Postmodernist theory - Funny games trailer

                                Funny games Trailer – Postmodernist theory

The postmodernist point of view would say that this trailer knowing the rules break them down and does the unexpected in an unknowing way.

Referring to the Funny Games trailer they attempt to distance themselves from structuralism as there is no form of genre. Ferdinand de Sassure says that a society must use semiotics (science of signs) to explore the structures within a culture for society to be culturally constructed.

The trailer demonstrates this in many ways such as the mise en scene, lighting, sound, setting, characters, paradigms etc.

The setting starts off with a family of three moving into a beautiful house in the day time. This is deliberately done in the day time to set a jolly setting. They also play an opera cd in the car which sets a happy setting. This is a torture, and starts the setting totally opposite to the theme.

Mid way, the music stops to create confusion and the young son says seriously ‘mom there’s someone here’. It turns out to be a kind young gentleman who one of the ‘villains’ and is shown to live next door and politely makes his way in. The music that introduces the villain, is jolly and mysterious .This is where a paradigm shift is used; the ‘kind’ villain is amazed by the golf kits and suddenly uses it to hit the father and breaks his leg, unexpectedly. This is when the pace of the music starts to get faster.

The villain makes a bet, ‘by tomorrow morning you’ll all be dead’. He then sings “inee meeni mini mo” choosing who to kill first. This again is done unexpectedly; a song is used to pick who to murder as if it’s a joke. This shows that there is no genre or structure to the trailer.

At the end of the trailer, the pace of the music increases even more. One of the villains says “you shouldn’t forget the importance of entertainment”, this plays with the ‘bricolage’ of the film. Most to the time the villains are calm and smiling/laughing, on the other hand, in other typical horror films the villain would tend to be angry, evil and mean. This trailer does the opposite which plays with the construction of the film.

There are many tone cards in this trailer and doesn’t just use words related to horror but uses positive words too. This can be referred to the postmodernist theory as there is no structure of the tone cards. 

• -        The game is simple                       -   Savage
  -        Pick a family                                   -   Extreme
  -        Pick a victim                                   -   Evil
  -        Darling                                            -   Magnificent
  -        Dangerous                                     -   Mysterious
  -        Wicked                                            -  Brutal
  -        Wild                                                 -  Brilliant
  -         Sensual

The tone cards are purposely used starting with the same letter twice which is very interesting as it shows contrast. For example darling and dangerous are completely different and shows how it can be nice and it can be horrible.

Pitch and treatment preparation

Here as a group, we have come up with ideas for our trailers and shared our ideas onto a diagram using props, characters and settings.  

My example of a Pitch and a Treatment

Pitch 

Thirteen year old possessed twins torchering families, just like yours. Escape is impossible, stealing pure souls, slaughtering the blood from their hearts. Our morning juice they call it.

Treatment  

-October 2013, South London. A family of three, mum, dad and 13 year old Johnny. Its Johnny’s first day at his new school. He makes new friends, Mia and Tia the twins.  He invites them over for tea. The same Johnny’s dog dies. Mia and Tia are confused and feel extremely sorry for Johnny. Johnny’s parents couldn’t find any evidence of how their dog died, even by taking it to the vets. They assume it may have been because of his age but what they couldn’t understand is how it happened so soon. Johnny is very upset about this and doesn’t act himself.

Mia and Tia decide to cheer him up. They go for a bonfire night in the woods with his parents uninformed. They have a picnic and take lots of snacks with them. Then the twins insist on playing hide and seek, but blindfolded with their hands tied up. As its  Johnny’s turn, he’s blindfolded and his hands are tied. As they play they spin him around and make him find them. 

Suddenly Johnny feels something behind him approaching him, he tries hard to undo the knots tying his hands but its too tight. He is helpless He feels something scratching his back. He can not see anything and screams. Mia scrapes her nails into his back. Tia rips poor Johnny's chest open with her dagger like teeth. The animal like twins are evil monsters trapped in little girls bodies. They are possessed children. 

After slaughtering poor Johnny and drinking their so called 'morning juice' blood, every bit of evidence is destroyed. His flesh and bones are buried or thrown in the river. Johnny's parents are left sick and worried crying out for their one and only missing son. Police are set out to find him but he is nowhere to be seen. 

Mia and Tia come to visit the next day and ask if Johnny's okay as he didn't come into school today. Johnny's parents question the twins asking them if they had seen Johnny after school or any other information they had of him as he hasn't come home since yesterday. There response was that they had not seen him after school acting shocked and worried. 

After months of searching, for there beloved son, they still find it hard to accept that they have lost their son forever and that he will not be found. A friend of the father comes to visit, he is a priest. He looks into the story and believes that something had happened relating their dog to die and for their son to go missing. He suspects that something is doing this. 

The priest prepares rituals. The twins find this extremely disturbing as it violates their devilish spirits and so they come to haunt the parents. During the haunting of the parents, the twins prepare scary scenes in the house during late nights. The parents start to believe that the house is haunted. The priest then comes the next day and identifies whats doing this. He tells them its the twins as they find a hair ribbon in the garden. 

The priests performs other rituals to destroy the possessed spirits in the twins. The fight is difficult.  

Pitch research

A killer known as Ghostface begins killing off teenagers, and as the body count begins rising, one girl and her friends find themselves contemplating the "Rules" of horror films as they find themselves living in a real-life one. - Scream 


Paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren work to help a family terrorized by a dark presence in their farmhouse. – Conjouring


A husband and wife who recently lost their baby adopt a 9-year-old girl who is not nearly as innocent as she claims to be - Orphan 


A reimagining of the classic horror tale about Carrie White, a shy girl outcast by her peers and sheltered by her deeply religious mother, who unleashes telekinetic terror on her small town after being pushed too far at her senior prom. - Carie 2013 


A young girl buys an antique box at a yard sale, unaware that inside the collectible lives a malicious ancient spirit. The girl's father teams with his ex-wife to find a way to end the curse upon their child. - The Possession

In 1921, England is overwhelmed by the loss and grief of World War I. Hoax exposer Florence Cathcart visits a boarding school to explain sightings of a child ghost. Everything she believes unravels as the 'missing' begin to show themselves. - The Awakening


With a dead body lying between them, two men wake up in the secure lair of a serial killer who's been nicknamed "Jigsaw". The men must follow various rules and objectives if they wish to survive and win the deadly game set for them. Saw 2004

My pitch ideas


A loving husband, infected into a hideous monster, sending worm looking creatures to infect the innocent into zombies. - (Can relate to Slither)

Thirteen year old possessed twins torchering families, just like yours. Escape is impossible, stealing pure souls, slaughtering the blood from their hearts. Our morning juice they call it. 

Chase scene evaluation

Intro- As a group, we created a chase scene on a horror/slasher genre called ‘The Lesson’. It was about a teacher doing a one-to-one tutorial lesson with a student who goes to get a book from her office and gets killed by the villain with scissors. She then gets chased by the killer and is tries to lock herself in a classroom, however the killer manages to open the door. We planned this through storyboarding on large cardboard. We had then added the essential ideas such as the camera shot/angles, sound/music, mise-en-scene onto the storyboard to add to our understanding, which was very effective. The overall chase scene was effective as everything was set as planned. There were a few parts of the scene that were manipulated to suit the theme or if something had clashed we had changed that to blend in with the trailer. Camera- The choice of camera choices was very open as we had a variety of shots at different camera angles. We did this to ensure that we had numerous ideas to help us when it comes to editing. If we were not sure about one clip, we would always have others as a backup.

Sound- We were very fortunate to find a piece of music and download it from YouTube, which fit in perfectly into parts of our chase scene. We also used our initiative to produce sounds such as the killer’s footsteps. One of us had stood up on the table and created the sounds of footsteps and recorded it through using a Microphone. The use of non-diegetic sounds makes the scene feel more alive. We had found a gaping scream of the internet which we had edited and used to

Mise-en- Scene- We used a variety of iconography and props such a pens, scissors, paint for blood, and an emotionless mask. A pen used to write on the board sets the scene as an educational environment where it’s expected to be seen as a safe place. The use of scissors was used to symbolize school equipment as a sharp weapon that murders which also fits in to the slasher/horror genre. We used red paint for blood, as it was the closest prop to it. The red paint was used effectively as it was the danger of the scene, the scissors were bloody with the blood spillage next to the victim create the sense of shock with blood smudged over her arms. The killer, played by myself, decided that it would be ideal to use a mask, an emotionless mask in particular. I made this decision, as I believed it would create tension to the audience. A face with no emotion keeps you confused and gets the audience to think why is the killer doing this? Are they angry or upset, we don’t know! This makes the audience feel worried and frustrated. Add examples i.e. scream

Editing- When it came to editing, we used software called ‘Final cut pro’, which I personally think took skill to use. We gained the skills to use new software called ‘Final Cut Pro’. This helped us to learn new things through editing such as adding fadeouts, credits, titles, removing/adding sound, cutting and pasting clips etc. We learnt how to use fadeout effects, which we had used at the scene of the door closing after the teacher leaves the student and also at the time of the student waiting for the teacher. This also demonstrations to the audience how long the student has been waiting because the fadeouts make the scene feel longer and creates tension, realistically us as editors are saving time. As we didn’t need to use tone cards in a chase scene, we learnt how to add titles and credits, which was a key skills developed. Para3- we used a variety of media technologies in this task. At the planning stage, we used computers to research for ideas that could help us with our clip. We had researched horror trailers and chase scenes on you tube such as ‘Halloween’ add more examples. This expanded our knowledge, which allowed us to think broadly about our task. We had used a storyboard to plan our chase-scene. This was very effective as it structured our task. We used the Internet for non-diegetic sound/music, which we had then downloaded. We also used a microphone and a recorder to record diegetic sound such as footsteps. Whilst recording the chase scene we used professional cameras with tripods, which helped us stay in line and record perfectly. It also helped us to record from different angles and movements. We also filmed without the tripod for a point of view shot, which made it more realistic. Conclusion- Overall I believe I have accomplished a wide set of skills and gained my knowledge in film and research.

'THE LESSON' - Chase scene clip

Story board for the chase scene

Scream trailer analysis

Scream trailer analysis

The subgenre of Scream is slasher which is created through using iconography, stock locations and props along with character theories.

The opening of the trailer shows the first location as a isolated house, all of the lighting comes from within the white house which shows that within the walls of the home the character feels safe. The house is surround darkness and shadows, this represents the fact that the outside is where evil lies. The contrast in colours can makes the audiences feel anxious for the victims well being, this is enhanced by the fact that the time of day in night which is connected to fear as during the night it is harder to see clearly creating a sense of apprehension.

The majority of locations in which the victims are located are houses; this is a stock location because although a house can be seen as safe it can also act as a trap. The viewer can identify with the victim and their location which helps create a sense of fear. Within a house can seem remote because the victim is surrounded by walls creating the feeling of no escape, therefore heightening the anticipation felt by the viewer.

The props used throughout the trailer conform to the slasher sub genre, for example the phone acts as the communication between the victim and the villain before the climax takes place. The phone conversation ‘I want to know who I’m looking at’ builds the expectancy of the viewer, this creates a sense of dread as the view is given an insight as to the horror yet to come. In addition the victim is cooking popcorn; the pan of popcorn is slowly growing which represents the climax of the trailer. The movement of the popcorn creates a feeling on anticipation among the audience as they expect for it to pop. The villain uses is a knife (0.59 seconds) which conforms to the slasher convention as its a phallic symbol. This shows that the masculine figure is in power whereas the victim is shown running away helpless.

The camera angles and movements help to convey a sense of horror which contributes to the slasher convention. The opening of the trailer shows an establishing shot of a house, the camera is at a long shot which also shows the surrounding area, this enables the audience to gage the location and in this case see the isolation of the house. The camera tilts down; this shows that the character with in the house initially holds all the power. As the victim becomes more vulnerable the camera tilts down which then takes the control of the victim away.

An alternative camera movement used to contribute toward the conventions of horror is a tracking movement; this movement stalks the victim and shows that she is vulnerable. The camera also uses hand held movements at this point; the shaken camera represents the victim being followed. This creates a heightened level of anticipation as the audience realised that the victim is not alone.

The use of a zoom when the victim realises she is in danger allows the audience to see her expression, this means that the audience can identify with the character and sympathise with her. In addition during the disequilibrium there is an extreme close up of the victims face, this creates a sense of fear as the victim screams and the audience can clear see her facial expressions.