2. Plot
On October 2009, Kristi Rey and her husband Daniel are killed by her demon-possessed
sister Katie. She then abducts Kristi’s 1 year old son, Hunter, unaware that Daniel’s teenage
daughter, Ali, is still alive and away on a school trip. A text states that Katie and Hunter’s
whereabouts remained unknown.
In November 2011, a teenager named Alex and her family live in Suburban
Henderson, Nevada with her mother Holly, her farther Doug and her little brother Wyatt.
Alex and her friend Ben discover their neighbours child, Robbie, is hiding in their family tree
house. The next day, Robbie’s mother falls ill and is taken to the hospital, leaving Robbie in
the care of Alex’s family. Robbie begins mentioning an invisible friend, whose presence is
captured by a series of cameras set up by Alex and Ben. One night, Alex notices several cars
outside Robbie’s house, but flees after being confronted by a woman. During the
day, Robbie draws a green symbol on Wyatt’s back, which Alex later determines to be
associated with witchcraft and demonic possession.
3. Paranormal Activity 4 is the fourth instalment in the Paranormal
Activity series. Released in 2012 and directed by Ariel Schulman and
Henry Joost. It is an American supernatural horror film.
This movie explores themes of possession but living in normality.
Our trailer will feature this theme.
Tense sound is used at the beginning to show what happened in the
past . There is also a lot of screams used when certain sections occur
when the glass breaks . Other than that it is just music to build
tension for the spectator. This will definitely be a technique that we
will use in our paranormal horror trailer as we want to build tension
and suspense for the spectators so that they are left wanting to know
what will happen.
The clips are edited together very well. As it is a found/home made
footage trailer when the clips change it cuts out and back in as it loses
signal. There is also quite a lot of normal cuts to scenes to get through
as much as they can in the trailer to show the spectator enough but
not too much. Using the lose of signal cut would be good in our
trailer.
4. Narrative
This movie is an open ended narrative, this is because it can be carried on to another story of
paranormal activity and you never know what will exactly happen, you try to work out what
will happen but you never know what could happen as it is always left to tension building till
the final part.
This is a mixture of a single-strand and a multi-strand narrative as it focuses on the main girl
but has other characters that appear a lot but do now have a main part like her. Our trailer may
be either of these.
It is also a linear structure as it each story follows on and is in chronological order. It begins
with a flashback from a few years ago to explain to the spectator what happened and then
continues the story in the present day and we see them grown up but with issues occuring. Our
trailer would probably follow a linear structure.
5. Audience
Paranormal Activity 4 has an age rating of 15 for the film. So this suggests that an audience
under this age would not be appropriate to view the film as it may scare them.
This film is mainly aimed at teenagers as the main character is a teenager. This represents an
ideology of age as people who are the same age as the characters are more likely to watch the
film. Furthermore, teenagers are investigative and like to know everything that is happening
and if something is out of the ordinary then they will want to explore and find out what it is.
This film would also appeal to adults with an interest in paranormal movies.
6. Mise-en-scene
The main setting of this trailer/film is within the main characters house which is the girl. Our
trailer would probably be set in a house as we would like to explore a found footage theme.
The costumes are fairly normal, nothing out of the ordinary just everyday clothing which adds
to the found footage feel. The lighting is quite regular as it is shot from a camera/laptop.
Most of the facial expressions and body language lead to an anxious and worried feel as they
do not know what is happening.
When she is in her room the laptop is always positioned to the right of her by her bed so that
we can view the rest of her room, especially the door as we may be able to see things that she
can’t particularly when she is sleeping and does not know what is happening as this means the
spectator knows more than the character.
Quite a few camera angles/shots have been used in this trailer. An establishing shot so we
know that it is set in a house but mainly it is self recorded by the main character so the camera
moves around the room frequently. We follow people a lot around the house to find out what
is happening. You can tell that it is found footage/home made as the camera shakes a lot which
we may include in our trailer.
