My Coursework Report

For my MS2 pre-production I worked in a group of two in order to produce a trailer for a thriller film “Locked”. The targeted audience for my film are teen audience in the age range of 16-25 years old. The trailer I produced therefore uses actor in this age range, meaning that the audience can relate to them and so be more engaged in watching the production. In addition, I also used a high number of elements that portrayed the idea of an unordinary happening to ordinary people, in everyday situations.

Before commencing with my production, I used a wide range of planning techniques in order to allow me to meet all of the conventions that a thriller trailer contains. In order to do this I created a ‘bowl’ on “Pinterest”, where I stored all my ideas and suggestions. These included, a range of already existing, successful thriller trailers, such as ‘Gone Girl’ and ‘The Boy Next Door’, which I watched, analysed and that later allowed me to pick out specific techniques that are used throughout all trailers of this genre making them appealing and interesting. This includes a high number of fades to black between the different scenes showed, as well as low-pitched music and voice-overs that help to increase the tension created.

In addition, I also created an account of the characters that I wanted to use in my trailer. As the target audience for my project were teenagers, I made sure to use actors within my trailer that were of the teen age. This therefore, meant that the audience would be attracted to watch the production, as they would be able to relate and associate with them, by being familiar with the situations that they are in as well as the language that they use. Creating the character account allowed me to become more familiar with the characters and so establishing their role within the film. It also made an easier job for the actor, as they knew exactly what kind of character they should be playing in. this further helped me to make the scenes look more realistic and natural.  

Moreover, in order to help furthermore plan and organise my work, I produced a number of pre-production artefacts. These allowed me to generate together all my ideas in an organised way, so that I could later use them as a guide when it came to the actual production. As my artefacts I created both, a storyboard, which involved the images and descriptions of the key scenes as well as, a script for the opening scene of “Locked”. In order to do this, I used the website “celtex” to help me. This is because the website provides templates for storyboard and scrip writing, which helped me to ensure that everything I did was in the correct format and to the best standard possible. When creating the storyboard, I took photographs of the main scenes that I wanted to include in my trailer, placed them on the page in the correct order and included a description of what will be presented in the scene during the actual trailer. However, if I was to do the task again in the future, I would make sure to spend more time on the storyboard and include much more detail about the camera angles used and the effect that they would create.

As I worked in a group of two, in order to create the trailer for “Locked”, me and my friend, Raimonda had to make sure that we equally divided our roles in order to make sure that each of us played an equal role in the production of the moving image. Therefore, my main responsibility was to edit the clips; however, I also helped Raimonda with the recording of the scenes. Raimonda on the other hand, was responsible for creating the soundtrack for the trailer as well as producing the credit notes, to add at the end of the video.

In order to edit all the clips into one flowing piece, I used the Apple programme, iMovie. I decided upon using this software as I was already familiar with it, due to using it for my previous media coursework, and so it allowed me to quickly and easily proceed with the editing.

During the editing part, I found myself cutting a lot of the scenes, which I had gathered in order to ensure that not too much of the content was revealed and so that only the strongest parts of the production were included. Moreover, as I mentioned previously, I also included a lot of fades to black between the scenes. I did this, as during my planning I was able to identify that in all thriller trailers many of those were used. As an example, in the “The Boy Next Door” trailer, as a class we were able to identify as many as 13 fades to black just in 1 minute of the trailer. This editing technique allowed me to create tension in the moving image as it crated a cut off point for the scene, connoting to the audience that something important was meant to happen however, not revealing it to them, and therefore, persuading them to watch the full film. When I finished with the editing of the scenes and Raimonda has provided me with the background music and credit blocks, I also edited them into the trailer and finalised the project.

In my trailer, I made sure to use a range of camera angles in order to allow me to portray the emotions and status of the different actors. This was a clear strength of the production as it allowed it to fit in well with the conventions of the thriller genre. For example, during the scene when two characters (antagonist and protagonist) are shown, I used a long shot, with the protagonist standing above in order to portray their power and higher status. In addition, I also used a number of clos up shots. An example of one is the use of a close up when the antagonist (Skylar) is shown. The use of this allowed me to connote to the audience the kind of emotions that the character was having and the mood she was in.

However, a weakness of the production was the fact that some of the scenes were filmed outside. This meant that background noise was present and so made it seem unprofessional. In addition, some of the lighting inside was not great meaning that the footage was poorly lit and so once again did not seem very professional. In order to improve this, during editing I made sure to change the colours of them so that they were all darker, making most of them look similar and fit together. This also, helped in creating suspicion, increasing tension and following the conventions of a thriller.

After I was done, I presented the trailer to my teacher as well as some students from my class, this allowed me to gain feedback and make any changes that would have helped me to improve it, allowing me to achieve the highest level possible. As feedback, my peers told me that the fades to black I included were too short and therefore, very difficult to notice. They also said that it was difficult to understand the plot of the trailer, as the dialogue was too quiet and difficult to understand at times. Moreover, my teacher said that some of the scenes were still too long and not very strong at certain areas.

As a result of this feedback, I went back to my project and edited it further in order to make sure that all of the problems were fixed. In the correction, based on the tips from my peers I extended the transitions between the scenes (fades to black) so that they were more noticeable and created a much sharper cut to the scenes. Linking to this, I also wanted to make sure that the plot of the trailer was much easier to understand and therefore, in some of the transitions to black, I included short snappy phrases that linked to the storyline however did not reveal it too much. Also, as I was told that some of the dialogue was not clear enough and difficult to understand, me and Raimonda decided to mute most of the conversations completely and just base conveying the message through the text and background music. This not only made the trailer seem much more professional, but it also helped to build tension as the audience was left to guess what was happening in the scene. By completely muting the scenes, it also allowed us to overcome the weakness mentioned before, of background noise causing the footage to seem unprofessional.

Overall, my final piece was created in a quality, similar to the one of other thriller trailers. This was as I have completed a lot of previous research to ensure I was aware of all the codes and conventions as well as, asked for feedback from peers and my teacher.