Our Horror Trailer: The Making Of..

The filming process for our production is now complete and in this post I will talk about the different locations we found and why we chose them as well as including pictures.

We used Tom's house for some of the scenes with the young boy, mother and brother in. This was appropriate because the main characters are a family so obviously they will need to be living in a house and this will need to be shown in the trailer in order for the trailer to be realistic.

We then used Sheldon Country Park for scenes for a chase and death scene, this is very conventional of the horror genre as woods/forests are often associated with it. We re-filmed the scenes we had originally done in the park as we felt the lighting the first time didn't create the feeling we were going for because at the time it was fairly sunny and bright, that is obviously not associated with the horror genre. When we re-filmed it, it was very cold and ground was frosty and because it had previously snow, it was quite dark in the day. The lighting that time round looked much better and as a group we were happy with it.

As well as the park, we also filmed in a location we previously scouted which was a tunnel. The tunnel itself was dark when inside and it was quite long in length so it was great to shoot a chase scene in. Tunnels and isolated areas are very conventional of the horror genre so as a group we feel this was a really effective place to have filmed.

After choosing and agreeing on the locations we were going to film in, we then needed to think about props. Props are an extremely important element in film as these are what tie everything together and make the plot as well as the whole feel of the production realistic. They help to give a production high levels of verisimilitude. After having a discussion with the group, we decided on what was needed and made sure that we could easily get hold of everything ready for filming.

I myself was able to provide some props from the list above, including that of the fake blood. It was fairly simple and the picture below shows how i made it. It looked quite realistic.

Final Decisions - Setting and Lighting.

The majority of our production will be set at Tom's house. This location was chosen because a bedroom was needed for the trailer and Tom's appeared to be the one with the best shape to it which would allow us to get all the angles and shots we needed without too much hassle. The shots we need for the production vary and some of them will be filmed using natural light and when the night comes and it is darker outside, the light in Tom's room can be used to replace it. What's also good about our chosen location is the fact that outside of Toms house, there are street lamps and so when we shoot scenes outside, the lamps can create a really interesting effect when teamed with the darkness.

References:

http://www.ehow.com/facts_6813553_visual-importance-stage-set-lighting.html - Accessed 21/01/12

Final Decisions - Sound.

When filming the animatic, we used a keyboard version of 'Santa Claus is Coming to Town'. It's played slowly and the tune itself is from a youtube video tutorial. As i said, we used for the animatic however we need to bare in mind copyright issues when we think about the soundtrack for our actual production. We do like the song that we found but we feel we could create something just as good ourselves using software like GarageBand. We will therefore consider using this song and if need be will contact the people who created it and see if it can be used. If we decide not to do this, we'll make our own music.

In terms of what we actually want our music to sound like, it needs to have that Christmas feel but should also work well in reflecting the horror aspect of our production. For that reason, whatever sound we go for, I think it needs to be slow in tempo as this can help with building up tension in scenes and creates a feeling of suspense and mystery.

When we have made a final deicison on our music, we'll post another update detailing what we are going to use.

Update: We have decided to search for copyright free music to use for our trailer. We have decided we need two separate pieces of music for our production; one for the start which is fairly slow and then another for fast paced, action packed ending of the trailer. The slow music will help to build up the tension and will fade into the fast paced music that we use. The two pieces we found are from the references below, one is entitled 'House of Leaves' and the other is entitled 'Music Box Opening'.
References:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8u1o3lfh7Hk - Accessed 15/01/12

http://incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/index.html?genre=horror - Accessed 15/01/12

http://www.jamendo.com/en/tag/horror - Accessed 15/01/12

Final Decisions - Costume.

As you can see from the image above, the costume for our main character is of course the iconic costume of Santa Claus. This an interesting choice of costume for the main character because the representation of Santa is one of a friendly character, one that children look up too, associated with the holiday that is Christmas. Therefore, the costume we have chosen clashes completely with the personality of our antagonist, he is evil and twisted with mental issues from his past childhood experiences. We can also notice some symbolization within our costume choice as well because to reflect the horror aspect of our production, the bright red of the Santa costume could signify blood.

References:

http://www.stnicholascenter.org/pages/origin-of-santa/ - Accessed 17/01/12

Final Decisions - Film Logo.

This is the final version of the film logo for our trailer. As a group, we looked at other drafs that Tom had created and came to the decision that certain elements from each should be combined to create the logo you can see above. I personally really like this film logo and I think it is really effective. As you can see, there is the Christmas elements with the tree and the snow-like background but it also features the horror aspects our of film with the letters dripping with blood and gothic font.

These are some of the other versions of our logo that Tom created:



References:

http://tomsa2media.blogspot.com/2012/01/film-logo-creation.html - Accessed 15/01/12

Animatic - Final Cut.

This is the final draft of the animatic for our horror trailer. As I said before, we re-did our storyboard as we didn't feel that it was up to scratch. Tom volunteered to create the animatic for us and he did so using a program called Adobe Premier Elements 9.

References:

http://dpallee.blogspot.com/2011/07/toon-boom-storyboard-prowhats-animatic.html - Accessed 15/01/12

Final Decisions - Props.

These are all the props we will need for our media production. As you can see, the props are connotative of Christmas with the tree and the Santa hat, but also convey elements of horror with the knife and the blood. We wont be needing anymore props because most of our trailer is filmed in a house which will already have any necessary objects that we might need to make the production realistic. Another prop we're using is Scrabble which of course well known family game which again fits in with the idea of Christmas and family and coming together. In the storyline however, we plan to use the Scrabble to leave a scary message for one of the characters in the trailer. so the representation and meaning of this game is changed.

A juxtaposition is created here with the props we are using because on one side we have the idea of Christmas, a joyful event which makes you think of family and the exchanging of gifts etc.. and then we have the knife splattered with blood which makes us think of death, fear and brutality. These are both complete opposites but they are being put together to create something which I think is quite unique amd therefore effective.

References:

http://www.ehow.com/about_6566170_importance-movie-props.html - Accessed 13/01/12

Weekly Blog Update #5.

We have now completed our location scouting and have posted the pictures from doing so. As well as this, we've also posted descriptions of why we feel each location we selected would be appropriate and effective for our production.

As a group we also decided to redo our storyboard because we did not feel it was good enough. We decided that there were certain aspects of it that weren't needed and that there were some scenes that needed to be added in. We have now created a new storyboard which we are all happy with and the next step now is to create the animatic for our trailer.

Once we have done the animatic, we will be discussing the final decisions for our production and will then finish off our production schedule. After this has been done, we can finally start our filming. We are hoping this will be within the next week or so.

Storyboard Pictures.

As you can see, these are pictures from the storyboard we have completed for our production. We have included what will be happening during the scenes and the type of shots or angles plan to use.

This is the second and final draft of our storyboard which we changed because we felt that we had left out key scenes in the trailer and that there were certain elements that we didn't actually need.

However, after having a discussion and making sure we thought precisely about each scene we chose, we have now created a storyboard which we are happy with. We will now proceed to create the animatic to go alongside it.

References:

http://multimedia.journalism.berkeley.edu/tutorials/starttofinish/storyboarding/ - Accessed 10/01/12

Location Scouting.

This is a shot of the entrance to a large park that i live near to. The park itself is extremely vast and considering our audience research results revealed that audiences preferred woody/forest areas as a setting, I think this location could come in useful for certain scenes in our trailer. I especially like the entrance to the park because if you look at the actual gate, they almost look like spikes in the ground and they're quite worn and old looking, I think this creates a really spooky look to the entrance and I think this could look really good in the trailer, especially if filmed at night. Also, the large trees around the entrance add to this creepy feel.

This is a shot from inside the park in a particular tree filled area. I think filming a scene within those trees and bushes you can see in this picture would be really effective and I think this location would be great for a chase scene.

Again, here is another shot of the park. As you can see at this side of the park, there is a long path from the entrance leading further into it. I think this path and the large trees all around the entrance would again be good for a walking scene through the perhaps, you could easily imagine someone trying to escape from the killer and following the path trying to get to somewhere safe or perhaps hiding within the trees. Once again, I feel this would be a really useful location to create some scary scenes with, especially if shot in the night.

References:

http://blog.production-now.com/2008/03/importance-of-location-scout.html - Accessed 6/01/12

http://www.videojug.com/interview/location-scouting-for-your-independent-film-2 - Accessed - 6/01/12

Weekly Blog Update #4.

So, some location scouting has already been done and photos of possible settings have been taken. We may need to do a little more scouting however, but this shouldn't take us too long.
I have uploaded the questionnaire analysis which i decided to format into a video.

(You can find my analysis video here).

I then identified the main points we need consider from the results that we gathered. Once we come back from Christmas break which is tomorrow, we can have a chat as a group and think about the findings we received from both the interview and questionnaire and make some finalization's.
What next? Well, we need to complete our production schedule but this wont stop us from going ahead with filming as we do already have the first few days accounted for and planned out. We are currently in the process of writing a script which shouldn't take too long and once we've had a group discussion, we'll be well on our way to beginning the filming stage of our production.

Questionnaire Results and Analysis.

I decided to post the results and analysis for the questionnaire our group did in a slightly different format, so i recorded a video which includes the results for each question in a chart and narrated over it. I used Windows Movie Maker to create the simple video, I added the photos from the graphs we made for our questionnaire results and then my sound recording over the top of it.

So, to conclude what i said in the video, the results and analysis that i spoke about is going to help our group to create something that our target audience will want to see. From the analysis we now know that we need to:

• Try to include a setting based around the woods or a forest and to include pictures of such in our locating scouting post.


• Focus particularly on music for our horror elements as this was deemed most important so we must choose an effective soundtrack for our trailer.


• Consider the use of gore and how to avoid the production looking tacky/cheesy.


• Take into account both the horror movies and Christmas movies that proved most popular with the people we interviewed. We know they enjoyed these films so it would be wise to take any inspiration we can from them. This may include watching the films or researching them if we aren't already familiar.


• Think about lead roles, female proved most popular so perhaps we need to further develop our current female characters so that they have a more dominant role in the production.


• Think about how we're going to succeed in putting across the thriller sub-genre to our production, find out what are the main elements of a thriller and try to fit them into our production.