The student created a horror movie trailer for an assignment. As the director, they conducted research on horror film conventions like establishing equilibrium, using jump scares, and including a fast-paced montage of scenes. Extensive pre-production included writing a story treatment, researching music, locations, and costuming. A filming schedule and risk assessment were created. Artificial lighting was needed during night shoots. Post-production logs tracked editing progress, where limited effects were used like a glow and scramble effect. While not matching the original vision fully due to errors, the student was still pleased with the final trailer.

1. Evaluation
For this assignment I had to film and edit a movie trailer. As a group we decided to follow
up my idea and create a horror trailer. We assigned each other role’s to make the trailer. I
was the Director because it was my idea, so this would make it easier to decide what
needed to be filmed or if changes had to happen to certain scenes. Our target audience
was people 15 and over because I feel that it would only be understood by people of this
age and it could be too scary for a younger audience.
For my trailer I tried to follow as many conventions as I could, such as I used inter-titles to
help build tension with the trailer and put the viewers on edge. Another I used was
narrative, I felt this was important in my trailer because I wanted people to know what
was going on so i changed some of the script to help explain the story a little better, and
then it was easier to build the narrative further.
Before we could just make a trailer we had to do lots of Pre-Production workto gettera
better understanding in to film trailers. I done lots of research and looked into lots of
different things, to start i analysed horror trailers and reviewed them to help me
understand what makes a good horror trailer and what doesn’t. Because of that research I
learnt that horrors set the equilibrium of the characters almost right away toshow what
they normally do, the getting intothe trailerthe equilibrium gets disturbed and it
normally has a fast paced montage of scenes from the movie which would interest the
audience and nearly every time, a jump scare. After gaining knowledge of Horror trailers I
them made a film proposal where I wrote the whole story then how the trailer would go,
over time lots of changes were made to it but these choices where necessary to make the
trailer better. The next thing I did was research music and sound of horror trailers. Music
and sound is needed in horror trailers because they can make it seem scarier and also
keep the audience interested. I then went on and done research in to location and
costuming for my trailer, my trailer needed a little bit of costuming but mostly it was
normal clothes. The locations where not hard to find and I am happy with the choices I
made. Then when it came to filming my trailer, we made a filming schedule where we
decided where, when and who was filming/acting on that day. These made it easier to
film because it meant we were planning ahead so we wouldn’t have to spend time
organising what we are going to film. The last thing we did was make a risk assessment.
After reviewing my Pre-Production Work I can how I can see how over time I learnt lots
more about trailers and how they work, this ultimately helped me create my film trailer
and I wouldn’t have been able to without doing these steps.
When we started to film, we filmed the trailer in the order that it was going to be and only
filming some extra scenes later on. We needed lots of artificial lighting because some of
the scenes we had to film in a park at night time so there was no natural light source
around. We resorted to using torches to help lighten ourfaces but not so much that it
would be obvious to the viewer’s. Props were not a huge thing in our trailer but the ones

2. we did use we made sure that they looked there best and were clear on camera. Whilst
filming we made things called Production Logs which outlined what we did that day and
explains it in detail.
When editing I did not rely on heavy effects but some were used for example, I had to use
motion tracking toadd a glow effect on the antagonists eyes but these effects weren’t
used lots in the trailer as you have to go frame by frame to get it in the clip and this can
take a very long time. I also used a scramble effect in the trailer which I think also was a
very light but effective effect. We also made editing logs which like the production log,
explain what i did with editing for that day.
To conclude, I think that my trailer was ok but compared tomy original plan it didn’t turn
out how I wanted it to, but none the less it still something. For my original idea I wanted
to have a part where the antagonist jolts in and out while scenes are going on, but due to
file errors this would not work so instead I added the one part in as and ending.