Narrative Structure

According to Todorov there are stages to a story and he found these stages through studying folk tales. The stages are equilibrium à an event that disrupts the equilibrium à then there is recognition of the event à attempt to fix the problem (resolution) à this results in a new equilibrium. With this theory in mind, as a group we decided to follow these rules when creating a narrative for our movie.

So for our movie idea we started with an equilibrium which consists of a group of friends who live a normal life, they go to college together and do things outside of college as well, and we planned to show them doing these sorts of things so that the audience would know who all the characters are. However for Todorov’s theory to be put into place we had to have something that would disrupt the equilibrium that we had created. We wanted to have a signifier for the movie and so this became the Ouija board and from this it felt as though we needed this to be the disruption for the equilibrium, and so we decided that something would happen with an Ouija board that would make a change between the friends therefore making a change within the equilibrium. The next step in the theory is for the disruption to be recognised and so to do this we decided that the main character would realise that something has happened to herself and that no one else can see how much they had changed due to the signifier. So, to do this we used a clip in the trailer where the main character asks what is happening to her however it takes her a while to convince others around her that something is going on and eventually they begin to realise that something went on when the Ouija board was used within the group. We then needed to decide how the problem would be resolved and this would then result in a new equilibrium being created, due to a few of the characters being killed off during the process of disruption, we knew that a new equilibrium would be needed anyway and that there would probably be new characters added into the storyline. The resolution to the problem would have to include the main character overcoming what the signifier has done as well as the disruption and signifier being taken away and this case, we decided that to destroy the Ouija board would be the best way to show that resolution has taken place. 

Shot List

As two separate groups, we had two different ideas, these ideas being:

Group One: First Idea

Group Two: First Idea (sheet two)

Group Two: First Idea (sheet one)

Group One had a shot list for their idea:

Group One: Shot List (sheet one)

Group One: Shot List (sheet  two)

And Group Two had a shot list for their idea:

Group Two: Shot List

The two groups were then changed into one big group, where we came up with a new idea combining both the previous ideas:

Final Idea (sheet one)

Final Idea (sheet two)

During the planning for the final idea, we also had a lot of other ideas written down and we did start a shot list, but we decided on using the previous shot lists we had created and just combined the ideas when we shot the footage:

Planning: notes on the new idea (sheet one)

Planning: notes on the new idea (sheet two)

Planning: notes on the new idea (sheet three)

Final Idea: beginning of shot list

Filming Schedule

As a group we decided on two days that we wanted to use as filming time and this meant we could get as much filming done as possible, leaving more time to edit all the footage. We first decided on filming on the 2^nd January for the majority of the day – we used this time to shoot all the inside footage that we needed. We then filmed on the 7^th January for a couple of hours and we used this time to shoot all he outside footage that we needed. By splitting our filming time this way, it made it easier to work out what locations we needed and also what we needed to shoot on what day. 

Props and Costumes

Props

• Ouija board
• Candles
• Knife
• Car
• Face paint/Fake blood
• Shot glass

Costumes

• For the main character, we wanted an all black outfit as it would help signify the bad presence that is being brought in by the Ouija board, as well as showing the negative change in the characters personality.
• For the dark figure we wanted to use either a black cloak or a black coat with hood as this would conceal the figures face and leave the character unknown and there the audience would see them as mysterious and unnerving.
• For the other characters that appear in the trailer, we wanted to keep their costumes as everyday wear because this would signify the normality of these characters compared with the main character as she is the only one who is affected by the Ouija board.

Mood Board

I have created a mood board that will build up a representation of what our group hoped to base our horror movie on. I placed a picture of a Ouija board in the middle of the mood board to show the basis of the idea the group have and it also shows the main reasons for what else happens in the horror movie. To not show too much on the location of the movie, I have used a picture of a wood/forest location just to show that one of the locations used with be something similar, we chose this as a location because it is seen as a convention for many horror movies. I have used images of blood and a knife as this is signifies one of the deaths we were hoping to put in the movie but I decided that I didn't want to show anymore of the deaths as this would give too much of story-line away. The reason for the pictures of the candles is that we hoped to used the candles when the Ouija is performed in the movie as this would set the scene and make it seem more realistic because this is something that is associated with the performance of Ouija. As well as this, we also hoped that we would be able to have glass shattering by either a shot glass falling or flying from the Ouija board and this would show the signs of some presence and so I used a picture of some glass smashing to show this idea we have. The final picture that I used is of a star and as a group we decided that we wanted to use this as a representation of the friendship in the group that perform the Ouija, however we aren't sure if the idea will work out. From all the pictures I used, i have tried to build up the image of a horror movie that doesn't have too much gore, and is more of a psychological horror instead.

Audience Questionnaire

            A questionnaire was designed to find out what audience’s most like about horror films if they like them at all. I also found out from this questionnaire what aspects audiences like to find in trailers and films and this will help our group in knowing what we need to put in our horror trailer to make it successful. Our questionnaire was handed out to 50 people, 62% who answered were female, leaving the remaining 38% as males, which give us fairly even results for the rest of the questions. We also managed to ask a range of different ages having an advantage with the teenagers, as it was mainly 17-20 years olds that answered wit a few that fell into the under 16, over 41 and between 31 and 40 categories, which also helped to give a range in the overall people who answered the questionnaire, giving us an advantage into who we would most likely be able to aim our own horror trailer at.

            To begin with, we asked how often people go to the cinema, and from this we found out that only 2% visit the cinema very regularly however  30% do go to the cinema at least once a month. But there were the remaining 68% who only went to the cinema either once a year or once every few months. With this information, we could see that there were less people that go to the cinema now however it doesn't mean to say that less people will buy DVD versions of films because films still manage to become popular if they aren't part of a sequel. We then asks what attracts our audience to go and watch a film, and the most common answer we found was that the trailer usually attracts the audience to go and watch a film and the least, which told us that our trailer needs to be eye catching and provide the right aspects for it to be successful in the audience wanting to go and watch the film. The second most popular answer was that the audience are attracted to a film due to the actors who feature in the film and this could be because they are fans of the actor or because the actor is credible and they think that the film will be worth watching if that certain actor is in it. The least popular answers which were if it’s a follow on film which gained 12.9% and the name of the film and the poster that only got 1.4% each, showed us that for our own trailer we don’t need a name or a poster for the film that is particularly noticeable because there are aspects that audiences find more beneficial when going to watch a film. However we did learn from this that it would be beneficial to use big actors as a source to gain a wider audience.

            We then decided we wanted to find out how many people tend to watch horrors these days and if so we wanted to find out if it was more the female population or the male population who watched more horror films. To do this we asked how often people watch horror films and this would then give us an indication to how popular horror films still are compared with all the different genre of films that are around now. Through this question we found that the percentage of people who never watch horror films was almost equal with the percentage that watch horror films all the time. However there is more of an overall percentage of people who don’t ever watch horror films or don’t watch them often, compared with the percentage who watch them regularly or all the time. as we knew were making a horror trailer, this information made us think that perhaps our trailer wouldn't be popular however, it told us that we need to do certain things within the trailer to make people want to go and see a horror film and bring them out of their normal comfort zone. Even though we knew that some people wouldn't be interested in watching horror films, we still asked what type of horror they prefer to watch and this helped us in deciding what type of horror to make that would attract the widest audience. Out of the five options we gave, we found that the most popular genre within horror itself is psychological horror that gained 41% of the overall percentage and then there was supernatural with 26.2% of the votes which told us that we needed to focus our trailer on the more ghostly and paranormal side of things that would make people thing about what they were watching instead of something that has a lot of gore in it. We found that the least popular option was monsters, which only gained 6.6% so we knew not to include anything from the monsters or sci-fi genre however because gore did manage to get 16.8% it could be possible to include a little bit of gore in with our trailer.

To find out what aspects we would need to include for a horror film we asked what things within a horror film most scare the audience and the most popular answer that we got was jumpy scenes which implied that the audience would most likely want to see jumpy scenes as it would be what makes a horror film horrific for the audience. We then had an almost equal second answer between the music in scenes and whether the film is based on a true story. This showed us that within the trailer we could say that the film is based on a true story to try and attract the audience into watching it and then it becomes scarier for them but we could also use tense music to and bring in the audience as they will want to know what is going to happen as it known that a jumpy area in a scene comes after a sequence of tense music. Along with answers that we gave as options in the questionnaire there was 9% of the answers that came back as other and so we found that there were other things that some people found scary in horror films and these were: children; tension in the scene; things that play and the mind and there were 3 answers that came back that nothing really scared them within a horror film. The results for this question show us that we could put nearly anything that would be deemed scary in the trailer and it would work for most horror film audiences. The next question on the questionnaire was asking how much gore audiences like to see in a horror film and to this we allowed people to mark on a scale from one to ten how much gore they prefer to see. The most common answers for this question were 5 and 8 which showed that a lot of people do like to see some gore in a horror film however even with some of the top percentages being above 5 there were also a few there were high percentages from 5 and below. After counting all the percentages from 1 to 5 we found that 52% of the audience like to see less gore and so it was a fairly even spread for how much gore people like to see in horror films which meant that we were able to use as little or as much gore as we wanted in the trailer.

We decided to ask if people believed in ghosts and this was to see how many people would believe in a film that was based on Ouija. After doing some research on the Ouija boards, we found that if people didn't believe in ghosts, a spirit wouldn't be found if a group with a non-believer performed Ouija. From the results we found that it was an even split on how many people believed that ghosts and were real with 48% either way, and 4% saying that they were unsure so this made us think that only half the people that we asked would go and watch a film that was based around the idea of ghosts and Ouija boards. From the next question we found out that there were more than half the people we asked that said they would go and watch this type of film. Only 30% said that they wouldn't be interested in watching a film about Ouija and we found that this percentage come mainly from the people who answered that they didn't believe in ghosts, which told us that we would be focusing our film to believers of ghosts rather than non-believers. To find out whether we should put our villain obviously in the trailer, we decided to ask if audiences liked to see villains in the trailer, or whether it spoiled the film as they knew who the villain was. We found that there was a fairly even split between the two, however 54% said that it wouldn't and as this is the higher percentage, it has given us the opportunity to decide whether we would like to use the villain in the trailer. However, if we used the villain in our trailer, we wouldn't like to make it obvious who the villain was as this may spoil it for certain audiences who said that they don’t like to see the villain in the trailer.

As our final question, we asked what people’s favourite horror films are and who their favourite villain was, the purpose of this question was to find out whether the villains were villains from just horror films or whether people’s favourite villains were from other films. And if the villains were from films other than the horror genre, it showed us that we could use any kind of villain in our horror trailer as long as they had the main aspects that are expected from villains. The villains that we found weren't from horror films were Lord Voldemort from the Harry Potter series as well as Joker from the Batman films and both of these villains came among the most popular villains even though they weren't from horror movies. The group of popular villains that come from horror films are Hannibal Lecter from the Hannibal Rising series, Ester who is from the horror film Orphan and Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street series. We then found out that some of the films with popular villains in weren't favourites as an overall horror film with films such as Saw, Hostel, The Exorcist and The Last House on the Left.