Final Idea

The final idea we decided together was a mixture of all our idea and we decided to stick to the genre of Horror/Supernatural. Our idea was about a group of teenagers, preferably 3-4. Who wander off in the school premises after hours just for the fun of it with a handy cam to record their exploits. There they are haunted by the ghost of a child who died there recently, a victim of sexual and physical abuse by a staff teacher. The child committed suicide after the entire incident and the school administration kept the whole thing quiet in order to avoid any complications with the law and buried the dead body of the child in the ground somewhere and thus the teacher was never caught. The administration spread the news that the child went missing and the police never suspected the school of any wrong doing. After two days of this incident, the school announced summer holidays and a group of students broke in the school just for the fun of it. However they did not know the building was haunted by the angry spirit of the child who died in there and started picking off the students, one by one.

We are going to use the point of view shots all along the trailer as done in ‘Blair Witch Project’. We also can use the school security camera footage as exhibited in ‘Paranormal Activity’. So our most of camera work will be handheld and we will be willingly showing jerks all along. Sound effects like the creepy digetic sounds of squeaky opening of doors, the walking of someone on the staircase, flickering lights etc. Lighting will be done low and so we will be able to show evening hours. Editing will kept at a faster pace so that a horror/thriller effect can be shown. We hope to engage our audience by all the techniques and creating sympathy in them for the characters that die one after another.

Positive Points:-

         1.       Shooting at school provides us number of different locations to take shots e.g. labs, class rooms, lobby, corridors and staircases.

         2.       Our cast won’t have any issues of location.

         3.       Handheld camera means POV (sort of) and a lot of enigma can be created by using this technique.

         4.       Sound effect those we need can be recorded easily.

         5.       Can use emotion triggering texts in the trailer.

         6.       A storyline that targets a large range of audience. Recently such movies have done a real good business.

Negative Points:-

1.        Can’t shoot anytime we want; need permission for specific times to work.

2.        There are virtually no dialogues, we rely more on sound effects and non-digetic sounds.

3.         We certainly need to do the lighting low and it’s very hard to do so.

4.        Handheld means very less innovative shots and more simple and conventional shots.

Posted By The Group

Group Meeting # 1

We had our first group meeting to decide the final idea about the teaser trailer.
   

Posted By Hassan

Individual Idea # 2

As the genre of our teaser trailer is inspired by the paranormal phenomena so we had to choose a set that would look as if it's a haunted place. I did a lot of research on haunted places all over the world and found a lot of places which gave me an idea to choose a location for my trailer. So after doing a lot of research I decided ''a night at the campus'' would be a good title for our trailer. So I considered choosing our own school's premises as the location for our shoot, as later in the evening since there's no one around so the be-wilderness gives a haunted effect. I stayed behind after school just to see how haunted it looks and found certain places like the corridors and the basement to be the perfect place for shooting the intro of our teaser trailer. Then it also clicked to me that the empty classrooms were also a good spot for a shoot out. Considering the above factors it seemed that the shoot in the school premises would be a perfect choice, however it has it's draw backs. It is difficult to get permission from our school administration and it would be difficult to shoot with our handy-cam, plus we would also require to have a proper light setting there which adds another constraint to this location. Then I thought of shooting the trailer on my farm house, as at sunset it gets quite dark and the openness gives a real creepy effect so it can also be a good spot for our shoot out. The positive thing about my farm house was that the house is very old and since no one goes there, so there are cob-webs all over and the natural haunted effect would definitely be an ideal spot for the shoot for our teaser trailer, however choosing my farm house as the location also had certain negative points, such as it's too far from the city and it would be a problem to go get together and I don't have an electricity generator there so we cannot rely on the local electricity connection.
So what i decided was to raise up both of the ideas I have in mind for the shoot outs location and then have a group meeting with my group fellows before finalizing our location.


Posted By Saud

Individual Idea # 1

My Idea takes inspiration from incidents which took place in my city Lahore a long time ago. My mother told me about a person, who used to kidnap children and then used to purchase them clothes. He then saved all the items they had and throw them into a tank full of acid. Upon increasing kidnap cases the police finally set the premises. The police was able to catch that man when he was about to throw a girl into the tank. He was there right on the spot shot by the police. Another myth is that he was thrown in the same tank.

I want to mix both horror and crime genre, as in the ‘Silence of the Lambs’. My narrative is about a group of teenagers, probably all boys. They all are dared by another group to spend a night in a ‘haunted’ house in their neighborhood. And for evidence they did, they also have to shoot all the night. I am also thinking of evolving it into like an initiation challenge. The house was of a local serial killer who lived their in late 1960’s and upon discovery that he is a killer, he along his house was burned. The notion is that his soul still remains in the house and doesn’t let anyone enter or demolish the burnt building. That ‘physco’ killer used to kidnap boys of ages 7-18, bring them home then he used to torture them to death. Let it be by slaughtering them or by spraying acid on them. The group accepts the challenge and decides to spend some time of night in that house. The idea is about showing all the sequence as handheld camera, as in ‘The Blair Witch Project’. The group of four enters the house very easily and they just start disappearing one by one till the one who has the camera says his last words that ‘all of his friends are missing and he is scared’. The camera falls and we hear his screams then their footage is discovered when the police finally comes and rips down the place.

The camera shots to be used are simpler because the whole clip is made by handheld. The lightening is just of the two powerful torch lights which are in the hand of the teenagers. The use of cuts and fade ins and outs would be there, to enhance the horrifying effect. I would also like to use the simple black screen, to show text which can engage my audience to the text I have produced.

Positive Points:-

1. A story line which will target the most active audience.
2. Single location.
3. Creates Enigma in the audience.
4. Sound for the sequence can be easily found.
5. Catches audience attention by engaging them emotionally to the sequence.
6. A location, where I can easily shoot at anytime.
7. Can use texts in the trailer as in ‘ The Blair Witch Project’.

Negative Points:-

1. The biggest problem revolves around the lighting. Difficult to create the effect I wish
2. Handheld Camera means a lot of jerky movements, which would be very disturbing.
3. Need actors which are potentially good.
4. Difficult for audience to understand immediately as no paranormal ghost can be shown.
5. Will be relying on the sound more than the visual.
6. Less dialogues and more screams and monologues. Unless we show one.

Posted By Zayan

Research On Paranormal

Paranormal by literal definition means something 'beyond normal’, as in something that is mysterious or unknown to us humans. Paranormal phenomena are basically a term that distinguishes experiences that lie outside the range of normal experiences or beyond scientific exploration. People refer to such unrealistic matter as 'ghosts' or 'spirits of the dead'

The U.S.N.S (United States National Science) has also made references on the existence of such unrealistic matter. However the existence of such 'spirits' and ghostly creatures has yet not been truly discovered by us, but there are certain reports which have strong evidence regarding such material. There are people who have witnessed sights of ghostly creatures and have felt the presence of such paranormal-ism. 
There are certain haunted places where the restless spirits of the night linger. They manifest as eerie voices and strange perfumes; they move things about; they creep out of the shadows as apparitions. Sometimes they even attack.

The Waverly Hill sanatorium was completed in 1926. The hospital was always dedicated to the treatment of tuberculosis patients a disease that was fairly common in the early 20th century. It is estimated that as many as 63,000 people died as the sanatorium. Those deaths coupled with the reports of severe mistreatment of patients and highly questionable experiments and procedures are ingredients for a haunted location.

Ghost investigators who have ventured into Waverly have reported a host of strange paranormal phenomena, including voices of unknown origin isolated cold spots and unexplained shadows. Screams have been heard echoing in its now abandoned hallways, and fleeting apparitions have been encountered.
 Located in San Diego, California, the Whaley House has earned the title of "the most haunted house in the U.S." Built in 1857 by Thomas Whaley on land that was partially once a cemetery, the house has since been the locus of dozens of ghost sightings. Author deTraci Regula relates her experiences with the house which include:
- The spirit of a young girl who was accidentally hanged on the property.
-The ghost of Yankee Jim Robinson, a thief who was clubbed to death and who can be heard on the house's stairway where he died, and has sometimes been seen during
tours of the old house.
-The red-haired daughter of the Whaley's sometimes appears in such a realistic form; she is sometimes mistaken for a live child. 

Posted By Saud 

TEXTUAL ANALYSIS.

The trailer I will be analyzing now is from the famous 1991 hit, ‘Silence of the Lambs’.

The genre of the movie is a mixture of both Crime and Horror. The narration of the movie revolves around three characters, a rookie FBI agent; a psychiatrist and a serial killer.

The trailer was released in 1990’s so it is a bit different from what we see nowadays. So let’s analyze it.

VISUAL:

Talking about the camera movements and shots, we get to see a variety of those.

The trailer begins with the close up of the female FBI agent. CUs of other characters are also shown which denotes a horror genre. Shots like Point of view are also used. These shots are used very much in horror genre to enhance the effect. The zoom in of a newspaper is an innovative shot- impressive.

The location of the shooting is a jail. The iron bars and the stone walls get the audience engagement to the text. These too are stereotypical to crime and horror genre. Shot compositions are brilliant; be it of the stretcher or the killer talking to the agent, the audience is still with the trailer.

Misc-en-scene of the trailer is such to favor the genre. Lighting is kept dark, particularly using only one source of light. The costumes are according to the characters, e.g. the plain Wight suit of the killer.

Editing is again on a faster pace. Use of fade ins and outs at a higher speed is conventional. Cuts are also used. The same flashing effect of the title is kept which creeps the viewer.

AUDIO:

This time a narrator uses non diegetic sounds to engage the audience. It was very common those days to narrate a part of the story to get audience’s attention. Sounds effects are also used i.e. the sudden bang noises particularly at the movement when a cut is being used.

The characters use the slow whispering tone to add to the horror. The diegetic voices like squeaking of the door and the sound of light bulb swinging is conventional.

Posted by Zayan

Link:

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

TEXTUAL ANALYSIS.

The trailer belongs to the 1999 movie, ‘The Blair Witch Project’. It was a small budget movie, released worldwide. The narration of a movie shows us three main characters, who travel to Black Hills near Burkittsville, Maryland to film a documentary about a local legend known as the Blair Witch. They all went missing and the footage was discovered later, edited and released. The genre of the movie is ‘horror’ and it is hand held made i.e. ‘Point of view’. The movie related to unsolved mystery of the Blair Witch, and thus movie also shows some paranormal activities.

Our main idea revolves around paranormal, so it was vital for us to analyze trailers of such movies.

VISUAL:

The trailer begins with the lines stating of three students who went missing in the October of 1994. These very first lines engage the audience emotionally to the media text and get the attention. Then continuing this pattern, some critique’s views are shown regarding the movie.

Phrases such as, ‘Genuinely Frightening” and ‘Scary as hell’ are ample enough to get my attention. This is kind of the strategy that we will develop when doing our Advance Portfolio so that we can engage our audience and also raise their expectations.

Talking about the camera movements and shots is very simple. As the camera is handheld, the movements are jerky and shaky. This is also a convention of a horror film. Only introducing the shots taken at night increases the horror effect and the trailer does not show any face or introduce a character visually.

Editing is used in the trailer. Several dissolves and fades to Wight are used. These sudden fade in and out means a fast editing- convention of such genre. The title of the movie flashes and creates disturbance in the viewer.

AUDIO:

Using diegetic and non-diegetic sounds, the trailer gets your attention. The screaming of a girl and of boy calling ‘JOSH’ is a sudden surprise, Getting lost of a character in a Horror/Thriller movie is now a convention. Stereotypically using the haunting score the director has created and enhanced the fright in the audience.

The voice, “Tell me, where you are Josh? “Is creepy and gives you sort of goose pimples.

Thus by a mixture of both visual and audio effects, the genre effect is doubled.

Posted by ZAYAN

Link:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZu1cTg-xUM