EVALUATION FOUR: How did you use titles and how did they advertise your film in your trailer?

Titles are an essential element that help to shape and structure any trailer. It's what makes a trailer a trailer, they almost act as a visual narrator, they give the audience a basis to what the film is about, and what kind of genre the film is. In horror films, stereotypical titles include things like ' The scariest film of 2017' or 'don't forget to lock your house up tonight'. They give the audience little teasers an hints to keep them informed about the film, and create tension. In our trailer, we included a lot, this was because we didn't have as much footage as we had hoped, so we had to make the timings up by using titles. The style, transitions, fonts and sizing all mattered so we had to plan a lot of these out before actually creating them. 


The first thing we began to do, was create our production titles. These are presented in every film, they give the audience and understanding of who the film was made by. Production companies can range from huge, global international ones such as, Universal, and smaller ones such as Lionsgate. We created our own production titles. Admittedly, this did take a while, as we wanted them to appear as professional as possible, so we experimented with lots of different transitions and colour schemes, as well as choosing the correct picture for our production. We went with two companies, as one would feature as the main film distributor, and the other as the sound distributor.  We decided to call it "Purple Lake" as we feel that this is a professional and yet simplistic name that makes our film look as if it would have been distributed by a successful company. We decided to incorporate a colour in our production title, in which we went with the colour purple. The colour purple connotes aspect such as: Mystery, poison, toxic, and power in which the majority of these are seen to be negative, which helps to link to the genre of our trailer. From research, lots of production companies use simplistic locations such as mountains or animals. Thus, we decided to use a lake for our production company. It was easy to find a photograph of a lake off the internet in which we then edited on Photoshop. Photoshop is a complex platform, which allowed us to manipulate many different parts of the photograph. The first thing that we did, was edit the brightness and contrast of the photograph. We made the brightness +11, and the contrast -46. These particular scales ensure that the photograph had darker edges, and a brighter centre. This gave the illusion that it had a  'Vignette'  effect to it. this particular filter, creates a eerie daunting atmosphere due to the black shadows created in the background. This makes the institution effective, especially for a film with the genre of horror.We also decided to use the 'Hue and Saturation' tool to edit the colouring of the photograph. As our company features the colour purple in the title, we decided to include this into our photograph as well. We made the hue +3. This particular scale made the image have a purple tone/shade to it, which not only created strong tonal contrasts, but it also helped to balance out the photograph with the title of the trailer. For our second institutional company, we decided to call it 'On track productions' The idea of being 'on track' can also be seen as an expression to be doing something correctly, or heading in the right direction, which will make the audience think that the company is head strong and professional. We made this company a lot shorter on the screen, as it wasn't the main company that we wanted the audience to see, it was mainly used to fill up the space, but also to adhere to the conventions of trailers, as there are usually two featured on trailers. We felt that using a train was a good idea, as it links in with the trailer as there is a scene where a train goes past, as the clown is walking down some steps. This was a clever way to help link everything in together. 

Throughout our trailer, we used numerous titles. Titles almost act as a visual narrator, they help tell the story through words, they help structure and piece together the film. We began by using the first title which states 'Some say that clowns'. This particular title creates mystery and confusion. This is because the sentence is not finished, suggesting that there is more to come, creating tension and wanting the audience to carry on watching, this is why we felt that it was effective to include this early on in the trailer so that the audience do not get bored. Having short, snappy titles that are unanswered is a common convention used to grip the audience into the film. The second title that is presented states 'Aren't to be afraid of'. This immediately cements the idea to the audience that the clown that is going to be featured in this film IS to be afraid of. The use of the word 'Some' in the first title, suggests that not everyone would agree that clowns aren't seen as a fearful symbol, but then others might. This has already set the idea to the audience that primary antagonist in the trailer is a clown, that should be seen as fearful. 'Some people haven't met HIM' was our next title, as was slightly different to the previous two that we had used. The key aspect to notice here, is the change in colour of the pronoun 'Him'. The fact that the word is singled out through the use of capital letters and colouring suggests that 'he' does not fit in with the world in which the film is set. We again used the word 'Some' to suggest a small amount of people that are not familiar with the background and context of this particular clown in our trailer. The colour red can connote danger and blood, it's an alarming colour which are conventional emotions expected to be seen in a horror film. In addition to this, the colour red is a colour that is predominately attached to clowns, through their red nose, which also helps to display a link. 'And others wish they hadn't met HIM' was the next title which was displayed. The timing in which this title was placed is effective, as it comes after the first full on shot of the clown is show, along with a high pitched violin sound effect. Again, we have used a term referring to other people 'Others', this is not specific, it doesn't define who the others are, which helps to create mystery in our trailer, which we wanted to include to help create fear and tension. We made the word 'him' to be in red and capitals again, to help link this title and the previous one together.  We then started to slowly divert away from the clown, as we didn't want to give too much away. We then started to base our titles around the general film, and start to use persuasive techniques to get our target audience to go and see our film. 'The scariest film of 2017- Diverse film'.  Using a quotation from a different source, helps give the audience another person's opinion and point of view. This will make them realise that the film is not biased and not 'really good' just based on our terms.. We used our own magazine company to feature this quotation, as we thought it would be ideal to feature it, so that the film would get positive recognition. As our film is a horror, we want it to be scary, so the fact that it has been quoted to be 'the scariest' shows that the film fits to its conventions well. The next title reads ' Winner audience choice award 2016'. This again is a persuasive technique used to help promote our film. We thought that by including a title that the film has won an award would clearly suggest to the audience that the film is good and successful. Next, we needed to include a release date so that the audience are aware of when the film is being released. 'This Spring' explains to the audience of the season in which the film is being released. Films do this so that the audience almost have a waiting game of when the film will be out, to create anticipation and excitement. 

The colouring and transitions of the titles was also a key element to consider. We decided to keep the colour scheme simplistic, and similar to the magazine and poster. We made the titles monochromatic whereby the background of the titles was black and the writing was white. This adds a professional feel to the titles, as if they were the colour pink with stars all over them it would completely subvert our genre and what the film is about. The colour black and white helps to create strong, tonal contrasts which help to make the titles bold and eccentric. The two colours completely juxtapose each other, which can also be seen in a metaphorical sense. The colour black connotes evil and darkness, whereby the colour white connotes goodness and purity. In a horror film, there is always the antagonist (The black) and the protagonist (The white) or in a literal sense 'good and evil' This can link to the idea of binary oppositions. The chosen font that we picked was called ' Matiz urla'. This font had a slightly old fashioned feel to it, due to the small edges on the side of the letters, that give the appearance of ink hand writing. We felt that by adding a slightly old fashioned and historic feel to the letters will help give the audience a creepy atmosphere. Horror films usually feature something from the past, whether it be a character that has come back, or a letter/symbol to help solve a clue, therefore we felt that by adding some historical features it would help to conform to a horror film. We ensured that all of our titles were in capital letters. This firstly added an intense effect, as capital letters are usually featured to add emphasis to a sentence, but secondly, it also follow the conventions of a trailer, as trailers usually have capital letters on their titles to make them clear and stand out to the audience, therefore we repeated this process. Regarding the transitions, we used the effect called 'Smear' to fade the title off of the screen. The smear effect almost dragged the letters of the page in a pulling motion, as if they were being dragged below the image. T

his is an effective way, and links strongly to a horror film, as it appears like something is pulling the letters off of the screen. We also had to make sure that the transitions faded into and out of the screen, to do this, we just simply clicked the 'fade in' and 'fade out' icons. The effect of this, ensured that all the transitions ran smoothly across the trailer. It would look too harsh and abrupt if the titles just busted onto and out of the screen, therefore we used the fade icons to help make our trailer appear smooth and professional. This was difficult to do at times, as the curser on the screen was hard to get between each clip to fade it in and out. Therefore, we had to maximize the timeline on our screen so that each clip could be separated, we then faded each clip in and out separately