Evaluation

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

As group we chose not only to use and develop conventions but also challenge them, the aim of this is to create a complex story and also not to be seen as copying the story line from other movies, this is a hard aim to have when living in a post modern society where inter-textual references are almost certain to appear in every movie created in the modern day and age. We chose to have a female as the antagonist, we did this by showing the differentiation between when she's younger to older with change in hair colour, brunette represents strength and that she is most likely going to succeed within the movie, furthermore dark colours represent death and she goes on to murder many people for revenge. Jennifer's Body is an example of a movie where a brown haired killer is used. I think audiences will like this as it shows the strong independant, modern woman.

We used a teenage cast to fit to our target audience, we used conventions within the groupsuch as first love, rebellion, teen angst and alienation. Not all these themes are shown within the teaser trailer but would later be found within the movie. Also as the producers and directors of our group are in this age range it's some what easier for us to relate and know what an audience would want to see. Another film where a teenage cast is used and these themes are used within the movie is 'Cabin Fever' Cabin Fever Trailer - Showing use of teenage cast and related themes.

On the other hand having a young cast from the beginning of the movie could of been a risky choice of casting as it might not appeal to our target audience from the start of the trailer, although we did show change in time and the intensity of the movie develops throughout. Furthermore we used a creepy repetitive song of a young girl singing to show the horror genre from the word go. This is a inter-textual reference from the movie, 'Nightmare on Elm street 2010' Nightmare on elm street trailer - Girl singing starts at (1.00)

We chose to challenge the conventions by using a final boy instead of girl, this was to create a strong stereotypical male for the female audience to lust over.

We also challenged the conventions by using a female voice as the voice over, in all the trailers I viewed not one female voice was used to market the movie for example the release date. We chose to use a female because of the largely based female cast and also to signify that the killer is a female. When doing this we had to be careful that the voice was still powerful and effective especially on the the part where she says 'Truth or Dare'. To give more exposition we could of used the voice over even more so but we felt this was unnecessary feature of a teaser trailer.

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

The initial magazine front cover was meant to represent the change between when the girl was happy when she was younger and then when she was abused and come backs to kill her friends when she's older. I did this by having a colourful, bright and vibrant picture of the girl when she was younger and washed out, close to a black and white image of the girl when she's older, the main problem with this idea is that in most media contexts black and white represents the past which should be the younger girl, although the dull and darker picture could have a preferred reading of death and hell. Overall, after evaluating the initial magazine has shown me that the image could create confusion for the readers. On the other hand the whole story line of the Truth or Dare isnt given away within the front cover which is what we wanted. Also there is no big names within the movie so we put introducing as a marketing device. I chose to use red text as it signifies blood and this is a fantastic way of representing the genre of our movie, also the sans serif font creates a hard edge which creates the imagery of a knife. The name for our magazine was 'Panic' we thought this would be a good title to use as it represents the genre of our movie but also its short and snappy and hopefully easy for the audience to remember. We used our magazine within our trailer, we thought this would work very well as both our magazine and trailer are aimed at the same audience, and its also a very good marketing device.




After we had all grouped together and analysed these points on the poster we decided to have another go at creating a magazine front cover to the groups highest standards. We used just one main image of the antagonist, look fearful straight at the camera, so its more eye catching within the marketing place. There are 3 things we wanted to stand out to the audience the most firstly the image, secondly, the working title which we did by using a large font and red colouring and finally the name of the magazine.The front cover mentions movies such as 'The unborn' 'Jennifer's Body' and 'Saw VI' we chose these because of the target audience of horrors that appeal to a teenage audience. 


We started out with a teaser poster which worked well. It showed the genre of the movie by using the blue tint the creepy tagline and release date, we also added one member of the groups blog address on as a marketing device. We chose to do a close up on the girls face using one side of her face as a young and naive visual and on the other a dark and scary image. This created a fascinating juxtaposition between the two. 

For our poster, just like the magazine we created two images this was because once we had analysed the first one we realised there were aspects of it in which we could of progressed and overall created an superior poster. For the first poster we used a number of images, the aim of this was to create enigma and some insight into the film, after reviewing it we realised it looked messy and confusing so on the improved version we took away the some of the images and left it with the one main charecter of when she's old and young. Visually the poster works very well alongside the movie as it looks like a timeline, although you could argue that using the black and white image of the girl represents the past we did discuss this and we thought we would go against the convention and use the colour to represent the dark side of the girl. We used the tag-line from the the trailer 'There are two sides to every story' we used this tag-line and the two sides represents the enigma of wether it's the boy who's the killer or the the girl and also represents the mind of the girl when young and older. We included our production company logo for a marketing device it also appears on the last shot of the trailer also the working title 'Truth or Dare' wasn't included at all in the first poster which is a crucial piece of text we needed as the whole aim of the poster is to market your film, this text could of possibly been better in red as the text in the trailer and magazine showing the working title are aswel.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

When creating a media product such as a teaser trailer, you work with the idea over a long period of time adding and deducting ideas within the group. You start with your own initial basic idea and present it to the class, this was great for us as the group consisted of our target audience.Its the first time you get a large number of people giving you some feedback. This is when i realized when creating an idea you really do need to think about it in as much depth as possible, which i found out i hadn't, as there were obvious aspects of it in which were unclear.


 Once deciding on groups we combined our ideas debating which idea's are going to be the most successful, when presenting to the class we found there was the same problems as the initial task the story needed to be carefully structured. The biggest problem we had to face was why the girl comes back to kill her friends, we initally said it was because she was possessed but we then realized we could face some problems creating a realistic scene of this happening, so after discussing within class we realized that it would be better if she came back to kill her friends for revenge. 


After planning the production of our movie, we took some test footage and showed the class, many problems occurred, lighting being the most prominent. Lighting created alot of intensity within the movie so its extremely important to get it right. Fortunately by having time to test footage we found this out before producing the final shots.

After already finding problems within the story-line of our production, the audience then noticed there was no evidence of male characters within the footage. Linking a male stereotype with a blonde was a great idea as it showed she was most likely to get killed because she was naive and sexually active. Furthermore to create a twist within the story-line we could use the male to appear as both the killer and the final boy this gives some narrative enigma. We did this by showing the gold mask in the boys locker and the killer seeing it. Using a male also creates a larger target audience as the audience may presume there could be scenes of a sexual nature, although we didn't include this in the trailer as we didn't think it was necessary.

On the other hand, although there was lots of constructive criticism audience feedback also reinsured some of ideas such as the bath scene. 'the under water shot worked well and signified there was more scary aspects to come'

After creating our first presentable representation of our movie to the class we found there were lots of things we could improve. The audience wanted more exposition before the running started. We were relying too much on the audience to understand who the characters were too early on. So we showed a clear link between 5 years. An idea of how this could of been done aswel as text on screen is the contrast between black and white. 

Using stills and cuts to black with a scream using a flash effect would help slow down the shots as it was too fast for the audience to take everything in. Also by adding in reviews would add in timing


Just when we thought we had reached our final cut and got what we were thinking was our final audience feedback a comment was made about having a voice over, we agreed as we thought it would create a higher impact trailer we could add in a voice over as a marketing device. We chose to use a female as it would tie in with our female cast and target audience, this is risky though as is goes against horror trailer conventions.

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


Throughout the production of the teaser trailer we used a blogger to show research, planning and evaluation. This was the main new media technology used, It was fantastic to use as we could access the main blog which gave us headings and tasks that we needed to reach by a certain date, furthermore it was very efficient as we could use it at home when we wanted and didn't need to write things down and then copy them up at school. Many of the features of blogger helped us along the way including the use of importing videos and images, showing links so people could see where i was finding my information. When planning the media production we used www.scribd.com to share around word documents this made it easier for the group to access and analyse. Without the internet the majority of my research wouldn't of been possible. I got images and word documents up onto scribd by scanning them. The only problem i faced was when getting the teaser poster on the blog as its only an A4 scanner, instead i took a picture and uploaded it so it was clearer to see. I needed to look at alot of trailers to work out what i really liked and what conventions to follow for my movie. A website i used quite often for up and coming trailers was apple horror trailers. Wikipedia gave me help with definitions and basic topics that i needed more understanding about and the final search engine that gave me a lot of infomation and background was imdb. All of these websites are examples of new media technologies in which I have used to my advantage. Although if i had no access to the inernet there are other possiblites of where i could of found my research from such-as books. I did use a couple of books but i found the internet much easier to use.

We used photoshop to create or ancillary tasks, i have worked with this piece of software before so it wasn't too hard to grasp onto. The biggest benefit of photoshop i believe is how you can import several photos and deal with how ever many you want to at the time by using the layers appropriately. I used mac computers throughout the production of the movie, this isn't only because there available during school time but i have them at home aswel which made it easier to do work in my free time. We used imovie for the production of the trailer, all the group had past experience on the software from AS. Its easy to use and does everything we need to create our coursework. The only problem is the accuracy of sound, we did try to use final cut express 4 but we found that the music wouldn't work with final cut express and for this reason we stuck to imovie, if we had of used final cut express there is a few seconds of ambient sounds in the scene where the girls on the phone in the bedroom (0.42), we would of altered this if able to although it's not extremely prominent. We used a portable audio recorder  to create the voice over on the trailer, if we hadn't of done it this way then we would of probably had to of used a DV camcorder which wouldn't of picked up the sound to its highest quality. The camcorder was used to produce all our shots within the movie, there was a choice of using the boom mic that school provided us with but as we were having a sound track and voice over we didn't feel that this was necessary. 

Finally i posted my trailer onto the social network facebook, this was to help with the evaluation and get the most out of our target audience as possible for the audience feedback as our aim throughout the production of the trailer was to create a powerful and thrilling trailer 

Teaser Poster

The colour is blue tint as this is a signifier of horror genre in many horror movies, we used one side of the face of the girls pre killing and after when she comes back to take revenge on her friends. As its a teaser poster there is only image the Tag-line and release date, not even the title is revealed. We used a catchy tag-line to stick in people's head with coincides with the teaser trailer where the young girl sings i, the aim of this catchy line is because its a good way of marketing the movie.

Final Cut

Location

We've set the beginning of the movie in the woods, this is a inter textual reference with movies such as cabin fever and the strangers. It creates a sense of vulnerability and fear, especially at night.

We used different houses for different killings, this is because the friends are unaware of anything so having it in the houses makes it more realistic and shocking for the audience.

The school creates the link of the story-line from past to present and makes the audience understand that her friends don't realise who the girl is now she is older.

  

Editing.

We started the movie using the effect, black and white this is a common convention in movies as it shows the past, the aim of this was to make the story clearer to the audience. We then added a voice over of the girls singing this is create a naive and vulnerable effect on the audience a film that also does this is nightmare on elm street 2009. The voice over is carried on throughout we used a girl to advertise the movie we chose to go against the common code and convention of having a male this is because it is a female based cast and also the voice over will still strong and shocking. 

Inter cutting is another common convention of horror movies it creates suspens

e and fear for the audience. We used a linear sequence at first but then after we had some audience feedback we realised it would be more effective to have it non-linear. 

Titles create anchorage for the story line, after the audience feedback we realised some people were confused with the basic's aspects of the story-line so we made that clearer for example to make the change in time very clear we had titles saying '5 years later'

Using the effect of slow motion it created greater emphasis on the action which we wanted to be clear, for example when the killer gets the young girl. Also after researching teaser trailers it it is clear that timings have to variate and the beginning is usually slower passed which slow mo adds to.

We added transitions to show the passing of time and for the visual as it makes the trailer look to a much higher standard.

After shooting we realised some of our shots were too short so we added still when necessary, it worked nicely as there is a contrast in shot types and shows emphasis upon them.

The soundtrack was created to carry on throughout the trailer, it starts of slower and heightens at the end we added in a big crash at the last shot to make the audience jump and leave them feeling scared and wanting them to watch the movie.

Storyboard.

Storyboard

Pre Production Schedule

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