Early history (1935 to 1937) - Hammer Productions
Resurrection (1938 to 1955) - Hammer Film Productions
The birth of Hammer Horror
Another thing which makes strangers such a tension filled piece is the use of masks this leaves the audience having to guess who the 'strangers' are, involving them in the piece and therefore capturing and keeping their attention.
^^^ This tutorial will help us create the effect of three point lighting in order to create a 3 dimmensional shape of the subject matter or to illumiate the subject matter. In our case this will be the facial expressions of our characters and their reactions to the 'killer' this will help to create tension and will be a good introduction of the characters for the rest of the film.
She follows on to say how this contradictory nature of media is due to the modern media culture. How modern media pieces infuse all types and products of culture. These are categorized in to many factors;
All these things are put togeteher to create cultural depictions of society at one given time. Also how social actors in new forms of media mediate and navigate these contradictory forces of history, the material world and culture is the key to the problem of mediation in Marxist theory.
Tony Reale describes and shows how to film and light the same scene during the same time of day to appear either in the day or night time. As a group we can apply these techniques to our project as we have a limited time period in which to cast and film our trailer.
Other things to consider when releasing the teaser trailer is the age group it is targeting towards and when are they most likely to see this trailer. In the evening? When prime time tele is? or during the day? These would be important questions to consider when discussing the release of a teaser trailer.
The Blair Witch Project is a film which has set the boundaries for a new genre of film, for example, Paranormal Activity directed by Oren Peli. The handheld camera only confirms the realistic feeling of fear that the audience begin to feel in the cinema. As our movie is based on teenagers having a 'fun' trip camping which turns horribly wrong this movie trailer is very 'current' and the values which are decipted from the group of teenagers is something that we would like to create and bring in into our own media coursework.
The Blair Witch Project is a movie which has been viewed by a wide range of audiences from adolescents to adults and therefore does not have a set audience, which could be argued to be hard to acheive in the modern day world of cinema and film. This is an original film which I believe is achieveable on a low-set budget. However, trying to make a movie trailer based on hand held shots is risky and we may find that actually the shots do not look as good as if we were using a tripod and using long shots and medium close ups etc. Therefore I feel when we film our first draft, to use both handheld shots as well as camera shots such as long shot or close up.
The message at the beginning of the trailer, decipting that the movie is a real life story is also a method which can be seen in many major movies in the Box Office e.g. the Last Exorcism. The black and white lighting is effective as the audience feels as if they are physically in the dark as well as 'being in the dark' about the information in which we are given about the presence of an evil spirit. The realism that is created by the black and white lighting and hand held camera shots acts as if the audience is filming the documentary with them, and thus, builds up the suspense.
What is a story?
Teaser trailer also throws up alot of discussion in whether itself is a genre..
Definition: A teaser trailer is a short trailer which advertises an upcoming movie, game or television series. They are unlik conventional trailers as they are much shorter in length (usually about 30 seconds long) and usually contain little if any acutal footage from the film. Teaser trailers today are increasingly focused on internet downloading and the convention circuit.
Teaser trailers are a genre which is intended to appeal to just one type of audience. they are used to promote awareness of a film and are not always literal representations of the film. Teaser trailers are a medium known for experimenting and to use controversial genreic conventions.
When looking on http://www.petesmediablog.blogspot.com/ pete discusses how Tim Clague uses another technique called storycards. Which helps organise a piece of media this simply involves pinning up fragmented ideas and then reorganising them into shape an overall project. Tim also reccomends recording all discussions and ideas generated from whatever source just incase one day they are needed to go back to. it all helps to build up a story for a piece of media. however this idea isnt exclusively from Tim Clague he said he took this idea from the way H.G Wells an english author who created 'War of the worlds' and 'Time machine' who constructed his ideas by writing things on scraps of paper and putting them in a jamjar and when it was full would open it and start to construct ideas.
He also mentioned a site called http://www.postsecret.com/ which can help us generate an idea for our project. This site describes itself as a 'community based site' which enables people to post their secrets anomynously. He explains how this could be a good place to look for something to fuel an initial idea.
STEP 2: Frame for Emotion
STEP 3: Camera is Not a Camera
STEP 4: Dialogue Means Nothing
STEP 5: Point of Editing
STEP 6: Montage Gives You Control
STEP 7: Keep the story simple!
Step 8: Characters Must Break Cliche
Step 9: Use humor to add tension
Step 10: Two things happening at once
Step 11: Suspense is Information
Step 12: Suprise and Twist
Step 13: Warning: May Cause MacGuffin
Audience
10 commandments for reflective writing;
1) Focus on creative decisions informed by institutional knowledge
2)Focus on creative decisions informed by theoretical understanding
3)Evaluate the process-don't just describe it
4) Relate your media to 'real media' at a micro level
5) Try to deconstruct yourself
6) Choose clearly relevant micro examples to relate to macro reflective themes
7) Avoid binary oppositions
8) Try to write about your broader media culture
9) Adopt a meta discourse
10) Quote, Paraphrase, reference.
In OCR media studies book there is a case study by Sophie Hughes called 'woman clone'. It brings up lots of areas for duscussion.
MEDIA LANGUAGE;
GENRE;
NARRATIVE;
Narrative is such a powerful tool that it is, arguably, an even more important key concept than genre. Narrative has probably existed as long as human beings; It is likely that the stone age artists who drew 18,000 year old cave paintings expected narratives to be woven around their images. (Nick Lacey 2000)
