Research - Comparing Thriller Trailers

Skyfall (2012)

·      Fast cutting

·      Music pace speeds up near end of trailer

·      Accumulation of action shots near end of trailer (Explosions)

·      Brief story line

·      Narration form enemy

·      Focus mainly upon one male dominant character (hero)

The Dark Knight (2008)

·      Narration of trailer by enemy/ villain

·      Music pace speeds up during trailer

·      Accumulation of action shots near end of trailer

·      Story line given

·      Emphasis on hero and villain characters

·      Focuses just as much upon the villain as hero

Inception (2010)

·      Change clip to the beat of the music

·      Narration from one of the characters taken out of context

·      Fast paced changes of clips

·      Music stays the same tempo but becomes more intense

·      Detailed story line

·      Funny dialogue at end of trailer

·      Focus mainly upon one Male dominant character (hero)

Similarities

·      One of the biggest similarities I found between the trailers is that that in the thrillers they often use the ‘villain’ to narrate the trailers where they take a piece of dialogue that they say during the film and overly in on the trailer. This is only really used within thrillers as normally in horror films the ‘enemy’ is eluded around a mystery where as in thrillers it creates a tense and diverse atmosphere like the villain is talking directly to you.

·      It is also common for at the start of a horror film for the music to be quieter and slower paced when there is someone narrating and then near the end of the trailer the pace and volume builds are up to create the tension and fitting in with the non dialogue shots of explosions. All the trailers I viewed had this quality, which I think, makes it distinctively a thriller. 

Differences

·      All these trailers had a large amount of similar codes and convections however most thrillers are mainly centered on the dominant male hero, however The Dark Knight focuses just as much upon the Joker (villain) as Batman (hero). This is unique for films but due to so much popularity the Joker received and Heath Ledgers incredible portal of the Joker. This was defiantly what made ‘The Dark Knight’ trailer so unique and captivating.

Research - Timeline of Movie Trailers

Research- Intertextuality

Research- Blank Space Music Video Analysis

Research- Short Film

Research - Adobe Premiere; Making my short film

When given the project of taking unedited footage and making it into a segment of TV drama, there were many things I had to learn to do using Adobe Premier for the first time.

Firstly I cut out all the footage which were bloopers including muck up of lines and microphones coming into the shot.I learnt how to do this by selecting the 'scissor' tool which then cut the clip into a different segment allowing me to the delete it from the rest of the footage. After time I slowly became better at this leading to me being able to cut clips more actually making the clip look more professional and clip it was form a real TV drama.

The next stage was to change the lighting of each clip making sure the exposure matched all the rest of the clips as the view form one angle had unprofessional looking lighting, causing it to look odd when switching between both angles. So I figured out that I needed to change the exposure of the clip in order or it to match the rest of the scene. The colouring of the footage then fitted the 'soap opera' type of vibe.


I then needed to pick a background track to fit behind the dialogue of my film to make it sound more like a soap opera and to get rid of that empty silence. It took my a fair amount of time to pick the correct music as I wanted to build tension but make sure it would still fit well with the conversation and not look out of place. I finally decided on a fast paced piece of music which fitted well with my short film.



Due to me adding music to my short film, it ended up masking some of the dialogue so you could not hear quite as clearly as you did before, so I then had to find the volume tool and turn up the volume in some areas. This was done by selecting a clip and moving the volume tool so it would increase the sound in that area. Due to the dialogue being a priority it was important that I did this.

Finally to finish off my short films I added a few simple transitions to make it look as professional as possible. These where two 'fade to black' transitions as the start and the end of the of the film to make it look like there had been a scene change in the soap opera the clip was from. I think these transitions really topped off my short film and made it look incredibly professional.

Research - Editing and Camera Work of Horror Films