Refined Idea

We changed our final idea to be similar to ‘I Spit On Your Grave’ where two friends, Nina and Tatum, are in a dance studio rehearsing their routine and two boys enter. They begin to misbehave with the two girls and as one of them approaches Nina to rape her, Tatum flees leaving her friend helpless. This leads Nina seeking revenge on the rapists and her friend who left her at a time of need. After discussing this idea, we concluded that the story line was complex where the victim resorts to villainous acts blurring the line between Clover’s final girl and the sadistic villain. Thus we have decided to follow our initial idea of 'The Last Laugh' with the unknown masked villain and Nina's character conforming to Clover's Final Girl Theory.

Ideas for Horror Trailer

1. The Last Laugh

A group of friends who are also dancers are practicing for their end of year performance. They all decide to leave after a busy rehearsal but one, Buffy remains to perfect her dance. A masked villain appears and she is his first target. One by one, all concede defeat to the unknown figure’s merciless intentions except for Nina. Now Nina is the last one remaining, will she uncover the villain’s identity and more importantly, will she survive?!

2. Big Bad Wolf

A group of bored teenagers go into the woods and start messing around, drinking alcohol and playing dangerous jokes on each other. One of them suffers a psychological breakdown when a prank goes too far and he begins to act strange. Soon, the group get attacked in a brutal manner and fall unconscious. When they wake up, they discover that their friend is not who he seemed to be!

3. Sweet Revenge

It’s the end of a long year at Plumstead Manor School and a group of friends decide it’s time to play the ultimate joke on the school nerd. Passive and afraid, Laura believes the bullies to be her enemies but when they invite her to the end of year party at their house, she innocently agrees. Excited that this is her chance to mix in with the popular crowd, she makes her way to the party venue only to be embarrassed and humiliated in front of 500 people! She leaves in utter grief. Once outside, she bumps into a stranger (hooded figure) who she confesses all her anguish to. After begging him to help her, they both begin a journey to teach the bullies a lesson and achieve this through brutally murdering them. Now that the revenge is taken, the hooded figure wants something in return but who is he and what does he want?!

Final Idea

Our group came to the conclusion that ‘The Last Laugh’ plot would be most suitable for our horror trailer. The ‘Sweet Revenge’ plot would be too complicated and organising the party venue with 500 people also difficult. The ‘Big Bad Wolf’ plot line deviates from the slasher horror genre that we want to convey. It is too unrealistic and would therefore be difficult to convey convincingly. We all voted in favour for ‘The Last Laugh’ plot line due to its conventional narrative of Clover’s ‘Final Girl’ theory in action.

Preliminary Task- Bussing Sequence and Evaluation

 Bussing Sequence

Evaluation

Introduction
The planning of our bussing sequence was quick and required us to create a storyboards and then film on the same day. This process enabled us to se our initiative and experiement with shots as and when new ideas and suggestions were given.

To allow ourselves to put our AS Media skills into practice, our group decided to focus on demonstrating our creativity via camera shots and sound. The story of our sequence follows a teenage girl who is attacked by an unknown villain whilst playing the piano.

Mise-en-scene
Our herione is a typical teenager dressed casually for colleg wating for her teacher to arrive so that she can begin her piano lesson. Through mise-en-scene of the high key lighting in the corridor, the horror element is not entirely clear. We were unable to dim the lights and this was reflected on our sequence as the eerie non diegetic sound dows not synchronise with the setting. The narrow corridors create a claustraphobic atmosphere illustrating her entrapment as she walks away from the camera, safety, into the danger that awaits her. The low key lighting of the hall was created by blocking the light from the windows by pulling the blinds down. Here we wanted to create a dark setting paradigm notorious in horror films and the visual metaphorical transition from the herione walking from the bright lit corridor to the dark hall was effective in portraying the this shift to a dangerous environment. 

The piano is old and the herione plays 'Moonlight' by Mozart paralleling with the silk curtains which create an overall traditional atmosphere. The prop paradigm of the curtains correlates with the popular net curtains in Halloween and other horror films illustrating that the victim is exposed to the sadistic voyeur.

Sound
The non diegetic sound is effective in building up the tension and the diegetic sound of the classical music juxtaposes with the eerie non diegetic instrumental, all which inject suspense and sustain a fear of the unexpected. Our group decided that a real scream would be much more effective than one imported from the Internet therefore we told the actor to scream to make it realistic. One of the problems we faced with the diegetic sound was when filming the piano scene, continuity errors occured where the camera cut and disjointed the music. For future reference, our group decided to record the piano mucis and then embedd it into the scene to avoid the obvious jerkiness.

Editing
Our editing was very simple due to the shortage of time therefore we were only able to use some transition effects such as fades to black. For future reference, we will allow plenty of time for the editing where we can explore different effects and transitions which will heighten the horror. Tone cards may be a useful device in engaging the audience.

Achievements
Our protagonist was a universal teenager in a setting relatable to all the youths today. Her costume is casual and our group tried to illsutrate that this could be anyone at any school. The sequence begins with the protagonist walking through a narrow corridor. She walks further away as she walks closer to the danger. In the long shot, she appears very small in contrast to the menacing corridors which mirrors her vulnerability. The camera then cuts to a point of view shot of the dark hall and this is a visual metaphor of her movement from light to dark, safety to danger. The point of view pan shot when she looks into the hall is effective as it allows the audience to be positioned as the herione. In the next scene, the fade correlates with the eerie classical diegetic sound creating a similar effect to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre trailer where the classical non diegetic sound juxtaposes with the brutal events happening. The high angle shot of the scream zooms in to the heriones mouth echoing the shower scene from Psycho. The trailer ends with a fade to black mimicing the protagonist's plunge into darkness, her death.

Improvements
The fact that we did not include an establishing shot limits the audiences understanding of where the trailer is set. By including an establishing shot of the school behind the gates would have enabled us to create a sense of entrapment almost instantly. Additionally, the audience are unable to connect with the victim because there were not many close up shots. A close up shot is effective in establishing a relationship between the masochistic audiences and the victim, moreover it creates pathos. There was also no build up and the victim got to the scare very quickly making it unrealistic and not frightening. The fall is also unbelievable and humerous and our group have decided not to include a fall for our trailer. Continuity errors also occures with the piano music and also the actor was dressed differently in the second half of the sequence. This occured as we ran out of time whilst fiilming the first half and the actor forgot to dress the same the week later.

Conclusion
Overall, our group were satisfied with the quality of our trailer in regards to the short amount of time we had for planning, filming and editing. We decided that for our real trailer, we will take time planning our shots and know beforehand what music to use  which will compliment the genre. Editing will also need to be longer to enable us to explore the different efects which will give our trailer the 'professional look'.

Questionnaire Analysis

 

Questionnaire

Media Approaches Timelines

Todorov's Theory Of Narrative

 

Levi Strauss Binary Opposites

Propp's Eight Character Types

Saussure's Structuralist Theory

 

Clover's Final Girl Theory

Barthe's Pleasure Of Text Theory/ Althusser's Interpollation Theory

Media Approches Mind Map