Q1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

For my horror trailer, I created a poster as a form of promotion.  The point of the poster was to generate a thrill for the upcoming film.  The poster linked to the trailer as its main image is of a location that is important to the film. The red writing on the poster is to represent the element of blood  

Research

For my research I also analysed particular horror trailers so that I had some inspiration carried to make my own trailer. One trailer I admired the most would be “the cabin in the woods” the reason that I admire the trailer is because it is quite a modern horror film and it uses recent techniques and not out-dated techniques.  I grabbed some ideas from this trailer and added them into my own. The effect I liked most would be the dramatic fading in and out of every action sequence, as it showed the audience the tensest parts of the trailer.

I also did research on existing magazines to show that I understood the main conventions for when I create one for my task. I looked at the basic conventions of making my own film magazine. The conventions consist of a Masthead at the top of the page and how effective it is when you put it on the top left hand side of the page. I have also noticed that magazine companies always have a barcode which is always placed near the bottom right hand side of the page.

Comparing my trailer to existing trailers

This would be the disruption shot, its purpose is to introduce the fast paced editing and  horror  music

This would be my disruption shot, which kicks off the fast paced editing. showing the beginning of our narrative structure 

Researching recent products at the start of my project made me realize the typical forms and conventions of a real media product out today. "The cabin in the woods" was a horror film which I chose to briefly analyze, however as a group we looked through a range of horror trailers which would inspire us to apply in our own trailer. Analyzing these trailers we found that the typical conventions were:

-Gentle dietetic sound to start off the equilibrium

-During the "disruption" lots of fast paced shots and sounds are used to complement the action on the screen

-A disturbing shot, often someone killed, dead or hurt.

-More disequilibrium is used than equilibrium.

-More cuts and more transitions during the disequilibrium scenes.

-Most often has a vulnerable character and a villain.

-The soundtrack often changes to create a thrill.

-A scare shot at the end of the trailer.

Typical convention of character(s) being watched 

Conventions for trailer
In our horror trailer we followed some of the typical conventions which existing films used.
-One soundtrack that starts off gentle and eerie then crescendos into a heavy thump of dietetic sounds
-We start the trailer with an equilibrium
-A disturbing shot of a victim being killed
-During the disequilibrium we have lots of fast paced shots and sound that complement the action on screen
-The editing becomes more apparent with more shots and shot angles
-Fade to black to create the suspense

-During the "disruption" lots of fast paced shots and sounds are used to complement the action on the screen
-A disturbing shot, often someone killed, dead or hurt.
-More disequilibrium is used than equilibrium.
-More cuts and more transitions during the disequilibrium scenes.
-Most often has a vulnerable character and a villain.
-The soundtrack often changes to create a thrill.
-A scare shot at the end of the trailer.

Vulnerable male as a victim

Stereotypical young female who gets killed

Our unique villains killing equipment

In our trailer we challenged the conventions of a typical horror trailer by having a young vulnerable male as one of the victims as he runs away from the villain.  This challenges the convention because males are seen as rarely getting scare and intimidated. We also used some of the conventions an example of this is the stereotype of a female that is the victim. We also followed one of the conventions by having a female killed first in our trailer. Another convention which we challenged would be the villains prop, normally the prop is used as a tool for digging graves but we challenge this convention and give it a dual purpose of making your final resting place (grave) and being the cause of the final resting place (murder weapon). In a typical horror film you would usually see a weapon that is obvious as a weapon such as a knife or gun (anything with a sharp edge)

Conventions for posters and front cover of magazines
As well as looking at trailers we also analyzed magazine covers and posters which were both used to create an target audience and to also promote the product.

Here is an existing poster showing what a typical horror poster presents, as you can see:
-The red writing connotes the feel of danger
-A credit block allowing the audience to know who is involved in the film
-A scary image with manipulated lighting to create a greater outcome
-A image inside of an image exposing a lady screaming which then shows the vulnerability and scariness
-Deformed title text shows the creepiness of the film

Q2 - How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Q2 - How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

In our group we produced a horror trailer as the main product and for the secondary task I produced a magazine front cover and a horror poster. One main feature we decided on as a group Was to show a convention of horror in the secondary task. On the poster a girl is displayed lying on the floor covered in blood. The woman’s face is never shown as we want her to be anonymous. Because the woman’s face wasn’t shown I was able to have this tie in with my film poster of the three graves and there not being a name on the graves. I believe this is the selling point that attracts many of our target audiences. Another main selling point of my horror trailer is my main prop the shovel, the reason for the shovel being a main selling point is because it is shown a lot throughout the trailer and it creates an icon of the killer needing a shovel to kill like a symbiotic relationship of the killer without the shovel isn’t important and the shovel without the killer is just a tool.. This is what I think would make my trailer stand out from others as it is unusual but it suits the storyline of my film trailer.

Order of production
If I were to market my production I would firstly release the film poster as I think this this would make the most impact on the audience. if the trailer was released before the poster then the audience wouldn't experience the hype a poster can create. The poster will get the audience asking questions and want to find out more whereas the trailer gives the audience a quick thrill

Fonts
when picking the font for my products, they had to be linked with the horror genre. So I decided that the font should have a horror genre theme. This required the font to be recognised as being part of the horror genre.

Where 

I used the font called horror hotel in two of my media projects. For my magazine cover I chose to not to use this font as the mast head. The reason for this was because the magazine was not linked to the film as it was an independent form of media. If I did use this font then the film would be viewed as originating from the magazine. 

Main attraction
blood is the main part of the trailer. The trailer shows this as much as possible. My trailer shows that blood is constant in the film. The theme of blood is my entire media product the reason for this is for synergy. In my poster the title is red, the red represents blood also in my magazine front cover the image is of a woman covered in blood and the masthead glows red for the synergy of the film and the magazine. 

I took many photos and videos of the villain in a black hoodie to show that he is the main attraction in this particular product. The whole hoodie scene is to make sure the villain is never exposed and to also add a bit of modernity in my trailer as the criminals in this generation dress in this way to protect themselves from exposure and punishment.

Characters & target audience and how they linked

The characters staring in my trailer play an important role in determining the target audience, my target audience would be 16+ which is why I have made my characters about the same age so that they could relate. My trailer shows the character’s age.  My poster and magazine link to my trailer. For example the image on my magazine is of one of the female characters if the audience look closely they will notice that the girl that is covered in blood is the girl that is last while they are being chased.  My poster also relates to my trailer as there are three characters that are victimised throughout the trailer and my posters main image is of three graves, this suggests the ending of the story of all three characters dying but it does not confirm this and the audience will need to watch the film in order to find out the actual conclusion.

Main products and ancillary text

When advertising my products I used different media technologies and marketing campaigns for my poster, magazine cover and trailer. I looked into varies way in which I could reach out to my target audience, and decided that social networking sites such as Facebook was the best way to do this task.

A film poster is known for advertising so I thought that the best place to do this was on a location that many people can view at once such as Facebook. Facebook was the best promotion ground because that is the media ground that my target audience is located.

A lot of young people such and 16 year Old’s and above would use these kinds of sites. They use these to connect with other people their age so if we have the trailer and poster on Facebook, they can share it with their friends which help me on advertising. This is cross media because Facebook is used for us to advertise but we then also advertise Facebook by uploading our trailer onto their site. With YouTube which was also used in my marketing campaign, in the use of synergy as I uploaded my trailer to their site to give them publicity and also my product.

Q3 - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Q3 - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Feedback from my target audience is very important to my evaluation as they are the people who give me the critical analysis which would provide help for me to improve on the projects. I consider everyone's feedback important because their comments help me make my work better; I find critical analysis very effective as it describes my works flaws and how to improve it.  

Types of audience feedback

Advantages of Interviews

-You receive more personal responses

-Helps the creator with linking the responses to their products

-It enables the creator with reliable data. 

-Longer detailed answers as there are no limits to how long the answer can be.

The disadvantages of interviews

-it is very time consuming

-it is hard to process all the data as this wouldn't involve many closed questions.

-It is not used for a large number of people.

-The interviewer can affect the data if he/she is not consistent. 

Advantages of questionnaires

-These are kept anonymous most of the time

-It is kept quick and easy, doesn't take long to complete

-I would receive many quantitative and some qualitative date

Disadvantages of questionnaires

-Questionnaires are impersonal, this means that it may be difficult to understand answers and thus to act on them.

-Open questions can take a lot of time to collect and analyze. 

- There is a chance that the question may be misinterpreted, rendering the answer useless. 

Quantitative data- more feedback

The advantages of using this type of data would be:

-Quick to get data

-Easy to process the data

-Receives a general idea of views and opinions

Qualitative data- quality

Advantages of using this data would be:

-It enables the person to go into detail on the particular question

-It gives a more personal view and is more reliable

To gain my target audience feedback I decided to create a focus group. The focus group watched the trailer and answered the questions from a questionnaire I had created. This enabled me to get a mixture of both detailed qualitative answers and quantitative data. To make sure I received quantitative and qualitative data, I made sure I included both open and closed questions.

Here are some of the results I got from my questionnaire

Here are some samples of answer I got from my questionnaires and focus groups:

What did you like about my trailer?

"The trailer was amazing, great acting and editing"

"I liked the narrative structure, it all made sense"

"Very good and professional acting"

"Showed information but not too much given away"

"The music matched everything that was shown in front of us"

"The killing scene looked realistic"

"Love the choice of music"

What things in my trailer would you improve?

"Could have had a scene after the credit to make the audience jump"

"Raise the volume of dialogue in the library scene"

"One of the disturbing shots involved a random scene"

"Maybe show more characters getting hurt or killed"

Technology

I decided to spread the trailer to different media to maximise the amount of feedback. One of the locations I spread my trailer to was the video sharing site YouTube. The reason I did this because I believed that it was the fastest way to get my target audience to view it.

My trailer that was uploaded on YouTube received many positive comments; I was shocked to discover there were no critical or negative comments. Even though the comments weren’t critical I found problems with the trailer and made slight improvements, these improvements included changing the sound to fit the genre of horror.

Currently my horror trailer has been watched 168 times on YouTube. The advantage of using YouTube would be that it is easily accessible and is shared publicly, so anyone can view my product as long as they type the right subject into YouTube search engine.

This is my other media product. I included all the basic convention that a poster holds. The convention which I used was the convention of blood. This convention is used a lot in horror. Blood is used a lot in horror as it is linked closely to death.  I have also included the colour black, I did this to represent the subject of death because death could be seen as everlasting element of horror. In the poster have included an image of three grave stones, the image dominates the whole poster as it shows the three graves in the view of someone watching over them. This is somewhat the convention of horror of there always being a survivor.

Evaluation of feedback

The feedback I received from the research allowed me to view my project as a whole. I used the answers from my questionnaire and added them to my trailer. For example the readers of the questionnaire said that they found the horror genre more effective with teenager characters instead of adult characters. We used this information and had teenage actors. Because of the quantitive data we received we discovered that the choices that they preferred where the most popular and as an audience if they preferred these choices, then we using their opinions would make the trailer better

Q4 - How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Q4 - How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Blogger -Blogger allowed me to show how I was progressing and to also reflect on my use of time management. Throughout the project I allowed my teacher to mark and analyse my work to see if I had any mistakes so that I could then make an improvement towards my final grade.

Internet - I used the internet as a source of for research throughout my project. It was used to attain existing trailers for research. Without the internet It would have been difficult for me to find out the main conventions that horror trailers share. I also used the internet to view past horror posters I used Google to view images of posters such as child’s play, final destination and humpty dumpty. With these posters I was able to compare and find similarities with them, and the conventions I found I used in my own poster The internet let me view magazine front covers for research into existing products. I also used it to gather information about the history of film and the horror genre. I used websites such as "Dafont" where I searched particular fonts for my auxiliary task for my poster and my magazine front cover. 

Websites used to share my work

YouTube - This site was used for the evaluation process of my production as I uploaded my trailer onto YouTube in order to gain and receive audience feedback.

Facebook – I used Facebook to show my trailer. The main reason that I did this was so that I could find out what the audience thought of the project. The other reason for my trailer being posted on Facebook was so that the audience can leave me comments and feed back on what they enjoyed about the trailer and what could be improved. I received some comments and was able to improve my trailer because of these comments.

 

Filming equipment

Camera – this was the most important equipment in the trailer task. We used this camera for filming the scenes and locations and because it was digital we were able to view the scenes we had recorded straight after they had been recorded. With this feature of the digital camera we were able to view recently recorded scenes and decide weather we were going to use it. Because of this feature we save a lot of time as we didn't need to upload of develop the videos/images; we could view them straight away. 

Tripod – The tripod was used in the creation of my trailer, for most of the scenes where I needed a still camera or I needed to do specific shots close ups and long shots. The tripod was very useful as it gave us different options on how to direct our scenes

Document files - This is where my videos are saved, "windows video files" as I then dragged and dropped this into my editing panel.

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SkyDrive- the windows cloud let me store my video files on the internet. The reason I did this was because the server of my school couldn’t hold all the files that we had created. So we decided to store our files on the windows cloud as it had more than enough memory to store all our files.

 

Photoshop - This was used in the construction of my auxiliary task. I used Photoshop to create my poster and my magazine front cover. The reason for this was because it offered the tools that I needed to make my poster the way I vision it. For example Photoshop allowed me to edit my image to a degree that gimp and fireworks could not.

 

Macromedia Fireworks - This was mainly used to construct the text for my auxiliary products of my poster and my front cover film magazine. This program helped me edit the fonts that I got from Dafont and edit them so that they fit my poster and magazine front cover.

PowerPoint - This program was used to design the still frames for my trailer, for example the frames which created the fade out during the trailer transitions and also the ending credits which displayed my horror logo. All of that was done with this program.

Filming

Here are some of the photos my group took of me whilst I was directing a few scenes for my trailer. We thought it would be useful to take these photos as it would show the progression we had through this particular task. I used the tripod for my still shot, panning and tilt, this played a key role in making sure that the shots were how wanted. As you can see below it shows different stages in creating that perfect scene which would then be added to the editing process.

Editing

Apple Mac - I used the apple mac when editing and constructing my trailer. The apple mac was used in the joining of the different scenes to create the trailer. There was particular software on the Apple Mac called "Imovie" where I constructed all my editing of videos on. I used this to cut some scenes that where longer than I needed, create a faster paced trailer (a convention of the genre horror) and also used the effects available on the Imovie which included slow motion for scenes such as the three characters running in the running scene. I also used the jump cut after every scene to show the progression of the trailer and to add the typical horror feel to make the audience jump. 

House Of Sins Trailer