Editing for scene 1

On the 1st of november we decided to film our first scene, in order to be able to do so successfully we needed a high quality nikon camera, a tripod, props, actor and an urban location. It took us around 20 minutes to gather it all and start filming. however, it would have taken much longer if we hadn't already planned days ahead where we were going set our location and assigned our actor. we knew which props to supply for the scene and knew where to get out tripod and Nikon camera. This highlight how much preparation and planning is key for our project.
We found that our first scene was too long as it rounded to 20 seconds. The reason why it was essential to cut it down is that the first scene consisted of the actor typing on her laptop and had only 1 line to say near the end. This sort of scene should only last a few seconds as nothing interesting is happening and it may bore the audience which result to them deciding to watch another trailer such as silent hill which creates suspense from the first scene.And so we will have failed our objective of attracting the audience from the trailer to watch the movies in the cinemas. Once we had started to immensely cut parts of the first scene in 'Final cut pro' it rounded up around 6 seconds.
We realised that the actors voice was low and there was background noise too, to fix this we went on a different software called GarageBand. Here we could edit how her voice's pitch and volume; we could also remove and reduce the background noise to make it sound clearer.  After we refined her voice on GarageBand we edited into Final cut Pro; so we now had better quality sound. Never the less, it was the only sound in the scene, there was no atmospheric music in the background to create suspense which is a convention of horror/thriller trailers. To find the perfect soundtrack we had to research what sort of soundtracks other horror/thriller trailers had used and which would be perfect for ours. We found out that the soundtrack's pace must align with the pace of the scene, so we needed a slow paced soundtrack for the beginning. This also brought up the fact that the pace of the trailer will change later on and so we need different soundtracks but we must edit it so it flows smoothly from one soundtrack to another without the audience thinking theres just a playlist being played in the background.
-Frouzon

The Villain's Costume

One of the main mise en scenes that makes a trailer/Movie verisimilitude is the costumes. Our trailer is set in the modern day so the settings did make contribute to the verisimilitude. However, our genre is horror and thriller which makes it hard to make it realistic and for the audience to believe into it. This is why the paranormal villain in our trailer must look scary and believable. This can be done through the use of editing and customs. We decided on buying a mask and knife for a few of the scenes and experimented it with to see how it looks on camera. The first scene in the trailer that you see the paranormal villain we do not use the mask and its more of a black creature. This creates confusion and enigmas.

However, the mask we decided to use was a copyright of Scream so we could not use it. We realised this after filming scene 3 so we had to change the shooting time table as now we had to reshoot scene 3 without the Scream copyrighted mask. This meant that we now did not have a villain or supernatural creature so we were back at the drawing boards. Other than the 'Scream' mask, all the other masks were very childish and unrealistic. So we could not just simply use another mask, which seems to be the better option as using editing techniques and being original with the creature would help us gain more marks.

Mood board from FrouzonAhmad

We decided to do a mood board on different villains /supernatural creatures from horror/thriller movies to help us create one of our own. The mood board consisted of villains such as the Grudge, Chucky, Freddy Vs Jason etc. what we realised was that all the creatures either had a scary face or a mask. this was how the audience recognised them as the villain. A typical horror/thriller convention is to have a scary villain whom has scary physical features that will scare the audience without them even doing anything gruesome. realistically speaking, it would be really difficult to create a very horrific creature without a big budget. It also can be difficult to be original when creating one as it will have similarities to other monsters from other movies, mainly because supernatural creatures were introduced all the way in the 1890s Le Manoir du diable (The haunted Castle 1896) was screened and credited as being the first horror film. Ever since theres been many thousands of the supernatural creatures in movies and somehow our one will have similarities with a few. On the bright side, it is acceptable to have similarities with another movies' villain as long as they're  not exactly the same like it was when we use the scream mask.

It was almost like we had a head start as in the previous scene we had included a creature that had no face and was a black creature. This creature created enigmas on its own as it was simply a black figure and there are hardly no supernatural monsters in movies that are similar. So it was new and the audience want to know what it is and how is it dangerous. Even though such a creature has not been in horro/thriller films, we did get the inspiration from another mythical creature named "Slender man". The reason why he ha similarity to our creature is because he is thought to be mysterious and his actions lead to a trial of questions. He also is faceless like our creature, this in a certain perspective can be seen to go against the scary supernatural convention as it is the face that usually creates horror and terrorises the audience. It is essential fot us to create that mystery and to make sure that the audience cannot predicts its actions and motives as our trailer is thriller as well as horror. Thriller is meant to keep the audience in the dark and create suspense rather than letting them successfully predict what sort of creature it is and what its motives and back story is.
Therefore we decided to use this creature throughout the trailer as it is eligible for both of our genres. It terrifies the audiences yet creates mystery and enigmas that leave the audience at the edge of their seats.

-Frouzon

Analysis of trailer, Silent hill- Frouzon

Silent Hill The revelation on Prezi