Today I began filming my teaser trailer. I had filmed some of the scenes that take place in the night schedule of the shooting order. I found it quite fun experimenting with the different shots and angles I could use to better accentuate the pacing of the scenes. I had used members of my family as actors in my scenes and had used my house as the location for the scenes, I had done this because I wanted to set my teaser in an everyday suburban house and thought my house was the right representation for this, using a suburban house allows me to make a link with my audience because they can relate with the lifestyles of my characters,
Due to the low ambient lighting in my house I had to compromise and use a combination of LED lights and mobile phone torch lights to lit the setting.
unfortunately whilst I was evaluating the clips that I shot I had discovered that the footage came out quite grainy/noisy whilst being quite dark, meaning that the lighting I had used was still inadequate, to combat this I would heavily edit the image on after effects and premiere pro to increase the brightness and decrease the noisiness of the clips.
Altogether this was a great learning experience as I know what the problems I need to consider before I begin filming again.
Above is the storyboard for my horror teaser trailer, I am planning on having a dark and "techy" look on my footage; I can achieve this by using Adobe premier pro to change the colour grading of my footage so that it appears like an authentic Hollywood movie. I will also use Adobe After effects to generate and animate some glitch/computer error animations to implement into my teaser, these computer error animations will be effective at connoting the themes of technology in my trailer as well provoking an uneasy tension into my audience.
This is a short test teaser trailer that I had produced to sort of test and try out the different techniques I could use in my final product. One of the main techniques I was focusing on in this teaser trailer are dolly movements, I really wanted to give the teaser an authentic blockbuster feel so instead of having normal static/still shots in my sequences I decided to having moving shots. Moving shots make scenes for engaging for audiences and also emits a feeling that the scene is pacing faster than it actually is. When shooting these scenes I wanted to get as many shot types in as I possibly could the majority of the shots consisting of mid-shots, close ups and extreme close ups.
In the first sequence of the teaser I had used a computer desk chair and a tripod to emulating the feeling of having a dolly to track my actor with, I found this quite difficult to do and I taken many takes because on like an actual dolly track the desk chair does not have a predetermine track to follow and would sometimes swerve out of focus when trying to convincingly follow my actor. The second sequence consisted of a pan movement that showcased the items on the table, this shot was much more easier to capture as all I did to motivate the shot was place my camera on cardboard and slide it along the flat surface of the table.
The second dolly track movement I did was much easier to execute than the first one, this is the part v of the trailer where my actor is using the laptop and the camera zooms in to show the audience what my said character is doing on the computer. To achieve the dolly shot all I did was use the desk chair and tripod again as I moved closer to my actor.
Another initial part of the trailer as the lighting originally the only lighting I had was the ambient lighting that was emitting from the lamp in the scene but this turned out disastrous as the scene was lithely dimmed causing the footage to come out noisy and hard to view, to tackle this I had borrowed the industrial flood lighting from my schools drama department to properly light the scene but even with flood light the final footage still turned out less than desirable; to combat this problem I had done some research into the type of equipment that would solve my lighting problem and found that I was using the wrong lenses. The camera I was using was the Cannon 600D which came equip with an 18-55mm lenses, this lenses is known to let little light into the sensors thereby making it worthless when filming in low lighting area. I had then bough a Cannon 50mm 1.8 lenses which is one of the lenses suggested to me for filming in know lighting, the difference between the two lenses was amazing, the 50 mm lenses produces a much more professional and sharper looking image and would be the lenses I will use to film my final product.
Before I big shooting and editing my final product I though it would be quite appropriate to get a film for the kind of work I will be producing. I had storyboared a short teaser trailer that would showcase some of the themes in my narrative and some of the techniques that I may use in my final teaser trailer.
When creating a film of any genre it is important to always set a particular theme/tone that will be apparent throughout the course of the entire film, my doing this content creators are injecting the motif and connotations of the film into the viewers sub consciousness to help them to fully grasp unto the narrative of the film and the major plot points.
The themes present in the original Suicide club film consist of; fear, death/suicide, brainwashing and technology, as I am using the original film as influence for my own narrative I will need to implement the themes and motifs of the original source into my teaser trailer. I will be using technology as my major theme in my teaser trailer, by capitalizing on the themes of technology in my teaser trailer I will be casting a very thorough reflection on the use of technology in our separate everyday lives, in turn I will be making my trailer reliability surpass those in my target demographic to everyday users of technology, I can achieve this my making the characters in my teaser trailer interact with technology one way or another; this could be done by showcasing my character getting a text message or showcasing my character visiting a certain website.
A teaser trailer plays a major role in the marketing side of the film industry as it allows a film/content creator to slightly "tease"/temp any movie goer to viewing the movie.
The conventions of a teaser trailer are kept pretty simply, with the duration of the teaser trailer being a major practicality of of the conventions, film makers tend to produce a teaser trailer that varies between 60 seconds to 120 seconds in duration. The short duration of the teaser trailer is then used as an essential mechanisms when attract the right demographic as the viewers of the trailer would in turn be persuaded to wanting to watch the full feature length film.
When creating a teaser trailer it is important the the content creator showcases the right amount of narrative and plot twist in the trailer, if the content creator was to showcase a small amount the attention of the demographic would barely be light thereby causing audiences to not be interested to watch the film, in addition to this if the content creator was to showcase to much of the narrative in the teaser audiences may believe that they would not need to watch the film because they believe that they already know the story line and wouldn't want to spend money to watch the actual film. If the content creator was to showcase just the right about to make the teaser ambiguous but still quite captivating to make audiences interested on watch the actual film then the content creator has achieved his goal of creating a successful teaser trailer. I am planning on using this technique of my teaser trailer to thereby increase the authenticity of my product.
Above is a teaser trailer for an up and coming horror movie to reach the cinemas. As we can see the teaser is only 137 seconds long which is close to the 120 seconds rule I had mentioned earlier in this post. From this 137 second long trailer we that audience are introduced to some of the themes are and narrative of the film, from the teaser we are introduced to enough of the narrative that we know the basic outline of the narrative whilst the teaser is still ambiguous as we are not informed of the events that lead up to the graphic scenes that are showcased near the end of the teaser.
We can see that Todorov's theory on narrative has been applied to this trailer this is evident due to the beginning of the teaser portraying the equilibrium; the part of the narrative where the characters are living out their normal lives unaware of any of the danger they are about to face this is highlighted between the 0:00-0:29 of the teaser were we see our to main characters enjoying each others company whilst a peaceful backing track is played in the background to connote the sense of stability. This stability is disrupted at 0:46 were the disruption appears the characters are put in unrest by this disruptions and are now aware that they might be in danger, but that is as far as Todorov's theory of narrative is applied to this teaser; then rest of the teaser showcases different points of the disruption section in the film, this was done by the content creator as a way to ease the audience to watching the film in cinemas, as the ambiguity of the characters fate will then captivate the audience to sit through the entire film. As I had mentioned before this technique plays a major role in the marketing side of film making and would be the technique that I am applying to my teaser.
