Evaluation
My trailer challenges a lot modern horror forms and conventions, With more recent horror films there’s a tendency to show the antagonist and give away the film straight away. The only existence of the antagonist I show during the trailer is two shots from it’s perspective and the reactions from the actors towards the very end of the trailer. The trailer for “The Hills Have Eyes” practically gives the entire plot away. I wanted a far more secretive trailer in order to get a reaction from the audience, in order make the audience think and imagine their own antagonist thus getting them more mentally involved with the trailer.
I wanted the plot of my trailer to revolve around the fact they are in a remote location as to being almost the second deadly force against them. Typically many horror films now base all of the ‘scare-factor’ around purely the main villain, this leaves the film feeling more two-dimensional. I would describe my emphasis upon the setting as a challenge of typical codes and conventions.
I wanted to use a well established horror trailer convetion, I wanted a slow beginning to the trailer followed by a fast ending. This was featured in “Resident Evil” and “The Hills Have Eyes” along with many other horror films.
I wanted a trailer that made the audience concentrate upon the images on the screen without the diagetic audio of the trailer distracting them. I experimented with the use of diagetic sound but the results weren’t what I wanted, it seemed far less concentrated. I decided instead to use an appropriate piece of music by the industrial band Nine Inch Nails, I had observed industrial music being used in other horror trailers such as in the “Resident Evil” trailer. My abandonment of diagetic sound is definitely against typical horror conventions, however I decided to adhere to a convention by using modern industrial music in my trailer.
I openly chose to use a well established horror technique during my trailer. I wanted to create a montage of reaction shots from different characters in different locations sandwiched between two halves of my tagline. (as seen below). This is a common technique used whilst producing horror trailers. I think it is an effective addition to the project and works as a nice transition between the slow beginning and the fast ending.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary task?
I feel I have effectively created an effective combination of both my film trailer and my ancillary tasks. I decided to include the forest in both parts of the task, It features heavily in my trailer and is a theme carried on to my ancillary tasks as the main image used on my film poster and as the background layer of my film magazine front cover.
I used an image of my main character from my trailer on the front of my magazine cover, linking both tasks.
Another example of the convergence of both of my tasks is the use of the basic ‘Arial’ font which appears on my ancillary tasks and appears during my trailer in the form of the tagline and the films title.
What I learned from audience feedback
I carried out a secondary questionnaire in order to determine how an audience would react to the trailer.
I found that the trailer pleased the majority of my audience.
75% of the people asked thought that my portrayal of the antagonist was effective. A further 85% found that my characters we appropriate and wanted to see the film. 90% of the audience I interviewed found the location of my film appropriate for the style of film and plot. These are all very positive findings and they highlight that my film has achieved what it had set out to do in it's early planning stages.
Final Summary
I feel that I have created a high quality project that effectively encompasses my main and ancillary tasks.
From my research I’ve learnt what techniques are used by film makers for making successful film trailers and I have applied them to my project.
I’m happy with how my project has developed from an idea into a complete film trailer.
