EVALUATION - Our Trailer and Media Language

Here is an analysis of our trailer in terms of media language.


Camera Work:
Our trailer starts with a medium close-up of our character Megan packing food into her bag. We then have an over-the-shoulder shot of her grabbing food from the cupboard. This makes the audience feel as though they are there, watching her from behind. Our next shot is a high angle shot, looking down onto Megan, to make her look small and inferior as she is drastically trying to escape from a higher power. We cut back to an OTS shot. For our flashback sequence of Megan walking down the corridor we have a long shot, to establish the location she is in, to create a sense of familiarity with the audience. We the have a high angle shot of Megan as she bends down to pick up her books. As she meets the other main character, Eric, who bends down to her level, creating equality, there is another OTS shot. Back in the present day, we have a high angle shot of Megan, running around her house, into different rooms. We took this shot from the stairs, to gain the height necessary to portray her vulnerability and it was a long shot, so the audience can see what she is doing in the full environment. We then have a medium shot of her opening a draw, to grab her passport. With the next flashback sequence we decided to have a long shot to establish the setting and to make the audience feel as though they are an outsider looking in on the two characters date. We cut to a medium shot so the audience gets a better feel for what they are doing. As Megan runs up the stairs we thought it would be effective to have a low angle shot from within the stairs bars, to create a dramatic effect. Throughout the bedroom scene we used a variety of shots. We used close-ups to see what she was packing, and her scared reaction to a noise she hears. Long shots to show her rushing out of the room and high angle shots to show her vulnerability. For another flashback scene we used the medium shot and cut to a long shot,m to show their intimacy. When Eric goes to the kitchen draw we used a close up so the audience can clearly see the weapon he is choosing. When Megan grabs her pen-knife we use a medium shot. There is a long shot of the front door when the knock happens to show the audience what is happening. As the phone then rings we cut to a medium shot of Megan so that we can see her reaction. There is a close up of the phone ringing so the audience can see that Eric is calling her. It cuts back to the medium long shot of her against the cupboard not knowing what to do, then she gives up and slides down the side, crying.



Editing:
In our trailer we used many editing transitions of fade to black and dip to white to portray the going into the evil present and the innocent past flashbacks. The fade to black transitions make the audience apprehensive about what is about to come next, and the dip to white make the audience feel as though they are going back in time to a dream like flashback. In the trailers which we analysed we took a note of how they would cut from scene to scene and the use of flashbacks were included in a lot of trailers. From our original filming footage we had about ten minutes worth, which we had to cut down to approx 1.50 mins. This is because we took many shots from different angles in order to be able to chose from the best ones. We kept our editing simple as not to take away the focus of the action occurring in our trailer. We were able to contrast the scenes of the flashbacks to make a clear difference between the present and past.

Mise-en-scene:
Our trailer had one dominant location, which was the normal family house, to represent realism and the school corridor. This shows that our film has different settings and they are familiar so the audience can recognise them and with scary events happening in such normal settings makes the film more scary. Our characters wear normal modern clothes such as jeans, t.shirts and shorts to represent modernism. It is also easier to relate to things you recognise. The props we used were a backpack for Megan to stuff full of food and clothes. We used a passport, mobile phone, books, picnic food, knives etc, which are familiar to the audience and create realism. Throughout our filming we didn't really focus much on lighting as it wasn't too much of a problem, but whilst filming we did have to make the rooms as bright as possible as then seen through the camera it is much darker.


Sound:
For our trailer we had to find a non-copyrighted song which we went on the website Freeplay.com for. This had many non-copyright sings on and we chose one called Abducted which suited our trailers atmosphere perfectly. We were able to match it up to the actions, but it fitted so well we didn't have to. It was perfect as it started off quietly and built up a crescendo, creating the climax of the major events happening in our trailer. The music is a very important aspect of the trailer as it tells the audience how to feel an ours tells the audience that they should be scared, and apprehensive. We also used the same website to find sound effects of a phone ring and a knock at the door. We included a line of dialogue for each of our characters to show the audience how much they loved each other. Eric says "do you promise to stay with me forever?" and in another clip Megan replies "always." This creates a creepy effect as Eric whispers his lines, and Megan replies just as there is a screeching sound in the soundtrack. We built up layers of the audio track to make the trailer more interesting, scary and realistic.

Nikki Stock