Research into different aspects of our trailer

Mise-en-scene

Here, I’ve looked at the trailer for Shutter Island. This was relevant I thought because it focuses on a psychological aspect rather than a gory-horror like feel. This is where we can draw parallels between the film and our trailer.

Initially we wanted it to be in an isolated area, where it’s vast, yet the protagonist feels alone. This is what we aspire to achieve with our main character, Rosie.

This picture shows the idea of no escape, which is what can be reflected in our film because she sees the scary lady in her nightmares and in reality, which means it’s a constant attack on her. The water surrounding it reinforces this idea that there’s no escape. This idea is mirrored in the picture below of the barbed wire, which could show protection, but initially in this way, shows no way of escaping.

The general setting needs to be quite cold and harsh, which is why we want to film at night, and in the winter, because this can add to the general setting of the film. We also want to film some of our shots during the day, on a bleak, cold morning. This can represent mundane activities, and the lack of brightness foreshadows something bad is going to happen.

Finally, when we are in the interior of our shots, we aim to achieve once again a cold, dull feel. This represents a life-less approach which we imagine is what our protagonist is feeling.

This picture shows colour-less walls, with one dim light hanging from the ceiling. This represents again the fact there’s a lack of items and things that the protagonist possesses and make the viewer almost feel uncomfortable at the fact the room is so bare. Not only this, but there's shaddows as well on the picture which once again can foreshaddow something negative is going to occur soon. 

Shooting

To investigate into the different shots of a trailer, I looked into the Woman in Black. This film is a horror; therefore the same genre is shared. Here we see lots of different types of shots. Most prominently are close-up shots of the antagonist.

These types of shots allow us to see the emotion of the main character; this is because their emotion to the audience is significant and allows more of a connection with the actor-audience relationship to be set.

Not only this, but it’s quite an invasion of privacy having such close-up shots, therefore going alongside our story-line of no-escape. The actor could feel uncomfortable in a situation, that’s why such a close-up shot is needed, and this is then bounced back on to the audience so they feel the same way.

There’s also fast paced shots, this creates tension for the scenes and shows the intense activity that’s taking place, which also reinforces the genre of horror.

This picture is a screen –shot of one of the scenes, and we see that he is moving quickly because it’s from behind and the actor, Daniel Radcliffe, is running away and scared. Not only this, but the figure is quite blurry, only reinforcing the scary effect that he is running away from something. We can use this in our trailer because it is a really good clip to represent a quick paced scene that is likely to reflect and scare the audience.

Another effective way of shooting is changing the angle at which each shot is taken. For example, low angle shots are really effective.

These pictures actually represent intimidation and could show a feeling of entrapment. This is vital for a thriller as it allows the genre to be recognised and reinforced simply buy the angle of a shot. Therefore meaning it’s very effective.