Evaluation question four.

Evaluation question two.

Full film idea

Full film idea As a group, we sat down and discussed possible film ideas in which we could create an appropriate film trailer for. We knew that we needed to have in mind the whole film idea in order to make the trailer because a film trailer contains clips from different points throughout a movie. After a lot of deliberating we came to the conclusion that we wanted a film based on obsessive stalking. The film is based around one main character; a typical looking college student who stalks female victims, often to the point of killing them. The film would see this character becoming gradually obsessed with one girl who has a small group of female friends. He slowly kills off the two friends and finishes with harassing the main girl. If our film was to be produced and filmed in full length, it would see some gory deaths with the main girl being the typical ‘final girl’. Final girl theory was compromised by theorist Carol Clover and basically states that the surviving girl in horror movies is more often than not the girl who doesn’t challenge the conservative ideology. Though it might not be expressed through our brief horror trailer, if we were to compile a movie together, the girl who lasts longest would be the girl who carries these more innocent traits. Claude Levi-Strauss looks at how binary oppositions determine media texts. In our movie, there are demonstrations of good vs. evil. The ‘good’ is the people who fall victim to the obsessive killer. Although they’re the majority and outnumber him in every way, the killer and his psychedelic power is the ‘winner’ in the end. The killer is definitely the ‘evil’ in our movie. If we’re looking further into more complex binary oppositions, we have a sort of ‘normal’ mental state vs. a ‘psychotic’ mental state. By this I mean that the victims have the mind set of any usual human being. They don’t suspect they’re being stalked and they have a casual optimism that nothing drastic is going to go wrong in their day to day life. On the other hand, the killer has a ‘psychotic’ mental state in the sense that he’s always thinking outside the box with how to approach his next victim subtlety. It is obvious that his mind isn’t in the right place and we can tell this through his obsessive ways. Binary oppositions are a big part of our film as the film is literally the killer vs. the victims throughout. Roland Barthes claims that media texts are polysemic and it’s up to the audience member’s perception of the text depending on their own life experiences. With our film being psychological, we wanted it to get deep into the audience’s mind, making them think about their own safety. This is what scares people; knowing it could happen to them. ‘Obsession’ is about an obsessive stalker who discreetly gets into the lives and minds of innocent female victims. If any audience members have been stalked or are being stalked, they could relate to the film and it would inject fear into them. However, even audience members that haven’t been stalked or aren’t being stalked can experience the fear. They may develop a fear or a self-consciousness that makes them paranoid that they could be being stalked. With the drastic outcomes (deaths) shown in our movie, they should end up fear stricken, which is our aim. Our film also touches on the theories of people such as Todorov. He suggests that media texts start with a state of equilibrium, a disruption to that state of equilibrium leading to a chain of events, the events being solved and then a new state of equilibrium is formed. This applies to our film. Everything starts off pretty swimmingly in a typical school setting. The audience then become aware that something isn’t quite right about the ‘schoolboy’ (killer) and start to question his way of life. The characters within the movie then start to notice something’s up but they brush it off thinking he’s just another one of those ‘weird’ kids that every school has. He then makes his first prominent killing and everyone’s suspicions rise into a genuine concern. A chain of events happen with the killings and deaths of students. This is where horror movies don’t always stick to Todorov’s theory. Our film idea ends with all of his victims dead and a deserted school with just the killer lurking about. The events aren’t solved and there isn’t a newly formed equilibrium. All in all, our full film idea follows a lot of the theories, just as I’d expect. These theories, especially the ‘final girl’ theory, helped us to come up with a fetching horror film idea that we could branch our thoughts from.

Storyboard/shot list

This was the original shot list compiled by my group and I to give us a structure to stick to when filming our trailer. We changed a few of our shots and our finished trailer is slightly different to this shot list. We adapted our trailer to make it better as we went along. This shows our ways of improvement.

My film poster draft

My film poster

Filming Schedule

Film magazine draft

Props/Costume list

Props/costume list Props used in our trailer: • Fake knife • Fake blood • Sweet wrapper • Fake foot • iPhone We decided to stick to the main generic props you would see in a typical horror movie trailer. This was so we could demonstrate the conventions of a horror trailer through our prop(s) use. Costumes used in our trailer: • White shirt covered in fake blood • Hooded top • Day time clothes We used casual day time clothes for the girls as they were just ordinary looking people in the trailer who happened to fall victim of the killer. For our main character (the killer), we decided a hooded top for some shots would represent secrecy and mystery. The fake blood filled shirt reinforced the horror elements.

Audience research (Independent)

My film magazine cover

Film magazine analysis - Empire

History of a horror character