Trailer name

My group and I have been trying to find a perfect name for our trailer. So we have had many ideas for the names. Its been very hard to decide on a name because we want it to beeye catching. I teh end we decided to call our film 'SlenderMan'. This is because 'The Man' sounds really dull and boring as for 'Slender' it sounds like some sort of blending machine which all my group has agreed to.

My group and I have alot of names that were really hard to say e.g.:

• Slimas
• albena
• Schlanker Mann
• Slima
• Der Ritter
• der weiße Mann 
• Slimum
• der schwarze Mann

In the end, we had decided to keep it very simple and easy. For the audience to actually be able to talk about the trailer (word to mouth) and for them to know exactly who the film is about.\aaa

Horror Prelim

Our horror prelim.
Here is our finished spoof horror trailer of 'The Man' . We uploaded it on YouTube so it is available to anyone to watch.

Our Trailer (Spoof)

My group and I have started filming our trailer. We collected ideas from current trailers and filiming our own parody.

So far we filmed the villain chasing after the boy who runs through the field and is caught by the villain in the end.
We are now editing the video and we will soon post it up on YouTube.

Trailer Narrative

For our trailer narrative we have come up with some ideas so far

1. A introduction with use of text. e.g. 'This Halloween' slenderman seen slightly behind a tree revealing his tall shady body and faceless white head
2. During all of this music with suspense will be played over it
3. We are then taken to a bunch of teenagers kicking down a door and breaking into an abandoned home
4. The attic is then shown and old films are seen half falling out of a cardboard box
5. A machine is ready to set up and watch the film
6. They watch it
7. 2 teens suspect something is not right
8. Cuts to a laughter of the scared teens
9. Quick 0.1 second shot of slender appears with a sharp psycho string like noise with it comes and disappears
10. Running and screaming is heard
11. Blacked out screens then screams and thumps

The Slender Man Documentary

Here is a short documentary that me and my group found about slender man and his origins on YouTube

Horror Film Narrative.

The Man

The man is a horror scopophilia film. It is based around an urban myth of a creature called ‘Slender Man’.

The film is set in the present day; however, it will be based on a home film that was recorded 60 years ago which was owned by the recorder, ........... She had passed away recently and her house had been abandoned. A group of 4 teenagers decided to break into the house at night for fun and discovered the home video in the attic. After watching the video, 2 of them were scared of the video. The others were calling them names and said there was nothing to worry about. Then they proceeded to wreck the house.

They all go home. The next time they meet up at the house, one of the teens looks out of the window and sees slender man. None of the others believe him and make fun of him. The teen becomes hysterical so the others lock him out of the house as a joke. He bangs on the door hysterically as the others laugh before suddenly falling silent. The others think he is messing around but when they go to let him in he is nowhere to be found. They come to the conclusion that he must have found another way into the house and is hiding potentially trying to scare them. They split up and look for him in the other rooms, one of the boys, Jeffery, looks out the window and see’s a tall shady black figure underneath the street’s lamp, he is unusually tall and lanky, with extra long hands. Jeffery immediately realises that he just saw slender man and ducks under the window in shock; he then calms himself and looks again. The figure is gone. Jeffery tells the others but once again they do not believe him, thinking he is in on the joke. They soon realise that their friend is genuinely missing and the whole group begins to panic.

They decide that the safest thing to do is get away from the house and return to their own homes. They make their way down their usual route down an alley but are cornered by Slenderman. They run away in the opposite direction, towards the woods, Slenderman’s preferred domain. The leader urges the group on, saying if they can make it through the woods they can escape through the other side. They run from Slenderman but every time they reach the end of a path he is standing waiting for them. All they have to light their way is the light from their phones and these soon stop working leaving them in complete darkness (Slenderman interferes with technology)

The group have no choice but to use matches to keep Slenderman away (he doesn’t like light) but these don’t last very long. The film ends with the group desperately grabbing matches and trying to keep them alight for as long as possible, but they eventually run out and are taken by Slenderman. The audience think that all the teens have been killed but it is revealed at the end that one of them managed to escape as they had a torch in their bag. The screen goes black. Dot of light from torch gets bigger and runs past the camera.

Where my group are being inspired from.

The Blair Whitch Project Trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZu1cTg-xUM&safe=active

The Cabin In The Woods.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXfc12BqFkc

The Slender man

The Slender Man is a creature with characteristics and abilities Slender Man generally appears (in modern times) as a tall man in a black or grey suit, red or black tie, and white shirt, with no eyes, mouth, or defined facial features. It has no hair, and generally has normal-looking bare hands. Slenderman typically is depicted in imagery and literature as between 6 and 15 feet tall, depending on the situation, and in video as around 6-7 feet tall.

The most effective trailers?

1.Abraham Lincoln vampire hunter:

Link to trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Eo766iZZ0c

2.The Amazing Spider-Man:

Link to trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpKPiHYJc54&safe=active

3.Red Lights:

Link to trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzDOkA6O6rE&safe=active

4.Skyfall:

Link to trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kw1UVovByw&safe=active

5.Total Recall:

Link to trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWMhADqlPYg&safe=active

Hitchcock Show Scene.

Article on the Daily Mail recreating the iconic Psycho shower scene for V Magazine.

Article Link:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2229541/Hitchcock-blonde-Scarlett-Johansson-recreates-iconic-Psycho-shower-scene-V-Magazine.html

Final girl theory

Who is the final girl?

-The only character to be developed in psychological detail.
-She is often given a lot of attention, camera time therefore important.
-Final girl is virginal. (Friends partying having fun whilst final girl studying or babysitting.)
- Her unisex name is also a giveaway.
- Shared history with the killer final girls connection to the killer may help her survive and getaway.
- She is resourceful, level headed, intelligent often first to sense something is wrong.
-momentary paralysis in the face of death creates the universal nightmare.
-Last one left alive.

The final girl.
- Physically and emotionally smart, strong and masculine e.g.
Ellen Riley (Alien)
Sidney Present (Scream)
-Male actions?
-RESOURCEFUL/ THINK ON THEIR FEET.

Trailer Feedback.

What my group were told to improve on were.

·         Make natural noises instead of funny sound and talking whilst filming.

·         Taking more shots and footage so when editing we have a lot of footage instead of running out.

 Include a few people. The fewer the better this means less dialogue.

·         Shoot more than we need so we can have different angles of the same shot

·         What was good about our prelim trailer

·         It was very basic and simple.

·         It had a few editing effects

·         It was polished and professional

·         Very fast creates tension.

Independent Research.

Classifications:

• U-Contains mild threat or NO material likely to offend or harm.
• PG- Contains mild threat sex and drug references.
• 12- Contains moderate sex and drugs references or violence.
• 15- Contains strong sex, drugs referances and gory images.
• 18-Frequents strong bloody, sex, nudity and gory scenes.
•  Highlight best bits of film
• No narrative order
• Showcase stars of film
• Credits
• One line conversation
• Voice over to tell story
•  Title appears in the end
•  Music creates atmosphere and tension
• Trailer builds to climax where it ends.

Key Points 

Matricide- Killing Mother

Infanticide- Killing Infants.

The Cabin In The Woods.

The Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ENUBUdFswM

The Blair Witch Project 1999

Posters.

Case Study.

The Blair Witch Project 1999.

- Low budget film ($25,000)
-Always struggle to compete in the market place.
-No films stars
-Cheap location
-No soundtrack
-No special effect
-$56,000 on first weekend it raises $56,000 per screen
-27 screens across 20 states in the USA
-Internet marketing
-Third week it increased to 1100 only 2nd in Box Office receipts to Runaway Bride.
-In total the fim made $140 million.

How are horror films marketed?

What are the different ways of marketing a horror film?

-Posters

- Front Cover magazines.

-Word of mouth.

-Teasers

-TV adverts.

-Online reviews

-Reviews

-Web 2.0 (YouTube, Facebook and twitter)

- Official Websites

-Buses

-Film magazine interviews.

-Bus stop adverts

-Merchandise.

-Social Adverts

-Film Trailers

-Cinema

-Billboards

-Radio Ads.

How is horror created in Halloween 1978

Halloween 1978

We see the killers shoulder thinks makes us think that the killer is going to kill someone.
We see hear the sound of a knife stabbed into something but we think we saw the boy getting stabbed to death.
We see the bed messy and a naked girl after a boy has left but we think she just had sex with her boyfriend.

Female and Male Characters.

Carrie- Final girl (Sue Snell)
In adaption and portrayal of the character, she is a popular teenage girl who is dating Tommy Ross. She feels remorse for bullying Carrie and makes Tommy take Carrie to the prom.
She fits into the final girl stereotype because she stays at home whilst her friends, school mate and teacher go to prom.

Psycho- Marion Crane.
Marion Crane did not survive because she had a boyfriend and she wanted to go back home. She went to a hotel for the night which meant that the killer was able to kill easily. The killer was able to sneak into her hotel room into the room making his way to the bathroom shower to stab her to death.

Male Characters.

Good male characters.
-Boyfriend
-School mate.

Bad male characters
The killer is often unseen or barely glimpsed during the first half of the film. It does not invite empathy (deformed, wearing a mask.) and eventually the killer is killed.

Final girl theory.

What is my initial perception of how women are represented in horror films?

-Women are represented as a sex objects or something dumb to men (male gaze) through camera angels.
-Women may be smart sometimes e.g. Riley (Aliens)
-Clueless.
-Nervous 'damsel' and vulnerable.
-Costume either tight or a lot of skin is shown.
-Women are heroes or final girl or they are stupid and they die quickly.
-Outwit villain, masculine trait.
-Pretty, dumb will get killed girl.

What are the uniting features of these women?

-Physically and emotionally smart, strong and masculine e.g. Ellen Riley (Alien) and Sidney Present (Scream).
-Male actions.
They use whatever is there to get away from the villain e.g. hitting villain with fire extinguisher.  

-Resourceful and they think on their feet.

The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis

It is one of the most enjoyable feminist film theory books. The author explores the fear of the monstrous-feminine not as the castrated subject-as Freud argued. It gives all sorts of examples of castrating female monsters, with images, from popular culture!

This book makes watching horror movies and reading psychoanalysis so much interesting.
It examines the issue of gender in horror films, something that seems completely obvious when you read the essays but was always just on the tip of your subconscious mind, waiting for the right articulation.

Case Study.

Carrie.

What representations are there in Carrie?

·         Teachers-Not caring

·         Mothers-Crazy

·         Supernatural-Power

·         Religion-Negative Christians (Extremists)

·         Teenagers- Gang mentality. Girls dominate and Boys just follow Orders.

Case study.

Banned Movie in the UK.

·         Name: Grotesque (2009)

·         Main Language: Japanese 

·         Genre: Horror

·         Splatter horror Film.

·         Film was banned due to high level of sexual torture.

·         Refused because of the sexual assault, humiliation and extreme torture to both man and women.

·         Couple are abducted, bound, stripped and sexually violated.

Case Study.

Child's play 3 and the murder of James Bulger.

Why were the media so fixated on the film as a reason for the murder?

• Trying to explain the inexplicable- the conditions two 10 year olds.

Moral Panic.

What is a moral panic?

• Horror films are often at the centre of moral panics.
• Cohan (1972) argues that a moral panic is when the media amplifies an event to refer its consequences to much wider social issues.
• A moral panic is essentially a 'crusade' against behavior or perceived negative developments in society. 

How and why do they work?

• It raises the alarm in people suggesting the event. That society is becoming dangerous.
• It appeal to fragmented and fragile post war consensus.
• Politicians and campaigners use newspaper to create panic: 

Effect of horror films.

What effect do you think horror can have on audience.

Normal  reaction:
Jump,scream, continuous jump after film is over, closing/ covering eyes, nervous laughter, crying.

Extreme reactions:
Heart attack, psychosis, re-enactment, collapsing, mental scarring.
e.g:

• Most vulnerable women and young kids.
• Who's responsible?     Parents watching over their kids.

Different theories of audience recption

What gaze is used in these films?

Bond- Female gaze.

Twilight-Male gaze.

Studying genre at a textual level.

Similarities and differences between Psycho and Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Psycho Vs Texas Chainsaw Masscre.

Similarities:

• Date and Time shown at the beginning of both films.
• 'slasher'
• Both Documentary 
• Multiple killings
• Disguises unhidden
• Isolation
• Inspired by Edgein
• Fast, quick shots to create horror.

Differences:

• Colour / Black and White.
• Not Ellumination film.
• Shows dead person (Psycho)/ Show 2 dead people (TCM)
• Knife/ Chainsaw 
• Leather face= Monster / Norman= Normal.
• Teen Vs Adults
• Final girl survives.

Case study.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

• Film was released in 1974
• Cult horror film (slasher)
• Directed, written and produced by Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel
• Cast mainly non-professional actors.
• Hooper was hoping for a PG rating but he failed. the filmed has an R rating.
• Film costs only $83'532.
• Dinner table scene shot in 27 hour shoot.
• Film is a documentary style.

Laura Mulvey.

Visual Pleasure and narrative cinema.

• Women are presented as sexual spectacle and objects of pleasure for the characters and audience.
• Men fetishist women imbuing them with an over valued and unrealistic status fetishistic scophillia.

Paul Wells.

• What conclusion can I draw from this study?

The relationship to being frightened changes with age and relates to border factors affecting emotional responses.
Audience between 1970-80's are most anaesthetised to explict special effects, whereas 'monster' films 20 and 30's reported very strong personal responses to images and iconography of horror (when cinema was new and unknown.
Young audiences are aware of artificality and are become harder to shock. which films play into this knowingness of horror conventions? is this part of the fun?

• What are the limitations?   

on the basis of this theory, what horrifies audiences changes according to conditions in society and ways in which audiences experience film going so what scares us now?

Nosferatu.

• My Respond to unnamed women.

weak, powerless, submissive, vulnerable,passure.

• Psychoanalytic Theory- Spectatorship and the 'Male Gaze'.

Her femininity and sexuality is focused on by camerawork- audience is influenced by how the male character responds to her. e.g pity, attraction.

However fisher (director) deceives the audience by the women givening Haker's and then there's an extreme closeup of her fangs. she momentarily has control.

Why Watch Horror Movies?

-Who do you talk to?
I talk mostly to my friends not parents
-Sources of information.
When friends go to the cinema and tell me all about it and advise me to go and watch it myself (word of mouth), the internet (web 2.0), adverts, social networking for example Twitter and Facebook.
-When watch horror is watched?
When I'm at home alone or when i invite friends round, sleepovers,
-Have I ever decided to not watch horror?
when at home and there was a horror film and I didn't want to watch it so I change the channel.
-How would i describe my experiences with horror films.
Well i don't watch a lot of horror films so I could feel scared when watching it. also thinking bad things may happen in reality which is frightening.
-Main audience/
15-30 year old, Both Male and Female.
-Effects?
Entertaining, humor, shared experience, escapism, fear but ultimate safety.

Alfred Hitchcock.

• Highly influenced film maker.
• Most respected man of time.
• He is a director and producer.
• Directed more than 50 films.
• His films draw heavily on fear and also contain black or droll humor.
• Many of his films contain appearances of the man himself Alfred Hitchcock.

Horror films.

The opening scene of psycho.

• The use of black and white is used even though colour was available was so that the audience can make their own judgement and minds up themselves.

• Role of the audience is that they made audience feel like spies sneaking into the middle of the couple. also the scene made me feel very uncomfortable. the director shot a closeup shot on the couple this was purposly shot so the scene wont look like a romance scene.

Steve Neale (1990)

Genre do not consist only of films: they consist also and equally of specific systems of expectation and hypothesis which spectators bring with them to the cinema, and which interact with the films themselves during the course of the viewing process. these systems provide spectators with the means of recognition and understanding.

Case Study.

Shaun Of The Dead.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfDUv3ZjH2k

Conventions I've noticed in many horror films.

Blood, zombies, screaming, deaths, location unknown, isolation, shadows, domestic settings

• Mise-en-secene: isolated or at home
• Camerawork and editing: handheld camera fast cuts to create tension.
• Characters: Outcasts, evil, survivors.
• Themes: Deaths
• Icons: Weapons, Candles Knives (Used because knives are very frightening and real)
• Music and Sound: Screams, panting, breathing deeply, crying, shouting, tense, strong beats, strings

Key Concepts (area of study) of media studies.

• Textual analysis
• Representation
• Genre 
• Institution

The key areas for analysing film conventions.

• Sound- Diegetic and non-diegetic
• Effects- Speed, effects, type of cuts.
• Camera work- shots, movement, angles.
• Mise-en-scene- Light, set, props, costumes, makeup.