Evaluation - Sophie Saunders

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

When we decided to create a trailer for a horror film, we researched different sub-genres in that genre, including slasher, vampire/werewolf/monster and supernatural/thrillers. In each sub-genre, we looked at the codes and conventions before narrowing the choice down and choosing to make our trailer a slasher horror. Our research in this sub-genre gave us ideas of what technical and symbolic codes we should try and implement into our trailer.

In our trailer, we used jerky camera movements on a handheld camera several times, to show the killers point of view. The handheld killer point of view is very common in slasher films as it shows us part of the killers personality, as he is unstable, like the camera, also the jerky handheld style is very voyeuristic, which worked very well as our story is about obsession and stalking. We used the sharp/rapid cuts to make the trailer move quickly and also to create suspense. We cut out at certain points, especially when the killer was involved, so his identity was kept secret in the trailer and his identity would still be a mystery to the audience when they went to see the film itself. We used extreme close ups in the trailer, when showing the weapons and injuries/restraints on characters, this made the trailer easier to define as a horror as in our research of other similar products, we noted that these elements of obvious horror such as a fearful look, a scream or bound hands are greatly exaggerated in order to instil fear in the audience; they can’t deny they are expected to feel fear when the entire screen is filled with these fearful images. We made the lighting very bleak and dark at times, especially when our killer in in the shot. We used no extra lighting on the killer, partly as we didn’t want to see his face, but also because he is a dark character, and we wanted to exaggerate this. The shots of the girl have been lit, wither with lighting we had on hand or with our birdie lights, again, just as we wanted to exaggerate the killers character with darkness, we felt the girl should be lit brightly to exaggerate her pure character. In the shot in the cafeteria she is almost glowing, due to lighting and editing, she looks untouchable, especially as the killer watches from a distance. The brightest colour in the trailer was red, when shown as blood, which again defined the trailer as a horror, also, the colours were brighter in the “restraint” scenes. This gives clues about the story line, everything before the capture is bleak because there is no escape, and you’ll eventually end up trapped, which is shown in more vivid colours because it’s the end for that character.

We implored these technical codes as we wanted to meet the expectations of a horror film. We also implore symbolic codes in the trailer, to back up the codes and conventions of the horror genre.

We’ve shown the juxtaposition in the first shot and in the titles. We at first believe that this will be a typical teen romance story, until the second shot when we see a photo of “The Girl” being ripped up and the subsequent stalking/horror shots. This creates a tension which we carry on throughout the trailer. There is no resolution in the story line, so this tension carries on, hopefully making the audience want to see the film more due to these enigma codes, hopefully they’ll want to know what will happen to the characters. The objects used to kill are highlighted in the trailer. The scene with the knife was edited to made the blade appear brighter than everything else in the shot. Before this shot, we hadn’t used any obviously dangerous weapons, partly due to safety, but also because in this scene the knife is so bright and unused; its clean and pure like the girl, which suggests that the killer is saving the knife for her, and the brushing of the knife over her hair as she sleeps is like a promise of what to come. The setting was a “high school”, we showed this at the beginning of the trailer by having the first shot take place in a hallway of lockers. We also use school bathrooms and a cafeteria, to implement the “normal environment/nowhere is safe” theme. We knew this would instil more fear in the audience as our storyline became more probable because of it. We made some plans regarding costumes. For the girl, as she was the main character and we wanted her to appear in a certain way, we planned to dress her in an innocent way, and the clothing would become less and less innocent as the film went on to suggest her realising she was the object of desire. Also, this way, to the killer, it looks like he is getting closer and closer to the girl he wants as she becomes more and more available to him. The killer had no costume or mask in our trailer, we simply just didn’t show his face. We did however show his shoes whenever a murder to place to show that it was the same person. In the first shot “The Girl” carries a red book in her arms to suggest she is dangerous. The book is almost like a red flag, like she is tempting the boys to look her way by carrying it. We chose to use a "rock" song in the background of our trailer as many trailers now do the same thing, especially in horror film trailers and for films aimed at teens and young adults (our target audience), as a rock or alternative song can emphasise the mood or certain aspects of the genre in the film and make them more appealing to the audience. In the Gamer (2009) trailer, Lionsgate used the song "Sweet Dreams", covered by Marilyn Manson. The Season Of The Witch (2010), from Atlas Entertainment, also uses Marilyn Manson’s, "The Long Hard Road Out Of Hell". Daybreakers (2009) uses Placebo’s cover "Running Up That Hill". The trailers use these popular songs to emphasise the plot and mirror the feelings the song evokes in the listener to the film itself. The subjects in the songs can be interpreted to have similar themes to the films themselves. Even if only a few lines from the song do this, the trailer simply makes the intro louder, so the audience will recognise the song, then use the rest of the song as background music, until the appropriate lines appear, with the similar themes, usually at the end of the trailer as the fast paced montage of images flash by. I think the use of these songs is very clever. Fans of the music could be entirely turned around on the film after hearing the song on the trailer. I believe the choice of music can gain enthusiasm and audience members. If given the choice, we would have chosen to use a similar approach to our background music. Instead, we used the Sound Track Pro program and found a rock song that fit in with the action and mood of our trailer. We found that the music pulled all the parts of the trailer together and united it and also gave it a bit more of a "Wow" factor.



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

I think that the combination of our trailer, posters and film magazine covers is very effective. We chose to make 2 posters for our trailer and 2 film magazine covers, not only because we worked as a duo, but also because we researched posters and magazine covers and decided that we wanted to take a more realistic approach to our marketing.

We produced both a teaser and a main poster for our trailer. The teaser poster shows all of our characters, but in an obscure way. The girl is shown as a silhouette and the boys have tape and graffiti over their faces. We felt that this would work well as a teaser poster and it gives us limited clues about the storyline; you can see that these stereotypical boys all want THE girl, but one more than the others, as he is openly mocking them on the poster with “graffiti”. We know the film is set in a school or college because of the hallway background used. We also know the film is a horror because of the blood splatter used across the images. Despite this, we don’t know much else about the film, we cant even see the faces of the stars. We thought that this would be memorable and the questions about the film would stick, generating more publicity for our next poster and the trailer itself. The main poster is character based, showing only the girl. Out marketing strategy was to produce a poster for each stereotype. “The girl all the boys want”, “The bad boy”, “The loner” and “The jock”. Not only then would we see the stars, but the storyline is shown again, this will clearly be a teen film as its characters are teenage stereotypes.

We used the same strategy for our film magazine covers. The first cover shows The Killer from behind, sporting several tattoos on his back, one of them of The Girl. At the point of the magazines release, we imply that our marketing campaign is well underway as we expect the audience to recognize the girl in the tattoo. We think this would be believable as we have clearly gained enough notoriety for our film for it to warrant a front cover of a film magazine. This, along with the tagline “Teenage romance gets intense in The Act Of Obsession.” Gives more clues about the nature of our film, as it is now clearly about obsessive attraction. The second magazine cover could work a little later in the marketing process, perhaps as the film is released, and would be more actor-based than the first cover, which we see as based entirely on the film, to gain more popularity.

The 1st poster showing the girl only and the film magazine cover showing our "Killer" with tattoos on his back, both have similar dark red patterned backgrounds, which tie them both together. They also tie together with the blood used in the trailer, as we put an effect on it to make it very dark red also. Again, this ties in the 2nd film poster as it used a blood spatter pattern. The red also ties in with the captions and titles we used in the trailer, as they were written in a very dark red colour. All 4 items give away clues on the storyline but none give away any crucial plot points or the ending. I think that the 4 items all present the same expectations. Even the magazine cover which shows the killer does not show his head as it would reveal too much, we kept the information in the ancillary tasks at the same level it was in the trailer.



What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We first conducted some audience feedback after deciding we wanted our trailer to be of a horror genre. After some research, we discovered that our target audience was males and females between the ages of 15 and 25. As we were aiming mainly at teenagers, we decided to conduct some research on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. We simply asked the question, “What makes a horror horrifying?” and got responses from people whose ages were appropriate and who’s ideas, such as; normal everyday situations, death, blood, fear of loosing control, music and suspense, were a good stating off point for out trailer.

After we came up with a definite story and began scouting locations and seeking our actors, we decided to look a little deeper into our audiences expectations for a horror film. To do this we constructed a questionnaire. In the questionnaire we asked specifically what the audience would expect from a new horror trailer. The answers provided backed up our preliminary research as they say they expect to see sub-genres such as vampire or slasher themes. We had already researched horror sub-genres at the start of our project so we knew already what to implement in out trailer to accomplish this. The answers also stated that the audience expected a build up of suspense and tension, blood and darkness, which are all conventions of the horror genre, so we knew that implementing them would help us cement our trailer as within the horror genre. The questionnaire also asked more technical questions such as; How long should the trailer be? Where do you usually see trailers? And How much of the storyline do you expect to see? Our responses told us that our trailer should be between 1 and 2 minutes, Should be available online as well as in the cinemas and show an abbreviated view of the storyline - without any spoilers.
Whereas the timing and storyline answers were easily implacable, we knew that we couldn’t screen our trailer in a cinema, so we had to use a more viral approach to attract viewers.

We uploaded out trailer onto the video sharing website Youtube, and sent out the link virally, via Facebook, Twitter and other Forum sites, in order to create an online buzz and attract more viewers. We intended to rely on the number of hit’s the trailer received and also any comments left on the video. However, Youtube has recently added a new tool to its videos; a dropdown set of graphs which allow you to see exactly who is watching your video, if they enjoy it and also how they were referred. This tool was extremely useful to us as it allowed us to see directly if we had hit our target audience. Our trailer was mostly viewed by males and females between the ages of 13 and 34, but most popular between the ages of 16 to 24. The referrals from Facebook gave us 22 views, and referrals from other sites we put the address on gave us 87 views. We also got 13 views from people typing in our trailers name into either Google or Youtube directly. This shows us that we were successful in creating an online buzz for our trailer as well as hit our target audience.

At this point we decided to make some new questionnaires, so that we had opinions about our trailer in writing also. This questionnaire asked viewers, Did the trailer conform to your expectations of a horror film trailer? The overall answer to this question was yes. We had edited the trailer in a way that created suspense and some of the shots are said to directly meet the expectations they have, as are the cast and the storyline. One person said that the music fit in with the style and genre as it was punk-rockish, fitting in with the teenage theme and linking the trailer to other modern horror film trailers. Other people however disagreed and said that the music is comforting to them and takes away from the “horror” aspects of the trailer, however our research on music backed up our choice to use the song we used and people who didn’t like the music say it does not deter them from wanting to see the film. We didn’t consult our audience when we chose the music for our trailer and perhaps we should have, but we did a lot of research before picking the backing song for the trailer. Our idea in using the modern rock song was to link the trailer to other modern horror films that have this teenage soundtrack as another link to the audience and the people who have said that they agree with our choice of music are ones who also mention these films we tried to link our product to.

Without the audience feedback, the production stages would have been allot more uncomfortable, as we wouldn’t have been sure that we were providing our audience with something they’d like or want to see at all. Overall, our audience feedback throughout the project really helped us to see what was expected from our film and give that to the audience. At all points of our production stages we kept what we had learned about our audience in mind and tried to make a trailer that not only gave them exactly what they expected, but also gave them more; something they hadn’t seen before and something shown to them in a new way.



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


Our project began on one of the largest media technologies: The internet. As our entire project had to exist on a blog site, our whole project has used this media technology. Working in a partnership has also given allowance for use of media technologies via several outputs. My partner and myself have used instant messenger, forums and email in order to contact one another about different areas of our project.

At our research stage, we were not only researching using the internet, watching trailers and reading articles, we were also conversing about these ideas online also. We also used email to send and receive questionnaires, which was a more reliable way of getting an audience input, but also an easier way, as we could simply copy and paste the questions directly onto the blog and there was no worries about loosing the work or having to copy it up. We also used social networking sites to get audience feedback, using websites such as Facebook and Twitter to ask our prospective audience their thoughts on the horror genre. When we began to look at similar products, we were able to use recording software websites to take trailers we had analysed and upload them directly to the blog, so reader could watch the trailer themselves and look for the things we had pointed out. When we began looking for locations for our trailer, we took photographs with a camera so that we could upload them to the blog and look at where we could stage our scenes.

When we began to construct our trailer we used a Panasonic DV60 camera. Our filming period was about 3 days, using a day for each location, The wooded secluded area, the school area and the home area.. During construction we also used a boom mike and birdie lights. At this time, we also began contacting our prospective actors via email and Facebook, arranging filming times and their roles. Once the trailer had been filmed, we started on our editing process. We used an unfamiliar edit program, Final Cut Pro, so we were inducted onto the system before we edited our trailer. During edit, we used the basic tools such as cutting and splicing, but were introduced to many new filters and effects which we used to turn our shots into the trailer. We used text tools to create our film company logo and the titles and captions used throughout the trailer, We also used fades, throughout the trailer between shots. We used dip to colour fades also, as seen I the first shot as the girl walks down the hallway and in the “capture“ scenes we dip to red to signify danger. We also used filters such as bad film, which created a dark, judder effect on the shots and gave them a really good look for a horror film. We used vignettes, in some scenes, especially ones we had lightened as the trailer is for a horror film and we didn’t want any shots to be too light, but we didn’t want to darken them entirely either. We used freeze frames and the sepia tool to create a photograph effect. We also used the colour correction tool on most shots to give a more professional look and to darken scenes. In some shots we also added a tint of blue to add a cold and eerie look. We used the Soundtrack Pro software to find sounds for our project which we also edited, changing reverberation, pitch, volume, speed and gain. Our editing process was about 6-7 days. Our finished project was saved as both an mp4 file, to upload to the internet, and onto a DVD disc, to screen on televisions.

While we were constructing our film, we came across an article in The Guardian newspaper about viral marketing campaigns for films. We decided that, as we weren’t able to show our trailer before a feature film at the cinema, we could instead start our own viral campaign, although not to a level set by those in the article, we thought it would still be a good way to generate popularity for our trailer. We uploaded the trailer to Youtube as soon as we had finished editing and immediately started giving out the link. We put the link on websites we thought wee popular within our target audience, such as Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and several other forum websites. By doing this, we began to generate more views for our trailer and create a buzz for our film which helped greatly with our audience research.

Our ancillary tasks/marketing campaign included 2 film posters and 2 film magazine covers. To create these we used a camera to create some base images and Adobe Photoshop CS3 to create the finished products. On our posters and magazine covers, we used the burn tool to create and darken shadows and give a fading effect. We used the blur tool to fade images slightly if they were too sharp. We used the magnetic lasso tool to cut out images and we pasted them onto our base images. We used the clone stamp tool to carry images on where they had ended in their original images. All of the pasted images were cleaned at the edges with the rubber tool. To make the images look as if they really were in the backgrounds we created, we blurred the edges and used the dodge and burn tools to lighten and darken the images, creating lighting effects. We downloaded the blood splatter brush from the Internet. We used the text tool to create our texts, editing some on the text editor and adding inner/outer glows, outlines and bevel and emboss filters. We also used the desaturate tool to make black and white images. We changed the opacity of some layers using the opacity scale.