Green/ red card ratings

Stages of a trailer

A trailer is usually broken down into 3 stages. These 3 stages are what makes a trailer successful and catch the audiences attention. The first stage sets up the story for the audience, giving the audience a part understanding. The second stage drives the story further and usually ends with a climax. The final stage is usually a visual montage of powerful and emotional moments from the film. This stage also features a strong/recognisable piece of music and will often show some key actors and actresses. Through any of these stages a voice over can be included to give a brief, necessary explanation as to what is happening.

Age Certificate

These are the BBFC age certificate ratings for films, As we are creating a horror trailer we had to look at the top end of these ratings to chose which one we wanted our film to be. Each rating comes with guidelines and limitations as to what you can do. We felt that the 15 rating would be best suited for what we want to create.

Theorists

To help gain an understanding of the horror genre even more closely I decided to look into some of theories that be linked to the film industry and see if they can give me a different outlook on them.
I chose to look at two theories, one from a male and one from a female. I chose to look and LEVI-STRAUSS' theory about binary oppositions and also LAURA MULVEY'S theory about the male gaze.

Camera shots/angles

Within every film a huge range of camera shots are always used. We want our trailer to be like any other and follow this wide usage as well. Here are a list of the camera shots I have looked into closely:

• Extreme close up
• Close up 
• Mid shot 
• Long shot
• Extreme long shot
• Establishing shot

As well as looking at camera shots we also looked at the angles in which a camera is placed which has massive effect on the camera shots used giving them a whole new meaning. Here is a lost of the camera angles that have been looked at: 

• Birds eye view
• Low angle 
• High angle 
• Eye level

Supernatural Horror

Once we had chosen to create a trailer using the sub-genre of Supernatural Horror, I started to look at some of the "typical" features within the genre itself.
I looked at:

• Setting
• Lighting
• Characters
• Costumes
• Weaponry
• Sound/Sound Effects
• Plot Lines
• Specific Events 

I believe that doing this shall help us to create a better understanding of the genre and create a more realistic and accurate trailer. To look at the the features click on the Trailer Research Page. 

Genre

We quickly came to the conclusion that we wanted to produce a trailer using the genre of horror. We however also then decided that we should include a sub genre and from research concluded the sub genre of Supernatural Horror.

To see our research through the sub genre decision, look on our Research page.