Thursday 30 September 2010

Movie (Audience) Research

On the 30th of September 2010 I had undertaken some research from audiences around school asking what they believe make a good trailer. I had asked them questions such as "Why people choose the films they do, whether trailers make a difference, what attracts people to trailers and what putts them off; and the feedback that I got for the different questions were:

Why do people choose the films they do?

Jenny Brown: the genre attracts the film that I watch, therefore I believe that it is the same with other audiences.

Vidur Bharatram: I believe that people choose the films they watch because of entertainment value, genre and a good night out with friends/families.

Ahmed Mohammed: I think people choose the films that they do because it relaxes them and also allows them to enter their comfort zone, for example a old-aged woman/man would want to watch a horror film.

Gregor Sharp: I think that a lot of people choose the films that they watch not only because of the genre, but also the story line and cast for example majority of audiences would not be sure about a new film which has an unknown cast.

Whether trailers make a difference.

Jenny Brown: I would expect that trailers make a difference as they hype the films up and get audiences into the cinemas.

Vidur Bharatram: The trailers do make a difference as they promote the film by showing them not only in cinemas, but also after TV programs, and as a result this gets audiences exited and attracted to a certain genre.

Ahmed Mohammed: Trailers make a difference as the editing, mise en scene, cinematography and sound get the audiences into the mood of the film.

Gregor Sharp: I think that trailers do have an effect on audiences, as some trailers have an impact on audiences because the trailers are either well edited or easy to understand, however there are also negative effects as some trailers contain to little or to much information which can throw the audiences off balance, as a result this puts people off the film.

What attracts people to trailers.

Jenny Brown: I think that actors/actresses, music and storyline attracts a lot of audiences because the trailers always get their attention.


Vidur Bharatram: I would say that promotion is the key that attracts many audiences because then many people see after TV breaks and so on. The Cast is also an important factor as nearly everyone talks about actors and actresses and discuss if they are good entertainers. So yeah cast is another important factor.

Ahmed Muhammed: I think that many people always talk about cast, genre of the film and storyline, but seem to forget the directors and producers. What makes a good film and trailer overall is the way the directors and producers produce the product for the audience so I would say that directors and producers are important. Also the distribution and production studios are important as they also give an image to the films. 

Gregor Sharp: I would say that genres that have succeeded before will attract customers. Also the cast are a big part of attracting audiences as actors/actresses change the thought of the customers first impression of the film(s), for example if there is an actor/actress that has had success in past films and has a good reputation then more customers will be willing to see the movie, unlike an unknown actors or actresses. 


What puts them off 

Jenny Brown: I would say that I don't like low budget film because sometimes they look dodgy. I hate bad acting as it just ruins the film and dosent really get you in to the film.

Vidur Bharatram: I really don't like watching films that don't have a good cast even if they are good actors, but thats really my opinion.

Ahmed Mohammed: The things that put me off some films are due to the poor prduction of the trailers that they produce and if I don't understand what is going on and the storyline isn't coherent enough then I don't bother to watch the film. I also dislike unknown casts. 

Gregor Sharp: I'm a very relaxed person and like to be adventures. I watch any genre film really, but what really puts me off a film is when the trailer looks amazing, but then when you watch the actual film it's not as good as it seems in the trailer a good example is 'Clash Of The Titan'. Also I really dislike low budget films as some of them look bad or seem to be as not much time has been put in to it. Another factor are film series, for example I enjoyed 'Pirates Of The Caribbean' but making two films was a bit too much as I thought they weren't as good as the first part.

With these comments my group will try and make our film as high quality as possible. We know what people want or desire in a film so this gives us a ideas to build on, which is always a good way to start. So we will discuss what the group as a whole wants to do and create a stroyline and a story board.

Posted by Sultan Mackinnon
Candidate Number 3641

 

Wednesday 29 September 2010

Final Decision on Genre

After a long discussion we finally found the genre that we are going to use for our Film Trailer. After we'd found that the genre teen horror would be a good idea, we thought of using that genre and add a few elements of thriller. This is a very common combination that is very popular now a days. These movies have more of a scary factor than blood and gore that is common in usual horror movies. We will try to make a movie that is comparable with "Paranormal Activity". Obviously we are not going to copy the storyline, but we are going to have a look at the filming methods and how the scary aspects of the film have been built in.
Paranormal Activity is a low budget film, that has been very successful and very impressive, that shows that even we, as a group can do a good film trailer with limited equipment and maybe not the most high tech softwares.
Another good movie with good aspects of the genre we've chosen is The Traveler. It is a very good movie that has been produced very recently in 2010. The genre is classified as Thriller/Horror, there is a very good mix of both aspects that is visible while watching the movie.
The main points that we have to look at now are, to find out the key elements of the genre Teen/Horror...
The main aspect of nearly every horror movie is that it involves normal people, living a normal live, but then suddenly their live changes because something happens. At the beginning of the movie the environment is usually very bright and there is no sign of horror, but through the progression of the movie, things change and the real story -> genre pops in. This is a very common point that nearly all horror movie producers use to build up the perfect tension and fear while watching the movie.
Another main point would be the location where the story is set, it has to be a very specific location, making it possible to build up the aspects of tension and fear. It is not easy to create these feelings in a movie, but when successfully realized the effect on the audience is tremendous.
One of the main key elements of the genre "Horror" is the editing, this has to be done in a specific way to, again get the wanted Horror feeling.
The acting will probably be one of the most difficult key element, but this is less of a problem because we are more concentrated on the actual shots and editing, I'm pretty sure we'll find a way to get some good actors for our trailer.

Written by SHS Production
Henri Yueksel (4450), Sultan Mackinnon (3641) and Sonia Routledge (3825)

Tuesday 21 September 2010

Trailer Research

From looking at various trailers on YouTube, and looking at different types of movies both in class and in our free time, we came to decide that the genre of movie we thought would be most effective and entertaining would be a Teen Horror.
Although it may be something that is quite difficult to make, we thought it would have the biggest impact on the watching audience and would be most likely to capture the attention a lot more of that of a Romance or Comedy.
We realised that we are quite lucky with locations as most of the places around campus are spooky looking and have an eerie feel to them. This is much to our benefit as it means finding locations whilst filming will be a lot easier than if we were anywhere else.
A movie trailer that I was looking at on YouTube which was quite inspirational was “Cry Wolf"


I found the trailer interesting as it seemed to be quite popular and was put together in an interesting but yet simple way. The plot was believable as it wasn’t too complicated to carry out and I thought that doing something like this, simple and interesting would be beneficial to us.

Another trailer that I looked at was “the Season of the Witch” starring Nicholas Cage. This trailer showed much greater complexity but was still along the same lines of what we are looking to produce. The locations for this trailer were obviously much more advanced and there were a lot of things in this that we would have found difficult to do in our own trailer. However it was good to look at this and pick out various different ideas that gave us a contrast between other teen horrors.
All together we think that our Teen Horror trailer will be both interesting and exciting to watch. If we do start filming and decide that what we have chosen is far too complex or will be difficult to complete, we could always change either the story line and how complicated we have made it to produce, although we will try to keep it simple whilst still being entertaining.




Posted by Sonia Routledge

Monday 20 September 2010

Trailer Research

As you probably know the genre that my group has picked for our 2 minute trailer is "Teen Horror" and the two trailers that have inspired me are 'My Soul To Keep' and 'When A Stranger Calls'.

My Soul To Take
My Soul To Take is an upcoming 3D movie which is produced by Wes Craven, Iya Labunka and Anthony Katagas. The film is not released yet and already it seems to me that it will be viewed by many teenagers around the world. Teen Horror films to me have always been amusing to watch, the trailers that they show are very predictable however some kind of twist behind the story. The cast in most Teenage Horror films have attractive actors and actresses; this is a technique that nearly all the films use to attract the opposite gender, you can see this in the trailer. The reasons why I had chosen this trailer is because it dose not seem to be difficult to produce as it has simple shots of the scenery in Riverton, and at my school we have a lot of beautiful scenery and open spaces to film. There are simple shots such as close ups, tracking shot and mid shots. Also the mise-en-scene dose not seem to be a problem as nearly every teenager wear simular clothes to one another, such as a pair of jeans and shirt. The editing throughout the trailer is very simple, but fast. Within the editing the producer has placed the most exiting scenes into the trailer to really attract the audiences.The only nuisance would be that we would not have any SFX, however this is not a problem as  if there aren't any SFX then it makes the trailer more frightening as it seems more realistic if a man is chasing you rather than a large monster. In this trailer I also like the soundtrack as well as the editing. It really gets the audiences attention as it is aimed at teenagers.



When A Stranger Calls
I would expect our film trailer to be a bit like 'When A Stranger Calls' as it does not contain a lot of special effects. I think that this film is original to the other Teenage Horror films as its not about a curse, monster or a ghost, but just something that could happen to anyone. I like the idea of the stocking of the young teenager as it really makes the trailer effective as to other trailer such as Paranormal Activities. The beginnings starts off with a shot which slowly gets closer and closer to the phone this is called a 'close up shot'. This is really the key prop in the film as the stalker keeps calling the young girl and describing every move that the she makes.  The scenes are also very simple and very possible to take as it is scenes of the girl walking around the house. Also there arent really any difficult shots to put in execpt for the crane shot when the girls father drives her to the house. There isn't really a soundtrack in the background however there are sudden hart beat sounds to shows the audiences how frightened the girl is or a continues high pitched sound to build up the climax. The film also includes ambients sounds such as the ringning of the phone, this again concentrates on the phone and makes it the key element. The picthed sound and heart beat make the audiences mind to anticipate the next beat, this is to get the crowd in the cinema or in the living room to get involved with the moment and concentrate on the scene, this also shows that you do not need music to produce a scary atmosphere, just a simple beat; unlike in 'My Soul To Take' the editing are much more and faster. And as a group our aim is not to make a complex storyline; just something very simple so that everyone can watch with good filming, sound, mise-en-scene and editing.




Posted by Sultan Mackinnon
Candidate Number 3641


Trailer Inspiration "Teen Horror"

The trailers that I was watching to get some inspiration are not very up to date, because I thing the first "Teen Horror" movies are the best and not as trashy as the newer one's (for example Freddie vs Jason, Friday the 13th 2009 remake etc.) .

The Blair Witch Project

The first trailer is "The Blair Witch Project (1999)". This is one of the first Teen/ Horror Movies that I watched when I was very young, about 11 years old. The first time I watched this movie I was very scared but I was already able to see the difference between reality and fiction. I knew that the movie was all acting and that there is a myth that the Blair Witch truly exists. The main aspect of the movie, that I thought was very good and very significant was that nearly the whole movie was filmed, from the view of the characters, they actually held the camera to make it look like they would be filming (see "Paranormal Activity") what goes on in that forrest. This main aspect was used to make the movie very believable, that actually some audience thought that the Blair Witch really existed.
Unfortunately I couldn't find a good trailer to analyze.

Halloween Trailer

The Trailer is "Halloween" a very old movie but still one of my favorite old school teen horror movies. It contains everything: A mentally disordered murderer, creepy and dark locations, a perfectly matching soundtrack amazing storyline and perfect day of happening -> Halloween!
If that's not enough for a perfect horror movie then I don't know what else is missing.



This is a remake of the old Halloween series. There are two remakes of Halloween, Halloween 1 and the sequence Halloween 2 (The first one is a good remake, the second one is more trying to make money out of it.)
The trailer has a very fast editing that, with short footage of the movie cut together and a narrator summarizing the story.
The trailer contains a lot of atmospheric music that is played in the background followed by the legendary "Halloween Soundtrack" that you can hear at the end of the trailer. Everything combined together gives Halloween the perfect Teen Horror feeling containing a very creepy and believable story (even though everything is fiction), fitting characters, mostly teenagers and young adults and one of the main characters an old detective that has played in all the Halloween movies and plays a key role, fitting location, a small town where something terrible happened and a unbelievably scary murderer...
The trailer contains a lot of close up shots of the main character and murderer "Michael Meyers". The main character is introduced at the beginning of the trailer as a little child, that later turns into a masked murderer. To make him significant, he is often filmed as a whole in one shot, as well as a lot of close up shots like I already said.
The editing bulilds up the thrilling feeling you get while watching the trailer in addition the atmospheric sound in the background makes it a perfect horror and classic horror trailer.

Freddy vs Jason Trailer

The Third Trailer that I've chosen is Freddy vs Jason. A very special Teen Horror movie where teens aren't the main characters, but Freddy Krueger, a murderer with long metal claws and Jason, a murderer wearing a hockey mask.



This movie trailer has a even faster editing than the Halloween trailer. This is because the trailer only consists of short clips of the movie, containing no speaking parts. This is a very impressive method of doing a trailer, maybe not the best, well this is arguable.
The trailer contains a lot of explosions, fast action and teenagers. This is mainly because teenagers are the main target audience of the movie. The movie contains no difficult story, no difficult dialogues, just a lot of action, explosion, gore, violence, sfx and teenagers that are partying the whole time, well doing teenager stuff.
The two main characters of the movie are being introduced at the beginning, we don't know who they are and what they are. The story isnt very well summarised, that's because there isn't much storyline in this movie.
I really liked the movie because of it's bizzarre combination of two of the most evil characters in the history of horror, it is actually a battle between these two characters. This is combined with a lot of sfx, explosions and action what makes it very thrilling even though the storyline isn't really good, basically the storyline is the one from the older movies where these characters played in.

Written by Henri Yueksel
Candidate Number 4450

SHS Media Productions Introduction

We are proud to present our new production company for this year's A-Level portfolio. The team consist of 3 members: Henri Yueksel, Sultan MacKinnon, Sonia Routledge. We have chosen what we are going to work on this year and have also decided the genre of our movie trailer. We chose the genre "Teen Horror". Nowadays "Teen Horror" movies are very popular and often contain different aspects of comedy, whilst being a Horror movie. It had all started with the Scream movies and and old movie series of Halloween; with the famous murderer Michael Meyers and the classic fitting Halloween Soundtrack. These movies usually contained a group of young students/teenagers getting chased by a masked murderer.

Our Movie Trailer is going to be very simple whilst having a very complex story. A very good example for a simple Teen/Horror movie is "Paranormal Activity". A very impressive piece of film with a lot of good shots and even special effects that are very easy to put into practice with a very low film budget.

We will encounter different situations during this year, so the genre that we have chosen for our movie trailer might alternate throughout the weeks.

New Posts coming soon!

Written by SHS Media Prodcution
Sultan Mackinnon (3641), Henri Yueksel (4450) and Sonia Routledge