Evaluation

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

I believe that our horror movie trailer is very conventional. The trailer follows Freytag's triangle theory, beginning with the exposition, followed by, rising action, the climax and falling action. The rising action occupies a larger proportion of the trailer, as this theory states it should. We have used longer shots that portray normality at the beginning whilst the trailer remains in a state of equilibrium. The trailer gradually builds in intensity as the mysteries unfold. The pace increases not only through the use of shorter shots but also through the use of sound. We arranged the soundtrack so that it would effectively accompany the editing. The way our trailer 'builds up' is conventional to that of a typical horror trailer. We also used intriguing captions throughout to help 'tell the story', which is another convention of movie trailers. When analysing the trailers for 'Pans labyrinth' and 'Eden Lake' I found that the use of captions completed the trailer. They were particulary key in the Pans labyrinth trailer as there was no dialogue or commentry. As our trailer would have little or no dialogue we decided to use captions to 'explain' the storyline. Each caption is in the same font style and colour helping the trailer to flow, something that is also commonly seen. We conventionally chose to end our trailer with the film title, names of cast/crew and a website address, as it is known that this way the audience are more likely to remember the name of the film - something that is extremely important. This was the case for all of the film trailers that I watched and analysed. We chose to film the majority of our horror trailer in an eerie woods as this sort of location fits the horror genre well. We wanted to find a location similar to the one in the film 'Eden Lake' (image on right). The mise-en-scene is also typical of a horror trailer. We darkened down many of the shots, altering brightness and contrast, to aid in portraying a tense, eerie atmosphere, as is seen in media of the horror genre. As well as this, the protagonist in our trailer is female, whilst the antagonist is male. This is often the case in horror movies. Much of the content of our trailer is typical of the horror genre, for example, our shots include, running, screaming, blood, a fearful victim and a threatening antogonist.

We also used conventions in our film magazine cover. We arranged the page so that the masthead was at the top (to the left), and the majority of coverlines occupied the left-hand third. This arrangement is often seen in conventional magazines, as the left-hand third is the area of the page that is visible when the magazine is stacked on a shop shelf. For this reason it is important that this section of the page contains information that will attract the target audience at point of sale. When researching and analysing film magazine covers I found that the masthead often stretched across the width of the page. Our masthead only stretches across half of the width of the page, so in some ways it could be said that we challenged this convention. However, I have seen covers of other types of magazines, such as 'NME' and 'Q', that also have mastheads that do not stretch across the page. Other conventional features that out magazine cover possesses include, a pug, barcode, date and price. The image on its own is very powerful and is clearly the focus of the page. This was also the case for the two magazine covers I analysed previous to production. The 'EMPIRE' cover on the right features an image of Megan Fox. This coverlines are arranged around and in line with the image. We also based the arrangement of our cover on the composition of the image.

Our film poster also uses many conventions. The release date, production company and website address are all conventional features that we have included on the poster. Conventially a film poster should closely resemble the film it is advertising. The film poster and trailer for 'PANIC ROOM' closely link - the image on the poster is clearly representative of the trailer and the film name is in the same font style and colour for both. We took this into account by making sure that the audience will clearly be able to associate our poster with our film/trailer. We used an image featuring all of the the characters in the same location as the trailer was filmed in. The image also resembles one of the shots in the film. As well as this, we have used the same style of font for the title on both the trailer and poster. We have however challenged conventions with our poster by positioning our film title at the top of the page. Usually the title of the film will be placed at the bottom of the page, however this set up did not work well with our poster image. I think that challenging this convention has paid off as the arrangement of the poster works really well and helps it to stand out amoungst others. (the analysis of each of our finished products also describes the conventions we have used and challenged).

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

Our ancillary texts - film poster and magazine cover - clearly support our horror movie trailer. The images that we have used for our poster and magzine cover have been taken in the same location as the movie trailer was filmed in, and feature the characters as they appeared in the trailer. The images actually resemble 2 of the shots that feature in the trailer (left). We altered the brightness and saturaion of the images, something that we also did with many of the shots in our trailer. We have used the same font style and colour for the film title on both the film poster and trailer, which is conventionally seen. This allows the viewer to immediately link the two. The magazine cover still features the film title however, not in the same recognisable font style. We decided to do this as usually a film title will appear in the same font as other text on the cover - it is rare for the film title to be shown as it is in the trailer and poster. This however is not a real issue as the image on the cover alone will be enough for the audience to easily associate the cover with the trailer and poster. As well as this we followed a main colour scheme of red, white and black throughout all three of our products. We incorporated captions in our trailer, these were shown in white text against a black background. This white text on black theme ran throughout the trailer, the film title was also presented in this way. The poster also follows this trend with the majority of the text in white, again positioned on top of a black background. The magazine cover is slightly different. Most of the text on the page is in red or white/grey font and there is no solid black background. Although this differs from the other two products the same red/white/black theme is still relatively present. It is common for the magazine cover advertisement of a film to differ fairly significantly from the film's trailer and poster.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Throughout the process the group have gathered views and opinions of target audience members in aid of making our products as relevant and appealing as possible. Firstly, I posted a series of around 8 poll questions on my blog. I then sent the link to a random selection of people, asking them to visit my blog and fill out the questions. The sample size was small, only 18 people participated, however I believed that the results I gathered were still more than relevant as the vast majority of people that completed the question were of the age group we were targetting. The results that I gathered mostly helped to re-confirm decisions that we were looking to make. We made no real changes following the results, as peoples answers appeared to coincide with our original plans. This showed us that we were capable of making choices that would appeal to our target audience. The reason for this is likely to be that our group - me, Grace and Katie - also all belong to the target audience our products are aimed towards.

Following the completion of our 3 products we gathered feedback from a small group of target audience members. The feedback that we received was for most part very positive and complementary. The audience members seemed to particularly like the film trailer and film poster, giving little or no criticism on these 2 products. For this reason we decided that no alterations to these products were needed. The magazine cover however did seem to raise a few issues. The feedback brought to our attention a few areas where alterations should be made. One thing that more than one audience member had mentioned was the font styles that were originally used on the film magazine cover. We took this into consideration and made changes accordingly.

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

Throughout this coursework unit I have used a variety of media technologies. To start with I had to research and analyse actual media products, and chose to do this by using the internet. I started off looking at music videos as well as film trailers, as to begin with our group was unsure as to which we would produce. I used http://www.youtube.com/ to view a variety of trailers and videos. This site was extremely useful and seemed to contain every trailer or video I could think of. I would then used the embed code to post relevant videos to my blog. My blog was set up using Blogger, which is a free weblog publishing tool from Google. I used this blog to document all of my A2 coursework. As I also documented my AS coursework using Blogger, the technology was very familiar to me and so I had little or no issues with it. When it came to constructing our products we used a variety of different technologies. To begin with we had to learn how to use the HD cameras so that we could capture the footage that we needed for our film trailer. This was relatively simple, the camera, tripod and light that we were given were all easy to transport and simple to use. It took no time at all to figure out how everything worked. On location we also used a digital camera to photograph the images we needed for our promo package - this again was very quick and simple. Then came the tricky bit, actually constructing our products! I had to learn how to use Adobe Premiere Pro, a software that I had never come into contact with before. We used this software to edit together out film trailer. The initial process of dragging and cutting individual clips was relatively simple to begin with but soon became much more complicated once the music and effects were added. It took a while to get the hang of where all the tools were and how to use them, however once everything became more familiar the editing process was actually quite enjoyable. To construct our film magazine cover and film poster we used Adobe photoshop. We also used this software at AS level and so it wasn't completely alien, however it did take a while for me to reacquaint myself with how it all worked.

Our Finished Film Magazine Cover

Initially this was our finished film magazine cover however, following the audience feedback we received, we decided to make some alterations to the texts.









This is our complete film magazine cover. The image that we decided to use represents the film well - the photo has been taken in the woods location that we filmed our trailer in and features the two main characters. The image makes it apparent to the viewer that the film is of the genre horror. I think that the composition is very effective and works well as the main cover image, spliting the page down the middle. The majority of the text is on the left-hand half, mainly due to this section being the area that will be most visible at point of sale. For this reason, this area of the magazine must promote features that will attract audience members. The masthead also only spreads across the width of this half of the page. After receiving audience feedback we decided to change the font style of the masthead and also added some inner and outer glow effects. I think that it now looks a lot classier and stands out more. The left-hand side of the image (behind the tree) is much darker than the right and so helps the text to stand out. There is more 'going on' on the right-hand side of the image and so if much text had been placed on this side its prominance would have been lost. We also altered the fonts and style effects of the coverlines following the feedback we gathered. This definitely helped the cover to look more appealing. The one font that I think works really well is the 'STENCIL' font that has been used for the main coverline. I think that this really stands out amoungst the rest, which is important as that particular text is promoting the film. The main colours that we used were red, grey and white. The majority of the text was in either grey or white, with only what we considered to be the most important features in red. Also on the cover is a pug, price, barcode, date and magazine website address. All of these features are conventional of a magazine cover. I think that the pug really helps to balance the page.

Our Finished Film Poster

This is our finished film poster. We decided to use a long-shot image so that the characters appear inferior against the vast, dark background. We added a 'spotlight' effect to the image so that much of the outer border was black, drawing emphasis in the centre of the image. We also adjusted the brightness, contrast and saturation of the image to give it an eerie, 'horror-like' appearance. When taking the photo we lined the characters up so that they were facing the woods. This arrangement suggests to the audience that the main location in the film will be a forest/woods. It also connotes that the group are about to enter the unknown, where danger awaits them. There is a sense of mystery as the image itself presents no obvious danger and gives away little about the storyline of the film. Conventionally, film posters tend to be arranged so that the film title is at the bottom of the page. We have challenged this convention by placing the film title at the top of the poster, which I think works well due to the composition of the image. The title is in the same style as it appears in the film trailer, which I believe is very important as audience members will be able to clearly link the two. There is a caption in bold just above the title, 'LIVE IT, BREATHE IT, DIE FOR IT', which links in with the storyline of the film well. At the bottom (centre) of the poster is a release date, magazine quote and star rating, and a website address. These are all conventional features. The release date information also informs the viewer that the film is also being screened in IMAX 3D. We wanted to include this feature as currently 3D TV/film is becoming increasingly more available and is growing in popularity. All of this text is arranged neatly in the centre at the bottom which compliments the image well and really helps to balance the whole poster. The majority of the text is in white so that it stands out against the dark background whilst also relating to the film title. The release date is in red so that it is more obvious to the audience at a glance. Also the name of the well know film magazine, 'EMPIRE', is in red. We did a screen grap of the actually magazine masthead so that it would feature on our poster in the same recognisable style. We believed that featuring a quote from a well known film magazine would impress and therefore attract audience members. Finally, in the bottom right hand corner is the logo for the production company, 'GNK Films'. We decided to include this as on conventional film posters the film production company is usually mentioned.

Our Finished Film Trailer

This is our completed Horror movie trailer. We Have used a variety of different shot types to ensure that the trailer remains interesting throughout, so that the viewer's attention is held. The trailer opens with an establishing shot, showing all of the characters that will feature in the film, the content of the shot makes it apparent to the audience that the story involves a trip of some sort. A series of shots follow showing the group travlling to their destination. The shots were set up so that the two main characters, Grace and Jon, stand out as being key. Jon is driving the car in the shots and two shots feature just him, suggesting to the audience that he may play an important role. We positioned Grace in the middle of the car shot of the girls, again to show that she is a key character. There is then a shot that pans from the moving car to a sign that reads 'STRICTLY NO EXIT'. This sign is symbolic of danger and an indication of what is to come. This idea came from the analysis of the 'Eden Lake' trailer. Following this are the camping shots. This sequence of shots begins with a high-angled shot of the entire group, that pans up as the characters walk off into the woods. This not only establishes the new location but is also representative of the group entering a dangerous situation. This shot then cross-dissolves into a shot of the group camping. A mid-shot of just Grace and Jon talking follows, again suggesting to the audience that they are the main characters. There is then a short shot-reverse-shot sequence that shows Grace and Jon having a conversation, where Grace rejects Jon as he tells her he 'likes' her. At this point the music changes, increasing in intensity, as this is the point at which the story begins to move into a state of disequilibrium. Originally, we had the dialogue of the conversation audible as we believed that what takes place is significant. However, we decided to mute the dialogue as the body language and gesture of Grace pushing Jon was enough on its own to tell the story. The long pause and over-the-shoulder shot that ends the sequence also suggests that what has just happened is significant. The next shot fades onto the screen to show that time has passed. The dialogue signifies the turning point in trailer, where the story really starts to unfold and the real mysteries begin. It is known that if the audience are intrigued by unanswered questions then they are more likely to go and see the film that the trailer is promoting. There is then a flash of Jon's (the antagonist) eyes that fits in time with the sound crash that is present. We achieved this by using the razor tool to split the shot and add a 'fade to white' transition. There is then a caption that appears reading, 'who can you really trust?'. This, along with the previous extreme close-up of Jon's eyes, suggests to the audience that Jon may be responsible for the disappearance of them both. The music changes and increases in tempo as we see shots of Grace alone in the woods. Here we have used 2 long shots at different distances to show that Grace is alone and to also portray her as inferior and weak/out of control. There is then a shot framed in the same way as the earlier group shot, again showing how she has been taken from a safe group situation into danger. The final shot in the sequences is shot as being from the antagonist's point of view, as he follows Grace. This helps to build tension. At the end of the shot Grace turns to face the camera, as there is a crash in sound. This is very effective and also helps to bridge this sequence and the next. There is a very brief moment of silence before a new section of music begins, this time much faster in tempo. As the new section of music begins, so does the final sequence of shots. This sequence is the falling action and has been cut together quickly, meaning that the fast tempo music accompanies it well. The short, varied shots help suggest to the viewer that the film is packed full of action. The variety of shot types used make the sequence interesting. One of my favourite shots is the shot of grace hiding with blood on her neck. I think that Grace's acting skills have allowed her to portray fear and panic really well here. I also really like the jump cuts of Jon as he moves from tree to tree. However, my overall favourite has to be the shot of Grace getting dragged, screaming, away from the camera. I think thats this shot ends the sequence dramatically. The film title then appears - which is conventional of a horror trailer. In any trailer the film title will appear at the end so that the viewer is more likely to remember it. To close the trailer there are 2 final shots of a blood stained knife, suggesting that ultimately someone will die, the audience will want to watch the film to find out who! Throughout the trailer we used captions to help 'tell the story'. All captions are in the same font and all increase in size. I believe that this helps the trailer to flow. The production company name and film title also grow in size. I think that our trailer follows many conventions. For example, we have included the production company name at the beginning and the film title at the end, and have also closed the trailer with cast/crew names and a film website. As well as the above conventional traits, our trailer also follows Freytag's pyramid theory and I believe that the overall representation is also typical of a horror.

Audience Feedback - Detailed, of finished products

Once our trailer, film magazine cover and film poster were complete, we asked 6 people belonging to our target audience (3 female, 3 male) to give detailed feedback on all 3 of our products. Below is some of the feedback that we recieved:

Audience member 1 :
'The photos are really good, and I like the framing of the shots.'

Audience member 2 :
'I like the colours you've used for the magazine, very conventional! However, the text styles for it are very basic and bland, and could be varied a bit more to make certain areas stand out.
THE MOVIE POSTER, I LOVE IT! - the contrast between the brightness for the Protagonist and the Darkness which highlights the Antagonist. It is very surreal and the colours are sick, very horror generated colours and not your typical styling either. Plus the shot composition is so good! Love the low angle shot and how it's kind of an establishing shot and because it's very open too, it's like basically saying "anything can happen".'

Audience member 3 :
'Your trailer is really good!'

Audience member 4 :
'I think that the trailer's good but maybe her head should turn a bit quicker in the shot where she is walking away and has got her back to the camera.
I like the picture on the cover of Grace infront of the tree and Jon behind - where she has her head turned and he's facing completely forward.
I like the music on the trailer.'

Audience member 5 :
'I love that trailer! Grace is well good.
It's honestly soo good! - The picture of her with Jon in the background is really realistic I think... looks like an actual british movie.
For the font I think maybe something a bit bolder and different looking is needed.'

Audience member 6 :
'The poster is pretty cool, I like that.
The magazine is good, like the layout and stuff but the fonts are a bit naff,
they don't stand out from the background and the logo isn't very "logo-ey".
However, I like the picture on the magazine, it's nice how it like splits the page and how it's light and dark.
The trailer is pretty amazing, I like the captions because they like give an idea of the story but don't give too much away.
Also, it's good because it has a build up and the pace of the music like builds up with it.'

This feedback has been very useful as it has brought to my attention a few areas where alterations should be made in order to make the product/s more appealing. One thing that more than one audience member has mentioned is the font styles that have been used on the film magazine cover. This is something that we will take into consideration and make changes accordingly. It was really nice to hear that the audience members we asked very much liked the trailer and poster. Following comments on these two products we decided that alterations on either were not necessary.

Audience Feedback - Online Questionnaire Results

Eighteen people completed my online poll - ten male and eight female - meaning that the spread between genders was relatively equal. This is what we hoped for as our trailer is aimed at both genders and so it is important that we obtain feedback from both. The vast majority of the people that answered the questionnaire were aged 16yrs - 19yrs, which means that the feedback we gathered was relevat, as our production work is targetted at 16-25 year olds.
One of the questions we asked was in regards to the location our trailer should be filmed in. The majority selected the 'Forest' option, which is the location that we were planning to use and so this result re-confirmed our decision.
The results of the next question showed the majority vote as wanting the sound/music of the trailer to be a combination of fast and slow tempo sections. This also supported out initial plans for the trailer.
I then asked whether the trailer should contain dialogue and the votes were spread between all three options - yes, no, no preference. We took this into consideration and decided we would add a very small amount of dialogue (only where it was really necessary) and very little diegetic sound.
The next question was about the use of captions in a trailer and whether people find them beneficial. Most answered yes or sometimes, with very few answering no, and so we decided that we would include captions. Personally, I think that they can be useful when trying to 'get across' the storyline of a movie, and can be extremely effective at drawing the audience in.
Finally, the last question was in regards to the title of our film magazine. The title, 'The Cut', recieved 55% of the votes and so we decided that this should be the one that we use. I was very pleased with this result as 'The Cut' was the title that I was most found of as it is blunt, to the point, and relates to both film as a whole and our actual trailer.

Editing Process

Above is a screen shot image of our footage open and edited together in Premiere Pro. After each filming session we would upload the footage into Premiere Pro and pick out the most suitable shots. We would then drag these down into the work area (the bottom mid panel) and edit them individually, making sure that only the parts of the shot that were needed remained. To begin with we didn't get as much filmed as we had hope, so we didn't have many shots to alter. To use the time between filming sessions efficiently we added lighting and in some instances speed/duration special effects to the shots we had. We did this using the drop down menus on the left hand side of the screen - one effect that we used on the majority of our shots was the brightness and contrast effect. This allowed us to darken down shots, so that they would portray more of an eerie, chilling atmosphere, as is seen in horror films/trailers. We didn't start arranging the shots into the correct order until after our main filming day. On this day, we managed to film the majority of our shots. As it was difficult to get all of our actors/actresses together at any one time, we had to make sure we completed the shots that we desperately needed on this day. To make sure that we covered everything I made a shot list and detailed plan of what order the shots should be arranged in when it came to editing together the trailer. Obviously we followed our group storyboard, however the detailed list came in useful as some alterations had been made between the time the storyboard was completed and when filming took place. After this day we uploaded all of the footage and did as we had before, dragging down the shots we wanted and cutting them down individually. Then using the list we began to order the shots and also uploaded out soundtrack. The shots that were going to be quickly cut together at the end of the trailer (to represent the falling action) were left in a 'random' arrangement until the rest of the shots had been put into a suitable order. We used many black 'still title' slides to add captions throughout. We altered the scale of the text as the slide was played so that the text 'grew'. Once we had the basic structure of our trailer in place it was time to tweak and improve certain shots and sequences. We also had to cut the soundtrack right down as to begin with it was over 3 minutes in length and our trailer would be no longer that 1 minute, 30 seconds. To do this we used the Razor tool (on the right) to mark the sections of the music we would cut out. This was extremely frustrating as it was very difficult to get each section to match up with the previous, without sounding 'out of place', and was just a matter of trial and error most of the time. To help the track to flow I used some of the audio effects (on the left), dragging them on top of the soundtrack where the sections joined. This allowed the different areas to fade into one another. Once the soundtrack was roughly the right length we started to arrange the shots in time with the track, which was often complicated and involved repeating the same section over and over until we were happy with its posistion. We left 2 gaps for 2 shots that we were yet to film. These shots later slotted easily into place. Following this it was simply a case of tweaking areas and adding effects. Towards the final days we also had to completely re-edit the soundtrack as the tempo increased too earlier on in the trailer. To solve this issue we repeated the beginning of the track so that the pace/tempo increased as the trailer reached the point of highest intensity. Doing this meant that shots had to be moved and altered so that they would again play in time with the track. This was difficult and we also had to add small sections of the track to Audio layer 3 to help bridge gaps and joins.