Paranormal Activity Shot Storyboard

To get more knowledge about horror trailers, I looked at the one for Paranormal Activity 2 and analysed the content. As I will be doing a similar trailer hopefully. Whilst following the codes and conventions.

 

 

 For the first 14 seconds of the Teaser Trailer all we see is a black screen with occasional grey distortion ( presumably edited in) added to it. This is to create the realism of the hand held camera effect. The black screen connotates the darkness and fear and is a conventional colour used in horror.

Next, unlike most teaser trailers we see a clip from the first Paranormal Activity film. Also, it unconventionally starts with the disequliberium. I think this was done to create a impact from the start, to give more of a scare factor. A hand held camera is held still by tripod. Suddenly the body of a dead man is thrown at the camera. The camera is filming in Black and White (night vision so it seems). I believe Strauss Levi’s theory of binary oppositions has been applied here. (good vs evil, black vs white.) As we see the man with a white shirt being thrown back by possessed woman who is shown in black a few seconds later. In addition, this adds to the effect of the filming being done with a hand held camera and also gives the trailer a spooky feel. The location is quite typical, as stated in my research, it is conventional to film in homes. Also, the low diegetic sound (which sounds to me like the wind blowing in the background) creates a spooky and lonely atmosphere which makes the viewer feel tense about what is going to happen.

 The camera cuts to a mid-shot of the audience watching Paranormal Activity One, it then cuts back to the shot of the bedroom and the camera zooms in on the door. It seems as though the camera is on a canted angle because of it being knocked by the man. This is to add more of a disorientation to the situation The door being open seems to be icongraphy to me. As in the bedroom door is like a portal and this evil entity has made it's way in and causing havoc. The shakyness of the camera and the static which appears on the screen as the camera is cutting from one scene to another re-inforces the idea that this is being filmed on a hand held camera. So it gives it more realism.

The screen then goes black and then cut's to a shot of the audience. Waiting to see what will happen. The silence of this shot builds up tension and creates enigmas to the audience, such as, “What will happen next?” Suddenly the camera cuts and we see a woman leaping at the camera, this is conventionally found in trailers. The evil entity or possessed subject appears only for a split second (been edited in) as this creates more of a effect and to not spoil the film too much. The woman appears to be not in focus as well. You can't really see much of her due to the poor lighting on her face. I believe this is done to freak the audience out further, it makes us question "What was that just then?" This frightens us and creates further enigmas such as, “Why is this woman jumping at the screen?” Although people who have seen the first paranormal activity film will probably know the answers to these enigmas already. The camera cuts again and we see the audience viewing the film gasp and scream. The camera then goes static. By showing clips of the audience viewing the first paranormal activity film the creators of this trailer have emphasised that it was a popular film in 2009. The silence, both during and after this clip, make the viewer feel tense, wondering what will happen next

After that, we see a clip from the new Paranormal Activity film. We get the impression that the image is coming from a surveillance camera as a high angle shot allows us to look down on the room. The room is a bedroom with a baby sleeping in a cot and a dog sleeping on the floor. The high angle shot is used to make the dog and baby look weak. Connotating that they may be next. The mise-en-scene of the room adds to the creepy atmosphere. The baby toy probs used and the crib denote innocence. The whole baby's room is juxtaposed with the current situation at hand. That the possessed woman is walkin about somewhere. Also, it is to be noted that the lighting is more predominant in this scene. For the reason that babies are innocent, have no clue of the world just yet. The camera isn’t shaky, which means that it must be stationary. The surviellence camera effect makes us want to pay attention to what is going on, as we would pay attention if we were watching a CCTV camera.

It then cuts to black, the words, “For What’s Next,” appear on the screen, this adds more suspense.

The camera cuts to a shot of the living room which seems normal and then cuts again to the bedroom where we see the baby and the dog have dissapeared, and now a woman is standing in the doorway to the bathroom. The woman is dressed in black which carries negative connotations of evil, danger and fear. As an the target audience we fear this woman. We are also left with several more enigmas, “Who is this woman?” “What happened to the baby and the dog?”

The screen goes black. The number 2 flashes on the screen 3 times before the title of the film, “Paranormal activity 2,” appears onto the screen. This is followed by the address of the films website The name of the movie flashes up again followed by the camera going static. Briefly, a shot of the bedroom flashes up again. Then the camera cuts out. The teaser trailer is over. This abrupt ending to the trailer is supposed to hook the reader and make them want to watch the film. It is a unconventional ending, however. As usually, there's one last scare from the demon or possessed being.

Set locations for Paranormal Activity

 The Roof of wyke college was chosen because of the slight wind there was moving the trees, keeping in with the theme of it been scary.

We had to choose this corridor carefully because we couldn't have any photographs in the corner, and also nobody walking past, the aim of this image was to show how quiet the building is.

 Shooting this scene, Dan Troupe was on the elft hand side shaking the silver chain, making it appear like it was moving, the problem we had with this shot is that the yellow wet floor sign looked out of place so we had to reshoot.

In this shot, we used a rolling chair and got Dan Troupe to lay on the floor and push the chair, we then used video effects to make it appear to be going slower than it was.

Deconstruction + reconstruction of a media text

Group Names:
Dan Troupe - Director (www.dantroupea2courseworkportfolio.blogspot.co.uk)
Andy Goodhand - Editor (www.andygoodhanda2mediablog.blogspot.co.uk)
Matthew Nolan - Camera (www.mattnolanadvancedportfolio.blogspot.co.uk)
Bethany Hirons - Producer (www.bethanyhironsmediaa2.blogspot.co.uk)
Andy and Beth will be playing the cast members.

The media text we have chosen to deconstruct and reconstruct is the film trailer for Paranormal Activity 2, directed by Tod Williams, 2010. The aim of our work is to make sure that everything looks like it is shot from a surveillance camera.



Research into making the media text:
Finding ideal sounds.

This sound is identical to that in the paranormal activity trailer. The sound at 0.14 is the same as this boom sound that we found using www.freesound.org






Shooting Schedule:
Tuesday 2nd October:
Filming in Oak, near the vending machines.
Props needed: Comb, back combed hair to shoot the close up of the girl also black t shirt.

Wednesday 3rd October:
Filming the scenes in the classroom, shooting a sequence in the canteen, on top of the Oak building. 
No props needed.
All group members needed.

Thursday 4th October
Begin filming, all cast needed.

Friday 5th October
Go onto the roof, reshoot the scene of the man running into the camera.
All cast needed on the roof.

Tuesday 9th October
Begin editing and putting all of the clips into order.

Wednesday 10th October
Add the static effect and also the sounds.

Audience Feedback

Demographic Data Results

Gender: 5 Males, 5 Females

Age Group: 10 16-19, 1 20-24

Where do you live: 8 Hull, 3 East Riding

Social Class: 1 A, 1 C1, 7 E

Favourite Music Genre:

Indie	4 (36%)
Pop	4 (36%)
Rock	6 (54%)
Country	3 (27%)
Acoustic Covers	4 (36%)
R & B	3 (27%)
Electric Dance	1 (9%)
Rap	2 (18%)

What form of music video do you like most?

Performance	6 (60%)
Abstract	3 (30%)
Narrative	5 (50%)
Animated	1 (10%)

Psychographic Data Results



Matthew Nolan, another media student been asked what he thniks of my influential media texts. Within his psychographic interview he stated, that he felt all of the performers were neccassary when making the music videos, this is good research for myself as I am going to be using a performer in my video. He also felt that the stylistics were very well used, which helps me because these will influence my work.

Key Audience Terms

Qualitative Data:
Qualitative data is extremely varied in nature. It includes virtually any information that can be captured that is not numerical in nature. For example in terms of my blog, If i asked someones opinion why they liked a certain type of genre, it would become qualitative data.

Quantitative Data:
Numerical form data that can easily be turned into statistical data such as percentages and ratios. This information is usually found on questionnaires which in terms of my blog is the poll on the right hand side.

Demographic Data:
The age, gender, post code: any information that lacks emotional response.

Psycho-graphic Data:
This type of data looks at the persons like and dislikes, it looks at the person much closer usually asking for opinions and reasoning for their answers.

Skills Development Essay

For my Foundation Portfolio I created a front cover, contents page, and double page spread of a music magazine of my choice, I had to choose the genre and also the individual who would be used on my magazine. All of the images and text used had to be original, produced by myself, which included a minimum of four images. I chose to create my music magazine within the genre of pop. Also for my preliminary exercise I needed to produce, using desktop publishing and an image manipulation program, the front page of a new school/college magazine, featuring a photograph of a student in medium close-up plus some appropriately laid-out text and a masthead, this preliminary exercise was to help us develop skills in Adobe Photoshop CS5.

Research & Planning, Genre Conventions
I researched the elements needed for my brief by analysing existing (e.g. NME, Kerrang and Q) music magazines and the conventions they have used and to what effect. I later analysed the genre of Pop by looking at their more successful artists and an already existing magazine. I looked specifically at NME magazine, although it did not have the same target audience I was looking for, it is a hugely popular magazine with the look of what I wanted. For example, when creating my contents page I used the same layout as NME, however, for the front cover I chose to use the style of Q, using a lot of emphasis on the artist. Some of the genre conventions for a pop magazine are that the artist used on the front cover must be the person most involved in this issue. On their picture it must state in bold writing who they are and a quote from the article to bring their audience in. The quote would be to do with their own personal life; something that the audience could relate to in order for them to want to read on. Another genre convention I found was on the contents page, this convention was not just specific to pop but to all music magazines; in that the numbers on the contents page did not have to be in order, they could just focus on the key pages that the reader may be interested in, rather than listing 1-100 chronologically. The source of this research was mainly the internet, but also some magazine hard copies. I used the internet to find magazine front covers from a magazine, genre and year of my choice. The LIIAR acronym (language, institution, ideology, audience and representation) helped to shape my analysis.

Creative Work
As part of the creative process I identified the typical conventions of a music magazine. I explored different ways of setting out the conventions across a layout and also considered the conventions of pop, my chosen music genre. The practice that I'd had whilst making my college magazine helped me to know what conventions to use and also to know what looked good on a front cover. I used an off white background on Photoshop and toyed different fonts, pictures and shape to see what fit well on the screen. I took a series of photos when planning my final piece using both different poses and different models seeing which would best fit the genre of my magazine. Once I was in the final stages of production I gave my audience my front cover, contents page and double page spread along with some questions about my project and what sort of audience they think it is aimed at. My results assured me that I had made the right decisions when taking my target audience into account as all those asked knew it was a pop music magazine.

Digital Technology/Post-Production
In my foundation portfolio I used Adobe Photoshop CS5 in order to manipulate my photos to have the desired effect and make the publication look more professional. I had never used Adobe Photoshop before so I had to do many drafts in order to get it right. Adobe Photoshop CS5 allowed to edit my digital photos to a degree which I was happy with, but my main technical challenge was learning which tools to use to create which effect whilst also creating a photo which would allow for the typical conventions of a music magazine such as a masthead, main feature headline, dateline, barcode, issue no, skyline and subtitle. In order to achieve a professional looking magazine along with all the typical conventions I took photos and then tested them out on Photoshop by adding all the elements and seeing if it worked. Following this I would take some more photos with the layout of a typical magazine in mind in order to achieve the desired result. By creating a magazine front cover with all the typical conventions I was able to communicate to the audience that publication was a professional one, i.e. something worth buying. As for the creation of the double page spread, I used Microsoft Publisher 2010 in order to create the effect of a typical publication. When working on Microsoft Publisher you can add effects to key quotes that you cannot do using Photoshop CS5, I tried out many different fonts and also styles of writing a double page spread as prior to this I had no experience of writing an article which led me to using an interview style article.