In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
For my teaser trailer, I followed a fairly conventional structure. It begins by establishing the setting and briefly introducing characters, both of which then develop as relationships are put in place and another shot of the dark night scene, lit up by lights from the cars and buildings in the distance. The relationship between the young girls appears fun and carefree, this is portrayed through the diegetic music that they’re listening to and the laughs, drinks and dancing. This gives them a sense of vulnerability as they aren’t worried or aware of any dangers, despite camping in the dark, alone, with only a single campfire. The lights are shown so far in the distance to make the scene appear to be set far away from civilization and therefore more dangerous. A complication in the story is then introduced as one of the young girls have dropped to the floor, the lively music has stopped to emphasize the sudden change in mood, and the only sound is of the girl breathing heavily on the floor as if scared or in pain. The camera has been dropped sideways on the floor, and the shot isn’t clear, this emphasizes the idea of it being real footage that the girls recorded that night, this has previously been confirmed using an inter-title. This soon cuts to a fuzzy screen which is intended to leave the audience confused and wanting to know more. Next, minor events are briefly shown, such as a dog walker running through the woods, using a point of view shot to add a sense of someone chasing them, which is a common convention of a horror film. The final minor event is of a unknown young girl in a plain room staring out of a window, this appears to be insignificant until she turns around and she is cut, bruised and clearly deeply troubled. This shot is, again, cut to a fuzzy screen, leaving the audience to wonder how this happened and hopefully wanting to see the film to find out. Like most teaser and theatrical trailers, it ends with the title. Quite often, order is restored at the end of a trailer after being disrupted throughout, similar to a classic story-telling structure. I challenged this convention and ended my teaser trailer with a shocking clip of a young girl in a bad state, and clearly not a resolved complication in the story-line. I believe this will leave the audience wanting more and feeling as though they require a conclusion and answer to how she got this way.
Overall, I have followed a fairly conventional structure, despite challenging it slightly at the end. The location, being the woods, is extremely common in horrors but always appears to have a good effect and emphasizes the genre. The characters consist of victims and some kind of villain is suggested through the events but never actually shown. This is a usual convention for a horror and the characteristics of the victims making them appear vulnerable is also common.
How effective is the combination of your main products and ancillary texts?
Main Product: Teaser Trailer
Ancillary Texts: Film Poster and Magazine Front Cover
I aimed to create a consistent brand image using font, colour schemes, taglines and subtitles. This was to ensure the audience could make the connection between different the forms of advertising and recognize that it was for the same film. They also worked together to give a strong sense of the film's genre. Although they weren't the same throughout the different forms of advertising, the taglines and intertitles did relate strongly. For example, the title 'Behind You' has a strong connection to the question featured in my trailer as an intertitle, 'Ever feel like you're being followed?'. Also, the location has a big influence over the tagline of the film poster, 'If you go down to the woods today...You're in for a big surprise', which is why I used an image of the woods as the background. A 'surprise' implies you are unaware of what is coming, and being 'followed' suggests not knowing who by, and not being in control of the situation, therefore both of these are strongly related to the fear of the unknown which is consistent throughout my ancillary texts and trailer.
I used the same font for the films title in the poster and magazine cover. I chose the font as it was bold and eye-catching, and it looked eerie which reflected the genre and main location in my trailer, the woods. Although I used a different font for the intertitles in my trailer as it looked too much like headings otherwise.
The colour schemes for the poster and magazine cover aren't as similar as I intended, apart from the deep red, which is a conventional colour to be associated with a horror. I used photoshop to turn the image I used for the poster black and white, this reflected the ghostly effect given throughout most of the trailer. It also increased the fear of the unknown, which is a continuous feature throughout my trailer. White is also used throughout both ancillary texts and my trailer, this symbolises the innocence and vulnerabilty of the young girls. This contrasts with the deep red, symbolising blood and danger, which appears to overpower the white as the evil in the film does clearly overpower their innocence and take advantage of their vulnerability.
The poster and the magazine cover both contain images relating to the trailer, the woods and the young girl who is cut and bruised. This is easily recognizable as they are signiture features of the film, being the main location and a main character presented in a shocking way.
Overall, my ancillary texts and main product aren't combined as obviously as you might expect as the colour scheme and fonts dont follow a strict pattern, but they are combined effectively through more subtle features such as what the colours symbolise, a continuous fear of the unknown, location and characters being presented in a recognizable way.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Usually in teaser trailers, they will end by resolving a problem which has earlier been introduced, but I ended with a shocking image of a young girl cut, bruised and disturbed, and a member of the audience said it 'made you want to find out what happened to her'. I was unsure whether to do this at first as it went against my research on trailer conventions, but in the theatrical trailer for 'The Last Exorcism', it ended with a shocking image of the posessed young girl and definitely didn't appear to have resolved the complication, but this drew me into the story as it didn't give any kind of solution or outcome away and left me wondering a wanting to know and see more. I learnt from my audience feedback that by challenging the conventional structure of a teaser trailer, I effectively attracted an audience.
I only used diegetic sounds in my trailer as the beginning was 'real footage' and by adding computer generated sounds, I felt as though this would have made it seem less like a true story and real life. The audience appear to prefer non-diegetic sounds to assist in creating atmosphere. I think my trailer would have been more effective if I used inspiration from the trailers I researched and used non-diegetic sounds to build tension during the intertitles rather than often leaving gaps of silence.
The main location of my trailer was the woods. This is very common for horrors and although I saw this as following conventions, my audience feedback thought it was unoriginal. It did work effectively with the genre and storyline but I could have considered using a more unique location where you wouldn't be expecting the events that followed to happen. Although it would be more difficult to present a camping scene somewhere other than the woods.
Finally, I wondered if my trailer was frightening, like you would expect from a horror and the answer wasn't what I expected but wasn't necessarily negative. The audience admitted that they would have also expected it to be more frightening but instead it was very intriguing. I cut a lot of scenes short before they revealed too much of the storyline, this definitely reflected my intention of building a fear of the unknown. Despite not being too afraid of it, the audience definitely appeared to wonder about what was unknown to them throughout the trailer, and 'it was the idea of not knowing what had happened which drew (the audience) in most'.
Overall, my audience feedback has reassured me that I have created a trailer which will effectively attract an audience, by following and challenging conventions and structures. It has also helped me realise what I could do in the future to improve my trailer.
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Construction: Video cameras, digital cameras, Final Cut Pro, Motion, Youtube, Blogger, Photoshop
Research: Youtube, Imdb, Empireonline
Planning: Blogger
Evaluation: Blogger
When constructing my trailer, I began by filming each scene multiple times on a video camera, so that when I transferred it to Final Cut Pro - the programme I used to edit and create the final trailer - I had a range of choices as some may have come out better than others. I used 'Final Cut Pro' to add effects such as 'Fade in Fade out' for the sound and each clip. I used 'Motion' to create the intertitles for my trailer. In order to present my trailer I had to transfer it to Youtube so it could be displayed on my blog. For my Magazine front cover, I first used a digital camera to take photos of one of the main characters, with her make-up done as if she had been badly hurt. I selected one of these images and used 'Photoshop' to edit the image and add text, etc. I began by cropping the image so it was a rectangle shape, more similar to a magazine. Next, I added text, block square strips, and a barcode, all of which were inspired by the Empire magazine I had analysed. This was similar to my Film Poster as I simply selected an image and transfered it to Photoshop so I could edit it based on those I had researched and how they influenced and attracted me.
To prepare and inspire me to create my own trailer, magazine cover and film poster, I researched professional ones for real films. I found all trailers on Youtube, which allowed me to watch them for free and pause/rewind/etc to ensure I could analyse them thoroughly. The Film Posters I analysed were find on the IMDb 'The internet movie database' website, http://www.imdb.com/.
When planning and evaluating my project, I simply used blogger, http://www.blogger.com/, to display all my work, as I had done with the actual project aswell.
Overall, I have followed a fairly conventional structure, despite challenging it slightly at the end. The location, being the woods, is extremely common in horrors but always appears to have a good effect and emphasizes the genre. The characters consist of victims and some kind of villain is suggested through the events but never actually shown. This is a usual convention for a horror and the characteristics of the victims making them appear vulnerable is also common.
How effective is the combination of your main products and ancillary texts?
Main Product: Teaser Trailer
Ancillary Texts: Film Poster and Magazine Front Cover
I aimed to create a consistent brand image using font, colour schemes, taglines and subtitles. This was to ensure the audience could make the connection between different the forms of advertising and recognize that it was for the same film. They also worked together to give a strong sense of the film's genre. Although they weren't the same throughout the different forms of advertising, the taglines and intertitles did relate strongly. For example, the title 'Behind You' has a strong connection to the question featured in my trailer as an intertitle, 'Ever feel like you're being followed?'. Also, the location has a big influence over the tagline of the film poster, 'If you go down to the woods today...You're in for a big surprise', which is why I used an image of the woods as the background. A 'surprise' implies you are unaware of what is coming, and being 'followed' suggests not knowing who by, and not being in control of the situation, therefore both of these are strongly related to the fear of the unknown which is consistent throughout my ancillary texts and trailer.
I used the same font for the films title in the poster and magazine cover. I chose the font as it was bold and eye-catching, and it looked eerie which reflected the genre and main location in my trailer, the woods. Although I used a different font for the intertitles in my trailer as it looked too much like headings otherwise.
The colour schemes for the poster and magazine cover aren't as similar as I intended, apart from the deep red, which is a conventional colour to be associated with a horror. I used photoshop to turn the image I used for the poster black and white, this reflected the ghostly effect given throughout most of the trailer. It also increased the fear of the unknown, which is a continuous feature throughout my trailer. White is also used throughout both ancillary texts and my trailer, this symbolises the innocence and vulnerabilty of the young girls. This contrasts with the deep red, symbolising blood and danger, which appears to overpower the white as the evil in the film does clearly overpower their innocence and take advantage of their vulnerability.
The poster and the magazine cover both contain images relating to the trailer, the woods and the young girl who is cut and bruised. This is easily recognizable as they are signiture features of the film, being the main location and a main character presented in a shocking way.
Overall, my ancillary texts and main product aren't combined as obviously as you might expect as the colour scheme and fonts dont follow a strict pattern, but they are combined effectively through more subtle features such as what the colours symbolise, a continuous fear of the unknown, location and characters being presented in a recognizable way.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Usually in teaser trailers, they will end by resolving a problem which has earlier been introduced, but I ended with a shocking image of a young girl cut, bruised and disturbed, and a member of the audience said it 'made you want to find out what happened to her'. I was unsure whether to do this at first as it went against my research on trailer conventions, but in the theatrical trailer for 'The Last Exorcism', it ended with a shocking image of the posessed young girl and definitely didn't appear to have resolved the complication, but this drew me into the story as it didn't give any kind of solution or outcome away and left me wondering a wanting to know and see more. I learnt from my audience feedback that by challenging the conventional structure of a teaser trailer, I effectively attracted an audience.
I only used diegetic sounds in my trailer as the beginning was 'real footage' and by adding computer generated sounds, I felt as though this would have made it seem less like a true story and real life. The audience appear to prefer non-diegetic sounds to assist in creating atmosphere. I think my trailer would have been more effective if I used inspiration from the trailers I researched and used non-diegetic sounds to build tension during the intertitles rather than often leaving gaps of silence.
The main location of my trailer was the woods. This is very common for horrors and although I saw this as following conventions, my audience feedback thought it was unoriginal. It did work effectively with the genre and storyline but I could have considered using a more unique location where you wouldn't be expecting the events that followed to happen. Although it would be more difficult to present a camping scene somewhere other than the woods.
Finally, I wondered if my trailer was frightening, like you would expect from a horror and the answer wasn't what I expected but wasn't necessarily negative. The audience admitted that they would have also expected it to be more frightening but instead it was very intriguing. I cut a lot of scenes short before they revealed too much of the storyline, this definitely reflected my intention of building a fear of the unknown. Despite not being too afraid of it, the audience definitely appeared to wonder about what was unknown to them throughout the trailer, and 'it was the idea of not knowing what had happened which drew (the audience) in most'.
Overall, my audience feedback has reassured me that I have created a trailer which will effectively attract an audience, by following and challenging conventions and structures. It has also helped me realise what I could do in the future to improve my trailer.
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Construction: Video cameras, digital cameras, Final Cut Pro, Motion, Youtube, Blogger, Photoshop
Research: Youtube, Imdb, Empireonline
Planning: Blogger
Evaluation: Blogger
When constructing my trailer, I began by filming each scene multiple times on a video camera, so that when I transferred it to Final Cut Pro - the programme I used to edit and create the final trailer - I had a range of choices as some may have come out better than others. I used 'Final Cut Pro' to add effects such as 'Fade in Fade out' for the sound and each clip. I used 'Motion' to create the intertitles for my trailer. In order to present my trailer I had to transfer it to Youtube so it could be displayed on my blog. For my Magazine front cover, I first used a digital camera to take photos of one of the main characters, with her make-up done as if she had been badly hurt. I selected one of these images and used 'Photoshop' to edit the image and add text, etc. I began by cropping the image so it was a rectangle shape, more similar to a magazine. Next, I added text, block square strips, and a barcode, all of which were inspired by the Empire magazine I had analysed. This was similar to my Film Poster as I simply selected an image and transfered it to Photoshop so I could edit it based on those I had researched and how they influenced and attracted me.
To prepare and inspire me to create my own trailer, magazine cover and film poster, I researched professional ones for real films. I found all trailers on Youtube, which allowed me to watch them for free and pause/rewind/etc to ensure I could analyse them thoroughly. The Film Posters I analysed were find on the IMDb 'The internet movie database' website, http://www.imdb.com/.
When planning and evaluating my project, I simply used blogger, http://www.blogger.com/, to display all my work, as I had done with the actual project aswell.
