Planning - Storyboards

Research - Moodboard

This is my storyboard. I have used a lot of disturbing and scary images from previous films to get ideas for my own poster and to show what genre I am aiming towards. However, in my trailer I will try not to include gory images and scenes because this is not my aim. My aim is to scare the audience and attract them to my film without using gory images. I want to use more questioning and suspicious content in my trailer to entice the audience without giving much away. 

Planning - Our Narrative

Possible Titles of Film:

- The Night that never lived

- Slaughter Reborn

- REBORN (chosen name)

We found the title 'Reborn' to be the best fit for our plot as 'slaughter reborn' gave the wrong idea to our target audience suggesting blood and gore when our main story is more about ghosts and spirits. 

Characters: 4/5 ghost hunters, a ghost, church caretaker.

Settings: City of London Academy classroom and a church. Most of the trailer will be filmed in the church. 

Narrative: based on a true story, the Charles Manson murders. 4 or 5 ghost hunters looking for the ghost of Charlotte Manson, a mass murderer of South London, Bermondsey in the late 1960s (based on Charles Manson). Rumours say that the spirit of Charlotte Manson is trapped within the church that he body was buried under and this is the church we will be filming at. Her spirit possesses one of the ghost hunters when they enter the church (Sophie). Sophie starts acting differently towards the others. Whenever they make ghost jokes she doesn’t laugh or respond in anyway. Her face begins to turn paler as the trailer goes on showing that she is clearly possessed. The spirit is now fully REBORN within Sophie's body and starts killing the other ghost hunters. The spirit of Charlotte Manson is trying to recreate the murders of the late 1960s.

Tagline: Charlotte Manson is back…

Editing Styles or techniques: We agreed that we were going to use a handheld camera throughout the trailer to give the effect of realism and illustrate that the ghost hunters within the story are amateurs.

Props/Clothing: Within our £0 budget. Everyone will wear their own clothes nothing extravagant. Dark coloured casual clothing will be worn by all the characters within the trailer. Props include fake blood, Charlotte Manson's previous murder weapons, etc.

We have also developed our story boards and filming schedules for our group. We created our filming schedules so that every member of our group knows what things they are doing and when they are doing them. These filming schedules list the dates we are filming on, director, actors, setting, camera shots/angles, lighting, actors costume for continuity, etc.

Research - Narrative Theory

Todorov 's theory -


Bulgarian scientist Todorov, proposed a basic all narrative structure. In his theory, he suggested that every story had an equilibrium or a 'calm period', a disequilibrium which is the disruptive factor and a new equilibrium to restore the 'world of fiction'.  


Five stages of a narrative (according to Todorov's Theory) -


1. A state of equilibrium - all as it should be 
2. A disruption of that order - by an event
3. A recognition that the disorder has occurred
4. An attempt to repair the damage - of disruption
5. A restoration of a NEW equilibrium




Propp's theory -


Vladmir Propp's theory suggested that in all narrative's, there were eight types of characters:


1. The hero (seeks something)
2. The villain (opposes the hero)
3. The donor (helps the hero, providing help)
4. The dispatcher (Sends hero on his way)
5. The false hero (falsely assuming the role of the hero)
6. The helper (giving support to the hero)
7. The princess (the reward for the hero but also needs protecting from the villain)
8. Her father


According to this theory there are only eight different character types, and only 31 different things they ever do. This is easily related to a lot of stories/narratives today. 



Claude Levi-Strauss' Theory -

Levi-Strauss looked at narrative structure in terms of binary oppositions. Binary oppositions are sets of opposite values which reveal the structure of media texts. An example would be GOOD and EVIL – we understand the concept of GOOD as being the opposite of EVIL. Levi Strauss was not so interested in looking at the order in which events were arranged in the plot. He looked instead for deeper arrangements of themes. For example, if we look at Science Fiction films we can identify a series of binary oppositions which are created by the narrative:

Earth - Space

Good - Evil

Human - Aliens
Past - Present
Normal - Strange
Known - Unknown

Slaughter Reborn Poster Draft

Planning - Typography

Here are some examples of fonts we would consider using for our poster. Each one has a 'horror' or 'spooky' feel to it. I got these examples from www.dafont.com under the 'horror' themes.

Planning - Images

Research - Questionnaire Analysis

From the results of our first questionnaire for random people we found that 9/10 sixth formers we asked said they liked watching horror films. Also, the majority of people said they enjoyed the 'shock factor' of a horror film instead of gore, violence and other aspects. This suggests we should include a few shocking scenes in the trailer that will make the audience jump. They also told us that they are more attracted to a good storyline rather than gore or violence. This connotes we should make our storyline intriguing to our audience instead of including a lot of violence to draw them in because they want to see a good storyline.

From the results of the focus group questionnaire, we found that the most popular sub-genre was 'gore' and the most popular 'time' of horror was the 1980's so our storyline could be from the 1980's or based on the 1980's horror.

Research: The Shining Trailer

The Shining has alot of short, quick clips that show quite alot of the action but it does give quite alot away about what is going to happen in the film. For example, at the beginning the storyline is revealed before you see any of this 'action'. Also throughout the trailer there are a lot of fade-ins and fade-outs into the next clips, this helps create the tension within the trailer instead of just cutting to the next scene. There is tension also created in the middle of the trailer as the clips start getting faster and shorter as more action happens and as the trailer goes on. 


At the start of the trailer there are a number of establishing shots just showing the setting that the film is. Shortly after this, there are quite a lot of short clips showing what happened in the house before with the man walking up the drive with an axe which makes you think that the film will be based around this. This is similar to when films use the 'based on true stories' line to entice their audience. Then we meet the family that are going to be living in the house and the audience automatically know that something bad is going to happen. Then the quick shots start as the tension rises, during the quick shots there are a lot of long black shots that are followed by short, quick clips of action. The music in the trailer also helps to build up the tension as its quite dramatic and fast.

RESEARCH: Questionnaire

Research - The Ring Analysis & Empire Magazine

This poster is quite simple, yet very effective on what it is trying to advertise. It's very plain and simple, the use of dark colours also help with its simplicity. However, it also suggests alot about the film it is advertising. The title 'the ring' is very vauge but suggests 'horror' or 'thriller' because of its deformed shape which seems quite unnatural. It contrasts against the black background by using the colour white to make it stand out which makes you attracted to the title instead of the background. You can't really see what is in the background, it's also distorted for the purpose that you notice the title. This creates a tension because you actually don't know what is in the background (fear of the unknown?). This represents the genre of horror.

There are no clues to what the film is about. The only clue given is 'before you die you see the ring' this keeps the audience intrigued the only thing we know about the film is it could include death, and 'the ring' whatever that might be. Again, this is unknown. There is no major advertisement of the actors in the film either. This is going against the conventions of a film poster because most films use the actors names to intrigue the audience. The audience are not familiar with the actors so they have no idea what to expect. This is again like 'the fear of the unknown'.

Research - Genre

Genre is a way of defining or categorising something. Its a term used for any category of literature or other forms of art culture, E.G music and in general something written or spoken, audial or visual. Genre is used effectively to make our lives easier. For example, if you go into a shop and want to buy a 'horror film' you would look for a sign which says 'horror' because this is the 'genre' of film. It is almost a way to control and categorise film or any other media text.

We can't put a specific meaning to the word genre because it means something different to everyone. Each genre follows it's own conventions. However, genres are fluid and not fixed and are always under constant renegotiation between media industry and audience.

Research - Horror Film Timeline

1920's - The first horror movies:
Early horror films are surreal, dark pieces, owing their visual appearance to the expressionist painters and their narrative style. Darkness and shadows, such important features of modern horror, were impossible to show on the film stock available at the time, so the sequences, for example in Nosferatu, where we see a vampire leaping amongst gravestones in what appears to be broad daylight, seem doubly surreal to us now.


1920 classics -
The Golem (1915/1920)
The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1919)




1930's - Horror begins to talk . . . and scream.
Horror movies were reborn in the 1930s. The advent of sound, as well as changing the whole nature of cinema forever, had a huge impact on the horror genre. Sound adds an extra dimension to terror, whether it be music used to build suspense or signal the presence of a threat, or magnified footsteps echoing down a corridor. The horror films of the 1930s are exotic fairy tales, invariably set in some far-off land peopled by characters in period costume speaking in strange accents. Horror was still essentially looking backwards, drawing upon the literary classics of the 19th century for their source material.


1930's classics - 
Dracula (1931)
Frankenstein (1931)




1940's - Horror eats itself
Wartime horror movies were an American product and they was banned in Britain. With film production curbed throughout the theatre of war in Europe, horror films were cranked out by Hollywood solely to amuse the domestic audience. The studios stuck with tried and tested ideas, wary of taking risks that might suggest they had no measure of the zeitgeist, and trotted out a series of variations on a theme. This was not an age of innovation, but horror movie memes were, nonetheless, evolving. If the horror movies of the 1930s had dealt in well-established fictional monsters, looking back towards the nineteenth century for inspiration, the 1940s reflected the internalisation of the horror market. The Americans looked at themselves as “safe”, whereas everything else, particularly anything hailing from that frightening, chaotic, unreasonable and uncontrolled place known as Europe was dangerous. 


1940's classics -
Cat people (1942) 




1950's - Creature features 
It is hard to grasp the changes that took place in popular consciousness between 1940 and 1950. In ten short years the concept of a horrific monster had altered irrevocably. Whereas Lon Chaney, Jr in a fine covering of yak's hair had once served as a powerful envoy from the dark side, now there were more recognisably human faces attached to evil. Faces who had fought on both sides in WW2, the developers of the atom bomb and the death camp, mad scientists indeed whose activities would have unnerved even Victor Frankenstein or Dr Moreau.The military action of WW2 had left over 40 million dead, and millions more exposed to the full spectrum of man's inhumanity to man. Homecoming soldiers and bereaved widows had too many horror stories of their own to appreciate fantasies on the big screen, and much preferred the silliness of Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein et al. The world could never be the same again, and the dawning of post-war posterity in America brought with it a new breed of monsters, adapted specifically for survival in the second half of the twentieth century.


1950's Classics - 
The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953)
The wasp Woman (1960)
House on Haunted hill (1959) 




1960 Thriller to chiller 
Horror films and thrillers had intertwined way back in the days of the Old Dark House (1932) and Cat People (1942). However, horror's relegation to the B-movie zone in the 1950s meant that those directors who were interested in thrillers had concentrated on producing glossy, stylish, film-noir stories with no taint of the supernatural, the monstrous, and therefore the drive-in. It is interesting to compare the original Cape Fear(1962) with its 1991 remake. And yet... The undisputed master of the thriller, Alfred Hitchcock, chose the 1960s for his two main ventures into the horror genre.


1960's Classics
Psycho (1960)
The Birds (1963)




1970's - Nightmare decade: in front of the children 
Horror movies of the 1970s reflect the grim mood of the decade. After the optimism of the 1960s, with its sexual and cultural revolutions, and the moon landings, the seventies were something of a disappointment. It all started to go horribly wrong in 1970; the Beatles split, Janis and Jimi died, and in many senses it was downhill all the way from there: Nixon, Nam, oil strikes, glam rock, feather haircuts, medallions... However, when society goes bad, horror films get good, and the 1970s marked a return to the big budget, respectable horror film, dealing with contemporary societal issues, addressing genuine psychological fears.


1970's classics -
The Exorcist (1973) 
The Stepford Wives (1975)




1980's Horror films
Horror movies of the 1980s (which probably begin in 1979 with Alien) exist at the glorious watershed when special visual effects finally caught up with the gory imaginings of horror fans and movie makers. Technical advances in the field of animatronics, and liquid and foam latex meant that the human frame could be distorted to an entirely new dimension, onscreen, in realistic close up. This coincided with the materialistic ethos of the 1980s, when having it all was important, but to be seen to be having it all was paramount. People demanded tangible tokens of material success - they wanted bigger, shinier, faster, with more knobs on - as verification of their own value in society. In the same way, horror films during this decade delivered the full colour close-up, look-no-strings-attached, special effect in a way that previous practitioners of the art could only dream about. Everything that had lurked in the shadows of horror films in the 1950s could now be brought into the light of day. The monsters were finally out of the closet.


1980's Classics -
The thing (1982)
Child's Play (1988)




1990s Horror in the 1980s
By the end of the 1980s horror had become so reliant on gross-out gore and buckets of liquid latex that it seemed to have lost its power to do anything more than shock and then amuse. Peter Jackson's Brain Dead (1992) epitomises this; a riot of campy spatter, it climaxes with a zombie orgy through which the bespectacled hero must cut his way with a lawnmower. It's hilarious, and not scary in the slightest. The original creations of the late 1970s/early 80s were simply pastiches of their former selves, their power to chill long having disappeared in a slew of sequels and over-familiarity.


1990's Classics -
Se7en (1995)
Wes Craven's new nightmare (1994)




2000's Global Convergence
Horror movies in the late 1990s predicted dire things for the turn of the century. Whilst January 1st, 2000 came and went without much mishap, many commentators have identified the true beginning of the 21st century as September 11th, 2001. The events of that day changed global perceptions of what is frightening, and set the cultural agenda for the following years. The film industry, already facing a recession, felt very hard hit as film-makers struggled to come to terms with what was now acceptable to the viewing public. Anyone trying to sell a horror film in the autumn of 2001 (as George Romero tried with Land of the Dead) got rebuffed. "Everybody wanted to make the warm fuzzy movies."(LA Times 30/10/05) There were even calls to ban horror movies in the name of world peace. But, by 2005, the horror genre was as popular as ever. Horror films routinely topped the box office, yielding an above-average gross on below-average costs. It seems that audiences wanted a good, group scare as a form of escapism, just as their great-grandparents chose Universal horror offerings to escape the miseries of the Depression and encroaching world war in the 1930s. The monsters have had to change, however. Gone were the lone psychopaths of the 1990s, far too reminiscent of media portrayals of bin Laden, the madman in his cave. As the shock and awe of twenty first century warfare spread across TV screens, cinematic horror had to offer an alternative, whilst still tapping into the prevailing cultural mood.

Research - Pulp Fiction Review

A interesting story about four different stories/lives in one film: A boxer, a gangser's wife, a pair of hitmen and a pair of bandits. All four seperate stories are linked together at the end which makes parts of the film a little confusing, but enjoyable. It meets the conventions of a comedy, action and a thriller all in one which made the film interesting because the lives of these people are all unrelated to each other and somehow they all manage to link together. I found there was alot of violence throughout the film, which put me off a bit but other than this, I really liked it.

Research -The Truman Show Review

As Jim Carrey is one of my favourite actors, I was very keen to watch this film. However, it was completely different from my expectations. Compared to his other films such as 'Liar Liar' 'Me mysef and Irene' etc. It was a very emotional, funny and intelligent film, like a story within a story. The main character (Truman) is unaware that his whole life is a popular TV series and is being watched worldwide with every moment being captured my cameras. It brought technology into focus and how it dictates our real lives and the lives of the characters in the film.

Research

Rise of the planet of the apes

Teaser Trailer -

Trailer -



Viral Video -




From the official website:



These are screenshots from the planet of the apes official website (http://www.apeswillrise.com/), where you can watch the official trailer, download images from the film, buy tickets, learn about the cast and makers of the film and watch trailers and videos. You can also 'like' their Facebook page and 'tweet' your views on the website/film via the website.

Reviews -

'Time' Richard Corliss:

Astounding triumph. This years finest action movie. Should slacken your jaw in amazement. A work of high, often thrilling popular art.

Wall Street Journal:

Judged, though, as the action extravaganza it means to be, Rise of the Planet of the Apes wins high marks for originality, and takes top honors for spectacle.

My own review -

I thought this film was amazing in terms of technology, (my friend thinking the ape costumes were so realistic meant I had the fun job of explaining performance capture technology) and was the first of the 'Planet of the apes' film not to be so dependent on makeup and costumes. I don't normally enjoy sci-fi films, but this was the best i've seen so far. It was also quite an emotional film and had a grown man in tears. It was the first film to star animals with human-like natures and qualities. The film met the conventions of a typical action/sci-fi film. For example, the scene where an Ape jumps onto a helicopter in mid-air is a typical action scene. Also, the lab scenes and the costumes the characters wear are very sci-fi related.

Marketing -

First the trailers tried to sell the movie on the premise of a monkey attacking a helicopter the first example of a primate battling an aircraft since Bruce Willis drove a police car into a chopper and lived to tell the tale. Then, Fox raised warning flags to full-mast by refusing to show Apes to critics until the last possible moment. August is historically the time of year when blockbuster fatigue sets in — and when Hollywood execs go on holiday. Thus, the doggiest days of the summer are usually the dumping grounds for your Final Destination 5s. And yet Fox found the sweet spot between cinema’s silliest season and its most murderous month. Apes was in the right place at exactly the right time. "I give credit to the guys who picked the release date, Early August gives you a much smaller summer window. But they had no competition for the weekend. Except for The Change-Up … right, no competition!"

Technology -

After years of playing CGI characters--Serkis was also the man behind the Rings series' Gollum--Serkis has become quite adept at explaining the technology behind his performances. WETA Digital's technology has evolved over the years to enable a few "firsts" for the new Apes film. Rings brought us the first fully emotive digital character, and Avatar marked the first time those characters could be rendered in real time for the director to see. But with Apes, for the first time, according to The Seven Sees, "the performance capture and live-action sequences [are filmed] at the same time." What's more, point out several outlets, it's the first time mo-cap has been sophisticated enough to confidently move outside, for massive exterior shoots beyond the tightly-controlled soundstage. As Serkis told Total Film, "Basically this film represents one of the first and biggest examples of having multiple [performance capture] actors on a live-action set.... The Golden Gate sequence must be a world record in terms of the size of the capture area."