Editing: Credits.

When we were adding our credits to our trailer, as I said before in a previous blog, we tried a font and changed the colour of it to fit the trailer colour scheme throughout.

Although this did have the effect that we wanted our credits to have as they also didn't seem to fit in with the handwritten border that the credits were based on which we wanted to keep so that it tied in with the rest of the trailer as the killer's book is like this and is used throughout.

Instead we used the stop motion pictures for our credits. I uploaded the images from dropbox to our event on Final Cut Pro. From here I dragged them onto the timeline of our trailer and used the blade tool to cut a very small part of the image.





Due to the files being pictures and not footage it didn't matter what part I used as long as they were all the same length so that they would all appear for the same amount of time. To do this I would drag the next images underneath one which I had already cut and line up the blade with the end of the image so that they were the same length, I zoomed in to make sure it was precise.



After this I would drag it to the end of the images so that they were in the correct order. When I reached the last image for each credit I made the length that it would appear a bit longer than the others so that the credit would stay up for a length of time at the end for the audience to read. After I had completed each credit I highlighted all of the images and moved it among the footage to where we wanted the credit to appear.


When we played the trailer with all of the credits in place I did have to make some of the last images a bit longer so that they could be seen properly but on a whole they worked really well in our teaser trailer as they kept the momentum of it going and so these will be our credits for our final teaser trailer.

Credit Making.

For making our credits we firstly tried to use different fonts which we downloaded from the internet through a free font site (dafont.com), we decided to use the font crimes times six as it was very similar and almost a match to the type of writing we had created the credits that we wanted alongside a page of the scrapbook being the background and border for the credits. We added different effects to these so that they would conform to our trailer but in the end they didn't seem to be working as well as we wanted them to work.

We found inspiration from another A2 teaser trailer called 'Vendetta' in which they used stop motion, which we had previously tried before with newspaper clippings, to draw on the mirror. We decided to try this with our credits to see if it would be effective for our own trailer.

I used a page from the killer's book to create a border for the credits to be based on. From this I would draw one line of the first letter and then the second, third and so one until I had completed the letter. Then I moved onto the next letter and the next until I had all of the words completed for each credit. 

After all of the pictures were done I uploaded them to dropbox so that they could be accessed easily when editing them together on Final Cut Pro.

Psychological thriller trailer deconstructions

Asylum is a psychological thriller about a woman who falls in love with one of the inmates at a mental asylum in the 1950's. At the beginning of the trailer the pace is slower and there is quite a lot of colour used in the shots. The intensity of the non-diegetic sound also intensifies which builds suspense, this is quite effective, at the same time the pace of the shots gets faster to fit in with the music.  From this trailer the aspects that are most effective which we would want to use is the increase in the pace of the shots and the suspenseful music specifically the booms which are used towards the end of the trailer. Because of the setting of our film: in London we don't there to be too much colour in our trailer. We also want to include a psychologically disturbed antagonist in our narrative.

The black dahlia is a psychological thriller about a killers whose infamy consumes a whole town in the 1940's. There is quite a warm atmosphere in the and there is a lack of colour in the film. The police are heavily featured in the film. This is not very practical for us as it would involve a lot of actors who are middle aged which would be quite hard to source.  The narrative being told by a voice over is very effective and and we are going to use as a news report in our teaser trailer, we think that this is the most effective way for the audience to understand the narrative without using dialogue. In this teaser trailer the diegetic sound is quite slow paced which works quite well in this trailer but we want to build more suspense so the diegetic sound will get louder towards the end of the trailer to fit in well with dramatic footage. We would also like to take inspiration from the extreme close up used in the trailer as it creates a sense of mystery.

Film title and tagline.

To decide our film title and tag line we tried to think of titles that would link with our psychological thriller genre that were also original, we came up with 5 options for each the title and tag line and we decided to create a survey to get our target audiences thoughts on the options. We asked people between the ages of 15-22 as this is our target audience to fill out the survey and we got 68 responses in total. We gave a quick synopsis of the film before we asked which titles and tag lines would be most appropriate. We then used the title and tag line that was most popular.

'End of trailers' Deconstruction:

We were unsure what to include in our final ending screen so I looked at the last ten seconds of a couple of psychological thriller trailers to see how they finished the trailer and what they chose to be their last shots.

Gone Girl:



The trailer ends with the intense build up of sound until the final moments where it slows down as there is a underwater shot of the missing woman and a off-screen voiceover from the lead character - "I did not kill my wife. I am not a murderer" with an operatic harmony in the background. The title of the film then slowly fades in with the release date replacing it a few seconds later on a background of an establishing shot by the sea.

Nightcrawler:

I have already done a blog post deconstructing the teaser trailer for Nightcrawler and also the ending, but I think the way it builds up so much to suddenly go silent (during the shot of him looking at the camera) is a really effective technique which I hope to embed into our trailer. The repetitive ticking noise then returns as the film title and release date come up before the screen goes black with a drum booming sound. I like the unnerving effect that the sudden calmness after the intense action can have on the audience and I feel it will be ideal for our trailer to include it to follow genre conventions of a psychological thriller.

Lucy 2:




In the teaser trailer for Lucy 2, I feel the typography is quite simple but it doesn't come across as effective as maybe planned. However, in the final moments the audience are reminded about the protagonist and the famous actress who portrays her which we invite a lot of people to see it. I really like the extreme close up of her eyes when they are the unnatural bright blue colour, signifying the psychological element of the film. This is then followed with a quick glimpse of her looking above her sunglasses, directly at the audience and it appears she is in disguise as she looks 'normal', despite her extraordinary brain abilities. The sound used at the beginning was more metallic and resembled machinery but then it changed to fast paced wind instruments which created tension, but didn't actually build up that much.

Inception:



In the trailer for Inception, the title is formed from a birds eye view of a group of buildings, cleverly placed to turn into a maze background with the title as gaps in the maze. There is no dialogue in this trailer just repetitive, tension building music until the end where cinematic boom sound effects signal a transition between credits. I really like this idea and feel like it could work at the end of our trailer.

In terms of how our trailer should end, I like the idea of the tension building up to the reveal of the title and then a small shot afterwards (like in Lucy 2 above) as I feel like this can often be a common feature with teaser trailers. I then feel like we definitely need to include something about when the film will be released, either the actual release date, the season like 'September 2015' or just a 'Coming Soon' screen. The music should build up to the reveal of the title and then I think either dropping to silence afterwards or a repetitive noise would work quite well.

Final Storyboard:

This is our original 'final draft' storyboard, since we have been editing some of the framing and positions of the shots have altered slightly to make it flow better but the narrative is the same.

The trailer will start off with the typical trailer conventions of the "green screen" and the production company logo (which we have already decided will be Paramount). We are then going to open with establishing shots of London and short clips of the book and of the girl. The polaroids are then going to flash up gradually with the speed increasing as the trailer plays. At this point we are hoping to have our voiceover of the news reader playing and the end of the voiceover will coincide with the shot of the killer turning off the radio.

We are also going to include close up shots of the girl's clothing and also different shots of different pages of the book while our killer is looking through it. More of the polaroids will flash up, still in chronological order so they are building up to the last girl who will be 2015. We are also going to include POV shots from a passerby which frames the girl on the street. We also have a shot of our killer leaving his house, although this has changed to a close up shot of his hand on the door handle.

We found that filming a shot of trains was proving to be too complex so we have just changed that to an establishing shot of the river and we are including it at the beginning instead to set the location for the film. We are then going to have more shots of our girl and the killer along with the polaroids which are quickening up. We are also going to place our actors credits near a shot of their characters and they will interrupt the footage, it will be shown long enough for the audience to read but quick enough to help build up the pace of the trailer towards the end.

At the end of our trailer we have a upwards tilting shot of our killer from the POV of our victim, stopping just before the audience would see his face, which will be interrupted with the rest of the polaroids and close ups of the book. Originally we wanted to flash up the polaroids consecutively from 2007 - 2014 really quickly to form the climax of the trailer and then have a extended shot of our killer to calm things down before the title is revealed. Now we have merged it so that the shot of our killer (which was going to be taking off his hood but is now just folding his jacket collar down) plays with the 8 polaroids flashing throughout and then the final '2015' polaroid is placed into its position in the book. Since creating this storyboard, we have also changed our idea for the credits which will now be animation style with the words flashing up line by line. The title and the information screen will now be the last frames in our trailer.

Trailer Deconstruction - Nightcrawler:

After watching Nightcrawler and reviewing it in this blog post, I felt it would be a good idea to analyse the teaser trailer and look at what made it successful to see if it would give us any inspiration for our trailer.



I really liked the trailer and thought it outlined the film without giving too much away, the use of quick shots along with the voice-over and non diegetic music built up the tension and I can say personally it intrigues the audience and draws them in. Some shots I found interesting are below.

(00:00 - 00:04) "Green band  - rating card"
~ typical convention of a trailer - lets the audience know who the target audience is

(00:06) "Production Companies"
~ typical convention of a trailer which goes at the beginning

(00:07 - 00:11)
~ opening scenes are establishing shots of the city at night, hinting at the setting of the film

(00:12 - 00:14)
~ close up of the side of his face, which makes his eye stand out

(00:15 - 00:18)

~ overhead shot of the car turns into a tracking shot as the camera goes behind - the car plays an important part of the film as a lot of scenes, particularly dialogue between Lou and Rick take place in the car, due to its use to get them to incidents quickly

(00:20 - 00:23)
~ this low angled tilting shot starting at the camera and moving downwards towards the strange expression on his face shows the intensity of what he is doing, the contrast between the dark night sky and then the light on his pale face makes it even more creepy

(00:34)
~ quite simple typography in a bright blue colour, stating approximately when the film will be released

(00:52)
~ as mentioned earlier, this is from one of the conversations with Rick in the car, again I liked how big his eyes are as it just adds to his creepiness

(00:53)
~ this is a middle shot of Lou looking directly at the camera, this means the audience are instantly drawn to him and he's almost talking to them directly

(00:54)
~ mentions the name of the lead actor to get people's attention and also the fact that he has been nominated for an award to highlight the success of the actor and therefore the film - in the same style as before in terms of font and colour

(00:55)
~ this shot is to show the other side of Lou when he is trying to make an impact at the TV station, this will seem weird and unusual to the audience as they have been so used to seeing his serious face and when he smiles or laughs like this it comes across as unnerving

(00:59 - 01:01)
~ this series of shots again show how far he is going to achieve the perfect footage, his obsessiveness with filming accidents has gone so deep that he actually moves the corpse just to get a better angle for the video

(01:02)
~ again this shot is similar to before as he is looking directly into the camera, talking to the audience only, these shots are only used in the trailer to appeal to the potential viewer that they should see the film

(01:06)
~ this is a shot of Lou when he's being interrogated by the police, all through the interview he remains calm and confident that he is innocent and then as he looks to the camera, the audience sense the feeling of cockiness and that he knows exactly what he is doing

(01:14)
~ this over the shoulder shot demonstrates the chaotic side of Lou that he usually keeps hidden but he lashes out and ends up shattering the mirror, the anger that clearly comes through is once again a shock to the audience as he is usually so calm and collected

(01:15)
~ this close up of Lou and his camera is a complete contrast to the previous shot as we can see here that he is calmly focused on filming

(01:19 - 01:24)
~ this clip comes after the big build up and it is simply Lou looking up into the camera, acting like a newsreader and then smiling but again it puts the audience on edge as there just seems to be something not right psychologically with him

(01:25 - 01:29)
~ name of the film - consistent in the use of typography

(01:30)
~ finishes off with the actual release date and social media links

Sound and Music:

• The diegetic sound used is a combination of clips of Lou talking in the film and him doing an off-screen voice-over although he sometimes it will be on-screen as he directly looks at the camera
•  Lou is the only one who talks during the trailer, even though he is the protagonist it still hints at his controlling personality and that he feels like he needs to be in charge of everything
• Diegetic sound effects are used for impact such as the sound of the car crash and the car engine
• Repeats the line "you have to make the money to buy a ticket" five times, which gradually builds up so by the 5th time he is shouting and it coincides with the mirror image of him screaming above, this should be linked to the idea that he believes people need to work hard to get success and 
• The voice-over resembles a monologue, with Lou introducing himself to the audience using rhetorical questions ("Who am I?") and describing his personality maybe to a potential employer
• The trailer opens with regular beats which continue mostly throughout the trailer, they set a precedent for the trailer and along with the speed of the editing that gradually increases. After "this fall", another sound joins in and then a combination of the beats and mechanical whirring sounds build up the tension until the final moment where it suddenly goes to silent and a silent clip of Lou is shown before the beats come back in quietly for the title

Personally, I think this is similar to how we want our trailer to be although ours is based on two protagonists rather than one. As it is a teaser trailer we need the tension to build up, including the use of non-diegetic music as we aren't having any dialogue, although I do like the way the clip of him acting like a newsreader is placed afterwards with no sound as a contrast to the loud music seconds beforehand as it calms everything down before the title comes up with quieter, more gentle music yet still repetitive. We are hoping that the gradual introduction of the Polaroid shots along with the repeated flashing of them at the end will build up until the slow calm shot of the 2015 Polaroid, which links together all the the hints that have been shown throughout to possibly reveal the plot of the film.