Repertoire of Elements

Supernatural Horror Mood Board

Iconography on Supernatural Horror mainly includes visual representations of death, vulnerability and good vs. evil. Death will include skulls, gore and graveyards whereas vulnerability will include being restricted by chains, weapons that could kill and the setting of isolated places with the lack of aid. Themes such as religion can also be included in all but works most especially well with good vs. evil due to the debate of justifying if a person is right or wrong because their religion is their belief. The dangerous aspect to religion within horror is how far a person can carry believing in their religion until it can harm another being.

Supernatural itself is popular with movie fans because although some may be in fear of the unknown, many are curious and would like to see where a fictional story can end up.

Trailer Analysis 2 - Blair Witch Project

The found footage thriller/horror Blair Witch Project starts by a shot on a camera held by someone running in an abandoned building. The sole sound of running out of breath during this clip is effective in immediately informing the audience what type of movie this is. The fact that it is also by point of view allows us to empathise for them as we see what they get into later into the film.

The build up of tension appears both in footage and music put together by synchronised editing. The characters' curiosity lead them to the isolated forest and an abandoned house. The moment things go wrong, the characters' speech become high pitched, shaky and mostly questions such as "What's going on?" implying that they have no idea what will happen; that they are all vulnerable. The music score is intense in building up in volume and higher pitch.

Going back to the beginning footage, the character are running around in the abandoned house or forest and screams can be heard; from this gore and violence is expected. The selling point in the trailer which is exactly the same as the first movie, is that a supernatural, demonic character is killing them off one by one. This concept shown in trailers seem to appear in most thriller/horror or supernatural/horror films.

Trailer Analysis 1 - Chronicle

Chronicle is an unconventional superhero film in that the students who get superpowers weren't born of galactic royalty nor has a mentor to tell them about what they get. The trailer therefor starts with the three main characters in school from the camera the protagonist (Dane DeHaan) films the whole movie with. When they stumble upon a mysterious underground area, they start to panic. Editing uses static transitions from each to the next thus emphasising that something wrong is happening until it blacks out.

When they get back to their normal lives, they start to experiment with what they can do and the main character has killed someone without thought. A tense rise in music is applied to build up the suspense and tension as the audience anticipate what they are going to do about their problem non of them their age can handle. The camera angles and shifts also become much more unstable implying no sense of control of the next events. The footage shows various damaged such as cars being lifted and crushed when the main character turns evil and lets loose with his powers. 

The transitions near the end also become much more glitched and some footage is pix elated and static in between shots. Nerve-racking experiences from the whole film is put into a montage beside a crescendo of music. This would include the three flying in the sky through clouds, people crashing in between building floors and the units of army closing in on them. These random set of clips in a montage make the audience question what is happening so that people will watch it in cinemas.

Reviews - NERVE

It’s no coincidence that Nerve, the most successful attempt at melding the virtual world and the real one so far, was directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, the film-makers behind Catfish, itself a mind-melting “documentary” that unpicked the myth of online identities. 
-The Guardian 

“Nerve” succeeds mainly in showing us how exhilarating it can be to embrace them.
-New York Times 

Like one of its daredevils hanging one-handed from skyscraper scaffolding, Nerve mostly manages to maintain its precarious balance of pulpy suspense and social commentary.
-Rotten Tomatoes 

Reviews provide an insight from experts who understand how to analyse a film. It gives the audiences and idea of their own future opinions of the movie after they have watched it. In many ways, it tells the audience whether or not the film is worthy of spending money and time to watch. 

The reviews can also help bring up conversations between people in the hopes of making the film a common topic whilst it is in the cinemas. The review may include unbelievable snippets of a film without giving away too much that may cause controversy making the audience want to go the cinema to see it for themselves. For instance, one review mentioned one of the characters hanging off a crane; people who hear this might know of the actor and they might have only heard that they are in the film because of the review.

As the film becomes popular with the public it is possible critics can also praise the movie. The audience's response also affect later reviews as much as the reviews affect the public response. 

Website Analysis + Social Media Use - NERVE

                                                             http://www.playnerve.com/

Prior to entering the website, a neon sign of an eye appears saying 100% underneath. Automatically, I am getting a sense of the film's theme as technicolored with a bit of mystery to make the whole movie intriguing to audiences targeting those looking for an exciting film; even more so that this is a thriller. The same colour scheme is applied throughout for the texts and lighting for each scene in the movie.

The movie's poster appears at the top making it recognisable from other public places it appears in such as buses, train stations and bus stops. Film posters, movie stills and the storyline follow to introduce the film. Embedded on the website are gifs which are short-time moving images that repeat from the film and phrases from the film inviting the audience to join them such as "We dare you". Other enticing phrases include "You can be famous" and "Play to survive".

From the top of the page to the bottom, icons of social media websites are linked to their official accounts. The use of social media is powerful in reminding the audience and fans of the film that the movie is out in the cinemas. The inside veiw of movie posters, stills and soundtracks invite the public to be intrigued and teased even before release; sales are already predicted to be successful when many people visit the website and many people follow the accounts on social media. This shows that there is already an interest in watching the film within the public. The behind the scenes visuals make the audience feel like they have known the film for a long time which helps in the build of anticipation until the film comes out.

Welcome

This is Beamari Alarva Suerte's blog post for my A level Portofolio.