Trailer Themes 

Death

The theme of death is one of the most important in our film trailer as it is all based on the 'hangings' of people, and what is causing them to do so.

Death begins in the trailer with the medium shot of Mary walking into the forest with the prop of the 'noose' which is an iconic image in our trailer. This shows what the narrative is based on overall, being the suicide Of Mary for being bullied, which triggers the other deaths in the film.

    The theme of death can also be seen through the long shot's of the 'noose' on it's own indicating another death soon to occur in the film leaving the audience scared.
Although not to give too much away in the trailer we didn't go into the death of the victims in great detail, but left the audience ones again questioning who is dead? and how did they do it? The long point of view shot from within the tent from one of the friends, shows death surrounding them as the male feet hang from outside indicating danger.

The theme of death also brings the horror elements to the trailer as it is what leaves the audience afraid as it is so realistic.

Isolation
Isolation was another theme we wanted to include in our trailer as we had followed the conventions of other media trailers. We found this to be common as it makes it seem as there is no way out of safety in the film and they must figure it out themselves. Some examples of films we followed conventionally of this is 'The Blair Witch Project' which includes the isolation of the woods, similar to our trailer. Also 'Insidious' which has the theme of isolation but of the mind. 

This theme links to the physiological element as it involves the audience to 'think' and 'problem solve' along with the characters in the film getting their minds ticking over.

An example of the effect this theme creates in the trailer is the close up shot of the mobile phone saying 'No signal'. This immediately uncertainty in the trailer as a teenagers mobile phone is known to be a necessity and there is no way of phoning to get help from anyone. This puts the audience in that situation as they imagine themselves there, in the middle of nowhere afraid of the unknown.

Also the use of diegetic dialogue of the of Connor shouting 'Where are you?!' reinforces the isolation and danger that they are in as they begin to loose everyone and can't find a way out.

The Unknown

The unknown is another theme we wanted to include in the trailer, as it is the main element that makes the audience what to see the trailer to found out what 'it' is. This can also be linked to the number of code of enigma's that our held in our trailer.

The main question of the unknown is what is it that Mary is? and what does she want?

We leave this message open in the trailer by the use of various shots, such as the long shot of Mary in the trees, with the night vision and blur effect. This gives the impression that Mary is something of the supernatural but it is still unclear to tell this because the shot does not give too much away of her appearance.

Another great example to represent this theme is the many point of view shots from someone behind the trees, this is used from the long shot of Sophie as she then turns around with diegetic dialogue 'Guys, what was that?'. This gives the impression to the audience that 'something is constantly watching them, making them scared of the unknown'.

The theme of the unknown is one of the most important elements of the trailer as it is what makes the audience go and see the film overall.

Past and Present
The past and present a theme we decided to explore as a group as we thought it added more narrative to the trailer, and gave reasoning for the story of 'Mary' as it wouldv'e felt pointless and disjointed if left out.
We did this in a flashback effect in the trailer, with the effect of sepia to give an oldern look effect.

This also brings the Physcological effect to the trailer as it makes the audience follow the flashback and work out themselves what has happened in the trailer.

The past and present is also seen through our mixture of genders shown in thee trailer, which is evident in the close up shot of the back of Mrs Kynch. The Old and young Mrs Kynch connection we made was used with the prop of the 'ring'. This was viewed on a Close up shot on her young hand and her young hand to show the link with Mary.

 

Sounds - Audience Response


Overall our trailer consisted mostly of diegetic sounds rather than non diegetic sounds, as we only used one main background string piece of music and few 'booms' and 'screeches'. This is because of the diegetic dialogue of the flashback took up quite alot of time in the trailer, and the diegetic shouting of the teenagers, making the noises seem real life with the audience becoming more involved with the characters.
However, following other films conventions we decided to use a diegetic music voice over with the repeating of 'Mary' to create a child like chanting effect, such as the nursery rhyme also played towards the end whilst the fast paced editing takes place 'If you go down in the woods today you're sure for a big surprise, If you go down to the woods today you won't come out alive'. This chanting spooky play on words was a convention used from the trailer of the 'The Woman In Black' with the child speaking over the fast past editing.
This was what we found our audience liked most about our trailer as it had it's unique effect on how to scare them, as the breaking of the stereotype of a large male was transformed to a small girl in order to make them fear.
They also thought that the singing was what had the most effect on them watching the trailer aswell as the 'screeching' sounds that are commonly used in other trailers.

Setting


Overall we used three main settings when making our trailer. This included..

• Our school library 
• A woods (behind Kelly's house) 
• Katie's Nan's house

These were all easy accessible and realistic locations.

Audience perceptions 
Overall the audience thought that the main setting of the 'forest' was very realistic and was one of main elements that made the trailer so 'scary', with the unknown fear of who's lurking in the trees. They also said however that it would've been more scary if the whole trailer was filmed at night time in the forest.
When they expressed their opinions on the other settings such as the 'school' they also thought we did a successful job at showing this as not much was going on in the mise en scene, being a simple non cluttered environment which made it more realistic.

Key charcters and roles

Emma - (Holly)
The main character out of the four friends is Emma who plays 'Holly', so we had to show this in a way that she didn't take too much prioty of the trailer. An example in which we show her in her main role is the 'Medium side shot' of Emma finding the prop of the diary in the libary and The 'close up shot' of her reading from the diary in digetic dialogue. This reavels to the audience that she has a leader role in their group of friends, who is interested into the death of Mary and is confident into look into it.
Emma was one of the volunteer actors in our trailer and is not part of our coursework group.

Jordan - (Connor)
As a group we needed to present Jordan as a character that was 'arrogant' and didn't believe into the things in which Emma is confident about. An identifable moment where we were able to capture this was in the Close up shot of him when they are all reading from the diary, where he is seen shaking his head and looking away. This shows the audience that he is listening to what is being read and believes it to be 'nonense' and is not afraid of anything. The close up shots used on all of the characters here allow the audience to get to know the characters in the story more and their personality.
Jordan is part of our coursework and his main role was contributing to the technology part of the portfolio as he was best at working the editing suite and adapting his computer knowledge to it.

Kelly - (Sophie)
Using four firends we needed to be able to spread four different personalities in the trailer between them. As of Kelly's character we needed to present her as the more scared and vulnerable. This first shot where this is evident is the close up shot of her when reading the diary which immediately shwos the audience how scared she is before she even enters the forest, with a bad feeling about it.
This vulnerability then continues through the trailer where we present her as the first one to get 'picked' on by the long shot of her with Dafydd (Tom) and then disappearing.
Overall Kelly played the role of a director in the coursework whilst playing the role of Sophie.

Dafydd - (Tom)
We needed one other male character in the film to even out the number of sex's, we decided to use Dafydd as this character as he was the more 'heroic' male character, and played the second mainly role. An example of a shot we used to present this to the audience was the long shot of him walking over the mud with the diegetic shouting dialogue of 'Sophie!' to emphasise his worry into finding her. We deliberately do not give away in the trailer if Tom lives or survives, to make the audience want to see if he makes it out alive.
Dafydd played a role in our portfolio group as the most opinionated with great ideas throughout.

Katie (Me) - (Mary)
Mary is also one of the main characters in the trailer, although we needed to present her in the way of being a main character but being revealed less. Mary was also one of the main Code of enigma's of 'is she the one who kills them in the forest for revenge? or is it themselves?' We did this by creating to audience emotions throughout the trailer.
The first one was sympathy towards Mary from the audience, we were able to create this representation from the 'sepia' effect used for the flashback of the long shots of Mary getting bullied, and then entering the woods to hang herself.
The next was the 'anxious' and 'scared' emotion we wanted to create for the audience from this character. We did this by using the creepy non diegetic string background music to create a mysterious effect with occasional quick close up shots of  Mary's face. This creates the audience to no longer feel sorry for her but scared of her as she is getting her own back on the teenagers.
My main role as a whole in the group was coordinator and director of certain sections.

The audience are able to identify the plot of the film as we have got it in a basic order in the trailer of when the events happen.

Although at the begin of the trailer we decided to use the first shot of a long shot of the forest with the title 'March 3rd, four friends entered Ashwood Forest'. We then deliberately go back in time to 'Holly' discovering the diary in school before they enter the forest. By doing this we are able to give a mysterious effect from the start of the trailer with the audience being able to understand why they went into the forest into the first place.

We also used a 'flashback' technique in our trailer to show the basic plot to the audience, we also got this effect from the trailer of 'The Woman In Black'. We did this by doing close up shots of the characters reading from the diary and then as 'Holly' reads it with the diegetic dialogue as the voice over goes onto the flashback long shot of Mary getting bullied. We thought this was a successful technique being able to show the history of Mary and the purpose of them entering the forest effeciently and quickly.

Throughout the trailer then we didn't give too much away of the basic plot to the audience as we wanted to leave many code of eginma's. We did this by using the deaths of people in different orders, and intergrated 'scary' shots of Mary.

Our genre is a 'Physcological Thriller' with elements of horror.

The physcological part of our trailer can be identified from the numerous code's of enigma's that are left at the end of the trailer. Some examples of these are

• Who dies in the film?
• Who survives in the film?
• Does Mary kill them?
• Do they hang themsleves?
• Is Mrs Kynch invloved with the deaths?
• Is 'Holly' invloved with the deaths?
• Does Mary die in the end?

Although the elements of horror filter through the trailer with the 'scary images'.
An example of this is the long shot of Mary standing in the forest which is used in fast pace editing put between just a long shot of the forest. This makes the audience blink and ask themseves did they actually just see Mary. This brings the supernatural element to the trailer making it a horror.

Another horror shot used is the last shot of Mary which is an extreme close up used at the end of the trailer. This is the last thing that the audience see on the trailer, as it reminds them of who Mary is without revealing too much, as this horryfying image will stick in their head until they go and see the film in cinema.

We identified our target audience to be aged 15-25 being both MALE & FEMALE.

We believed as a group for this to be our target audience as the age group's favourite genre on average is 'physcologicl thriller' which we found out from using mini questionnaire to other people of our age groups.
    We also thought that the age relates the actual age of the characters in these genre's which w conventional used in our trailer. This makes it seem more realsitic for it to happen to them and makes it more thrilling.
  We also found out that this age is the most common age to visit the cinema as they experience many holidays, and like to use it for leisure with their friends. This can also be related to the narrative of the genre, similair to our trailer as the friends are on their holidays going camping, this again makes it more exiciting an realistic for the age group.

   Also we generally think that this age group would enjoy the physcological thriller trailer more as they like the excitement of being scared, and liek to shar their enjoyment of the film then on sites such as 'Twitter' and 'Facebook', which leaves great advantages to the film company.

                      
The target audience could also relate themseleves to the characters in the film, as being the same age and watching the film with a similair group of friends make it even more realistic as they see themselves in their postition making it more enjoyable and thrilling to watch.

I think that the trailer that we have produced as a group is very successful as our visual improvement is apparent from the creation of my plot synopsis idea that we developed as a group. From this synopsis we then went into further detail and managed to create an animatic, then eventually into a real trailer which people have quoted to be 'professional' and that they would purchase to go and see the film themselves.

       Why I think it is so successful as it creates real life reactions that would also be found in watching a real life physiological thriller. This is because of the reactions of people who have watched it including myself, that have felt a 'chilling' 'goose bump' feeling that makes it scary which is the effect we wanted to have on people who watched the trailer, as this is what them makes them purchase to see the film in cinema's.

The creation of our trailer is an advertisement to the audience that will be exhibited in the future in cinema's  allowing them to get a taster of what they will be going to see. There a numerous number of ways where this trailer can be seen including the internet on sites such as 'YouTube'.

 

Teaser Trailers can also be seen on the television shown on adverts between programmes so people can get a 'teaser' of what is to be shown in cinema's. The purpose of them is less to tell the audience about a film content than simply to let them know that the film is coming up in the near future and to add to the hype of the upcoming release. Teaser trailers are often made while the film is still in production or being edited. It is then after the showing of trailers where it is then released into cinema's to be consumed by the audience it is targeting, where the audience again can also preview other trailers that will be 'coming soon' in the cinema. The film is usually on show up to 5 weeks in cinema's.

   

It is then an average of 3 months until the audience can purchase the film of their own when it is released onto DVD and Blu Ray, when they can view the film of there choice at home.

Evaluation

We decided to use the genre of ‘physiological thriller’ as we though as a group this was the most popular genre for our age group of 18 and had a greater impact on people to see the film with leaving a number of code of enigma’s and the overall fear of the audience of being ‘dared’ to watch it.

   We used many conventional aspects of our trailer such as our main narrative plot, including teenagers entering a place of ‘danger’ with a main protagonist, leaving the unanswered questions at the end of who lived? Who died? What exactly is the protagonist? An idea we got from a real trailer of this was the ‘Blair Witch Project’ which included a group of teenagers entering the forest where danger occurs, although they are filming in a documentary style. In our original plot synopsis we had this idea to adapt in our trailer although, we decided not to do this as many other trailers did not do this and looked just as successful with editing effects.

   We also chose some unconventional aspects to add to our trailer such as the main villain being a young vulnerable female ‘Mary’. Unlike other trailers we looked at such as ‘Nightmare on Elm St’ 'Freddy Cruger' and ‘Insidious’ they all have powerful males that cause disruption and have more fear on the audience. However, by using a younger female we thought that the supernatural theme worked well in making it seem more realistic to the audience having a greater impact on them.

 Although, our trailer mainly consists of conventional aspects from other trailers as we thought this way our trailer would hold real like trailer elements to become most successful. An example of this is the narrative plot using the Todorov’s theory where a state of equilibrium is disrupted.