Jack Howard Trailer

ChrisLyon

ChrisLyon

Well-known member
This is the trailer for a movie based on an urban legend at Louisiana Tech University which is about a student who hangs himself in the theater after not getting the part he wanted in the play. He swore to haunt the theater if the play was ever performed again. We shot and completed this in 2 weeks. The total running time for the film was just under 50 minutes. We were pressured for time because it was to release on Halloween of last year. Anyway, I'm not going to post the film, because it isnt great. Well, I may post it on down the road, but not right now. anyway, here is the trailer for the film...

The Haunting of Jack Howard (Theatrical Trailer)
QuickTime 4.0 MB, H.264 Codec

More information about the film can be found at: http://www.hauntingofjackhoward.com

Thoughts, criticisms and outright bashings are welcome.
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Edit: Fun game... there are two shots in this trailer that are not shot with the DVX.... can you tell which ones they are?
 
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Hi, here's the plus: Great trailer, nice style, music good, acting decent, now, all you need is to punch up the editing...(If I can throw in my 2 cents....) make it faster during the peak moments and make it scary! It's a horror flic... scare me! Throw in a couple subliminal images and a couple extreme close ups and you got a winner! Throw in a nice scream over the quicker images for scare factor.

one last thing: lower the music a touch when the guy and girl are talk/walking towards the camera.... can't hear their dialogue.

Cool trailer....
 
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hmmm. It definately grabbed my attention the whole way through, but once again the acting was quite poor ( too theatrical in line delivery ) Since it is a scary movie, you could use a bit of CC to add some effect.

But not bad :)
 
It's a fine trailer, sir. Very fine.

I do cringe a little when I think of how you kept some facts and then created a larger portion of the mythology to the "hometown urban legend". But that really doesn't have to do with your trailer.
It's just when the film was being made a lot of people kept asking me what the story was, and when I gave them the jest of it, they loved to point out that Jack Howard wasn't part of the legend at all. Immediately in their own minds, they are discrediting the film's fictional credibility.

By the way, the bloodstain is still in the bottom of the freight elevator. That stuff is pretty permanent.

I hope you get more hits on this post, man. See you later.
 
thanks kyle. the stain i guess is a lasting testiment.

but the point of the story and the jest of the story is that vera wasnt the first and that few people know the truth. The trailer was also geared towards a Louisiana Tech audience that already thouoght they knew the legend. So we played the trailer knowing that the howard ghost was in peoples minds.
 
I think it was Ok and that it has the potential to be an effective trailer. In addition to what PimpDaddyDA said., here are some other areas of improvements.

1) Your first two shots were weak. Specially the fast first clip that has that one distracting frame in it. The second shot just looks weird trying to support the previous one. In other words you need a stronger and more dramatic start. Perhaps, starting with the credits "Parennial Media" & "Louisiana Tech Film Society" just with a mood setting music, then start using the actor's dialogs to start telling the story. Note, you don't have to use the same shot the script belongs to, you can use for instance the cemetery and auditorium to support the (a) the intro of titles w/ moody music and (b) the narration of the actors. I think this could just go straight to the point and establish what the problem is.


2) Everyone starts running and freaking out because this kid appears on the screen for two seconds carrying something. I think is lacking a true reason or motivation to be really afraid and feel threaten. Look at all your footage even the ones that did not make it to the final cut and see what cold be very dramatic and set that Jack is a real threat.

Those were just samples to of my opinion but if you can work-out the intro and the motive for the cast to be afraid you will have something more effective. What you have works, but it can be better.

Best,
 
It pretty decent, I agree with the others starting was a bit weak, but the rest was pretty cool.

By the way, is that last music peice from "The Village" or is it just my mind playing games?
 
audio smoothing ... make sure there isn't gaps, fill them with room tone. (you have some rough transitions between silence and dialogue).
 
Visually it was a little lackluster, your editing wasn't too bad, audio not bad either.

This seems like it just needs some tweaking in order for it to really shine. All the structure is there, just everything needs to be tightened up, especially editing and audio.
 
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