Inspiration

This is a trailer for a new TV series which uses an effect we would love to use in our own trailer. Different faces of pretty girls appear, they start off happy and smiling and then slowly their face loses colour and their expression changes to sadness, fear or pain. Writing that looks like it has been scratched into their skin appears on different parts of their face like their forehead, cheek or eyelids.

We think that the contrast of the pale skin looks really effective with the scratch marks. The words that appear also reveal a secret about each specific girl so we could this effect to reveal a little bit of the narrative of our trailer. We can make our actress look distressed as this secret she is holding is hanging over her.

In order to make this work, we need to play around with the editing or the way we shoot it, which means we would have to use effective make up, draw a few bits of the word, film, stop, draw some more letters, film, stop and so on. We will play around with this effect so that we can make it look as effective as possible to the audience.

Inspiration - Gothika

As our genre is horror, I look into research from a film called Gothika which has a similar idea as our one (girl in a mental asylum who shouldn't be there).

The shot where there is writing on the wall in blood is very typical of a horror genre but very scary and has given us inspriation for us to do something similar to this is our teaser trailer. The blood will be representing danger and obviously the colour red has connotations that will be linked to anger, death and rage.

The character in Gothika looks very tired and run down from being in the mental institution and this is how we would like our protagonist to look in our trailer. We will do her make up to look very pale and this shows she has no emotion. Although the teaser is told from our protagonists point of view, we want her to look scary and weird to add effect to our trailer as in the end, she finds out she is not innocent. Halle Berry in Gothika has red marks around her eyes which signifies crying and we will use this effect in our trailer. Her hair looks greasy and unstyled which is also how our protagonist will look.

History of Pyschological Horrors

1930s: Gothic sub-genre
Cultural changes that influenced this sub-genre: Great depression, War, Technology 

Frankenstein



• "monster movies"
• for example: Dracula & Frankenstein
• 'The Cabinet of Dr.Caligari'
• 'Nosferatu'
• 'King Kong'

1940s: Wartime
Cultural changes that influenced this sub-genre: Adolf Hitler, WW2

• 
• The wolfman (Adolf means noble wolf in German)

1950s-1960s: Science fiction & Creature features
Cultural changes that influenced this sub-genre: Post-war effects, cold war, first sighting of a flying saucer, Roswell incident, Technological change, Atom bomb

• threats from the 'unknown' - aliens, mutations of plants and insects (effects of nuclear radiation)
• low-budget films. B-movies aimed at teenage audiences
• zombies for example: Night of the living dead
• demons, the devil for example: Rosemarys baby
• non-supernatural psychological horror for example: Psycho
• 'Godzilla' - monster mutation



Night of the living dead

 1970s-1980s: 'Occult' themes & Disasters

• explicit gore
• symbolism
• for example: The Exorcist
• religion, evil children, reincarnation
• ''body horror''
• slasher films for example: Halloween

1990s: Irony

• mockumentary for example: Blair Witch Project
• ironic, comic
• fictional horror and real-world horror



Saw

 2000s:

• re-releases for example: The Exorcist
• teen centred horror for example:
• zombie films for example: Dawn of the dead

Narrative Theory

Barthes Enigma Code


Throughout the narrative of our film, there are mysteries that the audience will find out at the end, hence the idea being a sub genre of horror; psychological horror. The mystery draws in the audience in and encourages them to ask themselves questions throughout the film.


Levi Strauss' Binary Oppositions

Narrative tension is based on opposition or conflict. Looking at the opposites sets values which show the structure of media texts. In our trailer and narrative, there are opposites which tell the audience about the idea.

-madness/insanity

-past/present

Codes and Conventions of a Horror

Our next step was to look at the codes and conventions, although we already had a good idea from our previous piece of coursework, it couldn't hurt to refresh our memories!

Shadows
Blood
Death
Silence
Dark Lighting
Eerie music
Handheld camera shots
Feeling of vulnerability
Victim
Villain
Isolated location
Heartbeat
Minor key diegetic music
Violence
Unprotected victim

Looking at the pros and cons of the horror genre

Benefits:
• Not many actors are needed to match the codes and conventions; we need one villain and one victim minimum.
• The codes and conventions (e.g. shadows, dark lighting, using colours that represent things) can be easily achieved.
• Depending on what type of horror we decide upon, we will be able to experiment with makeup.
• Using special effects, colours and lighting, we will be able to make the setting look scary and fit the horror genre.
• We can find typical sound effects that can be very effective and build tension e.g. a heartbeat.
• Low budget


Constraints:
• Can look very low budget
• May be hard to find a suitable location

Sub genre; Psychological horror

Psychological horror:

This genre is shown to depend on fears of the character, eerie sound effects, music that will build tension and emotions that compliment the plot to make it more mysterious. The characteristics of the genre usually have less physical harm than a general horror movie, as the film would be affecting characters and audiences mentally.

The horror tends to be more subtle and is hidden behind normality so is seen as more secretive and the discomfort that the viewer experiences is caused by unconscious vulnerabilities or fears. This is because is taps into basic human fears.

The object of horror is usually another person or spirit/supernatural presence rather than a make believe object e.g. a monster or stalker seen in typical horror films. Psychological thrillers are similar to psychological horrors but usually leave the viewers keep guessing and analyzing the movie after it has finished.

• Psychological horrors always have a lead character in the film
• Always have a twist
• Includes elements that are related to the mind; mental rather than physical nature.

Researching the genre

We have decided to do horror as the genre for our teaser trailer. This was our chosen genre because it wouldn’t be too difficult to find a suitable location and we had a lot of ideas for it. Obviously the first step was to research the typical codes and conventions of a horror and then we could look at different films with the same genre to get inspiration for our own teaser trailer.
Horror films are unsettling for the audience and are meant to frighten, cause tension, bring unconscious fears to consciousness and shock the viewers. Horrors can sometimes be confused with thrillers, which is a similar that lacks numerous scares but has elements of a horror film. Common elements of a horror film includes ghosts, cannibals, demons, zombies, curses or haunted houses.