when creating our film trailer, narrative was one of the most prevalent aspects of production that we took into account. with out chosen genre of a horror we wanted to ensure that audiences were actively involved in the narrative so that we could hence evoke fear and allow the narrative to scare and make audiences feel uneasy juxtaposing Maslows need for safety as conventionally horror movies do the parallel opposite to this. According to BBFC statistics, horror movies make the human heart rate incline the most in comparison to all other genres and we wanted to adhere to this by filling our narrative with jump scares, scary and enticing plots and an effective linear narrative.
most importantly in our trailer we wanted to exploit the equilibrium/disequilibrium theory suggest by Tvestan Todrov to create tension build up in our piece. the equilibrium was placid when our young female protagonist is in bed asleep but with the addition of thuds, drum snares and low pitch non digetic sound effects-disequilibrium began to rise. when the protagonist reaches the bathroom we used credits styled with red blood connoting font color to evoke fear and these credits broke up the action to increase brevity and pace. The ultimate disruption of the equilibrium was when the young girl sees the antagonist- the old woman. The diegetic scream sound effect and immediate face to black reinforces the distribution of the equilibrium of the narrative and the montage of scenes after this only reinforce the disruption of the equilibrium rather than in other trailers such as romance, action or comedy- there is no recognition,fixing or resolving of the broken equilibrium leaving audiences in suspense. this narrative technique is conventional in horror movies as prospective potential audiences will be inquisitive about what the full narrative entails and whether the equilibrium and serenity and peace in the film is brought back. this idea of keeping audiences inquisitive and questioning/guessing links to Barthes enigma code idea whereby codes and motifs that don't give away much about the plot are used to keep audiences in anticipation. by building our narrative around enigma codes, we ensured our trailer doesn't give too much away about the full film. and hence audiences are more likely to want to find out. our enigma usage in the narrative with not featuring the old woman antagonist much- only in close up 1-2 second long shots creates the enigma- who is she? why is she so fearsome? what is the story behind her peril?
regarding sound in our narrative our absence of much dialogue in the trailer allows simply imagery and editing to give away aspects of the narrative. this is unconventional of horrors with often low, monotone voices or eerie conversations being used to help the flow of the narrative accompanying the footage with a narrative voice and dialogue like in trailers for 'IT' or 'nightmare on elm street'. subverting from this we allowed only music and our warped soundtrack to guide audiences along our narrative as it allows even more enigmas to arise with what is going on, and additionally to this the simplicity of our prominent scene of the protagonist sleepwalking to the bathroom to be met by her nemesis is arguably more effective with the soundtrack we have used with the piano keys than cliched dialogue.
regarding the psychographics and demographics model we wanted our film to directly appeal to a certain audience persona/profile, in this way we could adapt the narrative to adhere to this. typically with horror movies appealing to the 15-25 age bracket- these audience members would be described in the psychographics model as 'explorers' or 'aspirers' contrasting with the 'resigners' who are older or family orientated profiles. when adhering our narrative to these audience profiles we ensured our narrative had a modern appeal, since our target audience of the 21st century and hence in our narrative we used a modern house interior as well as contemporary computer generated titles and credits and a glitching computer screen featured towards the end of the narrative/trailer to show the parallels with horror and the 21st century modern society.
In our narrative the usage of one primary environment relative to mise en scene the inside of a house was effective in playing the narrative off of audience fears as remaining in one small interior of a house gives the narrative a claustrophobic entrapment feel, with claustrophobia being the 5th most common global phobia. Although this subverts from narrative techniques whereby films such as the hills have eyes and drag me to hell exhibit multiple environments and locations with CGI and many different places- our narrative contrasts this with just one homely environment that audiences can relate and associate with and juxtapose with the fears presented in the narrative.
our narrative had to be inclusive of some of the key ideas behind blumler and katz's uses and gratifications theory so in order to structure the narrative to adhere to our audiences we wanted to incorporate the five gratifications/ desires- in particular ensuring the narrative gave audiences something to talk about- hence- social interaction. the narrative did this by using a multimedia format for our trailer and ancillary texts as well as using first person pronouns and direct mode of address to direct our narrative towards particular social groups who would talk about the film and its enigma codes. The gratification of 'relating to characters and their situations' was relevant as we wanted to create a narrative biased and evoking pity for the young girl allowing audience to relate to her. this hence meant audiences would feel involved in our narrative structure.
The binary opposites (suggested by claude levi strauss) in our narrative structure of young and old, good and evil and light and dark whether this be through our light usage physically and technical elements with lack of warm lighting and the dark bathroom and corridors or even metaphorical light vs dark with the young innocent girl and evil antagonist- this allowed us to structure and effective narrative with juxtaposing themes making the narrative complex and interesting.
Horror trailers conventionally have a partially linear narrative structure, to enable suspicions and tensions to arise without giving to much of the plot and its chronological structure away, however typically with all mainstream trailers, the beginning uses establishing shots of setting, credits giving away key plot pointers and opening scene character interaction to set up the story line and narrative from the very beginning. We tried to replicate some of these narrative conventions, in particular investigating the effective opening of horror movies of the likes of Sam Raimi’s drag me to hell. With this in mind, just like Raimi’s horror where themes of horror are absent at the very beginning when the protagonist of this film is at work, and loses her job similarly with our protagonist who is sleeping and cuddling a child’s toy. When this equilibrium is disrupted, ideas of Tzvetan Todorovs theory of how a disruption alters the equilibrium which is then recognized by the main character came into play, as the character then awakens.
With a sense of authenticity considering we
wanted to advertise our trailer as a small scale institution film, appearing at
film festivals such as the Sundance festival- we wanted to make the trailer
stand out, hence the absence of any of Vladimir Propps typical character
archetypes that a narrative would revolve around- for example audiences didn’t
get to clearly see or understand the villain, nor was there a helper or
dispatcher and by effectively using a
young girl as the protagonist- she didn’t adhere to Propps ‘hero’ archetype
because of her age. This would leave an ongoing enigma as none of the
characters are fully developed within the trailer, which we purposely did to
leave audiences in suspicion.
most importantly in our trailer we wanted to exploit the equilibrium/disequilibrium theory suggest by Tvestan Todrov to create tension build up in our piece. the equilibrium was placid when our young female protagonist is in bed asleep but with the addition of thuds, drum snares and low pitch non digetic sound effects-disequilibrium began to rise. when the protagonist reaches the bathroom we used credits styled with red blood connoting font color to evoke fear and these credits broke up the action to increase brevity and pace. The ultimate disruption of the equilibrium was when the young girl sees the antagonist- the old woman. The diegetic scream sound effect and immediate face to black reinforces the distribution of the equilibrium of the narrative and the montage of scenes after this only reinforce the disruption of the equilibrium rather than in other trailers such as romance, action or comedy- there is no recognition,fixing or resolving of the broken equilibrium leaving audiences in suspense. this narrative technique is conventional in horror movies as prospective potential audiences will be inquisitive about what the full narrative entails and whether the equilibrium and serenity and peace in the film is brought back. this idea of keeping audiences inquisitive and questioning/guessing links to Barthes enigma code idea whereby codes and motifs that don't give away much about the plot are used to keep audiences in anticipation. by building our narrative around enigma codes, we ensured our trailer doesn't give too much away about the full film. and hence audiences are more likely to want to find out. our enigma usage in the narrative with not featuring the old woman antagonist much- only in close up 1-2 second long shots creates the enigma- who is she? why is she so fearsome? what is the story behind her peril?
regarding sound in our narrative our absence of much dialogue in the trailer allows simply imagery and editing to give away aspects of the narrative. this is unconventional of horrors with often low, monotone voices or eerie conversations being used to help the flow of the narrative accompanying the footage with a narrative voice and dialogue like in trailers for 'IT' or 'nightmare on elm street'. subverting from this we allowed only music and our warped soundtrack to guide audiences along our narrative as it allows even more enigmas to arise with what is going on, and additionally to this the simplicity of our prominent scene of the protagonist sleepwalking to the bathroom to be met by her nemesis is arguably more effective with the soundtrack we have used with the piano keys than cliched dialogue.
regarding the psychographics and demographics model we wanted our film to directly appeal to a certain audience persona/profile, in this way we could adapt the narrative to adhere to this. typically with horror movies appealing to the 15-25 age bracket- these audience members would be described in the psychographics model as 'explorers' or 'aspirers' contrasting with the 'resigners' who are older or family orientated profiles. when adhering our narrative to these audience profiles we ensured our narrative had a modern appeal, since our target audience of the 21st century and hence in our narrative we used a modern house interior as well as contemporary computer generated titles and credits and a glitching computer screen featured towards the end of the narrative/trailer to show the parallels with horror and the 21st century modern society.
In our narrative the usage of one primary environment relative to mise en scene the inside of a house was effective in playing the narrative off of audience fears as remaining in one small interior of a house gives the narrative a claustrophobic entrapment feel, with claustrophobia being the 5th most common global phobia. Although this subverts from narrative techniques whereby films such as the hills have eyes and drag me to hell exhibit multiple environments and locations with CGI and many different places- our narrative contrasts this with just one homely environment that audiences can relate and associate with and juxtapose with the fears presented in the narrative.
our narrative had to be inclusive of some of the key ideas behind blumler and katz's uses and gratifications theory so in order to structure the narrative to adhere to our audiences we wanted to incorporate the five gratifications/ desires- in particular ensuring the narrative gave audiences something to talk about- hence- social interaction. the narrative did this by using a multimedia format for our trailer and ancillary texts as well as using first person pronouns and direct mode of address to direct our narrative towards particular social groups who would talk about the film and its enigma codes. The gratification of 'relating to characters and their situations' was relevant as we wanted to create a narrative biased and evoking pity for the young girl allowing audience to relate to her. this hence meant audiences would feel involved in our narrative structure.
The binary opposites (suggested by claude levi strauss) in our narrative structure of young and old, good and evil and light and dark whether this be through our light usage physically and technical elements with lack of warm lighting and the dark bathroom and corridors or even metaphorical light vs dark with the young innocent girl and evil antagonist- this allowed us to structure and effective narrative with juxtaposing themes making the narrative complex and interesting.
Horror trailers conventionally have a partially linear narrative structure, to enable suspicions and tensions to arise without giving to much of the plot and its chronological structure away, however typically with all mainstream trailers, the beginning uses establishing shots of setting, credits giving away key plot pointers and opening scene character interaction to set up the story line and narrative from the very beginning. We tried to replicate some of these narrative conventions, in particular investigating the effective opening of horror movies of the likes of Sam Raimi’s drag me to hell. With this in mind, just like Raimi’s horror where themes of horror are absent at the very beginning when the protagonist of this film is at work, and loses her job similarly with our protagonist who is sleeping and cuddling a child’s toy. When this equilibrium is disrupted, ideas of Tzvetan Todorovs theory of how a disruption alters the equilibrium which is then recognized by the main character came into play, as the character then awakens.
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