Choice of trailer
The trailer for Francesca will be a highlights trailer. This type
of trailer is used 90% of the time in real life. This is because it allows the
producers to display all the best bits of their overall film in an effective
way. Through quick montages; including slow and quick scenes, to present the
narrative but keep it fast paced and exciting. This is shown in the trailers
for Evil Dead (2013) and Pusher Trilogy (1996-2005), which always
use slow to quick montages/ collision cutting to create a jump scare.
Synopsis (film)
A young girl called Francesca was
sexually abused by her father as a young teenager (14-15 years old). She
continues to go to school and is picked on for being quiet and smart by the
school boys. She later seeks revenge on her father and brutally kills him still
at her young age.
After this murder Francesca gets a
thrill from the revenge she brought upon her father and continues this onto men
that give unwanted sexual attention to her and other females.
She does this by placing herself at
pubs and night clubs in search of her next victim. One night she takes this too
far and kills a married, decent man. This leaves the wife distraught and on a
separate revenge mission to kill Francesca.
At the end of the film Francesca is
killed by the wife of the man she killed.
Synopsis (trailer)
The opening shots to the trailer
show Francesca’s father leaving a bedroom, doing his belt up, to delicately
suggest sexual assault. It then continues to Francesca’s’ revenge on her father
where she stabs him to death.
The trailer then shows brief
encounters with different men that have harassed her or other women, resulting
in the death of the man. This is shown in alley ways, night clubs and a mystery
‘torture room’.
Throughout the killings in the
trailer, Francesca has frequent flash backs of what her father did to her,
which is making her progressively emotionally unstable and causing her to
self-harm and convince herself that she is bringing justice and helping the
world.
The trailer ends with Francesca in a
room with a man, who is struggling for his life and hints that he is going to
be tortured.
Stitches is a Horror
comedy which was directed by Conor McMahon and was released in 2012. Stitches
is about a Clown who comes back from the dead to haunt those who took his life
6 years before at a 10th birthday party. The film has generic horror
characters the main character Stitches is the Psycho Killer of the film, the
male heroes are Tom and Vinny both of these boy have dark hair which fits the
generic horror conventions. The final girl also fits the generic horror
conventions, she is a dark hair called Kate, whereas the female victim in
stitches is Sarah who is a blonde haired girl who is portrayed as a
‘slut’. Generic horror conventions are
well used in this movie, body horror is used a lot in the movie, and one
example of this is the death scene of Stitches the Clown he falls on the knife
sticking out of the dish washer and then pulls it out which releases a flow on
blood on to 10 year old Tom. Another example of body horror being used is Sarah’s
death scene; Stitched throws an umbrella through her eye which brings her eye
out on to the tip of the umbrella. Enclosed creepy are used mainly throughout
the film, as it is mainly set in Tom’s house at night or the graveyard. Both
Contrapuntal music and Parallel music is used in the film, Contrapuntal clown
music is played when Vinny’s ‘genitals are ripped off’ at school. Whereas
Parallel music is played in the graveyard when Tom sees the clowns with the
painted eggs when he was younger. Lots
of different types of shots were used in the film such as point of view shots;
these were used whenever someone looked through the telescope in the tree
house. Another type of shot used was close-ups, these where used a lot to
create tension and show different emotions, an example of close-ups being used
is after Tom falls down the stair after being chased by Paul dressed as
Stitches, this was used to show Toms extreme fear of clowns. The flash backs are
shown via montaging in the film an example of this is when Tom looks at the
tree house and it flashes back to his birthday. The film contains a lot of
scene with low key lighting, such as when Stitches rises from the grave and
walks forwards, low key lighting is used this way to show the mood of the scene
and to make it feel eerie. The ending of this film is an open ending, this is
because there are 3 teens remaining and Stitches egg gets fixed at the end of
the film. 
The film was made in
2012 is up to date for context. The film shows how children grow up quicker in
maturity since the 2000’s. The clown’s performance shows this as the 10 year
olds do not find stitches funny and instead decide to play pranks/ torment him.
This is also shown in the sequence 6 years later. The teenagers (16 years old)
have also shown that people grow up quicker since the 2000’s as they drink,
smoke and have premarital sex at the party. The film is also up to date with institutional
context; the movie contains a lot of gore which correlates with people becoming
more comfortable with gore so more movies are become more extreme to be able to
keep the audience entertained/scared. Compared to movies made 30 years ago such
as Dawn of the Dead (1979) the gore has become more realistic and more intense.
One of the scenes
that impressed me most in this film is when Pauls head lands in the water, the
slow motion effect used with shot is very effective. The face emerging out of
the face at the end of this shot is unsettling because of how gradually it is
shown. Another shot I was impressed with in the film is when Sarah gets killed,
the detail of the body horror in the shot is well done and again the slow
motion makes the scene more powerful. I would have liked to use slow motion
kill shots in my trailer but I don’t think it would have worked with the pacing
of the trailer. This film helped me decide that I wanted to avoid the comedy
side of horror because it is really hard to portray correctly without the film seeming
‘cheesy’.
