Research - Age Rating

When making our film, we will have to think of what age our audience will be and what rating the film will recieve, therefore we have researched into the british board of film classification to read the guidelines and how they classify films in order to classify our own and apply these guidelines to the content of our film.

U - Universal meaning suitable for all
This means that a film recieving a rating of U should not upset any child and should be suitable for audiences aged four years and over and should diplay positive moral framework. There should be no disciminatory language, no refrences to drugs and aspects like Horror, language, violence and sex should be very mild. For example only kissing, no nudity in a sexual content and horror should no cause anxiety to the children.

 PG - Parental Guidance

This refers to genral viewing but some scenes may be unsiutable for young children. A PG film should not disturb a child aged around eight or older, however parents are advised to make a judgement as to whether the content may upset younger or more sensitive children. Aspects like Horror should not be prolonged or intense, along with violence and imitable behaviour should not be dangerous that potentially a child could copy. Aspects of drugs should be to a minimal and should only be referenced briefly unless it is carrying a suitable anti-drug message. Moderate sexual references and none detailed violence.

In terms of our film, we feel these two particular ratings are not suitable as our film involves a certain degree of violence and horror which is unsuitable for children, along with the theme and plot that shouldn't be exposed to as the murder of a baby is not something children should watch and may cause upset. Therefore we will not be rating our film PG or U.

12A/12 - Suitable for 12 years and over
Simirlar criteria are used to classify films that are a '12A' or '12' rating. These catogories are given when the work is suitable in general for those aged 12 and over. Works classified as this may upset children under the age of 12 and/or contain material that parents do not think is suitale for them. The '12A' catergory exists only for cinema films, no one under the age of 12 may see this film without being accompanied by an adult as they are not recommeneded to children below 12. However, parents can make a judgement regarding the film whether they think its suitable and therefore responsibility in some cases lies with the accompanying adult. This rating should only contain moderate violence, sexual scenes that are only suitable for young people and must be discreet along with nudity. Themes like suicide should not be dwelled on and strong language is not permitted.

Again, for our film this may not be a suitable rating the theme is quite adult as we are dealing with mental health issues and death of a baby, violence is likely to be a strong aspect and we don't feel this rating is best suited for our film.

15 - Suitable for 15 years and over
No one younger than 15 may see a ‘15’ film in a cinema. No one younger than 15 may rent or buy a ‘15’ rated video work. Drug use may be shown but as a whole should not promote misuse of drugs. Strong threat of horror is permitted unless in the context of sexualised, Any theme is acceptable but themes like suicide and self harm, along with use of weapons should not be glamorised. There may be use of strong language but the strongest terms must be justified by the context, however repeated strong language is probably not acceptable. Any sexual activity must be portrayed without a lot of detail. Violence may be strong but should not dwell on the infliction of pain, like torture. Sexual violence should be discrete and have a strong justification as to why it is used.

We feel that this age rating is the one most suitable for our film and when looking at the criteria on the bbfc website, it is the one most adaptable to our plot and what we intend to include in out film.

18 - Suitable for adults
No one younger than 18 may see an '18' film in the cinema or buy/rent an '18' rated video. This rating mainly links with the principles that adults have and the freedom of choosing their own entertainment. However expceptions will be made in the following areas:
- where the material is in breach of criminal law
- where the material or treatment appears to the BBFC to risk harm to individuals through there behavious to society, for example endorsing sexual assualt.
- Explicit content which cannot be justified by the context.

This rating we feel would be to strong for our film, we are not displaying explicit sexual content or explicit violence which may glamorise the idea of violence. Therefore we feel that our film would not be suitable for the '18' rating.
After researching each of the individual ratings we feel the best rating suitable for our film is a '15' This appeals to many people in our age range and by reading the guidelines of the rating we feel that our film is in line with the rating '15'.  

Planning - Camera Angles, Shots and Movements

We went through our script and storyboard to identify the different camera shots, camera angles and movements that we need to incoporate and consider when doing our filming. We carefully picked out certain angles and shots that we feel are important to concentrate on and help convey feeling and emotion of the character along with creating an atmosphere thats suitbale for our trailer and plot. We bullet pointed all the different ones that we found and will research them in closer detail in order to ensure we make the most of them.

Camera Angles/ Shots and Movement

• Birds eye view into Close up
• Close up into mid shot
• Match on action shot of main character entering her home
• Over the shoulder to close up which will take place during the dreams
• Close up of main character's sleeping face to tilting camera so it pans up the wall
• Mid shot of cot
• Panning shot of the police car
• Low, mid shot of police man getting out of the car
• Mid shot of babies cot
• Long shot to Extreme close up
• Mid shot at eye level zooming out to display more of surroundings

Birds Eye View: This camera shot shows a scene directly overhead which often gives the audience a postion of power as they are looking down on the action. This gives the characters a inferior position making them look quite weak, which is what we wanted to convey as the birds eye view shot will show the woman mourning the death of her husband and we want to to have a position of weakness and loneliness to create an atomosphere of sadness.

Close up
This concentrates on a specific detail in the shot, either a face or part of the mise en scène, and avoids showing any more of the background and is often blurred. Often used to convey the importance of things or a facial expression. Also used to try and get into the mind of a character as it is a very intimate shot, making us feel quite uncomfortable: this is an aspect that we definately want to include in order to convey the thrilling and frightening nature of our film. Along with being very intimate towards a character as we want to go inside the mind of our main character, Helena. This is crucial to our film as

Mid Shot
Contains a character or something from the knees/waist up, normally used for two shots so that a dialogue scene can be seen or action. Surroundings are minimum more than likely the environment has been established proir to this show. We plan to use this shot during conversations that are of high importance an establish details and imply details about our film.

Match on action
This refers to when a person is doing an action, and cuts to another shot which then matches what was happening in the previous shot often from a different angle. For exmple in our film, Our main character will be entering her house, focusing on her turning the door handle, then cutting away to a view from the inside of the house to see her coming in.

Over the Shoulder
This is a shot of someone or something taken from the pespective from over the shoulder of another person. This person's back of the shoulder an head of this is used to frame the image of what or who the camera is pointing towards. Very commonly used when two characters are having a discussion and will usually follow an establishing shot which helps the audience connect the character to their setting.

Tilt and Panning

These two camera movements are similiar in that they pan across the screen, however a tilt scans a scene vertically. Where as panning is a movement in a scene, horizontally, often used to establish a setting as a whole or follow a moving object which is kept in the middle of the frame and may be following a character. This will be of great use as our film is focussing on our character and her actions, so panning will be necessary, This will particularly be of use when Helena is in bed dreaming, and the camera is focusing on her face, but then pans up the wall to the ceiling to establish this idea of her fading into a dream.

Low Shot
These increase height which is useful for short actors and give a sense of speeded motion. Low angles help give a sense of confusion to a viewer, of powerlessness within the action of a scene. The background of a low angle shot will tend to be just sky or ceiling, the lack of detail about the setting adding to the disorientation of the viewer. The added height of the object may make it inspire fear and insecurity in the viewer, who is psychologically dominated by the figure on the screen. Often used to give someone or something a position of power and if viewed from another character through a low shot makes thenm inferior to them. As the trailer progresses, our main character will slowly disintegrate into a broken character being shown as inferior to others as she breaks down further.

Extreme close up

This can be taken from as much as a quarter of a mile away, and is generally used as a scene-setting, establishing shot. Normally not showing much detail, just establishing something of importance. 

Eye level

A fairly neutral shot; the camera is positioned as though it is a human actually observing a scene, so that for example actors' heads are on a level with the focus. The camera will be placed approximately five to six feet from the ground. This will be effective when seeing life through our main characters eyes. It really allows us as the audience to gain her perspective from a situation, which is needed in our film as to understand her way of thinking and how her mind works. Crucial to understanding her mental illness 'disassociative identity disorder.'

Zooming out
A zoom lense contatins a mechanism that changes the magnification of the image, bringing it closer or further away to the audience's view. A video zoom lens can change the position of the audience, either very quickly or slowly without physically moving the actual camera which saves a lot of time. The zoom will prove very useful during our trailer when the woman is being drag into an instituion, the door slams and through the small door window we can see her fighting and struggling to get away. Starting at her bloodshot eyes using a close up, we zoom out at a medium rate to establish the surrounds on a mental institution along with the focus of her getting further and further away from the audience. This relates to the idea of with every dream and thought she believes that her baby has been killed which pushes her further away from reality and the audience.

By researching each movement, angle and shot we have now a greater understanding of what each one requires and how to make them work effectively in our film.

Planning - Costumes and Props

Costumes and props were key to making our trailer as realistic as possible: from looking at existing trailers we had an idea of how important these aspects are and how real that should look and appear to be.

Costumes and Make-Up

- A large black coat and hat (private investigator)

- A plain white gown (the hospital clothing)

- A formal black dress (for a section of our magazine cover)

- Hair gel

- Dark eye make up 

Props

- A doll (to use for the baby that dies of cot death)

- A bed (the hospital bed, and a normal bedroom)

- A cot

- A Lamp (to adjust the lighting)

This is one of our actors that we got to play the part of the private investigator. We dressed Sarah in black to convey this role and make her look manly. We also used a car in order to make it realistic to show that this character is just arriving at the house. 

This is the plain white gown we used that is the usual dress wear when in hospital. We made the gown look very creased and old to give the impression that she's undergone the stressful event of having a baby. 

Here is where we dressed our actor Sophie in formal wear. A black dress and curled her hair making her look very formal as if she has just been to the premier of the film. This is for our magazine cover as we want it to feature this formal picture, as a feature of interviewing this "new upcoming actress" but also have a picture of her in character. Similar to the Black Swan Magazine cover we de constructed. 
We also used this lamp as a spot light to emphasise and really show our actress.










Here is when we did the make up for our character 'Helena' we used dark make up to convey the stress that this character has gone through in terms of the loss of her husband and having a baby. Also reflecting that she may not be 100% stable and how tired she is. We used hair gel to make her her look wet and sweaty which is the case when someone has just had a baby which hopefully we have conveyed as being realistic.










This is the prop we used as the baby, obviously a real baby could not be used like in real films, but we felt that this baby did look slightly realistic and therefore used this doll the best that we could. 

 
 For the hospital scene, we wanted to make the entire area white to illustrate the setting. The presents a real representations of stereotypical hospitals. 

 Here is the lamp the we used, and for some areas of filming we need to dim the lights instead of having them fully bright. Therefore we used material to cover the lamp: this still reflected light through but dimmed it enough to give the effect we wanted.
 









This is the cot that we created in order to shoot the scene where the baby supposedly dies of cot death. 

Planning - Location

The locations we used were all in Whittlesey, which is local therefore we had easy access to our locations. The three main locations that we used were:
1. The Vicarage
2. Sir Harry Smith Community College
3. St Andews Church

The first location of the Vicarage is used for Helena's House, and also the hospital room in which Helena has her baby. So we've used this one location to shoot two of our scenes. The second location is our school, Sir Harry Smith Community College as the pyshchatric ward. This we felt would be a successfull location as it is very old structure and our specific part is the slamming of the door when she is in this ward and has gone mental and suffers from her condition. St andrews we going to use for the grave scene when she's mourning the death her husband.

Planning - Auditions

We decided to invite people along to the auditions for our film, as we had various people in mind that we knew would be good and suited for our part for our main character and various other small roles that we need. So in hope that people would enjoy coming along and trying reading our script.
This would also be a good idea to recieve feedback of opinions of our film script and if they themselves would want to go and watch it. 

Planning - The Script

Here is the script for our trailer. Those parts in Bold are character speech and those in italics are what is happening within the trailer as well. We have included both as we wanted to do an overall script for the whole of our trailer. 

Script for film trailer:

Non-Diegetic Sound: Background Music and sound effects throughout.

A long shot shows a woman kneeling down next to her husbands grave, she is dressed in black and is crying whilst holding her husbands army hat, she also is holding her stomach to indicate that she is pregnant.

Main Character (Female): Crying

The shot then changes quickly to a point of view shot looking down at the hat and grave whilst the sobbing becomes louder.

Main Character (Female): Crying becomes louder

(Birds eye view on grave)

This shot then does a close up on the womens eyes, which have obviously been crying. The camera then shakes and blurs slightly to reveal the next shot which is the same close up on the women’s eyes but this time the tears have gone and you can see that she is overwhelmed with happiness. Her crying from the previous shot changes to the crying of the baby.

(Shot fades to tearful eyes)

Baby: (crying)

Nurse: Congratulations! You have a healthy baby boy.

The mother looks down at her baby and has a beaming smile on her face to show how happy she is.

Mum: My beautiful baby, Jack.

This then cuts to a shot of the woman and baby walking into their house, match on action shot of her walking into her house.

A Shot of her looking down into the cot happily.

Quick shots then cut to the baby who has died in the cot, a point of view shot, close up shot..

Overlapping, Sreams of mother, As the shots of the baby, a doctor's voice over

Doctor: I'm sorry, theres often no cause of cot death, theres nothing you could have done.

A black screen will then show the film distributer titles.

Mum: there is then a close up of the mother of the baby in bed drifting off to sleep, crying her self to sleep.

The camera tilts towards the ceiling, whilst fading into her dream.

In the dream there is a mid shot of the babies cot with a figure of a person leaning over the cot holding something, as if to go and suffocate and therefore kill the baby. However, whoever it is is unclear.

Her alarm clock goes of, which wakes her from her dream

Mum: She jumps up, upset by her dream and alarmed by what she saw

Alarm of her clock fades, replaced by the sound of a police car siren

Shot pans police car and the police man gets out, a close up shot shows him.

Quick cuts to the titles of the actors name

Mum: You have to believe me, this wasn't an natural death! SOMEONE KILLED MY BABY

Door slams as police leave, she sobs

Quick Cut to close up on her sleeping face, again camera tilts towards the celing as she again has a dream.

The dream becomes clearer but still distorted

From the makers of...Distorted appears on the screen

As the trailer comes to an end, the Mum runs towards the camera, close up of blood shot eyes, a door slams as she is restrained into a white mental institution room.

zoom out to show the mental institution room

Title appears

D.I.D You? 

Planning - Final Decision On Film Title

After mind mapping all our ideas for a film title, we have narrowed it down to three film titles that we feel are the best and have a clever meaning behind each one and therefore would make a successful title.


D.I.D You?
This title is based on one of the main plots in our film, the fact that our main character suffers trauma in her life, which leads to her development of Dissociative Identity Disorder' which is what ultimately leads to the twist in our film and the devastating end for our character.
By abbreviating this disorder, we get the word Did. This leads to questions which the audience will ask concerning the title 'Did You?', they will be curious about who did what, and whether they did anything, thus making them want to go and watch the film to answer these questions. The overall idea of 'Did You?' is important in our film as we wonder whether the baby was killed, did someone kill the baby and finally did the mother kill her baby?  




Miss-Understood
This is play on the word misunderstood, we want to convey the same connotations in that she is not being understood or believed by those around her that her baby has been killed. This is crucial to the plot of the film as it takes a while for her to convince anyone that it was not natural causes, however still no trace of murder can be found although she continues to believe it is true, which continues the idea of her being misunderstood. The way in which this title would be spelled would be without the normal single 's' but instead with double 's' to change it to Miss, this would refer to the main character in our film who is a woman. 




Rock-a-Bye-Baby
This title is a play on the well known nursery rhyme 'rock a bye baby'. We did research into this before considering this as a option to ensure that there was not copyright attached to this title and that we could use it. We found that this song was in the public domain where the intellectual property rights have expired and therefore becomes 'publicly available' to use by members of the public. This title would emphasis on the word 'Bye' as the main character has lost her baby due to what appears to be cot death and therefore she has to say goodbye to her child and let it go. However she is struggling to do this, and therefore links this idea of the big part concerning the baby and the mothers obsession with how the baby die and therefore she can't say 'bye' until she knows the truth.

Planning - Film Title Mind Map

Before we continued any further we wanted to name our film and the characters in it as this will be a crucial aspect when doing our script for a trailer as the Titles is what we need to include in our trailer. When thinking of our film title, we looked closely at our plot and tried to find clever links between our plot and characters to the title. So from our mind map you can see that ideas like Madness, Psychotic, Craze are all reference to the mental illness that she has. Night Dreaming, Bad Dream and Nocturnal all relate to the idea of her dreams that occur at night time which ultimately lead to her downfall. Baby Blues and Rock-a-Bye-Baby all relate to the death of her baby which again is a major part in the story. The remaining ideas like Miss-Understood, D.I.D You?, Who? Hybrid, and Need all relate to the main character herself.  

Planning - Storyboard

This storyboard briefly goes through our trailer and just gives an overview of what we plan to include, we are going to go through each picture in the storyboard and explain what this represents and the shots it leads to.

Shot 1: the first shot will be a long shot of the women kneeling down at her husbands grave, then a point of view shot of her holding a military hat that he wore whilst fighting in the war and she is crying.This will already raise questions and emotions for the audience. She will also be holding her stomach to indicate that she is pregnant with his child.

Shot 2: This next shot will be set "4 months later" when she has just had the baby, the shot will emphasize how happy she is and how healthy and happy her new born baby is, suggesting that her baby is now the new focus in her life and after all her trauma with the loss of her husband, she finally has something to set her mind to and think about. This drastically changes the tone of the trailer from going to a negative to a positive. Quick shots will display her taking her baby home, maybe her holding it and enjoying having a baby. 

Shot 3: This is where the film goes wrong as the baby sadly dies, its mother cries and sobs at the loss of her child and obviously takes her back into what the audience will assume is depression and anxiety. Quick shots will show her screaming at the loss and the taking away of her child. 

Shot 4: This shot shows the distributors of the film, so the company or individual that is responsible for the release of a film, either theatrically or for home viewing (for example DVD, TV programmes, Video-On-Demand etc.) After the deconstructions we did of existing trailers, we found that showing the company that distributes the film is very commonly and is almost always shown in the trailers. 

Shot 5: The next shot shows her having very vivid dreams, her in bed tossing and turning because of this dream she is having. The dreams show that she is seeing a figure holding a pillow suggestively about to suffocate her baby, however this figure she sees is unclear. Fixated with this dream she truly believes her baby didn't die of naturally causes but was murdered. 

Shot 6: This next shot shows the police arriving, as she is convinced that a full investigation must be made into the death of her baby to find who or what has killed him.

Shot 7: Again, from doing our deconstructions we learned that often actors names are shown to encourage to audience to watch the film, as often if an actors name is recognized they will be influenced to go and watch a film. Also from our audience research we found that 75% of our respondents were influenced to go and watch a film by who the cast was and who directed the film. 

Shot 8: We want to indicate to the audience that these dreams are of some importance to the plot therefore we are going to include another part of her dreaming to build up suspense and tension as the audience will question these dreams, and also be quite unnerved by who is in her dreams. 

Shot 9: From our AS coursework, the film we produced the opening scene of called "distorted" was a horror film, however the opening scene also was very thrilling. Therefore we thought it would be a good idea to include in the titles: "From the makers of distorted" we had a lot of positive feedback from our audience feedback questionnaire and they would continue to watch the film. Therefore we thought we would use the common convention of displaying previous films that the makers have made. From previous research we found that if an audience has enjoyed previous films made by the same people, they will be encouraged to go and watch this film as they know the positive reputation of the film makers. By doing this we hope to make this a convincing and realistic trailer.

Shot 10: Last part of the trailer will be very fast pace getting quicker and quicker along with the soundtrack becoming louder and faster to build up to the climax at the end of the trailer of a cliff hanger. This shot just displays one of the shots that will be shown, a close up of the main characters eyes opening very quickly, giving an element of shock and danger as we can see the veins in her eyes showing her anger and despair. This sudden opening of her eyes we feel will fit in well with the fast pace of the trailer. 

Shot 11: The next shot shows the slamming of a door and a shot panning backwards, seeing the women through the window in the door struggling to get away and screaming to get out. Again this raises more questions which is exactly what we want to do. 

Shot 12: The last shot it of the actually title of the film, after all the fast pace shots, it suddenly stops still on the title of the film. This last shot lingering on the screen will hopefully stick in the mind of the audience, it will be memorable and will stand out, making them remember this trailer and therefore wanting to go and see this film at the cinema which ultimately is what this trailer needs to do. Referring back to our audience research, the most popular answer to the question where do you prefer to see the titles displayed in a trailer" was the end. Therefore we took this into consideration and put our titles throughout the film, but mainly displayed it at the end.  


Thrillers are mysterious and fast pace, this trailer makes the audience ask questions, they will want to know what happens next, why all these things are happening and will hopefully be thrilled by the trailer, thus want to go and watch our film.

Planning - Plot Synopsis

After researching into the Thriller genre, we have took all the codes and conventions of a thriller into consideration and came up with the plot for our film. Although we are only creating a trailer, trailers often include parts from each of the film throughout, therefore we needed to think of the entire plot to ensure that our trailer reflected parts of the whole films. We first thought of a main character to base our film around, we felt we could create a plot easily if we had one character at the centre to be a starting point.


Firstly we decided to brainstorm a character that we had in our heads, and what characteristics this character would have, what gender they would be, age and appearance. We also took into account any past issues they've had prior to the stage of their life that is going to be in the film. We decided that our character would begin the film with having suffered a truamatic loss of a loved one, but in contrast is pregnant, therefore she does try to be strong for her unborn child.


The main aspects we decided were:
- they were female
- young adult
- pale (reflects illness)
- slim figure
- dealt with traumatic situations
- mental illness


Our next task was to build a plot around this character, we also had to think of a big unexpected twist within the story as this is one of the key conventions of thrillers and is what will make the film itself "thriller". We also had to take into consideration that we are only doing a trailer, so we have to think of a twist that can in some way be reflected in the trailer without giving to much away to the main story line.


Research into Mental Illnesses
We knew from the start that we wanted our character to suffer from a mental illness to include the psychological element of our thriller. One of the first illnesses that we thought of what schizophrenia or depression, because these are amongst the most well known. We wanted our chraracter to suffer from an illness that made her see things that weren't real and believe them. However, we knew to make our trailer and film realistic that we would have to research into our chosen illness so this is what we did.


Depression is a state of low mood and aversion to activity that can affect a person's thoughts, behaviour, feelings and physical well-being. Depressed people may feel sad, anxious, empty, hopeless, helpless, worthless, guilty, irritable, or restless. They may lose interest in activities that once were pleasurable, experience loss of appetite or overeating, or problems concentrating, remembering details or making decisions; and may contemplate or attempt suicide. Insomnia, excessive sleeping, fatigue, loss of energy, or aches, pains or digestive problems that are resistant to treatment may be present. Depression is often a reaction to:
- ceratin life events (loss of a loved one)
- symptoms of medial conditions
- treatments
- a feature of certain psychiatric syndromes
We would have a lot of features to work on with all the characteristics of depression, which means we could create a interesting chracter with many features to choose from. However, because of the wide variety of depression, it would be hard to incoporate the illness and reflect it in a short trailer.

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social or occupational dysfunction. The illness can be diagonised through certain factors like genetics, environmental factors, prenatal and substance abuse.

From schizopherina, we realised that we wanted our character to have dreams that included delusions, and become someone who has social dysfuntions because of these hallucinations. This lead us to our next disorder that we researched.

Dissociative identity disorder is a psychiatric diagnosis and refers to a person that displays multiple distinct identities or personalities known as "alter egos" each on has its own unique set of memories, behaviors, thoughts and emotion that is related to each specific personality.
Patients of this disorder may experience an extremely broad range of other symptoms that resemble epilepsy, schizophrenia, anxiety, mood disorders, post traumatic stress disorder, personality and eating disorders.


This aspect of multiple personalities and alter egos is what we are going to focus on. From this we created our plot.


Plot
        A young woman at the age of 24 has recently lost her husband who fought in Afghanistan in the war. This lead to her being diagnosed with depression, however she is 4 months pregnant with her husbands child when he passes away. With the help and support of her family she struggles through her depression but slowly starts to be better. The baby is delivered and she has a new focus in life which is her child, she takes her healthy baby home and starts to build her life again. 
      However it soon goes horribly wrong when her baby passes away, and cause is of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, often referred to as "cot death". However the mother does not believe it has died of natural causes and believes her baby was killed by something/someone because of the dreams that she is constantly dreaming of this memory of a 'figure' that suffocated her baby. But the face in her dreams is never shown. 
     Convinced by this she goes to the help of the police to have a full investigation into the death to put her mind at ease, but they do not find any substantial evidence that anyone was involved and dismiss the case as the original 'died of natural causes'. Not letting this rest, her dreams become more vivid and frequent to the point where she cannot sleep or go about daily things, she seeks the help of a private investigator in the hope of solving this mystery and putting these dreams to rest and she can finally start grieving for the loss of her child. 
The private investigator becomes consumed in this story and the only solution due to the woman’s unusual actions and the depression, lead to the conclusion it was her. She will not take this as an answer and becomes violent. She becomes dangerous to the public and other mothers, so she is taken into a psychiatric ward.   

     We are only seeing one of her alter egos, the one that has lost a child, however the other is the murderer of her child. As the plot progresses, the 'figure' that always appears in her dreams becomes more apparent and clearer to the point when you can see that it is in fact her.   

Audience Research

As a group we have created a questionnaire that we've distributed to 20 people to gain information of our target demographic, their opinions of Thriller films and aspects of a trailer that encourage them to go and watch an upcoming film. We've asked various questions that we feel will help us when creating a plot for our film and further more creating a trailer for this film. 

Results

Question 1:

The first question we asked was What gender are you? and from the results you can see that we ensured that we had equal responses from both males and females. We felt out results would be more reliable if the the opinions and feedback that we got were from both gender's points of view as someone's gender will influence their ideas and opinions. 

Question 2:

The majority of our respondents are aged 15 to 18 which is helpful as this is the age group that our film is likely to be aimed at. After researching into the Thriller genre, the majority of popular thriller films are rated 15 or 18. Therefore we felt it would be relevant if many of our respondents were this age. We also don't want to just have our film directed at only one age group, although our main demographic is 15 to 18, by having the opinions of others we can hopefully open up our film to a wider range of people.

Question 3: 

Our next question was very straight to the point as we simply asked whether they enjoy watching thrillers and as we can see from these results, the majority voted Yes, they do enjoy watching thriller films which suggests that it is a popular genre. It may not be to everyone's preference as a few voted No. However, it will help us to have both peoples opinions so we can find out about why those who voted Yes like thrillers. and why those who voted No do not, and hopefully we can create a new original trailer for a thriller to encourage those to enjoy our film.

Question 4: 

Our next question is open-ended and asks for their favourite thriller film. We felt it would be helpful to obtain this information and discover what Thriller Films are most popular amongst our target audience as we can then research into some of the trailers for these films and analyse what makes them successful, whether they have used typical conventions of a trailer for a thriller and this will improve our knowledge for what we need to create a successful trailer. The most voted for film was Shutter Island which is a Psychological Thriller. The next most popular films were Secret Window, Se7en, Inception, Black Swan and Panic Room. 

We also asked Why this was their favourite thriller, and the answers the commonly occurred were ...

Question 5:

We want to live up to these expectations and create a trailer that conveys these emotions as if this is what they expect to see and feel then this is what we will try to include.

Question 6:

The next question is purely based on the respondent's opinions of trailers and what they think makes a good trailer. The top answer was it must have a 'fast pace', which is one of the conventions of a thriller trailer which we learned from our deconstructions. Trailers for thriller often pick up the pace nearing the end of the trailer to build up tension and excitement. The next most popular answer was flashing images, which links with the idea previous idea as once the trailer is at a fast pace the images will also be flashing quickly. The next two answers were good music, which we feel is very important to have a good soundtrack as it can also build suspense and make a trailer more thriller. Dark setting also indicates conventions of a thriller. 

Question 7:

This question we asked was to discover how effect trailers are and whether they actually are the reason why many people go to see a new upcoming film. We found that 18 out of our 20 respondents answered Yes, that they do influence them to go and watch a film. Therefore the trailer must be of a good standard and is crucial in promoting the film well. 

Question 8:

We have chosen to create a trailer for a film of the Thriller genre, therefore this closed question is purely to see what sub-genre of thriller our demographic enjoys the most, and as we can see from the graph, psychological thriller is the most popular answer closely followed by supernatural. Which suggests that our audience enjoy elements of the horror genre within a thriller. We have ensured to research into each sub-genre, but Political, Legal, Romantic and Spy Thrillers received zero votes which shows that these are of the least popular and therefore we will not be basing our trailer on any of these sub-genres specifically. 

Question 9:

This question investigates how our target audience normally knows that a new film is being released. We gave the option of trailers which were the main source, but we also asked where they see the trailer whether it is on Television, On the Internet or at the Cinema. The main answer was on Television, but also a large proportion of the remaining respondents answered Online and at the Cinema, proving how much influence trailers have. This is also helpful for us as we now have more knowledge on where to display our trailer. 

Television trailers seem to be the most popular, therefore we need to create a suitable trailer for TV that can be displayed in between programmes in the adverts, therefore we must think about the timing and other such issues. No one voted for Posters or Magazines, showing that they are not the most direct way of discovering about a new film, therefore we feel we must create a magazine cover and poster that changes the opinions of our demographic and ensure that this is a useful way of knowing about a new film. 

Question 10:

From our AS Coursework, we found that displaying the titles of a film needed to be eye catching, stand out and was an important feature of our final product. Therefore we wanted the opinions of our demographic, to know where they prefer to see the titles within a trailer. The End of the trailer was the most popular answer, which in trailer like Shutter Island, they have done exactly this, and seems to have worked to create a memorable and thrilling trailer.

The least popular answer was The Beginning, and we feel this may be because the audience feel they want a build up to the title of the film to add suspense of what this film is. 

Question 11: 

This question was simply asked as we found that cast and directors names are commonly shown in trailers, and from this question we can see why. 75% of our respondents are influenced by who is starring in the film and the director. Therefore we need to take this into consideration and include the names of these people in our trailer as it is obviously of some importance to our audience. 

Deconstructions of Existing Trailers - Horror

Our next deconstruction is of the horror film trailer for Insidious (2010)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1YbOMDI59k

First Still

The first still displays the distributor of this film which is 'Film District' and therefore by showing this Film distributor which promotes this distributor. Also the colour scheme used in this still if red and black and these often represent anger and death, therefore the audience is already being informed of what genre of film this is: Horror. 

Second Still

This still shows the name of the film, and this is a recurring image throughout the trailer the repetition of  'Insidious Is' which raises questions and draws the audience in as they are curious to know what this means. Also the colour scheme is a dark black with a hint of red, which distorted writing in white, which is kind of hidden as if it were in the shadows which obviously makes the audience very weary and nervous.l  

Third Still

This next still shows what seems to be one of the main characters looking very nervous and breathless as if he's seen something that has frightened him or has had a shock. 

Fourth Still

Horror films often begin by establishing main and important characters, and this is exactly what is happening here. A family is shown with their children looking extremely happy and content with their new born baby. By showing them to be happy, it shows the contrast and how the audience will know that this happiness will be short lived as they know something will happen. 

Fifth Still

This next still states that this film is 'From the makers of paranormal activity and saw' which are both very popular films and well known horror films which again states that this is going to be a horror film but also this is appealing to a wider audience as many will this is will be up to the standard of these two films. They have an idea of what kind of film insidious is going to be as this suggests it. 

Sixth Still

This next still shows a child in hospital. The setting of a hospital immediately gives a negative and emotional feel and because it is a child who is in the hospital, we start to feel sympathy for the child and for the parents which gets the audience already emotionally involved with the film. 

Seventh Still

This is a long shot of a little boy, who in the trailer is slowly closing the door, and this gives a very creepy feel to the film as its unnerving for the audience. 

Eighth Still

In the trailer, the very scary red person gives the idea of anger and blood, and the idea that the person has no idea that this thing is behind him is very scary and common as it is used a lot in horror films the jumpy and surprising aspects. The scary imagery is only briefly seen within the advert, but it does stay in the audience's mind and is very frightening. By bringing in a small amount of frightening imagery, the genre has been confirmed and already the audience is feeling nervous and scared.

Final Still

This final still says 'Insidious' the repetition of the title of the film will stay in the mind of the viewer. By doing this they will remember the name and trailer of this film and will be tempted to go and see it as it will be in their mind. The trailer is very successful in this aspect as it would encourage them to go and watch the film which essentially is what the purpose of this trailer is.