Proposal

Psychological Thriller Mood Board

The Three Narrative Theories and Applying Them to a Trailer (The Witch)

The Three Different Types of Narrative Theory

Prop's Theory (7 characters)
The idea that films are made up of 7 different base characters:

• The Villain - A character who has a conflict against the hero.
• The Donor - They give themselves to the conflict against the villain by either preparing or giving something to the hero to help them.
• The Helper - Helps the hero in their mission against the villain.
• The Princess - The romantic interest who is often sought after.
• The False Hero - Someone who appears to be good at the beginning but has their true intentions revealed.
• The Dispatcher - Someone who reveals the problem within the mission and sends the hero off.
• The Hero - This can be a victim, seeker, paladin, or winner. This person will receive the donor's help and engage with the princess romantically. 

Strauss' Theory (Binary Opposition)
The theory that in order to understand one thing, you must understand its opposite. For example, to understand what light is, you must first experience dark. This is commonly interpreted with:

• Good and Evil
• Night and Day
• Light and Dark
• Love and Hate

Todorov's Theory (Equilibrium)
The theory that the story of a film is based around equilibrium, the idea of things being in perfect balance. This theory orders films like this:

• Everything begins with a peaceful equilibrium, a normality for the characters.
• Something happens which disturbs the normality.
• The disruption is recognised and the characters sought to fix it.
• Things are fixed and a new equilibrium is put in place but things are not the same again.

Narrative Theory Applied to 'The Witch' Trailer

Prop's Theory

• The Villain - Not clear by watching the trailer though we can assume it is 'The Witch' since that is the name of the film.
• The Donor - The Donor is also not made very clear since the trailer is leading the audience to believe the family goes against each other. It doesn't want to give us answers within the trailer so it leaves us with the question of who is on whose side. 
• The Helper - Like the Donor, this is also not made clear for the same reasons.
• The Princess - Since the only young woman in the film is the older sister, we can assume she is the princess. But she will not be a romantic interest because the film focuses on a family, instead it would be maternal love.
• The False Hero - Because the trailer leads us to believe any one of these people could be under the Witch's 'curse', we're not yet sure who the false hero is. Also giving away the false hero within the trailer would spoil the plot of the film.
• The Dispatcher - Here, the dispatcher would be the mother who recognises that one of the children is under a curse. Though whether this is actually true to the film's plot or it's an assumption made by the character who is not only deeply religious but lives in a time where curses would have been something heavily believed in, we are not sure.
• The Hero - We are not entirely sure who the hero is because, again, the trailer isn't giving too much away about the film because it's leading the audience to believe the family turns against each other. But we can assume the hero might turn out to be the father in the end because he is the only one not seen doing bad deeds.

Strauss' Theory

• Light Vs Dark - The trailer begins with a setting during daylight, and then the later clips are within darkness as things take a disturbing route.
• Good Vs Evil - The family of the film is deeply religious, and through the disturbing images we see of what could possibly be the Witch's work, we can assume they are up against something incredibly dark, maybe even satanic. Therefore this point could also be seen as Christianity Vs Satanism. 
• Young Vs Old - At points during the trailer, we see the adults turning against the children. At one point the mother even accuses someone of being 'cursed'.
• Love Vs Hate - At the start of the trailer, the family obviously love each other. But as the trailer goes on and it's assumed one of the family is cursed, they all begin to turn against each other.

Todorov's Theory

• The equilibrium can be seen as the family carrying on with their religious routine, travelling from home to maybe find God. We see them getting on with everyday work such as tending to crops and milking goats.
• The thing that disrupts the equilibrium is the baby going missing, after that the mother recognises something is wrong by accusing someone of cursing the family. 
• We do not see the last two steps of Todorov's Theory as it would spoil the film, this is common for trailers as they tend to only include the first two theories in order to get the audience interest in the film and wanting to watch it to find out what happens.

Horror Movie Magazine Cover and Poster Analysis

1123 by JessCB on Scribd

Initital Thoughts

Link to Initial Thoughts Mind Map on Mindmup

Brief

To create a promotion package for a new film, to include: a trailer, a film magazine front cover (featuring the film) and a poster for the film.

Horrible Bosses Recut Trailer - Preliminary Evaluation -

1. How did you decide on the trailer you picked and why did you pick it?

I picked this trailer in particular because I had watched the film Horrible Bosses recently and felt it would be easier to edit a film that I had recently watched as I was able to easily remember certain parts of the film that could be included in a trailer of a different genre. This included the car chase scenes of the film and the certain violent scenes that would have otherwise been followed up with a comedic remark but I was able to cut these out to keep the crime thriller genre of my trailer. 

I picked this film because it already had crime thriller aspects to it though it was twisted with comedy, I felt that out of the films I had in mind for this recut, this one had the most scenes in it related to the genre I would be recutting it to. I also felt that picking a recent movie would be better than picking a movie such as The Terminator or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which were films I originally planned to recut. But the problem with these was that because they are fairly outdated, the only clips available on Youtube were of bad quality and in order to maintain a decent quality for my trailer, I was better off selecting a recent film that would also have released a lot of clips as part of its marketing campaign. Because the official trailer was fairly limited on clips to convert into a crime thriller, I did have to start using clips released for the marketing campaign to fill in the gaps and with an older or less popular movie, this would not have been possible. 

2. Why did you choose to adjust the genre of your trailer to the one you picked?
I chose this genre because not only am I a huge fan of crime thrillers, them being my favourite film genre, but I also felt this was the genre the film could be most easily adapted to. Also, due to my knowledge on great crime thriller films, I already knew which scored would go well with this styled trailer and what kind of mood I needed to adapt it to.

Another reason I chose this genre was because some of my favourite trailers from the past have come from this genre. Trailers for films such as Nightcrawler, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Gone Girl, Jason Bourne, and Prisoners are all crime thriller and crime drama films that have excellent trailer. Therefore this inspired me to opt for this genre because not only did I already know a lot about it, but I also preferred the effects and feel to these trailers above over genres such as romance or action. These trailers seemed a lot more unique than other genres as most romance and action trailers tend to be repetitive with the same kind of outline to them. Crime thriller allowed me to not only easily turn Horrible Bosses into a different genre due to the clips provided, but also be creative with what I made.

3. How did you go about the production of your trailer (editing, sound, etc.)?

I mainly edited the trailer by taking various clips off Youtube, cutting away the comedy scenes, taking away the clip sound if necessary, and then reordering them so the trailer ran smoothly and captured the audience's attention. I also had to make sure to include clips that included aspects of the storyline so the trailer could tell the audience what the film was about. I cut up the clips using the 'blade' tool in Final Cut Pro. I also used Final Cut Pro's sound editing tools to blend the sound of my clips in with the soundtrack so there was an equal balance of dialogue and soundtrack.

The soundtrack I chose was 'An Itch' by Trent Reznor and came from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo score. This also had to be edited down during trailer production as the original piece was over 4 minutes long and I needed to edit it down to an appropriate trailer length. I did this by using the 'blade' tool but also overlapping and fading out the volume of each 'bladed' score selection. This was so the score selections would blend into each other so anyone watching the trailer wouldn't notice the cut within the music.

4. How did you manage the time of your production (did you meet deadlines, etc.)?

I did not meet deadlines as searching for appropriate clips took longer than anticipated. On top of this, editing also took longer than anticipated as not only is editing a fiddly and unpredictable process if you're unsure of how it will turn out, but I also had to learn how to use the programme (Final Cut Pro) as I created the trailer as this is the first time I have ever used this programme. Overall, this slowed down the process of production. Once this was sorted out, I managed time by planning what I was going to do with the trailer before I got round to making it. I also made sure I had collected every possible clip I could use to make the trailer so I would not have to go back out and search for more clips during the process of production.

5. What problems arose during the production of your trailer and how did you overcome them?

Problems that arose during production mostly involved clip searching and the sound that came with the clips. Clip searching was difficult as I had to mostly look for clips that did not include a soundtrack already over the top of them that my own trailer soundtrack wouldn't be able to drown out. This was because my sound editing skills using this programme cannot currently diminish the soundtrack from these clips so it's still audible over my own trailer's music. The solution to this was to either mute the clip or scrap it altogether. Because of this, a lot of the clips within the trailer were unusable and rather than recutting Horrible Bosses' official trailer, I more or less had to create a new trailer based off clips from Youtube.

On top of this, I also had issues selecting a soundtrack for my trailer. The two other soundtracks I had available that would have also fitted the mood and genre of my trailer were 'Nice to Meet Me' and 'Greeting the Menace' by Zack Hemsey and also 'I'd Love to Change the World' by Jetta. These were all songs that would have gone well with my trailer and I had difficulty choosing between the four. In the end, I overcame this by choosing 'An Itch' because this song had also been used in the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo USA official trailer, a film also belonging to the crime thriller genre. 

6. What have you learnt from this process and how will you improve your own final product? 
Skills I learnt from this process was how to cut and stick clips together on Final Cut Pro, the various subtitle and editing transition options available on the programme, and how to cut and blend a song onto a trailer without the cuts being audible to the trailer's audience.

I would improve my final cut by improving my editing on the soundtrack. Despite my efforts to blend in the different cuts of the music, there were still parts that were noticeable to the audience. In the future, I will improve this by learning different tips on sound editing off Youtube videos and Final Cut Pro tutorials. 

I will also improve my final product by included an introduction to the actors and actresses involved in the film towards the end of the trailer. This is done by most trailers to attract audiences that are fans of these stars. It would also help prolong the length of my trailer as it was also a very short trailer due to the limit of clips available for it.