Film Trailer Portfolio

Film Trailer Portfolio

When the task of creating a film trailer was first put to us, I had

several ideas for the movie's context. The first was of a movie in the

action genre that dealt with revenge, whilst the other two were in the

horror genre. The horror genre appealed to me more, as a low budget

film can still have the desired effect by use of different filming

techniques, and I wanted to depend more on a psychological aspect. My

first idea was to do a film about a poltergeist. I had watched several

films such as "Poltergeist", but wanted to create a film that relied

less on visual effects, something that leant towards the style of

Albert Hitchcock, who is still seen today as the "Master of Suspense".

This Poltergeist idea did intrigue me, but I could not think of a plot

thick enough, or original enough to capture an audience.

The remaining idea was more original, and would create the correct

feel of the horror genre. This idea leant more towards several horror

films from the 1970s, when a crop of films also used religious

undertones to great effect. My idea was for an ancient relic to be

uncovered that posed a threat to religion, an idea that didn't require

special effects or large production values. I took this idea and tried

to further it by thickening out the plot for the trailer. To do this,

I researched other films in the same genre.

I looked directly at three films from the last three decades, "The

Exorcist", "The Name of the Rose" and "The Sixth Sense". I was first

attracted to these films by the techniques that had been used to

produce the desired effect on the audience.

The Exorcist (William Friedkin 1973)

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... on a Panasonic Digital Camera, and

was edited using Pinnacle Studio software on a PC. All of the footage

was shot without the use of a tripod after several experiments to see

what presented the storyline the most effectively. Most notably at the

beginning of the trailer, a short zoom shot towards a radio speaker

was attempted with a tripod, but the elegant and fixed camera movement

lacked the character and ambience that was available when recorded

handheld, especially with the emotional sound bite that accompanied

the shot.

I decided to use two different tints

Editing during "I dare not say"

I wanted the speed of the trailer to change when I was editing, from

calm and mellow camera movement with slow transitions, to brisk and

abrupt movement with quick transitions. This was my idea of

representing chaos.