Evaluation question 1 video

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

Evaluation question 2 video

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

Evaluation Question 3

What have you learnt through your audience feedback?

Evaluation Question 4 Video

Evaluation question 4

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

When planning and researching for our trailer in the beginning stages, we mainly used the internet to discuss the conventions of the horror genre, the conventions of a trailer and brainstorm ideas for a story line. As we had previously explored the horror genre for our year 12 coursework, we were quite familiar with the conventions but had to research a different area as we used traditional horror (1980's) previously and wanted to create a modern horror film. We did this by looking at examples of well made horror films, so Googled 'top ten horror movies' to come up with a key list of codes and conventions that would need to included in our trailer. IMDb's list of Top 10 Horror Movies of all Time included a number of late 20th Century horror films such as The Shining, Alien and The Exorcist, so we concentrated on the more modern films, 21st Century, such as Shaun of the Dead and Woman in Black. We were able to use YouTube to watch the trailers of the horror films that we liked to analyse what we thought made these films successful. This helped us with inspiration for our own story line; we found the Internet extremely useful in the initial stages of our research as it is so easy, simple and quick to be able to access information. We also created a horror genre mood board, this was so we could visualise the genre and get an idea of the image our trailer would create.

We also used the internet to research different narrative and audience theories that we applied to our horror trailer. An example of a theory we used was such 'The Gaze' theory by Laura Mulvey, which is explained in her essay 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema'. We understood this as the idea that the average audience prefer to see attractive people as the protagonists, they are more likely to connect with the characters and become more in to the film. This sounds like quite a shallow view to have, but this is the case as presented in most Disney films; the villain is usually unattractive and not pleasant to look at while the hero/heroine is extremely attractive and innocent. We applied this to our trailer by having the 'old man' as the villain dressed in dark clothes with glasses and the character of the 'whore' as a pretty blonde with revealing clothing. 

Using the internet, we were also able to advertise our film within our target audience of 16-24 year olds using social media.We did this by creating a Facebook, Twitter and YouTube page, which we regularly updated with news and pictures of how our trailer was coming along.  We concluded from internet research that 45% of global Facebook users are ages 13-25, and more females use Facebook than males, so Facebook was a perfect way to advertise our film. As the popularity of Twitter increases in the celebrity and media world, we felt this was another field of social media that would be effective in advertising our film, and we regularly tweeted to our followers and included links to our blog posts about what was happening with our trailer production. 

Our blog was another major field of social networking that played a major part in our coursework, as this is where we recorded all our researching, planning and construction so we have a chronological log of the journey of our trailer, which has been very useful when evaluating our coursework as we've been able to refer back to the process. 

To gather information from our target audience we decided to conduct a questionnaire to find out the general opinions of horror films to help us begin our story line. We did this in the style of a 'vlog', a video blog, as this would be more visually interesting than reading questionnaire results. We thought because we post our research on our blog we could put links to our posts on our Facebook and Twitter sites so our social medias were connected. We were able to use iMovie to create this and this was the first video we created for our coursework so used it to also refresh our memories on editing. We filmed a number of people from school that fell into our target audience in pairs and asked them a series of questions including their opinions on the sub-genres of horror, the sound and the composition of a trailer. We included text slides to separate the questions and then had different clips of people answering these questions, so the difference of people's answers was obvious. We took the feedback gained from our questionnaire applied what our target audience had said. 

During our production, we were lucky enough to use a Canon 5D Mark II camera meaning the quality of our filming was very high. This automatically improves the professionalism of any footage so we were very pleased that we had the opportunity to use this camera. We also used a tripod to film some sections, but from our research we realised that trailers contain mainly quick cuts and fast shots so we  mainly hand held the camera when filming. 

To edit our trailer we again used iMovie, and by now we were extremely familiar with the program. Unfortunately due to weather conditions our filming was rescheduled leaving us minimal time to edit and this caused us a few problems as we did not have much time to re-film anything if we needed too. iMovie allowed us to create an original trailer and produce what we thought was a suitable trailer for our genre. We added 'fade to blacks' between each cut to separate the shots, as we found this an important convention of horror trailers. We were also able to edit the sound on our footage, making it louder, quieter or muting it. We created our own soundtrack by recording our main male character playing the piano; a series of minor chords on a grand piano that was conveniently at our location and added very effectively to the mise-en-scene of our trailer, as an old creepy man playing a grand piano is something you would expect to see in a horror scene. This reminded us of Davy Jones, the villain in Pirates of the Caribbean II playing his organ. iMovie also provides a large number of sound effects that could easily be added to our trailer, so we used a static electricity to create an edgy sound when the 'writing on the wall' first appears, and also recorded our own sound effects to layer over the piano chords which was a knife scraping, a girl's scream and a ticking clock. These sounds were all recorded on the camera, but we tested them first recording them on an iPhone to check how they would sound. 

For our ancillary tasks, we created our poster on Photoshop. This program allowed us to create an original product that advertised our film and linked with our trailer, as they shared the same logo and theme. We were able to add images and text and edit them as we required and follow the conventions of a movie poster. The program provides grid lines so we were able to create a clean and organised poster that appears professional and everything is lined up in a neat fashion. We also wanted some aspects of the poster to stand out more than others, Photoshop allowed us to change the opacity of text and images. An example of this was the cartoon silhouette of a house that we had in the background of the poster, we wanted this visable but not so it took attention away from the logo so we faded it slightly and made it black and white. 

Evaluation Question 3

3. What have you learnt through your audience feedback?

To allow ourselves the best possible opportunity to meet our target audience's preferences, we organised a series of methods to allow ourselves an opportunity to acquire this information and research and therefore adapt our trailer to produce the desired results.

The first method we used to acquire feedback was creating a vlog questionnaire, completed by our target audience. We did this by asking available students who fell into the age range of our target audience, to take part in a questionnaire including 5 vital questions which we would then film the responses to and edit them together using 'iMovie' to create a vlog. We decided to collect our research in this way as it is a more unique and fun way of displaying our research rather than a written questionnaire, and it allowed us to adapt our questions and ask additional ones, depending on the answers they gave us.
 This proved to be a beneficial form of gaining results as it gave us an idea of what our target audience enjoys most in a horror movie and the typical conventions that they would expect to see when watching it.

In our vlog questionnaire, one of our questions was 'In a horror movie trailer, do you prefer it if the story is shown so that you know what it is about, or do you prefer knowing minimal details until you watch the film?' The results from this question were very useful when creating our trailer because we were then able to plan our storyboard so that it has the correct shots and dialogue so that our storyline is more mysterious and not much information is given away, so that this would encourage the audience to be more interested in watching the movie to find out the whole story.
Additionally, another question that proved to be beneficial within our research was 'Do you find paranormal or slasher movies more scary?' From the feedback we received, we found that girls tend to find paranormal movies more scary, whereas boys prefer to watch slasher movies, although they may not necessarily find them more scary. This helped us to form the storyline of our film and base it around the character of the creepy man's deceased wife, as our client in mind is a teenage girl so therefore, we believed this would have the most effective outcome.






Furthermore, by frequently posting updates of the trailer's progress to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, this has allowed us to receive feedback and response from our audience.
 It has allowed a direct path of communication to our audience to not only keep them updated with the progression of the trailer, poster and website, but to allow us to ask questions and gain responses and inspiration whenever needed. For example, we asked our audience what they thought of the trailer after the first cut was complete, we then took on board the responses we received and were able to adapt and improve our trailer to fit their ideas.





In addition, a film screening was organised for our target audience so that they could feed back on what they enjoyed most about the trailer and what we could improve on. From this we learnt that the majority of people believed that the horror genre was clear and that the music and sound effects effectively created suspense and fit the genre.
 However one person informed us that the background noise in the car scene was too loud and this caused them to struggle in understanding what the characters were saying. From this we were able to edit the sound to try and make the dialogue louder and clearer. One of our questions was 'Did the voice-over help you to understand the storyline?'This question produced mixed results. We realised that there was confusion concerning the character of the creepy man's wife, therefore having a voice-over of a woman reciting wedding vows proved to be misleading. To solve this we added an additional voice-over of the man repeating his vows too, to reinforce the fact that he was married to her.

We also asked our audience to list some shots that they liked the most, and that they found to be the most memorable. These results included; the blood on the wall, the bath shot, and the man playing the piano. We were really pleased with this feedback as these shots were aimed to shock and intrigue the audience and therefore they evidently accomplished the desired effect.

In conclusion, the use of feedback from our audience has proved to be extremely beneficial throughout the trailer process as it has allowed us to gain new ideas and discover the elements of what would shock, intrigue, scare and interest our client in the most effective way. The acquisition of this research has been extremely aided by the use of social networking sites as it has allowed us to reach out to our audience, at any time, to ask questions or to share the development process.

Evaluation question 2

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

For our ancillary tasks we were asked to create a corresponding movie poster and website for a film trailer that we produced for our coursework. We started this by gathering ideas during our post production as in the editing period we would be using text including a title and credits, and to achieve the most professional outcome we decided these should all follow the same ‘theme’ and have a similar look and feel. We first researched current, fairly new and previous released films’ websites and posters to understand the codes and conventions and take inspiration for our own. At the time of research ‘Les Miserables’ and ‘Life of Pi’ were the top new releases in cinemas so we looked at their websites, posters and social media pages. As we first discussed, the design such as the colours, logos, pictures and layout were kept the same or similar throughout; we thought this was an extremely important aspect for our media products to achieve professionalism and high quality. 

The conventions of the websites for both films we researched were similar; they are kept simple and eye catching. The background is a large image from the film that is memorable and could involve main characters or a main setting; something that is very relevant to the film and will encourage the audience to see the film.  The film’s logo is something we spent a long time on and decided this was another important aspect as to achieve professionalism; a high quality logo that is memorable adds to a professional look for a film. The websites of films we looked had their logos large and in the centre of the homepage. Other aspects of the design of websites included additional text placed around the logo such as a tagline, release date and actors, and some included reviews from well-respected companies or people. All the text used is simple and links with the logo, it matches so again looks professional and clean. It is pleasant to look at and makes the viewer want to stay on the website and watch the film. The actual interactive features of the websites included pages which again are kept simple, such as ‘Home’ and ‘Photos’, so the website is easy to use and navigate around and the main point of the website is to advertise the film, so the images and logo are the most important part.

We then researched movie posters to gather knowledge on the codes and conventions. As an example we analysed a ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ poster, and found that posters and websites share similarities. Their main features are large images from the movie, or sometimes the characters posed and a new image is taken for the poster as the background, and then the film’s logo is large and eye catching placed at the top or in the centre. Other text on the poster includes the actors names, which are at the top and usually highlight the surname of the person, and the credits (less important information) is always in the same style and composition at the bottom of the page. In the credits, the date is often used but this is usually highlighted to draw attention to it. The poster is rather like a website homepage; we kept this in mind when creating our own. The credits supply information such as the cast, crew and production companies that were involved in the making of the film. We created our own credits text on Photoshop, using the credits from ‘The Dark Knight’ as a base, and used this for the poster and a cut in the trailer. We invented ‘Wok Productions’, ‘Schoolhouse Pictures’ and ‘Glassbeach Productions’, and used the Weald, Canon and iMovie logos in the correct places. We also added ‘Coming Soon’ and made this bigger and bolder than the other text as to make it stand out.

Our own trailer is a psychological horror film based on a group of teenagers, who consequently end up trapped in a haunted motel after their car breaks down, so for our film’s image we needed to first start creating a logo and decide on a colour scheme that would be used for the trailer, website and poster. We brainstormed and decided that red, black and browns would be a suitable colour scheme, as red is typically associated with horror films, because of blood (which is a feature of our film) so we decided that ‘The Writing on the Wall’ should look like blood writing on a wall as to link with the storyline of our film. We experimented with a number of fonts that mimicked blood writing and settled on one that appeared readable but also like someone had written the words with their finger; we then placed this on a wall texture that we found online and used faded blood splatters to add effect and again link with the idea the title had been written in blood. This logo and background would be the base used for the poster, website and trailer shots. Firstly, we added this to our trailer; from our planning and research we decided to add the title at the end of the trailer, and then have a final shot of a ‘Coming soon’ image. Again to make this look professional the title shot and the ‘coming soon’ shot would need to correspond and follow the same theme, so we used a blood splattered wall, a simple font for ‘Coming Soon’ and the credits we had created on Photoshop that would also be used for the poster.

We then used the logo base to begin our poster using Photoshop. Using our research that we recorded on our blog, we placed the actors names at the top using a simple font, highlighting their surnames, and invented a tagline to go below this, which we faded as to not draw attention from the title. Because we were using the wall background we decided to not use an image from our footage, but instead used a cartoon silhouette of a house that we edited and placed on the right of the poster as to mimic the house we used in our trailer. Here we went against the conventions of the posters we had looked at but felt this was the most effective way to create our poster. We then added our credits that were used for the trailer, and placed these at the bottom as we felt it is the least important information, and this follows the other posters that we researched.

When the poster was finalised and we were happy that it advertised our film well, we started our website. As said before when researching the conventions of a movie website, the homepage is much like a poster, so we simply used our logo and background base that we had used for the trailer and poster, and placed this on the homepage of our website. We then thought an important aspect of a website was links to our social networking pages, and Wix.com allowed us to have a ‘Social Bar’ showing the logos of our Twitter, Facebook and blog. As social networking is very popular within our target audience, females and males aged 16-24, this would be a main feature of the website. Our pages were simple; ‘Home’, ‘About’, ‘Photos’ and ‘Watch Trailer’. Our main focus was to make the website simple, advertise our film and correspond with the poster and trailer, which we believe we have done effectively.

To successfully combine our main product and ancillary tasks, we had to construct a professional and effective image that advertised and suited our horror genre and would be popular with our target audience to produce an overall positive appearance for our film. We carefully researched as to select the appropriate aspects for our poster and website, using a suitable logo and images to publicise our film.