Our Production Logo/Title card

For our production company title, we chose to make it on Final Cut Pro which allowed us access to multiple different editing tools. 

Our group member, Charlie, went and photographed part of a wood near his house that was close to what we had in mind for our title card. We used the font Grunge as we felt it displayed the genre our production company produced, horror, and chose a cool blue colour to fit with our colour scheme. We also darkened the image, lowered the saturation and reduced the exposure to create a more eerie feel, and found it also emboldened our company name. We overlayed the Gaussian blur over the whole image which we felt was fitting with our genre.

Location Scouting

We settled on the idea that our trailer would be set in a forest, the primary setting used in the Slender man games. It was important to find a place not too far away and easily accessible while providing an appropriate atmosphere and mise-en-scene.

The forest/woods we have settled on are situated in Tonbridge and are located near one of our crew's house, meaning we have a base nearby.

Call Sheet

We created a call sheet that is adaptable to each filming session, so both cast and crew knows exactly what is happening and when. This then also gives the crew a record of what was filmed with who and when.

‘ALWAYS WATCHES NO EYES’ TRAILER

Job No: AWNO0-

Call Sheet: 0-

(date)

Production Company:	Trespass Productions	Mob: Contact: Client Contact:
Location & Unit Base:
Travel & Parking:
Production note:
Location note:
Weather:
CALL TIMES:
--:-- – Crew Call
--:-- – Cast Call
CAST:
1. ‘SLENDER MAN’		Mob:
2. ‘MEGAN’		Mob:
3. ‘HARRY’		Mob:
4. ‘JAMIE’		Mob:
5. ‘EMILY’		Mob:
6. ‘HANGING BODY’		Mob:
CREW:
Director:		Mob:
Camera:		Mob:
Production Manager:		Mob:
EQUIPMENT
Camera: Supplied by Charlotte Morris
Lights: Supplied by Trespass Productions
Grip: Supplied by Trespass Productions
Other: Supplied by Trespass Productions
Props:
Wardrobe:

SCHEDULE:

--:--	Crew call
--:--
--:--
--:--
--:--
--:--
--:--	Wrap

Model Release Form

For our trailer, we require model release forms as our actors will all be under the age of 18 when we begin filming. This is so we have permission to use the footage, required by the law.  

Analysing Horror - Until Dawn

Until Dawn is a interactive survival horror game developed by Sony for PlayStation 4 and released in 2015. The game revolves around a group of friends spending the night at a log cabin on the anniversary of disappearance of two of their friends. As the night progresses, they have to survive a crazed serial killer and something more sinister until dawn. The game employs a technique called the 'Butterfly Effect' - the choices the player makes will carve the story of the rest of the game - and this is incredibly immersive for the player.

I thought that the concept of friends together is similar to ours, and the use of the supernatural Wendigos is similar as well to our use of Slender man. I also feel that the cover for it is something we should use as inspiration for our poster with it's simplistic design that conveys the genre and use of time, and the idea of something sinister and uncontrollable watching their every move.

Analysing Horrors - Dead Silence

Dead Silence is a horror film that was directed by James Wan in 2007. It follows the story of a young man returning to his hometown after the murder of his wife. He believes that a ventriloquist doll that arrived at their house the night of her murder is the reason, and hopes to find answers there. However, what he doesn't realise is that the ventriloquist's ghost is hungry for revenge.

I felt that Dead Silence is very similar to what our film is about, both using the idea of a myth/fairy tale to bring fear. Slender man, of course, is an urban myth created for a competition, and the rhyme in Dead Silence was made for the film to imitate the concept of the Bloody Mary rhyme. I thought the build up of tension was executed well, and the way the audience were thrown into the action almost immediately is similar to our ideas.

Analysing Horror Trailers - The Forest

Analysing Horror - As Above So Below

As Above So Below is a found footage horror film directed by John Erick Dowdle in 2014. It is set in the catacombs of Paris, where a team of explorers are hunting for Nicholas Flamel's philosophers stone. However, they also uncover the dark secrets that live in the city of the dead.

What I really liked about this film was the constant use of a found footage style. It's supposed to be a documentary of the experience, and it therefore immerses the viewer in what is going on. This made the film incredibly intense and exciting as you were seeing what the characters saw. This would link in with Blumler and Katz's uses and gratifications theory in the point that the audience want to identify with the characters of the situation.

I also really liked the tension it created with so few "jump scares", instead playing with psychological fears such as claustrophobia and guilt of deaths. However, I felt that the ending wasn't as good as it could have been, relying too much on a supernatural element when it had started off with a more natural style.



I first found out about the film through a promotional YouTube video by Felix Kjellberg (aka PewDiePie). He embarked on a quest through the catacombs with his girlfriend where they were scared in multiple ways, creating an almost real life horror game.

Conventions of Horror

Our Concept - Slender Man

Our trailer is to be based around the concept of a popular Internet meme known as Slender Man.

Created in 2009 on the Something Awful forum by Eric Knudsen (a.k.a Victor Surge), Slender Man was formed for a photoshop contest where users were to create supernatural images. To increase the overall effect, Knudsen added snippets of text that were supposedly from witnesses. It was a hit and soon went viral, fanart, cosplay and fanfiction (known as creepy pastas) jumping from site to site and gradually losing contact with it's original creator. In 2012, the "myth" of Slender Man was formed into a video game named Slender Man: The Eight Pages, and within the first month it had accumulated 2 million downloads, leading on to more variants of the game that included Slender Man for iOS and the sequel, Slender Man: The Arrival (2013).

What made Slender Man so popular was the flexibility of the concept and the highly collaborative nature. People can edit and adapt the story and images due to the mystery behind it's creation and author. In a sense, Slender Man could be considered similar to a campfire story, or urban legend, as Andrew Peck suggests, the story teller able to claim a sense of ownership over their version of the myth.

The concept of Slender Man has become so popular, and the lines between fantasy and reality so blurred, that there have even been cases of Slender Man - related incidents. In 2014, two 12 year old girls held down a classmate and stabbed her multiple times. When later questioned, the two claimed that they were following steps to become Slender Man's "proxies"after reading about it online. Later that same year, another girl of 14 supposedly set fire to her house with her mother and younger brother inside with possible connections to Slender Man who she seemed infatuated with. These are just two examples of cases that have been related to the concept, proving the cultural impact it has had on a generation of technology natives.

Our Vision Sheet

Iconic Directors of Horror Films

History of the Horror Film Genre

Changing Genre

Our group was set on trying to make an intelligent thriller with certain shots, and this was our downfall. We were so focused on two particular shots we were trying to form a narrative around them and it just was not working. So, we took a step back.

We looked at the current narrative we had and noticed that we had been using conventions that were tailored more towards a Horror film. We talked through it more with one of our teachers to find possible routes to follow, settling on a found footage style film before slowly drifting towards something influenced by today's culture and the influence of memes. Eventually we were able to create a horror film narrative based on the concept of Slenderman that we hope will employ the main conventions of the genre.