Evaluation Task One - Special Effects

We understood that special effects was one of the main key areas about making a successful horror trailer and how it helps to increase the suspense, the effects help to increase the realism of the film. For example, we studied the film/trailer of Grave Encounters, and studied the way at how they used their special effects to enhance the realism and the impact of their film. The effects they used were very minimal but had a huge impact on the film/trailer, they used a glitch effect in the film, this is to give the impression that something was wrong with the camera and that when text came up in the trailer, it would have the same effect, glitching to enhance the effects and impact on the audience. In our production, we didn’t want to overcomplicate the trailer with various different special effects as we thought that it wouldn’t have the same effect as it would do, so we decided to use minimal effects and natural camera shots and locations to make it as effective as we can. We knew this would be the best way on how to attract an audience.

One thing we had done was a lot of research of many different types of found footage horror films and most of them used the glitch effect. We started to do more research on the glitch effect and how we can introduce this into our production, fortunately, in the editing software that I used to edit the film, there was a TV Simulation effect, this was great to use as it gave us the same effect as the glitch effect and making the audience think that there was something wrong with our camera when filming. We thought that using this effect, that it would be a simple way to make the trailer look better and giving it more quality, attracting a wide range of audiences. We also used some faded shots at the start of our trailer, but as the trailer progressed, these fades were not necessary due to the increase of intensity of our trailer, where we started to use hard cut shots or implicate the intensity and also the horror feel. 

This editing technique shown above, was used as a very snappy way to change shots, and video footage. Making it seem as if something is faulty was a very efficient way of reaching to the audience and implying this is a high budget film.

Smudging the writing, again, making it look as if there is a fault, quick and meaningful way of setting a superior image for the film.