Eval Q1

My A2 film trailer challenges, uses and also develops forms and conventions of media products. Personally I’d say in general, I tried to break and challenge classic media text conventions. All of the trailers in my media class are really impressive, it is noticeable the amount of work that has gone into them. But I tried to make mine more psychologically challenging for my audience and I had said that from the start. The first thing I did was cutting out the audio, in my trailer there is no speech at all, bar the whispering in the end credits. And this is because I wanted to create a certain mystery, and tension behind my trailer. Revealing very little about the plot. I was very careful with the audio I chose, and I mix it up throughout the trailer. The first half of the trailer is daunting, tense music that sets the scene, building tension from the get go. Then in the second half I found some non copyrighted music on youtube, that had quite a trippy, unnerving sound to it. I did this because I liked the way it made my trailer flow. My film is about being stalked and the descent into total paranoia and insanity, and I believe that my trailer represents this as in the second half when I start speeding up the footage with different flashes combined with the trippy music it creates a psychologically challenging atmosphere for the viewer. It’s unlike any other horror film trailer I’ve seen, where they reveal characters, the plot itself and has quite a lot of speech. It’s the same with the other trailers in my class. And I find when making a trailer or short film with little to no budget, it’s easy for it to look cringey. I didn’t want that, I wanted to create a trailer that generally unnerved my audience and would be taken seriously. And I believe I have done that. I paid very close attention to camera angles for they really set the scene, more so than anything else. My favourite shot is in the opening 30 seconds were Luke (my actor) is sitting on a bridge looking out. The camera is situated to the left and a little lower than him, showing him looking out onto the setting son showing the day ending. It was really effective for it gave this impression of emptiness and loneliness, and it was filmed early in the day when it was sunny, so when I put it into final cut pro I played around with numerous filters until i found the right light. Creating a trailer with no budget isn’t easy, you have to be creative. And the thing with making a psychological horror is you cannot rely on cheap jump scares, gore and blood, you really have to play with the audience's imagination, and also your own. I wanted to do a scene where you see a hanging body, and I couldn’t work out how to do it. I realized it would be to hard to get a full body shot, so I just tried to film the legs. I covered my legs in mud, and hung from the rafters in my loft by my arms and got my friend Callum to film my swinging legs. Initially the footage looked poor, it didn’t look realistic. I was swinging too fast but also it was to bright. Final Cut Pro was great for manipulating images, far more effective to use than photoshop and also easier. I added a few filters over it, like an old recording frame and also different filters to make it look more grainy and dark. Then combine that with the distorted audio and you have a really great piece of footage. The last scene before the film title wasn’t even planned. We were sitting in the sixth form room and I was playing around with the camera and filmed Luke, he didn’t know I was filming until he turned and looked at the camera, so when I was editing I had to cut the last two seconds out. That scene seems genuine, it’s at the end of the trailer and the vacant expression on his face helps with the flow of the trailer. One of my biggest inspirations when making my trailer was a youtuber called cinemassacre. James Rolfe is an American amateur film-maker who I’d actually been a fan of for a while, right back since 2006 when he first started his account. He is known for his angry game reviews but is also a huge horror film buff and has created numerous projects with little no no-budgets. I took a lot of inspiration and got many ideas from him, even his name itself, “cinemassacre” meaning cinema massacre, breaking the codes and conventions of how a film should be made because of a lack of facilities and money to create a film. Looking at his work he uses mostly practical effects but still manages to produce a great film. Here is a link to a video called