Evaluation Written Script

The task for our A2 coursework required a promotion package for a horror film. This promotion package must include a short ‘teaser’-like trailer; a magazine front cover and film poster. The task was easier than anticipated for I had experience of magazine design and research from my AS coursework. In addition to this, I had extensive knowledge of horror movies from the lore to the behind the scenes and the history of the genre of horror, it made my creation so much more clearly and easy. I also had experience within filming and editing for I made a suede trailer for my AS coursework in order to prepare for the A2 work.

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

‘Conventions’, these are the typical factors that help to create various media texts. These vary from technical, design and auditory techniques. The genre of horror and the sub genres have universal conventions and rules in order to allow the audience to feel terror and fear in horror. My survey results wanted a trailer with the hybridised genre of slasher and supernatural which provides me a wider scope on how to construct my trailer.

My horror trailer uses most of the conventions of horror films, particularly of the supernatural genre. The construction of the trailer is conventional to the genre whereas the full written narrative of the trailer differs slightly. A convention of a slasher is that a group of young adults enter a place, unaware of the dangers lurking ahead. Slasher movies like Friday the 13th (2009) and Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3D (2013) often have groups of young adults travel to a place and come across a particular building.

These groups would have at least one BAME (Black Asian Ethnic Minority) character who unfortunately die either first or towards the end. This is done in order to appease BAME audience by having a representation of BAME on screen. COMPLEX MAGAZINE did a survey in 2013 which asked audiences about black characters in horror movies. It turns out that 10% of black characters die first and in spite of this, they have low mortality rates. Their only purpose is to be a background character to make the BAME audiences happy or a comedic influence.

The trailer we have created follows a group of mixed race group of young adults: one black man; one mixed race man and two Indian-Asian women. This was to show a greater representation of BAME and diversity for most horror trailers are dominated by white Caucasian actors i.e. Halloween (1978) and Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). The black character’s fate in unknown in the trailer as he is last seen running in the trailer. This was done this way to entice audiences to be curious of the fate of the BAME character.

The narrative and trailer conflict with Carol Clover’s final girl theory. The Final Girl is a horror trope and theory that includes a girl being the final survivor of the slasher film. Our narrative has the black male, Sam remain as the ‘final girl’ as this breaks gender and ethnic stereotypes. A popular example of a male ‘final girl’ is A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1986) where Jesse Walsh (Mark Patton) became a final survivor of Freddy Krueger. Sam in our trailer, being a ‘final girl’ allows for a greater representation of BAME and an introduction to new horror tropes where BAME people can be the survivors of a cataclysmic event.

Apart from this most of the trailer uses the typical conventions of a horror trailer like razor edit jump cuts, darkness and eerie sounds. We used these conventions as it provided a basic structure to our horror trailer. The razor edits helped to bring excitement to the trailer by making the ghost of the trailer appear in unexpected places. The trailer has been darkened to hide mystery and to frighten the viewer. Eerie sounds have been used to create an unsettling atmosphere so the audience are fully immersed within the media text.

My magazine front cover fully follows the conventions of a film magazine as it uses a ‘T’ layout in many magazines like Empire and Total Film. The ‘T’ Layout helped me to ensure a full focus on my film and it promotes the film even more. The design of the poster was inspired by the following: https://movietalkexpress.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/empire-suicide-squad-newsstand-cover-the-joker.jpg the layout was simple but it was an effective magazine which caught your attention and gave a lot of detail in a few words. This helped me to construct my magazine. My front cover has a barcode on the front unlike the Empire Joker one as it was to look professional. The website is mentioned underneath the masthead to really give an effective professional look to the magazine for some film magazines like Entertainment Weekly, place their website underneath the mast head to advertise their own company.

Finally, the poster follows the conventions of a poster slightly as my research showed a lot of uniquely designed posters. The inspiration for this poster was http://www.blackfilm.com/read/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Rings-poster-2.jpg this poster inspired me to have the main ghost in my trailer to be the anchor model of my poster since it catches your eyes. I placed the poster underneath text to sort of hide the ghost as it gives the viewer an omniscient presence. The audience know it is there but sort of can’t see it. The slogan of the film takes over the picture to confuse and frighten the audience into watching the trailer. It directly addresses the audience. The poster has information of the production company, release date and people involved at the bottom of the poster in smaller text in order to inform people of who made the trailer but to ensure more of the attention is on the name of the film, tagline and anchor model of the poster. This shows that the poster does follow the convention of a film poster.

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

The main product and the ancillary texts are effective in design and promotion. In terms of promotion, the film is promoted through the media platforms of poster and magazine. The digital and print converge to help promote the product. The teaser trailer is released on YouTube, which has over a billion users. The trailer can be accessed in about 180 countries which generates a mass audience for the trailer. YouTube helps to promote the trailer to audiences who would share it through different social media platforms. If the poster were to be distributed, it would be visible in billboards, bus billboards and tube station advertisements as it is clearly visible to the audience. These places are constantly in use and many people will notice the poster which promotes the film through visual aspects. The same goes for the magazine as it would be distributed in shops for many people still go to the shop to buy a magazine. Having our magazine published in the shops promotes the magazine company and film, presenting synergy.

The design of each product is unique yet similar. All three share a similarity in fonts, colour and design. It uses darker washed out colours to create suspense and fear. This occurs through all the products as it keeps a consistent theme of fear going on. The poster and trailer share a glitch effect to show the concept that there is something dangerous about the trailer and poster which entices the audience to watch the film. The magazine brings a light hearted tone to the film and focuses on behind the scenes of the film. The magazine is brighter and gives the audience an opportunity to get to know how the trailer is created. This would inspire people to create media like the trailer, poster and magazine.

What have you learned from your audience feedback? (AUDIO)

For the audience feedback, I sent the link of my trailer and the digital images of my poster and magazine to my friends as it fits within the age range of my target audience (15 – 18). I asked two questions:

• What was good about the trailer and how effective was it?
• What can be improved?

The responses mostly praised the trailer. The sound was most commonly mentioned and people appreciated how the music constantly played in the background was well placed. The giggle sound effects were the top favourite because it brought chills to the audience. Although there were a few comments of criticisms. For example the footage of people running was blurred and unfocused which took some of the viewers out of the experience. This shows that if I had more time, I could sharpen the quality of the running footage clear to the audience. The trailer perfectly matched the genre of a supernatural horror yet it needed some more things like someone getting killed to convey the slasher genre of the trailer. Other than this the trailer was well received and people rated it 10/10. They would definitely watch the trailer.

Many people liked the design of the poster and thought of it being dark and edgy. Some people wanted to see Mara more as her head blends into the background of the poster. The title of the film is slightly big although some people say it fills in the space. This helps me to understand that space within the design of the poster is essential as it gives more focus on the art rather than the text.
The magazine was also well received as it used the conventions of a film magazine to a full extent. It has a consistent theme of colours throughout and overall looked real and professional. The audience feedback lets me know that I have achieved to make my product more focused towards 15 -18 year olds.

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? (VIDEO WITH MUSIC)

Various media technologies were used in different stages of the production:

The pre-production consisted of technologies like web 2.0. This is the revolutionary stage of the internet where information is received, given, created and shared across different platforms. It made my research easy and simplified as I used the Google Search engine to shorten my task of searching things to do with horror. Advanced search helped to narrow my search query to specific websites for example: horror films “slasher” this narrowed the search to specifically find horror movies of the slasher genre and my work was simplified. I also used websites like YouTube and Trailer Addict to find horror trailers to draw inspiration from. Trailer Addict in particular made my work easier by providing me the official footage of trailers, teasers and TV Spots of horror films, unlike YouTube which has a variety of official/unofficial footage and fan made trailers to horror films. I used YouTube to understand horror movies and the construction and theories with the YouTube Channel Film Theory. This channel had videos on how to create intense horror movies, the golden age of slasher. Unfortunately the videos were taken down. My knowledge of horror movies gave me a basis of few genres to choose ones to create a trailer from although IMDB (INTERNET MOVIE DATABASE) helped to solidify the information I understood. To collate my findings and analysis together, blogger helped me to structure my work into paragraphs as well as chronological order to make the steps to the creation of my trailer, easier to understand. Prezi and PowerPoint were used to present some of my research in a creative way which simplifies the information. I used Polyvore, which is a fashion website to help me create the costumes and gain a true understanding to my characters and who they are. I also used Quotev; a survey story writing website to create a questionnaire to ask users about the construction of my trailer which gave me a greater basis of how to create my trailer. To collect the results for the answers to the survey, I used meta-chart.com to display my findings in colourful structured ways and this is how I used media technologies in my pre-production.

In the production of my trailer, magazine and poster I used different media technologies and devices to bring my creation to life. For the filming of my trailer we used a Nikon Coolpix camera A10 for the camera was compact and easy to upload. There was a USB cable and no SD card which made transferring the files of photos into my desktop with ease. The quality was not that great but it helped me with the horror aesthetic. I also used a Samsung S3 and Samsung S7 to take photos of behind the scenes of the film trailer, the poster and the magazine front cover. This produced a high quality and revealed everything in regards to how the production went.

Post-production is where most of the technology was used to the maximum. To edit my film trailer I used Sony Vegas Pro 14 for I am familiar with the technology and it helped edit the video clips together with ease. I brought in my HP 655 laptop which had the software and it helped with the rendering for the quality of the trailer turned from 600pi to 1080 x 1920pi. In addition to Sony Vegas, I used Ocenaudio64 which is a sound software that allows me to manipulate sound. This is what I used to enhance some of the sounds in my trailer to have better sound. The synch of the sounds were made as some of the audio had voiceovers which I cut out to make the music flow well. Web 2.0 was used to help me share my content to the wider internet. I used YouTube to upload my trailer so that it is accessible to a larger audience.

For the magazine and poster construction I used Adobe Photoshop CS6 for this was the easiest tool to use to digitally manipulate my photos to suit the plan of my poster. My skills with Photoshop exceeded vastly from my AS work to my A2 work. I used various curves and levels to change the brightness and contrast on photos to really bring out the theme of horror with darkness. I scanned my flat plans with a HP scanner and this helped to upload my work on to the computer and base my design of my magazine and poster. When doing the creative evaluation each question, had a different media technology used to bring a clearer simplified understanding to each question:

• For the first question, I used a video capture editing software called Source Filmmaker. I used this software for the first question as I wanted to create an artistic understanding visual for the question as it helps to express the points I made for my answer to the first question. I uploaded it to YouTube for easier access.
• For the second question, I used a Prezi presentation as it helped give a clear visual to the effectiveness of the ancillary and main products.
• For the third question, I recorded my answer on my phone and uploaded on to YouTube as an audio video with no images and it helps to communicate my answer if I speak and explain it.
• Finally for the last question, I created a video on Sony Vegas Pro 14 with background music over it and this was once again to convey a visual understanding of my answer of evaluation through visual text and images.