The Possessed: Final Cut

Evaluation-PART FOUR-

Evaluation PT. 4

Our first piece of audience feedback for the trailer came through the focus group screening. Through that I learnt that a lot of the audience had plenty of 'likes' from the trailer my group produced. Surprisingly, there were only a few concepts we could improve towards getting a better mark which we took on board after the focus group screening of the trailer. We were delighted when the trailer received the highest score out of the six trailers shown in class, and this really encouraged us to keep improving the trailer’s quality to an even higher level.

 

The praise which were very much highlighted in the focus group screening were in line with my own thoughts about The Possessed, that it generally felt real with quotes such as “atmospheric and jumpy” with the mise-en-scene looking natural and believable with the use of night vision looking scary. Also the focus group included the jumpy end scene which created collision cutting from tense and atmospheric surroundings to a representation of a quick ‘possessed’ monster (played by me) jumping towards the handheld camera really brought a live the trailer. One member from the focus group said “The style and pace of the end scene of the jumpy close up of the possessed monster made the end of trailer on a good impact." Another good point that was highlighted was the make-up effect on the face of the one of the characters who was possessed was good and added to the trailer and acting is convincing as it’s casual. 

The focus group helped us improve the trailer too and valid criticisms were highlighted in some concepts from the focus group screening, starting with how the "camera was possibly too shaky" and "the distorted static was possibly too much" in the trailer. I believe these two comments are good criticism but I believe in order of the style and type of horror trailer we went for i.e. handheld style (as in the Blair Witch Project trailer that inspired us a lot) it had to look realistic and that is why the camera is shaky throughout to create a sense of documentary style realism. 

 

I definitely believe our trailer The Possessed successfully appeals to a target audience of horror fans because of theinspiration we got from real-life films such as The Blair Witch Project(1999) and The Tunnel (2011) which were both handheld based films. The genre of horrors shown in all these films including The Possessed are realistic horrors constructed of tense and creepy atmospheric ideas and cinematography instead of too much body horror.
 

After the final screening the trailer improved the with the inclusion of the scene with the possessed character (myself) changing his face expression to make it more scarier as people said in the focus group it wasn’t scary enough. By making the face more distorted and mouth stretched our group used 'Adobe After Effects' to develop this technique starting with the mask tool formasking around the face. Then we changed the position on each key frame and added a colour correction on the grey face. In the final screening the focus group thought this ending scene made the trailer more impressive, and once again showed how useful audience can be if you respond to it right.

Horror Trailers: The Possessed - Evaluation Screening

Name of Trailer:The Possessed

What did the audience like about the final trailer?
-Edited together very well
-Sound effects when text/credits comes up
-The part where they head down to the basement was screened well
-The way it leads into the footage in the whole trailer
-I t was well put together and really does have the look of a true handheld trailer
-The shooting and suspense building works well
-Good camera filters throughout
-Acting was realistic
-Camera angles/shots worked well towards a handheld trailer

What did the audience think still needed to be improved?
-No gore/violence
-Collsion cutting from the woods to the basement seemed out of place
-Too long before the last scene shot with the static tv tool
-Not enough horror in it
-The text/credits at the start is too much to read

Evaluation-PART THREE-

Evaluation PT 3

Right at the start of the coursework unit I began researching and planning times for my main task which was creating and developing a horror trailer. My ancillary tasks were creating two advertising products which were a movie magazine front cover for the film my group created and a movie poster for our film (The Possessed). I began using all sorts of media technologies, starting with internet based research sites to find texts that gained a better understanding for my horror film trailer. I researched horror trailers using YouTube to get ideas for the trailer, and my reviews of some of them are seen in my research section of the blog. Internet movie database (Imdb) was another website which was very useful. It let me find out facts about the films I was studying and also helped me work out even more what audiences liked and myself would help make a good trailer.

I watched and analysed a series of horror film trailers on YouTube both in class and at home to see different types of trailers out right now and past ones. These are in the research part of my blog. Three trailers which I covered in class for my trailer reviews were Pusher Trilogy (1997-2005) whose genre of the trailer was drugs/horror/crime. A second class trailer was Toxic Avenger (1986) a comedy horror and finally there was Day of the Dead (1985) which is a gory horror. All three trailers I had to mark out of ten to see was elements we could use in our own trailer. I then reviewed two films which were Dawn of the Dead (2004) and Paranormal Activity 2 (2010) to gain more of a perspective of horror films. I was able to watch trailers online to make sure I remembered the films in detail.

The construction side of my three texts (Trailer, Movie Poster and Movie Magazine front cover) I used media technologies such as Adobe Photoshop which was the most used program through my development of my magazine cover and poster. I used many effects on Photoshop like typography (with the 'fx' tool for stroke/outlining words), layering and colour filters plus a grain tool especially in my movie poster.

To construct the movie trailer we used 'Final Cut Pro', to edit and cut the right parts of the footage we captured on location. Final Cut Pro helped create elements such as collision cutting, transition with parallel sound effects to make the trailer sound perfect. We used online website sound devices like Sound Bible and Freeplay as these were free from copyright and so we could use their music/sounds on Final Cut Pro.

The last media programme I used was the main media technology which was Blogger. This was where everything went starting research, planning, products and evaluation. It made sure I couldn't lose any of my work as it stored all the information online. I used the program in the first year too for my music magazine work, but I really got to terms with the program more this year. I was able to embed plenty of videos and pictures to illustrate my points and overall I found all of the programs and websites very helpful. If it wasn't for them I think the trailer for The Possessed wouldn't have been as successful and praised as it is.

Original Photos For Magazine & Poster Covers

Although I took lots of photos in different locations, these two photos were the ones that made the cut to my horror poster and trailer. I used a smaller version of one image hidden in the "O" on the poster for "The Possessed".

Evaluation-PART TWO-

Evaluation PT. 2

My ancillary texts (Poster and Magazine cover) effectively connects to my main product which is The Possessed trailer. The links starts with the choice of colours in my film poster showing only black and white with shadows of grey on the text The Possessed on my film poster. The black background connotes death and darkness to relate to the title and the type of genre it is. The graininess of the text recreates the handheld, grainy style of the film. It also links to the mystery of the film, with only the small image of my distorted, possessed face in the ‘O’ giving any clue asto what the film is about. The tagline under the title of the film also helps make the viewer unsettled and forces them to relate it to their own minds andlives. I have compared my The Possessed poster with the Gangs of New York (2004)

because it's one that has as least three features that look the same. Firstly the graininess effect of both posters shows both films are grimy, grainy and unsettling type of films. Secondly the shape of texts shown on both feature posters are the same size and cover the same amount of space of the poster frame plus the bold visual eye-catching text and style of both posters connecting with the viewer.

For the magazine front cover, I designed a horror edition of the magazine Empire. The image in the centre is of me, the main character who is possessed in the woods. The photograph had to be a dramatic, mysterious and creepy image to fit the horror genre conventions. It is a close-up pose of the main character that looks serious and gives the sense the movie is deep and meaningful, plus the low-key lighting definitely emphasises the shadows. It is also slightly blurred, to connote the handheld feel.

I designed a template around the movie magazine ‘Empire’ with the title at the top of the cover with a central image of the main character of ‘The Possessed’. Also the colour code of it was very important to consider, mainly using the colour red like in some of real 'Empire' magazine front covers. Using red connotes blood, hell and danger so this works well for our movie horror trailer. I think that in the end both the poster and the Magazine cover link in very well to the style of our trailer. They are gritty and a little bit unsettling, and they are less about body horror and more about suspense and restricted narration.

Evaluation-PART ONE-

Evaluation PT. 1

My horror trailer titled ‘The Possessed’ fits the genre of horror and mystery. We knew that recreating generic conventions was very important in creating a successful trailer. The critic behind genre theory was a man called Thomas Schatz, and in his book Hollywood Genres (1981) he believes genre theory is the most important theory in film. The importance of genre theory is by understanding and creating media texts by seeing this in trailers, and how they “flog” the genre to us as the audience. You must give the (horror) genre fans what they want, which are “generic expectations”. Schatz explains how the film must be similar to films of the same genre, and with our horror trailer The Possessed we first researched by watching other similar horror films what we wanted to get inspiration from. The Blair Witch Project (1999) was a film we all liked and became a big inspiration.

However, we also knew the film/trailer must be slightly different enough to be interesting plus the trailer won’t go against the expectations created by the advertising. The auteur influences I put into my trailer was definitely the detailed use of horror cinematography, as I like how horror surprises and confronts you with weird shots. All of them are ‘expressionist,’ because through expressionism you use camera angles to create emotion effects. The Possessed is a handheld film and this really makes the suspense and the shocking moments seem real in the trailer. Other powerful cinematographic techniques were our use of close-ups, point of views shots and skewed angles. This first appears at the start of the trailer with the scene in the car with the five students are driving to the woods (creepy location) with the handheld camera in the back seat focusing on the outside and where they are with skewed shots. Secondly horror cinematography of expressionist shots and angles shows when the person holding the camera is running through the woods and the camera is moving around creating excitement and intense moments.

Editing and sound playing had a huge part in the trailer with natural sound and movement through out to seem realistic and true. Plus by editing, sticking the shots together montage, it creates emotion and that is the way The Possessed is distinctive. For example the ending of the trailer we go from the slow build up down the stairs to the sudden jump as the possessed character (me) leaps towards the camera, this compares to Hitchcock’s use of the same type of collision cutting from Psycho (1960) when Lila discovers Norman’s mother in the basement. It's a big contrast from a slow suspense filled scene to a jumpy scary one.