Initial Characters Bio's

Annabelle: 15 at the time of her death. She either got bullied or her room was in the basement and didn't like it so she told her parents. They told her it was nothing, that she was being foolish. It was obvious she was a lonely child.

Kerri: 15. She didn't want to move, however does so with resistance, hates her new house, one day discovers a secret cupboard and finds a diary, tells her mother about it as suspected she thinks her daughter is being foolish, so to her mothers disapproval she reads the diary and finds out it is the only thing person she can relate to.

Anthony: 12. Typical younger brother who is annoying and unaware of many things. He is ignorant to how his sister is feeling. A mummy and daddy's boy.

Marie: 34. Typical mother running around trying to sort everything out with the new house, doesn't pay much attention to Kerri - pays more attention to Anthony as he is the baby of the family.

Michael: 36 and is a very reserved father. Tries to do everything possible to help his children. Doesn't like the fact that Kerri is upset and is changing - doesn't know what to do to help.

Initial Narrative Idea

The narrative of our film features a young girl named Annabelle, aged 15, who lived with her mother, father and younger brother. She loved to write, especially poems. Every day she would write in her diary; a new poem and a chapter about her day concerning her emotions and feelings especially about how she was tormented and labelled about having mental health issues as she would hear voices and see ghosts. She believed that she haunted by a ghost who she named ‘Gwenevere’ (around the age of 5, but no one knows) or otherwise known as ‘The ghost that lives at 134 Queens Road’, who manipulated and antagonized her so much, because all she wanted was someone to play with her and love her, like her mother never did. This eventually made Annabelle commit suicide; from a drug overdose, due to the constant hassle of people calling her ‘crazy’ and the continuous terrorizing from Gwenevere. All she wanted was to be left alone. Gwenevere, was finally at peace when Annabelle died, as she finally got the friend she always wanted. She left her with only 134 Queens Street. When Annabelle died, all she left was her diary, and the mystery of her death unsolved. Until now.

17 years later a family of four move into the house that the young girl committed suicide in. The family consists of single mother thirty six year old ‘Sandra’, her two brothers ‘Anthony’ (11 years old) and ‘Matthew’ (5 years old) and finally are main character ‘Tara’ who is 17 years of age. Tara finds a diary in her room and it happens to be the diary of Annabelle. She tells her mother about the diary and its contents and Sandra insists that she stops reading it and throws it out. Tara disregards what her mother says and still continues to read it and gradually creepy and abnormal things start to happen for example the noise of a young teenage girl crying. Sandra asks around the neighbourhood if anybody has ever heard of anything on the history of the house, one neighbour expresses that they heard of a teenage girl committing suicide, with this information Sandra goes on to the internet to research the house and finds an article on a blog website form ex neighbours about the ghost of Annabelle that they believe exists in 134 Queens Road. Sandra goes through Tara’s room and tries to throw away the diary believing that this would put a stop to all the unusual activity, but it does not. Tara believes that something is watching and haunting her and a series of events occur that makes it apparent that the ghost of Annabelle does actually exist. This results in Tara becoming mad and she leaves her house. To this day she has been missing. Without a signal warning or sign to know where she has gone. Leaving her family to believe that she may be missing forever, and even the possibility of her being dead.  Now all they can do is wait for a knock on the door, a phone call, or a spiritual sign, just something that would tell them that she is still with us.

HIGHLIGHT THE KEY POINTS!

Draft Narrative

The Conjuring... in three sentences

Ø  Group/pair of psychological ghost hunters

Ø  Women asks these people for help as her family is being possessed, haunted and taunted by this ghost including herself.

Ø  Hunters have to release this ‘thing’ from the human ‘wife’ and house to relieve the family from trauma

The reason we got asked to do this was because it helps up narrow a whole movie into 3 short sentences. Making sure we understand the narrative and what may happen in the film. This is useful when creating our narratives because it helps us have a fixed idea of what our full narrative is so through the 3 sentence we can pick out the most important and scary/exciting points that can go in our trailer. This is also helpful because as a group we wouldn't want to give everything away in the trailer that may happen in the film although we aren't making the actual film.

Blair Witch prelim

What I learnt

By doing this prelim I learned that the most important thing in order to create a brilliant trailer within a group dynamic is good speaking and listening skills and team work. By doing this trailer we got to spend time together. I think this is important because we will have to spend a lot of time together making this trailer so it good that we’ve briefly spoken about roles and we get along. This is 100% beneficial in order to create a good horror trailer.

Technical aspects

On a technical side, I learnt that when we film our own trailer we are going to have film many of the same scenes from different angles and positions. We need to do that as a convention to horror films as an audience generally see’s a lot of the same scene from different angles and movements the camera makes. We learnt just how long and tricky that will be when doing our prelim because although The Blair Witch Project had longer scenes in it, we are filming a trailer which means different scenes will be coming up 3 seconds at a time and our trailer will have to last around 3 minutes.

As far as sound, Blair Witch used all of the natural sound of the weather; the harsh wind and the leaves ruffling along with dialogue and that worked. However when it comes to our trailer I think we are going to need some sort of creepy underlying music which I will create for my group to include.

Finally, mise en scene is very important and that was highlighted when filming the prelim, because The Blair Witch Project is set in the woods, we were able to go to a forest-like place outside school to film and it worked because it was very similar to the film. However when filming some shots we had to make sure we didn’t get cars or swing sets in the shot otherwise it would feel like the film was shot.

Differences to the trailer

One important thing about the prelim task is that my group and I film a scene from a film, for our final product, we need to create a trailer, so although the same rules apply when filming such as sound, mise en scene and camera work we have to take in considerations the conventions a trailer uses verses the conventions of a horror film.

Research.. What is it?

Prelim scene task

Today we got put into the groups for our horror trailer. Before I start my real trailer my class got set a task to produce a scene from a horror film we’ve seen, focusing on mise en scene, camera work and sound.

Seeing as it is autumn, my group and I decided it would be a good idea to re-create a scene from The Blair Witch Project. Before filming we discussed what film we was going to shoot – the one where the lost teens were in the woods arguing – the dialogue we’d use and how and who will shoot the scene. We decided that my job was to film most of the scenes although others had an opportunity to use the camera. Although it was another person’s job to edit, the whole group sat around and put their input in as she did. 

Analysing trailers

By analysing these trailers I have come to realise what should go in a trailer as far as music, titles, credits etc. and with this knowledge I will create my trailer following these steps.

Conventions.. specific to trailers

Key conventions - specific to trailers

• Titles
• Credits
• Classification
• Title appearing at the end
• Voice over
• Minimal conversations
• Climax
• Atmospheric music
• Short clips
• Fast pace
• Flash of scenes
• Best bits
• Not in chronological order
• Showcases stars of the film
• Synchronised sound and scenes
• Unusual angles
• Brief narrative
• Action & credits interspersed

Making the list of conventions has enabled me to spot and pick out specifically key ingredients a trailer requires. This will benefit me when it comes to the trailer because I will use and stick to the majority of the conventions in order to produce a successful trailer.

How to make an effective film trailer

Barthes Enigma Code Theory

Intial Ideas

Today we had to think of some ideas for what we want our horror trailers to be based on. Here is a mind map showing all of the initial ideas I came up with.

Moral Panics

Today we learnt about the structure of the moral panics audience theory.

CONCERN: That the behaviour of the group or category in question is likely to have a negative impact on society

HOSTILITY: Towards the group in question increases, and they become 'folk devils'. A clear division form between 'them' and 'us'

CONSENUS: A widespread acceptance that the group in question poses a very real threat to society

DISPROPORTIONALITY: The action taken is disproportionate to the actual threat posed by the accused group

VOLATILITY: Moral panics are highly volatile and tend to disappear as quickly as they appeared due to a wave in public interest or news reports changing to another topic.

Recent panics include:

• video games
• online activity
• campus killing/knife and gun crime/gangs and YouTube
• texting, internet and literacy
• electronic media and obesity
• screen/web addiction
• social skills in decline due to internet