Actors for my trailer

I have already chosen the three actors I want to use in my film trailer. For my main actor, the women, I have chosen to use Chloe Laskey. She has studied drama for many years and although she is only 17 I feel I will be able to look older, using both makeup and costume. She has also been in many productions and in February 2010 starred in the Glyndebourne production with Garath Malone of 'The Knight Crew'. To the right is a picture of Chloe:

To the left is a picture of Grant Peters, he is who I have chosen for my actor playing the fiancé who then turns into the stalker with split personalities. Grant is 21 and I chose to use him as I feel he will be able to play the part of both fiancé and stalker very well. Grant is also in a band which therefore means he is not afraid of acting and performing.

Finally the male I have chosen to use as the new boyfriend is called Darren Maylem. Darren is 21 and like Chloe has lots of experience with acting. He studied drama up to post A Levels and has therefore performed in many shows and performances, having to play many different roles. To the right is a picture of Darren:

Location Shots

For my trailer I want to use both outdoor and indoor shots using different lights to give a variation of effects and to show many different moods throughout my trailer.

I want the filming of the Chloe and Grant when they are originally a happy couple who are engaged and living what seems to be the perfect life to be filmed outside on a nice summer's day with blue skies and bright sunshine. I want shots of them holding hands and walking through the park as if they are on a summer's walk and both in an ideal world.

When Chloe tells Grant she can't be with him any more I want it to be filmed on a more overcast day possibly in the evening in a smaller park with alleys, steps and lots of dark corners to create an eerie feel. I also want for Chloe to act distressed and like she doesn't really know what she's doing and for Grant to be getting more and more angry as the conversation goes on.

I want shots of Chloe walking down lots of streets and not knowing what she's going to do with her life or where she's going next to be filmed in the evening but not when it's too dark to show that she's simply confused about what she's doing and where she's going. I also want shots of Chloe packing her bags in a panic as if she is in a mad rush to get out of her house and just wants to get away. I will use two different houses for my trailer as I will have shots of Chloe and Grant together in her house and then ones of Chloe and Darren in their new house together.

For the other half of my trailer when the Chloe is with her new partner Darren and finally managing to settle down I want to film inside and use a more 'homely' feel. I then want a shot of Chloe and Darren sitting on the sofa cuddled up by the fire watching a nice film and Grant just standing behind them at the window, watching them and wishing he was with her instead. Also shots of Chloe walking and trying to get away from everything but with Grant following not far behind.

Trailer Inspiration

The Watchmen trailer uses a different technique to most and rather than having continuous dialogue it instead uses music to set the mood and create the feel of the film. I would like to use this idea for my trailer as feel it doesn't give away to much but at the same time emphasizes the key ideas of the film. I want for there to be an ongoing soundtrack throughout my trailer that changes with what's going on at that specific time. I just want to use a small amount of dialogue to make certain parts seem more dramatic and highlight the key ideas. The music will give away the ideas behind what is happening in the trailer; therefore some bits will be joyful and cheerful whereas other will be very dark and eerie to fit the feel of the film.

For example I want when Chloe shouts "I can't do it anymore" to Grant, her fiancé at the time, to be heard as I feel it is a key part of my story that needs to stand out. There is a scene where Chloe is telling Darren, her new boyfriend, about what has happened to her in the past and the fact she thinks she is being stalked. I feel this also needs to be heard as it gives away key parts of the film and will hopefully draw the audience in, without giving too much away.

Alfred Hitchcock - Strangers On A Train

In Alfred Hitchcock's trailer 'Stranger's On a Train' we see that the audience know what is going on in the film whereas the characters have no idea. This is shown by the plans for the murder being openly discussed on the train and although at first it just seems like one big joke, in the end it comes true. The wife of one man is killed by the other man and the audience know exactly who killed her and why she is killed whereas the women herself had no idea this was coming.

In my trailer I want to use this idea of the audience being 'in the know' yet the characters having no idea. I also want for tension to be built and for the audience to get frustrated that they know what is going on but the character to have no idea and to simply think everything is normal. I think this will make the audience want to learn more about the film and to want to find out what happens when she realises she is being stalked.

Also Alfred Hitchcock makes films that are mainly thrillers and again my film fits under this convention. He uses the idea of the camera moving in a way to mimic a person's gaze and I may use some shots like this for my trailer as I think it gives the audience a different perspective of the film and what's really going on. I don't want my entire trailer to be filmed from one person's perspective, instead I would prefer for things to be seen through the eyes of both the girlfriend and ex fiancé.

My Thriller Genre and Ideas

The thriller genre uses tension and excitement as its main elements to draw the audience into the film and make them want to watch on. In my trailer I want to use this genre as I want to draw my audience in and make them wonder what's really going on. Another convention of the thriller genre is that it creates and eerie atmosphere which is usually shown through darkness and dingy lighting, I'm going to use each of these aspects in my film as I want to portray one of my characters and having both a normal, happy side and a slightly darker feel to him. I'm going to show this by at the beginning of the trailer when everything is normal filming him in daylight and sunshine but when he turns against everyone I'll portray him in darkness and also I'll use pathetic fallacy to show his two different personalities and make them clear to the audience.

Also in most thrillers you find that there is a twist to the story, I am again going to use this idea for my film. The twist to my story is the fiancé who at the beginning of the film seems like the perfect man suddenly turns once his girlfriend leaves him and develops a kind of split personality without even realising. There is also a climax in most thrillers and I'm going to portray this in my film by allowing the audience to know what's going on and that the ex fiancé is hunting down his ex girlfriend he's still in love with but the girlfriend herself has no idea and is just living what she believes to be a happy and normal life with no trouble from anyone. She has managed to block out her past relationship until one day he finds her and yet she still has no idea, she's simply being stalked from afar and yet is oblivious to it all.

Thrillers are known for taking place in suburbs or cities and I want to film my film in two different locations. I want my film to begin in a town area but not too large a town where it seems like the perfect location for two childhood sweethearts to be in a young relationship and living the ideal life and once the girlfriend runs away I want my location to move to a bigger town or city where it seems to the audience she has more of a chance of being able to simply blend in and hide from her past. I also want there to be some elements of mystery in my film such as why the ex fiancé was so in love with her and turned into a different person once she left her, why she left him in the first place, what made her fall out of love with him and also how she managed to simply block it out of her life.

I want to introduce the ex fiancé back into my film in a scene with the girlfriend sitting on the sofa with her new boyfriend having a nice romantic evening in and simply enjoy herself. I want them to be cuddled up on the sofa and for there to be a storm going on outside with thunder and lightning. I want for the camera angle to be looking towards the couple however also facing towards the window and I then want for there to be a flash of lightning and you to just see her ex fiancé just standing at the window staring and watching them and then on the next flash of lightning for him to be gone. This will start to create a panic for the audience as they can see what's going on however she will still be enjoying her evening unaware of the events that are about to unravel around her.

My Mood Board

For my mood board I took images off the internet that I felt would fit my trailer and ones that gave me ideas of what to film. I have chosen the picture of the girl and boy standing at the gate because I like the use of silhouettes and also it portrays my idea of childhood sweethearts. I used the man with his face split into two to represent the split personality of the ex fiancé. I like the lighting used in the image of the man following the women and feel this lighting gives and eerie feel and the camera shot used is one I would like to use as I feel it gives a tunneling effect and suggests that everything is closing in around the women. I wanted to use the pictures of the woods and small town because these are locations similar to the ones I want to film for my trailer. Again I like the silhouette that has been used of the women leaning against the window and think it looks very effective, so this is something I may choose to use for my poster or magazine. I have chosen to use the lightning pictures because for me this will be a key point in my trailer where I introduce the ex fiancé back into the film. Finally I have used the dark image of the man walking down the alley because I would like to use a shot very similar to this in my trailer, portraying the ex fiancé in a darker way.

Original Trailer Ideas

I am not sure of exactly what shots I want in my trailer or what order I want them to appear in yet. I know I want shots of the fiancé and his girlfriend when they seem like a happy couple at the beginning; I also want to see him getting angry and her walking away. Finally I want to see shots of the women settled down in her new home town and then shots of her with her new boyfriend. I think that at the end of the trailer I want to introduce the ex fiancé back into the film but at this time I want shots of him following her and to introduce the fact he has a second personality.

At the moment I haven't decided whether I want my trailer to appear in chronological order of how the events take place in the film or if instead I would prefer things to be mixed up. I think I want to use lots of hand held camera and dark shots and also I possibly like the idea of using flashbacks.

After having been on a trip to the Duke of York cinema and having seen two relatively low budget films I have decided that I want my film to be of a low budget but not appear obviously low budget. The films I saw were Dolphins and Down Terrace; Down Terrace was a very low budget film, however it still used effective camera shots and was very well finished. So I will use this as a guideline of how my trailer should appear.

My Plot Ideas

Originally I was not sure of what I wanted the storyline for my film to be; I knew I wanted to use the idea of stalking and either horror or thriller as my genre however I wasn't sure of how I was going to put this across. To help me think of some ideas I looked up stalking and stories behind it on the internet. This led me to start to come up with the plot for my film.

I decided I was going to use a women as my victim, possibly a business women but I wasn't completely sure. I originally thought I was going to use the idea of her being followed and watched by a complete stranger. I was going to use both cyber and real life stalking in my film trailer. After having spoken to some of my class mates about my ideas they said they thought the plot was a good idea however helped me to expand upon my ideas.

I have now decided to use a relatively normal women who starts off the film in a relationship with what seems like a normal man. As the film progresses we see her start to lose the love she had for her now fiancé and see her try multiple times to end the relationship. Every time she tries though the man just promises to be different and insists he will change to be exactly what she wants. He begins to get angry with her and forces them to stay together, even though she's clearly not happy. One day she just decides she has had enough and waits until he has gone to work before packing her bags and leaving. She has no idea of where she is going but just drives until she feels she is far enough away from him and can be safe there. She changes her number, email and anything that will allow him to track her down. She then settles down in her new town and lives a perfectly normal life for nearly a year where she finds herself a new partner and a new way of life. Just as she thinks everything is getting back to normal, her ex fiancé finds her and that's where the stalking begins.

People Who Influenced Films

David Thompson is a British film and television producer and is most famously known for being the founder of BBC films. He originally worked as a film programmer and documentary maker and then left to start his own film production company. He is now known as an executive producer and is still working in the film industry today; some of his more famous films are Revolutionary Road, The History Boys and Brideshead Revisited.

David Bordwell is an American film theorist, film critic and author. He is the Jacques Ledoux Professor of Film Studies at the Emeritus in the department of communication arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the founder of the cognitive film theory which is an approach to film that relies on cognitive psychology as a basis for understanding films effects. It is an alternative method to the psychoanalytic/interpretive approach which was responsible for widely dominating film studies in the 1970's and 80's. David Bordwell is married to Kristin Thompson and they have written two textbooks together, these are Film Art and Film History. Film Art is the most widely used introductory film textbook in the United States.

David Bordwell is also associated with the approach known as neoformalism; however it is his wife Kristin Thompson who has done the majority of writing on this subject. Neoformalism is an approach to film analysis that is based on an observation first made by the literary theorists known as the Russian Formalists; this means that there is a distinction between the story and the form the story puts across. An example of this would be if in a detective film the murder comes at the beginning of the story, however you don't find out any details about the murder until the end. Neoformalism also deals with the idea of de-familiarization which aims to show us familiar objects or concepts in a way that encourages us to see them in a new light.

Pam Cook is a professor in film at the University of Southampton. She was a pioneer of the 1970's Anglo-American feminist film theory along with Laura Mulvey and Claire Johnston. In the mid 1980's Cook co-authored and edited the leading textbook in film studies which is The Cinema Book for the British Film Institute and from 1985 to 1994 she was Associate Editor and contributor to BFI and Sight and Sound magazines. She retired in 2006 however still publishes books and continues to write articles.

Propp and Todorov's Narrative Theory

Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp was born on the 17th April 1895 and died 22 August 1970. He used the narrative structure in a formalist way and after breaking down many different Russian folk tales he believed that every film was made up of these eight main characters.

1. The villain who struggles against the hero.

2. The donor who prepares the hero or gives the hero some magical object.

3. The (magical) helper who helps the hero in the quest.

4. The princess or prize — the hero deserves her throughout the story but is unable to marry her because of an unfair evil, usually because of the villain. The hero's journey is often ended when he marries the princess, thereby beating the villain.

5. Her father who gives the task to the hero, identifies the false hero, marries the hero, often sought for during the narrative. Propp noted that functionally, the princess and the father can not be clearly distinguished.

6. The dispatcher who character who makes the lack known and sends the hero off.

7. The hero or victim who reacts to the donor and weds the princess.

8. The false hero who takes credit for the hero’s actions or tries to marry the princess.

Tsvetan Todorov was born in Sofia on March 1st 1939. He believed that stories began with an equilibrium or status quo which was then disturbed or disrupted by an event or problem and finally the all would be resolved and everything brought back to its normal state. This is usually broken up into these three stages:

1. Equilibrium (Normality)

2. Disequilibrium (Normality is interrupted)

3. New Equilibrium (A new normality appears, however this may not be good)

In my film trailer I use the idea of Todorov's theory. The way I portray this in my film is that the equilibrium at the beginning of my trailer is when the women is with her fiance, where they are both happy and feel they are living the perfect lives. The disequilibrium, where normality is disrupted is when her fiancé goes crazy on her and his personality splits into two. The new equilibrium is then where she settles down in her new town with her new boyfriend and feels her life is returning to normality.

Advanced Porfolio Task

I am going to produce a promotional package for a film. This is going to include a tester trailer, a magazine, a front cover and a poster. My work must be presented on my blog format and edited to my individual taste.