Health and safety assessment

Hazards	Who is at Risk	Controls	Severity of injury	Chance of Injury	Risk	Control measures
Falling from the top of the stairs	Alx	To be aware of stairs and stand a reasonable distance away.	High	Medium	Medium	Instructed to just be aware, watch footing when walking out.
When the knife scrapes across the plate, material could flick out and go into the cast’s eye	Alx and Danny	To gently scrap The knife across	Medium	Medium	Medium	To keep at a distance away from the plate.
“Lunging” at the camera	Alx	To hold on to the tri-pod as a guide of when to stop	Low	Low	Low	To keep the camera secure and to have a prompt of when to stop as well by nearby person

This was the first Risk assessment I did for my first shooting.

Hazards	Who is at Risk	Controls	Severity of injury	Chance of Injury	Risk	Control measures
The knife striking Danny’s hand	Danny	To be aware of when the knife reaches Danny’s hand.	High	Medium	Medium	Use a blunt knife just incase something does happen.
When Alx is holding the blade on the tip of her finger	Alx	To make sure the knife doesn’t pierce her finger	Medium	Medium	Medium	Like with Danny, to use a blunt kitchen knife.
The LED light systems	Danny and Alx	To be aware of the light getting too much for the actors	High	Medium	Medium	Adjust the lighting system and take breaks so that the light doesn’t blind them both.
When Alx is holding the kitchen blade	Alx	To hold the blade away	High	Medium	Medium	Walk steadily so Alx won’t trip and damage herself

This was the second risk assessment that I did for my second shooting.

Script for film trailer

EXT. DESOLATE FIELD

The field is full of dying plants, and there are no signs of life.

EXT. OF HOUSE

We see footsteps walking towards the entrance. These footsteps are DANNY’s.

INT. OF HOUSE, HALLWAY

The audience feels welcomed by the post reading “A house is a house, a family makes it a home”

INT. OF HOUSE, CONSERVATORY

DANNY and ALEX are sat down on the sofa.

DANNY

Hey, how was your day?

ALEX

Not bad, how was yours?

DANNY

Yeah, mine was good. Did anyone ring today?

ALEX

Yeah, Ryan did actually. He’s found a box that’s got some weird carvings in. He’s a bit worried about it, so he’s coming over later to see if we can try and open it.

DANNY

(intrigued) Aah…

RYAN enters the house and walks through into the conservatory

RYAN

Look, er…sorry if this is a bad time or owt, but, I bought this box at a market and…I don’t know, something’s odd about it. (shows box to DANNY and ALEX) I thought you guys might be interested. (he slams the box down at the table)

DANNY

Aah, well it looks cool, I’ll take it from your hands.

INT. OF HOUSE, KITCHEN

DANNY and ALEX are sat at the dinner table. DANNY is holding the box.

DANNY

Well this looks safe. (shakes it) Whoever made this doesn’t want us to look inside. You know (swiftly moves box aside) on second thoughts, I don’t want this.

ALEX

Give me it! I’ll have it! (ALEX takes the box and plays with it)

INT. OF HOUSE, LIVING ROOM

ALEX is sat on the sofa. She proceeds to open the box and take out the bracelets. She looks inside and takes out a pencil.

Some time passes. RYAN and DANNY are now positioned on the other end of the sofa.

DANNY

Hey, you haven’t happened to notice anything strange with Alex, have you?

RYAN

No, why?

DANNY

She seems to be acting quite weird ever since she got that box.

RYAN

Well, er… that’s weird.

DANNY and ALEX are later sat at the dinner table, eating a meal.

DANNY

What’s so important about that box?

ALEX

(frustrated) Nothing! (she scrapes her knife across her plate)

DANNY

Okay, stop it, you’re acting really weird.

ALEX stabs her food with her fork. DANNY slams his hand in frustration. ALEX proceeds to stab it with her knife. The camera cuts before it hits him.

DANNY is later back in the living room. He is researching Dibbuk.

DANNY

(Reading from laptop screen) “A Dibbuk is a malicious spirit of the dead that possesses the living”?

INT. OF HOUSE, BEDROOM. ALEX is sat on the bed, drawing something on a sheet of paper with the pencil from the box.

ALEX

(possessed) People suffering, people dying…

DANNY enters the room

DANNY

Alex?

ALEX

For whom the bell tolls, (turns to face DANNY) it tolls for thee.

INT. OF HOUSE, CONSERVATORY.

RYAN and DANNY are sat at the sofa

RYAN

(Firmly) Look, an exorcism must be performed tonight, or else it’ll just get worse.

DANNY

Yeah, I agree

INT. OF HOUSE, STAIRWAY

ALEX is seen walking across the stairway. She stops to look down at the stairs.

DANNY

Alex? Something wrong?

RYAN

Alex, you okay?

ALEX leers towards the camera

DANNY

Ryan, help…Alex, I love you, please don’t hurt me…

Location shots

For my locations, I have used 8 altogether. When I re-shot my trailer I decided to not film in the hallway or have the shot of Danny opening the door. To adhere to the convention of rural, abandoned locations I filmed a desolate field just opposite a old car showroom on Endyke Lane. To add to the abandoned feeling of the house locations, I asked Danny if he could ask his parents if it was okay if they left for a short while. They agreed to this in some instances.

 

 

 

 

 

Character Profiles

I chose Alx and Danny as they're both film and media students, it allowed me to get constructive criticism in regards to my script and storyboard. I can openly talk to them both and i've known Danny since high school. They both don't live far away therefore making it easier to film. The most important fact is that I chose them because of they're in a relationship. I needed the roles of a husband and wife and I thought they fit that role so well, plus they're happy together.

I chose Ryan as he is also a film and media student. He produced a short film called "Infection" for BTEC media production, it was one of my inspirations to do a horror film/trailer. So I had characters that were well affiliated with film and media. Ryan is a good friend of mine, known him since high school like Danny. His role was the family friend, so he suited the role. Ryan doesn't live that far away so if I needed to re-shoot; there was no difficulties.

Gender issues relating to horror (representation)

Throughout media women are presented to be beautiful and much more emotional compared to men who are stereotypically seen as being much more tough and less emotional. They can be represented as part of a group such as a group of friends or a family, they tend to work and think of part of a team, they take the role of a helper they are generally never a leader.

Men are usually the heroes in typical media forms, they tend to take on the active roles whereas women tend to take on the passive roles, and there is a definite lack of female role models compared to the amount of male role models. We know what types of relationships men have with the characters, as their roles are made out to be a lot more active, we focus on their actions a lot more.

About 20 years ago the visibility of men to women in media was men outnumbering women. Proving males are much more dominant within the media. Women can be seen as sexual objects, in media we are often presented with women in the nude or wearing revealing clothes whereas we never really see men in the nude, showing the difference between male and female presentation.

The presentation of female visibility in horror films is different compared to other media forms. The main female protagonists can turn into the final girl and are therefore present until the end of the film.

Horror, unlike many other forms of media, shows gender in a much more ‘respected’ way, women can be portrayed as being more active than passive, and their passive roles are normally conveyed in other forms of media. In certain horrors they can even be seen as the heroes, or the characters that save the day.

The final girl normally lasts to the end of the film, by either defeating the monster or actually turning into the monster. This type of female strength and anger is not usually presented in other forms of media. The males are mainly the aggressive types, stereotypically. However, in horror films you do normally have a male protagonist, they generally get defeated and the female takes over.


Horror films tend to follow the rule that the male killer kills the group one by one until he himself is killed by the ‘last girl’. This is featured in the book by Carol Clover: ‘Men, Women and Chainsaws’. This suggests that the female is usually the survivor or one who kills the killer therefore giving females in horror power over males, which is feminist ideology. However now with the influence of feminism and modern ideologies women are more successful and therefore the representation of women has changed in horror films to intelligent women who try to figure out who the killer is and stop them rather than be overwhelmed with fear and get killed stereotypically as they were before.For example, the female characters in the movie Scream. They take the role of a male hero and take charge of the movie, trying to find the killer and either capture or kill him.

Carol Clover, the writer of the book: ‘Men, Women and Chainsaws’ has many points of feminism in horror, one of them is the audience identification. She questioned who the audience identifies with in the film. It was previously assumed that the males of the audience identified with the male killer. Clover argued the audience rather identifies with the ‘final girl’. This means that the audience identifies with the fear of being attacked as opposed to the satisfaction of the killer as he kills people or sneaks up on them.

There tends to be three groups for male and females in films; the useless character, the hero and the monster, gender can be represented through any of these categories.

Possible sound effects/ songs for my trailer

Inspiration for the project

The inspiration for my project was the Dybbuk. In Hebrew it means adhere or  cling. I thought it was neccessary to research about a spirit in folklore to add realism to my trailer. The Dybbuk is a malicious or malevolent possessing spirit believed to be the broken soul of a dead person.

The films A Serious Man (2009), The Unborn (2009), and The Possession (2012) all feature a dybbuk in different roles. When it comes to creating my film trailer, I will take influences from The possession, Sinister and Paranormal Activity but not copy. I decided to use the Dybbuk as it's unheard of and it's not just a typical horror film.

But "The Possession," is based not so much on Jewish legend as urban legend: a supposed "dybbuk box," a "haunted" wine cabinet bought at an estate sale in 2001, and advertised on eBay with a story about a dybbuk's curse that causes misfortune to anyone rash enough to own it.

There are, to this day, people who believe in dybbuks – and people who have claimed to cast them out.

One example, from the 1970s: a possessed woman who was being "choked" by the necklace she was wearing. This necklace had been given to her by a parent, her father, who had committed incest with her. In addition, the father held her over the throat when he did that to her.

In the Jewish faith there is no belief in demonic possession though there can be a possession of a living person by the soul of one who has left the body, but not the world. This soul is seeking a body to possess in order to take care of unfinished business. This would make sense because of the example I just gave above.

The dybbuk may be the soul of a sinner, who wishes to escape the just punishment given to it by the 'angels of the grave' who seek to beat them, or to avoid another form of soul punishment. A dybbuk may seek revenge for some evil that was done to it while it lived. The dybbuk may be lost and enter a body simply in order to find a rabbi who would be able send it on it's way. The living host may or may not know that a dybbuk is occupying their body. There may be torment towards the host but this depends on the intent of the possessing soul.


If the dybbuk is able to encounter a rabbi while possessing a living host, then an exorcism ritual can be performed. The Jewish exorcism ritual is performed by a rabbi who has mastered practical Kabbalah. The point of the exorcism is to heal the person being possessed and the spirit doing the possessing. This is a stark contrast to the Roman Catholic exorcism that is intended to drive away the offending spirit or demon. The intent is to heal the soul that's possessing and heal the person. The ceremony is done on behalf of both.



Horror films go back as far as the beginning of film making, infact centuries before that. From a young age we have all imagined seeing 'something' out of the corner of our eye, shadowy shapes/ghostly images and have come to fear the unknown. Horror films give shape to this fear, an outlet for the essence of fear itself, launching us into a terrifying and disturbing world without ever being in danger at all.


Horror films, when done well and with less reliance on horrifying special effects, can be extremely potent film forms, tapping into our dream states and the horror of the irrational and unknown, and the horror within man himself. For example the Blair Witch Project which was a film that was created using only hand held cameras and no special effects whatsoever. It played on the fact that at the time no other films had ever been made like it using just hand held cameras. Also its storyline was developed on and incorporated the legend of Elly Kedward, a woman banished for witchcraft in 1785 in the Blair Township (latter-day Burkittsville) where the film was set which fooled the audience into thinking "could this actually be real?". The way it was amateurly filmed just added to this sense of ultra realism which opened the audience up to a whole new level of fear. The Blair Witch Project and The Posession are the main influences for choosing to do a film trailer.




The above poster for The Blair Witch Project is what I intend to re-create with my film trailer, as though it's a whole film.

Demographics