We used the film title of delirium as it was chosen as the favourite by our audience research. As it is the audience that we are producing the trailer for, this is why we chose to go with the title that appeals to the target audience the most.
For our animatic we used:
Luke Williams - Father
Alys LeMoignan - Mother
Dora Jones - Son
An animatic is the initial production of the trailer you desire to make, however, using pictures of your storyboards, not using film. This eliminated other aspects such as acting and allows the filmmaker to concentrate on the flow of the shots and if they work together. At this point one could introduce new, delete or modify the camera shots and their content, as well as the order. It provides the filmmaker with a rough understanding of the presentation of the the animatic, and avoids re-shooting the real trailer and avoid paying potential actors/actresses to film or re-film more shots etc. All in all, for filmmaker’s it cost and time efficient to use an animatic as an initial draft of their trailer, which is why our group has chosen to also.
Our trailer’s plot was selected through an exercise during a class. Each participant of our group created a script on our chosen genre (horror), from which we all collectively decided on the best. The criteria for the best did not just contain whether or not we thought the trailer would appeal to the audience as scary enough, but also if we could professionally create a trailer around it using the limited equipment and time period we have been given. We settled on one plot of a supernatural presence in a new and spooky house, causing possession of a loved one. From this, we could create suspense through suggestion and tension, rather than time and expense on gore, with equipment we did not have access to as media students. The location wouldn’t be too hard to obtain either, as we just needed the use of a house for a few hours. We then critiqued the plot to make it easier to film, modifying aspects such as the amount and gender of certain characters.
We then spent a considerable amount of time creating the shots of our trailer. We considered this priority as we understood the flaw in creating an animatic at pace without proper planning of well thought out shots we were happy with as a group. We used class time and free time in school between lessons to all meet and discuss the shots of our storyboard. All having different ideas of the presentation of our trailer, we benefited greatly from suggesting aspects of shots and each other modifying their suggestion until we came across a selection of shots that we all felt would work. I offered my skill of representations to the shots also using my research of other horror trailers and picking up on techniques. An example of this is the shot of the chair’s shadow upon the door within the house as well as many high angles of the possessed, to demonstrate their power. This is also why I took the task of writing the shot descriptions for the story board, to specify what we had to take and why. As a result of this we all worked well together and ended finishing the story board quicker than expected.
In terms of the actual construction of our animatic. We first used our storyboard to create a new order of shots, basing on the time and location we would need to shoot them. For example, some shots needed to be darker than others, so we grouped those together as placed them at the end of the order. This order was placed against a time line, helping us ensure we take the lighter shots in the limited amount of bright daylight of the winter period, to symbolise the happiness and peace before the break of the equilibrium. Having all of our props, such as vases and a teddy bear, bought in preparation, we were able to take all shots during one filming day, leaving us time to have first access to the editing suite.
In total, we used around sixteen different props in the production of our animatic, which we gathered together ourselves in preparation of the shoot. We prepared this to aid us further when reflecting on our animatic, as using props would allow us to see a more realistic version of how our camera shots would look like in the real trailer production. We found that during the actual production of the camera shots, we did add in extra props, such as the wooden cross leant against the clock, which we felt enhance the darkness of the presence and how possession is sometimes associated with the devil, and the cross helped incorporate the theme of religion we felt subtly.
Our plot had the other advantage of using minimal characters, some of which were in our group. We then created a fixed date of shooting which we could all attend, and invited the additional actor along so that, with us all there, we could get shots done without losing track of which shots had been taken, continuity errors and actors/actresses being away, which is a possibility with multiple shoot dates. We chose the actors and actresses on their physical appearance and availability. We used a male to play the father, Alys to play the mother and myself to play the son, as I was the shortest and would be more effective for a realist portrayal of the shots. We had planned an actual child to play the boy, however, we decided that the originality of him doing the trailer would be key, and he may not be as willing to repeat the shots again in the final trailer, therefore we used myself.
During the shoot, we attempted to work as efficiently as possible. We also added to shots’ contents as we took them. For example, the aforementioned chair shadow on the door shot was improvised during the shoot. Some shots were extremely difficult to capture. In particular, the shot of the vase dropping to the ground was too quick to capture as a picture on the camera, so we filmed the smash as practice, to see how it would look on film and were happy with the results. Even though it didn’t feature in our animatic, we attempted it to ensure we were prepared with practice to capture it correctly for the real trailer.
During the editing process, our group first put the pictures back into the correct timeline of the trailer. We then edited their time length to allow use to gain an idea of whether the suspense is created in the correct places. A shot usually lasted around two seconds, varying on what we wanted the audience to feel. For example, as the climatic shots were shown, were made the shots quicker to create the suspense and hopefully imitating the audience’s heartbeat quickening with fear. In contrast, during the more horrific shots at the end of the trailer, we decided to slow the pace down, leaving the shot time length longer with longer fading transitions to create tension, ensuring the audience’s focus is solely on the shots as they possibly will be the most iconic and the last ones in the trailer that the audience will see. The software that we had access to also had colour adjustment and transitions available, which we took the opportunity to include once to priority of the shots had be successfully completed in the animatic. Amongst the camera shots, our inter titles were placed to help us gather an idea of the separation between the sections of shots, bring our storyboard more to life.
The inter titles used were meant for suspense, for example ‘The past will haunt you’. We used key words such as the pronoun ‘you’ to suggest to the audience that they themselves are somehow directly involved in the events of the film, hopefully allowing the trailer to be remember, leading to possibly them viewing it, which will create profit. As the filmmaker, this is the desired effect of a the trailer, as it is free and meant to be a promotional device to entice the audience to watch the film. ‘haunt’ also implies the supernatural ghost-like nature of the antagonist. As well as this, we positioned this phrase as split into two separate inter titles. This create tension as the audience is left waiting for the end of the sentence. Also, it infers that the contents of the trailer between the inter titles somehow relate to this ‘haunt’ing it suggests. We kept the inter titles simple as possible using a black and white colour scheme with a traditional font, not to distract from the more influential content of the trailer. The font was traditional to portray the old fashioned time period that this presence originated. This is all true for the title, however, we made the text larger with a longer time length as the title is the key text on the film as it is what the audience will need to go and view the film. This is why in the real trailer we will ensure that the title is more complex in a design that differs from the other inter titles more.
This was as the other aspects of the animatic such as shots and editing with transitions were considered more of a priority being a visual aid of the flow of our trailer. Having said this, our soundtrack was being created during the final stages of our editing, yet it’s time consuming nature made it impossible to achieve by the deadline, something we should have time to achieve completion in the final trailer. Our planning of the soundtrack is keeping it simple. We did not want lyrics or too many instruments, as it was unnecessary. the point of the soundtrack was to accompany and enhance the tension and suspense of the shots. However, we did consider the use of silence as a lesser known but equally as effective source of tension, which we could added the diegetic sound of the mother or the child’s voice rhyming a witch’s spell, hinting more information about the presence to the audience.
To aid the production of our trailer, we would use the animatic as a research tool, giving it to those of our already reached target audience, which are possibly parental females of the twenty to thirty age group, to see their opinions of the trailer and how to improve. At the moment, i would criticised our trailer as needing a more visually memorable title presentation and to ensure the soundtrack and dietetic sounds to be include in the final trailer
I would consider five iconic images from our animatic to be, the rocking chair shadow across the door, the possessed mother tied to the chair, the close up of the teddy bear’s face and the high angled shot of the boy’s face.
For our animatic we used:
Luke Williams - Father
Alys LeMoignan - Mother
Dora Jones - Son
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