Film Narrative: So... It's About?

Coming up with a film idea to make a horror trailer for is harder than you would imagine. From the outside, you would assume all you have to do is find a girl, have her get chased by someone scary, and have her eventually get lost. Make the film. Voila! BUT... once you are faced with the actual task of making a horror trailer, there is so much more to it. As we are 'ameateur film makers' we will find it very hard to produce a predictable storyline and still have it scary. So, as we tried to work against the norm, my group & I came up with these two ideas to develop into a trailer.

Idea 1 

Setting:

-Children's playground on Hampstead heath.

Characters:

-A mother and child that the viewer is made to empathise with

-A creature of some sort that takes children

Narrative:

When playing in a rather deserted playground a child goes missing right before their mothers eyes. There is a constant chase of what makes these children disappear and who takes them throughout the trailer.

Ideas of possible shots:

-A swing moving on its own with diegetic sound of the scraping rusty metal moving back and forth.

Idea 2:

Setting:

-A woman's home and painting area.

Characters:

-A sexualised alluring female.

-A passive male figure.

Narrative:

A female painter allures male character's into her home to paint life drawings of them when in fact she is a serial killer.

Ideas of possible shots:

-An over the shoulder shot of her painting the male with a focus pull to show the males insignificance and the females power.

So, what's the film about? Well, my group & I decided to opt for the less obvious plot of a haunted house where the freaks come out at night and went for more of a 'I'm a psychopath so I'm going to kill you' route. We briefly came up with an idea of a young woman who was an artist and she has invited over a man to be her life drawing model. Whilst he is too busy being in complete awe of her, she is busy planning his murder behind the canvas. She goes on to somehow reveal her insanity and thus the mad mayhem begins.

One thing that we had to take into consideration was that this was a TEASER trailer rather than your average two to three minute trailer showing all the important bits of the film narrative. In a teaser trailer, the director only has one minute to two minutes to show the most thrilling, tongue-teasing bits of the film that will entice its audience from an early stage. That being said, we chose to base the teaser trailer around the life drawing and the chase.