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Christina Taylor 1799

Claremont Fan Court School 64680

I worked in a production team with Jacob Cooper 1720 and Harrison Allman-Varty 1701.

Our brief was to make a main trailer and a teaser trailer, along with a poster and a website. We decided to make a paranormal horror based on true stories from Claremont Fan Court School. Our film is called Charlotte. We planned and researched the genre as shown on my blog.

I acted in the film, in the role of Emily, a paranormal fanatic who loves ghost hunting.

I also worked as a director, camera woman and editor. 

I worked with the other actors to create the exact shot I wanted and wrote a script for the actors to make their jobs easier. I sorted out quarrels in the group effectively.

We filmed all of our shots on a phone as we were inspired by found footage films such as the Blair Witch Project. This added an authentic quality to our films that added to the mystery.

At first I started editing on Premiere Pro but I found there were too many issues with the software, so I switched to Final Cut Pro X. This software was much more sophisticated and I got the results I wanted.

FINAL PROMOTIONAL PACK

 My final trailers can be found on YouTube.

Final FULL TRAILER:

Final TEASER TRAILER:

This is my final POSTER:

This is my final WEBSITE:

https://cbtaylor1238.wixsite.com/charlotte

CONSTRUCTION: SOCIAL MEDIA

 I chose to use the platforms of Twitter and Instagram to promote Charlotte. I liked these platforms as they are user friendly and allowed for both pictures and text to be uploaded together. I decided to upload 3 posts with identical text on both platforms. Each of these posts included 3 sentences, to abide by the rule of three, to increase the mystery around the film. Although I haven't reached much of an audience on either platform, I managed to use the follow function to give hints about the plot by only following paranormal experts and short films. By creating social media, it allows for a wider audience to discover the film and become potential audience members.

The instagram can be found at https://www.instagram.com/charlottefilm2021official/

My Instagram is very basic as I wanted to build up the mystery, so by using 3 black posts with white lettering, it made the text stand out a lot more than it usually would. I used a brief synopsis to allow the audience to get more of a feel for the film. I really liked the effect of the black backgrounds with the dark mode on Instagram as it blended into the background, leaving just the white text to appear as if it was floating, much like paranormal objects.

The Twitter can be found at https://twitter.com/CFilm2020

My Twitter was quite similar to my Instagram, as I used the same text on both. This allowed for a cohesive social media brand and helped potential audience find both platforms effectively. My profile picture came from a video I took that eventually got cut from the final trailer but I still really liked the mystery it gave off.

Upon reflection, I think I should have used images on my Twitter and had more than 3 posts on each. However, I am happy at the basic format that was cohesive on both platforms.

REFINEMENTS, CHANGES, EDITS AND REFLECTIONS

Over the course of the construction of my trailers, there were a lot of changes made to my two trailers. My first full trailer received the feedback that some clips were portrait and didn't reflect the stereotypical trailer. At first I thought I could justify those clips being from a phone and reflecting the found footage, but upon self reflection I felt they weren't necessary and that I could create a suspenseful trailer without them.

Once I started using the Final Cut Pro X software, I found my work was of a much higher quality and I felt a lot more confident in my ability to create an effective horror trailer.

When I filmed a lot of my footage, I was unaware that the wind would cause interference with the sound, so when I was editing I acted on feedback to create a voiceover to replace the original sound in the clips that included wind interference.

I was proud of the way I wrote an initial script as it formed the basis to the storyline we ended up creating, and without it our trailers may not have had a fully developed story.

I didn't get along with my production team at first and that really meant a lot of confusion over what we needed to get done, By speaking to Mrs Mann, we managed to get the boys up to date on what their roles were in the production team and we produced a lot more quality work after creating a group chat on social media.

I managed to create a custom filter on Final Cut Pro X with the help of Harrison in order to fix lighting inaccuracies. This ensured that the daytime shots looked like night. I layered sound on the software for the first time and the feedback I received made me aware that these both were effective in hooking the audience in. 

CONSTRUCTION: EDITING

 I was not expecting to edit my own trailer as this had originally been assigned to the boys. However, the 2nd and 3rd lockdowns meant I had to reassess my editing skills as the production team could not come together to create trailers together. I learned how to use Premiere Pro by Adobe as a starting tool and created my first trailer. 

Upon coming back into school, I received the feedback that the trailer wasn't as similar to the horror trailers I researched as I hoped. I was advised to switch to creating my two trailers on Final Cut Pro X and this really helped build my confidence when editing. I talked over my fears about editing with Mrs Mann and my production team, who then supported me with editing my trailers.

The two main issues with my trailer were the sound and the appearance of some of the clips. Because we shot our footage during school hours, the light in the clips was apparent but our story took place at night. With the help of Harrison, I created a new night filter which I applied to the outdoor clips and received feedback that the filter was effective but that my sound was still a problem that distracted viewers from becoming fully immersed. I added voice overs to the clips that had background noise in the initial clips. I also added a couple of voiceovers to make the storyline and the ghost of  Charlotte believable.

Lastly I added an ident and intertitles to my trailer and received the feedback that both my trailers were ready for publishing. 

CONSTRUCTION: FILMING

 Harrison, Jake and I all decided to work on three different cuts of the trailers as we all had different visions for what the trailers would entail. This meant we took the opportunity to film during our lessons as a way to be time efficient. We filmed the majority of the shots in order of location before Christmas. We then filmed pick up shots in early January to February during the editing stage so that we could create a more cohesive storyline in our trailers having received feedback on our initial trailer edits.

There was tension in the group which was resolved, centring around the shots we wanted included in the trailer. I hadn't done much camera work before so we came to an agreement that the boys would take over the filming work as I am much more comfortable in front of the camera. 

We eventually ended up with shots filmed outside the belvedere, in the mansion tunnels and in the sixth form centre, as these were prime locations and all our actors were free during the same time, in school hours. 

CONSTRUCTION: SCRIPT

 Our group decided to write our ideas into a script on Celtx.

PLANNING: INSPIRATIONAL FILMS / GENRES

 For my planning, I decided I should make a list of all the horror movies I have watched, and mark the useful ones with comments explaining why they are effective. I also included films that I haven't watched, but will during the planning process.

FILMS I HAVE WATCHED:

The Paranormal Activity series- this is a found footage film series exploring the possession of lead character Katie. This film is extremely useful as it utilises most paranormal horror tropes. It also looks at the dynamic of using a possessed character, as it shows Katie and Micah's relationship, and Demon Katie and Micah's relationship.

 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.

The Insidious series- This will not be useful in creating my piece, as it heavily uses CGI, and is not in the general found footage style.

The Conjuring Series- The characters within my film slightly mimic those within the Annabelle series but overall there is not much correlation.

PLANNING: MY TARGET AUDIENCE

 I have planned what my target audience is likely to be:

Having found several surveys from a widespread audience, I found a general idea for my audience. A total of 32% of respondents watched horror films. Of that 32%, 36% are males under 35. 33% are males over 35, 44% are females under 35, and 22% are females over 35. The majority of watchers were parents and fit the social class C2. 

My target audience is likely to use social media to find films that they are interested in, in particular the visual platform Instagram. They are risk takers, as evident by the amusement when watching jumpscares, and they often watch these films in order to get a thrill. Similar films they have watched include The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity. They often watch films on streaming platforms, rather than in cinemas and live on a lower wage. They can have any career but are likely to hang out with a tight knit group of friends.

(ADD RESULTS OF AUDIENCE QUESTIONNAIRE)

CONSTRUCTION: SMASH CUT

 (As GIBBY finishes his tirade, the camera focuses on the spill of coffee on the table, and it fades to an identical stain of blood in the grass in front of the Belvedere. Suddenly, the music swells as the audience get flashes of scenes, of EMILY possessed in front of the Belvedere, a pin of an article about Claremont being haunted, EMILY leaving the boys to use the bathroom, EMILY possessed again, a pin of a ghost, EMILY staring in the mirror, a pin of the interior of Claremont, EMILY's reflection shifting and distorting, EMILY possessed again, a pin of ghost hunting equipment, EMILY touching the violin player on the shoulder, a pin of their plan, the boys running out of the mansion, EMILY presenting a book to the boys, EMILY's torch laying on the ground up to the Belvedere, the passage about demons within the book, the boys running up to the Belvedere, the book being closed with a slam, revealing the title (Daemonology), a black screen. Suddenly the audience see EMILY at the top of the back balcony, about to enter Claremont, looking back at the boys, as she says the words:)

This passage in our script utilises smash cuts, as shown in Cinematic Storytelling by Jennifer Van Sijll. We aim to increase the pitch and volume of our soundtrack, potentially with a violin, to create an impact and create the tension of the scenes while the scenes smash cut.

This technique was modelled in films such as American Beauty, within the alarm clock sequence, and Psycho, where the mother kills. We looked at these scenes for inspiration in forming our own sequences.

CONSTRUCTION: WEBSITE

 (Fill this out later!)

https://cbtaylor1238.wixsite.com/charlotte

PLANNING: LOCATION RECCE

 

As we are using Princess Charlotte as an established historical figure, and we currently attend the school in which she lived and died, we felt it would be accurate for our filming location. We were met with the challenge of having school supplies, and the layout of a school rather than an abandoned set. Therefore, we decided to still use our own school to film, but to make it canonically a school which is abandoned due to the 2020 pandemic.

PLANNING: PROPS

 For our props, I found 6 key ideas. I put some images into a collage to show the rest of my production team. 

We decided to use a pin board to mimic the crime investigation plots as this is what Emily wants to do. We will need electronic devices, of which, the camera is obtainable. We may need to use a similar looking prop to mimic the EVP recorder. We will need a baby's christening gown, and  a georgian style night gown for the ghost plot line as we need to establish the characters of Princess Charlotte and the baby who died in the horrific incident, which left them both dead. Lastly, we will need torches, to set the scene, and a fake daemonology book for the same purposes.

PLANNING: INITIAL DEVELOPMENT

 

PLANNING: PINTEREST

 As a production team, we felt creating individual pinterests based on characters and social groups within our piece. After discussion, we felt that the social issues we would cover would be: strong women, the role of the male (subverting and adhering to the stereotype), the paranormal, the belief in evil, and the female victim, royalty and the absent social group of the absentee school population. There are also two more social groups; people who believe in the paranormal and the teenage risk takers.

The Main Group;

This covers the social groups of people who believe in the paranormal and the teenage risk takers. I used Buzzfeed Unsolved and Loey Lane's YouTube for inspiration. These teenagers are mostly not afraid of anything, a common feature in horror movies- the characters become too arrogant and take too many risks. They also believe they are experts- especially Emily, which then becomes their hamartia. As we have decided to use paranormal characters in our trailers, I decided I needed to look at why people believe ghosts exist. 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.

Princess Charlotte;

Princess Charlotte is the ghost figure in Charlotte. Her pinterest takes inspiration from the real figure as well as Claremont, where she lived and died. This board highlights the royalty of the time, especially through the clothing and paintings of her at the time. She also presents as the female victim, although the main story reveals she was the victim before, and that's why the demon chooses her persona. She appears innocent, and taken too early, which highlights Emily's supposed fate.

Strong females/Female victims;

Emily subverts expectations by being the expert within the group that pushes the group to their limits. However, she also fits the category of female victim as she is taken by the demon, and the trailer insinuates that she does not survive the events of the movie. This pinterest shows posters and images of these two ideas around women in media and life.

The Role of the Male;

The male stereotypically comes in to save the female. In our trailer, the boys actually are the cowards in the group although they pretend to be brave. They also do not reach Emily in time which subverts the stereotype of the male saviour. The pinterest highlights the stereotype that the boys do not fit.

The Belief in Evil;

The reason the demon manages to succeed is because the group fears the demon. They have to believe the demon is real because otherwise Emily would have taken herself into harm's way. Emily also is very knowledgeable about daemonology so she would know the demon is real, therefore believing in evil. I took examples about demons in literature and drawings to highlight that demons have been recognised for centuries.

PLANNING: TREATMENT

 'Charlotte', our film, follows a group of teenagers who enjoy ghost-hunting to an extent. On the anniversary of Princess Charlotte's death, they decide to visit her death place, a school abandoned in the midst of a pandemic. Emily, the avid paranormal expert, pushes Gibby and Jack to the limits when communicating with what they believe to be Princess Charlotte's ghost. However, when Emily becomes separated from the amateurish boys, she finds that the once friendly spirit may not be who she first thought after all. It becomes a challenge for the boys, a race against time, in order to save Emily from the demon and get out of Claremont before they are lost forever. 

This treatment acts as a baseline of our film that explains the narrative simply. It is concise but allows directors to see the vision of the film.

We watched Frank Ash, a BBC Creative Consultant, and learned of the topline and big questions.

I decided the big question for our film was 'Will they make it out alive?' which stemmed from questions such as 'Will they find Emily in time?' and 'Will they discover the demon's true nature?'.

PLANNING: CASTING

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. 

PLANNING: GENRE

 For our promotional pack, Harrison, Jake and I decided to focus on the horror genre, with a deeper focus on the paranormal and found footage sub-genres. I have already watched many horror movies including the insidious series, The Conjuring series and other stand alone movies like the Blair Witch Project.

The horror genre has two common directions, found footage and narrative. Found footage is commonly teamed with action, with a focus on a group of people who have gone through the events of the footage already. The films often take place in woods or old houses. Narrative films show a more structured film, with more emphasis on the tropes as well as well-rounded characters.

There are four main sub-genres that I looked at within my research. 

Paranormal:

Often has a ghost as the antagonist which is defeated by a group of teens.

Case studies include The Paranormal Activity series (2007-2022), The Conjuring Universe (2013-2021), the Blair Witch Project (1999), the Insidious series (2010-2018), the Grave Encounters series (2011-2012) and the Quiet Ones (2014).

Slasher:

Often the goriest of the horror genre, slasher often has a group that turns on each other or a murderer as the villain.

Case studies include The Cabin in the Woods (2011), Happy Death Day 2 U (2019), The Babysitter (2017), Halloween (2018), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), the Saw franchise (2004-2021) and The Human Centipede (2009).

Psychological:

Often has the danger as an urban legend or the uncanny which plays with the audiences' minds.

Case studies include A Tale of Two Sisters (2003), The Purge Franchise (2013-2021), Psycho (1960), Frozen (2010), The Ward (2010), 347 F (2011), The Descent (2008), Inside (2007), The Strangers (2008) and Buried (2008).

Zombie/Virus:

Like the title says, the main threat in this category is either a zombie or a virus outbreak.

Case studies include Night of the Living Dead (1968), Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (1974), Dawn of the Dead (1978), 28 Weeks Later (2007), Resident Evil (2002), Pontypool (2008), Rammbook (2018), White Zombie (1932) and Zombie (1979).

I also looked at relevant horror tropes that I knew we could use in our own work. The most important one is the Final Girl trope. Often the sole survivor of the group is the girl that often has abstained from drinking or sleeping around. She will often be the one to defeat the antagonist. Others include the Mirror trope (often the protagonists will look into a mirror and see a glimpse of the antagonist, but not a major look so the mystery remains), the no signal trope (where characters don't have signal, so can't contact for help- entities drain batteries to try and manifest from the stolen entity), the Basement trope (where the basement is the single most haunted place- no characters want to go down there but they do anyway), the Shaggy Search Technique (instead of showing characters actively search for clues, they stumble across them like Shaggy from Scooby Doo), Credibility trope (where often for audiences, a sign that says based on true events will make a story scarier- especially for stories with a paranormal plot device) and the Constant, Lurking Evil (by showing brief glimpses of the antagonist, the audience keeps the mystery but are satisfied with speculating about the antagonist).