Evaluation - Jade Daly

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

For our main task we decided to create a trailer for a horror film. The sub- genre being a slasher. We did a lot of research looking into the codes and conventions of different sub genres for horror films such as Vampire, Monster, Supernatural, and thriller as well as Slasher. This allowed us to weigh the pros and cons and decide which we thought would work best for us. When creating our film we decided it would treat the camera as another character. This allowed us to use it as the killer’s point of view, adding to the eerie atmosphere, and creating suspense. It allowed us to have the killer within certain scenes, for example the murder scene within the bathroom, without giving away his identity, which would ruin the intense atmosphere we were trying to create. It worked really well for the scenes in which we were going to turn into photographs to show the killers creepy side. We used a handheld camera as much as we could to create jerky movements, which reflect what happens within the scenes for example people running away, and it also shows the killers unstable, out of control state of mind. We also had to think about the different shots we wanted to use, and how we would frame them for different characters and scenes. Horror films have a lot of close ups. We decided to focus our close ups on things rather than faces as we thought it would add to the ‘fright factor’ we had close ups of the killers feet, the killers hands (ripping the photo) and the knife stroking the girls face. We thought if we focused more on the symbolic codes we wanted to portray rather than raw emotion (which can also be seen in a close-up) the trailer would come across as more intriguing, leaving the audience wanting more.

Colours and lighting played a big role in our film. In the first scene of the trailer we decided to shoot in a blue corridor, when researching we found that cold colours created a chilling, almost disturbing atmosphere so we thought a cold colour would really set up the trailer, we also added a red notebook to denote danger and temptation which reinforces the whole story/idea, this worked well as the trailer seems completely normal at the start so were simply hinting at what is to come. We continued to use different shades of red throughout the trailer. For example during the scene when the killer leans against a window we set up the shot so the red street light could be seen behind him. Red has connotations of danger death and blood, as well as things like love, passion and temptation. Our film mixes all of these ideas together. We chose to have subtle hints of red contrasted with strikingly obvious shades of red, such as the blood in the sink and on the wall, we over exposed that particular scene so that the red would be really obvious against the white walls and it worked really well. We also considered the colours we would use when thinking about character costumes.
We considered a variety of different costumes for the female role. Pastel colours such as light blues and white to portray her feminity but also to show she is innocent and pure, hence why all the boys want her. We considered reds again to show the temptation she radiates. We thought about brighter colours to show the story line moving on, they would portray her as target for the killer and even the other boys as well. Eventually we settled on black and white colours. They portray two sides to her character the black show the fact she doesn’t understand what’s actually going on around her and the white shows that although she doesn’t no what’s happening she knows it has something to do with her. For the scene when the killer enters her room we had her wear green, we thought this would work well because green signifies earthly and natural things. During this scene she is sleeping which is seen as a completely natural thing to do, and it’s also when she is at her most vulnerable.

We created a contrast between the lights and darks within the trailer. When we had a scene involving the killer we made it darker, adding shadows which gives a sense of isolation and fear, and as the trailer goes on the dark scenes out weight the light scenes; whereas at the beginning there are scenes filled with white light, for example within the opening shot in the corridor we had all the lights on plus some extra birdie lights. We also had extra lighting for the scene in the cafeteria. These lights represent the female character. As the trailer goes on the light tells us that the killer is overpowering the female character who is no longer in control of the situation.

We gave a lot of thought about the setting for our film. We looked at a lot of different horror films and most of the settings for the story were not hard to achieve. They were simple everyday places like high school, a camping trip, a road trip and people’s houses. The idea being that the more familiar a place seems to the audience the scarier the film will be as it seems more real. As though whatever the film is about could actually happen. We decided that as our film was about teenagers it would work best in a school setting, this also gave us scope to use ‘the home’ as well. We then had the chance to use long empty corridors and toilets which worked well when trying to achieve scary isolated feelings.

Although most horror films trailers use speech to keep the trailer flowing and pull things together we decided we wanted to rely on images rather than sound. We used titles to portray the general idea for the story which allows the audience to use their imagination, and at the time choose for themselves why things are happening. We used a variety of sound effects such as whooshes and echoes which draw the audience in and reinforce the fact that this is a horror film trailer. We also added a prominent heartbeat sound at the beginning to reinforce the raw emotional feelings that horror films strive to achieve. It’s what the audience feel just as something is about to happen, it portrays how the characters feel but it also fits in with the idea that all the boys want the girl, she makes their hearts beat faster, just as the killer will make her heart beat faster later on. We used a rock song (Soundtrack Pro) as a lot of horror films use this as a way to draw the audience in. Daybeakers (2009) used Placebos; Running Up That Hill and The Blair Witch 2 – Book Of Shadows (2000) used Marilyn Manson’s Disposable Teens. The songs are usually linked in some way to the films usually by the themes being represented. We could not use a real song due to copyright issues so we chose a song that we thought fitted the genre but also pulled the trailer together and made it seem fast paced as they need to seem fast in order for the audience to feel they’ve seen the right amount of a story.

When editing our trailer. We used the transition fade to black to keep the trailer moving, and obviously to make it look like a trailer rather than a short film for example. We also used rapid cuts to make it seem fast paced and to add to the jumpy out of control affect we wanted to achieve. Using short shots and cutting away quickly allowed us to keep the killers identity a mystery and avoid giving away to much of the plot/storyline. When editing we considered the order in which we would show things, we decided juxtaposition would work well, at the beginning of the trailer we believe the boys all ‘worship’ the girl however this is the contrasted with the ripping of the girls photograph which plants doubt in the audiences mind, do all the boys feel the same? What will happen?


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

I think our trailer, magazine cover and film poster all work really well together. We looked at the whole project as a marketing technique for our new horror film. So we needed a marketing strategy. It was important that the trailer, magazine and poster had a connection-so that when people looked at them they know whats being advertised, they cane make the connection themselves. We researched other marketing techniques and how certain films were marketed for example the Batman Film; The Dark Night had different posters for each character, this gave them a larger target audience as if someone didn’t like a character there was another poster waiting to draw them in. We thought this would work well for our film so we designed two posters. Each with a different Unique Selling Point (USP). One poster USP was the desired girl; this could potentially draw in males who want to see a horror film about a pretty girl who is the reason for a massacre; but it can also draw in females who ‘want to be the girl that all the boy’s want’. Our second poster was aimed at people who attend school/collage. The USP being the idea that there’s a character everyone can relate to. We stuck with this idea when designing the magazine covers and again we made two. The USP being the girl on one and the killer on the other again widening our target audience. Within each piece of work we had the same themes, we had a lot of red as it was a main signifier within our trailer, denoting danger temptation passion and blood, so we kept this within our posters and magazines reinforcing the fact were selling a horror film. We had the blood as a really significant part of our trailer, so we put blood ‘splatters’ on the second poster.This was similar to the first poster, we had a vivid red background, which again is similar to the background in the killers magazine cover , linking the two characters and the pieces. Within the girls poster we used the tagline ‘you would kill to have her’ using the same jagged font as we see within the trailer, this worked well as it continues the story that the trailer is portraying, we did this in a different way for the second poster using a corridor for the background linking the locations of the poster and the setting for the film. Both these effects are subtle but they worked really well. Within the two magazine covers we wanted to show both the characters but in a really subtle way, this way they could be connected as obviously they are the two main characters in the film. Obviously we couldn’t show the killers face as it would ruin the suspense the trailer creates. Instead we chose to show the girl tattooed on his back, this reveals a little about his character, his motive and so on, and then within the girl’s magazine cover we had the shadow of the killer behind her. This way we reveal only what the trailer reveals, that the girl is the motive and the killer will do anything to have what he wants the most. The posters, trailer and magazine covers all show that we are selling a horror film and they worked really well together as a marketing technique.They each have similarites that tie them together, and show they are all advertising the same thing.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We established who our target audience would be before we began shooting our trailer. We considered the age group we thought we would be aiming at, and after researching we found that we were looking at both males and females aged 15 to 25 years old. This age group seemed more likely to go to the cinema to see a film; and therefore see trailers too. We also looked at recently released horror films, and considered the audience they were aiming their films at; they generally seemed to be using younger stars in order to attract a younger audience which we took into consideration as well. Even the music they were using whilst advertising there films, bands such as Placebo and Marilyn Manson seemed to be aiming towards a younger age group, who would no doubt see the movies based on their favourite song.
We considered the approach we would take to find out more information regarding our audience’s expectations, and decided we would use social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter as teens and young adults generally use these sites as a way of communication. We tweeted ‘What makes a horror horrifying? ;’ the response was unanimous. People expected fear, the unknown, blood, everyday situations and death, the typical codes and conventions of a horror film. We then distributed a questionnaire via Facebook and email, it asked about people’s expectations of trailers in general with only one horror specific question; what do you expect to see when watching the trailer for a new ‘horror’ film? The answers made reference to sub genres, having all ready researched and decided upon the codes and conventions of our sub genre we knew what was expected of each. We asked how long a trailer should be and how much story is expected to be shown within a trailer. Generally people expected trailers to last between 1 and 2.5 minutes, and this was reinforced when we researched other similar products which also lasted within this time frame.
When our film was complete we needed to find away to distribute it as we can’t actually play it in a cinema. We again though about our target audience and what the best way to reach them would be. We decided we would upload it to YouTube; a video sharing website. It would allow a wide range of people to see our trailer and enable us to receive feedback from comments left on our account. A device within YouTube called ‘insight’ enabled us to see the site in which people were directed from for example Facebook, Google or Twitter. This let us know whether we were using the right sites to send out our link. The device also tells us the sex and age of people who are viewing our trailer, the largest age bracket being between 18 and 24 and the majority of viewers being female, which shows that as of yet we are hitting our target audience. The ‘insight’ tool also enabled us to see which sections of our film the viewers found interesting and which areas people found uninteresting. We found that half way through our trailer the audience interest dropped however gained again after the ‘shadow in the window’ scene; we found that when the interest dropped it was during the ‘leaning against the window’ scene. This led us to believe that perhaps we needed slightly more action within that area, or perhaps the take was too long and could have been cut slightly shorter.
Although we knew were hitting our target audience we still needed audience feedback about the trailer. Again we chose to use questionnaires as our means of gathering information and asked much more specific questions; whether it conformed to the expectations of a horror film? And what worked well and what did not? We received both positive and negative comments, which is to be expected. People generally thought that the trailer was good, and they would see it at the cinema (if it was released) or online/DVD. The strongest opinions seemed to be aimed towards the choice of music. Whilst some people felt that the music was not scary enough, and was perhaps too modern and even comforting, other people felt it was fitting to and even makes the teen horror genre. Evidently we felt the music pulled everything together and made the trailer feel fast paced and ongoing much like the daybreaker’s trailer but perhaps a chilling instrumental may have worked better. People also said they would have liked some dialogue within the film. So perhaps a voiceover would have worked similar to the trailer for Friday The 13th, to convey the story rather that the titles we chose. People generally liked the fade to blacks, which we expected as they are common within trailers of all genres as they keep the trailer moving and help keep the shots short and sweet. When looking at our feedback people seemed to want more story conveyed within our trailer, in hindsight we could have done this however we didn’t want to give away the whole story and get the ‘all the good bits were in the trailer’ kind of response, but perhaps we could have made a healthy balance by adding slightly more storyline without giving away much more than we already have.
We learned a lot from our audience feedback, and given the chance we would have liked to have made slight changes to appease our target audience. However during the post productions of most real films more than one trailer will be produced, so had this been an option we could have addressed these problems during the second trailer, perhaps conveyed slightly more story than this trailer and maybe try a different backing track, with some dialogue as well. However our audience feedback has informed us that we are hitting the right audience and were meeting their expectations regarding the codes and conventions, with minor exceptions. Our audience feedback gave us something to aim for and without it we wouldn’t have got very far, we referred back to our feedback throughout the process of creating our trailer to ensure it would be received well as the reason for a trailer is to sell a film. It allowed us to take what people wanted and experiment to bring them something they knew they’d enjoy but at the same time something new and different, allowing us to put our creative skills to the test.

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

Throughout the process of creating our trailer we have used a variety of different media technologies. Not only in the production stages such as filming and editing, but during our initial research and planning as well.

One of the largest contributing media technologies was the internet. Are work being based on a blog gave us the chance to widen the way in which we present our work, adding other website links as a means of research and allowing us to share our time management plan, as each post provides the date in which it was created.
We used the internet to watch recent trailers to find out what was expected, and then later narrowed down are searches to horror film trailers. We then analysed a few select trailers and were able to upload them onto our blog using recording software websites, this proved really useful as the reader can then refer back to the trailer when reading the analysis, and we did not have to worry about the chosen trailers being removed from the internet. The internet also proved incredibly useful whilst we were pin pointing out target audience. We were able to create questionnaire’s regarding people’s expectations of trailers in general and horror trailers and send them out via email and social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter this allowed us to hit a wide range of people and establish their wants and needs. We also didn’t have to worry about losing the work as people could fill them in online rather than by hand and we could back the work up by saving them to disks and pen drives. It also gave us the chance to send our questionnaires in mass so that if half the people did not fill them in we still had some input to work from.
The internet also gave us more options when distributing our trailer. We were able to upload it onto YouTube. This meant we could easily reach our audience as obviously we can’t actually play our trailer in a cinema. YouTube also has an insight section which was useful regarding our target audience. We could easily find out the age range of viewers, how they discovered our trailer and which areas they enjoyed or did not enjoy. This means we know whether or not we are hitting our target audience, in this case we are.

We were able to use a digital camera to record our creative process, taking pictures of significant events such as editing and certain stages of filming, this worked well as we could then upload these to our blogs and they worked as a visual diary alongside our work. When we decided upon our initial idea we set out to find suitable locations that fit our own expectations, using the camera gave us the opportunity to record the different places we found so we could refer back to them later as a visual aid.

It took us three days to shoot our film, and we had to make prior plans in regards to what equipment we would need for each day. Our main locations consisted of, the school environment, the isolated area and the girls home. We considered lighting sound and obviously the actual camera. We used a Panasonic DV60 to shoot our film. Before we started filming for our trailer we experimented with the camera to see if we could achieve any new effects that would work for our trailer. We played with the white balance and found that if we set the white balance using a different colour; for example orange (rather than white) we could make it look like we were filming at night rather than during the day. We found that over exposing certain things looked slightly strange and sharp so when it came to filming the actual trailer we used this procedure to make our blood look more prominent within the scene, we used the zebra button to help us see which areas were being overexposed. We also found that when changing the shutter speed we could slow down the images on the camera whilst filming; this achieved a juddering unnatural look which would work well for the killer’s point of view. Focusing the camera was vital, we achieved this by zooming in on something stationary like writing on a wall and then focusing the camera so that it was perfect for every scene; this had to be done for every new shot we filmed. For most of our scenes we used a hand held camera as it works well for our chosen genre but we did use a tripod for a few select scenes such as the scene in the canteen as we tilt towards the killer watching from above, we wanted this to look smooth and confident and the tripod helped us achieve this.

During the school scenes we found that the environment had a lot of hustle and bustle so we had to pay extra attention to our sound. We used a boom mike and a set of headphones connected to the camera which allowed us to hear which sounds the camera was picking up on, this made it easier for us to decide whether the audio levels on the camera needed to be turned up or turned down. We also found that we needed to light some of our scenes as the natural light was not sufficient or didn’t give the effect we wanted to attain. We used Birdie lights mounted on small tripods to correct this, positioned in such a way that we didn’t create shadows cast by the camera or crew.

Once we had successfully filmed our trailer we moved into the editing suit. We used an editing programme that was new to us; Final Cut Pro. We were inducted into the new programme before we began our own editing process. We learned the basic tools we would need such as how to log and capture our file, essentially getting our footage onto the system, and how to make sub clips; which meant we could separate our footage into smaller sections such as different scenes and even each different shot. We then learnt how to cut together our trailer such as cutting and splicing our clips. Once we had arranged a rough cut of our film we could fine tune things and begin to add sound, effects and filters which would help our rough footage evolve into an actual trailer. During our first scene we added several dip to colour (black) transitions, and we later added a dip to red to signify the danger as the trailer goes on. We added a heartbeat sound effect(Soundtrack Pro) which is in sync with the absence of the image during the first scene. We were able to slow down the speed of the sound to achieve a warped effect. We wanted our trailer to have an unstable, unnatural look to it so that it would seem bleak and horrifying as to keep with the codes and conventions of the genre. To achieve this we added the bad film effect. We didn’t like the way the filter looked to begin with so we changed the effects levels until we were satisfied. We added a high percentage of scratches, dust seed and mix, as well as saturation and jitter which sucked out some of the some of the colour and gave it the unstable shaky effect we wanted.
Another way in which we achieved the dark and bleak atmosphere was by adding a vignette to some scenes. It was only a subtle effect but we set the size, falloff and darken to 50 percent so that it simply gave the edges of the shot a smoky sinister feel.

We wanted sections of our trailer to look as though picture were being taken to create a voyeuristic feel. We took a freeze frame of shots we wanted to turn into pictures, and then made the image slightly longer so it would linger on the screen. We added a sepia tone to the image to make it obvious it was a photograph. We then found a suitable camera sound (Soundtrack Pro) and slowed the speed, again to make it sound slightly warped.

Having never used the programme soundtrack pro before we found it very useful. We were able to find sound effects we needed such as whooshes and echoes and then edit them until we were happy with the effect. We changed speed and added pitch reverberation and gain to make sounds seem sharper and scarier than they did to begin with. We also found a suitable backing track for our trailer which we edited to fit the time frame of our trailer. As well as sound track pro sounds, we recorded some of our own sound effects such as; the knife scraping along the metal bed frame. We also filmed and edited the sound of screaming girl, we added key frames which allowed us to change certain aspects of the sound for example it is louder at the beginning, then quieter then it gains a higher pitch towards the middle , the key frames allowed us to choose when this would happen in the clip. As well as the pitch we added a pan to this sound clip which meant it moves from left speaker to right speaker as it plays, we thought this would work well our genre as it sounds strange and eerie.

Our ancillary tasks consisted of a poster and a magazine cover; however we chose to create two of each as part of our marketing plan. We created them on Photoshop CS3 and used our camera again to take pictures of the images we wanted to use. We used a variety of different filters for both the posters and magazine. We used the magnetic lasso to cut around the images of the people and place them onto the new background images. The burn tool helped us make the images seem sinister as it created dark shadows which fit in well with the horror genre, we also used the dodge tool which works in the opposite way and lightens images which allowed us to create striking contrasts. We used the smudge and blur tools which made the background and images merge together rather than looking like to different images. We experimented with colour and used the eye dropper tool to match the colour from the trailer with the posters and magazines. The desaturate tool meant that we could bleed the colour from some of our images for example in the girls poster we left only the colour in the background and her eyes to give a demonic dangerous look. We added text to each image and added filters such as inner/outer glows and outlines as it was important that they appeared to be eye-catching.