Script

Our script is a voiceover of our main character speaking. We wanted to keep the audience in suspense and not reveal too much. The idea to use the main character for the voiceover was from the teaser trailer Black Swan, where Natalie Portman is talking about a scary dream she had. The tone of her voice is soft and confused, we want our actress to have the same intentions when recording our voiceover. For our voiceover we have used the dictionary definitions of reality and dream, this fits well as our film is all about the characters confusion between the two. However, giving the definitions does not give too much away as to the films content.

Trailer Transcript

TEXT: PRODUCTION CREDITS

Close up of hands underwater  (voiceover)

Aerial shot of Verity floating in swimming pool face down  (voiceover)

Montage of rapid underwater photographs  (voiceover)

TEXT: DO YOU QUESTION REALITY?

Aerial shot of Verity running down spiral staircase  (voiceover)

Verity standing in a busy place, surroundings in fast forward

TEXT: (Quote from review)

Aerial shot of Verity running out of the monument 

Jump cut, close up of Verity in distress (voiceover-laughing)

TEXT: ........................

Jump cut, close up of Verity laughing (voiceover panic/distress)

Passed out/asleep on a train (digetic sound)

Rapid sequence of train station names, combined with previous shot (digetic sound)

TEXT: .........................

Close up of shifty eyes

TEXT: .........................

Rewind of entire teaser trailer minus titles

TEXT: Title of film  COMING SOON

VOICEOVER (Verity) - over lapse of shots

Reality. Reality is the state or fact of being real; that which is real and not imaginary; truth, verity; the fixed permanent nature of real property.

Dreams. A dream is a train of thoughts and images experienced during sleep, a vision; something only imaginary, a distant hope or ideal, probably unattainable; a state of mental abstraction; to think ideally, to think of possibilities, contemplate as imaginably possible; to be lost in abstraction, to see or imagine in or as in a dream, ideal.

In the transcript for our trailer we have dictated the original ending but we also are going to attempt another ending, as an experiment. If this experimental ending works we will use it, if not we will use the original one. In this last shot we want to try and get a close up of Verity in her bedroom falling asleep and then zoom out and the viewer will find Verity in the woods, all in all confusing the viewer and Verity, giving them an insight into narcolepsy.

Our actress Emily, playing Verity, came in and read the dictionary definitions of reality and dream from the dictionary to see if we like the way it sounded for the voiceover. We recorded her doing it in a similar voice to Natalie Portman from the Black Swan teaser trailer.

This video shows the recording we made...

Progress

This week we have been working on our storyboard and script. For the storyboard as it is a teaser trailer we wanted to include lots of titles and for the shots to be quite complex and in a variety of different locations. For this reason we have chosen to use photographs on our storyboard instead of sketches.
For the script we have decided on a voiceover, this is inspired by the teaser trailer for Black Swan. We want to incorporate the use of ambient sound in our teaser such as water from the pool and the footsteps of her running down the stairs.
We are pleased with the progress we have made this week and are getting more excited about filming.

Synopsis

Our psychological thriller is based upon a girl in her early twenties who suffers from narcolepsy. The most common symptoms of narcolepsy are drowsiness, dream like hallucinations which can occur between sleep and wakefulness, sleep paralysis- where she is unable to move when she first wakes up or when feeling drowsy and the most serious symptom, cataplexy, is the sudden loss of muscle tone while awake resulting in inability to move.  These symptoms make our main character very vulnerable and dependant on her boyfriend.  She particularly suffers from hallucinations and often finds herself in locations with no recollection of getting there.  She also struggles to tell the difference between reality and dreams.  In her hallucinations she finds herself in violent situations with her boyfriend.  When she thinks she has woken up from these nightmares she tells her boyfriend and he continues to react in the same ways as he did in the nightmare, this becomes a vicious cycle and she becomes more afraid and doesn't know who to trust, although her boyfriend is not hurting her in reality, the hallucinations are so realistic and vivid she believes them.  The illness becomes so suffocating that in self defence she kills her boyfriend believing it is an hallucination but later finding that it is reality and she can not wake up from that.

Target Audience

For our teaser trailer we are looking at an audience of about 18-25 years of age. The reason we would like it to be slightly higher, is due to the fact the film is based on an intense storyline as well as the audience needing to understand what is happening throughout the film.

It could be either gender as it is not focused on one topic. There is action, which is typically aimed at males as well as characters that appeal to woman. The thriller aspect appeals to both genders, as it is quite a vague genre allowing many things to happen within. The fact the main character is female, allows female audiences to perhaps relate to the character. Men will also like the fact the main lead is a woman due to shots aimed at the male gaze used as an incentive to watch. After researching online we found that 57% of woman watch thrillers and 43% of men watch thrillers, confirming the idea that our film is appropriate for both genders.
Attracting this target audience we will advertise in places such as analogue channels after 8 o'clock because..........................

The locations used in our films are also aimed at the age group selected as they are places that many may have visited, or know about leaving a sense of belonging.

After looking at previous research projects looking at the link between thriller and target audiences, we noticed that the age most popular when viewing a thriller is 50+. When we saw this we were quite surprised, due to the fact it is an age not often considered by young people such as our  selves. However, we believed that this was not going to be the same result wit our project due to the use of young actors which relate to an audience of 18-25. The second most popular was 18-25. We were not surprised by this result, this result confirmed our decision to use an audience of 18-25.
Here, we have looked at the success of The Butterfly Effect. A film that similarly to ours is a psychological thriller. The results show that there was only a slight difference in the amount of men and woman who viewed the film. The age group 18-29 is the most popular age group to view the film, again reassuring us that it is the ideal age group to use for our target audience. 

  

Influential Trailers

BLACK SWAN 

This is the teaser trailer for black swan, it has a similar genre to our teaser trailer; psychological thriller. We really like the way this teaser has been made with intense music, good titles that are sharp and striking. The shots are edited in a rapid sequence to make the film seem fast paced, this creates a tense atmosphere for the audience.  For our teaser trailer we would like to use similar aspects of this trailer such as creating a fast paced sequence, eye catching titles, changing between scenes of her being the black swan and the white swan showing her two different personalities. 

This is the film poster for Black Swan, this is something we need to consider also, as it is another aspect of our project. This poster is quite simple as it only shows the main character and does not reveal much about the film. It shows Natalie Portman with a crack on her face, perceiving in some way that she is mentally broken or split between two personalities. This poster contains the name of the film, the main actors, a review, the film studios and some other successful films made by the director. The title of the film is in a large bold black font which stands out due to it's large lettering featured on the poster. The poster is simple, and does not represent the successes of the film. it is rather mild in comparison to the possible imagery that could have been used, and is not the main method of selling the film, to the potential audience. 

KILLER ELITE

This is the teaser trailer for an upcoming action thriller called Killer Elite. We have chosen this teaser for the fast paced shots throughout. This trailer revealed a lot of the plot and showed a variety of scenes from  the film. The use of music in this trailer creates a sense of anxiety and makes the atmosphere tense for the audience watching it. We are beginning to realise that a number of thriller teaser trailers use the structure of having fast paced shots put together, this is definitely a main aspect we want to use in our teaser.  

This is the poster for Killer Elite. It has shown the three lead characters on the front, all of which are well known actors who will attract an audience. The photo of the three actors is black and white, which is quite plain and simple but the orange banner across it makes the title stand out and which also has the three main actors names. The caption at the top 'May the best man live' gives the audience a sense of what could happen in the film and may get their imaginations running. The poster portrays a clear genre, as Clive Owen is holding a gun, which shows it indefinitely comes under the genre of action. The poster also shows film companies and has the date it will be released into cinemas, using a relatively large and bright font and colour, so that it stands out clearly.

SHUTTER ISLAND

We like this teaser trailer for its structure, we specifically liked how the music and the titles coincide with one another, each beat had a title that matched with it. This made the trailer really dramatic and drew more attention to the titles. We also liked that it used a variety of footage from the film considering it was a very short trailer, this really teases the audience. We would like our teaser trailer to follow a similar structure and use some of the aspects that work well in this trailer. Particularly how the music works with  the titles. 

This is the official poster for Shutter Island. Like the other two it has featured its lead actor as the main selling point of the poster. It has used bold red for the title, which makes it stand out against the dark background and red also symbolises a number of things such as blood and danger, which may reveal something to the audience.  The island is featured on the poster as well, it looks very gloomy and mysterious looking, which portrays to the audience that the subject matter is twisted and dark.
For our poster we want the viewer to get an idea of the genre and slight clue as to what the film may be about without giving too much away, this will also intrigue the audience. We will also have our lead actress on the poster, as we have seen on most posters. Although our actress will be unknown we hope to that the subject of our poster will make them want to see the film.

Development

Development on Prezi

Pitch

A psychological thriller about a girl suffering from narcolepsy. Her hallucinations are becoming so vivid that she is unable to distinguish between reality and delusion.

Thriller

This is a thought shower of our initial ideas for our teaser trailer. We have thought of location, genre and possible shots. 

Thriller

This moodboard is on the film genre Thriller.  After talking about our initial ideas I then made a moodboard to fit our idea of doing a psychological thriller.  I tried to find images from magazines that would fit this. 

Film Covers

As part of our research task each member of our group thought of a topic based around films and created a mood board that related to it. The topic I based my mood board on was film covers, I varied the film covers by using old and recent ones.When making the moodboard I realised that depending on their genre the theme of the cover would suit it, many horrors and thrillers have very dark and mysterious covers for example "Insidious", whilst comedy and romantic front covers are usually light and use colour such as "Breakfast at Tiffanys".

Locations

Here I have designed a mood board based on location. Location is an extremely important aspect of a film. Here, there are a vast amount of different locations that are possibilities when it comes to our teaser trailer. I especially like the idea of working with water as many different visually interesting things can be done. 

Costumes

We were asked to make different moodboards to do with teaser trailers.  We each made one which focused on a certain topic, such as costumes, locations, film posters and finally after deciding on our genre we made a moodboard on thrillers (our chosen genre).

As part of research I looked at different types of costumes in films. I discovered there is lots of options when it comes to dressing characters in our production. The costumes I choose to use in my mood board were very elaborate to show the extents film makers go to with there costumes. These costumes especially stood out to me because they were big, colourful and not your normal everyday clothes. I will take subtle inspiration from my mood board. 

What is a Teaser Trailer ?

A Teaser Trailer is a variation of a film trailer. It is usually minimal in length and adds insight to the film. A teaser trailer does not reveal many aspects of the film and usually uses a lot of text to attract audiences. For research purposes we watched four different teaser trailers. The first Teaser Trailer we viewed was the Human Centipede II ( Full Sequence ).

The content of this trailer mainly includes reviews of the film and the hype that surrounds it, using examples such as 'BANNED IN BRITAIN' and 'UNLEASHED IN AUSTRALIA.' There was no footage from the film, just the horrified reaction of the audience watching it. It was 1 minute 16 seconds, which is relatively long for a teaser trailer, as their length usually varies between 30 seconds to 1 minute 30 seconds.  This trailer is good as showing the audiences reaction makes you want to see what they are watching but we would rather see clips from the film then the audiences faces.

The next teaser trailer we watched was 'Green with Envy' this trailer initially deceives the viewer into believing that the film is a romantic comedy, it then turns out to be the next Muppet sequel. This trailer was different to the first as they introduced the characters and they also broke down the 'fourth wall' by having the characters directly address the audience.  This trailer didn't really appeal to us as this film it's intended audience is young children and is a comedy.  We are hoping to make a serious film and our intended audience will be much older.