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

For this question I have taken screenshots of real films and put them alongside shots from our trailer to compare their uses of mise-en-scene, shot size, framing, character use and so on.

Trailers are made to make people want to go and see the film, if the trailer is good then people will go to see the film. They are very important when making a film as they hope to excite and intrigue the audience to want to know more about the film. If made correctly, it will attract the audience that the producers have targeted. All trailers share the same ideals and they also share the same conventions when it comes to structure. Our trailer, which was one for a horror film, had to create a sense of uneasiness and fright whereas one of a more upbeat manor would have to make the viewers laugh and excite them into what happens.

This frame is from The Boy, I chose this shot as it was of text. Although the text is part of the rules for the narrative, I used this example because this part fades in and out much like the text in our trailer.

I decided to use a clip form Paranormal Activity: Ghost Dimension as it has a hand held camera part. It may not be a running scene but it still has the 'wobbly camera movement that we needed.

For a long shot I decided to use a shot from The Woman in Black as it shows her standing far away from the window looking into the window where Arthur is standing. In our trailer we tried to recreate this scene but obviously with our killer standing outside.

The next example is one that came from Krampus in the scene where they're in the loft and the toy clown comes alive and their torches are shining on it        

For this screenshot I have decided to use Frankensteins Army as an example as it contains a shot that flickers on and off, much like the one in our trailer. This was used to create tension in our trailer.

Although this doesn't show the news report full screen I feel that our report looked similar to the one in the trailer for The Purge. This is because they are both giving information as to what's happening at the time of the trailer.

This shot is from the 2009 Friday the 13th as it shows, as a jumpscare, one of the girls screaming. Again this isn't entirely the same to the shot from our trailer, I feel it gives the same effect.

I chose Cabin in the Woods for the next shot as the music in this shot and the scene surrounding it is very tense, which is what we wanted to create when coming to the music in our trailer.

Again I have used Cabin in the Woods as at the end when the name of the film comes up, it is in the style that we wanted, which is why our trailer ends in the same way this one does.


I feel that the sound in our trailer kept to conventions of real horror films as it built tension throughout and then ended on a more climactic piece.  When trailers are done right, the music and SFX can, and will be the reason as to why people jump. If the trailer and the music don't work well together then the film won't work. This is why we made sure that we took extra care when making the music to go along with our trailer.

Overall I think that our trailer worked well and that it kept fairly close to classic horror conventions. Although there were a few points during it it that I would improve further to make it fit to conventions even more closely, I still think that it work well and am proud of what we have produced.

Magazine and Poster

Final Trailer

Risk Assessment

Story Boards

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

The role of a film distributor is to advertise the product correctly and to the right people. Examples of this are in the cinema if a horror film is shown, then the trailer before the film will be ones that are horror related. Also if the film is say a 15, the trailers for it will mostly be other films with the same classification as the one that is screening at the time. Posters will be placed in places that are easy to see and catch the eye of the target audience. Magazines will advertise these films but obviously you would see a article/poster for the next Saw film in a Knitting magazine so they would have to make sure that they send there piece to companies that would put them in their magazines. One of the biggest way that companies can get advertisement is by using the internet as so many people use it that it is almost impossible for it not to be noticed. Social media and Youtube would be the biggest contributors to this as the distributors can put their trailers on before videos that are appropriate for the target audiences.
Reviews are also a huge part of advertisement as if the film does well then more people are likely to go and see it and if it doesn't do well then it'll do the opposite.

This poster was for the 2009 remake of Friday the 13th. I like this poster as it is very simplistic. It only shows Jason's mask which is one of the most iconic props in the horror genre so when people see the poster they instantly know what film it is. Also the distributors will have to rely on this heavily as it is the only thing on the poster.

I have decided that my film will be classified as a 15 as it involves, swearing and a small amount of violence and blood. The poster that i have created is very much along the lines of the Friday 13th trailer and the Scream poster in which it only shows the mask from a side perspective. This is because the poster consists of the killers mask. I made the poster like this because it gives a sense of mystery about the killer which will raise question asking who he is and why the mask. The poster is black as well as the mask to make it look as dark and sinister as possible.

 The magazine cover features the same picture as I wanted to keep the mystery to keep people in suspense about who the killer is. I went for quite a modern take on a horror magazine as its quite simplistic but keeps the horror aspects in it such as the text is classic horror text. But the rest of the magazine is quite minimalist. The other texts I used were quite gothic type writer ones, again keeping with the genre. I used this Empire cover as inspiration as there is a lot going on but not so much that it's confused.

I decided to then steer well clear of magazines such as Scream they are cluttered, although this fits well with the genre this is not how I wanted my magazine to look.

What have you learnt from audience feedback?

Audience feedback is incredibly important when making a film. As if you don't know your audience then there is no hope in making a film that will sell/make a profit in the cinema. If you collect audience feedback then you will be able to thin out what you can and can't do for the audience that
you're trying to make a film for. If the audience enjoy the film then they may come and see it in the cinema with other people. So in a way it is a form of advertisment.

I gathered audience feedback by showing our trailer to the rest of our class. They trhen wrote down what was good and what was bad, gave that feedback to us the we went away and made as many of the changes as we could to make it more suited to what the target audience wanted. As our class is that of teenagers we already knew what kind of trailer we needed to make. The feedback just helped us to refine what we had made into a better, more interesting trailer.

All the feedback that we recieved was telling us the same things. Even though people enjoyed the narrative there were problems with it that we already knew about but people obviously wrote these things down. These were the main comments.

1 The music doesn't fit all the way through
2 The order of the shots was predictable and threfore made the story predictable
3 Music wasn't sinister enough
4 There wasn't enough 'suffering'

Using this feedback i was able to make the changes that were needed. we found some more dramatice music and embeded it in our trailer to give it more tension. Also we went out and filmed some more shots that showed/depicted suffering and put those shots in. On top of that we completely messed around with the different shots and made it less linear. We also made all trhe shots look similar in lighting, which was something that I noticed but there were no comments about it.

Pre-Production paperwork

How did you use new Media Technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages.

When making my magazine cover, poster and trailer I had to use multiple different types of program.

Blogger

Everything that I needed to research and plan had to go on my blog which was where it was all marked, I had to upload my magazine, poster and trailer all to my blog. I did encounter some problems to do with uploading and labelling as I hadn't activated the label column.







Premier Pro

This was the software that I used to make the trailer. This was shared between all three people in my group as we all needed to show that we could use it and interact with the group to improve the grades we got. Personally I enjoyed this section the most as I felt most comfortable with the software as I had used it before this course.

Photoshop

This was what I used to make my poster and magazine. As I had used photoshop previously in other courses, again, I felt comfortable with the technology which made the job at hand a bit easier.

Camera

Obviously we had to use cameras to film the footage for our trailers, and again due to another course I have taken it meant that I was very familiar with using these cameras.





Issuu 

 I used this to upload all of my pre production paper work. I did this by scanning in the physical copies and then uploading them to Issuu, I then took the embed code and put it in to a blogger document.








Web 2.0 

This is what the next generation of the internet is called. In this version it gives anyone the chance to do most things on the internet. They can upload to sites such as youtube, and have their own channels and make content for the masses.  Also, the software and the gear that you need for this is really quite cheap and accessible to everyone. This is all very useful for smaller film makers as it means the budget for their actual films etc.

These technologies have been ones that have helped immensely with the making of my trailer and with making all of my blog posts with ease. They are easy to use and don't hinder me in anyway. Although at some points they failed to work they did in the work and helped me with my work 

Magazine and Poster templates

Shot list

establishing shot- front of college
news report from front of college about missing student- mid shot of reporter
newspaper articles- close up
janitors house- janitor sitting on bed, head in hands- close up- voice over still going from news report

classroom- one lacking off, one doing work- close up of date on computer- present day
                                                                      - pan out to show Curtis on computer and other student
                                                                      - close up of each characters
                      - shot of computer with work, computer with online shopping and hands on phone
                                                                 - mid-shot of lacking student 'I'm going to the toilet'
corridor- lacking off student walking to toilets - different shots from different angles of her walking

toilets- student with back to exit door and on phone- behind
                                                                 -over the shoulder now revealing the janitor behind
close up of students phone tweeting 'I'm so bored'
over the shoulder shot- mirror, reflection of janitor looking at student
                                    -janitor grabs student

classroom- good student looking around, checking watch

slacking student being dragged down the cellar- mid shot just showing legs being dragged
  
All computers turn on at the same time- classroom- over the shoulder of student
                                                                                 - different angles of the room
Chairs move by wire
lights swing 
student walking around- down glass corridor, janitor watching from outside
student looking out window at grass, janitor far away in the trees- shot from behind student
                                                                                                        - shot of outside
                                                                                           - close up of students puzzled face
                                                                                                  -shot of outside, janitors gone
corridor- reflection/shadow of blade- close up
close up of students phone- 'no signal'
close up- janitors badge
student running down the corridor, classroom lights turn off as he passes them
student reaches sports hall- doors swing open and the lights are turned off- long shot 
close up- students feet running
library- hiding at the end of isle
skills- 360 degree pan of student stressing out with paranoia
lacking off student- messed up, bloody, crying- darkroom, close up of face
Chairs being pulled by wire
lights swinging 

Prop's

-mask

-rope

-fishing wire

-phone

-computers

-chairs

-smart black clothes

-caretaker badge

-torch

-knife/machete

-newspapers

Costumes

Janitor- smart clothes- black trousers and polo top with a janitor’s badge

Good student- smarter casual clothes

Bad student- crop top and skinny jeans

Ghost- if in trailer (undecided) black clothes or sheet 

These are my groups individual ideas for our horror trailer, we didn't outright like one so we mixed them all together to create our trailer plot.

Tilly: A power cut at college or student's get locked in, Zombies or Vampire attack the college from the inside, plot is following a group of friends.

Charles: Haunted house, young couple move in, strange goings on, their dog dies, a fight for survival.

Me: Cat and mouse chase between a serial killer and his next victim. Our final idea for our trailer is; two students stay after college to do work but things take a turn for the worst, a giant cat and mouse chase between a student and a mysterious figure- one year after a student was found dead at the college. A coincidence or not, this mysterious killer kills one of these students. The killer is being haunted by the ghost of the student he accidently killed and the story follows a fight for survival of the student.

Questionnaire and Target Audience Research

Pre Production Paperwork