Favorite genre for film

My favourite genre in movies is horror, although I mainly prefer ‘zombie’ horrors as they offer a lot of action ( which I also like ). There is a lot of effort which goes into it such as editing, acting, make-up and the time to create it all.

I have two preferred horror films, Zombie land and Shaun of the Dead, both being exceptional and tense whilst also maintaining some comedic value to it. Shaun of the dead has great actors, including Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Kate Ashfield. A lot of effort went into making the film, especially the makeup and making the story, whilst it is dramatic and funny at the same time. To be able to make that kind of film it takes a lot of effort which makes the film even more respectable.

Another benefit of horror movies is that they release built-up tension, via the stimulation of one's personal fear level, so there is also a benefit to watching horror movies!

Characters used

As we only had two characters in our trailer we were able to task our minds with much more determination on those two characters and use our creativity to create what we thoughts was the best costumes which we could find at that time, as we bunched together some things such as a trench coat, a horse mask and a Kukri blade for the antagonist. Also seeing as the two characters did not talk much due to us deciding on not including any dialogue, we pondered on the thought that it would make them seem just emotionless and vague characters which is extremely boring, since horrors generally rely on creating a stereotype such as in teenage horror films where a powerful murderer finds and usually ends up killing the group of teenagers, each inevitably being given a certain way of behaving, such as the blonde girl usually being the first to be killed as well as the smart nerdy dude being killed second to last with one of the quiet female characters. With the protagonist we hoped that we could apply some kind of emotion to him, which we did but it was hard to spot, as the only expression you could get from him was pain. In human nature we generally feel bad if we see something in pain and want to help it to some extent, which is why we tried to show the protagonist as a vulnerable and somewhat impeccant person.

production difference

Our production is different from others of horror films since we were mainly focusing on having a Friday the 13th themed story line, since we have the antagonist who is chasing after the protagonist but at the same time can be killed fairly easily if the protagonist had a weapon, the antagonist also has a machete which he will then use to kill the protagonist further into the trailer, or will he? Through this we left a good enigma and a cliffhanger ending to see whether the fallen over protagonist will survive the Michael Myers lookalike. Generally other people who produced a trailer for A2 had stuck with more of a possession and ghostly horror film which creates more spooks and less goofs and gaffs like our film. I believe with a film including malevolent phantoms the antagonist generally wont be seen and only requires fairly exceptional acting from the protagonist in order to get a higher grade, but with our film we placed a mask on the antagonist to make him somewhat anonymous but also something which the audience can see, so we had to get a taller person to make him seem more intimidating. The change between both our films and others' films is important because both groups need to be able to clearly display that they are capable of doing something which they plan out to do, and with both groups planning different variations of one genre they need to make it clear for the audience most of the time so that there aren't so many questions being asked and that there are enough answers.

generic conventions

generic conventions have been adhered to since we stayed with a fairly classic old school style of filming where the protagonist is being chased somewhere, for example Attack of the killer tomatoes which is a fairly old classic film where the antagonist overpowers pretty much everyone else. If we had subverted the horror we wouldn't have included any blood and it would have seemed more like an action or a comedy film since it is so crazy, so the blood and the use of a weapon helps the audience determine that it is indeed the horror film which they wanted to see and not something else, such as a romance.

mise en scene

I believe that the make up and the costume gave it away for our horror film, since we had the antagonist wear a trench coat and have a horse mask, which is although fairly funny in certain contexts, it can be quite disturbing in others, such as a dark building located in the middle of nowhere with a massive forest which has no end (Not actually the setting but we imagine it so for immersion). With any horror film, all you have to do is change the color scheme to a much darker tone and you have the shot. It can be as simple as filming outside whilst it is really sunny and then all you have to do is as said, location sorted for the horror film, which is what we tried to do however we got to the location a bit late and had a dark setting anyway, which funnily enough someone gave bad feedback about. We also included a lot of blood on the protagonist since we wanted the audience to know that he was injured and trying to escape from the antagonist. If we had made a proper film the story would have been explained a bit better but since we didn't have much time to film we had to focus on the shots.

genre and how its conveyed

The genre of our film is horror, we conveyed this to our audience by using everything that we knew, this being how to make the location seem more ominous and mysterious by making it darker, as well as including fake blood which we used fairly well in order to create a good look on the protagonist. Also we had used one of the most basic things in horror films, a omnipotent being randomly chasing the vulnerable protagonist. Of course there should be a story behind why this is happening but it would be explained much more in the real film. We tried to add as much immersion for our audience through the use of over the shoulder shots of both the protagonist and the antagonist, although we gave the antagonist much more prevalence over the trailer.

male gaze

Since our whole cast were males, we decided that the male gaze is fairly important in understanding our trailer, since there is so much violence and chasing going on it would be hard to understand, and having the male gaze it would be easier to conform to the trailer and understand it since males may see the trailer as more exciting than it actually is since it has a quick clip of fighting, since our main target audience were teenagers, and since the majority of people who view action and horror are stereotypically male, so we realised that in order to improve the immersion for our audience we would have to apply basic scenes which contained action in order to attract that audience.

User and gratification

The main user and gratification that the audience can appeal to in our trailer is social interaction. This is mainly because people would be more than likely to talk about it after watching. such as the following day they may group up and start talking about what their opinions of the film was, such as positive and negative criticism. For example, one of the actors in our trailer does taekwondo and does a kick to the antagonist. This could enable the audience to feel more immersed as they may do martial arts themselves, so they can relate to the character, as well as talk about the kick in a conversation with their friends which may then result in them talking about other martial arts and branching off the conversation into other topics. Our trailer may also spark debates on what props we used, such as using fake blood, where people may talk about what they thought about how the blood affected to trailer and if it made it conform to horror much more than if there wasn't any blood. Another topic that people may talk about is the music which was used. This could spark long conversations since that music is such a wide topic which sparks pretty much everyone's interest, such as what music they are into, so our trailer would begin that conversation.

Another user and gratification that we can relate to mainly is to entertain. although our trailer is fairly short it enables our audience to have a sense of escapism for that short time, as they are constantly wondering what is going on. It lets them exit their daily lives through the means of watching an unconventional horror film, as the thing which happens in the trailer most likely would not happen in real life, so to say it is something different for them to see, it distracts them from reality.

Comparing: Last year's film to this year's film

For our first year we decided on making an action film, since we believed that it was easier and we were more willing to do a fight scene, however this year we wanted to keep it more relaxed, and still applying action into our trailer, yet not as much. A good example of this is we initially had a scene on last year's film which foreshadowed a fight scene, where the protagonist (who had a gun) was chasing the two antagonists. However this year we only had one bit of fighting where the protagonist kicks the antagonist away.

In last years film we opted for little transitions, and if we did use a transition we wanted to keep it basic such as a quick cut from one clip to another or a fade to black to symbolise a change in time for the audience, we decided that this would be best for the film since it was action and we needed fast paced cuts to keep the action going. In this year's film it was very similar, where we decided to use a lot of match on action to keep the action going since the trailer was so short we couldn't afford wasting time on slow shots. Due to the fact that we first decided to start the trailer off slowly then build up the tension we firstly started off doing fade to black shots then again using simple cutting transitions from one shot to another.

The main effect that we achieved from last year was that we made people enjoy the film more since it had a better fight scene and generally had ironically funny shots, we also made the music change at certain times during the trailer in order to change to atmosphere, changing the audiences' mood, which is the main purpose of music from our opening two minutes of last years' film. In this year's film the main effect that we had on the audience is that we had them becoming curious as to what is going on and leaving many questions unanswered, to spark the imagination of our audience, such as why is a man in a mask chasing a guy covered in blood and why are they at a guides hut.

I believe that this does show progression in our skills since we were finally able to understand how to change the audiences' mood just by creating an atmosphere with music and a few camera angles, which we used in this year's trailer. By using this knowledge of the horror genre, such as making the lighting dark, near night time and adding a few dim lights it makes everything seem much more dangerous, and since a lot of people have a fear of the dark, if not what is in the dark, so this trailer would be a catalyst in provoking that fear, making the immersion of the film much better.

I believe that this year's trailer is better than last year's opening two minutes in involving the audience because we got a lot more positive feedback than from last year, and generally the audience seemed to enjoy quite a quick trailer, since our old one had some structure and story but wasn't described as much, so we decided to stay the same but instead for a purpose and not by accident, as mentioned earlier we tried to help spark the audience's imagination through not giving a story, but instead letting them imagine one.