Evaluation By Jo Penney

In what ways does your media product

use, develop or challenge forms and

conventions of real media products? • From all the research we have looked at on teaser trailers one thing I

have picked up on is the fact that trailers are not in chronological order, apart from the opening scene. The opening part of the film sets the scene and an uneasy atmosphere, as it creates suspense and tension as they are waiting for something to happen.

This is the opening scene for our teaser trailer. The opening scene sets the location but also two of the characters that will be included in the film. We made the location look realistic, picking a cul-de-sac to create realism, as lots of people live in these locations. This would make the audience feel like it could happen to them, which adds to the effect of the horror genre of the teaser trailer.

From the research and information we gathered, we noticed a lot teaser trailers would use clips of text through out the trailer. This would help catch the audiences eye, and make them want to find out more. These clips of text were carefully placed in the trailer to create suspense. The text gives information away without giving the story away.

With all the teaser trailers we have watched throughout this project, we wanted the writing to be shown on a black background, making it stand out. Choosing a white font and adding a red glow behind the it adds to the spooky effect. From looking at other teaser trailers we wanted to include as many conventions as possible to make it as realistic as we could. With placing the text we wanted it to be directly in the middle of the clip to make it eye catching. One of the other conventions on texts that commonly appeared was the different sizes of words and sentences to make them stand out from the others.

Many of the teaser trailers which we studied had text clip, one of the most important conventions we found was the text structure they chose to use. The short snappy sentences set the story for the audience, and added to the suspense on the audience, wanting to know what happens in the film.

Jump moments… When creating a horror teaser trailer one of the main conventions are the ‘jump moments’. All throughout our trailer we created many of them where you would least suspect it. These moments target the audience, making them jump and feel on edge. The ‘jump moments’ also help make the teaser trailer memorable which shocks and scare the audience, making the ‘jump moment’ stay with you.

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Here is a step by step of how the ‘jump moments’ work and why they are so effective. For this jump moments we faded the music out, to create tension. We then used a dip to black which slowly made the picture appear of Libby (girl holding the candle) and then less than a second later Evie appears. This clip is very spooky as Libby does not realise she’s behind her which puts the audience on the edge of their seat. The use of the light flame creates a shadow over the little girl, this creates an eerie feel. The ‘jump moment’ then uses dip to black to fade out . There is a pause of silence and then there is the outcry of Libby yelling ‘HELP ME’ .

Close ups… In this teaser trailer we chose the genre ‘horror’. From all the research, close ups play an important part. They get your heart racing and create a greater impact than a shot further away. Through out our teaser trailer we use a range of close ups to add to the scariness of the film.

This close up is a very strong shot. The face is immerging from the darkness and has been picked up by a torch. The use of the torch under the little girls face adds to the possessed and evil look.

These two close ups are both creepy but have been created in different ways. The screen shot of the little girls red wellies is a very strong shot, as they are used to make the welly image synonymous with the character of the little girl. The way the close up has been done is over powering as it feels like the little girl is gaining control from the way of the camera angle. The shot of the girl behind the glass works well. This clip also creates a jump scene within the teaser trailer as well as a close up.

Short clips…

Dip to black…

Most of the trailers we looked at for research followed similar conventions to one another. They are very short, snappy and show a range of clips of the film without giving much away .When all the clips are added together they fit together well creating a continuous flow. Even though the short clips are not in chronological order, the teaser trailer still makes sense to the audience.

Throughout our teaser trailer we have wanted to make it as continuous as possible, dip to black helped with this. Fading from one clip to another and out again adds to the tension as you don’t know what's going to pop onto the screen next. We also added dip to black which fades to a black screen for a few seconds, this builds up suspense and makes the audience feel on edge.

Different shots and

angles…

Tracking shot

High angle

Low angle

Close up

Adding a range of shots and angles adds to the teaser trailer. This makes it more inventive than just using similar angles all the way through. The way we have completed some of the shots and angles have been done to make them overpowering for the audience. For example when the camera is showing a high angle of the little girl walking across the stairs, it makes the audience feel over powered, as the little girl is above them looking down.

All our shots and angles have been carefully thought out to make the best out of out horror teaser trailer conventions making the best impact and adding realism to the storyline.

Music and sound effects… One of the main conventions of a horror trailer is the choice of music and sound effects. We carefully chose the music to fit in with the stages of our teaser trailer. Rather than just choosing one piece of music in particular, we took sections of songs to try and make the most impact on our horror trailer. At the beginning of the trailer we used slow creepy music, to build up tension. Throughout our trailer we had parts which are silent, this builds of the suspense for the audience watching our teaser trailer. In the middle of the trailer the pace starts to pick up, to fit in with the fast pace clips. We found this was a typical convention of a horror trailer. Special sound effects Through out the horror trailer we added sound effects to add to the scariness making the certain ‘jump moments’ scarier adding tension and suspense with the audience. Some the sound effects which were used are; the door creaking, screams, the sound of the door handle shaking.

End credits…

A lot of thought went into how to finish off the teaser trailer and how to make the end credits fit in with the rest of it. The title The title is one of the most important conventions of a trailer. It informs the audience what the film is called. We wanted the title to take up the whole black screen, to make it stand out to make it eye catching and memorable. Date From looking at many examples before we made our own, we realised that many of them did not include the release date of the film, we felt it was more effective just to put ‘THIS WINTER’ Production company Teaser trailers always have the convention of mentioning which production company was used. We made our own one up called ‘GP productions’ this makes the trailer look more professional.

How effective is the combination of your main

product and ancillary texts?

The aim… The aim of all my ancillary tasks are purely focused on our specific target audience, to make it eye catching to them, so we included all the conventions that would best suit them. I decided to choose a film poster and magazine front cover, I thought this would be the easiest way to attract my target audience to our horror film. I thought these ancillary task would also let me show my creative side using Photoshop.

Here is a close up of the main image edited. I decided to edit it in this way to make it more eye catching.

From researching film posters, a lot of them had a striking central image. Being placed in the centre of the page, makes it eye catching to the audience. With all the images that were taken I thought this one suits the genre of the film well. Making the little girl in the mirror in colour and to stand out more from the background and gives it a 3D feel.

I wanted the writing to be put in the middle of the poster to make it stand out. The use of the colour red indicates blood and danger and the poster has a creepier feel to it.

Magazine front cover… I wanted to include as many magazine front cover conventions as possible to make it look professional. Most of the magazine front covers had very simple layouts , this works well as it’s not over crowded and easy to read. Conventions of a music magazine: o Name of the magazine o Taglines o Date o Price Etc… Competitions was also one of the main conventions that would pop up on magazine front covers. This convention works well to persuade readers to pick up my magazine. I feel my magazine front cover has been successful as it includes all the conventions of a professional one.

Colours used… I wanted to keep to the same colour shades through out my ancillary tasks, this would help give a clear link between them. I chose to use red and black through out my poster and my magazine front cover. Red and black are the traditional horror colours, they create a creepy atmosphere.

We used the traditional colour of the Empire logo. The colour shows the readers that it’s an Empire magazine.

I wanted to slightly change the colour red from the Empire logo. This was because I wanted particular parts to stand out, for example ‘Evie Watkins’

The colour black stands out well from the white background. The circular shape is bold and catches the readers eye, making sure you don’t miss out on the deal!

The shades of white have been done to create a ghostly haunted effect. Changing the opacity level to make it look like its floating through the page.

Tagline and font

styles…

We carefully chose the tagline to fit the genre of our ancillary tasks. The one that stood out to us the most was ‘you can run, but you can’t hide’

The taglines could represent a child's play ground game, hide and seek, with the tagline trying to fool the audience of her innocence.

All the font styles have been done to make a bigger impact on my poster and magazine front cover. Some of the font styles elaborate on the horror genre and gave them a creepier effect.

I didn’t want to over do it with the amount of different font styles so I only picked some of the main bits of writing to change and make different from the others. I wanted the writing around the central image to be similar fonts as I did not want it to distract you from the image.

What have you learnt from your

audience feedback? Our target audience was for young adults, people our age and getting audience feedback from them helped us conclude whether our film trailer was a success with our peers. From looking back at our audience feedback we can see that our teaser trailer and ancillary tasks were a success for our target audience. But the feedback also helps us understand what our strong areas were and what we would need to work on more if we did this project again.

The ‘jump moments’

We felt one of the main conventions of a horror trailer were the ‘jump movements’. Through out our teaser trailer we tried to add a suitable amount of ‘jump moments’ to keep the audience hooked to our trailer. With our feed back we can see which ‘jump moments’ worked successfully by keeping the audience hooked. ‘I love the "jump" moments which are both visual and soundtracked’

The Pace…

In our horror trailer we wanted to make sure the pace of the film was right for the genre. Throughout the teaser trailer the pace went up and down, making sure the pace made an impact on the haunted/ creepy feel and to keep the audience wanting to watch more! ‘A great pace of up and down, climax and resolution takes the viewer on a wild ride in a short amount of time’

‘This trailer keeps you hooked on wanting to watch more’

This feed back shows that our constant change of pace throughout the trailer keeps the audience hooked and one of the main conventions of a horror trailer has worked!

The Music…

With all the research of horror trailers we found that one of the main conventions of a horror trailer was the music included and where you place it to make a greater impact with the audience. We decided to use 3 different types of music through out the trailer, the music we chose added to the creepiness of the teaser trailer and added suspense.

‘I like the use of the different music that you've used as it builds tension, especially when there's the classical sort of music as your waiting for the action to speed up’

‘the music is quite calm at the start, but invites you into a false sense of security’

The music we chose goes in stages from the first part being very slow paced, this creates an eerie effect and puts the audience on the edge of their seats, then we re-used it again to add to the ‘jump moment’ at the end of the trailer.

The characters… We wanted our main character to play an important role in making the horror trailer shocking and creepy. We chose the main character to be a little girl. We felt the little girl resembles innocence, we thought that this would trick the audience into thinking she was not evil. The storyline is all based around the little girl haunting the two girls, scaring them away! We thought long and hard to make the little girl’s outfit fit with the horror genre and also the time we set it at. As the girl was killed ten years or so before we wanted the fashion to stand out from the other girls, making a strong indication of who is who. The characters were a success from our audience feedback and shows us that our main character help create the spooky effect through out the horror trailer. ‘I can tell that you have thought about the outfits of the actress' especially the child’s dress.’ ‘the little girl is really scary.’ We wanted the two older girls

to be dressed casual everyday wear. We did not want their outfits to stand out more than the little girls outfit.

This is the outfit we chose the little girl to wear. From these two images you can tell that we have made a distinct change with the clothes they are wearing.

Camera shots and angles…

‘The use of camera angles through out the trailer is very effective.’

‘The way the camera moves away gives me a scare.’

‘How you've used the different angles to really utilise the conventional horror trailer concepts.’

From the audience feedback we found that the range of camera shots and angles really stood out throughout our horror trailer. Looking at previous horror trailers we found out that they created much more dramatic scenes by the way they have shot them.

One of the most dramatic shots we used was when the girl came out of know where and hit the window, creating a ‘jump moment’. The way the camera backs away from the window has been done to show the ‘hand held camera look’ making it look realistic and shocking the audience.

How realistic was our

horror trailer… We felt that our horror trailer was as realistic as we could get it. From adding as many conventions of a professional horror trailer as possible, we tried to include it in our own one. From our audience feedback we found out that everyone was impressed with our work. From our peers evaluation we found out what bits were our strongest points and which parts impacted on the scariness of the horror trailer.

‘This teaser trailer has everything it needs too be too resemble a realistic trailer for film in this modern day. It has everything.’

‘One of the best teaser trailers I've seen all year!’

‘Well done! This is a really good teaser trailer.’

‘This trailer keeps you hooked on wanting to watch more, It's a trailer that seems to take you on a journey.’

How did you use media technologies in the

construction and research, planning and

evaluation stages? Throughout out the making of our teaser trailer we used adobe premier pro to edit and putting it all together.

Razor tool

The first thing after uploading the footage onto adobe was to use the razor tool. We had to go through all the footage we uploaded and choose which bits to keep and get rid of.

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Arrow one 1 is showing the footage and arrow 2 is where you can find the razor tool. By clicking on the razor tool, you move the curser over the footage bit you want to cut. This separates the footage, making it easier to work out where to put each individual bit of footage.

After cutting up the footage you may find part that are unwanted. To delete certain bits drag the mouse over the footage and right click it and press delete.

Dip to black

With the amount of research we did, we found trailers were continuous and flowed from one clip to another smoothly. From this we found a certain tool on adobe premier pro that helped with this conventions of the horror trailer look. The dip to black tool made the clips continues and look professional.

To create this effect you would use the dip to black tool, which can be found on the left hand side. By holding down the mouse and dragging it to the correct clip you drop it. A purple line will then show at the top of the clip, this is the length of the dip to black. By clicking on the end of the purple line you can slide it to make it shorter or longer. In most of our clip we added a dip to black at the end of it,

this helped make specific clips run smoother than others and to create tension for the audience. In some parts of the trailer we made the dip to black longer to add to the suspense.

Sound- fade in and out

Fading the music in and out at the right time in one thing that you may not pick up on in professional trailers.

Fading sound in and out is pretty much the same as the dip to black process. On the left hand side find the cross fade and scroll down until you see constant power. Drag and place at the beginning or the end of the sound clips.

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2. A purple bar will then appear, by dragging the bar you can make it longer or shorter. To create tension you can make the fade out longer so it ends up being silent, this makes suspense as your waiting for something to happen.

Adding texts

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One of the main conventions of a horror trailer is the adding of the texts and where about they place it to create suspense and tension among the audience watching.

Here are the stages we made to add text into our horror trailer.

At the top of adobe click on title, then we scrolled down to new title, by clicking this a box comes up on the right hand side. Here is when you choose what option you want. We chose default still and decided to use this all the way through. After we clicked on default

still this appeared on our screen. To add text you click on the ‘text here’ box. On here you can choose what font you want by clicking on a font style underneath. To make sure the text was in the right place, we used the box in the left hand corner. We decided to keep all our text in the centre of the screen to make it stand out and eye catching to the audience.

After editing the text how you want it to appear, you close it and your text with appear in the top list. To make it easier to know which text is what you can rename it to what ever you want. By left clicking it drag and place where you want to put it within your clips. We made sure all our text were easy to read and stood out from the black background. To add to the creepy effect we added a red glow behind the writing, to capture the eeriness of the trailer.

Increasing sound

By adding another convention we made sure throughout our teaser trailer there were parts of the music/ sound which were louder than others.

By increasing the sound at different parts, you need to go to the correct audio bar. When you have found the correct one you will see a yellow line which represents the volume of the sounds. To make the sounds louder you would hold the yellow bar and move it up. By changing the sound increase at certain parts of the trailer, it will add to the tension of the trailer. Also if a clip is being shown as well, it adds to the clip making it creeper.

Different sound tracks

From all the preparation leading up to making our trailer, we looked at a lot of trailers, lots of them helped us gather ideas and helped us understand the key conventions of the horror genre teaser trailer.

We wanted to include a range of sound tracks throughout, to make it interesting and watchable. To add a range of sound tracks, you need to just put them on different lines on the audio timeline. Then you can move your sound track to where ever you want. In one or two parts we made specific parts overlap to make it continuous.

Reverse speed

To get our peer audiences attention we wanted to include a range of techniques that were either commonly seen in trailers, or ones which were unusual.

One of the techniques we used was the speed of clips, making some of them speed up to add to the horror or to help go with the music we added. The main time we used this was when the little girl walked down and back up the stairs. From the editing it gave it a zombie feel to it and made the girl look possessed. To make this technique you click on the clip and select it. At the top of the screen click on ‘click’. Scroll down to speed/ duration. After clicking this a box appears on the screen. You can now choose how much you want to speed up or slow down the clip.

Splitting sound from footage

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Some times when we were filming certain scenes for the trailer, we captured some sound which would be helpful to add into the horror trailer. We also found that some footage we shot was not up to scratch but the sound we got was useful and handy to use. This is one of the easier techniques which was on of the most handiest ones to know.

First of all you need to copy and paste the clip. Right click the clip you want and select copy. Make sure the red line bar is not on any of the edited clip. On the top tool bar click paste.

Your clip will now be copied, to unlink the sound and the footage, right click it and scroll up to ‘unlink. The clip will appear in two sections, delete the footage and you will just be left with the sound. Drag and place to the correct place in your edited footage.

Sites I used…

Throughout this project blogger was the most used site. Blogger was used to help store all my research and information gathered. One of the main reasons was to show the process of the project coming along. I posted my work and my thoughts on how the filming went. I also uploaded pictures and relevant videos that I analysed to make sure I have been including all the main conventions of a horror teaser trailer.

Blogger

Da Font

Da Font was the place where I got many of my font styles from. They had a range of interesting and eye catching fonts which I thought ties-in with my theme ‘horror’. The fonts I chose were unusual and had a horror/ gothic look about them.

YouTube

YouTube was also one of the ways I watched professional teaser trailers. I used it to collect ideas and information about the conventions which I needed to include. One of the other ways I used YouTube was to upload my finished teaser trailer, which was then transferred and uploaded to blogger. From uploading it to YouTube we could share it and get a range of peoples feedback to help us understand what to change, if we were to do this project again.