Evaluation Essay first draft

The very first thing we decided having already planned out a horror film trailer, was that the whole movie would be filmed on a hand held camera, (mainly due to the fact that all we had was a hand held camera, however it may make the film look uniquely different, which can only be a good thing).

The film's basic plot is about a small group of teenagers who wander into an abandoned school, they are just having fun playing around and even find a hand held camera. They start using the camera until all of a sudden they realise that one of their group (Sam) is missing. They look around for him and eventually find him in a room sitting in the corner on his own. Little do they know he has been possessed by a demon, this becomes evident to his friends as his physical appearance has become grim and he starts screaming like some kind of monster. Like a traditional modern day horror film he kills the others off in a gruesome and shocking manner that should frighten and maybe even disturb the audience (who will be adult). One friend will eventually survive and emotionally he kills his own friend who has been possessed by a demon.

The group first had to post ideas on this blog and were given certain tasks for research and planning. I chose to do some research on the films, Paranormal activity which is a new film, the Exorcist and Poltergeist which are both relatively old films. Looking at the details of these films gave me ideas which could be contributed to the making of our film trailer along with the actual story (which we still needed in order for the trailer to work).

We couldn't really point out any specific camera angels/shots since it's a hand held camera being held by the characters, but to name what shots we do have they would most probably be close up or extreme close up. We filmed the whole trailer in a corridor in the school and a couple of empty rooms provided fairly good scenery. We edited out several sounds and vocals that could of ruined the fearful mood in the trailer.

The group needed to decide on a soundtrack for the trailer and we were aided by a website with other soundtracks that could be used for films.

On the whole I think we produced a good horror film trailer with just a corridor, a couple of empty rooms and a spare hand held camera. I think the trailer will give the target audience a good insight into what the film is about and may do the job in advertising our horror film.