Film Planning - Storyboard

We are going to use non-chronological editing as it is typical of trailers and gives a feeling of confusion but also keeps the audience interested. The trailer will give the audience an idea that the film is a thriller and a brief introduction to the characters but we are aiming to only give them a vague explanation of the plot. The editing will be quick and the shots will be short to build tension and we will have fast-paced music with it to emphasise this.

Film Planning - Plot

There are two women that are close friends and as a result, their families spent a lot of time together. Both women have children of the same age, so these two kids are forced to be together whenever the families meet up - resulting in them growing up together like brother and sister. They live on the same street too, so they spend a lot of time with each other outside of school too.

As the children get older, the families meet up less and the girl, Holly, decides to push the boy, Michael, away from her because she wants to spend time with her friends, not him. Michael has nobody else so he's angry at Holly for trying to get rid of him and wants her to notice him again - he's extremely clingy. (This backstory won't be revealed until later in the film.)

The film starts with Holly messing around with her friends with a Ouija board or a pentagram, although this doesn't do anything and they're disappointed. Holly is the main protagonist and she has an average life - she goes to school, gets good grades and has lots of friends, which is shown by her being friendly and saying hello to a meek-looking boy from her class (who is later revealed to be Michael).

Once the protagonists have been established, weird things start happening to her friends, which then become bad things, and Holly notices a pattern of the things happening to people she has talked to - leading her to believe that the pentagram/Ouija board worked and she's cursed. Her friend Natalie goes missing and it's assumed that she has run away due to the bad things that have been happening to her.

Holly blames herself for Natalie running away, isolates herself and becomes paranoid (and is seen rejecting a call from a person named Michael but the audience doesn't know who he is). After thinking that it was all in her imagination, she talks to her best friend, Amy, about her problems and then finds out the next day that Amy has gone missing. (It will be shown later that Michael saw Holly talking to her friend, went to kidnap Amy, and took it too far - accidentally killing her.)

Later that day, Holly has a fight with her mother and storms out of the house to go for a walk to calm down. As it gets darker, she cuts across a field as a shortcut home and sees Michael near some bushes. She calls out to him and jogs over - seeing how he looks shocked to see her but disregarding it as jumping at the sudden shout. She asks him what he was doing and he says he thought he saw something in the bushes but it turned out to be nothing. They walk back to Holly's house together and Michael says about how weird things have been happening to him too, which leads to her mentioning Amy's disappearance (and it makes her suspicious at how much Michael knows about it).

The next morning, the body of Amy has been found in the bushes, dumped haphazardly as if the person was in a rush and wasn't able to hide it as well. Holly sees the area it was found on the news and realises that was where she saw Michael the night before. She asks him if it was the body he saw last night and why he didn't tell her sooner, which leads to him giving a very vague and suspicious answer about how it might have been. She then asks what he was doing out there so late anyway and when he doesn't have an answer, she realises that he was the one that put the body there. She goes to leave but he tells her that he was doing it for her, which results in her slapping him out of disgust and telling him that she hates him.

There is then flashbacks of the film from Michael's point of view, showing how he made the bad things happen and how he killed Amy. These flashbacks emphasise his infatuation with Holly and how everything he did was justified by his good intentions, even if they were executed in a twisted way. The audience isn't meant to sympathize with him and should instead understand him a little better.

Before she leaves, she asks him if he had anything to do with Natalie disappearing and he glances quickly to his basement door in panic. She goes down to the basement and Natalie tied up and on the verge of unconsciousness, and helps her to escape - more concerned with the health of her friend than Michael.

Natalie regains consciousness at Holly's house (after about an hour) and tells Holly to call the police immediately. Holly says she wants to but she can't bring herself to because Michael is like her brother and she doesn't want him to go to prison. Natalie asks if she's at least told Amy and Holly reveals that Amy is dead - resulting in Natalie going over to the phone to call the police herself but spotting a police car outside of Michael's house. The two girl go to see what has happened and notice that Michael is in the back of the car and the neighbours are gossiping about how they can't believe how such a meek boy would commit murder. This makes the girls realise that he turned himself in and they are shocked as they watch him being driven away. The film ends with Holly and Michael's eyes meeting for one last time as he leaves.

Research - The Exorcism of Emily Rose - Film Trailer

To get an idea of the typical conventions of a trailer in the thriller genre, I watched the trailer for 'The Exorcism of Emily Rose'. It's obvious that the film advertised is a thriller/horror due to the fact that it's fast-paced and dark. The pace suggests that there will be action or suspense in the film a lot as it creates tension.

The narrative is quite simple and very easy for the audience to understand - Emily is possessed and on trial. Although it's a very basic plot, there are many characters included; for example, there's Emily, lawyers, a vicar and boy that tries to help her (who could be her brother or a love interest). There are also a lot of settings shown, with most of them being quite stereotypical - such as the dark forest or the dimly lit jail cell. There are also demons featured in the trailer - which are stereotypical in a horror film. Throughout the trailer, there are close-ups on these demons to put emphasis on the supernatural aspect of the film.

There is non-diegetic choir/gospel music throughout the trailer, which gives religious connotations and emphasises the presence of demons and vicars. The music starts off slow, with the pace of the clips matching it, and then gets faster after about the halfway point of the trailer to fit the quick editing of the footage. The music went silent when one of the characters spoke to put emphasis on what they were saying which I found very effective for getting the audience's attention. A non-diegetic heart beat can be heard in the trailer, that fades to black with each beat. I found this technique very good as it added to the tension created and adds another element of horror to the trailer. Synchronous screaming is also featured in the trailer, which is typical of the genre as it is a woman's scream.

By looking at the trailer, I got the impression that the audience was for ages around 15-35 and of both genders - due to men stereotypically enjoying horror films more but also because the main character is a woman females in the audience could relate to. The violence shown makes it obvious that the film is only for people who enjoy being scared people who enjoy being scared.

The trailer is 1 minute and 58 seconds long and has around 90-95 shots in it. Many of the shots were in the fast-paced sections of the trailer and only shown briefly, which is how so many were included. The structure of the trailer is non-chronological and the editing jumps around different very quickly - resulting in quite a lot of the film being shown. Even though I found it effective to build suspense, I also got the feeling that it wouldn't be worth seeing the film after watching the trailer.

There is an intertitle that says "Based on a true story" and this sparks interest in the viewer as they want to know about how something featured in the trailer could have happened in real life. There were 8 intertitles and I found them effective as it seemed as though they were talking to the audience and giving them information. At the end, it says that  the film is "coming soon" and this would make people who are interested in the film want to research it some mare and find out just how soon the film will be out.

Film Planning - Initial Plot Ideas

Initially, we wanted to copy 'A Stranger Calls' by having a party and a shadowy figure waiting outside. The shadow person would follow a person home and kill them, and we would crosscut between this and the party. The person's dying scream would be blended with the sound of a glass at the party falling to the ground and smashing. Although we all liked this idea, we also felt that it would be more suited for a film opening and not a trailer.

We then realised that we needed the person to have a motive and decided that the murderer-guy would be a friend of the girl hosting the party. Our first idea was that he wasn't invited to the party and he's bitter about that - which we then had to expand because that wouldn't be a good enough motive for murder without some backstory.

After some brainstorming, we made up a new idea that still had some elements of our original idea; a boy who's grown attached to a girl makes bad thing happen to her friends so that she pays more attention to him, which escalates into him killing her close friends.

We considered telling the story from the perspective of the boy. This would show him growing up with a girl who's like a sister to him but, as they get older, she starts to push  him away - which results in him trying to get revenge on her. To add a twist to our movie, we then decided to tell the story from the girl's point of view and make the bad things seem like a supernatural being's work - that finally gets revealed to be her childhood friend.

Research - The DaVinci Code - Film Trailer

For research, I also watched the trailer for 'The DaVinci Code', which is an action/thriller film, to see how different it is from a horror/thriller.

The trailer is very vague about what the film is actually about and this connotes that the film will be about a mystery that the audience will have to think about as they watch. Barely anything is shown in the trailer (and I'm pretty sure what is shown isn't actual footage from the film) and no characters or settings are established - which is weird for a film trailer but also emphasises the mysterious effect.

The main part of the trailer, in my opinion, was the intertitles as they made people want to watch through 'star power' - including famous actors such as Tom Hanks.

Only one music track is used in the trailer, which is slow and orchestral to give a sense of adventure or eeriness. A non-diegetic voiceover is also included, which is done by a typical American man with a deep voice.

Although the film is rated 12A, I think that the target audience is actually people aged around 35/50, due to the historical significance and the link to paintings - which wouldn't interest a younger audience. The trailer actually seems quite childish as it is slow and simple, but this could be seen as boring by people outside of the target audience as most films have a fast-paced trailer that builds suspense.

The trailer was 1 minute and 50 seconds long and had only 8 shots due to most of the trailer being one long tracking shot through the cracks of the painting. There's only one setting and a brief, single narrative, with the inertitles and voiceover being the main focus for the audience.

Research - Thriller Brainstorm

To begin with, we were told to create a mind map of everything we knew about the thriller genre - including typical conventions and examples of film we know. I found this activity to be very helpful as I initially thought that 'thriller' film were only horror films but realised that the term 'thriller' can be used across many different genres.