Third and final draft of the trailer

Here is the third and final draft of our trailer for our psychological thriller, called 'Sharpie'

Research for the trailer

For inspiration for our trailer we looked a lot a films such as 'The Snowman' and 'Se7en'. We took inspiration for the title from the title of se7en, which had white writing on a black background, with white patches around the writing. We copied some of these ideasfor our own title, with the colours, and hazy effct that the writing had over it.

For the pacing and overall feel of our trailer, we took a lot of inspiration from 'The Snowman', as both films start of relatively calm, build up through the revealing of someone dying, the the building of tense music in the background, the reaching a climax in music and tension, then slowly revealing the title and the end, with music in the background.

The 2004 film SAW, although not technically a psychological thriller, was also briefly used in our research, when discussing location. The argument came up that you could not film an entire film in one location, and the film SAW was brought up, as almost all of this film is in one room. This didn't result in out film being entirely in one place, as we have the scene in the pub at the beginning, and the scenes where they are walking through various streets, however a lot of the film is based in the school.

Some inspiration for our film could be drawn from films such as 'The Shining' (1980) and 'Psycho' (1960), as they are films based around focusing on people being chased, or hunted, by an individual who is after revenge or just homicide. Similarities could also be drawn from the 2010 film 'Shutter Island' which is about trying to escape a prison, which is the same sort of light that the school is seen in, in our trailer. 1999's 'The Sixth Sense' is about a man who is visited by ghosts, which can be compared to the antagonist in Sharpie, who is seen as a mysterious character that can be anywhere he wants/needs, with a sort of 'Hazy' feel about him.The same could be said about 'Memento' (2000), which is a film that follows a man determined on vengeance for his murdered wife, but faces difficulties along the way. As we do not know the intentions of Sharpie from just the trailer, his intentions, and reasoning could be anything.

Evaluation 2: combination of main products and ancillary texts

I had recorded a voice over for this evaluation, but the file corrupted last minute, so instead i am using the script that i read from when recording it.

For the three different texts i created, i tried to include multiple conventions of the psychological thriller genre, as well as stereotypes of the actual media products. I thought that if the synergy was used between the three texts, then they would be recognizable as all promoting the same film.
In all three pieces, the font 'Biro' was used. This suited our film as if it is used correctly, can come of as quite eerie, and the film is, to an extent, related to the the markers called sharpies, which is just another way that it can all link in together.

For my magazine cover, sharpie, the killer/kidnapper is the main aspect. It shows him with somewhat blurred images of himself covering parts of his body in a ghost like state, which adds to the overall effect of eeriness.

On my poster, the antagonist, sharpie, is once again the main focus. he has a blurred repeating effects around his head to show that there is mystery behind him, Who is he?, What are his motives? This is on top of a dark background, which connotes that he is inescapable.

In both texts, he is wearing the outfit he is seen wearing in the trailer, which is helpful as it is more synergy between the three pieces. The aim of this outfit was to reveal nothing about their identity, so use of multiple outfits may have also acted against this aim.

Throughout the three texts, the three protagonists are only seen in the trailer. this helps build up questions about where they are, and what happens to them. the fact that there is no reference to them in the poster or magazine cover could mean that something bad happens to them, or just that their fate may always be a mystery.

Evaluation 1:Media conventions

1. Title:

The title of our production is 'Sharpie', and we showed this in our trailer by placing it on a black screen with hazy writing, as shown here:

This can be compared to the title of films such as 'Se7en', which can be seen here:

This shares similarities to our title, as it is also on a black background, with white writing on it, and the writing has white 'splotches' near it, connoting a sense of illusion.

2. Editing:

Our trailer was edited in Adobe Premier Pro, as seen in the image below:

Similarities can be drawn from films such as 'The Snowman' they are similar because they both start of relatively calm, then show that something bad has happened to someone, then as the trailer progresses, tension is built through the fast editing style, and the increasing music in the background.

3. Characters:

The characters we used in out trailer were all people from our year group, although we were able to pull this off as the people they were playing were only a couple of years older than they actually are. The only exception to this is our antagonist, who face cannot be seen, so no-one has any clue about his age. Some of the characters from the trailer can be seen in the image below:

4. Settings:

The setting for our trailer was a school that was shut, as it was set after school hours. This follows conventions of other thrillers, as it is a darkened place, that can be portrayed as 'creepy' and 'eerie'. A shut school is a place that is empty, so, therefore we didn't have to find lots of people to be in the background of our film. Below is an image of one of the darkened corridors
in the school.

5. Sound:

The audio that we used for our trailer was mostly royalty free music that we found online, and stock ambient noise that was saved onto the schools computers, as well as noise that was recorded when we were filming the trailer. For example, at the end of our first draft there was a scream heard over a black screen, which was just recorded in a large empty hall, so that there was an echo. this was later removed, although a lot of the other audio we used has stayed.  the background music behind the second half of the trailer is royalty free music that we found online, after searching for royalty free music, and then using filters to try and find certain types of more eerie sounding music on multiple websites. Below is an image of one of the sites we searched to find royalty free music.

6. Camera Angles:

We tried to use a variety of different camera angles throughout our trailer, with examples such as the long wide shot high angle of the school at the start of the trailer, the low angle in the middle which two of the protagonists jump over while running, and the tracking shot right at the end that follows the last surviving protagonist through a  dark corridor. We also included some more ordinary stationary shots  at the start, and we used these to connote that there wasn't much happening at this point, and that this was not too vital to the rest of the piece. Below is a still from the panning shot of the school from above.

7. Props:

We didn't use a lot of props in our trailer. we intended to use a fake knife and axe for the antagonist to wield, but in the end we didn't get hold of any, so we found ways to covey his intentions in other ways. We did use some props however, such as phones that were shown on tables, glasses with drinks in them, although we didn't use real alcohol, it was just water with lemon and lime juice mixed in to look like alcohol, and the piece of paper at the end that was stuck on a wall that said 'Its you i'm after'
Below is a picture of some of the phones that were used, as well as the type of knife we were going to use until we decided against it.

8. Film Poster:

For my film poster i started by choosing the background image, then i made the billing block text for the bottom of the poster, then added the other effects, such as the blood splatter in the corner, and the release date, although i then changed the main image, as we went and took better quality photos, so one of those was was then used, and because of the was everything else was previously arranged on the poster, not much had to be changed.

9. Magazine Cover:
For my magazine cover, i went through multiple images that i was going to use for the cover, such as a screen grab from the trailer, a run down school corridor, and damaged desk, but i eventually used one of the photos that we took at a later date, as it was much better quality, and suited what i wanted to do more. I also added all the pugs from the other film trailer being made from people in our class, and the masthead, as well as the other text around the cover.

Evaluation 3: audience feedback

Audience feedback has been given at many stages throughout creating our film trailer. At the very start when we pitched the idea, we were asked questions such as 'How were we going to convey the use of weapons?' and in  the end no weapons were shown in the trailer, leaving the audience to wonder if the antagonist even has any. When casting the roles for our trailer we were asked why we used certain people,this was because they looked old enough to play a 20 year old for example.
then, when we had our first draft edited together, we knew there was still a lot needed to be done to it, but we still took on board feedback we were given such as to move the news report voice-over from the start of the trailer, to add inter titles, which we were already planning on doing, and to change how loud the music was in different areas. We went ahead and made these changes, as well as many others, and when we had a second draft ready, we were given more feedback, such as to move the news voice over back to the start, which we initially questioned, as it contradicted something we had been told by someone else, although they said to prioritise their advise, which we did.

Evaluation 4: use of media technologies

For our trailer, some of the media technologies we used were:

• Photoshop:

We used Photoshop on multiple occasions, for multiple projects, such as creating the film poster for our psychological thriller, and the magazine cover for it as well. We also used Photoshop for creating our group logo, which can be seen below:

We also used it to create the title image of our film as it appears in our trailer, as well as recreating pre-existing magazine covers at the start of the year.

• Premier Pro:

We used Premier Pro to edit all of our different drafts of our trailer, which included aspects such as editing all the different clips together, creating all the inter titles for our trailer, adding in all the sound effects and music for the trailer, and adding all the effects such as 'fade to black' and 'exponential fade' to our video and audio clips.

• Social media/Internet:

We used multiple forms of social media, such as YouTube, which we uploaded all of our different drafts of our trailer to, Blogger, which we constantly updated with the progress we were making on filming, editing, designing etc. We also used the internet to for our research, to find other psychological thrillers, as well as to look up locations, such as the pub we filmed in for the start of our trailer.

• Cameras and equipment:

We initially intended to use a camera that one of the people in our group would provide, but he unexpectedly left, and so we had to use a camera that was provided by the school, which can be seen in the picture to the left. We also used a voice recorder, which can also be seen to the right, and a tripod, which
 were also provided by the school.

Magazine Cover

Here is my current magazine cover for my psychological thriller called sharpie. It is not currently finished, as i still need to add a pug for another film, 'Final Bell', and do a few other things.

I made it by creating the masthead first, the adding all the different layers on. I then rotated the text so that it was following the edges of the corridor. I then used a tool to create the translucent effect around the edges of the sharpie character.
Here is a photo of the next edit of the magazine cover: The changes that have been made are that they text has been moved, and a bar at the bottom telling of a competition has been added in.