Being busy with pre production is taking good time but making sure my research and practice is well up to scratch will improve my final production, the indepth research in my genre will enable me to satisfy my audiences needs.
In order to improve the effectiveness and impact my trailer has on my audience i feel it is decisive to get all of my production techniques up to scratch.
With some research into camera movement and angles etc i found an excellent resource to refer back to whilst doing my production, Vimeo film school offers superb examples and run throughs that are easy to understand and can be quite simply emulated in my work.
Here are the techniques and descriptions of these tips:
Star of your Movie: The Sound!
You know the shark in Jaws is about to attack when its signature sound starts playing. Sound is the most important character in your scary film and can give your boogeyman a helping hand. It can build suspense, indicate mood changes and even give an extra scary jolt to your audience.
Although "Drive" is not necessarily a scary film, the sound design team was very particular about building tension and establishing a mental sound space that puts you in the driver's seat. When you have a scared audience, their hearing becomes hypersensitive, and constructing an effective soundscape can both set an eerie mood and deliver the biggest scares.
Remember a great resource to find music is Vimeo Music Store, where you can search for tracks with tags like, "dark, eerie, intense, etc." or by tempo if you're trying to build tension with a fast or slow music pace.
Look out!
Keeping your audience engaged and on the edge of their seats is important, and you can easily accomplish this by isolating what they can and can’t see.
Alternatively, you can add anticipation by switching up the perspective of the scene and allowing your audience to see what’s lurking around the corner, while keeping your main character in the dark. Another great example, Alexis Wajsbrot and Damien Mace's viThe Red Balloon, keeps you on edge alongside a babysitter and a little girl as they discover they are not alone in the house.The camera spends time looking at random, inconspicuous objects, like stuffed animals or a red balloon. This steers the audience's attention away from the danger that is lurking offscreen, and takes us by surprise!
Sometimes, less is more!
Many classic horror films never even reveal what the scary creature or character actually is. What made the Blair Witch Project so scary? The audience never actually sees the witch and is left to use their own imagination, right to the very end, about what horrible presence resides in the woods. When creating a low-budget scary movie, the unknown and viewers’ imaginations are much scarier than the real thing. For some inspiration, 'Internet Story,' which uses video blogging and flash animation to draw you into a very eerie modern mystery offers big chills by implying much of the creepy details without explicitly showing us. Also, nothing beats a well-delivered narration to make our imaginations run wild!
Lights out!
Typically you want to shoot with the light so that it is in front of your subject, however, when it comes to a scary movie, try shooting your subject in a dark room with a single light source. In horror movies, the characters often rely on a flashlight or a torch to keep away the dangers that lurk in the dark, making your light source a potentially important plot device.
Shake it up
When you’re shooting your scary movie, don’t be afraid to go handheld. It’s usually best practice to try and steady your camera or use a tripod so that you have a nice smooth shot, but a little shake can go a long way in adding more panic and suspense to a scene. A great example of this can be seen in the sequences depicted in the teaser trailer for Darkstone Entertainment's "Plan 9."
The contrasting levels of urgency switches. The shakiness in productions makes the audience feel like part of the chase, and visually keeps them on their toes as they look around more carefully for danger. On that note, you may also want to consider putting the camera in the hands of your main character so that the film is shot from their perspective. In a similar vein, sometimes lower quality video with a grainy image quality or shot in black and white gives a story an amateur but more believable demeanor. It's an aesthetic option to consider.
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