Website

Obviously we have to include pictures on the website and the one I have for the main one which will take a a large part of the screen is of daisy while we were filming her 'nightmare scene'. It has dark lighting and you can see her very clearly. The make up I did makes her look tired and weak.

Website content

As part of our promotional package, we have to design a website. We had our first lesson on website design the other day and we got taught about the key features of a website and what we need to think about when creating it.

In terms of creating the website, we need to think about the trailer we are producing, how it will link with our website and we will be inserting it onto the main page. We will also include information about the trailer and our narrative including the process of making the trailer.
We will upload photos and videos to the blog which will show all our location and the fun we had while taking part in the project. An idea we had for the website was a voiceover of some kind on the homepage.

In terms of the content on the website, we will consider the following:

Functionality
-how well the website operates
-access to the website and how easy it is for users to use
-speed, if we involve too much content that isn't really needed then it will take a long time for the website to load each page
-legality - this will involve us doing research about the rights of our website and what we cannot include e.g. copyright etc

Design
-Typography (which we have already been doing research on), range of fonts, colours etc
-Artistry -genre. We need to consider our genre to make sure that the website will link in and give off a 'horror' effect as out teaser will be for a horror film.
-User friendly - links in with functionality. We need to make sure our website is easy to use by our audience otherwise it will get a bad reputation and not many people will visit it.
-Clarity-make it clear. We need to make sure the website is clear and simple for people to use
-Aesthetics
-Colour harmonies - don't use colours that clash or aren't relevant.

Content
-Purpose - why are we designing the website, what does it need to include to be successful.
-Email lists, newsletters
-Fanbase
-Information process
-Verbal Expression
-Attention to detail

Originality
-Quality of predictive research
-Animations
-Distinctiveness

Overall effectiveness
-What wouldn't we like to include that has been featured on other websites.
-The strengths of the website.

Ideas for sound

As we found sound quite a challenging part of our AS media coursework, we have decided to start thinking about sound very early on that suits our genre and will benefit our teaser trailer. Our genre needs dark music, added suspense, quick pace, loud, shocking soundtrack that will make the audience jump. We want the music to be building up tension so they audience know something is going to happen that is scary in the teaser.
Some ideas we had that inspired us came from youtube as these were diegetic sound effects of ticking clocks, heart beats and the non-diegetic sound effect was called suspense.

Costumes

As we're getting ready to start filming soon, we need to sort out the costumes. Our initial idea for the protagonist was a hospital dress/robe as she would be living in a mental asylum. However, we changed this idea as we thought it was too stereotypical and she wouldn't be living in a hospital, its a mental asylum where she is being watched by staff. I've looked at a film that we have got a little bit of inspiration from called 'Girl Interrupted'. The patients who are in an institution here are wearing normal clothes but they are plain. This is a good idea and we have decided to dress our protagonist in plain clothes as it shows her identity is lost and she has no real personality throughout the film.

This picture of Winona Ryder from Girl interrupted shows she is writing/drawing, keeping herself busy while she is at the institution and she is wearing her own clothes but they are plain and as an audience we see her with no identity, and in the film her identity is lost for herself, she doesn't know who she is. .

Choosing our actresses

We needed two characters for our teaser trailer (one protagonist) and we wanted a girl who was about 17/18 years old who had dark hair. This was because we wanted to match the codes and conventions of our film and as our protagonist turns out to be the villian, we wanted her to have dark hair as she is mysterious and dark (although the audience will think she is innocent until the end). She is meant to have been admitted to a mental institution so our idea is to dress her in clothes which show no identity because she has little power.
Gabby is the other actress in our teaser. She is only in two shots of our trailer and is very mysterious, (you can't see her face). There is a shot in our trailer where Daisy is holding a picture and herself and Gabby are both in the picture together. We have burnt the edges of the picture to represent the fire that happened and daisys nightmares in the trailer.

Pictures of Location

This is a perfect location for our genre and fits with our idea very well as this is a derelict mental asylum which closed down in 1996. As shown in the pictures, it is surrounded by trees and very secluded. Its called Leybourne Grange and has connotations of horror as it is isloated, creepy and very dark inside. The rooms are all empty, (apart from beer cans and graffiti) and this will help us to be able to create good mise en scene for our teaser trailer. We will need to play around with lighting when filming as we will film a majority of the teaser at night to fit with the codes and conventions of our horror film. The long shot of the corridor is a fantastic shot and we will definitely be using this in our teaser as it creates a horror and creepy atmosphere. We will also get a shot of the asylum from outside from the back like the one shown in the picture above to make the audience aware of what kind of place it is. Playing around with effects will help us make our trailer perfect for the horror genre!

Derelict Asylum in Leybourne!!

Another location for our teaser will be a place we found called 'Leybourne Grange'. Its a closed mental institution near maidstone and has all the typical connotations of a horror teaser trailer. Its a perfect location surrounded by trees so it is very enclosed and isolated.

The video I have taken shows the outside of the asylum and different parts inside. There is quite a lot of vandalism in the building so we will need to make sure that we try and hide that when we are filming as we dont want the audience to be distracted while they are watching the trailer.

More Location

This is a picture of one of our locations, it is a derelict house located in Bromley. We are going to use this for the inside of the mental institution for a few shots e.g. when she is looking out the window, and when the policeman interviews the protagonist. It is a good location because it is very white and looks like the kind of mise en scene that would be in a mental institution. It is very plain and there is nothing to distract the audience so the focus will be on what is going on in the teaser trailer.   

In the derelict house there is also a lift that we could use to show isolation and trying to escape. In our teaser trailer, this lift is going to be located in the mental asylum and she goes in it to escape. This will only be used for one shot that last for about 1 second and she is going to rattle the metal to show she wants to get out. This is good for our genre as it is mahogany brown and represents darkness and gothic elements in the trailer.



Location Ideas

Main Gate

Our narrative is set in a number of different places, one being the mental asylum that our character is situated. We have found a closed asylum in Barming near maidstone. From the pictures we think that this will be an ideal location because it looks eery and looks like a typical horror location, i.e tall, large, dark building in the middle of nowhere. Iron gates emphasise the isolation of the builing and also the feeling of being trapped. We could use this to our advantage and show that there is no sign on escape for our main character.

Mortuary

The worn old buildings of the asylum would also be a good location to emphasise the isolation of our character and  seperates her from the outside world.

We need to visit the location to get permission to use the building in our media

Previous narrative ideas

This is a scanned A3 piece that we did before we had chosen our final narrative. We had 3 very brief ideas that we mindmapped and these were all different subgenres of horror; slasher, supernatural and psychological.

The slasher idea was based on two girls being kidnapped and tortured by a sick man. We got our inspiration from films such as nightmare on elm street, wolf creek etc. It would be set at night, in an isolated road and their car would break down.They have to find help from the nearest house and they would stumble upon a mentally ill man who was evil. However, we thought this idea was too typical and wasnt very realistic as looking at the codes and conventions of a slasher, would have to involve a lot of gore, blood and disturbing circumstances which we didn't want to include.

Our second idea was another horror sub genre; supernatural. We would use elements such as the devil, spirits, ghosts and 'the unknown'. This narrative would be about a boy who had been contacted by spirits who would tell him what would happen in the future. He was bullied at school because he was able to guess what would happen and people would tease him for being psychic. Throughout the film, he turned evil and would get revenge on all the people that teased him while he was growing up.

Our third idea was a psychological horror that had elements of voodoo in it. Our story was based on a girl that was very lonely and liked a boy at her high school. She got very jealous of the boys girlfriend and would always leave the girl notes to her which would threaten her. One night she found out where the girl was babysitting and went to the house to tell her to leave the boy alone. She threatened her and used voodoo to try and get the girl to obey her but the girlfriend ended up dying.

Narrative

After a lot of thinking and research, we have decided to do a psychological horror based on a girl from a mental institution. Our idea is based on films such as Carrie, Shutter Island, Girl Interrupted and Gothika. We will use a teenage girl, aged 16 or 17, as our main protagonist who lives in a mental asylum and she runs away. It is a story from her point of view and therefore the audience sympathise with her. Her story is that she is neglected by her parents, very depressed, she self harms and her parents have lied to the police and social services and put her in a rehabilitation centre so they dont have to put up with her. Throughout the time in the asylum she has flashbacks of a fire, candles, running water, graveyards where she has visited a tombstone with a certain name on it and nightmares about a girl who is the same age but she does not know who she is. She escapes from the mental institution because she believes she is innocent and she wants to figure out what the nightmares and flashbacks are about. At the end, there is a twist and the audience find out that the protagonist killed her best friend in a fire and this is the girl that she keeps dreaming about. She started a fire in her best friends room while her friend was in the shower because she was jealous of her family life and took it for granted. Her parents put her in the mental asylum because they found out about the fire through her diary and she was there for 1 year and 3 months before she ran away. She had erased the fire and her best friend from her memory, it was in her unconscious mind.

Coursework Brief

For our media coursework, our group will create a teaser trailer for a film narrative which we have come up with. We will then create a promotional package for this teaser trailer which will include a poster and a website.

Along the way we will deconstruct existing films, teaser trailers and film posters looking at the important codes and conventions that will in the end help to create our final product.

Definition of a teaser trailer

A teaser trailer is short film trailer that is used to advertise an upcoming movie months before its release. They are typically 30-60 seconds long and contain the title and only important footage from the actual film. Their purpose is to create suspense and questions for the audience as they give away little narrative. It also lets the audience know that this film is going to be released.