Our Film Pitch

After conducting substantial individual and group research, we found a gap in the market for the thriller/mystery genre. The completion of our audience feedback in the form of a questionnaire, supported our original findings.
We worked as a group to come up with a plot for our teaser trailer.


The film takes place in a small county, where previous abductions have been reported and sadly none of the children have ever been found. This time, the determined parents of the latest missing child will stop at nothing to get their daughter back. The film sees the parents along their trail in the hope of finding her.


We believe that our plot will work as there has been recent interest in the newly released 'Angels & Demons'. We realised that a film of this genre has its strengths as the audience get a thrill from trying to solve the mystery before the final revelations. Also, there has been a lot of news coverage on these kind of cases over the past few years and our film would create an awareness of these circumstances and the emotions felt by involved parties. We realise that this theme may have ethical reprecussions, causing upset to victims of such events, however we aim to handle the theme sensitively, and believe that enough time has passed since such events for us to broach the subject; similarly to 'World Trade Centre', released in 2006, based on the events of 9/11.

Funding - Institutional Research

For the purpose of funding and distributing our finished piece, we had to look into production companies who would be willing to do so.
We focused our research on smaller local companies who would be more likely to invest in our project. I found some of the following options:

• EM Media - http://www.em-media.org.uk/pages/home
• Screen East - http://www.screeneast.co.uk/
• Film London - http://www.filmlondon.org.uk/
• First Light - http://www.firstlightonline.co.uk/
• UK Film Council - http://www.ukfilmcouncil.org.uk/

We then looked at one of the companies each to see what the pro's and con's would be for using them as funding, and came up with the following conclusions;

First Light & The UK Film Council - Emma Cottee

Of these film production and funding companies, the First Light project particularly caught my eye. It is funded as part of the UK Film Council and the Department of Children, Schools and Families and runs several schemes with chances of funding for young talent. The Young Film Fund is part of the UK Film Council's lottery funded programme for up to 19 year olds, and offers funds ranging from £3,000 to £30,000. There are several other options through First Light such as Mediabox and Second Light, which I looked into, however they mainly focus on arranged group projects, and projects with under-privileged children.

First Light could be something we look into further, and consider presenting our ideas to so that we can see if they would consider funding our project. However, due to its links to the UK Film Council, we may be better to target them directly rather than such a small company who may only be able to offer limited funds. Saying that, the UK Film Council do tend to focus on slightly larger productions than ours, and therefore if we did look at approaching them, we would possibly have to look at expanding our production.

The UK Film Council do offer many funding programmes though, and therefore we would have lots of options when it comes to investigating them as a possible funder. Of their projects, we would possibly be interested in either the Development Fund, or the New Cinema Fund, as both focus on the discovery of fresh talent, and the New Cinema Fund has also shown to be successful in the past, producing British hits such as 'Adulthood' and 'This is England'.

Screen East – Amy Gallacher

Screen East is the screen agency for the East of England. They are dedicated to developing, supporting and promoting the film and media industries along with culture in the counties of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk. Screen East encourages the creation and production of distinctive films that could potentially reach an audience by investing in script as well as project development through National Lottery funding. Screen East also aims to seek out the most innovative new writing and directing talent in the East of England. Their talent schemes give filmmakers the chance and resources to develop their ideas and to boost creativity with professional guidance in a commercial environment.
Regional Investment Fund for England (RIFE) is Lottery funding that Screen East distributes on behalf of the UK Film Council. There are certain schemes that Screen East will fund, each with their own guidelines, for example, their Small Awards Fund which has been set up to support and encourage small-scale projects that develop industry skills and talents in the East of England. There are bursaries of up to £500 available for this type of scheme that is available for individuals across priority areas.

Screen East has recently launched its short film programme “Digital Shorts” for 2009/10. This partners the UK Film Council New Cinema Fund that will enable filmmaking talent to produce short digital films with professional support. Films can be of any genre within live action fiction, animation and documentary. Seven projects will be chosen for development and five will be produced after the developmental period. All films have a cash budget of up to £12,500.

Screen East will not fully fund a production. A contribution must be provided, how big of a contribution depends on if the funding is going towards an individual or a company…

For individuals. You must provide a minimum of 30% partnership funding (15% in cash and 15%
in-kind). We ask you to provide evidence of this contribution in the application.

For companies and organisations. RIFE will provide a maximum of 50% of the project budget and applications must show 50% partnership funding (25% in cash and 25% in-kind) of the total budget.

Minimum partnership funding. If you can show that your project encourages diversity or is aimed at socially excluded groups, you may be eligible for a discretionary award for projects with a minimum of 15% cash and 35% in-kind. The cash contribution can come from the projected income of your project (e.g. box office).

If we were looking to receive funding to transform our teaser trailer into a film we could apply to Screen East. We would do this by downloading an application form from their website, however we would need to look extremely closely at the different schemes available and would need to apply to the right one. Screen East encourages anybody applying for funding to call and discuss their production over the telephone. If we were successful in an application to Screen East, we would have to eventually repay the funding over time as Screen East does not provide grants. A re-payment schedule would be agreed after a successful application.

Photograph Storyboard

Here is the photo storyboard for our teaser trailer. As a group we have all been working to capture the images to show the type of shots we plan to use within our teaser trailer. I (Amy) then took the photos and put them into the storyboard template and input the shot types, sound/lighting effects, graphic code (if applicable) along with an estimated duration for each shot and each action that occurs within the shot.

The storyboard is now completed and will be printed and scanned to upload to our blog, but for now will be uploaded via authorstream.

Finished Photograph Storyboard

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Mise en Scene - Props

As well as looking at possible costumes for our teaser trailer we also had to explore the different props we would be using. I researched the types of props that we may be looking at using, and here are my findings as well as images that I have found to represent the props we may use.

To work with our locations, props such as park apparatus would be essential for our storyline, and we particularly liked the prospect of working with a swing. It seemed appealing as we can create a sense of absence by letting the swing move without the child on it, to contrast with footage of the child on the swing earlier in the trailer.

We also liked the idea of using other child's possessions such as a bike and small bedroom toys to portray the innocence and youth of the child such as dolls, teddy bears and building blocks. They could possibly be used in the footage of home-video to show a bond with the parents which would otherwise not be shown. Shots such as the parents teaching the child to ride a bike and incorporation of the parents into the home-video shots would help the audience to create the necessary connections.

Away from the props used by the child and in her environment, is the contrasting props used by the villain of our trailer. We would be needing objects such as old newspapers and possibly polaroids for our wall in the villains house or 'den'. We would possibly be needing specific articles and photos, preferably of young children and missing stories, and this would require collecting articles well in advance. Therefore we will begin to collect cuttings now so that we have plenty for our wall by the time we begin filming.

At the start of our trailer when a news reporter is shown on the television, we may need an actual television set to show on film, and use a DVD or video to play the pre-recorded news report. We would also need to take into account the papers or glass of water that the news reporter may have on the desk with him/her. Also their surrounding would be important, and maybe some form of backdrop would be necessary.

We would lastly need to consider the policeman/woman as it may be necessary for them to have something to symbolise their profession, whether this be a form of identification that they show to the parents at the door, or some kind of badge or logo. If we do chose to keep them as high status officers, then they would not be in uniform, and therefore we would need to show who they were in another way.

Sound Ideas and Influences

Again looking back at our original individual research, we already had a good base when looking at the certain styles of music and sounds that would be relevant for our teaser trailer and genre. We had all picked up on certain sounds in different trailers and so already had a good understanding of the sounds that we would want for our production.

We decided that we wanted an orchestral style music so that it would be haunting, but not too church or funeral-like. We didn't totally dismiss the idea of lyrics, but we're mainly looking for an instrumental piece. The instruments we will be focusing on are string instruments, piano pieces, and maybe some percussion, which are the most common instruments in the types of music we will be looking at.

Once we have found an exact style, we may look at creating a piece of music ourselves using Garage Band on an Apple Mac, or else use a piece of uncopyrighted music by an unsigned artist.

A soundtrack of a film/trailer that particularly stood out in my memory as being orchestral and similar to what we would want was that of The DaVinci Code and Angels & Demons -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5FyRZbqfeM

This particular piece 'Chevaliers de Sangreal' is possibly too dramatic, and not haunting enough for our production, however it was composed by Hans Zimmer who with further research I found is a top composer for hundreds of titles such as Hannibal, Gladiator and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.

Something that particularly caught my eye here was that I had analysed the teaser trailer of Hannibal in my original individual research and so I looked for the soundtack -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWzelYim1G4

Many of the pieces by Zimmer from the film can be found on youtube, above being just one of them, 'Virtue'. For this film, he has used mostly cellos and basses, choosing to play them at extreme ends of their range. He said in an interview this was because "Anthony's character is for me somebody at the extreme range of whatever is humanly imaginable somehow." As we are focusing on a psychlogically disturbed person in our production, this relates a lot to our work. The pieces themselves are of a lot lower pitch, and much more haunting than his work from the DaVinci Code. If we were to create our own pieces, we would probably try to work around pieces like these, moreso than his higher pitched compositions.

Other ideas for the soundtrack music genres we would be looking at were fairytale-like instrumentals to create an image of the naivity portrayed through our female protaganist (child). We liked the idea of music generally beginning slower and then gaining pace, but not in an action/thriller soundtrack context.

Moving away from music and soundtrack, we will also have to focus a lot of actual diagetic and non-diagetic sounds. Important ones being footsteps that we intend to use of the suspect, and how we will synchronise it to the footage, as well as speeding it up as the beat increases, and also the heavy breathing or heartbeat that may be heard towards the end of our trailer.

As we begin to explore the music available to us, and the programmes that we can use to create our own soundtracks, our ideas may change, so we will experiment with the genres and pitches further as our project progresses.

Mise en Scene - Costume

Clothing or costumes play a big role in the understanding of characters and mood when watching a film. With a good use of costume the audience can interact with what they are watching and allow them selves to create a sense of mood and feeling. It can also, almost foretell a characters attitudes and ways, even there status and role within the film. Colours can also play a big part in this as certain colours mean certain things, for example: Green= Jealousy,

To get a good understanding of costume my group and I have researched many teaser trailers that match our genre (mystery/thriller.) This has helped me a lot in understanding what each character generally or usually wears.

I am going to focus on the characters that play the biggest roles within our teaser trailer. These characters consist of: the child, the villain, the parents and the family liaison officers.

Child.

Most children wear a school uniform. You can also generally tell if they are in junior or senior school, as the uniforms tend to be different.
Those in junior school normally wear something along the lines of: trousers, a polo top and a school jumper or fleece usually black or grey with a coloured jumper/fleece.
Senior school students normally wear a more formal uniform, consisting of trousers, shirt, ties and blazers in colours of black, navy blue or dark grey with a coloured tie.

Being a child is a very fun and innocent time in our lives. Clothing can reflect this in many ways. In countless teaser trailers I have seen children wearing loose fitted clothes commonly in pastel colours. This allows the audience to reflect on the innocence of the children.

We decided to keep with the stereotypical conventions of a young girl, wearing a little dress in pastel colours, tights and ballerina pumps. But, we thought about adding a powerful colour to the child’s costume- Red.

Red is hot. It's a strong color that conjures up a range of seemingly conflicting emotions from passionate love to violence and warfare. This indicates everything about the child that we want it to; the unconditional love of the parents towards the child, the violence and situation that the child is put in and the struggle of the child. Also it’s not only to represent love but danger as well.

We also thought about possibilities of make-up for the child. Young children very rarely, if not at all, wear make-up. But on camera skin tones tend to appear a lot lighter than they are. So adding a tiny amount of red to the cheeks to give the appearance of them being rosy would make the girl look cute and would also this would make her eyes seem large again making her look cute.

Villain.

From our first thoughts and ideas we decided that within our trailer we would keep the villain unseen. We come up with this as we thought it would create more tension for the audience, not knowing whom this horrible person was.
We wanted to keep the kidnapper very mysterious to keep the audience hooked, wanting to know more.

When researching this I found out that the colour black hugely reflected all of the thoughts and feelings that I wanted our audience to feel. Black is associated with power, elegance, formality, death, evil, and mystery. Black is a mysterious color associated with fear and the unknown. It usually has a negative connotation so it was the perfect colours to reflect this character.

In most teaser trailers villains are shown to wear more sophisticated types of clothing. But as our villain was being a kidnapper we thought we would need to tone it down and wear more of a casual approach.
We chose to dress our villain in a black jumper and jeans. We thought that the jeans added a more laid back approach as opposed to formal and the black has negative connotation. Also, in part, our villain is shown in shots outside. So a jacket would be needed. We decided to keep again to a dark jacket.

We are going to add a small amount of make up to the villain to make him look dirty. Maybe some grey colours around his eyes to give the impression of having no sleep and a darker skin tone around the chin area to give the illusion of a rough texture.

Parents.

Within our teaser trailer we want to show our parents as being the loving, affectionate type. Not those that work all day, the ones that are always there. So we did not want them wearing work clothes, as this would give the wrong impression.

Looking at what parents wear on a day to day basis and in teaser trailers that I have researched, I found that the type of parent that we want to mirror usually wear a more casual outfit: jeans, top, jumper. Also we chose to keep these colours quite neutral to not take the light off of the protagonist characters.

On the mother we would like natural make-up.

Family Liaison Officers.

A Police Family Liaison Officer (FLO) is a role of an officer either of uniformed or plain-clothed Criminal Investigation Department (CID) role.

We chose this type of officer rather than a general police officer, as they are most likely to deal with the incidents that we are showing within our teaser trailer.
They are very formal so need to be shown wearing a type of suit. But to show who they are and what they do a badge is necessary.

On the officer we would like natural make-up but a bit more than the mother.

News reporter

As seen on various news programs, news reporters tend to wear very formal clothing, consisting of: shirt, black trousers and a cardigan or some sort of jacket.
We have chose to keep with these typical conventions as they are seen everyday on the television and changing this would be un-professional.

Mood Board

We decided to create a mood board in order to visually see the kinds of props, costumes, locations and characters. The mood board is built up of some vague ideas of things we wanted to include in our production.



Here is a photograph of our mood board showing some costume choices and ideal props.

Shooting Script

After planning our initial shot list, I typed up our final shooting script. This final shooting script (as below) shows the change in our plans for our teaser trailer since the shot list, and goes into a lot more detail of the dialogue and audio that we would be including in our production. We would then use this to create our sketched storyboard.

Sketched Storyboard

Missing Statistics

Since our teaser trailer is about a young child being kidnapped/abducted by a stranger of some sort, we felt we needed to research more about the ‘missing people’ topic to include real facts and figures within our production this is when we came across a website called missing people,the link is below

http://www.missingpeople.org.uk/media-centre/papers/detail.asp?dsid=603

This included everything we needed to know, from the definition of ‘missing people’ to various groups of missing types such as adults and children, parental abduction to stranger abduction which we thought was very useful and gave us more of an insight on how big a of topic 'missing people' actually is worldwide.

Therefore our teaser trailer being about a stranger abducting a child this website included key facts and figures that we are thinking of using throughout our trailer such as;

'STRANGER ABDUCTIONS

Of all recorded abductions and attempted abductions, a very small proportion were instances where a child was actually abducted by a stranger. Importantly, children who are abducted will not necessarily be considered missing, or reported as missing.
A 2004 Home Office study (Newiss and Fairbrother, 2004: 1-6) found that, of the 798 police reports of child abduction and attempted child abduction in England and Wales that year:

• 56 per cent or all reports involved a stranger
• 47 per cent of all reports were ‘attempted child abductions by a stranger
• 9 per cent of all reports were successful child abductions by a stranger'

By using real facts and figures it will make our teaser trailer seem more realistic and shocking to our audience, which is what were trying to portray.

Mise en Scene - Location

Whilst looking at a wide variety of teaser trailers for our specific genre being ‘Thriller’ we noticed that the location throughout was very similar, either being located in a designated/mysterious area, inside and out of an housing/apartment estate, abroad, Police station, Motor vehicles and even in the outdoors.




Therefore keeping all the following above as key concepts, this will give us a greater insight of the kind of location that will be more suitable for our trailer.

Numerous teaser trailers particularly caught our eye such as 'Taken' since being about a ex-soldier trying to find his kidnapped daughter abroad, it had so much scenery throughout. Paris being a main location scene within 'Taken' shows us this is where the daughter went on vacation, to then being mysteriously kidnapped. Us as the audience know 'Paris' as being the capital of France, symbolic for love and romance not for being brutally kidnapped, showing a bit of contrast. So by including a well known location and changing what there symbolicly known for, really makes the genre more intense to watch and to interact with.

Whereas the 'Gone Baby Gone' trailer has several sections at the beginning where its filmed within a ordinary family house, starting from the front gate, into the house to then ending up in the 'kidnapped' little girls room. The family housing location looks like its placed in a friendly, normal environment where inside the house it consists of basic cream walls, doors, storage spaces etc throughout the main corridor, even in the little girls room she has a pink duvet, cream walls as any other normal, basic house would have.

As a group though we had to decide what kind of location will be easy to travel to, be able to use the location for filming and be time sufficient, therefore we thought we would try and keep the location local to us so that we can film within our school free periods and after school.

Since we need a designated area in the outdoors we thought using 'Wickford Memorial Park' would be a great a location since then we could film our child character playing within the park on the swings etc but then behind the park we noticed lots of trees and a forest, which was what we had in mind.

Below are the different photos captured of our location.







The photo's captured of our location, set within a empty forest and park adds a sense of lose and isolation which is reflected in our film.

Camera Ideas and Influences

Before creating our final shooting script and our first sketched storyboard, I looked into the types on shots, angles and camera movements common of Mystery/Thriller trailers, and also the type of shots that I thought would work well with our storyline.

Using a lot of my research into teaser trailers of different genres and our own genre, I had already found a lot of shots that I found particularly interesting and relevant, and therefore had a good base to work with.

Here are a few specific shots I analysed in my teaser trailer research that I think link well to our production/storyline.

These shots include the setting of the woods, which we will almost certainly use in our trailer, the characters of the little girl sleeping in her bed, and the mother watching the swing, whom will both be present in our trailer, and the mise-en-scene of the swing, the newspaper cuttings and the photographs which will all be necessary in adding to the missing child storyline.

I specifically liked the use of the close up of the swing, however we may change this slightly by creating footage of a child on the swing, but still using a close up. Maybe of her hands holding on, or her legs swinging.

The woods shot, although establishing/wide, is also a blocked vision shot due to the tree on the left hand side. We are considering using the idea of placing the child in the woods, and therefore this could specifically be something we consider doing; the blocked vision giving the impression of spying, or being watched.

The top two shots are blocked vision, and also a halo effect. The halo effect is something I felt would be appropriate when showing our suspect as he/she is supposed to stay hidden throughout the trailer. The use of the light behind the suspect could be used to create just a silhouette and block out any features. The blocked vision could also be useful in this.

Although not a shot from the actual trailer, this well-known image from Schindlers list is very appropriate for our film. We like the colour red against the de-saturated/black and white background, and it is something we have talked a lot about using in our production. It helps draw all of the attention to the girl, and with the idea of using the woods/forest in our trailer, we have contemplated using the image of a girl in the colour red, in amongst the trees with a de-saturated shot to explore this idea.

Another key shot we may use in our trailer is statistics - in the form of graphics - over a black screen or another scene. We will explore the use of graphics and special effects at a later date, but this shot from the teaser of Man On Fire shows the style of the shot we would use, and also the exact type of statistics that we would need to find for our text.

Exploring camera angles, I found a common theme that we will most probably stick to of using high angle shots to represent the vulnerability of the girl, and low angle when showing the suspect, to show their power over her. Involving the suspect, our best option would be to use a lot of blocked vision shots and extreme close ups to help mask his identity, however where the girl is concerned, we are able to focus on a wide range of shots.

When it comes to camera movement, in this genre of trailers, there tends to be a lack of gradual movement, and more fast cuts to other shots. However, when camera movement was involved, it tended to be zooms, or fast pans. We may consider to use the idea of zooming out when we discover the wall in the suspects house to help enhance the gradual realisation and the scale of what the audience is being shown.

Storyline

Many children in this story are mysteriously disappearing from their own homes. Everybody is looking for those that have disappeared. But did they disappear or were they taken?

Our film shows an abductor kidnapping young children from their homes over and over again. It’s in his nature! Many families have given up looking. But not this family!
It focuses on the mayhem of one family trying to find their missing child, their wild chase to get her back and the unkindly nature of the villain.

Shot List

The following scan shows a basic idea of our teaser trailer, giving us a brief outline to work with. We will develop this further into a detailed shooting script giving us a deeper frame to work with.

Characters Profile

There is a wide variety of characters within films nowadays since the genres of films just keep on expanding therefore particular genres like to keep to same characters so that us as the audience will know straight away what genre it is and won't get confused, for example;

Rom-Com consists of:

-Characters of both genders
-Variety of sexuality
-Loved-up Couple
-Sexy Women/Man
-Funny Women/Man
-Rich Women/Man
-Embarrassing parents
-Younger siblings

and many more

Horror Consists of:

-Villain
-Hero
-Victim
-Emergency Services

On the other hand our picked genre 'Thriller' consists of:

-Villian
-Hero
-Victim
-Emergency Sevices
-Parents

Therefore we thought it would be a good idea to not change our characters and stay with a Villain, Victim, Parents and an investigator for our genre because within a 'Thriller' you cant have romantic comical characters because then it would seem surreal and not a thriller, so by sticking to same genred characters it will be easier for our audience to understand the plot of the film.

As you can see below I (Elizabeth) have drawn some ruff character sketches below of the following characters we think will suit our genre, also us as a group have included key words underneath the drawings to represent what we think the personality of the character may be like, what they may look like and what they may wear etc.

Child

-Female
-6/7+ years old
-Pale features
-Long hair
-Blue eyes
-Dresses
-4 inches tall
-Cute
-Bubbly
-Playful
-Happy
-Youthful
-Pink
-Barbie
-Dancing
-Horse Riding
-Loves her family


Villain

-Male
-44+ years old
-Beard/Unshaven
-Mid length hair
-Dirty Look
-Hoodies
-Ripped jeans
-Dark colours
-Mischievous
-Evil
-Shabby
-Has no family
-Lives by himself


Parents:

Mum

-Female
-36 years old
-5ft 5 inches tall
-Good job in the city
-Well educated
-Caring
-Hard working
-Married
-Looks after herself
-High Maintenance
-Slim figure
-Shopaholic

Dad

-Male
-6ft 2 inches tall
-38 years old
-Works up in the city
-Well educated
-Presentable
-Cheerful
-Workaholic
-Married
-Clean cut
-Family orientated
-Risk taker
-Likes going out with lads

Investigators

-Male and Female
-37+ years old
-5ft 6 inches - 6ft 5 inches tall
-Both worked for the police
-Very experienced in there work
-Well educated
-Hard working
-Respectful
-Helping there community
-Both caring
-Passionate workers
-Get the job done
-Male figure is big built and strong
-Smartly dressed
-Organised

Questionnaire - Audience Feedback

After collecting data from the questionnaire we made as a group, after choosing the genre of Mystery/Thriller, I studied the information and presented it in the form of pie charts.

We used a closed question survey so that the data we got back would all be qualitative, and therefore easier to analyse and present on charts. If we had used open questions, then we many have received too much information different information to process. However, we did offer our participants the option of 'other' on the majority of our questions, which interestingly they chose not to use.

Here is some of our findings:

Our research shows that Action, and Thriller/Horror received the most votes for favourite genres. This means that we could possibly stick to our idea of using the Thriller genre, and maybe incorporating another genre, such as Mystery, to make a polygeneric film/trailer that is still appealing to our audiences.

Something that stood out in the characters section of our research was that participants in our survey stereotypically chose Heroes and Villains as the characters they would expect in a Mystery/Thriller. In our production, we may challenge the conventions of a Mystery/Thriller teaser trailer by using characters such as Parents and Children which were rarely chosen in our surveys.

It is also clear that people expect certain styles of music in Thriller trailers, and therefore as well as eerie music, we may incorporate styles such as orchestral to give a more haunting atmosphere. The locations that people chose such as the woods and houses are ones that we will definitely consider using in our production.

Questionnaire - Audience Feedback

All members of our group created individual questionnaires in order to gain an insight into the expected conventions of a teaser trailer and where there is a gap in the market.

After exploring the different types of questions we had all thought of, we created one final questionnaire that we would distribute amongst fellow students within our sixth form, younger students in the school, parents and teachers and also any other willing participants we could find.

We then compiled the results and pie charts were created to visually display the findings of our questions. We looked closely at the questions targeted specifically at the mystery/thriller genre in order to see what the audience expected from a teaser trailer of this genre. This would help us when creating our shot list so that we could use and also challenge the expected conventions.

Here are the images of our completed questionnaires.

Teaser Trailer Analysis - Emily Wright

Teaser Trailer Analysis

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Teaser Trailer Analysis - Elizabeth Boulamatsis

Teaser Trailer Analysis

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Teaser Trailer Analysis - Amy Gallacher

Prior to planning our own teaser trailer, each member of our group would need to individually research the conventions of teaser trailers for specific genres. This would enable us to have an individual understanding of what was the required conventions are within a teaser trailer. The presentation below shows my own research into teaser trailers.

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The Missing (2003)


When conducting my original research into teaser trailers, I came across a teaser trailer for the film "The Missing". After watching this trailer I felt that it was such a similar genre and plot to that of our own planned teaser trailer. Although I could only locate the trailer for this particular film, there are numerous styles that comply with the expected conventions within a trailer for this genre. The main features within this trailer that I picked out was its use of colour to create a mood and also the way sound is used. Graphics are also used extremely well within this trailer to give the audience an insight into the storyline of the film, and as we decided early on that our teaser trailer would feature graphics I thought it was important to analyse this trailer to get some ideas of different effects we could use. I made sure that I reminded myself that I was analysing a theatrical trailer and not a teaser trailer, as some conventions would be different between the two.

As the trailer begins, a sound bridge of eerie rumbling and orchestral instruments features as the institutional logos are displayed. The “Columbia” institutional logo fades and a dark blue overlay has been placed over the logo. This changes the feel of the trailer and creates a tense atmosphere. The figure becomes a silhouette, suggesting mystery and a concealed identity – two features that we have discussed in our group that could potentially feature in our teaser trailer.

The use of graphics features early in the trailer, showing the director’s name etc, in a partially hidden state – as if the words are hiding behind the trees. The blue overlay still features through this section of the trailer, showing the bright graphics as if they were lit by the moon which contrasts heavily with the shadows of the trees. Use of camera panning to transition between shots, one pan fades as another pan sequence appears in place of the previous shot.

Flashes of white are injected in the fast paced sequence that features an extreme close up of a “creature’s” breath in the cold, as well as flashes of different canted angled shots that creates a sense of confusion and a misplaced sense of direction. The sequence then slows again, using more camera pans along with fades to change shot.

A young girl’s scream is heard and after a fade to black, a female (Cate Blanchett) is shown to be peacefully sleeping on her porch. The use of the blue overlay (along with the young female scream) suggests all is not peaceful. After another fade to black, the female’s face appears again, her face is low-lit with the same blue overlay, but her expression is a sharp contrast to the previous shot of her peaceful expression. An extremely effective jump cut is then used to show the look of worry and fear on the woman’s face as she realises something bad has happened.

From here, the trailer picks up its pace as the mother runs from her porch to search her house for her daughter. The colour tone changes to a de-saturated tone of browns and earthy colours. The speed of the pans and shot transitions grips the audience as they try to find out what exactly has happened. Suddenly, the de-saturated tone changes to a vivid red overlay as a picture is dropped into some liquid. The colour tone then returns to its previous de-saturated nature as the trailer shows a figure running through the woods.
More graphics are used to formally introduce the fact that a loved one was taken from the mother. The pace slows when the mother is featured on screen, screaming and crying in desperation. Again, the plot is introduced as the mother talks to her other daughter and asks who took her sister. As she cries, the daughter replies through her tears, “He wore a hood.” This is typical costume for a villain as the hooded figure is feared by children. Also a hood can sometimes symbolises that something is being hidden. Other flashes of action within the film are shown in a fast paced sequence, introducing other characters, specifically the man played by Tommy Lee Jones, a well-known actor. This is something that would not feature heavily within a teaser trailer as a theatrical trailer gives away more to the plot and cast than a teaser trailer does. The only time a hooded figure is shown is after the title has been displayed, and even then it is just a flash of a low-lit shot of a male figure in a hooded cloak-like garment.

One of the final graphics of the trailer shows the title. This shot its dark, but the trees are well lit and the title appears in pieces, as if to suggest a puzzle will have to be solved in order to solve the disequilibrium. The graphics that feature afterwards are of institutions and cast along with the important staff (e.g. music and costume design). The last shot shows a website for the film along with logos of the institution. A sound bridge is used again at the end of the trailer to maintain continuity. The sound settles from the fast screeches that are used when there is a lot of action occurring on screen, and whistling winds are used to settle the speed and tone of the music. There are then slow beats and strums that repeat and fade out in time with the end graphic shots.

Teaser Trailer Analysis - Emma Cottee

Before we began to plan our own teaser trailer, we individually studied multiple trailers of different genres, and also our chosen genre. The following presentation shows my research.

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