Poster analysis and analysis of the film.

In today's lesson I looked at the poster and film trailer for 'Paranormal Activity'. The film is based around true events that happened to a couple in America in 2006 and the files were released in 2007, due to live footage being put into the film, the film was banned and re-changed and then re-released in 2009.

The trailer begins showing a shot of the couple on the hand-held camera to show across to the audience who the main people are which is a common convention as it not only tells the audience who the main characters are but to also try and get across the plot straight away to keep the audience's attention.

The trailer doesn't have a lot of music, mainly dialouge from the characters but there is some music that puts the audience on edge. We see some of the footage from the bedroom which is where the demon begins to haunt Katie and Micah. The music starts here to keep the audience on edge to prepare them for what is to come, the rest of this snippet is eerie and creepy.

On the trailer thing's like "the scariest film of the year" and "most terryfying film of the year" which is also seen on the poster. These captions give something for the audience to read rather than just watch the trailer the whole way through. It helps keep them on edge and want to watch the film. From here on the music is very upbeat and fast, keeping the audience's attention, showing them more clips of the most terryfing bits but cutting out before anything drastic happens and anything too big is given away.

The trailer is very simple but very effective. It keeps the audience on the edge and creates a very eerie atmosphere. Not many special effects are used, and ordinary film camera's aren't used a lot due to being shown through the hand held camera that Micah uses a lot.

Film posters

In today's lesson I searched previous horror films that are based on true events. I created a slide that Charlotte, Gemma and I will add into our powerpoint on posters. The common theme I found whilst looking at these posters was that there mostly dark with images that are edited with a light to show the main characters and focus of the film.

Here are some of the newest and up-to-date films that are based on true events in which I will be looking at the film trailers for all of them for ideas and help to create our trailer.

The font's used on each of the posters give a feeling that the film has a hidden meaning behind them and the pictures help back this up. The images that are shown on the posters are the main bases behind the film. For example looking at the poster of "The Strangers" the characters are shown to the audience so we know what to expect from the film. Looking at "Wolf Creek"the main characters are cut up with images an award selling written section above the photo. This indicates the film has sold well and the cut up and different images give a sense of what is to come. 

Analysing a film trailer similiar to ours..

Today I analysed the film/documentary trailer "Bowling for Columbine". Whilst analysing this documentary I found that again the trailer was fast paced which is to keep the audience involved and aware of what is to happen in the film. Whilst analysing the trailer I looked at the following points.

Genre – Documentary
Narrative - The film is about true life gun crimes in America.
Unique Selling Point - There isn’t a lot of documentaries or films like this out there, there is a huge awareness of it but not so many films on the case.
Target Audience - 12A, it shows the age range of teenage and adult gun crime so it would be more appropriate to this age group rather than a younger audience.
Music - Very street type music at the beginning to show the fun in the documentary and continues through the first interview which we see to keep the audience involved. The music then fades out and we see the man being interviewed playing a gun game and we hear the gun shots.
Camera Types - Mainly medium close ups as to show Michael Moore interviewing people. Pace- Very fast pace, gun crime is usually a quick action to take and is over within seconds so the pace of the trailer keeps the audience on edge and interested to watch the film to see all the short snippets were given.
Dialogue - Speech from people that Michael Moore interviewed for his programme. We are showed footage of Michael speaking to people and organising interviews with them and so on.
Voiceover - Were told who’s staring in the documentary right at the beginning of the trailer. Special effects- The scenes are cut quickly, and there is animated cartoon characters throughout the trailer to keep the audience of teenagers involved in the documentary as well as adding jokes in.
Credits and intertitles - Put through the trailer to show past films created by this company, other shows Michael has worked with and the places he originated his ideas from.

This has now again helped given me an insight on things to look at whilst Charlotte, Gemma and I create our documentary trailer.

Analysis

From this week's lesson the three of us decided to begin to analyise some movie trailers. To gain more understanding we will watch different types of horrors and related aspects to as to how the trailers are made, what captures the audience and what the conventions are. This will help the three of us how to start our trailer. But firstly we looked at one of our slides which was conventions and decided to look for all these on the trailers.

Trailer Idea

Charlotte, Gemma and I finally came up with an idea for our film trailer.
The plot of the story in which we will be working from came from a news article we found on the internet. The plot we will work around for our movie trailer is the following:

We have a girl named Charlie, 15 who becomes a member on a website in which she can post pictures of herself, talk to friends and comment on blogs and so on just like facebook, myspace and so on. Whilst on the website she forms a relationship with a male called "Sean", whilst talking to Sean only over the internet, Charlie thinks that something could form from this internet dating and decides to meet with this so called "Sean". Whilst at school she recieves texts from "Sean" and her friends become worried for her about meeting someone from the internet. Sean begins to ask for thing's such as nude shots and so on and Charlie thinking his her "boyfriend" she does so. From this we discover Sean is not the only one on this account and he is being spurred on my his sick and twisted father Brendan. Thing's start to go a bit weird for Charlie as she constantly feels someone is watching her, being followed and knows her every move. Charlie and Sean decide to meet on a desserted Quarry to find out as they meet Brendad grabs Charlie and both men eventually rape and kill her. The movie ends with Charlie floating in the water and a local neighbour finds her, followed by the beginning news report to end the movie.

Today, Charlotte Gemma and I decided on our idea.

We came up with the idea to create a movie trailer. We have decided we are doing a thriller movie based on true events on a story that we all agreed on that was in the news. We have changed the story so no copyright is taking place.

Ben.