Trailer Commentary

Questionnaire

As part of my market research, I decided to produce and hand out a questionnaire aimed at teenagers from the age of 15 and onwards, to help me work out how to make my slasher horror successful. I randomly selected 30 students of which were 15+ to answer my questionnaire.

Below is the questions and results from the questionnaire.

1.) Do you enjoy watching slasher horror films?

In order to understand the interests of my potential market, I needed to know the percentage of those who enjoy watching slasher horror films to help me generalise the answers. It was good to know that 80% of the people enjoy watching slasher horrors therefore allowing me to analysis the other results in working out what their possible opinion will be on my film.

2.) Would you prefer to see a male or female killer?

To help me in deciding whether my killer should be male or female , I decided on asking this question. Although initially, I was going to use a female killer to challenge conventions and show that a female can look as daunting. After having thought about it carefully along with taking my research into consideration, I found that this may a little more complicated. Additionally, as I was required to produce a teaser trailer, it would be a short clip, therefore I wanted my audience to have a stereotypical assumption of the film.

3.) Would you find a slasher horror film scarier if the killer was masked?

From secondary research looking into conventional slasher horror killers, I found that one thing they all have in common is the either wear a mask or dehumanise their face. I wanted to ask this question to see whether this placed great importance in whether an individual would find the film scarier. By looking at the percentages, only 40% said no while 60% said yes. I didn't want my killer to be masked as I want to emphasis the fact that he is just an ordinary person and want to show that a killer can still look as daunting and scary without a mask.

4.) Do you think a film is scarier when it is set indoors rather than outdoors?

The location in which a horror film is set can often determine whether someone finds the film as scary as if it were set somewhere else. As I have chosen to set my footage indoors, I wanted to know whether this will have an effect on the reactions of my target audience and their opinions. On this question, I found that the percentages were in fact very close with 55% of people choosing indoors as a scarier setting and 45% believing the opposite. As the percentages were very close, I didn't focus too much on whether is would make a difference, for as long as it's set in the right environment.

5.) Would the release date of a horror film encourage your decision to go and watch it?

Often the release date can have a major impact on the amount of people who go out and watch a film. For example, those who may not go to the cinema very often, may in fact choose to go and see a scary film around the Halloween period. However, when I looked at the results from this question, I found that only 25% of people feel the release date has an effect on whether they would go and watch the film. I have decided to not place great importance on the release date as such, as I believe that it won't make much of a difference. On the other hand, I do feel that people are more likely to go and watch a film in the cinema around winter time rather than summer due to the weather.

Film Magazine

As part of the marketing campaign for my slasher horror film, I was required to create a front cover for a film magazine. I looked at all the still images taken during the filming and picked out one fo the most powerful ones. I chose a shot of the killer with his weapon to emphasis the slasher horror genre following conventions. The image that I chose was a still which was taken whilst filming our teaser trailer rather than an image taken on a photo shoot to add to its authenticity.

->Final Magazine Cover<-

->Layout Design / Plan<-

->First Draft<-

->Inspiration<-

I researched Fangoria magazine, as inspiration for our own magazine. I liked the use of the bold title and the dominance of the image. FANGORIA magazine is specially dedicated to the horror genre. Again, the image of a victim in SAW V dominates the entire page, a convention that was repeated throughout our research. As to stay true to the conventions within horror, I tried my best to make my image of my killer dominate of the front cover of my film magazine.

Film Poster

As part of the marketing campaign, we were asked to design a film poster to help advertise and promote our teaser trailer. I decided on an image where the killer is presented yet his identity cannot be seen to create a more sinister effect. I also decided that the setting in which the image was taken would have an impact on the effect given to the audience

->Film Poster<-

->Inspiration<-

I studied the conventions of a slasher horror movie poster and found that most images were of the antagonist in disguise or wearing a mask. However, as I decided the challenge these conventions, I made sure any shots of the killer were sillhoetes or simply just dark.

I took inspiration from the film poster, 'Nightmare on Elm Street' and decided to develop some of the conventional horror elements that it displayed. Aswell as this poster, the game over poster only presents minimal detail of the antagonist due to the use of the dark background with the red tint. This helps to create an enigma around the character, drawing in audiences as they ask questions about how and why the character is presented in this way.

The image of the killer has also been stylized using adobe photoshop to enhance his evil persona. The original picture background was in fact normal;in colour. A red tint was added in attempting to make the poster appeal to the slasher horror genre. The font for the title of the film was the same font used in the film.This was to bring about awareness so if someone had seen either the poster or film, they would be able to identify it through the title. The title was smudged to give a dripping blood effect which will add to the emphasis of the genre.

Trailer Soundtrack

In making a slasher horror trailer, I initially looked to use fruity loops software to create and edit the soundtrack for the movie. I created 3 different instrumental soundtracks which I sampled and decided on the best one to use. I chose to only use a part of the soundtrack created as I had also sourced another sample from istock audio http://www.istockphoto.com and overlaid both sounds (although subtle in the background) created scary and intense build up that fitted the slasher horror movie perfectly. Istock Audio had a huge library of royalty free music and soundtracks that were downloadable for only a few credits.

Before having created the soundtrack, I played existing horror trailers from http://www.apple.com/. I let it play and turned my screen off to allow me to focus mainly on the sound. After listening to 3 different horror trailers, it helped me when it came to actually creating it for myself. However, I thought of challenging conventions and added a deep heart beat tone which put you in the perspective of the killer. The heart beat starts off slowly and then when he finally finds his target his heart rate increases and so does the speed of the footage. I thought of doing this due to the fact that I remembered that our target audience was 15-19 and I wanted it to relate to them. During my research and planning, I found that sound is an important factor and plays a big part in the creepy horror effect of the trailer that I am looking to do.

Filmworks Logo

This is the first image that the audience will see while watching the trailer and so had to be simple, as not to over power the whole teaser, but also eye catching so that audiences will never forget it.I researched into existing film production logos and developed ours so that it would be original and easily recognisable. A commonality between logos was that they were simple yet bright, nothing was to wordy and all had relevance for the products they were promoting.

This COLUMBIA logo connotes an all American company as the image of a lady is draped in an American flag. She is also carrying a torch and is placed, again within the clouds, which suggests power and authority.

The HAMMER logo is a company, based in the United Kingdom which specialises in Horror films. HAMMER productions were a low budget company, like ours, which promoted British actors. The logo is very simple with red uppercase bold font with a black background. The use of red in the font represents blood which links the logo to horror films. I took some inspiration from this logo as it is horror based. Before having done research into film logo's, I thought about using the colour red for the font.

The integration of the cog in the word 'Works' is an obvious symbol of movement and progression, all positive attributes for a creative company. It also resembles a circular saw or instrument of torture hinting towards the Horror genre

Font Ideas

I researched into fonts that I could use when creating the poster or film magazine. I used the website http://www.dafont.com/ I got a variety of font ideas and put it all into one to be able to make comparisons and see which one stands out the most. I aimed to look for a drip looking effect to respresent blood which will be clearer when coloured in red giving the real slasher horror effect.

When searching for a font style that's similar to the one I plan to use for our slasher horror, I found this one to be the most effective initially in choosing how the "Game Over" should be written. I thought that the idea of blood looking text against a white background looked quite realistic and would stand out. After having analysed this, I created my own version on Adobe Photoshop of how it would look featuring my movie.

What I then discovered was that when I applied the graphic font to the trailer it seemed to loose its gamer feel. I then went back realised what was needed was a more gamer or computer graphics style font which which bring the whole movie together. Once we had chosen the font 'PixelSplitter' I then looked to recreate the blood dripping style on top of this blocky font... and feel that it worked well. Also the font needed an extra something to give it that creepy and dark feel so I looked to blur its slightly and add a glow behind it in photoshop which also created an illusion as if you are watching this through the hazy eyes of the disturbed gamer.

On the Final scene of the trailer you can see the original 'PixelSplitter' style font 'Game Over' and then by adding a transition between the bloody version it created an effect as if the text onscreen was slowly dripping.