1. Treatment
Film Title: Dying Leaves
Genre: Horror
Sub-Genre: Psychological, Massacre, unnatural
Final Plot Synopsis:
The trailer begins with CCTV footage and a news report, our protagonist is then researching
the recent ‘Lime Park Killings’, as her and her two friends, Jake and Beth, will be visiting this
park on the day of the death anniversary. Meanwhile, the killer is in a dim lit room with
numerous names on his hit list, and an image of Taylor stuck on the wall, there is a pan of
some drugs, a knife and leaves in the sink which is filled with water and also had blood in it.
The 3 friends Taylor, Beth and Jake make their way to the park, however are unaware that
they are being closely watched by the killer, who is losing his patience with people messing
with the environment. Jake enrages him by pulling leaves of trees and throwing his empty
drink can on the floor. Inevitably, everyone gets split up and tries to escape from the killer,
will they be able to escape or will they get caught? Just remember if you go down to the
woods today, don’t go down alone.
Influences
● In terms of influences, we looked at a variety of different trailers individually and all
had separate ideas. However we brought them all together and used a hint of
everyone’s idea and came up with Dying Leaves.
● I feel our idea of using a ‘knife’ for the weapon in our trailer is an extremely common
idea and is known to be a traditional weapon in horror films.
● Also, Scream influenced us with the ‘final girl’ and ‘scream queen’ and we
incorporated both of those in our trailer. Furthermore we looked deeper into the
idea of the final girl and found that conventionally the final girls name is always
unisex, hence we decided to go for Taylor.
● Moreover, we were influenced to use a news report or something similar, to help us
set the scene for our audience as we feel it was effectively done in Scream.
● Likewise, whilst looking at other horror trailers I realised they tend to use a lot of
fade to blacks and cuts to add to the suspense and horror.

2. Structure/Scenes to include
News report based on the anniversary of the “Lime Park Killing 2002”The killer will be an a
dimly lighted room, in which we will only see his/ her back, in which there will be newspaper
articles on Global Warming, Rubbish, Fly Tipping and other environmental issues.The
introduction of the three friends, Beth, Jake & Taylor, In which we see one of the
protagonist say dare their friends to go to “Lime Park” as a dare. They hear a twig breaks
and muffling of leaves. Then there are different shots of Beth, Taylor and Jake running.
Shots of the protagonists stumbling and looking behind them (deconstruction) this finishes
with a black screen in which we hear Taylor cry. This is then leads to the tagline being with
“If you go down to the woods today” which will be whispered and then “You’d better not
go alone” will be screamed in a low and loud voice (which is demand like) then we are
introduced to the date of the title. It goes silent then we see a schizophrenic Taylor who is
holding a knife and then tries to stab the audience.
Generic Conventions
Final Girl (Taylor) unisex name indicates that she will be the final girl.
Scream Queen (Beth) this is a stereotypical girly name.
Phone call as seen in Scream films this adds tension and foreshadows of what will happen.
The trailer will be shot when it goes quite dark which will add to the scary feel overall.
The serial killer is stereotypical in a teen slasher film.
Characters/Stereotypes
Taylor, final girl, tom boyish
Beth, Scream Queen, girly
Jake, is a stereotypical boy
Killer, is unknown, you never see his face
Settings/Locations
Alexander Park, there are an array of advantages of using this park firstly because it is a local
park and easy to get too and secondly it is very spacious and will have lots of places filled
with trees for us to film and experiment with.
We will also be filming in college, preferably a dark room, as this will be portrayed as the
killers hide out.

3. Props/Costumes
The cast will be wearing stereotypical outfits depending on their character.
In terms of props, the only props we will be using are an empty can of energy drink and a
fake knife, although there will also be use of fake blood to represent death and violence.
Cinematography/Lighting
Lighting, dark hence it gives a feel of foreboding, all light will be natural.
The killer point of view (over the shoulder shot)/long shots because we are unable to get a
killer.
There will be hand held camera to show running.
Closes up of Beth's injury body/ dead close up of feet (running) Weapon,
Mid shots of conversation/ Shot reverse shot of conversation
Use of Sound
For music we are thinking eerie music at the beginning, to help us build tension.
We are also thinking of using dynamic music for when the characters are running away from
the killers.
Sound effects: breathing, screaming, tin dropping, panting.
Editing and Effects
Change the original colour tint to a darker colour such as possible red to represent the
massacre theme of the film or a dark green the woods and eeriness. We will need to vary the
transitions between too shots to build the tension ranging from fades, cuts and zooms.
Title screens/Typography
For our tag line we have chosen is “Warpaint”, we have chosen this because it is very thin but it still
has the broken effect. Here is an example:

4. For our title we are going to use “Base 2”we wanted to use this because we loved the effect and we
felt like it really fits.
(Both texts were sourced from dafont.com, which allows for
free text downloads. A member in the group will download this
and create the titles on photoshop.)
Target Audience/Uses and Gratifications/Points of Identification
We will target 15 years and older, as the younger generations will not understand the story
behind our trailer. There will be continuous references to death and blood therefore it does
not appeal to any younger ages, as it would be ethically wrong to allow them to watch
this.My research enabled me to find that the ages that typically watch horror movies are
those aged around 14-24. In terms of sub-genres we have decided to go for a few of them to
enable our trailer to have a wider audience.