Final Trailer

Amityville Horror Trailer Sound Deconstruction

Sound Deconstruction

• Firstly voiceover of male protagonist speaking over production companies mentioning the area being out of price range with subliminal music playing as well underneath it.

• A montage plays with the voice over of a a conversation by the couple
• It’s all reasonably happy music till the estate agent mentions “A CRIME” then music changes, a drop then beeping like an alarm this links to the clock we see turning to 3.15am
• A gun shot is heard, mixed with the beeping then a voiceover of a news report, all mixed together creates chaos and isn’t clear. Gun shots continue infrequently as though he is killing them then and there. Voice over changes to male to suggest it was big news, probably national.
• Then you see a flash of the house, dark spooky and rainy. Music comes in to traditional choral music will long drawn out notes, linked with the rain and thunder.
• Children laughing modern horror, spooky
• Voiceover of main protagonist played of archive footage, piano music.

Paranormal Activity 4 sound deconstruction

• Pixelation is used a lot in the film to jump cut each section within the montage but is also used so it looks more like a home style/documentary video. Towards the end of the trailer, more pixelations are used to cut up some of the scenes and create more tension.
• At the end of the first scene, you hear an echo fading into the background to show it is the end of the scene.
• Quite a bit of the trailer is silent as it tends to put the audience more on edge, it also gives the film more of a cliffhanger with the trailer not being very predictable.
• As some of the trailer is silent, this means you tend to get more sudden sound effects within the trailer such as jumps and screams to shock the audience once in a while.
• During the trailer, you hear quite a lot of conversation to continue with the "documentary style" type film.
• In the last scene, as it gradually progresses, it gradually gets louder with more sounds to create more tension. You first hear whispers from the main character before starting to hear haunted sounds on top of that with that music gradually becoming louder before hearing a genetic voiceover which becomes the dominant sound to scare the audience. We finally hear a sudden bang of the door and a crash sound to end the trailer and leave it on a cliffhanger.

Chernobyl Diaries Trailer

Chernobyl Diaries Trailer - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp9xuquibQc

Chernobyl Diaries is based around the Chernobyl Disaster. It occurred on 26^th April 1986 and was considered the worst Nuclear power plant accident in history. The film involved a group of 6 tourists who hire an extreme tour guide to take them around the abandoned city of Pripyat, the home of the workers to Chernobyl nuclear reactor. I have analysed specific scenes within the trailer in which we could incorporate into our trailer.

·         The opening shows a short montage of places the places the 6 tourists have visited around Europe. One of the actors announces he thinks they should visit the site of the Chernobyl disaster. Another shot juxtaposes this by showing a flashback montage of footage of the Chernobyl disaster. Shots of the actual site, people being evacuated etc. Whilst a voice over of the same actor explains how schools, buildings etc. Still remains there.

·         This editing could be useful for our trailer to explain why the Klinger Factory shut down

·         This establishing shot shows the entire site of the disaster.

·         This was shown immediately after the 26 year old footage of the disaster. Changing from the flashback to the present day shows the audience how well preserved the site is and how much little is changed.

·         An establishing shot of the factory of the present day could be shown after some shots or images of the factory when it was open.

·         A medium shot of the tourists looking at the map is shown but the focus is intended on the silhouette of the small child standing in the background.

·         The angle disturbs the audience as we feel more vulnerable seeing a figure that main characters cant see.

·         A shot like this could be done in our trailer, we could capture one of our actors looking around one of the rooms in the factory and in the background, a subtle shot of a anonymous figure could walk across the room.

·         This shot effectively an easily shows that we are not alone inside there.

Grave Encounters Trailer

Grave Encounters Trailer - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8FBRATbJoA

‘Grave Encounters’ involves a production team who go into an old abandoned psychiatric hospital in the hope to catch some ghost activity on camera. The target audience is teenagers to young adults. Being shot like a reality TV show really captures the attention of the target audience as reality TV shows’ main audience’s are teenagers and young adults The trailer has a number of very effective scenes which we can recreate to use in our trailer. I have picked a number of different scenes within the trailer which I think are the most effective. I will look at the different camera angles, shots and techniques used to create a professional looking trailer.

·         Medium shot of presenter of the reality show introducing us the ‘show’.

·         The shot gives the audience the impression that we are about to watch a genuine TV Show, this gives a sense of realism to the film

·         Our trailer could use a similar approach but as if we are filming our factory for a ‘blog’

·         Establishing shot of the psychiatric hospital speed up which makes the clouds above move across the screen quickly and creates an ‘eerie’ atmosphere.

·         This technique is used a lot in all types and genres of films and trailers and is easy to film. The clouds moving over quickly shows the hospital over a long period of time. This shows the audience how deserted it is as nothing changes or goes in or out within that time.

·         Typography is shown on screen to show where the movie is set.

 

·         Long shot of corridor showing the crew sitting down, as the camera zooms in we see a silhouette of an unknown figure walk across the corridor.

·         Simple and effective scene, creates a very tense and scary atmosphere by showing the audience something that the main characters can’t see and something unexpected

·         The camera pauses on the figure and a deep non-diegetic drum is heard with lots of reverb, pausing and zooming in on the figure puts the audience in a lot of discomfort

Montages of the crew running through the corridors of the hospital are also used. These create a tense atmosphere once the audience get a sense that they are in danger. These shots can be easily shot by just using a P.O.V camera angle and running through the factory. This type of shot is used a lot in horror films and is very effective.

Session 9 Trailer Deconstruction

Session 9 is about an asbestos cleaning crew cleaning inside an abandoned mental hospital and while they are cleaning inside, they realise the past is coming back before their eyes.

In the first part of the trailer, we are shown an establishing and aerial shot of the mental hospital - this could show the importance of the location of the film. We are then shown a few facts about the mental hospital in black and white which could show binary opposition as you do not originally think that the location is a mental hospital. This scene is very relevant towards our trailer because we are also filming in an abandoned location and is a good example of describing the importance of the location - it is also a back up plan if using a news report does not work within the trailer and would just be as effective as the news report. We also hear diegetic music which sounds like the start of a documentary - this would also be useful towards our trailer because the plot of our film is similar to a documentary.

During one scene, we see the chair shown from the poster which shows it is a big symbolisation of the film and shows that symbols within the poster should normally be shown within the trailer as then it won't give even more away in the trailer. We also hear the quote "these new techniques they designed, they can reveal hidden memories", this gives away part of the plot and when making our trailer, we want to give as little plot away as possible during our one minute trailer.

We are shown four main words within the trailer - "secrets, possession, madness & murder". These are gradually shown within the trailer to give more effect and tension towards the end of the film. When the words appear upon the screen, we see a flash of blue before a flash of black and white - these are both conventional colours of horror (blue, more clinical & modern; black, classic colour). During the scene after each word has been shown, there is always a link towards the next word (i.e. after possession we are shown a crane shot of one of the workers which links to the next word shown - madness). Also, during the final scenes of the trailer, we hear screams, are shown fast motion montages and a cutout of light at the end - these are all typical conventions of a horror trailer/film.

   

Containment Trailer

In the trailer we are first shown television pixilation before the typography of “If the door to insanity” “were opened,” “would you walk through it?”. These were shown in 3 separates cuts with dongs through each quote. This is to make each part of the quote more effective and to create more tension in the atmosphere. Non-diegetic sound in the form of the dongs could symbolise something like “the end is nearing” for the main protagonist which could show how he may get killed/similar situation during the trailer. We are shown a number of different questions during the trailer and could try to be telling a story and making the audience think about the film &trailer before watching it. High pitched sounds were used each time to show important parts of the trailer which shows hints about the film to the audience - this is a cheap and easy way to give subtle hints to the audience without giving away the whole plot.

Pixelation was used as transitional jump cuts within the trailer and makes the audience confused as to what has just happened – something during the scene has just cut off and they do not know what is going to happen next. This is also a cheap and easy method as we can just generally download the sound & picture onto a computer. Other non-diegetic sound effects used within the film were gun shots and quick pace movements of the antagonist which symbolised the change of the pace within the trailer. Montages of quick jump cuts during the trailer was effective because it showed a lot more of the plot but within 30 seconds – yet sometimes trailers like these may show too much of the plot and then the whole story is already revealed within the trailer (something that we do not want to do at all – we want to tantalise the audience into watching the film without revealing too much of the plot). 

During the trailer, the camera used was hand-held for the whole of trailer (the picture above shows the security guard holding the camera to show as evidence of perculiar creatures within the film). This resembles a more real-life feel but the problem with using a hand-held camera for the whole of the film is that it looks really unprofessional – for some scenes it is effective but for the whole trailer = no.

At the end we are shown two extra scenes of CCTV footage from the film. The audience would of not been expecting it and shows how the film makers could be showing a message saying “there’s more to the film than you expect” and puts the trailer on a cliffhanger and tries to persuade the audience even more to watch the film. 

The film was made with a low budget in mind and shows that it is very possible for our group to make a film trailer like this. The film is done in the same surroundings (office block) but with different camera angles used (e.g. high angles, medium & close up shots), the trailer looked like it had been filmed in a number of different locations. There was one main actor used for the trailer and the main mise-en-scene used for the film was cling film for the antagonist but still looked effective due to the editing of the trailer. They did not use stereotypes such as “made from the producers of that famous film” or “based on a true story”; they relied on a good plot to counter the fact they had practically no money for the acting and technical aspects of the film and that is something we should concentrate on because of the low budget we have.  

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