Animatic . .

This is the animatic for our teaser trailer, we couldn't get the timing as exact as we would have liked it to be but when we make the actual teaser trailer it should be more specific to the timings on the storyboard.

Different Font Suggestions . .

Me and Carlaina have looked at many different fonts on the website http://www.dafont.com/ that we will consider putting on our teaser trailer, we looked at these seperatly to find out what we both came up with and found effective.

 We have chosen the title 'The Story of A Lonely Girl' because it is not as short and snappy as the usual horror film titles such as; 'Saw', 'The Ring' and 'Psycho'. It doesn't necessarily sound like a 'scary' title, which means we are challenging the conventions once again - it also shows that the 'villain' featured in our teaser trailer is also the protagonist as the story is about her.

The font we have chosen is;

We have chosen this because we like the idea that it looks like it is from a type writer meaning someone has written it, maybe like a diary. It also means when we put it onto our trailer we can maybe add sound effects as it comes onto the screen etc.

This is what it will look like on our trailer, we have inverted the colours because we wanted a black background, keeping with the dark mood of the film.

Genre Analysis . .

I have been looking into the genre of 'Psychological Horror' and looking at the key conventions of this genre, the sorts of films I will be looking at to get this information are - The Omen, The Ring, Blair Witch Project, Psycho, The Others . . 

Psychological horrors connect with the audience is a different way to the usual 'slasher' horror films such as; Saw and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. They do this by playing with the mind and on the audiences fears such as the dark or ghosts.

The definition of Psychological horror is -

"Psychological horror" is a subgenre of horror fiction that relies on character fears, guilt, beliefs, and emotional instability to build tension and further the plot. Psychological horror is different from the type of horror found in "splatter films," which derive their effects from gore and violence, and from the sub-genre of horror-of-personality, in which the object of horror does not look like a monstrous other, but rather a normal human being, whose horrific identity is often not revealed until the end of the work. Well-known examples of psychological fiction include The Sixth Sense and The Blair Witch Project. The Others is a more recent example of a psychological horror film"

This definition was taken from the website http://dictionary.babylon.com/psychological%20horror/.

Weekly Diary Entry . .

This week we have been working on the apple macs and I have found that the software on there is a lot harder than expected, I found the 'Final Cut Express' quite hard, but will have to watch the tutorial again to try and find our more. We have decided we will have to try and work on them again to figure it out ready for editing our teaser trailer.

By this time next week we should have hopefully chosen all our actors and will begin filming, as well as having made our animatics using 'Windows Movie Maker'.

We have also now started to use photo-booth, we will probably start recording our weekly diary updates on there :)

Production Schedule . .

As we are yet to find all our actors or finalise their decision's it is harder to find out when we will be filming definatly but we know when we would like to film and we hope to be finished after half term - 2nd November.
If we can get who we would like for our lead role, we hope to film the scene in town next friday which is the 22nd October, this will put us quite ahead of schedule as this will be the most difficult to film and if it goes wrong we will have to quickly think of another plan - the only actor we would need for this scene would be our main character and we would hope to use the Canon camera and a tripod.
In the half term we want to film the 'Tea Party' scene, it will be easier to do in half term as we should be able to get the actors we want because we're not at school and can be more flexiable with our filming - we would need 4 extra's for this scene and our main character using the Toshiba camera and tripod, but it is possible we will also be doing handheld.

We will fill out a more organised production schedule when we have everything finalised which should hopefully be by the end of this weekend.

Final Decisions . .

Sound Track

We have been searching on 'YouTube' for different ideas of the music we could include on our teaser trailer, although the music on 'YouTube' may be copy righted we can use it for inspiration when finding other pieces of music. The video above is a piano track of the nursey 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star', we like the first 28 seconds inparticular as it would fit with the first half of our teaser trailer and links with the fact our main character still acts like a child. It builds the right amount of tension we need and as it is a bit 'out of the ordinary' it fits with the psychologial element.

We will look around the internet for copy right free music, this is one of the websites we will use to help us;

https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AUseBOPe8QHnZGYyOWs0NTdfNHQ1c3F6Z3A&hl=en

Costume

These are images of the sort of costume we will be looking at for our characters, most of the images represent our main character such as the; masks, socks, dress, shoes and Alice In Wonderland. These images show our main characters personality because she is very childlike therefore wearing a small party dress, long socks and black pantent shoes which are steriotypical of a small girl. The mask is because she is obviously a murderer and will want to hide her identity. The dirty jeans are to show the victims in our teaser trailer as the tea party with the dead people will be in a forest and this will mean their clothing will  be dirty and ripped ect. The dead victims will also be wearing masks which makes them a game for her by dressing up her 'friends'.

I have looked at this website CLICK HERE to give us idea's about masks and what sorts of films use masks, luckily they're all similar genre's to ours - but none of them look like ours which makes me think our idea will be more original.

Lighting

Unless the weather is raining on the day of filming our 'Tea Party' scene this is what the lighting is most likely to look like. We will have to be careful that the tree's aren't blocking our actors because we won't be able to see them on the camera. We will be relying on the natural light for all of our teaser trailer because it is filmed outside. We will probably change the saturation of the teaser trailer when editing the film to reflect the dark mood.

Props

These images are all connected with the scene that we're filming in the forest because the scene in the middle of town won't include any props unless it is raining and we will include an umbrella. The tea party shows how all of this is like a childhood game for her and we thought of a tea party because it is included in many 'Disney' films showing that it is something children can relate to, but contrasting to this is the fact she is a murderer and not innocent at all. Juxtaposing to the happy tea party images is the splash of blood and ropes showing the sinister side of the trailer.

Shot by shot analysis . .

Click on these images to see them larger!

I looked at 'The Blair Witch Project' teaser trailer and have done a shot by shot break down as I thought I could look at it in more detail rather than looking at the trailer as a whole.

Shot Analysis . . .

The Strangers.

This image is from the horror film 'The Strangers', the type of shot used is a long shot from an eye level view. I think they used a long shot to show the murderer in the back ground and the audience know something the character doesn't.The villan is also looking at the audience/the character giving it a voyeristic feel. The lighting the main part of the scene where the woman is standing is quite bright and well lit, constrasting to the dark shadow that the villan is standing it - connotating the different personalities to the audience.

Treatment . .

We are going to twist the conventions of character roles within media texts by making our protagonist also the villain, the protagonist posses an obscure aim/motivation for their behaviour – as our intentions are to play around with our audiences emotions psychologically. Our focal character is a woman who dresses and behaves in a childlike manner, hinting to their subsequent mental instability. These factors challenge the usual stereotype of a serial killer in a typical horror movie; we are doing this because this sort of costume conveys innocence and vulnerability – provoking empathy for our protagonist. This is unconventional as in most cases the killer is usually a dominant male but we want to break the stereotype, such is seen in ‘The Grudge’ or ‘The Ring’.

We have thought about the formation of our plot, in the 3 Act Structure of media texts;
1. The Set up – This is where we follow round the protagonist during her murdering spree where she advances on her victims, we don’t see the killings directly but the violence is still reflected through codes and conventions through the key signifiers.

2. The Set back – We would start to reveal some of the protagonist’s history and clues as to why she is mentally disturbed in this way, through the use of flash backs.

3. The Resolution – The viewer would have hopefully built up some empathy for the protagonist at this point, in terms of audience reaction we want a mixed response – therefore it is likely we would have the protagonist kill or herself or be killed towards the end of the film.

There are many different settings we have considered for our film, these are our main ideas;
- The town centre – we would like to use this because it is an unlikely setting for a killer as there are many people around and usually they are in secluded environments. It also links to the theme of being ignored because even though she is in this busy environment everyone is just walking past leaving her unacknowledged this conveys her intense feelings of loneliness and neglect.
- A forest – this is where we will feature the tea party scene, which symbolises a child’s games with a sinister twist. We are using a forest because it is muddy and murky and symbolises the lack of nourishment and life (the trees will be bare). It seems like a suitable setting because the guests at this tea party are dead – also highlighting the violent element to the storyline. The idea of befriending the corpses shows the viewer how the protagonist is craving friendship and is incapable of building a “normal” relationship due to her past.

The main binary oppositions that feature in our film would be;
Sanity/Insanity
Childhood/Adulthood
Innocence/Guilt

Logline - A young tormented girl builds friendships that have devistating outcomes.

By establishing a storyline for our over film, we are now able to pick out the main features from the idea of the film and put them into our teaser trailer.

Teaser Trailer Analysis . .

I think that we will be basing our teaser trailer on Psychological horror, the main features of this type of horror rely on the characters fears, guilt and beliefs. They play on these with eerie sound affects, relevant music and the emotional instability of the characters. They are not like the usual 'horror' films that depend on blood and gore that 'slasher' films are based on but focus on the paranormal or the 'unseen' fears and play on the audiences emotions.

I will now analise 3 different psychological horror teaser trailers -


The Omen



Although this is a longer teaser trailer than the ones I had previously looking at I think the simplicity of it is very effective as it challenges the conventions of a teaser trailer because it is not full of fast flashing images. In the trailer the little boy who we assume is the main character is wearing all red - which can be seen as romance but when paired with the eerie swing sound only and the dark lighting it is obvious there is something sinister about his character and the red more than likely symbolises danger. The dog at the beginning - rottweiler - is often percieved as a visious guard dog and the audience are left wondering what or who the dog is guarding. The camera is pretty simple on this teaser trailer but really leads the audiences eye around what they feel is most important e.g; the young boy, the dog, the deserted playground, the swing. I think the swing and deserted play ground are important parts of the teaser trailer as they show you that something is not right with the little boy but him being on the swing gives him a sense of innocence. The young boys face is in black and white and he often smurks suggesting he is a dark character and the smurk shows he is up to no good.

The Strangers



I think 'The Strangers' may follow the conventions of usual teaser trailers in ways as it contains the fast moving images, but then in does challenge it in others because opens the trailer like a documentary with a rhetorical question, drawing the audience in. It is unconvential for a horror trailer - but this would be the psychological element of the film, there to confuse the audience. The way the beginning of the trailer contrasts to the faster part of the trailer shows that the film may be different paces and as it doesn't give that much of the story line away just gives images of key shots from the film, I think it makes the viewer want to see more. How the images of houses at the begining change from bright and happy looking neighbour hoods to more sadistic looking images with crosses through the houses it suggests to the audience that what happens in the film is planned. Unlike a lot of other teaser trailers there isn't a voice over giving information on the film, I think that having lack of speech adds a sense of mystery to the film, especially with this trailer because the main bits of speech are "you're gonna die" and screams. Linking to this is the fact that the trailer doesn't really give you much information about the acutall film like a theatrical trailer would - all we find out is the name of the film, 'based on true events' and the name of the two main actors - showing that the trailer is probably made before the date of realise has been decided.

Mise-en-scene Analysis

 'The Excorsist' - 1973.

The setting is an outside an old large house showing that the people he is going to see may be wealthy. Only one light is on upstairs it draws attention to it and shows that this is the room most important and something mysetrious may be happening in there. Adding to this is the fact he is looking up at that particular window. The male is the only character shown in this image, as he is all in shadow and black it adds mystery to his persona, the hat and the breifcase show that he may be there for business and doesn't have a connection with the house he is visiting. Although he is in black there is a light shining on him drawing the audiences attention to him, the fog surrounding him can show the time of year and just adds to the mystery of the image.