Horror Trailer Character Profiles

From previous research into horror trailer conventions and evaluation, I feel that in order for the most typical conventions to be followed in our horror trailer our characters must reflect features that would classify under Propps Character Theory. In order for my horror trailer to be successful, I must have an insightful understanding of each character so I can make each scene complement them which will in effect scare the audience more. To gain an understanding of my characters I have created profiles for each of them below:

PRINCESS

Name: Rhianna

Age: 15

Status: Year 11 student

Favourite Film/TV Programme: Gossip girl and Pretty Little Liars

Hobbies and Interests: She loves going shopping and going out to exciting things with her friends.

Personality: Rhianna is always caring towards her friends however sometimes is quite extroverted and therefore puts herself at risk in order for her to have fun. She doesn’t like being the centre of attention but will always put her friends in the spotlight. She thinks her friendship group is better than anyone elses in the school.

Relationships: she is single however has four best friends who she spends the majority of her time with. She has a mum and dad at home and as well as an older brother who she has a good relationship with.

 

PRINCESS

Name: Callum

Age: 15

Status: Year 11 student

Favourite Film: American Snyper and Saw

Hobbies and Interests: Callum likes to play football and go out with his friends. He often takes risks and does dangerous things whilst he is out with his friends.

Personality: Callum is quite intelligent however he hides it to avoid being made fun of by his friends. He cares about important issues on the news which he often talks about and he is a born leader. He is good at taking control in group tasks and stressful situations.

Relationships: Callum lives with his mum and has never met his dad. He is the oldest of 3 younger siblings who all love and care for him. His mum relies on him to do a lot for her due to her long shifts away from home.

 

PRINCESS

Name: Kimberly

Age: 16

Status: Year 11 Student

Favourite Film: Harry Potter and Once Upon A Time

Hobbies and Interests: Kimberly likes to read books and learn with her friends within school. She is interested in the news and is always organising events to promote and support charities for real world issues.

Personality: Kimberly is a very quite and reserved girl around people she doesn’t know however she is confident to talk to people about things she believes in such as preventing global warming and promoting world peace. She is very kind, however can sometimes be selfish in stressful situations and will go off on her own to avoid panic.

Relationships: Kimberly lives alone with her father and has no siblings. The only friends she has are Callum, Rhianna and Alessio. She enjoys spending time with herself.

 

PRINCESS

Name: Alessio

Age: 16

Status: Year 11 student

Favourite Film: Civil war and Guardians of the galaxy

Hobbies and Interests: Alessio loves watching action films and is a gamer; he plays everyday. He is very popular and goes out a lot with his friends but he also enjoys learning – especially ICT.

Personality: He is very loud nd outspoken but knows when he needs to focus on tasks. He doesn’t like people testing him and he hates people who dictate.

Relationships: Alessio has strict parents so compared to his friends, he doesn’t have a very close relationship to them. He has a girlfriend however she goes to a different school so they don’t get to see each other very much.

 

VILLAINS

Name(s): Zombies

Age/status: Mixture of teachers and students that will attempt to murder other students.

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FILMING DAY 1

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Today we began the filming for our Horror Film Trailer due to the weather being in a perfect foggy condition. The atmosphere outside was quite spooky and barron therefore we took advantage of this and filmed all of the main outdoor shots that we have outlined in our previous Shot Log post. We also took any additional shots that we thought would be effective in the trailer.

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 The Vlog

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Below is a short vlog that I created whilst we were filming our initial trailer shots:

Shot Log for Horror Trailer

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The Importance of a Shot Log

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We decided that before filming we should create our own shot logs to ensure that the fluidity of filming on shooting days is controlled and effective. We really wanted to make sure that we could use this plan to prevent us from needing extra time trying to find the right clips to go in particular places during the editing stage.

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Shot Log Key

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KEY:

ES – Establishing shot

CU – Close-up

LS – Long shot

MS – Mid-shot

ECU – Extreme close-up

PV – Point of view

SS – Side shot

OTS – Over the shoulder

‘-‘ – No shot

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Shot Log

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We will use this shot log as a working document on filming days and will tick off what shots we have taken and any other additional shots that we have added in. This way we can keep track of what we have to put into our trailer which will ensure that our time managment is excellent and on track.

Horror Trailer: Target Audience Profile

In order for me to create an effective horror film that will appeal to my wide target audience I must understand their likes and dislikes. This will ensure that I will constantly be referring back to what would draw my target audience in throughout the production process of my film.

My target audience will range from around 13+, therefore, I have created an example of an audience member that would watch my film using the social media website – facebook. I chose this online platform because many target age range would use this form of networking consistently to socialise and live their everyday lives.

My target audience profile is below:

As you can see above, this target audience member is young, loves the horror genre and enjoys watching films that play on your mind. Many of the things that are listed in the profile regarding films and interests show themes of isolation, moments of gore and themes of children.This girl would be appealed by our horror trailer due to the feeling of the ‘unknown’, isolation and the excitement of trying to escape due to her love of going out to places and adventuring.

Risk Assessment

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Why have we produced a Risk Assessment?

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It is important during the production of film that every aspect of planning is thought out carefully and thoughtfully. This is why I decided to do a risk assessment to accurately assess what possible risks may occur from or during the filming process of my Horror Movie Opening.

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Assessing the Risks for our Horror Trailer

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To represent my assessment I laid out all of the possible risks in a table and rated them at a high to low risk, explained what type of risk it was and how many people would be affected by it.

This method is shown below in my Risk Assessment:

BBFC: Age Rating

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BBFC

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It is essential that a suitable rating for a specific age group is classified before a film is released to the public domain. This is done to ensure that no ethical or moral issues within society are broken during the exibhition of the film which may be related to vunerable audiences.

The BBFC, which is formally known as the ‘British Board Film Classification’ is a non-government funded or run organisation. Its role within the media industry is to classify the age rating for media formats such as films, videos and video games within the UK.

The BBFC classify films within the following groups according to the films features and how suitable they are to viewers:

To categorize films the board have a specific list of requirements for each age group that they chose from. These requirements show how suitable the films should be to the age group the film is being shown to. Therefore, this factor of my horror film trailer is very important to prevent people who are possibly unsuitable to watch it from seeing it and being psychologically harmed.

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Our film classification

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We decided that our film would be classified as a 12A rated film because regarding the violent elements within this particular genre of horror films, they often contain a variety of disturbing and possibly psychologically harming jump moments and frequent frightening sequences. This rating of film provokes ‘moderate physical and psychological harm’ therefore we feel that because our film obtains all of these elements it would not be suitable for a younger audience without adult supervision. Any movie classified under this age rating also contain: minimal sustained horror sequences, moderate psychological threats, no emphasis on injuries or blood and occasional moments of gore.

We believe the conventional age rating of 12A for horror films would best suit our trailer as a result of these reasons and due to the fact that many horror films have this age rating.

Script for our Horror Trailer

Along with our storyboard we created a script that we could follow as a basic summary of what dialouge we might want to use in our horror trailer. By doing this, we could establish what sort of narrative each scene will have, meaning that production will by easy and quick.

This task allowed us to re-establish skills that we had learned last year in script writing. To do it, we used a website called celtx- https://www.celtx.com/index.html – which was useful for writing scripts in a professional way like you would see in film/telivision production. This made our production process seem a lot more sophisticated and  official.

My collegue has created three scripts in order for us to deistinguish between different scenes when producing the film which will make the process much quicker and easier.

Below is our final products:

NEWS REPORT SCRIPT

CLASSROOM SCRIPT

PRINCIPLE SCRIPT

Within our scripts we used a lot of ‘action’ descriptions due to the fact that we wanted to have less dialouge and more dramatic action shots to establish our narrative. A lot of more dialouge will be used at the start to represent the initial storyline our our trailer however after that minimal dialouge will be used and a lot more diegetic sound will be introduced.

My collegue and I both feel that the dialogue that we have put into the script is just an overall basic idea of what we will actually use in our trailer. With this in mind, we feel that there is a lot more dialogue there than we will actually use.

Storyboard for Horror Trailer

Over the last few lessons me and my collegue have been planning and creating our storyboards for our horror trailer. We decided to create them in order to have a clear understanding of what structure and narrative our trailer will have. It will also help us to decide how we will set the scenes in our horror trailer. We had to include a few important elements into our storyboard, they were:

• Shot Description
• Shot type and camera movement
• The edit used in the scene
• Dialouge/sound that we plan to use

Planning and creating this storyboard has allowed us to understand the transition in which our scenes will move within our trailer and where our props and settings will be used within them. This will allow us to save time when filming which will be useful in the production process.

(CLICK TO ENLARGE)

Scouting for Locations

In order for Melisssa and I to be prepared to film for our horror trailer, we set out a task to scout for locations around our school that would be suitable to film. This task helped us to explore the entirety of our chosen setting and this meant that we could specifically showcase the scariest parts of the school for the audience to see.

Below is a voiceover Video explaining what locations within our setting we chose and why we chose them. The video will also explain how we will incorporate these settings into our horror trailer:

Here is the Prezi Presentation that I have created if you would like to view it at a slower pace:
https://prezi.com/embed/2g2ym6c7hh0g/?bgcolor=ffffff&lock_to_path=0&autoplay=0&autohide_ctrls=0&landing_data=bHVZZmNaNDBIWnNjdEVENDRhZDFNZGNIUE43MHdLNWpsdFJLb2ZHanI0cmxwcVUzWUtQUGc4dnE3OE4xU0JIbStRPT0&landing_sign=CzwtunWMRZq1OFyBfnK0i5BnnoaviwByKQcRNkO8I24

Scouting for locations presentation weblink:

https://prezi.com/2g2ym6c7hh0g/scouting-for-locations/#