One Missed Call poster analysis

Psychological genre research

The genre of Psychological is related to the mind or processes of the mind; obstacles are mental rather than physical. Sometimes the suspense is drawn from one solitary character where they must resolve conflicts with their own mind. Usually, this conflict is an effort to understand something that has happened to them. These conflicts are made more of a struggle with physical expressions of the turmoil in the means of either physical manifestations, or physical contortions of the characters at play.

Examples of psychological horror films are The Ring, Psycho and The Shining. We will draw on themes of this genre by not letting our audience be fully aware of the plot  in our teaser trailer(by not having shots in chronological order and no spoken dialect) so they would have to watch the film to discover which character is in turmoil or whether what is happening in the trailer is even real.

Presentation on two choices of genres

Sherlock Holmes Website

Very effective horror teaser trailer

http://dont-be-afraid-of-the-dark.the-movie-trailer.com/

the use of non diagetic sound and a black screen is effective in a tense build up then sudden noise and visuals make the viewer jump. After the titles and credits at the end there is another scene to make the viewer jump, this makes the trailer more memorable, and would be a very good idea for our teaser trailer.

This poster is simple yet effective, a shot behind the killer close to the floor shows the weapon and not his face, hidden identity is a fear shared by many people because motives are hidden. The slogan is a twist on one of the ten commandments, 'love thy neighbour' has been changed to 'fear thy neighbour'. Because the ten commandments are known worldwide, this slogan is a memorable one. Because the weapon is a pitchfork, this poster implies that the film is set in the countryside, where there are less people and where police stations can be far away, this shows the fear that help will not arrive in dangerous situations.

Wolf Creek poster analysis

In this poster a montage of the victim's faces while they are scared is used, in order to make the audience feel this fear. The pictures have a dark orange/yellow tint, which is a sickly colour, is intense and also connotes danger.  The slogan gives away the theme of the movie, and two words 'thrill' and 'hunt' are larger, they are two words that can be associated with each other yet it is unnerving to the audience because it is clear it is about hunting humans. The single pictures of the faces are actually made to look like creased photos, to make it seem more realistic.

The Strangers poster analysis

In this poster the audience is placed behind the victims, creating the feeling that they are helpless bystanders. A sense of unease is promoted in that the audience can see the front of the killers, though they are wearing masks to hide their identity and show no emotion.  There is a slogan at the top which is effective at evoking fear, the word home is a safe word, where someone feels comfortable and the phrase implies an invasion of that. The mise en scene of the killers (clothing) is 'normal', showing that the killers could be anyone.

The Strangers Teaser Trailer

This Trailer inspired us to look into masked villains. As we want to explore the fear of the unknown as well as insanity. The use of still picture gives a great effect with the tag lines, as it depicts a factual informative slide show. This enhances the 'fear factor' as it creates a reality. 

Different shots from horror trailers.

The shots used in these teaser trailers are dim lighting from natural light or bright lights from torches and in the shots the people's faces are blacked out by the light so you can only see their silhouette.

Initial Idea

We have found a good location-an abandoned house, and have come up with a plot:
A small group of school boys decide to spend the night in an allegedly haunted house just outside of town, they bully a classmate into driving them there-he is a regular victim. He drives off, leaving them alone for the night. Strange things start happening in the house, the boys hear footsteps, see shadows moving, and one by one they start to disappear. The boys realise there is a killer in the house, and need to find a way to survive and escape the house.
We decided to go against the convention of having boys and girls in a horror movie to try and make it look different and unique compared to other teen horrors.