Planning-USP

The USP in our film is the date that brings our four main characters together. Throughout our research we found that in the vast majority of horror films the main characters seem to have a pre-established relationship such as being friends, as in Oujia. However we decided to subvert this and use a different convention that ties our characters together as our USP. To do this we decided to use their date of birth which connects them all, as seen in our title "D.O.B". The spirit/ghost in our film decides to haunt these characters in our film because it was the same date that a drunk driver killed his family, who was also 18. This narrative is further explored later in the film and because evident that their date of birth ties them to the spirit as well as each other. This provides a USP  as we emphasise the dangers experienced by our main characters by offering no sense of familiarity through other characters, forcing to create new bonds in a short space of time, heightening fear for the consumer throughout. 

Planning- Our film pitch

As seen above we pitched our ideas for our thriller trailer to our class mates and our teacher identify key features and conventions of our film from plot to target demographic. The process was useful as it gave them an opportunity to critic our ideas and clarify what aspects they feel work well and what they think could be improved. The feedback for us was very helpful and we were told that the majority of our ideas were good and our conventions clearly fit our intended genre of a thriller-horror film trailer. However we also were told some positive criticism which was that they were concerned about how we would introduce our characters in such a hostile environment like an abandoned barn without it seeming forced and unnatural. We took this feedback on board and decided that we would use a text message from a loved one such as a boyfriend or girlfriend inviting them to come to the barn. This was a simple aspect that we as a group had not thought about prior to our pitch which is why I found it to be such a useful exercise.  

Planning- Scripts and Voiceovers

After our research into the structure of different thriller films, we decided how we wanted to begin with a slow tempo start and build into a crescendo of music and footage montage. This meant that we could exploit the script carefully to convey the narrative of the film to the audience at the start whilst gradually building the tempo. However in the scene we would still include horror/thriller mise-en-scene to portray the genre of the film immediately through the use of low key lighting and eerie non-digetic sound.

Script:

George: "My girlfriend asked me to meet her here, what about you?"

India: "My boyfriend asked me to come here for a camping trip for my birthday!"

Sean: "Wait, no way, it’s my birthday too!"

Hayley: "Same…"

 George: "Same…"

Hayley: "I really don’t like this."

This is a feature we saw in our research of 1408, they opened with a conversation which set the narrative in place for the film which was about the death of his daughter as seen previously in the research. For us we had to tie a connection between 4 strangers and make this clear for the audience. We was able to achieve this through our dialogue in our script and starting the film in this way.

Secondly we decided to use a deep stereotypical British male voice to conform to the conventions of thriller trailers. However we saw a feature which was using simple, yet effective wording of "This Summer" in The "Lucy" trailer which can be seen below. To make our trailer unique we decided to incorporate these two elements together using the voice over and also the bold statement wording of "this summer" to engage the audience in our film. This will then promote the fact that the film will be coming out in the summer, however the fact that it is a broad statement saying "this summer" means the audience will engage further if they want to find out exactly when it will be released.

 Voiceover: "This summer, 4 strangers, get a surprise they wasn’t expecting!"

Lastly in our script we have include a short piece of digetic diologue to compliment the soundtrack as we felt if all of the music was non-digetic the audience would lose interest. This is a feature of trailer conventions we saw in 1408 when they combined the use of non-digetic and digetic sound in the conversation over skype with his wife, it always them to ensure  the audience is engage and we found this effective when we watched it ourselves.

Sean: "Help me"

George: "Get in"

Planning-Storyboard

We have decided to use "post-it" notes to storyboard our trailer. This way if we decided we want to change any of our shots then we can simply take out one of them out and replace it.

As seen above the storyboard was a very effective tool in the planning stage of our trailer as it allowed us to visualise each frame of the trailer. Therefore allowing us to figure out whether different shots would work with one another. We found this method much more effective than previous styles of storyboarding simply because of the convenience when looking to change orders and shots.

Planning- Production Company and Logo

Production Company:
Our production company is called 'Pinnacle Productions' we chose this as pinnacle is the long point on the top of a tower or skyscraper. This connotes that our production company is at the top and is always pointing up and reaching to the top which suggests we want to achieve more. This shows that we are a very competitive company who are trying to become the best in the business by reaching the 'pinnacle' or the top of the chain. Sky scrapers are also very often situated with others, which has the connotation that we are aware of the competition but will work very hard to outperform the opponents. 
Logo:
As seen below our production company logo features an image of mountains. During our research we were inspired by a major production company 'Paramount', they have been producing films successful for over 100 years. Paramount also have a mountain so we took this experience and adapted the concept into our own lower budget company. We used the mountains because they connote that our company is a large, powerful and suggests they are aiming for the 'top' in the business. However we have used very plain and simple colours and design to portray that we are a low budget film company, although maintaining professional and the ethics of a high budget company. Further to this we used sans-serif font that is very clear and precise although having elements that are not quite perfect like the 'N''s as this shows we are a small budget film company but maintains a level of class. Also the use of a simple picture, writing and colours actually gives a professional feel about it which shows again that we are striving for more and when we asked class mates when we were designing this they agreed.

Planning-Soundtrack

This is a picture of me searching through different music tracks for our trailer. We decided to choose our music after we filmed as we wanted to find a track that fitted our footage effectively. Due to our footage we needed a track that started off slow and eerie, yet build to an intense fast paced track to match our montage of past paced shots and editing. This was a feature we saw frequently in our research as the music often built up from a slow paced track into a fast paced one as the trailer progressed.

 After a great deal of searching through different tracks I was able to find something suitable for our trailer. The first track I found had a slow and low tone and pitch which create an eerie sound which we wanted to match our first clips at the start of the trailer. However this soundtrack didn’t progress any further which meant we needed to find an additional track to also incorporate into the trailer. We then found another perfect track which had a low tone yet it was fast paced and also had an element of breathing in it which increases the adrenaline for the audience as it highlighted the danger and tension in the trailer. We then used an expendational fade on the sound and the two different soundtracks worked perfectly together for our trailer!

Film Planning- Initial Ideas

After our research on a wide range of thriller films ranging is a variety of sub-genres such as horror-thrillers, action-thrillers and crime-thrillers. We decided we wanted to stay away from the conventional jumpy horror films as it would be too stereotypical of the genre. We decided we would aim for a crime-thriller and this is what we began to draft a plotline for.

The plot for this film idea was a kingpin drug lord who decides to target the weak and vulnerable to supply his drugs. The film was going to be based around a group of young friends similar to what we saw in our research of the 'Kids' trailer. This would therefore allow us to target a young audience which we know a lot about due to our ages and are most likely going to be able to achieve a preferred reading of our film.

After starting to plan how we would craft the elements of our plot line into a trailer it became apparent that the features we wanted to include to conform to stereotypical crime-thriller conventions, was simply not going to be achievable for us. This is because we needed to include certain figure such as policemen as our film was going to use a USP of the drug lord being taken down from the police force point of view. This would have been difficult for us to achieve whilst keeping the realistic look of the trailer that we wanted to create verisimilitude for the audience. 

This is where we decided to change to plans of our initial ideas. We decided to go for a more conventional horror-thriller film we will be able to achieve a more proffessional looking trailer whilst still incorperating the stereotypical conventions of the genre. We then decided on a new plot line which is an awoken ghost who haunts 4 young teenagers due to their date of birth falling on the same date as his death. We have started to story board and we are able to convey the look we plot line whilst achieving verilisimiltude for the audience. Further to this we decided to use 4 teenagers similar to the age of actors in our first idea because once again we will be able to use our own knowledge to achieve a preffered reading from the audience.