Ben Case Study

Synopsis: a native college student is cast into a world of blood, violence and terror as she desperately tries to find the whereabouts of someone only known as Ben. Through her journey of looking for him, she found the body of her best friend in the woods, surrounded in a bath tub filled with her blood. Shocked by her murder the female protagonist, spurred on by this, she loses her sense of innocence and begins her hunt for the killer. The video ends with her running through a marsh.

Themes: The video is shot and cut into a trailer. This format made the video very snappy, as trailer are produces in order to gain the audience’s attention the trailer mocks the modern day slasher film that is regularly produced in Hollywood. The nature of the trailer causes it to be quite satirical, despite its heavy use of blood and violence, the typicalness if this storyline makes it into a dark comedy. Blood and violence is generally a theme throughout the trailer, with the protagonist shown to be covered in blood and tired up by unknown forces. This type of scene has become so regular that it becomes a cliché scene that it loses the sensitivity.

Characters: although there is the mention of three characters, only two are actually shown during the mock trailer. The main female protagonists and her best friend, neither of their names are mentioned, however to juxtapose this, Ben is the only name given to the audience, but is never shown in the trailer. The main character is portrayed as a casual college student, texting and giggling about with her best friend. The best friend is only given one line of dialogue, but her character is used more importantly as the death that then sets off a spiral of events surrounding the main character. Despite never being seen the character Ben is by far the most interesting thing in the trailer. As the character is never shown, the air of mystery of whom or where Ben is, is furthered as the protagonist is also shown to wonder with increasingly more desperations.

Camera techniques: an establishing shot in the very beginning is done to paint the image of something normal and ordinary, when in actual fact a storm of violence is slowly brewing. Hand held is used heavily in the action sequences. This makes the actions sequence a lot more surreal to the audience. These are also shot in first person perspective as it then puts the audience in the place that the protagonist is in. Close ups are used effectively to move the storyline and to gauge the type of characters. The close up of her face giggling and looking shyly towards her friend, suggests to the audience that Ben is a boy that she likes and is maybe flirting with. This instantly establishes the relationship between her and Ben.

Editing: In the beginning of the video there are slow fading transitions between scenes, this gives the trailer a settled feel; however this quickly changes at the end of the best friends death scene and the action sequences begin. The cutting speeds greatly increases and create a sense of her desperation and the adrenaline of the action/running scenes. There are a few fade to black transitions between the opening scene in order to create some mystery and suspense, as the audience is and almost expecting a twist of some sort.

Mise-En-Scene: both girls in the trailer dress casually in the attire that would be common for a teenage girl i.e. shorts, vest top or a plain black shirt.

Props: early in the video the protagonist us shown to be texting on her phone, which is seen as a hugely typical teenage activity. In the midst of all the action, in which the protagonist is tied, a unknown figure is shown to be holding an axe. This gives a completely different feel to all the other scenes as this is the first time that there is a physical proof of someone hunting the protagonists rather than the scene of her aimlessly running from the supposed villain.

Setting: the woods is a key setting as it rings back to the mocking of modern slasher, as the most typical scenes are that of an innocent girl walking into the woods. These scenes of the protagonist heading into the woods us a nod to this, and gives the audience the indication of where the storyline is going.

Sound: sound is an important factor to the trailer in order to aid the intensity of the scenes with suspense and action. The trailer begins with a steady drum beat in the background of all the dialoge, giving a sinister and eerie feeling to the audience. The soundtrack continues and builds as more instruments and strings are added, creating more tension. The music suddenly stops and when the dead best friend is found. This draws the audience and contains the shock value as everything turns deafeningly silent. However this silence is broken by the blood curdling scream of the protagonist and a new orchestral soundtrack, which is another nod to the way Hollywood produce “epic” scenes.

Target Audience: the audience will be to the large majority of people as it is available on YouTube and therefore accessible to most people. However it would be more suitable and catered to the younger generation as they would be more privy to the mock humour of it.

The main things that inspired me is the way the running scenes through the first was shot and choreographed. The slasher-esque genre this trailer delves into something that I want to take and adopt into my own short film. I also liked the way hand held cam was shot in first person as it helped create a more realistic way to produce an action/running scene.