Making my horror movie trailer
Learning New Skills
How to create a story board
I looked at this example storyboard and I thought about the features that it had:
iMovie and Ipads
To learn how to shoot and edit a movie, I made a practice movie using an iPad to film my classmates and teachers and learn all of the different skills.
A Screenshot from one of my practice movies:
I am using iMovie to edit the movie and I wanted to learn how to use everything independently.
Planning the Project
Coming up with an idea for a story:
I asked my English teacher to help me with coming up with the idea for the story behind my movie trailer. This worked well because we have been studying horror stories in English.
First I wrote a script for the movie trailer I used a program called Celtx because this is what film professionals use to write their scripts. I did this practice script to get used to it:
It was a bit tricky to learn how to use Celtx but it was worth it because the script looks professional!
This is the story board I made for my movie trailer, the storyboard helped me to plan out all of the shots:
Filming the project
One big challenge I had was that the school closed when I still hadn’t finished filming the movie. I had two final scenes to film. I needed a TV playing static and a ghost jumping out at the camera. In the end, I filmed both of these at home on my phone with my brother as the ghost and I sent the videos to my teacher by email so we could edit together in Zoom.
The plan is to put these two scenes together so it looks like my brother is jumping out of the TV at the end to give the audience a jump scare!
I filmed both scenes on my phone and it was important to remember to film them in landscape.
Editing the project
One big challenge I had was that the school closed when I hadn’t finished editing the movie yet. I had done most of the main editing but there were a few things to do. I had Zoom calls with my teacher and she put iMovie on the screen so I could see it and then I gave her specific instructions of how to finish the movie which was really hard but I’m glad we kept working on it.
These are some screenshots from my first draft of the movie:
First Draft of the trailer
Password is SMAAsilver
Here is the first draft of my trailer. I made this at school before closures and Melanie gave me feedback.
The first drive of my movie, to watch it, enter the password: SMAAsilver
Ongoing Feedback
Savannah, your movie is looking good, and I do like the black and white effect, however, colour is so symbolic in horror movies that it might be good to introduce some. I love your logo and how it is working. That’s really excellent! I think you could include some layering, putting clips over each other to increase the creepiness. When we talked about how the trailer is going, you said that you were considering using some archive footage of slavery, and I think this is a great idea as it will add to the thematic themes of racism. The transitions between scenes could be a little smoother too.
Feedback from Melanie
Melanie watched an early draft of the movie and gave this feedback. I decided to include layering and definitely wanted to add archive footage. These are some screenshots of the archive footage I found:
Making a Logo
I made the logo for my imaginary production company in Photoshop using the skillls I got from my Bronze Award and then I used iMovie to animate it.
Sharing the Project
My Final Movie!
Tha password is: SMAAsilver
My Movie Trailer was shared in two ways:
It was sent to all the teachers and students by email and I asked for feedback. You can see this below.
It was screened at an end of term art exhibition and private view organised by Arts Award Students.
Sharing the movie trailer
My movie trailer was emailed to all of the teachers and students at my school so that they could give me some feedback:
FEEDBACK
Here is the survey that I created to see what people thought of my art work:
These are the questions I asked, I had a mixture of open and closed questions so I could get measureable data AND lots of comments.
FEEDBACK RESULTS
Here are the results of the survey that I made: click here:
It is best to click the link to see my results because then you can scroll through all of the comments, but I also took some screenshots of my results page:
MY EVALUATION OF THE PROJECT.
For my Silver Arts Award I made a horror movie trailer
My project was a horror trailer. I made a short film on an iPad and edited it in iMovie on a Macbook.
First, I had an idea that I scripted out. Next, I drew out my storyline as a storyboard. Then, I found some actors. Next, I filmed it on an ipad. Finally, I edited it using imovie.
I had to work with other people. I worked with Jason, my music teacher and a professional singer and actor. He played the son. Pauline, our pastoral support teacher played the mother. My brother Aaron played the ghost in the final scene and I had to direct him. My art teacher Melanie, a professional artist and photographer, helped me with the editing and she gave me feedback on my first draft.
The most challenging part was trying to edit it in lockdown because I had to do it over Zoom and it was really hard to be specific about what I wanted to happen. Also it took a lot longer to get stuff done. Luckily, I was able to come back to school for the last few weeks of the summer term and finish off the movie and make the logo using Photoshop at school.
Although I had done some scriptwriting before, I had not done storyboarding. I learnt how to use imovie to edit my work and I would really love to use iMovie again.
| Skill | How I got better at this skill |
| Using the technology independently | I learnt how to use iMovie during this project. At first, I needed a lot of help from my teacher but after a while I became more confident and I was able to spend a lot of time editing independently by the end. I was even able to direct Melanie to do what I wanted in iMovie over zoom when we were finalising the project. I also got better at Photoshop. I had used this software before but I had to do more complex things to make my logo. It was fun animating the logo in iMovie and it made the trailer feel more professional. |
| Having too many ideas and not being able to narrow them down | I think doing just a trailer really helped with this. I had ideas fro the whole story but a trailer just uses the most exciting parts so it was a challenge trying to identify what those bits were and put them in. If anyone is writing a story or a movie, I recommend making a synopsis or trailer because this helps you to find the most important bits. |
| Being too shy to ask people to be in my pictures or films | At first, I was still really sky and I wanted to do everything myself. Melanie came with me to ask people and did most of the asking. But as the movie started to come together, lots of people were interested. I edited it in the school and people would come over and ask if they could be in it. So by the end I was asking people and even encouraging them to be in the movie. |
People who scored my project gave it on average 8.8 out of 10 which is a great score and I am happy with that.
These are some of the things people said they liked about the horror movie:
“The atmosphere”
“I liked the whole video and was impressed with the range of different scenes you managed to create at school. This combined with very effective editing gave the clips a really eerie feel. Well done!”
“I enjoyed how the overall film was put together. It was fantastic.”
“I really liked the limping scene. It was chilling.”
“The whole thing was pretty scary, especially the sounds that the actors made”
These are some of the things people thought I could have improved on:
“smooth connections between scenes”
“You could have combined the archive footage with additional footage from the fighting scene to have a running theme throughout the video”
“The section with the foot when it is tied I think this could of been stronger more aggressive.”
“Maybe a few accessories like Jason’s glass and the chain around the foot”
“The scene where the leg was tied up could have been a bit more realistic – it looked too easy to escape!”
“Some of the actors were a bit over the top!”
My favourite comments from the survey were:
“You had other actors in the movie and you directed them well.”
“I enjoyed how the overall film was put together. It was fantastic.”
“I liked the whole video and was impressed with the range of different scenes you managed to create at school. This combined with very effective editing gave the clips a really eerie feel. Well done!”
If I made this movie again, I would add smooth transition to the scenes in the movie and have more accessories to the actors. Overall, I am happy with the project. My favourite part of the horror trailer is the boy who jumped of the tv it scared the audience and added an interesting touch. I would really love to act in the next movie I make and if I am able to do Gold Arts Award, my new skill to learn would be acting. Some of the actors in this trailer were not professionals and they found it a bit difficult and awkward. Other actors were professionals but they were a bit over the top and it made the film a bit funny when I only wanted it to be scary. So I think I would like to be better at directing people and not let them just do it how they want. This would make the movie more consistent in tone.