Pitch

Title: The Awoken
Genre: Horror Film Trailer

Summary of Target Audience;
The primary target audience for our trailer are 16-25 year olds, 50/50 male female split. My target audience are regular cinemagoers who enjoying going to watch movies in groups. The target audience enjoy horror films with a particular focus on psychological and survival themes.

Description of Ideas;
The Awoken is a trailer for a horror film aimed at 16-25 year olds. It follows the story of four teenagers; Joe, Sam, Ella and Chloe who discover and begin to use a Ouija Board for the first time. What they first think is just a joke, a game turns into something much more than that. Each of our characters is within the age bracket of our target audience so making the story more relatable and therefore more realistic. We focus on the vulnerability and naivety of our young characters emphasising the realism of the story and reinforcing the feeling of fear with our audience. From the four characters two are girls and two are boys, this enables our trailer to appeal to both genders, alienating neither of them.

Why our product will be successful;
Our trailer will be successful as we have completed in depth research into our chosen genre and also our target audience so we know what their expectations are and how to meet them. Through looking at existing products and examples of horror film trailers we are able to recognise conventions and include them into our product. We have looked at trailers specifically aimed to our target audience, from this we have learnt what appeals and what has been successful in the past. From creating a questionnairre which aimed to discover who our target audience is and a little more about what they expect and like to see in trailers we have learnt that the storyline is the most important factor in a horror film. Characters, violence and the actors were also fairly important to our target audience. To ensure our trailer is successful we will take each of these factors into account, we aim to create a horror film based on a unique storyline which has not been seen before. The main characters we have decided to use are two young females and two young males this is so that they are easily relatable by our target audience as they are of similar and therefore make the story more realistic and thus more scary. We chose to use two main characters of each gender so to appeal to a wider target audience by not alienating either sex. In the actual trailer enigma was a key element which or target market look for. We will make sure, when constructing our product, that we are careful not to give too much about the plot away and leave the audience with questions regarding what happens. The most popular sub genre of horror was survival closely followed by psychological, we aim to incorporate both of these into our trailer as they can both be worked in conjuction with each other fairly easily.

Summary of Conventions for Horror Film Trailer;
Trailers for horror films follow certain conventions which, through looking at exisiting products, we are able to include in our trailer. Trailer's for films of this genre often begin with a happy atmosphere, an equilibrium, which is clearly soon to be disrupted. To create this feeling high key lighting and up beat music is used, the editing tends to be fairly steady and at a slower pace towards the beginning of the trailer. As the trailer moves on we see the disruption of the equilibrium, this is bought across to the audience through low key lighting and a darker piece of music. From this point on tension is built creating a feel of adrenaline in the audience. Music and editing work together to create this, as the pace of music increases so does the pace of the editing. Shots and clips from the film are intermixed with transition slides which give certain pieces of information surrounding the plot however leave the audience with questions and no answers. Trailer's often use quick fades to white and to black to create a smooth transition between the clips but still keeping in with teh fast pace and jumpy feel. Trailer's aim to give an impression of the film without giving away the complete plot so to create interest in the film and make the audience want to watch the film in its entirety. Within many trailers short sections are specifically included to make the person watching jump, to the audience this is a gauge as to what they can expect during the film and whether or not this would appeal to them. Normally this section is executed successfully by the sudden movement or appearance of a character or by a sudden louder noise which is unexpected. The trailer most commonly finishes with the music at its loudest point and the editing at its fastest, to create an air of mystery around our product we will leave it with a cliffhanger so the audience will want to know more.

Conclusion of my research - Conventions

These are a summary of the conventions I have found for each of the products I will be creating through my research into similar, existing products. To create the mind maps I used https://bubbl.us/