Devil Poster and film reviews

- The Tagline lets us put together the idea of the Devil and being possessed if someone travelling in an elevator is not what they seem. Also playing on the fear of Claustrophobia, being trapped in an elevator with five people around you.

- The key image is the elevator doors slightly open with just enough gap to show an upside down cross. When we normally see a cross sign we are instinctively relate it to religion, god and Jesus, however because this cross is upside down it could be representing the opposite to God which would be the Devil. Also the 6 at the top of the elevator representing the level they are on, also symbolizes the Devils and his number, “666”.   

-The Title is placed at the bottom of the poster which could relate to the Devil being beneath us, also the tip of the cross is in between the ”V” in the word Devil almost giving us the impression that the red flames are coming from the Devil.

-The Credit block is traditionally placed at the bottom of the poster.
-The Studio and distributors logos are again traditionally at the bottom of the poster.

Devil - The Night Chronicles | Trailer #1 US (2010)

Narrative Timeline:

Period of Equalibrium:
Walking into a building.
Signing in.
Waiting for an elevator.

Moment of Disequalibrium:
When the elevator doors behind them open.

Period of Disequalibrium: 
The elevator stops.
The weather is stormy and dark. ( The camera pans up from the bottom of the building to the top, giving us the impression they are stuck high up in the building)
Lights go out
Hearing sound.
A woman has been hurting, Bleeding.
Not trusting eachother.
Strange things flickering on the camera.
Police, Fire brigade, and security cant get into the elevator.
Fighting eachother, trying to protect themselves with glass.
Flickers of them lying on the floor dead.
Glass smashing.
Screaming.
Someone falling from a building.
Falling down an elevator sharft.
Shawdow of someone fitting.


Film Report:
Title: Devil
Directed By: John Erick Dowdle
Year: 2010

Paradigmatic Conventions:
Setting: America, Elevator.
Characters: Five People. Tony, Old Woman. Sarah. Ben and Salesman.
Villan: The Devil.
Props: The elevator.

Plot Synopsis:
Five people are stuck in an elevator and one of them is not who they appear, One of them is the Devil. Strange things start to happen and people get hurt and start to die. No one can get to them and they are running out of time. Their only way to save themselves is to see themselves as they really are.

Editing the Treatment

Reading through our treatment with our teacher it started to become clear that we would have difficulty creating a good structural trailer so we decided to keep the initial idea but change the way we set it slightly.

So our new treatment keeps with the idea of a spirit and haunting but is in a way that we can see a good trailer emerging from it.

New Treatment: Three friends (all girls) are driving out in the woods to have a few drinks and just to have fun. It starts to get dark now and the car unfortunately wont start.

The girls walk towards a large house and see if they can stay the night there. No one is in this house and the furniture is covered by white sheets. The girls realise that the house is abandoned and stay the night.

The girls then start to explore the house. None of the phones work.
One girl tries to open one of the doors but it is locked. She struggles to open it but notice's someone or something is in that room, as the door opens the girl walks through and sees that this is the room of a little girl, however nothing has been touched almost as if this is a shrine to whoever owned this room.

The girl calls her friends and as she does this picks up one of the teddies on the little girls bed, suddenly there is a flash of white light and the girl sees this little girl playing with the teddy. The teddy drops and she now sees two adults standing over a grave. The vision ends there and the girl is taken back to the room. In shock she drops the teddy.
From then on strange paranormal activity starts to occur and the girls experience some very strange events.

Strange Events:We discussed a few ideas for our strange scenes and we feel that these our the key scenes we would want in our trailer.

1) Establishing shot of the woods.
    Car drives up through the woods.
    Close up on tyres.
    Establishing girls in the car and they get out with alcohol in there hands.
    They wander through the woods
    Gets dark
    See house and open the door.

2) Exploring house and find a locked door.
    Tries to open it - pushing the door.
    Looks under the door and sees foot steps.
    Looks through the keyhole and there is an eye looking back.
    Jumps back, turns around to shout for her friends and the door swings open.

3) Takes a teddy from the bed.
    Flash or white light.
    Sees girl playing with teddy.
    Teddy drops.
    Parents by the grave.
    Back to room/Drops the teddy.

4) Exploring the girls room more
    Finds a music box, opens it to hear music.

5) Another friend pulls a sheet off a mirror.
    (Nothing there) Girl looks into the mirror
    Little girl walks past the door behind her.

6) Lights cut out.
    Light switch not working
    The friends are all downstairs together
    They hear the music box being played upstairs
    Little girl walks from one place and appears in the other.


Trailer: Our basic trailer idea (Not complete) :

-Establishing shot of the woods and house.
-Girls mucking around in the woods and the drive up.
-Gets dark & the car wont start.
-Find a house - no one is there.
-Shots of them individually exploring the house
-Strange event with the locked door and the keyhole scenes that is involved there.
   -Sheets being taken off
   -Bussing sequences
   -Lights not working
-Weird events happening
  -Music box being played
  -Bussing sequences
  -Doors slamming
  -Windows jammed, Cant get out of the house.


Idea for the ending:Panning out from house. Daylight. Music box music playing. Car messed up (Doors and bonnet open). Little girl skips/Crawls towards the camera giggling.

The planning of an amazing trailer !!

Production company: X111


Pitch: "The Forth Kind and Poltergeist meet Amityville Horror in the woods"
- Seeing things, Abductions, Influences, Mental.
- Demons, Torment/Torcher, Feeding off fear.
- Isolated, No technology, No support.


Scenerio:  "A teenage girl gets haunted and taken to the woods by a spirit. Her friends are possesed and killed and torment the girl"

"Haunted" being the prop paradigm as well as "possesed"
"Teenage girl", "friends" and "spirit" are the character paradigms
"woods" is the setting paradigm


Treatment:
Opens in the girl being in therapy talking about the haunting and the huge event (traumatic event), discussion with threapist about the ouija board. (time and date on recording) video goes static-earlier time and date with everyday life.
Her friends are at her house for a sleep over, chatting and giggling.
There is a bang going down the stairs and a picture of her and her friends is smashed at the bottom of the stairs. One of her friends freaks out and mentions the ouija board.
They go back into the bed room and fall asleep, once they are asleep ghost activity happens for a short while.
The Camera goes to black and there is the sound of a girl giggling and the girl wakes up in the woods with her friends. She blames her friends as she wakes them up.
then she starts to freak out once she knows its not her friends and so does one other, however the other friend is sitting there with her head down-there is a close up on her face and she is smiling and the sound of the giggle is heard again, made by her.
The others react to this but then she is back to normal.
A sequence of weird things happen (bussing)
One friend is possesed and tries to attack them, the girl and her other friend run away, the possesion then jumps (which is indicated by the giggle)
The teenage girl says for one night she will keep watch
She slowly starts to go mad, paranoid.
For awhile nothing happens-One of her friends does something small one night (finds a sharp object to show them) The others think she is possesed and is trying to hurt them- they accidentally kill her. They bury her and run away.
The next morning they hear a giggle, they are scared and a little girl appears with her family, they calm down and ask for directions - they get out of the woods.
The other friends ends up commiting suicide under possesion.
Close up of bloody hand, glass and picture of the friends together.
As the girl comes out of threapy her boyfriend meets her and as they walk together her giggles the same giggle she has heard throughout, she stops him and he dosnt understand what she is going on about.
(we know this is her boyfriend from a picture in her room and her and her friends talking)

"End"


Key Scenes: Therapy.
                    Sleep over - door moving.
                    Black screen "Giggle".
                    Waking up in the woods.
                    Possessed friend.
                    Bussing sequence - weird things happening.
                    Esculation of paranoia.
                    Digging.
                    Friend with sharp object.
                    Flashes of possessed friends.
                    Smashed picture.
                    Little girl skipping.

             (Scenes not in order yet)


Ideas for tone cards:


"Do you really know the consequences"
"Playing around with things you dont understand"


Location list:  Woods.
                        Inside the house.
                        Shot of the house in the woods.

Bussing Sequence

With this trailer we had to decide what sort of things we wanted to involve in our trailer, however the main technique to include was a bussing sequence. We decided to use a common bussing sequence with someone looking into a mirror then away and then having the camera looking away from the mirror and then back to it with someone there.
we used many short sequences and close ups to create a quick intense trailer and with quick cuts we tried to create a fast, heart racing sequence.
Of corse without the best technology we couldnt but we tried our best!
To improve the trailer i deffiantly would of made the editing slicker and faster with quicker cuts to enhance the mood of the trailer.
I believe the trailer does following the structual paradigms we have a helpess girl character running away in an abondoned school with a strange, scary character finding her.

Editing:

I found the editing quite hard at first, getting used to the different techniques that you can use and what buttons to press to create certain effects took awhile but it does deffiantly help make the trailer look more real.
To create this short trailer it took awhile because we found it hard to use the tools on the macs to create slow scenes and fast scenes, scenes that we wanted to cut and finding the correct place to cut bits so i think we are going to need alot more practice to get our final trailers done it time and to look the best that they can be.

Filming: Whilst we were filming we tried to follow the rule of one in three close ups so we focused on hands opening the door, close up of the face scared, doors opening, we tried to really create this intense sequence where the audience was constantly expecting something to happen.
We also used a mid shot and an over the shoulder shot of the bathroom door opening behind me which cuts to a close up of my face with the bathroom door still opening. We decided that this would create the idea of panic with a quick cut and something opening the door.
We used long shots of me running and trying to open doors. We also decided to film from my feet with me running away from the camera to the door trying to open it, we thought this would be a nice scene to use where the whole setting is included.

"A Perfect Getaway" - Official Trailer [HQ HD]

Cry Wolf - Theatrical Trailer

Film Report:

Title: Cry Wolf
Year: 2005
Director: Jeff Wadlow
Studio:
Screenplay: Beau Bauman

Conflict: Trying to spread a rumour to create fear in the school but they start to believe it themselves.

Complications: The rumour is starting to come true and it is happening to the people who started it.

Crisis: They are being attcked by "The Wolf" and no one believes them.

Climax: It is all a big joke and there never was a killer they were playing a trick on the new boy.

Paradigmatic Conventions:
Setting: A private school in Virginia, USA.
Props: Computeur, Weapons used in the rumour, Gun.
Characters: Friends (Owen, Dodger, Tom, Mercedes, Regina, Randall and Lewis) The Wolf (Villian)