In the trailer we contain many intertextual references, such as halloween, jennifers body and black christmas. We also use a common code used by many horror films production teams in there trailers which is a Linear narrative, for example, in the black christmas trailer, the story is roughly told chronologically.
We ve also used quiet a sophisticated piece of editing software ' Sony Vegas ' allowing us to look less amateur by using visual effects. We ve also used similar techniques of successful low budget horrors such as match on action shots.
Throughout the project I have researched many trailers to find out just what makes a good teaser trailer. By viewing about thirty and making notes on them, you begin to spot similarities between them and a general theme, the forms and conventions seem to have a general code in the horror film teaser trailer industry.
Our media product develops forms and conventions of real media products such as the scene of the stabbing, when one character(sophie- Rosie)stabs another(theo-Matt) the stabbing involves some quite graphic detail e.g coughing up blood, this could be seen as forms and conventions of real media products such as the film ' Dressed to Kill' or other slashers such as 'Scream' and 'Halloween'.
The type of media institution that would distribute our media product would be a small indie company because of course we ourselves are just beginners and could not afford to even try and attract one of the big 5 conglomerates, our best and cheapest option would be to go to an indie company e.g Icon Film Productions.
Editing
The editing style we chose for our teaser trailer relates to the forms and conventions of real media products greatly. We felt we needed to edit it this way to give it a less amateur look and feel to our audience. We've also used similar shot types to those real media products use in their trailers, for example, close up shots to show expressions/emotions of the characters, these shots can be very useful in teaser trailers, as it provides anchorage for the point you want to get accross to the audience when you have little time to do it. Another shot type we've used would be a tracking/POV shot, this connotes to the audience along with the digetic and non digetic sound that someone is being approached in order to be attacked, especially with the pace the camera is going at.
Cinematography
We used many different shot types to give the each shot what it needed to give the audience the feeling we wanted to. We had to shoot and re-shoot almost all the shots as we didnt always get them right and also if we didnt notice the shot was wrong we have no other shots to choose from and it takes alot of effort to get the cast together as people have other things to be doing in there spare time. We used many close up shots as these are a form and convention of many teaster trailers for horror/slasher films.
Lighting
We use a variety of lighting types in shots for our trailer, to create all sorts of connotation, denotation and anchorage to show the audience whats the films all about. The two main types of lighing we use in the product are low-key, which is a much more pronounced shadows and dramatic contrasts and colour FX(mainly used in our rough cut) such as cold and blueish lighting, quite dark so it connotes a sense of cold emotion.
Characters
The characters choice was very important to us for creating the right forms and conventions of real media products but also challenging them. Instead of having a brunette female as the antagonist instead of the conventional blonde, busty, sexually active female. We challenged the real codes and conventions by mixing things up a bit, we want our production to be different, to stand out as we're not a big budget film we need something cheap and effective to make it stand out and attract an audience following. We have also chosen characters in the same social class group and age to the target audience as they can relate themselves to the film. The audience for our media product would be people aged from 15 to 24. We used methods of attracting our audience by the content of the film, although 'illegal' until 18 alcohol is praised upon by the youth, aswell as sex and violence, these things attract the attention of the audience and keep them drawn in.
Representations
We represented many of the productions features using stereoptypes of which everyone can relate to, e.g young people binge drinking. We tryed to represent things as obviously as possible however in such a short amount of time we can only connote representations to the audience through fast paced shorts montage of clips not denote apart from anchoring the point thats its at a party and theres going to be killings involving alot of graphic violence using mise-en-scene and other useful materials such as fake blood.
Mode of address/language(especially for print products)
We mainly stuck to language which was simple and easy to understand, aswell as bold words because the target audience isn't well educated, upper class intellectuals, its lower class people who are a broader more common market and we felt the need to use a common code of language for them to be attracted to the marketing campaign.
Narrative
Propp, was a Russian formalist scholar who analyzed the basic plot components of Russian folk tales to identify their simplest irreducible narrative elements. His theory is now used in media eduction. By breaking storys down into there simplest forms as we did with our project, you can arrive a typology to its narrative structure, this included the following...
ABSENTATION, INTERDICTION, VIOLATION of INTERDICTION, RECONNAISSANCE, DELIVERY, TRICKERY, COMPLICITY, VILLAINY and LACK, MEDIATION, BEGINNING COUNTER-ACTION, DEPARTURE, FIRST FUNCTION OF THE DONOR, HERO'S REACTION, RECEIPT OF A MAGICAL AGENT, GUIDANCE and many more.
Propp also came up with what virtually all films have in them, with their characters...The 7 broad character types... The villain The donor The (magical) helper The princess The dispatcher The hero or victim/seeker hero [False hero]
More info from the source is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Propp
Layout(Print)
The layouts of my print products relate very much to real media products. I have written mainly about these in my audience feedback section of my evaluation. I researched through alot of magazines and posters to spot the general forms and conventions of these.
Titles
The titles were used to connect with the audience through point blank communication. For example, we used effective ways to interact with the audience for example, 'YOU'RE INVITED TO A PARTY' 'YOU WILL NEVER FORGET'.
Soundtrack
We used a product which is completely royalty free from a software company called 'Videocopilot'. The product we used was 'Pro-scores' http://www.videocopilot.net/products/proscores/
Accents
The accents of the cast in the digetic sound is very important as they match the target audience and therefore will attract them, they specifically dont speak formal 'proper' upper class English as the audience would simply not feel connected with the characters and therefore would share no similarities and interests.
Teaser trailers were only usually used in big budget blockbusters, however due to the birth of technology and the internet, it has allowed small budget films to market there productions to large audiences on a low budget, for example, placing the trailer on a site such as Youtube.com.
The point of a teaser trailer is not only to tell people that the new film is coming out but also to add hype leading up to the films release and also to give them a bit of knowledge of what the film is actually about.
One of the main points of a teaser trailer is to add hype to the release of the film, to get people talking about it and get them excited to see about it. If your trailer gets people gossiping about the film, it allows word of mouth advertising and will get more people wanting to be paying for a ticket to see your film.
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