Evaluation

Question OneIN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

Screenshots(Sadly, the gifs didn’t work when I uploaded my PowerPoint I have put them all below and will reference to

certain ones when I am using them as examples, not as classy but there we go.)

Conventions of a teaser trailer

Teaser trailers are usually quite short, ranging from 30-60 seconds. Although some can be longer and last over one minute.

Teasers mainly consist of one or a few clips (that are meant to ‘tease’ the audience) and are usually edited into a montage sequence.

As with theatrical trailers, the pace normally starts of slow before picking up speed.

The teaser gives the audience an idea of the genre of the film and a rough synopsis of what its about.

Sometimes clips may be used in the teaser that are not included in the film, but will link to it in some way. This could be due to filming, as they might not have actually finished filming the movie and had to use the only footage they had for the teaser then realised that they didn’t need those clips in the film.

The teaser trailer is also released a lot earlier than the theatrical trailer and doesn’t usually have a release date so it is marked as ‘coming soon’.

This is the teaser trailer for warm bodies.

It uses some of the conventions that

have been listed. For instance it is just

over 60 seconds (the right length for a

teaser) the pace of it speeds up as it

goes along and it includes clips that

were not put in to the actual film, for

instace the zoom in of the city right at

the beginning of the teaser trailer.

Conventions of a film poster

Film title

Main image

Tagline

Billing block

Main cast name

Film quotes

Release dates

Production company logos

Conventions of a magazine cover

Magazine title

Film title

Film tagline

Main image

Quotes/reviews

Main actors

Magazine info

Price/Website/Barcode/

What’s included in the

magazine

Information on other films

Idents Dawn to Dusk: This ident was based of the BBC One moon ident that was aired

a few years ago. The ident was of a mood that had the BBC text in the middle whilst circles moved around it. We liked the idea of the moon and thought it fit in to our genre quite nicely. Our ident is different however as we used a clip of a moon reflecting on water as it disappears which is then replaces by the title of the company. For this ident we used dark colours like black, whites and greys to correspond with not only the theme of out film but with the zombie genre in general. We edited this clip so all the saturation was down and there was no background left. The font we used for the title is dark and shadowing creating a ‘horror’ vibe for the audience.

Iris: We chose the name Iris before we actual decided on what the identshould look like but it seemed fitting that it should be an eye. We used a close up of a girl blinking and changed it so it match the theme of our trailer e.g. black and white, scary. By using a human eye we also link into the genre of our film, zombie, as nearly all the characters are zombies with human eyes. The font we used for this ident was a luminous white which shone against the backdrop of the eye.

We made our idents fairly short not only to keep a good time with the teasers length but to make sure it fit with the pace of our trailer. If the idents were too long it would seem strange to suddenly change to a slower paced clip. Also our background music stays over the top of our idents so there is sound whilst the idents play creating a sense of eeriness. The ‘Warm Bodies’ trailer also does this at the beginning with their ident.

Camera work

We used the camera style of panning in our shots at the beginning of our teaser, we did this because we wanted to show fluidity in the

scanning of the body without making it jarred by using jump cuts. We

also took parts of the these clips and sped up the pace to create a

faster time frame in the audiences eyes. This has been done before in

the film ‘Zombieland’ where there is a very subtle pace change within

the panning of the main character. What this clip also shows is the pan

carries on to show said characters from both angles, we have also don’t

this in our teaser.

From the beginning we envisioned our trailer to be very sparsely lit and fairly dark throughout with maybe the effect of one spotlight on in a

dark room. This is also shown from another clip from the film ‘Saw V’

where a man is sprawled on a table in a badly lit room. We have taken

ideas from this and created what we have in out teaser trailer.

Titles

Titles are another main feature of a teaser trailer as they provide the information that may not be conveyed from the shots. Our titles provide brief answers to what our film is about and who the characters are. The style of the titles was inspired by the ‘28 days later’ trailer who also had white writing pan across a black screen.

We added in the colour change on ‘millions of zombies’ as it stuck to our colour theme and also conveyed that the title was important and was a key to what the film was about. The colour red also parallels to danger and blood, both of which relate to our genre.

We used around 8 titles altogether which is generally more than a teaser trailer would use and is more similar to a theatrical trailer but it was the right amount for us to get our films point across. Not all teasers stick to the convention of only a few titles. ‘Shaun of the Dead’s’ teaser was mostly made of titles and had around 11 of them in total.

Effects and Pace

We used effects of some of our clips to make them look different and present a more montage looking teaser trailer. We got inspiration to do this from the warm bodies trailer as it also used effects in the beginning when the zombies are on screen. We put on the effect of black and white and ‘broken T.V’ which gives the shot a jagged and faulty look to it. Because of these effects the clips look like they are being taken from a hand held camera. These filters and overlays also make the teaser look more appealing and will give the audience a larger desire to see it.

Also during the editing process we added in jump cuts so the zombies appeared to be getting closer and closer. This challenges some zombie film conventions as zombies are known as slow and brain-dead while we have shown them as fast and more threatening. Another film that does this is ‘Zombieland’. They have their zombies run after the humans at a much faster pace in comparison to older zombie films.

The pace of our film, much like our zombies, is faster than some zombie trailers. The shots fit in with out music as it reaches a crescendo towards the end. We start off with slow and flowing shots which quickly turn it fast snappy shots, which is when the zombies start to appear.

Close ups

We used close up to show off our main character and portray a

main element of our teaser trailer. We got influence for our ‘opening

the eyes shot’, not from a film trailer but, from a book trailer. The

book is called ‘As Dead As It Gets’ by Katie Alender. During this

trailer there is a close up of a girl who’s eyes are closed, as if to say

she was dead, but then they open. This inspired us to use a shot like that too as we thought it was very effective. We added in the eyes

fluttering part to our trailer as we thought it would look good from

different camera angles to capture a point of view shot.

Main title

During a teaser trailer you will usually find the films title will be shown at the end. This is because it is the most important part of the trailer and should be the most memorable bit of it. For us we wanted to use the name of our ‘zombie disease’ (Traumiac Omosis Disease) as the title but found that it would be too long so we shortened it down to T.O.D. We also put our film title at the end alike most other real teaser trailers.

The main title we used in our teaser trailer stuck to main conventions that revolve around the zombie/horror genre and theme. For instance the typeface we used is highly relatable to the genre of our film as it uses a font that is recognises by an audience that it links to our chosen theme. It is a bold font with lettering that has a + symbol in the letters O and D. This symbol is often related to the ambulance/first aid logo creating a link to our film T.O.D which is about a disease that spreads throughout the world. It could also symbolize death which is another hint to our films plot.

The colours we chose were very important as we wanted a clear colour theme running through all three of our products. We ended up deciding on red, black and purple as we thought it resembled blood as the title ran over the background. The blood was also a key feature for us as that is one of, if not the most important, conventions of a zombie film. So by portraying a bloody liquid flow across the screen we captured another element of our films genre.

Release dates

The release dates are what the audience see, usually, at the end

of the teaser trailer. The titles will either consist of a date or some

form of the words ‘coming soon’. We typically did what most

other teaser trailers do and put our release date shot at the end of the trailer so it is the last thing the audience see’s. We also

included on this screen the films website, the company names

that helped fund the film, the copyright details, ‘In Theatres

Soon’ along with the age rating. As we were taking influences

from other teaser trailers we decided to go for ‘not yet rated’

which is what ‘World War Z’s’ teaser trailer had. The other

information we included like the website was put in so the

audience could look up more information about the film, thus helping the film and franchise gain publicity.

Magazine cover comparisons

Magazine

title

What’s

included

in the

magazine

More

about

what’s

inside

barcodeMain image

Quotes

and

interviews

Film title

More

about

what’s

inside

Catchy

headline

Previews to

other filmswebsite

Film title

Magazine title

What’s

included

in the

magazine

Main

image

Quotes

from filmPreviews

of other

films

Tag line

from film

Price and

barcode Main cast names

Film poster comparison

Main cast

name

Film title

Main imageTag line

background

Star

rating/review

and quotes

Age

rating

Billing block Release date

Production

companies

names/logos

Secondary

image

Main cast

names

Film title

Background

Billing blockRelease date

Company

name/logo

Main

image

Use of

props

Tag line