Costumes

 Costumes: 
- For our trailer, it is vital that our costumes are relevant to our characters. For example, the protagonist cannot be wearing il-luminous yellow coloured costumes as this does not reflect their character traits. For our protagonist we decided to stick with the generic stereotype of wearing black. Black connotes aspects such as mystery, death and power which are all attributes that are going to be in our trailer. Initially,we were going to have our protagonist wear an entire clown outfit which we would have brought online. However, due to recent events in the media, clowns have been going viral around social media and on the news about their threat to the environment as they are scaring young children. Therefore, we decided that it wouldn't be wise or ideal to be wearing a huge clown outfit in a local park and residential area. This is why we had to resort to only wearing the clown mask. The mask is a little big for our actress, but this adds a more mysterious vibe to the character as her head appears bigger than her body, conforming to the clown appearance. The mask is still bright in colours of red hair and white face, which helps to make the audience aware of what the protagonist actually is. The black outfit not only connotes negative things, but it is also a clever way to camouflage our protagonist.  A section of our trailer was filmed at night, so the black costume cannot be seen, but instead just the mask. This gives the illusion that the clowns mask/head is just floating in the air which adds a sinister atmosphere to our trailer. It also makes the appearance that we have included lots of editing and special techniques. 

For our three antagonists, we wanted to keep their mise en scene fairly basic. This is because we want to sustain the vulnerability and innocence projected by their character traits. We want our audience to emphasise with the antagonist, to make them feel as if they were in their shoes. The idea of a horror film is to show the idea of fear to the audience, and fear can be felt by the way the characters are acting towards the protagonist. The characters in the trailer are young, teenage girls, and from my audience research, the research showed that young teenage girls like to shop in places such as Topshop, River Island and Primark. It showed that teenage girls wear jeans, jumpers and leggings. We decided to replicate this to our actors. We all wore jeans, tops and coats with our hair in our ordinary ways of style. 

 .We also wanted to show n her top is relatable to teenagers and our target audience as it's a popular brand which will be recognised. Her only prop is the bag as we want her to look as if she is leaving school with her friends. It's effective as we want the trailer to look as if the clown is luring in teens and children. This shows that the clown has chosen its victims and will soon attack.

Slogan Research- How can we apply this to our film?

 For our trailer, we were thinking about including a tag line to help keep our audiences engaged.  Slogan's help to give audiences a taster of what the film is about, without giving too much of it away. I looked at slogans regarding the horror genre, as that's the genre our trailer (Jokes on you) is going to be.

Black Christmas: 'If this movie doesn't make your skin crawl... it's on too tight!'
This automatically suggests something about cannibalism as it creates an image of the skin needing to be removed due to it being to tight. This reflects a chilling atmosphere to the audience as the thought of someone saying that would unnerve anyone. This could suggest that the film is a zombie like one which answers why the skin is too tight as they eat skin.

Psycho: ' Check in. Relax. Take a shower'
This film goes for a different approach as it the title of the film does not link with the slogan of the film. this slogan suggests the location of the film being some sort of motel or hotel due to the 'check in' part of the slogan. This slogan could be emphasising the iconic moment which happens within the film which would make the audience want to watch the film as this slogan creates an enigma due to the title not linking to the slogan.

Cloverfield: 'Something has found us'.
This could imply the antagonist of the film finding the protagonist, which give an inkling about the film. However due to the word 'Something' it suggests that this thing is not human due to not giving them gender. This could therefore be a alien/ supernatural film.

Halloween: 'The night HE came home'
An enigma is created just by using the noun 'HE', as no one knows who this character is. Having it in capital upper case letter suggests that this character has dominance and power within the film, which you should not mess with. This therefore suggests that 'HE' is the antagonist of the film. Using the word 'home' implies that it would be set in a neighbourhood which would be very relatable to the audience as they live in a neighbourhood.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: 'Who will survive and what will be left of them?'
In my opinion, this slogan is not my favourite due to the it dragging on a little too long and having not much continuity within the sentence. However, it does create an enigma on who will survive within the film. This slogan also justifies and links the the name of the film, 'massacre', which automatically suggests blood and gore will be packed within the film.

The Birds: '... and remember, the next scream you hear may be your own'
This slogan is from the film 'The Birds', which is very effective. It obviously suggests that there are going to be murders due to the word scream being used. However this phrase, to some extent, is aimed very much at the audience, which would make the audience feel a little fear as it makes them think the events within the film could happen to them.

Software Research

Software Research

This software research was also used to decide what software to use when doing our AS blog as well as what soft ware to use for our A2 blog. The type of software we use during the editing process is a vital part to achieve a high standard trailer, as we need to understand the whole programme, from the cutting shots to the precise point to knowing how to arrange them. This is important so we can benefit from all the technology provided from the editing software.

Movie Maker:

The first piece of software that we looked at was Microsoft movie maker. We used Movie Maker to create our storyboard. This was because it was easy and straight forward to use and apply music to. The storyboard didn't need much editing or clipping, as it was simply images being placed together. However, for our trailer, we may need a more complex piece of software as there are more complications such as sound effects, transitions, editing and titles. Movie maker is made by microsoft, which, as you know, a very well known company and is very user friendly as it should appeal to all ages interested within media and producing films. This software makes you be the editor, with no complicating buttons and techniques needed. Movie Maker also ensures that photos and videos are imported quickly and at the highest and clearest resolution, so the images are clear, avoiding buffering and blurriness. It also enhances your movie by providing ready made themes and audios, which could be used for different genres of film and videos, which give us ideas of what kind of music we need and which would suit with the shots we take. Finally, once our movie is ready, we can share it online on Facebook, YouTube or other social networking and video sharing sites, and if necessary we can send a link of our movie in an email so we can transfer our production to each other to do some editing and to make all our ideas come alive. There are many aspects of this software which may be ideal for producing our film such as the transition elements and having ready made horror music if we needed it. However this software is fairly amateur, meaning there isn't as much variety of transitions, sounds, cutting techniques etc, which could be a problem.

Adobe Premier Elements 10

The second piece of software that we could consider using is Adobe Premier Elements 10. We used this software last year, when filming our opening two minutes- The Alley. We feel that it was very useful last year, so it seems ideal to use it again. Although this software is another editing software like Microsoft Movie Maker, this is software is aimed for making and creating videos and films, which is more of an advantage using this software. This software also gives you a more clearer timeline with audio and soundtracks below so you can line the shots and the music precisely together. It also has much more advance effects such as the stabilizer effect, which keeps shots still if they are shakey when they are not meant to be. This may benefit us as we want to make our opening two minutes as best as we can so a more advanced software would aid us for doing this, right? This may not be true as it makes the process a lot more complicated as there is more techniques you can use, meaning more complication. However this software includes a range of transitions, effects, cutting processes etc, which would definitely benefit in producing our film.

Software Used

Ultimately, we had to come to a decision of what software we wanted to use. We decided to stick with what we already knew and had learnt from last year. We decided to go with Adobe Premier Elements 10. As we used it last year in our opening two minutes, it meant that we were all fully aware of how the system worked, and what buttons were where. In addition, many professionals use when they edit movies, this gives us the experience of a real movie editor and what they have to do to achieve what they achieve. The effects on this movie editor are acceptable for our genre of movie because they able you to control how the lighting and sounds are e.g. the volume; because our trailer is a horror we like to experiment with these things to create tension and fear when you are watching it, making it beneficial for us as editors. We explored the editing software to enable us to find the right tool to crop our clip, we managed to find one which brought us to realise how advanced this editing software really is.In conclusion, this is an ideal application to use to edit our film as it makes the finished project look professional and neat, it is also easy to use which is necessary because we are inexperienced movie editors. The range of transitions, effects and sounds makes it fun to use

BEHIND THE SCENES- Ashtead park

Today, we filmed part of our trailer at Ashtead park. We arrived there at 6:15pm and started filming around 6:30pm. It took us a while to get started, as we had to adjust our camera onto a"Night mode" setting, as it was too dark to film using the camera's natural settings. It was a successful hour and a half.. despite the freezing weather, we managed to create some effective filming that we feel will fit perfectly for our horror trailer!


We used our own flashlight to help generate different flashes of light. The ring light was handy, as it had a clip on it. This meant that we could move the positioning of the ring light around the camera easily and effortlessly. This picture shows one of us using the ring light on top of the camera. Placing the ring light on the top, helped to make the person in shot (Subject Matter) appear much clearer on the screen. the ring light also had a balanced amount of light, due to the fact that it was a circle. Also, filming when it was dark, meant that we needed to create our own light so that the subject matter could be seen much clearer. Using a tripod in our filming was essential to achieve effective shots. As we have to create a a magazine cover too, it meant that we had to capture photographs as well as footage. Therefore, having a tri-pod meant that we could get sturdy and professional looking photographs and videos.  The tri-pod also had a handle on it, so that we could adjust the camera to different positions, for example, a canted angle, whilst still having a sturdy photograph. 

Here is a video of the filming that we got up to. When Katy had to put the clown mask on, her hair kept getting in the way. This would break the continuity rules in filming, as it would make the audience switch back to reality that what we have created is not actually real. It was useful working in a big group, it meant that each of us picked up on different things that didn't look right in shot, for example, peoples shadows in certain shots would have broken a rule of continuity. 



Our costumes were a key and essential part to the trailer. As we are filming a trailer, not an opening two minutes, it meant that we had to have a range of costumes, so that we can show the entire film. It could look odd if we were all wearing the same thing throughout the entire film- excluding the clown obviously. Our antagonist was wearing the same outfit as before (black jeans, black hoodie and the mask), the three girls, again wore causal and simplistic outfits that conformed to our generation of teenage girls. We wore coats, jeans and trainers which we feel helped to express their vulnerability and innocence. Regarding the location of where we were filming, we filmed at Ashtead park in surrey. We decided to film in  park as we feel that it help to link in the clown. Clowns were historically aimed at children, and children play at parks. To more recent ideas, clowns are now looked upon as creepy and sinister, so we had to incorporate this into the park, which is why we filmed at night. In addition to this, the research that we all did regarding the location, 34% of people agreed that a park was a good location to film a clown horror, so we took this advice on board, and acted upon this. We managed to capture lots of interesting shots, including close of shots of a swing, swinging on its own. This connotes the idea of spirits and the supernatural- as something must have made the swing move. We think that we are going to include this earlier on in the trailer, to help set the atmosphere without giving too much away.