Final Decisions Costume

This is the only costume we will need for our trailer. As you can see it is a stereotypical santa outfit. We will use this outfit because the usual opinion of Santa is that he is friendly character and we plan to subvert that so the killer is a terrible person. We will also subvert the idea that children idolize santa, we will do this by making the children scared of him instead. Due to our characters personality his costume will be juxtaposed to the killers personality yet the red can symbolise blood so it could also be a good match.

References
Myth of Santa - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34525202/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/santa-claus-real-man-behind-myth/ - Date Accessed: 18/01/2012

How Coca - Cola changed Santa - http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/heritage/cokelore_santa.html - Date Accessed: 18/01/2012

Final Decisions Props

These are the props we plan to use in our trailer. Most of them are very typical of christmas e.g. the christmas tree and the santa hat. We have decided to use these because we feel that it will convey the idea that our trailer is set around Christmas/late December. The scrabble board and book are also there to show that the characters are kids and that they are still young enough to believe in Santa.

These pictures are juxtaposed because we have the typical objects associated with christmas yet we have a knife and blood which is associated with gore, horror and brutality. These objects are vital to our trailer because without them we will not be able to give the christmassy - horror feeling that we would like to convey to our audience.

Christmas Logo

Below are some ideas for the film logo that Tom created. As a group we had to choose which one we thought was suitable. We liked the font and the red on the letters from the 2nd one but we thought that there needed to be a christmas tree in the background from the first idea.We also like the black and grey colours from the first picture but we aslo wanted the blurred effect in the background to be added in from the third idea so Tom went away and produced our final film log which is the 4th picture down. We feel like this is a suitable logo because it shows that our film is very dark yet we can see the elements of Chistmas.


We found that this was a great idea because it had the red in the text. This is good because it symbolises blood and danger yet it is tightly connected to christmas. We decided against this idea because we thought the swirls looked like eyes and it gave away too much about the danger, this also disabled us from having some sort of enigma.


We also like the idea of the red and the font but we found that the background may confuse people because the green tinsel could have been confused for a branch or something else. A general audience response showed that this wasn't popular because the green tinsel could be misconstrued as a snake/ribbon.


We found that this one gave no clear idea that it was associated with Christmas or it was a horror. The colour in the font and the background do not create any meanings or obviously symbolise something.

This is our final logo that we came to agree on. We found that the grey and almost white symbolises fog, snow and darkness. It gives a feel that there is a lot of unknown, this implies that the film will be of the horror genre. Also, along with the grey/white the red on the font implies gore/blood/danger and the Christmas tree implies Christmas and happiness because the star is very noticeable.

animatic

This is the final version of our animatic. We have recently re done all of the storyboards for our trailer so we needed to make another animatic, a task we decided we wanted to do. It is very simply edited with them all following on from one another but this time we have left more time for each picture to be shown so the viewer can absorb more information. We have also added in the "Santa clause is coming to town" song played slowly on the keyboard without singing. This is because it is a key element of our film. We felt like this was a better animatic than our previous one because it shows the story line of the film and creates more of an enigma than our previous animatic that we agreed had not been thought through and wasn't as much as a group effort as this one.

References
http://www.storyboards-east.com/animat.htm - Examples of animatics and stroyboards. Date Accessed: 23/04/2012

Storyboard New

This is the new and final version of the storyboard for our film trailer. We felt that the last one did not follow the conventions of a trailer and didn't build up as much suspense as we would have liked. As a group we sat down and decided to write the script and what images we would show with it, this enabled us being able to picture what we wanted to see and then thinking of images to match what was going on in the script.

1)The first few shots were the same as the old storyboard but we showed them in a lot more detail and made sure we planned every shot alongside the script we have produced.

2)In the second part of our storyboard is where a lot of things changed. We included every shot we wanted because compared to the old storyboard it is very detailed and shows the shots well.

3)We decided in this part of the trailer we wanted to increase tension so we showed shots back and forth between the mother and the brother. We also introduce the killer here but don't show his face or any features to give his identity away.

4)At the end of the trailer we have the title of the film. We felt like this was better compared to the other storyboard where the title was at the beginning. We will flash to the brother at the end saying one final line before ending the trailer.

'Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale' Trailer HD

Over the holidays I have been trying to improve my blog to a grade C but with little luck. To change this I plan to look at example blogs to see how they're structured and presented. I will also look at at the depth of analysis in these blogs to better my own.

As a group we plan to start filming once all our blog work is up to a good standard. We have also been watching a trailer this tightly linked to our film which we can draw new ideas from.


We came to the conclusion that we will portray our Santa character almost like the Santa character from Rare Exports. As you can see from the picture, it is Santa yet in some ways it isn't. The ways in which the character is represented as Santa is the beard and the hair due to it almost being completely white. On the other hand, he looks menacing and has grey/brown parts in his beard. Also, his crooked nose makes him look almost evil and not how Santa should be portrayed. It's as though he just looks like a stereotypical grumpy pensioner.

References
2010 - Rare Exports (Jalmari Helander)
18/01/2012 - http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt1401143/

Media Studies - Audience Research Questionnaire Results & Analysis.

Try to include a setting based around the woods or a forest and to include pictures of such in our locating scouting post. We will need to make sure that we choose the right times to take the pictures to add an enigma and boost the scare factor of where we want our trailer to be set.

Focus particularly on music for our horror elements but still making sure that the music creates suspense and an enigma as this would make the soundtrack more effective.

Plan how we can incorporate gore into the trailer without it looking cheap or tacky.

Take into account both the horror movies and Christmas movies that proved most popular with the people we interviewed. We should watch these and take certain elements from them and post what parts we are using for inspiration.

Think about lead roles, female proved most popular so perhaps we need to further develop our current female characters so that they have a more dominant role in the production or maybe include a female lead into the cast (possible heroine)

Think about how we're going to succeed in putting across the thriller sub-genre to our production; an idea for how we could do this is watch some iconic thrillers like The Shining.

interviews

These are our interviews for our trailer. We asked 5 people a few questions of what they would like to see in a horror/christmas trailer.