RESEARCH- MUSIC

Below are a number of teaser trailers varying in plot, budget, production company and genre. However, all are unified in the same use of modern acoustic soundtracks of popular songs to appear hopeful, sinister, suspenseful, or just add to the overall ambience and tone of the teaser itself. We originally had the idea to use either an instrumental of a popular piece, however after assessing the below teasers we found that a cover using vocals would be far more compelling and compliment our piece as a whole.

BIRDMAN - "Crazy" Gnarls Barkley

This Gnarls Barkley cover of his own original track "Crazy" takes on a far more empowering and sinister tone as it is slowed down with background percussion in the form of drums to create a distinctive almost military beat. However, since the piece is ultimately stripped of its previous optimistic tone, but also stripped instrumentally, primary focus is on the actual lyrics of the piece which are to compliment the theme of mental deterioration apparent within both the teaser and the film. The action and images are almost surreal especially in the teaser, causing the viewer to wonder whether such action is due to an action movie, or whether as the contrapuntal soundtrack evokes, an underlying irony is present. 

GONE GIRL- "She" Richard Butler

The almost beautiful cover of Elvis Costello's "She" has a background choir to appear almost angelic connoting marriage and ceremony, however is contrapuntal to the establishing shots of crowds holding missing posters. The entire teaser lacks any dialogue other than the beginning and the end where the male protagonist speaks on both occasions: the start highlighting that his wife is missing, compassion pity being evoked from this... yet, by the end of the teaser, he is proclaiming his innocence that he did not kill his wife. The mix of clips between juxtapose atypical images of the perfect relationship: dates, dinners, kissing, POV shots of the wife, with that of scenes of corruption and crime: police, interviews, evidence, blood spatter. These are asymmetric to the music as it constantly develops from a beautiful soundtrack to that of a sinister melody. 

BRICK MANSIONS- "Stand by Me"by Ki:Theory

Alternatively, an action genre adopted this use of contrapuntal soundtrack with the use of an almost rock/ punk version of "Stand by Me" obviously to evoke the underlying message of this film, which is the concept of brotherhood and community. The eerie voice of the male vocalist further produces a sinister aspect to the teaser, evoking ideas of betrayal and corruption often within action.

THE SOCIAL NETWORK- "Creep" by Vega Choir

Highly one of the most infamous teaser trailers due to its use of sound, the extremely suspenseful choir cover of "Creep" produces tension from the outset. The connotation of 'Creep' itself with the establishing shots of Facebook profiles, make it appear as a piece based on perhaps a stalker or has a far more sinister plot. It is ironic then that it is a social realism piece based on the life of the creator of Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg. It has almost spiritual or religious connotations due to the choir, but instead of appearing hopeful or uplifting it is actually almost frightening.

THE GALLOWS- "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Malia J

Another eerie use of an acoustic cover, but not so much contrapuntal but corresponding to the horror genre, the fact that it comes into the teaser trailer late as well when the dialogue is least important and the plot has already been established necessarily uses the soundtrack to emphasise the actions of thrill and suspense. The powerful beats synchronous with the slamming of doors or throwing of bodies, developing the action even more.

ENDLESS LOVE- "Addicted To Love"by Skylar Grey  

The only romantic genre within this blog piece, where the acoustic track is synonymous to the pure relationship central and integral to its plot. It utilises a feminine female voice due to the innocence associated with women, and due to the female protagonists characterisation that is only emphasised more with the lyrics "Addicted to Love". This matches perfectly to the tagline of the teaser (found on its poster also) "Say Goodbye to Innocence". 

RESEARCH- PITCH REFLECTION

After creating our pitch we put them forward towards to a group whom we discussed, utilising audience feedback to develop and change our ideas before our shooting began.
The feedback was mostly positive, but there were some queries that they had, due to them being unsure as to certain aspects, it demonstrated even before we began filming certain cinematography aspects needed to be altered for the clarification of the audience.

Question: How will you imply the rape scene?
Answer: Due to the level of extreme close up shots we can imply the sexual assault but we do as a group want it to not be too clear with details due to leaving it to the imagination of the audience. The shots we will use however, will be extreme close ups of hands gripping dirt, feet embedded into the dirt, wide eyes etc (these have been sketch within our storyboard).
Development: We created more clear visuals (within our storyboard) and studied implicit rape or sex scenes in other films such as 'Once Upon A Time In America': these were to not only have greater clarification for us pre-shooting, but determine how the audience would have our Preferred reading.

Question: Will you film it in the style of British social realism or American social realism?
Answer: Stylistically we're attempting to embody the British 'grit' associated with their social realism pieces, examples being 'Trainspotting', 'Cherrybomb'. Our reason for this is that we believe these are heightened in their realism portraying a honest representation of the central issue in our plot. The macabre nature of attempting to heal after sexual assault we believe cannot be dramatised in a hollywood format... this would turn it into an entertainment piece, instead of attempting to raise a real issue.
Development: Pre-shooting we need to study stylistically British social realism films in order to understand the cinematography aspects to ensure that we can make it appear like the British social realism e.g. the lighting. 

reference: trainspotting

Question: How will you utilise the symbolism of the egg and candle?
Answer: We thought that we could do extreme close ups of both when they are broken or melting but stylistically this may take away from the symbolism aspect (thus at this point we were open to suggestions), here we were suggested the idea of stop motion which we adopted due to the fact that it is a message further on the progression of time, as is our piece the progression of our protagonist in the time post attack.
Development: We instead intend to use stop motion in our symbolic pieces to emphasise them amongst the shots that demonstrate the narrative. 

Question: You described you wanted echoing of movement... how will you attempt this?
Answer: What we will do is that we want to attempt to demonstrate that amongst her daily life she still experiences flashbacks as if she is within the attack still. Therefore we want it to appear as if she cannot escape from the location of her rape, therefore we will do a graphic match of however she is positioned within her daily life then have her like that in the location of the woods.
Development: From advice to ensure it is accurate we need to take pictures of her in the position so that the frame is an accurate match. 

reference: Psycho

Question: What is the bigger narrative? Where will the climax be?
Answer: We will create a larger narrative arc to construct our narrative (refer to blog post for an actual deconstruction of it).
Development: Create a narrative arc before filming to ensure the plot can be determined from the teaser. 

our narrative arc

Question: How will you be able to integrate your colour palette?
Answer: Due to the fact that we will be unable to have a grading studio, pre-shooting we need to have our mis en scene planned meticulously to ensure that blue items are bold within our scene. As we have decided to have our colour scheme as blue, we can further add post- production a blue tint or filter especially to our establishing shots to ensure that there is that fundamental colour scheme throughout.
Development: Pre-shooting we have our mis en scene listed and planned out to ensure that there are blue aspects within each scene, where these are absent however we have found blue filters and tints to add to the footage.

RESEARCH AND PLANNING- STOP MOTION

Inspiration:

We was inspired by this music video and its small subtle changes that build to a greater picture, (in this instance the greater picture being the entire plot & story). Thus we are using stop motion in our piece but rather with the symbols than our actual characters.

Here is an screen shot of our Final Cut Pro where we have the stop motion of the cracking of an egg. We had it placed within wooded ground (to match the mis en scene of our location), but it was cracked at 10 second intervals with a mobile phone. Then we split into a segments of approx 0.7-1.0 seconds in groups of 4 clips. This is all revolving around our symbol of the egg as a means of vulnerability and delicate destruction of a fragility. 

Here are some screen shots of what these shots look like. As you can see they are high angle close ups enough to get the detail of the cracks on the eggs, but far enough that the whole egg fits into the frame (we used a large egg, so that it could sustain shape despite being cracked).

This is the penultimate frame and image of the egg, as we previously noted on past posts this inevitable destruction is a mirror for our protagonist's mental state and psychological decay.

The blue tint is post production element which is to fit our colour scheme of blue, (see the tag 'colour scheme' to find posts in relations to our reasons why) we managed to produce this with the 'Tint" video effect in the "Color" section of Final Cut Pro.

Editing

In order to show progression from our editing in our AS film opening piece, we attempted new editing techniques to make our music more effective and to create new visual effects on our clips, in accordance with the conventions of the social realism genre.

 Our music was an acoustic take on "You're the one that I want" from Grease that provides an eerie atmosphere for our trailer. We cut different parts of the song out to emphasise certain lyrics that we decided would subvert the usual themes from the song. Where the piece is typically childish and comically romantic, we used it to be quite the opposite, serious and gripping, the music that we put together reflects the harsh acts visually depicted

To combine these clips to make sure that the timings were not affected when moving different clips around, we created a compound clip out of the three cut pieces. This allowed us to have one whole piece of music making it easier to match with the video clips.

We used the same technique with the video clips. This was to make it easier for us to view our clips together and to establish where we had these 'burst' of clips next to each other. To create a visual effect that was difficult to watch, we overlaid the same clip multiple times with each a split second after the previous one. This created a motion blur that is hard to watch but effective at achieving what we imagine as a POV shot of someone who has been drugged/is groggy after having been attacked and left in the woods. One code of social realism is that the films are often hard to watch, this effect on these clips makes a shaky walk out of a bunker in the woods an uncomfortable shot that people found themselves feeling nauseous watching.