Our trailer

This is our finished trailer.

Louise

Story Boards

These are the storyboards for our final trailer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Louise

Classification of our trailer

Me and Scarlett now need to classify our trailer, so that we can put the age certificate on our posters and magazine covers. We are going to take everything into consideration that the BBFC looks out for when they are classifying films and film trailers. At the moment I feel like our film trailer is a 15, this is because of the genre of the film and the fact that the trailer doesn't show much horror or violence, but the horror and violence is suggested.
Louise

The Pin Board Shot

We have used the pin board shot in the trailer to give an immediate link between why the young girl is being targeted. We have zoomed into the pin board and we have moved the shot down so the shot zooms in and drags down. This then concentrates on the girls picture and then quickly cross dissolves onto a shot of the girl typing on her computer, this makes a link with who the character is and that he is after her.

Louise 

Change Of Font Colour Throughout The Trailer

When we watched our trailer the full way through we discovered that the colour of the text didn’t go with the trailer. The white just seemed too bright and our film is dark and dingy so the fact that the white was light and bright just didn’t go. We did originally change one of the text font colours to red and it looked much better, it fitted in better with the dark and eerie theme. So we decided to use the red colour all the way through the trailer. It also shows horror, fear and danger, this fits in with the narrative of our trailer. 

Louise 

The Caretaker name shot

Me and Scarlett both decided that we should use the title for the trailer that I made out of newspaper clippings of which I mentioned earlier. We decided to use it because it breaks up the title from the other texts. We put an X-ray effect over the short clip of film; this gave the name more of a horror genre look, as without it the shot looked plain and it didn't fit in with the rest of the trailer. We also changed the saturation and light effects to make the shot look darker and to make it fit in better with the rest of the trailer. 

Louise 

Trailer Text

We felt as though the opening text on our trailer was too long so we shorted it down. We wanted for the text to be short and simple, so we started to look at nursery rhymes as they have a good, short and simple flow to them.   We decided to use a line from Humpty Dumpty:

''All the king's horses and all the king's men
couldn't put Humpty together again.''

This is the real version; we changed some words in it and came to this: 

''All the king's horses and all the kings men

Couldn't put his victims together again.'' 

This was too long and the king's horse’s part didn’t fit in with the idea of the trailer. So we cut that part out so it now says:

''All the king's men 

Couldn't put his victims together again''

This sounds a lot better than the first idea of 

''A school full of children,

One killer caretaker, 

And his thirst to kill''

The text also fits in with the storyline of the trailer, the king's men being the police and the not being able to put his victim's together meaning that he killed his victims so they were unable to get them back. 

Louise 

Shot of pin board

After taking the pictures of the pin board, I filmed a simple medium close up of the pin board, this shot just shows the pin board hanging up on the back of a door.

Louise 

Removal of slow motion shot

Me and Scarlett were not sure whether the slow motion reaction shot fitted in with the trailer as it was a reaction shot of someone different to who the trailer was mainly based around so it just didn't fit in. We made the decision that we should cut the slow motion shot out. We thought that it would confuse the audience.
Louise

Sound Effect of camera

We wanted to make the first small sequence of the trailer seem as thought the police were taking pictures of the lock on the door and the door with the police tape on it. We thought that this would be more obvious if we put a camera shutter noise over the shots. We then put a fade to white transition in-between the shots, this looks as thought the transition is a camera flash going off. I speeded up the fade to white transition so that the transition was really quick, as it didn't look realistic enough when the transition was slower.
Louise

Shot of Lock

We got a shot of a lock, we wanted this to be mysterious and show that something is hidden behind the door, in this case it was the caretakers room. I put a red tint over the shot, and changed the saturation and brightness to make the shot look eerie. The red also shows that danger is hiding behind this locked door. This is the unedited shot of the lock.

Louise 

Shot of police tape on door

Today we got some red and white tape, which is acting as police tape. We tied the tape across the door and left a little bit of the tape hanging of the door handle, we thought that this would look good, especially the way the tape blew in the wind, this made the shot look really eerie. This is the shot we have used in the trailer.

Louise 

Idea of Poster of trailer

Now that we are using the shot of the pin board in the trailer, I had an idea of putting the pin board as the main picture of the poster. I think that this would work well and fit in well with the trailer. It is really important that the poster and magazine cover fits in with the trailer. Hopefully this idea will work and if not it will be a great development in the construction of my poster and magazine cover.
Louise

Idea

I had an idea of using the pin board idea thought out the trailer. I thought that instead of having the chalkboard text on the trailer we could make the text out of newspaper cuttings. I think that this would look good and link in with the idea of the killer caretaker having a victims pin board.
Louise

Pin Board

I have spent time on the pin board for one of our shots. At first I had an idea of putting the title of the film on the pin board so I started with that. For the title I cut out articles from a  newspaper and pinned them to board. I then cut out the letters for the title using newspaper headlines. These are a few pictures of the title on the pin board.

I also got a recording of the title on the pin board just in case we decided to use it as the title showing in our trailer, this is the shot:

 

I made some fake newspaper headlines and printed them out. I then cut out some articles from a newspaper and they will act as articles about the killer caretaker. I have also got some pictures of celebrities and scribbled over their faces with red ink. I made a cut out headline which reads ''Young school girl solves caretaker murder mystery''  I have also done the same with the word ''Survivor'' and the name of the girl. This will help link in the ten year time period in our trailer. 

Louise 

Extra Shots

We really want to improve on the narrative of our trailer, so we have decided to add some extra shots to make the trailer look of a higher quality.

Pin board:

We thought of a shot of a pin board of the caretakers, it would be full of pictures of the students he killed, headlines about himself, newspaper cut outs. 

Police Tape:

We want to get a shot of a door with police tape on it, this door would be were the caretaker would hide all his killing implements and the pin board with all the information of the victims. 

We are hoping that these shots will help give enough of the narrative away, without giving away too much.

Louise 

Sound Track Used In Our Trailer

Me and Scarlett wanted music that creates an atmosphere of horror and suspension. We found it really hard to find music that fits in with the trailer. We both searched for ages trying to find the perfect music as it was really important to get right.The music we are using fits in perfectly and creates the atmosphere we wanted it to.
Louise

Dates Added

Me and Scarlett found that people didn't quite understand the time laps in our film trailer, we then thought that if we added two separate dates to show that the murder of the seven school children was in November 2001 and that the caretaker comes back in January 2011. We also found that some people didn't understand that the caretaker killed the students earlier and then he escapes form jail. I feel as though the dates that we have added make the trailer seem more understandable. The dates have gave more of an idea about what is going on and that the trailer is spilt into two different time periods.
Louise

Change Of Font Colour

We came up with the idea of having one specific frame of text in red. So we changed the font red, and it looks more powerful. We had a problem with the text sounding weak but when we changed one piece of text red it made it pop out and seem stronger. It also fits in with the usual conventions of a horror trailer.
Louise

Change Of Text

We have changed some of the text and moved things around. When we got a friend to watch over the trailer and they said that they didn't understand the narrative completely, so we are currently changing bits of the text so that the narrative is clear in the film, without giving too much away.
Louise

Shot colour change

There is a shot used of a character walking though the woods, we did put an effect over it called Hard Lighting, but I had an idea of showing that she is the victim by making the shot red. This shows that something bad is going to happen to this character and that she is the one that is being followed by the caretaker.
Louise

Nearly Finished

Me and Louise now are on the final stretch of our media trailer project.
Our film trailer is almost finished after a lot of changes we made to the narrative of our film.
Things we need to do still on our trailer are that we need to look over the trailer as it is and look at the text and if the narrative we are trying to portray is being understood by an audience.
This may mean we should get other groups of people to watch our trailer and then ask them what it is about, also the audience will be able to give us good comments that we can use to adjust our trailer so that the any audience will understand the narrative and will want to watch our film.
We also need to carry on researching films posters and film magazines front covers which will then lead us onto actually making our final products. We do not have too much to finish now but we will defiantly have to work hard so then we can look at everything and then make the final touches.
Scarlett

Text Idea

''One caretaker..
A school full of children..
His plan to kill..''
This is currently what the opening sentence of our trailer says, at first it said something along the lines of:
''Would you like the caretaker of your school to be planning to kill you''
I felt as thought we needed something short, snappy and something that gives the narrative within a few words. I have changed this on the trailer to see which one flows better and I have discovered that the second piece of texts works better.
Louise

Effects of shots

On our shots we have used the hard lighting effect, this is because it makes everything look a lot more dark and creepy. It makes the trailer a lot more scary, without the effects some of the shots just didn't look right for a horror film. Using the hard lighting effect over the hot has defiantly made the trailer look more real and professional. It's also a usual convention of horror films to have dark and eerie shots.
Louise

School Bell sound effect

When I was looking for a sound effect of a door bell, I came across the sound effect of a school bell. This sounds really authentic, it goes with the theme of the murder being a caretaker. I have placed the sound effect at the beginning of the trailer, when you see the caretaker walking down the corridor with two bin bags full of unknown items. I think that this sound effect of the school bell will make the indication of the narrative more clear.
Louise

Slow motion shot

The slow motion shot that we did at the beginning of our filming has been placed into our trailer.I initially split up the shot of the slow motion and placed it in different areas of the trailer. When I added more shots in, it didn't look right so I took all of the slow motion shots out and put the whole shot into the trailer. I then made the shot faster, the quicker shot goes well with the trailer and you can still see the effects of the slow motion camera.
Louise

The name of our trailer

When I told Scarlett about my issue with the name of our trailer she understood what I meant by how the name of I Am Here doesn't give a clear idea of what the film is going to be about. We then came to the decision that changing the name to The Caretaker would make more sense and would give the audience a clear idea of what the film is about.
Louise

Transition

I found that we had used fade to black all the time, I felt as thought this was too boring and that I wanted a more interesting transition, even thought fade to black is a convention found in horrors. I came across the transition called Cross Dissolve, It is where one shot cross onto another one, this form a better flow and looks good with some of the shots. I have placed them in various parts of our trailer for example when the caretakers hand is grabbing onto the students neck, this then goes to a shot of the caretaker looking thought the window. I really like this transition and it has defiantly improved the quality of our trailer.
Louise

Change Of Font

When we were watching our trailer over, I realised that the font we used didn't match with what our film is about. So I found a chalkboard font that I thought would go really well with our trailer, seen as thought our film is about a caretaker of a school.
Louise

Filming

Me and Scarlett did some more filming today in school. We borrowed a brush, a bag full of playing balls, a hard hat and a high visibility jacket, as I said earlier, we decided on the the murder in our film to be a caretaker of a school who gets arrested for murdering students. This tells the story better and explains why the murder is in jail. Here are the shots that I filmed today.
Louise

Name of our film trailer

We have had a bit of trouble with the name of our film trailer, Scarlett wants the name I Am Here, but I feel as thought it doesnt tell the story and what its about. I want The Caretaker, I feel as though this tell the story better and fits in with what the trailer is based on. We are going to talk about this and make a decision.
Louise

Trailer Update

Me and Scarlett spent the whole day today editing our trailer. We need to put some more sound effects on and decide on a name as I feel that the name isnt relevent to what our trailer is about. We also did some more filming, as Scarlett suggested the murder could be a caretaker, this would give away a little bit more of the main charactors past.
Louise

Change Of Narrative

After our decision on making our narrative different we found it hard to come up with ideas to show the narrative clearly also we don't want our trailer to look too much like the Paranormal Activity trailer. Scarlett came up with a good idea about a convict escaping from jail and hiding out in houses of a road call Hitrees. We did some voice overs which should hopefully tell the story more, without giving too much away.
Louise

In the half term holidays me and Louise decided to get together and finally record the voice overs for our film. We have changed our original film trailer idea's a lot and thought that having a news report voice over at the very beginning of our trailer will really set the scene.
For the very end of our trailer we wanted a police phone call recorded to give our trailer another eerie feel.

Here are some of the voice overs we have so far recorded.

Scarlett

Editing

We are currently editing our trailer, and we were showing it to some friends to get their honest opinion on whether the trailer is telling the story. A few people didn't quite understand what was going on. They also said that our CCTV camera shot was defiantly a good idea, and a few of the people we showed it too compared it to Paranormal Activity. Both I and Scarlett decided we should make it seem like more of a homemade/ handheld camera movie, this would mean we would be able to explain the film plot more in the trailer without dumbing down the audience. We are planning to get some more CCTV camera shots and I personally feel that this will help tell the narrative of the trailer better. In the mean time I will be researching into the Paranormal Activity and looking at the poster and film trailer. Also to see how they have been able to make the storyline of the film clear in the trailer.
Louise

Update Of Trailer

At the moment we have all the shots we need for our trailer. We are undecided about whether we should use the monster shot, but I’m sure that once we have put in the music and the rest of the sound effects we can come to a decision on what looks best.
Louise

Monster shot

I wanted to get a shot of the monster in our trailer because it would make it more obvious what the narrative was. I also thought that seeing the shot of the monster would make it easier to link it with the poster and the front cover of the magazine without having it look like they both were from different films. My first idea was to have a shot of the character doing her make-up in the bathroom mirror, and then the reflection of the monster and then the character turns around to reveal there is no monster there, this didn't work very well when I practised, so I decided to have the shot in the bathroom still, but using candles as it creates an eerie atmosphere. Then for the character to walk away from the mirror and to see the monster in the mirror, then pan around to show a close up of the monsters face for a second.  Here are a few shots of what I took.
Louise

Clock Shot

I had an idea of getting a shot of a clock ticking towards midnight. I filmed it against a pink wall and when I thought about it I'm not sure whether it looks right or not.Using a black and/or white background with the clocking ticking would fit in better with the genre, also the clock has a red second hand, this denoted danger, this fits in with the genre of our film.
Louise

Opening front door and CCTV camera shots

The opening the front door and the CCTV camera shots were fairly simple to do, but we had to find the perfect positioning of the camera to get the right shot.

CCTV Camera Shot
 For the CCTV camera shot, We took two shots of the CCTV camera scene, the first one was a tester shot and the second one was the real shot, but we are using the tester shot because it fits in better with the rest of the shots in the trailer. These are the two CCTV camera shots:

Opening door shot
It took us two tries of getting the opening door shot. On our first go I walked in front of the camera but you couldn't understand what was going on so we did the shot again. The second shot we did looks much better, it is a medium close up of the main character opening the door, looks eerie as well because you can just tell something bad is going to happen. It also looks as though the character is inviting danger into her house, the way that the door opens with just the view of her hand. These are the two shots of the opening door scene.
Louise

Switching off of lights

Scarlett had the idea of a shot of a house with all the lights on and then for all the lights to suddenly switch off. We both really liked this idea and we both thought that it would link with the trailer. I filmed this shot of the house. I really like this shot, we are going to use it to show that the monster is on its way and that the people who live in the street are getting ready to hide from it. This is the shot that we got and we will be using it in our trailer.
Louise

The Laptop Scene

The laptop scene is planned to be right at the beginning of the trailer, followed by the shots of the main character walking down the stairs.
Louise

Walking down the stairs shot

The walking down the stairs shot is an important shots in our trailer, because it leads up to what is going to happen. I am glad that I practised as because I found some problems with it for example, it was hard to hold the camera and walk backwards whilst keeping a steady shot. Scarlett came up with an idea of positioned the camera at the top of the stairs, as though the character  was walking away from the camera. These are the two shots that we took. In one of the shots I am walking down the stairs into darkness, this both looks eerie but also denotes that something bad is about to happen.
Louise

Filming the candle scene

I had an idea of somebody standing looking outside a window, with only candle light lighting up the face of the person, then for the candles to get blown out. We had great difficulty trying to figure out how we were going to blow out the candles. On our first try of the shot the character blew out the candles, this didn't look right so we decided to try and put the candles out by getting someone else to blow them out, but not having them in shot. It looks good as it looks as though the monster is blowing out the candles individually and getting closer to the victim. Here are the shots that we took

Louise

Green Screen Picture

When we were filming the green screen we had to find a picture that would tie in with our film trailer. We wanted to find a road covered in snow. The three pictures are the ones that we wanted to use.

 We used the third picture because it’s eerie, and most importantly there's snow on the roads and trees. The trees framing the outside of the shot would create a feeling of being trapped. We didn’t use the other two pictures because we didn’t feel they were eerie enough. There are also tire marks on the roads; we didn't want this as people are unable to get out of the town. 


This is the green screen shot we filmed.
Louise

Shot For Trailer

The other night I was thinking of the perfect outside shot of some trees. I wanted a shot of trees because when I was researching horror film trailers, I came across a shot in a trailer, the exorcism of Emily Rose. The shot is right at the beginning of the trailer and it is a high angle long shot of a house, it has one tree in in the shot but I imaged how much better the shot might look if there were a lot more trees. This is where I got the idea for the shot from. I then got a test shot of the trees outside my house.
This is the link of the trailer for the film; The Exorcism of Emily Rose:
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSy7DldFdUI (The shot is four seconds into the film trailer)

This is the shot I got of the trees in my garden:

Louise.

Practise Shots Of Walking Down The Stair Scene

 I decided that I would test out one of the scenes in our trailer.  Here are the two best shots that we got.
Louise.

New Idea For Film Trailer!

I came up with an idea which would fit in well with our trailer, the main character would run up the stairs frantically, go into a room and the light would turn off (transition- fade to back). Then the shot would go back to her but she would have transformed into the monster. This shot could incorporate well with the panning shot of the trees. Using the girl as the monster would break the mould in horror films as its usually girls who are seen as the victims. Another idea was to have a girl (girls are seen as vulnerable in horror films, this is a convention) to be looking out of the window, then a sound effects of loud footsteps and then fade to black rapidly.
Louise

Test Shots

 I tested out filming on my camera the other day so we could see if the picture was of a good enough quality. As it’s a handheld camera, I found it hard to keep steady so that the film wasn’t bouncy but I soon go the hang of it. Here are two examples of the test shots.

Louise

Wednesday 15th December-New Technology used

Louise and I took a whole day off our timetables to use the green screen and the slow motion camera.
We used green screening to put footage of me and Louise onto a normal background photograph found earlier, giving the audience the effect that we are actually there.
We then edited the footage so we lapped the photo over.
We also used the slow motion camera and did some amazing footage of reaction shots! The slow motion of the hair really gives an eerie, under water feel to the trailer.

From Scarlett and Louise