Inital Idea

Today my group and I discussed the initial idea for our trailer and film narrative. We stuck to the conventions of a psychological horror and ensured the narrative is easy to understand. However, this doesn't necessarily mean our trailer can't leave the audience asking questions.

Film name:

Oppression

Characters-The characters ages fit into our target audience as we want our audience to be able to relate to the characters as they are more likely to find it interesting and adrenaline rushing this way.

Elliot (boyfriend)

Protagonist and sex appeal- Maddie (girlfriend)

Antagonist- Delaney (the girl Elliot cheats on Maddie with)

Like in 'The Strangers' which I previously analysed, I found out some films/trailers don't include all characters, therefore we haven't included an unlikely hero as they wouldn't fit with our narrative idea.

Narrative
A young couple, Maddie and Elliot, inherit a house after Maddie's parents are tragically killed in a car crash. Dishonesty and murder stand to pull her into depth of despair. Taunted by the dead, betrayed by those she loves, blood and murder stand a chance to send her insane.

Trailer idea
On the mind map, we mapped out each event which could take place in the trailer and we numbered each one in chronological order taking in consideration Todorov's Narrative Theory to ensure the trailer wouldn't confuse the audience:

Equilibrium- A young couple happy together in their new home
Hint of disruption- Elliot cheats on Maddie with Delaney and Delaney is sending threats and taunting messages to Maddie which send her insane
Disruption- Delaney is outside the house covered in blood and soon after there is a home invasion where Maddie is attacked
Restoration of disruption- Maddie ends up taking pills because of her paranoia and stress and she overdoses which makes her hallucinate
New equilibrium- Maddie sees flash forwards of her boyfriend missing and her having interviews with the police to find out where he is but she then sees an shot of his dead body

True stories
We based our narrative and trailer idea around The Sun Family Murder. This is a story based around an event where a family go missing and are then found dead. We have developed this story by putting our own twist on it such as the home invasion and hallucinations as we found that a convention of a psychological horror is it being based on a true story to make it realistic.

Theories we considered
When discussing our research as a group, we needed to ensure it appealed to both our target audience genders therefore I suggested that we include the The Final Girl and Male Gaze theories. As we wanted the idea of female domination in the film trailer, we have considered The Final Girl theory to not necessarily challenge stereotypes, but to make it clear to the audience early on in the trailer that the male is not the protagonist which will persuade women to watch the film. We also included the Male Gaze theory at the beginning of the trailer idea which would work effectively as we wanted to include a sex appeal. Therefore, to draw the male audiences attention to trailer from the very start, we have considered lingering the camera on the curves of our female character to make her look sexy.

I also suggested considering Barthes enigma codes as I researched into this and we want our trailer to leave the audience asking questions. The enigma is created when Maddie starts hallucinating and seeing into the future which will leave the audience asking questions as it may confuse them, therefore it will persuade them to watch the film to find out what is going on and who the man in the shot is? etc.

I believe our film narrative and trailer idea fits the purpose of clearly showing the films genre and target audience as it conforms to psychological horror conventions. For example, we took inspiration for using masked antagonists from 'The Purge' which I analysed as they are conventions of a psychological horror and we will use them to hide their identities to add to the mystery and Semantic enigma codes. We took inspiration for the home invasion idea from 'The Stranger's' trailer as we found out that using a house as a location is iconic to a psychological horror as it makes the narrative more realistic. This adds to the suspense of the trailer as the audience think the realistic events such as the cheating and the man going missing could happen to them, therefore it also lets the audience relate to the characters which draws them in to the trailer even more.

We have also decided to include hallucinations and flash forwards which are inspired by the trailer Kayleigh analysed, 'What Lies Beneath', not just because they are conventions of a psychological horror, but because my target audience also said they associate psychological horrors with playing on the audiences mind, which these conventions do so to meet their expectations to ensure they like the trailer, we decided to include them.

Finally, whilst we were discussing ideas, we briefly thought of some non- diegetic soundtrack ideas which could fit in with the action in our trailer: