. A SCENE THAT HAS INFLUENCED OUR TRAILER

This scene is from Halloween (1978), one of my favourite scenes from the movie because in my opinion it is one of the very few scenes that are actually scary. This is one of the scene that influenced out horror trailer. This scene was chosen because this character of Bob was killed in a very conventional way, in the dark, in an isolated environment where there is no one who can actually come to his rescue.This iconic scene influenced our horror because it is conventional for every horror film to have a confrontation between the villain and victim(s).A scene like this, without the actual murder would frighten the audience completely and is an example of Barthe's enigma code.

. RECORDING A VOICE OVER

This voice over was created in garage band, with an exterior microphone and this audio clip is of myself and Shari conversing as the characters we are playing in the narrative.

A subversion of horror trailers that I identified in some cases are voice overs as they are normally used in trailers for either more dramatic films or those with little conventional imagery. We were initially not sure if we were going to include  a voice over, however if we were to place this anywhere is would have to be placed at the very beginning of our trailer with a range of  black screens. The recorded dialogue will play over it. The content of this conversation between Shari and myself, acted as a warning. The warning allows the audience to understand that there are underline obsessions that Riley has that lead to the events that follow in the trailer.

Shari played my Mother in the audio recording, a character that we identify as intelligent and full of wisdom, by my character not listening to the advice from her Mother the later events can be identified as expected. Shari was chosen as the voice of the Mother for this audio, because she had the correct tone and could portray the character of a ‘Mother’ justly. As the character of Riley it was expected that the audio would also include myself because I am her daughter, there is a sense of enigma can be identified here as the audience are unsure as to what is going to happen next, after the events of the phone call.

However we may decided not to include the voice over, as it adds an element of obscurity that is normally not included in horror trailers within the first few second. Conventionally the trailer starts with an equilibrium and because this phone call rivals the conventional element of an equilibrium we did not want it to be included, as it can be viewed as a clue to the coming events. The character of the mother warns me, and says “remember what I said, don’t go to that place”. The audience will probably be able to gather from this that she will definitely go into an environment that will result in her being harmed.

. SHOTS FROM OUR FILMING SESSION (under the bridge)

Our group decided to film a few scenes under a bridge, not too far from school. We chose to film later on in the day as we all had frees and could therefore take the time to film for as long as necessary. The shot below is a still taken before we filmed the scene where Dawn strangles me. This scene was extremely interesting to shoot, because of the level of violence in this scene a man driving a van stopped and turned on his hazards so that he could get a better understanding of what was taking place and if I was in any real danger. Because of this we did have to re-film this scene a few times because the van effected the shot. As you can see from the shot, I was a little bit nervous about this scene because it required actual contact, but Dawn spoke me through what she was going to do an encouraged me to keep as calm as possible. 

. SHOTS FROM OUR FILMING SESSION (graveyard)

Our narrative required us to film in a graveyard, therefore we chose one we believed to be the closest to school, the graveyard ground was outside of All Saints Church. The shot taken of me was a short scene we chose to take, this scene consisted of Dawn slowly walking behind me. This photo was taken before we had begun filming, this photo was a way for us as a group to work out whether we a group actually wanted to film this scene. Because the scene was going to be a over the shoulder , two shot I was encouraged by Shari to move over a little to the right. After we filmed the scene a few times, we had to stop because of pedestrians walking down the pathway you see here.

To the left is a still of myself in front one of the graves we chose to film in front of. At this moment I was filming the grave's inscription, because the inscription was a quote from the Lord's Prayer 'thy will be done', it was later decided that the prayer would be placed in the trailer itself.

. TEST SHOTS FOR POSTER COVER

Here are some test shots for our poster. We were trying to work out what shots would look best on the cover, and these were the best four shots . The shots however did not portray the narrative or it's events clearly due to the use of no iconography, even though these shots are of the final girl (myself.) All of these are medium close up shots, which can be identified as a convention of horror posters. Medium close ups allow the audience to observe the conventional elements related to both the genre and character type e.g make up, jewellery, facial expressions. Those examples don't apply to these shots, as the final girl normally abstains from hedonistic practices.We didn't photograph these images using a white background because the white background wouldn't have provided the conventional look that most horror poster's have, along with that the use of bright lighting in my face make me the key focus and represent my angelic appearance and behaviour in comparison to the dark events to come. The colours of the text we have chosen for the poster (red and white) would really only stand out best on a black background. Regardless of how well shot these images are, we chose to reject them because we wanted to ensure the poster and magazine image were closely correlated, therefore we'll choose to include an image of Dawn.

The image of Dawn we choose for the poster should have  Dawn holding a necklace and looking towards the camera. The necklace is an example of iconography because it links to the narrative directly and is cursed by the . The use of such a strong image of dawn would emphasise that out trailer is for a Slasher. 

. COSTUME MAKE UP

Above is a video, created by Dawn (who plays Lilith Woods). The video is a step by step of the process, and allows us to see how she achieved the signature look created for this character.

. CLOTHING/MISE-EN-SCENE

This is the outfit chosen for our villain 'Lilith' as you can see her shirt is covered with splatters of blood created with a 'fake blood' product we purchased. The blood on the shirt, represents the fact that our villain is 'back from the dead', the colour red is always identified as connoting danger encouraging the audience to be cautious of her. We placed a lot of importance on not just using a shirt with no blood on it because we needed to communicate that Lilith was a dangerous character, with violent tendencies.The blood was extremely significant to the role of Lilith and so we ensured blood was used on the back of 'Lilith's shirt and also on her face in the form of scars and tears. The gorey make up added an element of menace to the character of Lilith, but also may be an indication of how she died.

Above you can also see that the actress Dawn, who plays Lilith has on a 
pair of 'Timbalands' which are clearly unacceptable for the mise-en-scene acceptable for a horror villain, so we ensured we filmed her from the knees up in all but one of the scenes where we asked her to remove her shoes.

To the left is an image of myself, here you can see I am wearing an antique necklace, which acts as the main focus of our narrative and the prop that drives it forward. As the main character in the narrative, this necklace and I are closely linked due to the events that take place during the trailer. This necklace was supplied by Dawn, as the antique appearance could be closely correlated with the gothic theme of the genre we were able to identify that it was an appropriate piece of mise-en-scene. 

. PROPS AND EQUIPMENT LIST

. SETTINGS

 

These are a range of locations we chose to film the most pivotal scenes of our trailer in. We filmed at times of the day which had allowed us to get the type of environment we preferred (whether it be quieter or darker), the shots we took were extremely effective in adding eeriness and discomfort to the scene because of the narrative's purpose to frighten. A lot of the images you see above we've taken during the day, however filming in public was mostly done later in the day so the lighting was much different.