Horror Movie Idea

A group of good friends visit their local theme park on the eve of Halloween, as it is one of their birthdays, and this is where they hve decided to go. At the theme park, it is a 'special event day' being the eve of Halloween, so therefore the theme park is open till 8pm. A new Horror maze has been opened just for tonight and will be officially open at 6pm. These group of friends will have to make the best of the day, as they prepare for the horror maze! These group of friends are the last people to challenge this maze, and there is plenty in store for them to encounter. By the time they come out of the maze ther is only 4 of them, as a boy and girl are both trapped inside the maze, and these were the 2 people at the back of the group. They wait around for the 2 that are trapped and there is still no sign of them come 8pm and they are forced to leave without them. Ever since the 2 people went missing and was no sign of them that night, the theme park has not opened for weeks, it was confirmed that these 2 people were killed during the visit to the maze.

Paranormal Activity Trailer review

This trailer tells you where the film is going to be based, it shows that it is in a house that is seemed to be haunted, the time of day shows both morning and night filming this makes the film unpredictable as most horror trailers/movies are filmed just generally at night time. The camera is handheld throughout the trailer, with some shots that are shown from placed cameras in the house, but the use of the handheld camera makes it feel you are there and creates a sense of realism. The tracking shots that are shown of the person moving around the house helps build tension to the trailer. There is a lot of Iconography in this trailer, for example the  objects are used very stereotypical to gender roles, the main one being the camera which is controlled by the male, this may be because females do not have the technical ability. The characters in the trialer are shown to the audience as being normal working class citizens living in America, with general clothing and items around the house, the personality of the characters in the trailer show what kind of family they are (a family that care about their children). This trailer automatically has a theme to it just from seeing the first part of the trailer, you almost get a sense of isolation, love and intimidation

Paranormal Activity Trailer

Narrative Theory: The Crazies

Tvetan Todorov At the start of the film (Introduction), chaos is introduced at to engage the audience to the event. This immediately makes the audience think what has caused the event. The vent that caused the event was the plane crash, which then infected the water, which would then plague the citizens in the city that drank this water. This actually goes against Todorov’s theory as it states that a balance is present at the start of the film, clearly this is not the case. After showing the burning town which was caused by an infected citizen, the text continues to be superimposed. There is also a disruption to the balance of the film as we don’t actually get an idea of when the plane crash happens, we just see it happen. The crash of the plane turned out to be a complete accident as they didn’t mean to crash there, however the plane was carrying a virus which had been developed by the government. The plane was actually on its way to be destroyed anyway as it was posed to be a big threat. In the movie the first person to be hit by the virus was Rory Hamill who approaches the sheriff with a shotgun at the baseball game which is then abandoned; alcohol was the cause of his behaviour though. After this event, the disease continued to spread and all of the chaos with it, the balance between normality and chaos shifts immensely. No full re-equilibrium exists with this film, as a containment protocol that destroyed Ogden Marsh commences on the town that the couple approach. This is conventional of Horror films but also means that Todorov’s theory does not apply. Levi-Strauss Sanity/Insanity- The sane characters (The Survivors) try to fend off the insane characters Healthy/Unhealthy- The health of the normal people deteriorates as they cannot eat properly and the insane infected people are obviously unhealthy Alive/Dead- People are killed by the insane and the other people try to stay alive Male/Female- David is the male and Judie is the female. They are in a relationship and Judie is pregnant. The male has more power; therefore the female is targeted more. Military/Civilian- The military are seen as evil in the film as they hunt the packs of civilians and the civilians are seen as feeble and innocent individuals. Known/Unknown- The unknown is the infection, how it was made, where it came from. While the town and characters are the known Fear/Courage- Courage is held by the survivors that press on even when everyone is dead and those who sacrifice themselves and the fear are those who panic and get scared and then flee and be hunted by the military Vladimir Propp Villain: The U.S Army. They are the whole reason the virus is in the community because they crashed the military aircraft containing a dangerous chemical. The Hero: David (The town sheriff) as he rescues his wife and several others and escapes from the quarantine. He is also alive at the end of the film. Donor/Helper: Deputy Russell Clark qualifies as both the Donor and Helper. He is the donor because he gives his life so that David and Judie can get past the army without being shot. And he qualifies as the helper because he saves David’ life 3 separate times. The Princess/Father: Judie qualifies as the princess because she is married to David and he is trying to save her and create a new life. She also plays the role of the father as she tries her hardest to protect Rebecca from being killed. The Dispatcher: Rory counts as the dispatcher because he is the first townsperson to become infected by the virus. The False Hero: The Mayor is the false hero as he refuses to turn off the water for the town and by doing so he allows the virus to spread throughout the town. Bordwell and Thompson In the film we don’t actually see the plane crash which infects the water, this is what starts the chain of events throughout the film as the infection swarms round the city, which causes the chaos and rampage the citizens go on because of this infection. The whole event starts off at the baseball game when a drunk civilian carrying a shotgun enters the field, after this they discover the plane which is carrying this infection and realise that’s what caused the man to go psycho. In-between the beginning and end of the film, more civilians become infected and try to inflict damage on the civilians that are not infected, as this is the cause of the infection, many of the civilians encounter different settings and infected which they have to deal with, at the end of the film the main characters survive, this is typical of Horror films.

Teaser and Normal Posters

Film Distribution

Film Distribution is basically the process of a series of steps to ‘get the movie out there’, it is up to companies to buy the film and show it in Theatres. The first part of the process is where the producer/Companies acquires the rights to film a story or treatment, then the screenplay is developed by one or two more writers. After this, the Production finance and crew and cast are confirmed. The principal photography takes place, in studios or/and in agreed locations, followed by some months of post-production, scoring and editing. The Distributor develops release strategy, considers the release date and takes delivery of a master print of the finished film, once this is done the Distributor presents the film to exhibitors and negotiates bilateral agreements to have it shown in cinemas. The Distributor’s marketing campaign aims to create a ‘want to see’ buzz’ among the target audience and launches the film. Film prints including the British Board of Film Classification certificate are delivered to cinemas a few days before opening, the film’s run extends any number of weeks subject to demand, which may be augmented by additional marketing. Finally, to complete the whole film distribution process, after following its run in the cinemas, the film is released in other formats (home entertainment, television) and quickly becomes a catalogue title. Every film has its own distribution plan, which the film distributor develops in consultation with the producers and/or studio as appropriate. The most important strategic decisions that a film distributor makes are when and how to release a film in order to optimise its chances. This is done through a combination of market knowledge, commercial experience, statistical research and professional judgement; distributors gauge the audience for each film and set clear targets for the release. Some of the things that a distributer considers are; who can be convinced to buy a cinema ticket to see it and why should they do so? Can the film be positioned within a popular, recognisable genre? What sort of audiences have similar films attracted recently? When were they released? When film distributors have estimated what their film may earn, they prepare a budget to release it. Sometimes final distribution plans may be confirmed only when the finished film is available to view. Reach relates to film distribution as the distributors need to reach certain agreements and aspects of the distribution process. For example they need to reach the correct release date by making sure the film is ready to distribute, they also need to make the film successful so they can reach the correct budget they expect to get from sales. A marketing plan contains a list of actions, this outlines the organisations overall marketing efforts. The things that are included in the marketing plan are Financial data, Product data, Sales and distribution data, Advertising, sales promotion and merchandising data. The distribution plan is where the product is organised in where it is going to be shown and sold. Also you have to consider how the customers are going to purchase the products whether it is going to be in local stores or online websites, this will be considered as you also have to think about the selling price. You also have to think about how many copies of the film you are going to produce and sell as it costs to make, do you think a profit is going to be made? Advertising is used to encourage and persuade an audience, the main focus point of advertising is tv commercials, however there are other forms of advertising as you also see banners on websites, trailers at cinemas and also posters in magazines and shop windows. Publicity is more of a promotion process as you have to promote things to get your audience to be interested in them, The forms of publicity that are suitable for promoting a film are Event sponsorship, organise a tour of your project and arrange a speech about the film Promotion is all about making the product well known before it is even released, the main thing to do in promotion is influence your audience and customers to buy it when it is released. The best ways of promoting the product are personal selling, advertising, sales promotion, direct marketing and publicity. When you are promoting a product you need to present the information well to the customers and also try to increase the demand of making your customers to purchase the product. SAW IV: This film was released in October 2007; in the opening weekend the film reached number 1 and was shown in 3,183 theatres and gained $31,756,754. The average income from the opening weekend screening was $9,976. Domestically in the whole time of its release since October 2007 it has had a total income of $63,300,095. The main distributor of this film is Lionsgate which is the distributor for UK and USA.

Groups Initial Ideas

1. Me - A Group of friends go to a theme park for the eve of Halloween, and just before the theme park closes, they go to a newly opened horror maze and by this time the weather is completely dark and the majority of the people have already left the park, 4 come out of the maze and 2 are still left in there to complete it, they then wait until the closing time of the theme park for their friends, they realise that they're still not out so the 4 friends are forced to leave the theme park due to the closing time and the next day the 2 friends are still missing and the other 4 realise they've been killed inside this maze. 2. Ollie - The Popular guy of the college dates all the good looking girls, the girls go missing on the date with him, the guy gets bored of these hot girls and goes for a 'geeky/intelligent' girl that nobody seems to be interested in, takes her to his house which is in the woods, and then she realises he is not normal and he has killed all the missing girls and she has to escape him before he kills her. 3. Joe - A group of Friends go to the woods for a camping trip, see a masked man one night, then when they wake up one of the friends is missing, they then see the masked man again and he 'kills' another friend of theirs. All the other friends notice that the killer came as they saw him kill this person, then the other friend was absent so they kill him but it turns out that the friend they killed was working with another friend who he 'killed' and then he hunts them down 1 by 1, who will survive? 4. Steve - Geeky teenage girl/young adult is accidentally invited to a Halloween party at the end of the week whilst standing in with the wrong group of people which hare supposed to be her good friends, she then has visions and night terrors of people being kidnapped and brutally murdered by some old man (the killer), when she comes to, these people have been reported missing for a long time, no one believes her stories about these deaths, and she is scared that this old man will come after her the same night of the party. She does not want to attend the party but is forced to by her friend (peer pressure), and whilst at the party, the killer attacks, killing off the rest of her classmates, leaving her to fight off the killer, being the stereotypical virgin female heroin in the horror genre. THE FINAL GIRL THEORY!

Friday the 13th (2009 version) Trailer

Friday the 13th Trailer Analysis

This trailer is of Friday the 13th (2009 version). The genre of this movie is Horror. There are various settings seen in this trailer, for example, open water, the woods, cabin and a camp-site  In this trailer there is alot of camera work, for example, there is lots of editing as there are cuts in each scene of the trailer to show briefly what the film is about. There is also good use of montage (editing) in this trailer, as when the numbers appear on the screen, in a matter of seconds it swaps to the next victim and then to the next number, this is really effective. The use of the montage, helps create the mood/tone to the audience, I would also say that this image includes collision cutting. This trailer, has certain aspects of Iconography in it for example, the killer is male this is always the case in many horror films and also the victims are mostly female this is also the case for most horror films. The killer is normally always disguised by wearing a mask and wearing black clothing this is very stereotypical to horrors as this used to create the feeling to the audience that he is the bad guy/evil. Some of the themes that can be applied tot his trailer, just from seeing what is happening, could be, retribution, betrayal, revenge, rampage, death and violence.

From this trailer we can see that a chain of events has occurred at some point during this film, as it has caused a man, which is identified as a killer to go round killing the citizens on the specific day of his birthday.

The use of knowing the binary opposites that are featured in the film/trailer, helps makes the the film/trailer more understanding, giving it a story and also people can identify the genre of the film just by looking at the binary opposites that have been used. Some examples are, Innocent/guilt, life/death, good/evil, past/present, human/monster, normal/abnormal and light/dark..

Relating Halloween to the 4 Theories

Tzvetan Todorov: This theory doesnt really work in Halloween, there is an equilibrium, this is the night of halloween and  which is then disrupted causing a disequilibrium, the disruption is when the boy kills the girl at the start or could be when someone breaks into the hardware store to retrieve a mask and a weapon. But then the end of the tale isnt resolved so there is no new equilibrium as the killer doesnt actually die, the characters think the he is, but then realise that he isnt where his body landed, this theory doesnt really work.
Vladamir Propp: In this movie you can say that there is an example for each of the 8 character roles so I feel that this theory does actually work, the ones you can say that it works for, is that there is a villain, hero, the doner, the helper, the princess, the dispatcher and also the false hero (this could be when the little boy kills the girl at the start of the movie).
Claude Levi-Strauss: In this movie there is a good use of binary opposites, the use of the binary opposites help makes the film more understanding, giving it a story and also help people know the genre of the film, it gives them a basic idea of what happens and who is in the film and also what causes the events in the film. this theory relates to Halloween very well, for example some of these are, good/evil, light/dark, normal/strange, sanity/insanity and civilian/killer
Bordwell and Thompson: This theory works well in Halloween, as there is a chain of events, occuring in time and space for example when the killer breaks into the hardware store, at the strat when the kid kills the girl, these are all examples of this. Identifying these events that happen during this film, help us understand the genre of the film, just from viewing these events in the film helps us immediately discover the film genre is Horror.
The theory that would be the best to use to analyse Halloween would be Bordwell and Thompson

Horror Trailer Analysis

In this Trailer, I like the font that has been used as the colours are very simple and is very sharp. This font has a very horror style to it because of the way it is solid and sharp. I also like the way it appears on the screen as really makes you focus on what has been said because of the way it has been shown. I feel that having  avoice-over in the trailer makes it even more scary and relative to horror as you get the feeling that the perosn is a news reporter explaining the events that have already happened. There are typical conventions of Horror movies in this trailer, for example the expressions and feelings on the characters faces, the use of noise such as screeching, shouting and banging. Overall I really like the way that this trailer has been produced, it is really effective towards the audience, very influencial.

Horror Trailer