Film poster

Magazine front cover

Evaluation

In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our media products follow and challenges many paradigms of real media products.

For example ‘Toderov’s theory of narrative’ shows a period of equilibrium, point of disequilibrium, moment of disequilibrium and the new equilibrium. We have chosen to follow this theory, as most real media products conform to this. We think that out product shows a clear definition of each of these [shots]. For the period of equilibrium, we have chosen to use long, slow shots as this is appropriate for the mood of the trailer at this point. As the trailer progresses to he moment of disequilibrium, we used faster jump cuts which reflect the disposition of the trailer.

Moment of Equilibrium:

Moment of disequilibrium:

Disequilibrium:

  

We have also followed numerous other theories, for example, Carol Clover’s’ final girl’ theory. Although we did not follow this in the literal sense, we used the idea in our own way. We chose to have a group of final girls, instead of just one [shot].this is shown in the film trailer “The decent” (2005) 

In our trailer, we have also used the ‘SEX/ALCOHOL=DEATH’, and differentiated this clearly from the other characters.

 The mise-en-scene (costume) also shows this, as we have chosen to put the main character in a short skirt, a convention of a ‘party girl’. This is presented in “Halloween” (1978)

We thought that by doing this, it would put more focus on out main character, which follows the opposite convention.

Another convention that we have followed is the ‘mystery of the killer’. A common paradigm of real media products is that the audience cannot see the face of the killer like in “Scream” (1996).

 This conforms to the fear of the unknown, something which is a fear factor in horror films. We chose to follow this as it added a sense of fear to our trailers. The killer is also dressed in a black outfit, something else which is apparent in real media products. Black is often associated with death, and so we thought that it would be appropriate to put our killer in black costume.

Additionally, we used the paradigm of ‘the motive of the killer’ in out trailer

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 In real media products the killer has often been provoked to kill/kidnap like in “All the boys love Mandy Lane” (2006). We chose to follow this convention as it showed that anyone could be a victim, something else that adds an element of fear to the audience.

For out location, we chose to set it in busy environments, such as a school, house, and a pub.

  We thought that this would be effective in our trailer as a pub is often considered a safe environment to be in when there are other people around, and so to put this in a horror film, we thought it would challenge the conventions of the setting being in a desolate environment

 as shown in “Cherry tree lane” (2010). This adds fear-factor to our trailer, as the audience may then think that it cold happen to them in a ‘safe’ environment.

However, in our torture scene, we have conformed to media conventions, as it is set in an isolated location

like in “Eden lake” (2008). This adds suspense to our clip as the victim cannot get help, which is frightening for the audience.

The final convention that we have chosen to follow is that our media product doesn't show any of the characters being killed, only tortured 

 as shown in “The Texas chainsaw massacre” (1974). By doing this we have shown the audience that the character is in need of help, but we do not show the outcome, something which is more likely to want our target audience want to see it.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary text? 

When watching the trailer (main product) I feel you get a sense of darkness, and night time but I think it bring across the idea of it being in a urban setting and being quite modern, we used a lot of different transactions to make the trailer flow better and to make it seem more dramatic. When setting out the do my Magazine front cover and Poster (Ancillary texts) I had to think about how I could make them all tie in together without them looking completely similar, I used a brick wall as the back on both the magazine cover and poster this I thought represents the idea of urbanisation within the trailer, I had to add a shadow on the brick wall to make it look more grimy and scary, I decided against using the same image for both the magazine front cover and the poster as I thought it would show more about the trailers character and the killers appearance even though we should not let to much away but using different images makes it easier for the audience to relate. Also on the images I used inner and outer glows this I thought ties in well with the fade to blacks and dip to colours that appear within the trailer. I decided to use the same fonts throughout all of my products this I thought would bring it all together of the posters and the magazine I used red glows to show blood and danger I didn’t make the glows to strong as I wanted them to blend in within the products. When deciding what text to use on the magazine front cover I look at pervious magazines like empire and total film to get an idea of what to include, I used a lot of review and interview ideas to be included on the front cover, also getting some ideas for my layout. I used black banners on the cover I thought this made the magazine look more contemporary it also highlighted some of the more important text. On the poster I used the production credits form the trailer on more poster I feel that this makes it look much more professional. I also decided to give critics reviews, this gives the idea that it has been reviewed, make it seem more realistic. When showing my audience all three products on Facebook I got a lot of good feedback and a lot of people said that all three flow and go together very well without them looking like I just used the same Ideas. Some people said I should have been a little bolder with my colours but they were unsure whether it would make it look to glrarish so they understood why I keep them simple. Over all I think that all three go together and there may be small things that I could improve to make the link between all three 100% but overall im happy with my products.

What have you learned from audience feedback?

When we presented out first draft of our media product to our focus group, there was aspects that we needed to change, and others that we decided to keep. For example, in out first draft of the trailer, we had one piece of music that was continuous throughout.

After showing this to our focus group, they commented that the music we had chosen did not match with our torture scene, and so we had to choose two different pieces that would match.

Our focus group also mentioned that the whole product looked more like a short film, rather than a trailer. To improve this, we added lots of jump cuts in the torture scene and editing of the party scene.

By doing this we managed to achieve a product that looked more like a trailer and less like a film that showed individual and separate stages.

After showing the developed trailer to our focus group, they agreed that the trailer had been improved and looked better with the changes.

During our planning process, we came up with a questionnaire that we handed out to our target audience.

 From this we were able to distinguish what our audience would like to see in a horror film, and base our trailer around these findings. For example, the feedback suggested that our target audience would relate more to a group of teenagers in distress than an elderly person, and so we decided that we would use a group of teenagers in our film trailer. 

How did you use new media technologies in construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

We used lots of different media technologies in the process of creating our media product. During our planning stages, we used social networking sites, such as ‘facebook’, ‘twitter’ and ‘blogger [shot] to distribute our questionnaires. This helped us reach a wider quantity of our target audience as a lot of young people use social networking sites to communicate.

When creating our media products, we used numerous programmes to construct them; we used ‘final cut express’ to produce our trailer. This took practice to get used to, as we had never used it before but after a few attempts, we managed to use it correctly. When creating our ancillary products, we used ‘Photoshop’ to edit our photos and generate our magazine covers and posters. This was considerably easy to use, as we had practice from our AS coursework. After we had finished our media product, we used ‘quicktime converter’ to change the file from a ‘PSD’ format, to an ‘AVI’ format.

To film our media product, we used digital camcorders that we then uploaded to ‘Final cut express’. We also used digital cameras to take shots for our ancillary tasks which we uploaded to ‘Photoshop’.

We found that using the internet to construct research was the most useful way of creating a basis for our film trailer. We used search engines such as ‘Google’ and ‘Yahoo!’

This is the song we are thinking of using for the end of the trailer.

Music for the trailer

We are thinking about using this song  to open the trailer with, i like the fact it is upbeat but still quite heavy.

Moment of equilibrium

This is the clip we are thinking to use as the moment of equilibrium. we got really good feedback people thought it worked really well and the tone cards are good and explain what is happening so the audience do not get confused.

First opening idea

This is one of our ideas for the opening of the trailer, we sent it out on Facebook to see what the response was, overall people liked it but said we need to put some establishing shots before hand, so we are going to take that in to consideration and try to add establishing shots.

Test edit 1

This is one of the edits that i played around with, i wanted to make a statement with the knifes and the weapons that we used to make it seem more dramatic, i repeated the shot that i took a number of times adding a dip to colour transaction to make it look faster, i think that with the white dip to colour it looks like someone has been turning the lights on and off and i think this creates a more scary effect.