FEATURE: Teaser trailer for Australian horror feature film shot on Canon HV20

M

McBain

Member
Hi everybody,

I've been a proud Canon HV20 owner/user since 2007 and a couple of years ago I decided it was time to try to make a feature film on the little devil. I wrote a script entitled "Throwback" -- a horror/adventure tale inspired by '70s bigfoot movies like "The Legend of Boggy Creek" and jungle adventure flicks like "The Most Dangerous Game" -- and started shooting it last year. Right now, we're about 70% of the way through filming in Cairns, Australia, and I'm proud to share with you all the movie's first teaser trailer:


There's also a brief info page about the movie here which will gradually be expanded and updated over time: http://www.travisbain.com.au/throwback.htm

Now for the technical details. The movie is being filmed on a Canon HV20 with a Rode shotgun mic mounted straight on the camera with a "dead cat" windsock. I'm recording 1440x1080 25psf to Sony professional HDV tapes and editing everything in Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 on a cutom-built PC with a Nvidia GTX570 GPU, which rocks for HDV editing. I'm colour grading with Magic Bullet, but most of the shots in the teaser trailer are basically "untouched", straight out of the camera. Half the time I shoot off a Manfrotto tripod and the other half I shoot handheld using a monopod for stability. You can get great tracking shots with a monopod once you get the hang of it. It's like a poor man's Steadicam. Filter-wise, I'm really just using a neutral density and occasionally a Tiffen Ultra Contrast filter to flatten out the contrast in bright daylight scenes. Most of the time, I'm shooting at what James Cameron calls WFO (Wide F*&^ing Open) and zooming in slightly from a distance to get a shallower depth of field. For some shots, I'm shooting 1080i and converting the footage to slow-motion in post, and it looks really nice (see the guy-falling-in-the-water shot towards the end of the teaser trailer). Whenever I shoot low-light footage and there's noise, I just zap it out with the Virtualdub Neat Video plugin (http://www.neatvideo.com), which is awesome. I'm also using a Kodak ZX3 1080p waterproof camera to get some underwater shots for the movie and shots close to the water that are too risky for the HV20.

I don't have a poster for the movie ready yet but I have secured the services of a graphic artist who will be working on one over the coming months. Actually, he'll be working on two: a teaser poster and then a full-blown poster. As for behind-the-scenes stills, I'll be posting some here very soon.

I hope you all like my teaser trailer. A full trailer will follow later in 2012 and the movie itself (which will run about 90 minutes) is due for completion sometime in 2013, when it will be submitted to film festivals worldwide.

If you have any feedback or questions, please don't hesitate to contact me. Apologies if the info I've posted here is a little sketchy at the moment, but I promise I will add a lot more as time goes by. It's just that I'm wearing many hats on this production and my time is spread rather thin at the moment in between filming the movie, doing post on the movie, doing local publicity for the movie etc etc. All I can say right now is: watch this space. I plan to do video production diaries and a whole bunch of goodies down the track.

In the meantime, thanks for checking out my teaser trailer!
McBain
 
Great stuff McBain lookin good. I like the shots, pace, the grading and of course the Oz bush.

Some CC .. nothing gives shows away more than amateur sounding audio, first impressions count big time.

On this promo, I'd record all the narration so it has much much more presence, get the talent in a dead sounding room, much closer to the Rode .. and for any other narration in the film.

Also if you're entering it O/S be very careful of any real Oz sounding accents or pronounciations, even to the point of ADRing stuff.

Cheers.
 
Thanks for the feedback, Raster. I recorded the narration in my living room but for the next trailer I'm going to seek out a soundproof booth or room just so it sounds really schmick.

I'm making sure all the actors enunciate clearly when they deliver their dialogue to make sure they're easily understood by overseas audiences, but truth be told, "Throwback" won't really be a dialogue-driven film anyway. It'll mostly be 90 minutes of action and suspense with just enough dialogue to propel the story forward. I'm taking a leaf out of Ridley Scott's book re Alien. There's really hardly any dialogue in that movie, yet it's a modern classic of suspense and tension. Less dialogue just means less sound editing I have to do in post anyway!

Thanks again for your kind words.

McBain
 
I think the framing is excellent, the steadiness and deliberateness of all the camera movements is excellent, the editing is excellent, and all the elements seem to be "there." I only wish you could change the name from "Yowie", which to me is hardly... fear-inducing. Unfortunately you obviously can't do that, so maybe the trailer should place less emphasis on its name? Maybe I'm the only one with this problem.
 
Thanks, Jester2138, for your comments. It's fair to say that some Aussies will probably have the same reaction as you to the word "yowie", and I can understand that. After all, for years in this country, a yowie was a cute cartoon character on a Cadbury's chocolate, so the word doesn't exactly engender a fearful reaction in everyone. But I hope to change that. To me, yowies are pretty scary critters, and I'm doing my best to ensure that when people see my film, the LAST thing they'll be thinking of is a little chocolate furball. If you manage to get your hands on Paul Cropper and Tony Healy's excellent book "The Yowie" (www.yowiefile.com), you'll find it's not just a great scholarly text on yowies but also a cracking good read, and there are some truly hair-raising eyewitness accounts in it. Some people who've had encounters with yowies have vowed never to venture into the bush alone again. Some spontaneously burst into tears years after their encounters. These bad boys have the power to frighten the bejesus out of people, and I want that to come across in my movie. Having said that, the next trailer will focus more on "There's a big hairy monster on the rampage and, oh, yeah, by the way, it's called a yowie" rather than "Here's what we call a yowie down under." The teaser trailer was really just to get punters overseas hooked. I could have given the creature an Aboriginal name but the problem is, yowies have multiple different Aboriginal names across Australia. In some places they're known as a "jingra", whereas in North QLD, they're usually called "quinkin." The word "yowie", however, unifies all those different names, and it's also probably the most recognized name for the creature overseas. Already my trailer has been mentioned on various cryptozoology sites overseas, whereas if I'd put out a trailer calling the beastie a "quinkin" or whatever, it might not have had the same response.

In any case, the movie's aimed at an international audience as well as just Australians, so the purpose of the teaser trailer was just to introduce the yowie to the rest of the world. It was my way of saying, "OK, you guys have got your sasquatch, you guys have got your abominable snowman ... this is what WE'VE got."

Thanks for your remarks on the cinematography etc. I'm hugely inspired by the works of two great British Technicolor cinematographers, Jack Cardiff ("The African Queen") and Jack Hildyard ("The Bridge on the River Kwai"). Those guys shot two of the most beautiful jungle adventure movies of all time. In fact, I've gone as far as to name the main character in "Throwback" Jack as kind of an homage to those guys.
 
Raster said:
Also if you're entering it O/S be very careful of any real Oz sounding accents or pronounciations, even to the point of ADRing stuff.

Cheers.
Click to expand...

Oh, come on... that's why this sort of thing continues...

But on the topic of the 'trailer', I felt the first sequence, lead up, was a bit too long. It took me a while to 'get' that there was a 'old time story' cut into the modern day story. I think perhaps a bit of color grading to distinguish between the old and the new would help, while B&W or Sepia toning is perhaps a bit over used, perhaps muted colors for the old folks...

I also think a little less of the monster would also be better...
 
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Looks really good. I love to see people continue to do great stuff with the HV20. I love mine, (have 2), and will probably take on a feature project in the next year. It's easy to get caught up in the chase for the next big thing gear wise, instead of focusing on getting the most out of what we already have. If you do a good job with the resources you have, nobody will care what it is shot on.
 
Maybe you already do but if your characters mock the word 'yowie' up front, when the expectations slide from levity to horror it can increase the impact. My strongest association to the word is with the guy calling himself the 'yowie man'. Can't remember if he was connected to the chocolate or just some wacky guy with a touch of the elmer fudd about him popping up on the tv now and then. Does a bunyip fit under the yowie umbrella or is that something else?

Love the way you frame your shots, especially the ones with the canoe. The acting looks good (as far as you can tell from a trailer) good and the background music really sold it, sounded like any trailer you see in the movies. I'm only listening through laptop speakers so the loungeroom VO wasn't apparent for me.

The yowie suit looks good but a little underdone in broad daylight. That's comparing it to the modern blockbuster, compare it to an 80s/90s b-movie (which is where most my favourite movies come from anyway) and it's acceptable. I would suggest showing as little as possible of it or even nothing at all in the trailer. Even if it was a fully tricked special effects affair I would suggest the same. The classic monster trailer shows you nothing but reactions and then a flash of the eyes at the very end. Now I've seen the monster it would diminish the anticipation during the feature.

Nice work.
 
Maybe you already do but if your characters mock the word 'yowie' up front, when the expectations slide from levity to horror it can increase the impact. My strongest association to the word is with the guy calling himself the 'yowie man'. Can't remember if he was connected to the chocolate or just some wacky guy with a touch of the elmer fudd about him popping up on the tv now and then. Does a bunyip fit under the yowie umbrella or is that something else?

Love the way you frame your shots, especially the ones with the canoe. The acting looks good (as far as you can tell from a trailer) good and the background music really sold it, sounded like any trailer you see in the movies. I'm only listening through laptop speakers so the loungeroom VO wasn't apparent for me.

The yowie suit looks good but a little underdone in broad daylight. That's comparing it to the modern blockbuster, compare it to an 80s/90s b-movie (which is where most my favourite movies come from anyway) and it's acceptable. I would suggest showing as little as possible of it or even nothing at all in the trailer. Even if it was a fully tricked special effects affair I would suggest the same. The classic monster trailer shows you nothing but reactions and then a flash of the eyes at the very end. Now I've seen the monster it would diminish the anticipation during the feature.

Nice work.
Click to expand...

Thanks, Egg Born Son. I remember that yowie man bloke. He called himself Tim the Yowie Man. Not sure whatever became of him. Maybe a drop-bear got him? ;)

Re your suggestion about showing as little of the monster as possible, don't worry, that's exactly the approach I'm taking. The creature is always going to appear out of focus, or obscured by foliage, or in silhouette. You will never see a full-on, broad-daylight shot of the monster in this movie. For the most part I'm using shallow depth of field to blur the hairy bugger, and it's working out really well. I'm a huge fan of beautiful cinematography, especially in Terrence Malick's films, so I'm trying to make every shot as artistic as I can. The full trailer is due out later in the year and it's not really going to show any more of the yowie than what's in the teaser.

And yeah, there will be a little bit of "Yeah, right" from some of the characters when the prospect of them being stalked by a yowie first rears its ugly head, but then that'll quickly turn to terror when the claret starts to flow.

PS: love your avatar. Now there's a movie I'd like to see done with a big budget!
 
^ be careful what you wish for, it's been done and it was simply awful! It's too big a story to fit into one film and let's face it, the low budget was part of its charm (and the lovingly crafted but in the modern world borderline racist dub). There was also a hollywood take on it called "the forbidden kingdom" which was done well in that it starred both jackie chan AND jet li! Then aside from butchering the legend, being hollywood they couldn't just sit by and let it be awesome. They had to ruin it by white-washing it and inserting a daniel-san wannabe into the ancient chinese setting... Jet Li made for a great monkey though, almost the equal of the great Masaaki Sakai.
 
We just sold our Australian horror film to the US, so accents don't really matter. If you have a name, sales agents won't care about the accents at all. As long as it's sell-able, they will be keen to take it on. Even if it's VOD and DVD sales...
 
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