Conventions of our horror poster

Through conducting research on existing products we found there were 5 main similarities:

• 1 main image - darkish background
• colour scheme - black, red, white
• 1 main font - sell your soul
• Tagline - 2 short sentences, gripping, mysterious
• Release date

We then incorporated these five conventions into our own final product, however also challenged some conventions to make our product unique.

Images
We took a range of images varying from a close up of one of our actors faces, to shots of the woods to a close up of the necklace featured in the film. We then conducted a focus group where we showed all ten people these images and received their feedback, 8/10 preferred  the close up image of the hand holding the necklace due to it "fitting the horror genre" and it being "creepy and mysterious so makes you want to watch the film" but also liked the shots of the woods. Therefore we decided to use both images for our poster, use the hand as the focal point and the woods image as the background. This challenged the usual conventions of horror posters as our researched showed most posters featured a close up of the main character, however we didn't follow this due to our findings in market research/focus groups and the want to make our product unique.

Colour Scheme
After our findings from the market research we decided to stick with the trend of using red, black and white as the colour scheme as these colours represent the horror genre and allow the audience to easily identify the type of film we are portraying.

Font
We downloaded a range of fonts that we felt reflected the horror genre, such as Sell Your Soul, Bell MT and    Face Your Fears,these fonts were all quite simplistic but looked effective when placed onto a poster/magazine. We took these fonts and placed them onto a mock poster and showed them to the focus group, the group then unanimously agreed that Sell Your Soul was their favourite. Therefore we have used this font throughout our products to try and keep the font as a part of brand/product recognition.

Tagline
We found that most taglines were either one or two short sentences, that featured mysterious language which kept the reader guessing, which in turn makes them want to watch the film. We decided to go for 'You think you know the story. Think again' we used this as it makes the reader want to know more. We also incorporated these lines into our horror trailer itself.

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Here is a copy of our final media product - the movie poster. 

Conventions of the Horror Genre

Rationale

To gain an understanding of what makes an authentic, professional and convincing horror trailer we'd have to undertake some research. 

We will research the following aspects of horror trailers:

• Clothing
• Make-up
• Lighting
• Framing
• Sound
• Mise-en-sene 
• Target Markets
• Naming
• Fonts

Our findings would not be definitive in creating our product. The conventions we find will not be seen as 'rules' to making a quality horror film trailer but, in-fact, will be seen as guidelines that we can challenge, develop and put our own 'twist' on. For example, we may not have conform to the way the characters dress in a common horror film - we can create and manipulate the aesthetics of our characters to fit our own imagery and ideas. 

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Rationale

To make the sound in our trailer as professional and as creepy as possible we had to do some research into existing products. We looked at what different elements of sound were used in a horror trailer. We found several different aspects:

• Dialogue
• Music (main and underlying)
• Special Effects

Findings

Dialogue - In most horror trailers, we found that dialogue was kept to a minimum and, in some cases there was no dialogue at all. However, we focused largely on 'The Cabin in the Woods' as it has a similar theme to the trailer as our film does. Cabin in the Woods uses very little dialogue as a whole - the majority of the dialogue comes at the beginning of the trailer. This is something we're going to try and utilise as the microphones we have may be difficult to pick up quality sound. The Cabin in the Woods trailer uses small snippets of dialogue toward the end such as "we need to stick together". Again we're going to try and use this technique as little and quick dialogue can keep pace for our product.

Music - Throughout our study of music in a horror trailer we found that there's two main pieces - the beginning and the underlying. Again we looked at Cabin in the Woods, which showed an upbeat even happy song at the start; this music complimented the mood of the piece. However, as the scenes changed to a more creepy sense of style so did the music. Quiet, underlying and even harmonic tones created a sense of horror and even innocence. This is again a technique we'd like to exploit. Our piece involves a lot of loud bangs and scenes that try and surprise the viewer - the underlying tones add to this aim.

Special Effects -  All horror trailers use a lot of special effects from bangs to scratching to added dialogue. We tried to use all these effects. We've added sounds that escalate in noise quickly and produce a dramatic climax which will potentially heighten the impact of the following shots and scenes. Along with this we're planning on placing a heartbeat sound to compliment a certain run of shots with a character in a cellar. Our final use of sound comes through the added dialogue of a child's voice over the top of our film. Below is some of the audio clips we have used.

This video is a montage of the audio clips recorded to feature in our trailer. The recordings are of a young child, counting to 10 and singing a nursery rhymes. Throughout our research we found that audiences found young children featuring in horror films extremely creepy especially their young voices, therefore we decided to incorporate this into our trailer. 

C&B

Rationale
As part of our final product we had the task of creating a horror movie poster, we created this using our findings from existing movie posters and also challenged the conventions to try and create a unique product.

Creating the film trailer poster

Firstly I took two images, one of the woodland setting used in our trailer and secondly one of my little sister holding the necklace which is the key point in our trailer. The reason I used the woodland is because it is quite an eery setting used throughout horror films/trailers and also looks effective as a background. The reason I used a childs hand holding the necklace is because the small hand makes the image creepier and links with the child audio in the trailer and also holding the necklace as that is the key feature that turns the character in the trailer possessed. 

I then took the image of the hand and photo shopped it so that the image was purely of the hand, this allowed me to be able to copy it as a new layer onto the woodland image. I then positioned the hand into a chosen area on the woodland picture and used effects such as the smudge tool and the colour filter tool to make the hand look like it is 'coming out of the ground' and paler to make it look more 'dead'. I then edited the brightness/contrast to make the picture look creepier and darker. 

Finally, I installed two fonts (SteelTongs and Sell your soul) to use throughout the trailer, these fonts will be used throughout all 3 of our media tasks. I used these fonts to add the title of the film, name of actors/actresses, film slogan and film credits on the bottom.

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Lighting and Framing Analysis

Rationale

Before we begin to shoot our horror film trailer, we had to understand what techniques are used to create a sense of fright - something vital to our piece. We have decided to research two key technical elements of shooting a horror film; this is lighting techniques and framing techniques. We have done research into why, how and what types of these are the most useful and successful in making a film that fits the horror genre.

Lighting

While we conducted our research we found a website (http://www.videomaker.com/article/15436) which gave us some insight into some techniques that can be used to create a convincing light. A lot of the time, we found that our dark shots were too dark - characters and scenery were completely lost. However, we found this technique called 'light and dark.' This technique allows us to film at any time in the day - light or dark. By turning down the cameras 'gain', a well lighted room can seem dim. This trick is commonly used in film production.

We found another technique which uses 'harsh light' that was in most horror trailers. The contrast between very dark framing and an extremely bright focus on an object or character creates a very creepy sense to the film. We utilised this technique to create such a sense. The image below shows the use of harsh lighting in a previously successful film.





Framing
As we undertook some research into the framing of horror films we found two main techniques that are successful in creating a 'scary' scene.
- Hot points.
Many of the horror films we have looked at use hot points in the shot to create a professional looking shot. The character, or the action in the scene (for example a door slamming) are never in the centre of the shot. This allows the audience to be surprised and shocked when something happens - the loud bang etc is never the focus of the scene. We shall utilise this technique, as our trailer is designed to make people jump and this is a very successful style to make this happen.
- Movement.
Movement, away from the focus of the scene is very important. Horror films, such as 'The Strangers' use this technique brilliantly. As the focus of the scene is the majority of the framing there's often spacing around the side of them. For example, in 'The Strangers' the character is sat scared and just to left hand side of the shot, slightly out of focus, there's a little bit of moving from the killer. The same is done with trees, shadows and darkness. This little bit of movement, only seen by the audience, places them in a position of power and knowledge - they know what could and probably will happen. We're going to try and use this technique in our trailer, as the idea of slow creepy scenes is what we're aiming to achieve.

Paranormal Activity
- One harsh light illuminates the focus of the shot; the rest is shadowed and dimly lit to create tension.
- This drops subtle shadows and allows for extra movement in the scene.
- The famous 'door slamming' scene uses varying framing techniques.
- It's a wide angle shot.
- The door is in the left hand hot-point.
- This means the door is not the apparent focus of attention.

Uses
From our findings we've chosen to use all of the techniques in some way shape or form. We like the harsh light technique - particularly when it's focused on a characters face. We like the way the light focuses the audience on the character and blacks out the rest of the image. A lot of our film is designed to make the audience jump and keep them in suspense. The 'hot-point' technique is perfect for this - a lot of the actions that make the audience jump is not the primary focus of the shot.

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Name and clothing mood-board analysis

Naming Our Film

For our trailer we came up with the name Purgatory. To show why we chose this name I decided to do a mood board of pictures and words that are associated with the word 'purgatory'. This style of research will  aid my development and refinement of initial ideas by clustering certain associations together. The words that I chose to put on the mood board were 'Supernatural' 'Heaven' 'Hell' 'Souls' 'Paranormal' 'Purification' 'Catholic' and 'Punishment'. These words all relate with the meaning behind the word purgatory is 'A place or state of suffering inhabited by the souls of sinners who are expiating their sins before going to heaven: the punishment of the souls in purgatory' so they were perfect to associate with our film name. We chose this name as we have chosen to do a psychological Horror, where the people suffer just before death, as if they were in purgatory before going into heaven having their souls cleansed. 
Although we thought Purgatory was a fitting name we still had to gain a general consensus as to whether the general public would agree. So, questionnaires and focus groups were set up and they too shared the same conclusion.
The focus group brought back some interesting points that we have taken away. They thought a lot of names like 'paranormal activity' are too generic and even "boring". However, the name 'Purgatory' sparked a lot of intrigue - they had a general idea as to what it meant, yet it was still a kind of ambiguous term. Although this could lead to potential confusion, we believe (as did our focus group) that the name perfectly compliments our style of filming. A psychological thriller is meant to have a sense of ambiguouty to develop the intensity, and if our name can cause the same curiosity then it will be very effective. 

Clothing in Our Film

The second mood board that I completed was on clothing. I split the page into four; each section is designed for each actor or actress. I found pictures on the internet of clothing that is very similar or the same as what the actors and actresses will be wearing in our trailer. Before doing this I looked at several trailers of the same genre to see what kind of clothing they wore so our trailer will fit in with the horror genre. While watching the trailers I noticed that the colours of the clothing tended to be blacks, blues, reds and whites with the odd different colours used. When I was choosing the clothing I tried my best to stick to these colours and make sure that the style of the clothing fits in well. Analysis of previously successful films such as, The Cabin in The Woods and The Devil Inside gave a nice balance and comparison as to the horror film conventions. So we shall try and follow suit.

However, we have tried to challenge the conventions of the horror genre - a lot of the time clothing looks forced simply to fit the scenery. Yet, we have tried to make our actors look as natural as possible by dressing them in clothes they're likely to wear. This is because we didn't feel the 'forced' look would work with our film - they're wearing suitable clothes for every day life, not a real-life horror scene. 

However, we have encountered some problems. Continuity is a big thing in filming and makes the trailer look very professional. In a lot of the trailers we have looked at, clothes become muddy or even ripped - something possible on a high budget. yet due to our budget and the actors wearing their own clothes, we found this nearly impossible - this is something we'd like to change. 

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