Lesson 4: Trailer Screening

Aladdin Trailer (Thriller)

We originally intended to convert Aladdin into a horror trailer, but we decided that thriller might be more suitable. What was challenging is that Aladdin is meant to appeal to children, and even the scariest scenes have a cheery feel to them. I think that our choice of music, which is quite dark / heavy, was helpful with changing the atmosphere to something more horror / thriller-like and create a sense of suspense. We picked out important scenes from the movie to convey the storyline, for example, we used scenes of Aladdin and Jasmine falling in love at first to establish their relationship and afterwards, scenes of Aladdin fighting the villain (snake / genie) of the movie. At the very end, we included the scene of the tiger roar as a jump scare to further intensify the atmosphere.

Of course, our trailer has its weaknesses as well. The audio in the beginning is a bit too soft and we could've made the audio throughout the film more echoey to heighten the sense of terror. My peers also suggested that the trailer belongs more to the horror genre rather the thriller genre. The colour tone of the shots are a bit too bright / too cheery - we could've distorted / darkened the colour scheme using different effects to make the trailer more horror-like. Scary scenes could've been used in a devil movie, especially with demonic moments like the creepy man in the prison. Last but not least, some transitions are not very smooth. The pace of the trailer changes too suddenly because the transition between scenes is sometimes too abrupt, i.e. between the scene where Jasmine / Aladdin gets kidnapped to the scene in the prison. 

Ratatouille (Horror)

This group did a great job converting Ratatouille into a horror film. The choice of soundtracks were excellent as they helped with intensifying the atmosphere and building suspense. The transitions between scenes were smooth, and the sequence of the scenes as well as the pace of the trailer was controlled well as the trailer starts off normal and eventually reaches the climax. Since this is also originally a Disney film, the scenes from the original movie were quite cheery, and this group did a great job picking out darker images to create a horror movie trailer. However, I was a bit confused about the storyline and the role of the characters, but some of my peers pointed out that the ambiguity is what brings the mysteriousness / scary feeling to the trailer. I also think that the volume of the music can be increased towards the end of the trailer to make it more dramatic. Ms. Ward suggested to the group that they could leave more of a cliffhanger in the end. 

Saving Jaws 

I was confused about the storyline of this group's trailer. I wasn't sure what the climax was, until the group introduced their idea to the class - that the story is supposed to be about animal cruelty, with the protagonist trying to save the sharks. The choice of scenes supported the genre, but it does not really translate the storyline to the audience, mostly due to the choice of music. The group said that they tried to portray the beach as a bright, happy place, but the atmosphere that the background music was creating seem to contradict their idea. The music was giving an ominous impression to the audience. I think that some narration / more text is needed to explain what is going on.

Jurassic Park (Romantic Comedy)

This group chose "Just the Way You Are" as the soundtrack for the trailer, which seemed to fit the storyline perfectly in the beginning, where the male lead and female lead were introduced to the audience. Due to the music and the placing of the introductions of characters, we were expecting that it would be about the romantic relationship between the male lead and female lead, but the trailer took an unexpected turn and was instead meant to convey interspecies love. I think that the introduction of the female lead may have been unnecessary, and instead, the group should include an introduction of the dinosaur. The soundtrack can also be cut off halfway through the film and can be replaced with more dialogue / voiceover. The audio cuts / drop offs could've been fine tuned, but otherwise, this group did a great job turning Jurassic Park into a romantic comedy film and approached this task in a very unique and creative way.

Lesson 3: Editing Aladdin Trailer

Today is our third film lesson, and we continued to edit our movie trailers as we will be screening them next class. My group decided to split into two teams, with Charlotte and I browsing sounds that we may possibly use for our trailer on freesound.org, while Kaia and Tess are working on the timeline and reorganising the order of the scenes. Charlotte and I searched for audio tracks of music boxes, screams, and footsteps - essentially anything that can create a suspenseful and creepy atmosphere. We then switched roles - Kaia and Tess searching for music, while Charlotte and I worked on the timeline.

What was most challenging about editing was figuring out the order of the scenes and how we could create smoother transitions. Almost all of the scenes we picked out belonged to the climax and were intended to scare the audience and therefore, there was no storyline that could be derived from the scenes on the timeline. Hence, we got stuck and Ms. Ward advised us to come up with a plot first, and that thriller trailers usually start off with happy / normal scenes. We decided that the story would start off as a love story between Aladdin and Jasmine, with the Genie being the villain, and afterwards, Aladdin gets kidnapped and has to fight his way out. More peaceful / happy scenes were needed to establish the relationship between Aladdin and Jasmine, so we decided to pick out a desert scene from the movie opening as well as the scene where Aladdin and Jasmine meet. We also used an instrumental version of Arabian Nights as the background music for the opening scene of our trailer. 

Since Aladdin is originally a children's movie, some scenes that we tried to use as the scary part of our trailer can appear to be quite cheesy sometimes, therefore, we removed the original movie audio from some scenes and used soundtracks found on freesound.org as the background music to help tone down the cheesiness of the scene / intensify the atmosphere.  

An idea that I have is to try applying slow motion to some clips that are too short eg. the tiger roar at the end (?).

During lunch we went to edit together. After reorganising the scenes, we will need to work on the transitions between scenes because right now they are quite abrupt. 

This lesson, I was better at being open-minded to my teammates' ideas as well as contributing my own ideas. For example, I found a soundtrack from freesound.org to use as background music, but my teammates thought that the soundtrack I chose was not dramatic enough for our trailer to create the suspense we want, so I went online to find another soundtrack.

30th August, 2016

Today, we worked on our trailer together during lunch. Kaia and I stayed after school to complete it. One of the significant additions that we made to our trailer was that we replaced the tiger roar from the original movie soundtrack with a more powerful, longer, and louder roar from freesound.org. Text was also another major addition, as we used it to facilitate the transitions between scenes. 

Lesson 2: Making Our Movie Trailer

25th August, 2016

We began our second class by jumping straight into working on our trailers. My group has decided to choose another film, because none of us were unable to download Finding Dory. We agreed to stick with the Disney theme and decided that Aladdin would be an interesting movie to genre-bend. 

While transferring the movie file from Charlotte's laptop to one of the school iMacs, we started taking note of which scenes in the movie we could use in our trailer. Ms. Ward reminded us that we should keep the scenes short in order to prevent giving too much information away and spoiling the movie. All four of us contributed to the discussion, and we worked quite efficiently, with Charlotte finding scenes in the movie, then all four of us deciding whether it would be a good scene to use, and last but not least, me taking note of the scene timings. Throughout the lesson, I was open-minded to each others' ideas, but I think I have to work on communicating more with my teammates and expressing more of my ideas. After importing the movie onto FinalCut Pro, we took out the snippets we needed and dragged them into our timeline. We chose some peaceful scenes as well as some exciting / thrilling scenes. Next lesson, we will need to start putting them in our desired order, find suitable music to help change the atmosphere of the trailer, and edit in blackouts & text / alter (eg. slow motion) or cut out unnecessary scenes & sounds to complete our 1-minute trailer. 

We also watched a few horror film trailers to find some inspiration for our trailer. I noticed that in two of the trailers (Ouija: Origin of Evil / The Boy) we watched, the trailers both started off with a happy tone to it, where everything seems normal and peaceful, but then the music changes and the atmosphere turns creepy, building up to the climax of the movie. Snippets of the protagonist facing the source of fear in the movie (most likely the most exciting / noteworthy parts of the film) are shown, and sudden spikes in audio volume / blackouts are used to help provoke fear and build tension. The trailers then finish with an unexpected / sudden ending, in order to leave the audience in suspense and bring out their urge to go watch the movie. Towards the end of the lesson, we decided that changing Aladdin into a thriller movie would be more suitable than horror after we have picked out the scenes we wanted. 

We have one lesson left to edit, and I hope that during the weekends, I can do some more research into genre-bending and get some inspiration from watching more thriller trailers, and perhaps start finding some royalty free music that is suitable for our trailer. 

Lesson 1: Year 11 Film Introduction

23rd August, 2016

Developmental Web Blogs 

• Write reflections after every class
• Include handouts / homework assignments
• Start a new entry for every class
• Write film reviews
• Review your IB learner profile.

Year 11 Film Studies

• Screenwriting
• Mise en Scene
• Cinematography
• Sound Design
• Editing:
• Film Analysis

Editing: creating believability on screen

• Workshop practical skills including shooting for continuity editing;
• Developing student's skill in continuity editing;
• Developing student's skill in sound editing;
• Developing student's confidence and skills in manipulating editing software;
• To develop student's skill in montage (discontinuity) editing.

Film Analysis

• The role film plays in society and a cultural and historical awareness

Year 11 Film Studies Course Structure: Four Core Units

• Film Noir 
• Continuity Editing: Twilight Zone
• Montage Editing: A Russian Experiment
• Experimental Film

Today was our first class, and after introducing ourselves and why we are interested in film, Ms. Ward introduced us to the Year 11 film course. I decided to take film as I have been studying film since I joined CIS in Year 8. I did not have much prior knowledge before I started taking film in Year 8, but ever since then, I have become more and more interested in how films of different genres are produced and I love how every film can be interpreted differently by everyone. 

After we all introduced ourselves, we were then given the task to "genre bend" a movie by recreating its trailer, and my group (Kaia, Charlotte, Tess, and I) have chosen to try and turn Finding Dory into a horror film. We are having some trouble with finding a website that we can download the movie from, so we may have to select another film, one that is not as recent. Our next step would be to start thinking about what scenes and music to use in the trailer.