MediaEvaluation

Lucy Hall

Part 1- In what way does your media product use, develop or

challenge the forms and conventions of real life media product?

To make our horror trailer successful and fit the horror genre we tried to include as many conventions off the horror checklist in our trailer. Our location was definitely creepy, being set in a wood . It would have been even creepier if we had night shots however we couldn’t do this because of the weather. We used all three editing techniques in our trailer. We use collision cutting with slow to quick montages. For example, when the boy is waking up laying on the floor, that is slow editing which contrasts against the quick shot of the monster and then the quick shots of the boy running away. This creates tension and suspense within the audience making them really feel the panic and urgency of the boy as he is running away from the monster. We felt that a horror trailer needs a lot of close ups of the characters and the monster so we included a lot, especially of the monster because his blank face was the particular scary part of his characteristics. We used some handheld camera when the boy was running because it was also a close up of his face, and you could see how he was feeling it made the audience feel more connected to him as if they are feeling what he was feeling. Two characters were shown in our horror trailer. The psycho killer/quick moving monster. We don’t see him moving quickly but we can presume he is from how he appears at various places after the characters have been running away from him. We also don’t see him killing anyone but this is suggested by the subtle blood splats on his face. There is a theme of loneliness and being stuck in the woods on your own, lost and not knowing where anybody is.

Part 1- In what way does your media product use, develop or

challenge the forms and conventions of real life media product?

We started with a slow build up with slow cuts and editing. This helped to set the scene and ease the audience in. We then had a collision cut to when slender is seen over the boy. The pace then builds up and for a fast ending. To keep the audience on the edge of their seats we have a slow shot when the girl says ‘where are you’ and the monster is behind. This then cuts to the title page. We have a final jump scare at the end which is a collision cut due to in the sound track the music goes from quite to a loud screech. Our trailer is a highlights trailer which the majority of real life trailers are. We use inter-titles to set the scene and fill in narrative that could not be shown in the trailer. This also helps to break up the trailer and set a good pace. The structure is similar to the Sinister (2012) trailer with a slow build up with slow cuts and editing, moving on to quick montages and a fast ending, including collision cutting.

In our trailer we bought in many auteur influences, especially from Hitchcock and his use of editing. We also touched on Romero and his genre influence and the modern horror influence with the action and context.Our trailer is distinctive due to the suspense and editing which is all enhanced by the sound track. Because we’ve taken a classic song and added a horror theme and creepy effects and bulked out the song, it helps to increase and support the scariness of the trailer.

Part 2-how effective is the combination of your main

product and ancillary task?In both my magazine and poster I used the blank monster figure because I believe that he is the most important character in the film. After researching and looking at many real life magazine covers, I saw that often the most important character of a new, big film is the main, dominant character on the front of the magazine.

If the main feature film on the magazine is really important they sometimes change the header to fit in with the theme of the film which I have done on my poster. I adapted the colour and texture of the empire logo to connote blood and therefore the horror genre of blank. Below, my header is on the left as you can see the adaption to suit Blank and on the right is a real life magazine that has been adapted and developed to link to Hellboy 2.

Part 2-How effective is the combination of your main

product and ancillary task?To the left, below is the real life magazine front cover that most inspired my own work.

This empire magazine was definitely the most inspirational front cover for me. I took the patterns down the left side of the empire magazine and redesigned them to use on my own magazine cover. I feel that it adds interest to the front cover and balances out the magazine because I feel without it, it may be a bit unbalanced with all the text on the left of the front cover. I used similar colours on my magazine because I really liked how they work together. However I didn’t use blue because I didn’t think that it suited the mood of my film and the magazine over all. The text I have used is bold and striking. If my magazine was on a shelf in a shop, with bold text, a customer may see a headline that draws them in and they then buy the magazine due to the bold title.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/93812604@N02/8597858746/in/photostream/

Part 2-How effective is the combination of your main

product and ancillary task?The Woman in Black poster below is the real life poster that most inspired my own work.

The Woman in Black’s poster has scared main character in the foreground with the ‘monster’ looming in the background, which is the same in my poster. I feel that in both posters, the main focus is the eyes of the scared character. The backgrounds are both basically black. Although I have heavily edited mine to make the background darker to create low key lighting (see question 3 for more detail). Both posters have the date it will be released and the production logo. However, my poster has the age certificate and a billing block but The Woman in Black one doesn’t. Both magazines have tag lines briefly summing up the whole film in one sentence. My poster doesn’t have any actors names where as the real life one does.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/93812604@N02/8615673799/in/photostream/

Part 2-How effective is the combination of your main

product and ancillary task?My magazine and poster are quite dark which links to my horror trailer and the creepy location of the wood. The styles of all three products are similar because they are all chilling and creepy. The film genre is psychological horror and I believe that this is definitely portrayed through the composition and low key lighting of the images. The audience that we are aiming for is the individual, independent adolescence that are trendy and moving with the times. The best film magazine for this is Empire because it’s aimed at a more niche market and independent film companies.

Part 3- How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

Throughout the research and planning in this project, I have used many media technologies to help me complete the coursework. I have used many different websites. I looked on YouTube for trailers to help me in tasks on the blog. Three trailers that have helped me are Woman in Black (2012), Sinister (2012), Dawn of the Dead (2004).I have used imbd.com to retrieve information on films, actors, directors, etc. when writing up reviews of films and trailers. This is such a good website because it is full of important, key, information and it is easy to use. I watched many horror films to gain knowledge and understanding. I watched them on DVDs, using the special features option to watch documentaries and special effects and other horror themes.All of the work that I have done this year is presented and kept on a blog. The website I have used is blogger.com, provided by Google. I have also presented some of my work on Flickr. I used DaFont, a website full of different fonts, to choose titles and fonts for my poster and magazine. To film our trailer we used a digital movement camera and to take the images for the magazine and poster I used a digital SLR.

Part 3- How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

During the construction phase of the project I used Photoshop to create my magazine and poster for my film. Because the original photo was really bright, I added a texture on top of it and changed the layer type. I felt like it was still too dark on the face and eyes of the girl and the man so I lowered the opacity of the rubber to subtly reveal the faces. I revealed the eyes on the girl more than anywhere else because I thought it gave it a more creepy feel to To edit the trailer we used Premiere Pro and After Effects to create the subtitles.

Magazine layers

Poster photo and

development

Part 3- How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

In the evaluation stage of the coursework I used different media technologies. We had a focus group screening where we played our trailer to our class peers. We also filmed it so we could watch back the screening and see what feedback our peers gave us. I found this really useful because it was good to be able to hear the verbal feedback again because our peers’ are able to go into more depth and understanding when explaining and verbally telling us. We screened our final cut trailer but only received written and verbal feedback without it being filmed.

I have posted my trailer on to Facebook and received feedback from my peers and family. There wasn’t many Facebook comments but my friends and family told me that they really liked it and it made them jump and feel uneasy, especially the last jump scare.

For my evaluation, I have used PowerPoint to present my evaluation on my blog. I felt that this was the best was to present it in a clear, neat way.

Part 4-What have you learnt from your audience

feedback?From the focus group screening out sound track was the most debated and commented on element of our trailer. Quite a few people really liked the soundtrack and felt that the contrapuntal soundtrack really enhanced and complimented the trailer. On the other hand, some people thought that the trailer didn’t work all the way through and that it was too different. The use of the nursery rhyme ‘Teddy Bear’s Picnic’ was a risky move, but I feel that it really works. Other positive comments we got about are trailer was the use of quick editing, montages and camera angles/shots. I feel that we edited together our trailer really well, creating tension and jumps through our use of collision cutting, slow shots to fast moving. Even though before we screened our trailer we said to the audience that we hadn’t finished the inter-titles and they were just there to display the text that we would be writing once we had sorted out the titles, people still said that we had to adjust and redo the font and text. Overall, our average mark was 7.92 which was the rough cut I was really pleased with!

After the feedback from the focus group we changed the transitions in the car/driving section to mostly straight cuts, rather than fades because it flows better. We also changed the music so there was less of the nursery rhyme because we felt that it did some what distract from the main purpose of the horror trailer, which was to scare. The soundtrack was the very last thing we did so we could fit it to the trailer and edits and get them perfectly in time, complimenting each other. I definitely think the changes we made have helped to make the trailer flow better and live up to it’s true intention – to scare people.

Part 4-What have you learnt from your audience

feedback?I am really happy with the final trailer! It is not how I initially saw our trailer but I believe that it is a lot better than I first imagined. I believe that it would appeal to our stereotypical fan. I would say that is a youngsters psychological horror, appealing to trendy, individual people who like to socialise with their friends. It’s a film where I think it would have it’s full potential if the person watching could put themselves in the actors’ shoes. Which being 3 teenagers featured in the trailer, this is definitely targeted at the younger generation of the times.

My favourite aspect of the trailer is the contrapuntal soundtrack because I feel that it gives the trailer an edgy, quirky feel that a lot of trailers don’t have. The soundtrack really compliments the editing and shots of the trailer.