Teaser Trailer [first draft] and Evaluation

This is our first draft of our teaser trailer, We intend to add more footage and sharpen our editing to make the piece more professional. 

In what ways does your media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Psycho "1960": Vulnerable woman

• Within our trailer, we use shots of dead women, and women running away showing their vulnerability. This backs up Propps theory that women play the victims in traditional media texts as in our trailer women are being shown as the victims of brutal murders. This is shown in many media texts of our genre, such as in 'Psycho', released in 1960. 'Psycho' is an inspiration to our teaser trailer as it is in black and white, of the slasher horror genre and generates fear for all different audiences. Our teaser trailer will confirm this convention of these real media texts.

• Unlike most modern films, we have chosen to film and edit in black and white. This will enhance our shadow work and demonstrate our work with lighting. This challenges some of the deconstructions of modern horrors, such as 'From Hell'.

• Our trailer includes a voiceover at the start which challenges the traditional film trailers for horror films, as voice overs normally appear in other genres such as 'Phone Booth', which is a thriller and was released in 2002. The voiceover which we have created gives the audience a basic idea of what the film is about and an understanding into the thoughts of the person who is talking as the script which we wrote is based on a letter which the killer is writing to jack describing his obsession with him. This outlines the storyline to the audience as they are then aware that the film will be about carrying on Jack The Rippers legacy. 

• In our trailer we used different sound effects which make up the soundtrack. We firstly used a piece of music that we had found on Youtube; after gaining permission, and then  edited it using Garageband to make it fit better to the cut of our trailer. The music starts off slow and quite quiet and as the trailer continues it gets slightly faster and has beats added in the background making it slightly louder, this causes it to build up tension which fits in well with our horror genre, keeps the audience interested and is conventional to other horror film trailers. In some of the footage we also kept the diegetic sound of footsteps as the victim runs away which is effective as it creates fear for that victim. As we continue to develop our trailer, we will add in other sound effects including a ticking clock which is then cut to show that the time is ending for a victim and screaming sounds to emphasise fear, pain and trouble to help convey our horror genre. These are also sounds that may be conventionally found in other horror film trailers. 

• Titles were used in the first cut of our trailer. Three separate titles were used, the first being 'The Ripper's Shadow' which is the title of the film, followed by 'following a legacy' and then the release date and copyright in the third. By creating titles we used a typical convention of not only a horror film trailer, but most other film trailers. Titles are a priority within trailers as it helps the viewer in understanding the trailer, as well as telling necessary information about the film such as the title of it and release date. The font, size and colour of the titles are a key part of the trailer; this being because it contributes to showing the genre and style of the film. We chose for our first cut 'Humana Serif' and in white across all titles to show consistency. The size of the titles were different however. The first two titles used size '38' and the last '64' for the date and '9' for the copyright. This was because we felt the date was an important title. For our last draft, we have decided that size '64' will also be used for the title of the film. Also in our last draft, we will move the first and second titles around, this being because as a group we felt it did not make sense the original way round and that the title of the film should come after 'following a legacy' . Overall, by using titles in our trailer, it has enabled the viewer to understand what is happening as well as key information, all of which are essential in a real media product. 

What we thought went well:

• We thought that the soundtrack which we have used in our trailer works well as it helps show the audience the feel of the film due to the music providing tension.
• The black and white effect which we have used on the trailer again works well as it allowed us to create shadows when filming. 
• The montage of images at the beginning show the history of Jack The Ripper allowing the audience to gain knowledge on what the film is based on. 

Improvements:

• We feel that the ordering of the titles needs to be changed, as in most current media texts within our genre such as 'sinister' and 'from hell', have the title of their film at the end of the trailer, so we have decided to use this to conform to the media texts in this genre.
• Sound effects can be improved by adding in the sound of ticking when the shot of the stop watch appears which will show that someones life is ending as we could cut the sound to a sudden stop which would relate to the idea that a victims life as come to an end. We would also add in screaming of victims to create fear towards the audience. 
• Some shots which appear within the trailer are too fast for the audience to identify what is being show, we need to make the shot last longer so that the audience is able to take in what is being shown, although we need to keep the quick cut transitions which is a convention of a real media text.

Referring to Jack The Ripper through filming

Throughout our film we had to make direct links to Jack The Ripper as this is the basis for our story. Jack The Ripper famously sent a victims liver to the local police station, with this letter enclosed, it read;

"I send you half the kidney i took from one woman and preserved it for you, the other piece i fried and it was very nice. I may send you the bloody knife that took it out if you only wait a while longer

signed catch me when you can".


We decided this was important to include in our trailer as it would show the likeness our serial killer has to the late Ripper.

Voiceover

Below is the script for our voiceover, which is placed at the very beginning of the trailer to introduce the plot. The part 'From The Ripper's Shadow', is further along the trailer.The basic plot of the voice over is that our killer is talking to Jack the Ripper and telling him that he looks up to him and how he has influenced him to kill as well. 

First draft
Dear Jack,
Every city has that killer
One that never gets caught
But for every victim, i have my reason
To rid these streets, just like you did
Camden lives in fear, anticipating for my next strike.

From The Ripper's Shadow

Final draft

Feedback from our first trailer cut suggested that our initial voice over created a location anomaly as we only talked about Camden yet we overlayed this with images of Jack the Rippers killings in Whitechapel. Therefore to clear up this misunderstanding we had to rescript the voice over to explain that although Whitechapel was Jack the Ripper's area, our killer has to keep moving to stay hidden and has moved on to Camden. This was our new draft which was found to be clearer:



Dear Jack,
You've made me what I am today
a killer that never gets caught
But staying hidden means I have to keep moving
Whitechapel was your hunting ground, Camden is mine

The Ripper's Shadow

Gothic Genre

The gothic genre relates to the style of our trailer due to the ideas about a copycat killing of Jack the Ripper, as the original story has many gothic aspects. The gothic genre is where the story is designed to thrill readers by providing mystery and blood-curdling accounts of villainy, murder, and the supernatural.

Contemporary Gothic films

Women in Black 2012

The film Women in Black meets the Gothic genre as the as the villain in the film is supernatural and the film creates mystery as the main character is discovering clues to deaths of children.

  

Sleepy hollow 1999

The film Sleepy hollow meets the Gothic genre as again the villain in the film is supernatural and the main character again investigates into the deaths of people.

From hell 2001

The film From hell meets the Gothic Genre because the mystery within the story is about the murders of prostitutes in London The film is also graphic when it comes to showing the deaths.

Sweeney Todd 2007

Sweeney Todd is a musical which is aimed at towards the gothic genre because the overall appearance of the film is gruesome in the way in which the deaths are shown, they are also a mystery to the people in how people are dying.   

Our trailer idea meets the gothic genre because the deaths which are happening in the city of London are a mystery to the public. The story line is also a copycat killing of Jack The Ripper meaning that the overall story is about dramatic, gruesome deaths, however instead of the main character unwinding the mystery behind the deaths the main character is behind the deaths but the reasons for his killings is a mystery to the viewers and is unraveled throughout the story.

Practising creating shadows

We found that creating shadows was quite difficult when trying to position the camera so not to show in the picture/shot. 

However in post production, we found that the choice to edit our trailer into black and white makes it easier to construct successful shadows.

Special effects make-up

This is the process used when creating our fake wounds for filming. After much practice, we found that creating these could be quick and easy, which sped up our filming. Allowing us to concentrate on the mise-en-scene in the final shot when filming.