Evaluation Activity 1 - Characters

We noticed during our planning phase that the relevance of a character is given by offering as much or as little camera time. We wanted to maximise the amount of characters we include in the trailer to make it have more of a broad feel. We introduced characters at relatively the same time to help the audience identify them but also to tell the audience that there is still a lot of information that they can gain from watching the entire movie and it helps gain more interest of the movie from the trailer. 

Again Propp's narrative theory was vital in this particular aspect. We wanted to show the Hero first, although the audience don't find that out in the trailer, we tried to follow the introduction of characters to the helper and villain. The audience will identify that both James and myself have the same importance level in this trailer as we appear an equal amount of times each but only later in the trailer, they come across only seeing James and not me. 

As horror is a difficult genre to cooperate in character introduction, we decided making a found footage would be easier to produce, meaning, at the beginning I was situating an introductory scene, stating where we are. Though with James, first shot the audience sees is where he was joking around, and I was worried. We both introduced with dialogue where I was speaking to the camera and James was speaking to me. To the audience is may already imply as if I am the victim because I am seen more at the start, so I am potentially the subject.

The last scene with the car, another character is seen, to the audience it’s very hard to judge if it’s James or me. With very bright light shining of the person, this has a cliffhanger effect on the audience as the trailer ends with them not knowing who or what that person was. James and I intended for this to have an influence on the audience to want to watch the film, in order to find out who the person is. 

This is the introductory shot of me, telling the audience where the trailer is based, also introducing my character, Denzel.   

This shot was implemented to have a cliffhanger influence on the audience for them to watch the movie itself.