterious vibes. 

Animatic

http://www.slideshare.net/jacko_lynd/animatic-7674695

As you will see the animatic is a lot different to the storyboard, this is because we created a second storyboard after the animatic as we felt the animatic was not strong enough as a trailer and we wanted to change the story. We felt that the animatic was to amuteur and that it would not challenge any forms of hegemony of the 21st centry.

Trailers

Trailer Purpose

Trailers are the film advertising tool which is the easiest way of getting to the mass audience. The purpose of a trailer is to give a insight into the film, it gives short synapses of the film to grab their intended audiences eye if they manage to do this then the key details such as the release dates will me noticed and the audience will start talking about the movie, this is the first step for the film as they are hoping that the intended audience will have been caught, then the use of word of mouth will start spreading, friends telling friends creating an even larger audience base. 

Trailer Conventions

Together as a class we looked at trailer conventions. How trailers are structured, and what they entail. Trailers give a insight into the film, a short synapses of the film to grab their intended audiences eye and then tell them the title and release dates. Trailers are exploited in several ways, they may be displayed on the TV, at the cinema, on the internet or you can usually get a critics review in the paper.

We concentrated on one particular film Piranha. The genre of this film is horror/thriller; It uses several different techniques to get its genre across to the audience in the trailer. The first two main things I would say they use to get your attention is what you're seeing and what you're hearing directly. 



Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW5_4gZ0Jn4



So as it is a horror/thriller they will want the tempo to be quite high, creating tension and a mystery to what is happening. To accompany this they use sound to create an atmosphere and to get your imagination going, the sound starting slowly and speeding up at particular moments grabbing your attention making you ask yourself what is going to happen at those several different points in the film. Along with the sound of the heart beat they added in the deep thumping sound, this may be used to get your own heart going by the tension it is building and the adrenaline which will be released.

The trailer shows a variety of things which the producer thinks will grab the audience’s attention making them want to come and watch this film. In this trailer they showed a large amount of partying and girls and guys in swimwear. I think they did this as it creates that elderly teenage atmosphere grabbing your attention by using props such as booze, swimwear, big speakers and big boat. A sort of ultimate party scenario. They then got across the horror/thriller genre of the film by showing specific points in the film which were increasingly bloody and would shock the viewer, making the audience ask themselves, "What is happening here ?", " This is new and different I wonder what will be next?", 

They also usually have a unique selling point, it can vary from having a very famous actor or having SFX, but in Piranhas case is was 3D, but as it is trailered on TV they could only show this using inter-titles. 

Trailer Research

Before we started planning our film we researched into other trailers which had they same genre as us thriller/horror. We focused on how they built up tension and there use of camera angles. Also how they structured there trailer. How they faded from one scene to the next in the film. 

Cobra. Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObUuFsYgyGE

The first trailer we looked at was Cobra, this film stars Sylvester Stallone. It is about psycho maniac who is on the loose trying to kill an innocent victim. I particularly liked this trailer because although it is short, it gives a good insight into the narrative and the plot. It introduces the victim and in the short time you come to feel sympathetic. It build ups a great amount of tension, you don't know how this fierce cop (Sylvester Stallone) will come to bringing down this criminal. It uses great camera angles and really grabs your attention.

 Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObUuFsYgyGE

The second trailer I watched was The Dark Knight, is based on the novel of Batman and has The Joker as the villain. It is very sarcotic and violent. The perfect thriller/horror. I loved this trailer because it built so much tension and showed the two main characters Batman and The Joker, and it makes you really want to watch the show down. The use of camera angles was very well done , it really helped create a tense atmosphere. The tempo of the editing, making your body release adrenaline whilst you sit down and watch. I liked this trailer very much due to those points of fast flowing tempo and getting the audience totally immersed.