PLANNING: PARANORMAL CHARACTERS

 As we have decided to use paranormal characters in our trailers, I decided I needed to look at why people believe ghosts exist, and the evidence. 

I went onto YouTube to research the sort of encounters people have had with ghosts. The majority of the channels and their videos are by ghost hunting teams, professional and amateur. Many channels, such as Sam and Colby, AndrewTMI, Hailey Reese, Loey Lane, and other smaller creators, have been around for a while and built up quite a library of ghost hunting videos. In order to get the sense of the dynamics, I looked through the catalogue of videos and found a few common areas of interest.

All these channels started off as amateur detectives, that have honed their videos and become more professional with the equipment they use. Loey Lane and Hailey Reese started off using mobile apps to talk to the ghosts, but have since bought official spirit boxes and evp recorders to communicate properly with ghosts. 

All of the channels feature more than one person if investigations happen. Loey Lane, Hailey Reese and AndrewTMI used to go together in a group called the soul siblings, although it has since been disbanded. Hailey Reese will take her mum and sister often to hunt for ghosts, and many paranormal youtubers collaborate on videos such as the Sam and Colby channel and the TFIL channel.

All of the channels go to spaces that conventionally look scary, such as old churches, creepy old castles, or places such as Griffith Park- where serial killers took many of their victims, or tragedies have happened. Often these buildings will have more than one death in their history, and the channels have always done their research.

I found it significantly easier to watch Loey Lane, Hailey Reese and AndrewTMI's videos, as the mix of gender, as well as mix of attitudes works very well as a dynamic. Therefore, if possible there should either be 1 girl and 2 boys or 2 boys and 1 girl. There should be one confident ghost hunter, the leader of the pack, one hesitant member who will be timid but still go ahead with it, and one totally scared member who in turn will freak out the other members with their antics. They should be almost total amateurs, using rudimentary ghost hunting tools. 

PLANNING: PROMOTIONAL PACKAGE CASE STUDY

 I decided to look at a case study for a promotional package, and I chose Paranormal Activity (2007)

The Synopsis

A couple start having paranormal experiences. They set up a night camera and see that Katie has been sleep walking. They contact experts who claim the poltergeist is gone. However, things get worse, and Katie attacks Micah before leaving the house. 

Characters

Katie- a young woman who unknowingly has been possessed.

Micah- Katie's husband who gets haunted and later attacked, left for dead by Katie who is possessed by a demon.

Techniques

The director wanted to create realism and named the characters after the actors. 

He filmed all of the movie in 4 days, filming in real time.

The actors moved into the house as if they were a real couple, and improvised much of dialogue.

Promotional Package

Posters

The posters are extremely dark with mostly a grey-scale colour palette.

The title is in red, the only colour featured on the poster.

Website

Unlike most websites, Paranormal Activity does not have a website, to keep the illusion that it contains real events.

The Wikipedia page only went up once the news broke it was fake and that the actors were alive.

Trailers

The trailers featured only shaky cam shots and bits of dialogue commonly seen in some documentary trailers.

The Campaign

To keep the realism from the film, neither main actors turned up to the premiere, which helped the audience think it was just a documentary. The actors even took it to the extreme and didn't appear in public anywhere until the film was revealed to be fictitious.

Social Media

Paranormal Activity uses Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to effectively promote the film including character posts and shots from the movie as seen below. I aim to use a similar style in my own campaign by introducing character shots with backstories and also revealing subtle clues about the plot through mysterious posts like Claremont shrouded in mist and pictures of Princess Charlotte.