……………………… Media Evaluation ……………………
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1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Our group tried to make our trailer as realistic compared to normal trailers as we could by researching and watching a lot of horror movie trailers we have seen. All trailers tend to use the same forms and conventions that help make them look professional and so we used several of these conventions, however we also challenged them as well. Teaser trailers are very important when it comes to the marketing and distribution of a film as it allows the audience to get a sneak peek of the movie without it giving the whole plot away. This makes the audience want to see the movie. If the marketing of the film is successful, such as the trailer, poster and any other publicity such as magazines, then it is more than likely that the movie itself will make a lot of money. All trailers tend to have the same conventions such as titles and a release date, voiceovers and inter titles. Depending on the genre of the movie, there are also different conventions. As we have been studying the horror genre, I have learnt that conventions such as narrative structure, mise en scene and the sound are extremely important as they all have to work together to create a sense of atmosphere. Particularly with horror, the mise en scene is very important- what my group did was take normal everyday settings such as college and homes and the street but make them seem scarier. Horror films could use certain scary looking settings, but others could just take the innocent everyday settings, but make them seem more sinister. We decided to use Legendary Pictures as our distribution company as they played a big part in the success of some of my favourite films such as the Batman Trilogy and big adventure films. They were responsible for the teaser trailers and posters and everything leading up to these movies, and despite them working with films in a completely different genre to my horror movie, such as superhero and action movies, I like how successful these movies were.
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At the start of our trailer, between the inter titles, we placed really quick fuzzy black and white shots of different violent images, helping to get the idea of violence into the audiences head straight away making them feel uneasy. These shots are less than a second long and are really quick so it’s difficult to see what is in these shots, however we did this on purpose to make the audience uncomfortable. We were inspired by the ‘Sinister’ (2012) trailer for this part, as they also have quick shots at the beginning that are made all fuzzy and difficult to make out. Their shot however is of a symbol which is very important to the plot of their story. Like our trailer, by showing it at the start, it gets the audience’s attention and them thinking about what these quick shots could mean.
The use of inter titles helps to narrate the story without giving too much of the plot away. Here I have taken a clip from ‘Silent Hill: Revelations’, just like my trailer, they use inter titles to narrate the story and give the audience an understanding of what is going on. The titles also create suspense as they are broken up throughout the trailer. So the plot is revealed slowly, but not entirely.
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Here I chose a shot from the trailer of ‘Paranormal Activity’. I chose to compare these shots as at the end of our trailer, I jump out at the camera, making the audience jump, just as she does in the Paranormal activity trailer. They both have canted camera angles, giving the impression of dizziness. Shots like this make the audience feel uneasy. The fact that in both of the shots we are kind of looking up at the characters, makes us feel like they are superior and their victims will be helpless.
Here I have compared a point of view shot from the trailer for ‘Side Effects’ alongside a very similar point of view shot from my trailer. Both shots show a hand holding pills, and the point of view shot suggests that whoever is holding the pills is looking down at them, involving the audience.
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I found these shots very similar, as in our trailer I am hiding in the cupboard terrified, and in ‘The Crazies’ trailer they are also hiding in the cupboard. Both shots have very dull dark lightning adding to the dark scary atmosphere, dark lighting is key to the horror genre.
Although these two shots aren’t that similar, they both show scenes from a psychiatrist’s office, both shots display an over the shoulder shot and also the 180˚ rule, as in both shots, the people always stay on their set side of the screen. We used thescene with the psychiatrist to help make the plot more obvious.
Shots like this one from Black Swan and our trailer make the audience feel uneasy as whilst the main character is looking in the mirror, they look away for a slight second, and the reflection remains staring at the main character. Things like this are unexpected and shock the audience making them feel uneasy and creeped out. It was quite complicated for us to make this shot, as it involved careful filming on a tripod, as well as a lot of editing to ensure the shots lined up and lighting was right, but I think we pulled it off successfully. 5
Violence is key to the horror genre, as well as building suspense, so I have compared a shot from ‘The Crazies’ where a man is dragging a sharp knife along a wall, slowly towards his victim. This kind of shock builds suspense, and leaves the audience scared and waiting for the big jump. We did something similar to this in our trailer, a shot of my silhouette holding out a knife as I slowly walk towards my victim. I thought our shot was very good as you can see my victim within the shot, and my character is very large compared to his, almost suggesting I am superior to him and he is helpless.
One of the most important parts of distributing a film is finding the right title that will capture the audience’s attention. We chose to go with Disorder as the plot of the film is that there is a girl who has a mental disorder, and is given pills to help, but they make her more psychotic and she murders everyone- or at least that’s what we want you to think… We used the typical colours of a horror movie such as black and white; with mainly black, to connote the connection between good and evil. The old style serif font also fits more with the horror genre. This is more scary to the audience rather than a ‘fun’ font which would give away the wrong impression about the movie.
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We tried to stick closely with the general conventions of a horror trailer, whilst also challenging these, as when it comes to making a successful trailer, it is important to make it seem ‘different to all other films’ so that it stands out from what else is in the market. Most trailers do not give too much of the plot away, simply hint at what the movie entails, with our trailer it was difficult not to give too much of the plot away. Since we weren’t making the entire movie, to get a good reaction from anyone watching our trailer we had to make sure they understood what was going on, so getting the right balance between giving away and holding back the plot was difficult. Sound is also an important element of horror trailers- normally in a horror trailer, the sound should build up like a crescendo, gradually getting louder and louder and then suddenly, silence at the end before a big finish. We tried to emulate this, but since we didn’t have the time to make a proper musical score, we could only use software such as garage band to layer up pre made music. This made it difficult to make it sound professional, but we did the best we could with what we had, and even had the chance to record some of our own sounds such as the creaky noise, which I recorded from the drying rack in the art room. A noise like this is typical in horror trailers, so I felt it necessary to find a similar one. Because we didn’t want to give the plot away, but only key bits of information, we used only a little bit of dialogue. With lines such as “How long have you been having these dreams Jordan?” and “Sometimes I feel like I’m to blame.” These lines hint at the plot but don’t give anything away.
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2. How effective is the combination of your product and ancillary texts? The distribution of a media product is very important if you want it to be successful. A film distributor is responsible for identifying the audience, reaching them, deciding the release date (for example, if the film is aimed at children, releasing the film during school holidays will make it more than likely for them to go and watch it), the method it is exhibited (for example home viewing or theatrically). They much also ensure that the exhibitor has a full line of advertising material to attract the largest possible audience. They work with the physical production of the film and the creation of the advertisements for newspapers, magazines, posters, television commercials and trailers. Distributors work alongside a marketing plan, for example, up to a year before the actual release date, they will start leaking teaser posters and trailers into the world, getting the film into people’s heads without giving anything away, so that when the film comes out everyone will be excited to see it. As it gets nearer the release date they will try to attract as many people as possible by becoming part of other advertising campaigns, for example McDonalds is good for this, as they team up with the films to advertise both. Marketing a film correctly is very important when it comes to the reach of a film, for example, ‘Avatar’ was aimed at a worldwide audience and released all over the world and made a huge product- as it had a large advertising campaign. However, if you market a film correctly, even niche films can be successful, such as the niche film ‘Colin’ which was made with a budget of £60, and ended up with a product of £800. So depending on who you want your audience to be, it is careful to aim at them. For example, a kids film will be advertised during times when the children will be at home, such as in the morning when they get ready for school, or straight after school time, compared to a horror film, where the trailer will be shown after the watershed. I have decided to classify our horror film a 15, as it is not that scary, and most fifteen year olds are mature enough to understand what is going on. I feel that rating it a ‘12’ is encouraging people far too young.
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There are lots of different platforms for promoting a film , here are some example for the film ‘The Dark Knight Rises’: Teaser Poster-
This doesn’t give anything away, however, it attracts the audience’s attention and makes them aware of the film, this poster came out almost a year before the film’s release date. It only gives a rough estimate of when the film will come out.
Outdoor advertisingAs it starts to get nearer the release date more posters will be shown everywhere to capture everyone’s attention. From this poster nothing from the plot is given away.
Cinema AdvertisingAfter while a teaser trailer is released to let everyone get a glimpse as what happens in the movie- the idea is not to give too much away but to get them excited. Here is the first trailer that was released for this film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucEa50RIpuw
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Web Advertising and other products-
Here you can see how the distributors teamed up with a phone company so that their website was advertising the film, and both the phone and the movie were promoting each other. Overall I think the ‘Dark Knight Rises’ campaign was very successful as they managed to reach a large audience through the way they used different platforms.
My Final Movie Poster… Here is my final movie poster. I really like how it came out in the end, as I tried to make it look as professional as possible by looking extremely closely at proper movie posters and taking inspiration for these. The story for our horror film is a girl who goes crazy, and takes medication that ends up causing her to murder people without realising she is doing so- I tried to portray this in my poster really subtly, I did this by having one half of the photo of me covered in blood. This immediately split me in half. I edited me so that the darker areas were really dark and the lighter areas quite light, to help show the contrast between good and evil. I edited my eye on my evil side to look white, as this would make the horror look more realistic, I also used the burn tool on photo shop to darken the skin around my evil eye to make it look bruised and in shadow. I even used the burn tool to make that whole side of my body darker than the other. We took the photo of me against a white wall, so this made altering the background easier. I layered up several textures to darken up and add depth to the background. I then very faintly used the brush tool to draw on the cracks. I did this on one half to give the impression she is ‘falling apart’. I used the same font for the title on the
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poster as I did for the magazine and trailer and I wanted it to seem all the same- but for this one I made it the colour of blood and blended it out so it looked like it dripped. When I analysed movie posters, I liked the idea of having a film review on the poster, as this made it look more official and would convince people to see the movie. So not much would be given away I included a tag line “How do you know you’re not the problem?” This would intrigue the audience to find out what it means. I placed the distribution and production companies’ information at the bottom and showed the release date (which isn’t too specific as it’s only a teaser).
Each genre of movie has different specific conventions that help people tell what genre it is. For example for my horror one, we can tell it is horror because of the colour scheme, the poster etc. With this scifi poster on the left it has the typical sci- fi colours of blue, and the layout is typical of this genre with the smaller image at the bottom and portraits along the top.
With the child poster for ‘Wreck It Ralph’ we can easily tell it is for children because of the bright colours used which catch their eye and connote fun. Also the text has been made quite large so that it is easier to read.
The final genre I have chosen is a romance- new can tell from the neutral colours used, bright lighting and the two- shot of the couple on the front.
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My Final Magazine Cover… I decided to make a ‘Total Film’ magazine as I like the logo and it was easier to manipulate. I changed it by adding an old film texture to the writing. It took a lot of effort trying to make the fonts the same as those on an actual issue of the magazine, as I had to consider the line spacing. You can see I used their strap-line ‘The Modern guide to movies’ as well as their star saying ‘The world’s best movie reviews’. I used a midclose up shot for the main cover image as these are common for magazine covers. I also tried to include other photos on the cover, as well as coverlines. The use of a plus symbol and stating ‘first look’ suggests the audience will be seeing and getting information they won’t anywhere else, convincing them to buy it. Again I chose a black, white and red colour scheme to fit with the stereotypical colours of horror.
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3. What have you learnt from audience feedback? We tried several ways to get audience feedback, mainly through sharing the final pieces through several social networks such as Facebook and Twitter- these allowed people to comment their opinion and get back to us.
The first image is a set of comments in reaction to the final trailer. As you can see all comments show a very positive reaction! Several of the comments seemed so impressed with the final trailer that they asked ‘When is it out?’ meaning that from the trailer, they would like to see the movie. I find comments like this are proof that we have made a successful trailer, as the whole idea of the marketing and distribution of a film is to make products that encourage people to go and see the film- which this trailer successfully has. However- it is possible that the reason every comment was positive as the audience didn’t have the luxury of being anonymous. Taking this into account, we set up a private screening for a demographic group of people around the age of who we were
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aiming at. The people who watched the screening were aged on average 17-18, meaning they were older than the aged 15rating we gave it. We handed them forms asking what they liked/ disliked about the trailer and what could be improved. Once they became anonymous we started to get some ‘real’ feedback including things we should improve on. The main thing we were worried about when it came to our trailer was the length of the clips making it seem too slow- a couple of people picked up on this, but overall, people commented that they thought it was a good tempo and length. However, we cut some of the clips a bit shorter just to ensure that it wasn’t thought to be too slow. A lot of people commented that the sound of the dialogue was too ‘crackly’ in places, making it difficult to hear. To improve this we rerecorded the warped parts, making sure they were easy to hear. As we couldn’t re record all of them as some were part of the video clips themselves we simply adjusted the levels on the audio making it a bit clearer. The audio is my least favourite part- as it was difficult to get good music for the trailer as no one in our group knew how to make music, and garage band didn’t supply the right tunes, so we made do with what we had. I recorded the sound of the drying rack in the art room as this made a screeching noise. Using this I made the audio of the trailer seem creepier, as this allowed me to turn the levels of the unwanted music down, and a creepy screeching noise to replace it. This sound got some good feedback in the forms. There were two parts of the trailer that seemed to get extra good feedback as it sparked a reaction in the audience. The first one of these being the shot of me looking into the mirror and taking my medication- with the reflection remaining staring at me. This is unexpected and shocks the audience. The second shot they seemed to like more was at the end of the trailer. Up to this point we had increased the music’s volume into a crescendo and but the clips shorter to create tension, then suddenly at the end we cut the music into silence with a black screen, and then suddenly I jump out at the camera. This seemed to shock the audience even more, causing them to give us really good feedback.
The image from a twitter feed is the reaction I got to my movie poster and magazine cover when I shared it. People also seemed to like these and told me they looked ‘professional’.
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4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?
Web 2.0 technologies allow me and other people with next to no budget to be able to market and distribute our products for free through Social Networking and blogging sites such as Facebook, twitter and blogger. Aspiring film makers who do what we have done for a living would have to look for investors to fund their projects, however, lucky for our generation, we have been blessed with the web 2.0 technologies that mean we could do everything we need from almost any device. As you know I used the site blogger.com to hold all of my coursework together- this site is very simple to use and so I found no problems with this. Growing up in my generation, the use of social network sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube are part of our second nature, and so the use of these was not difficult either. There were several technologies I did use for the first time though and struggled with, such as the zoom microphone (it took a while getting used to how it worked) and also Garageband, which is an app on the Mac that allowed us to create the backing music. I did not like using these, as we had no experience with it and knew nothing about how to make music so it didn’t sound professional. I had used Mac’s several times before so it wasn’t too difficult to navigate. Learning Premiere Pro from scratch wasn’t as difficult as we thought- at first it was confusing and we had no idea how to edit our clips and manipulate them as it looked very complicated, but eventually we learnt how to and it became quite easy for us to use premiere pro at its full potential. The most difficult 15
Parts of it were trying to adjust the audio levels, as we did not know all the terms and this was the only way we knew what we were changing. I used a website called surveymonkey.com to create my questionnaire before production began for our research, which I then distributed across the social networking sites. This was easy enough to use, however it only allowed me to have ten questions- any more and I would have had to pay, which when you have no budget is impossible. I used the website scribd.com to put together my research and display it on my blog, and for this evaluation I will use issuu.com- which will take time as I’ll have to convert this document into a PDF file first. I used photobucket.com to upload albums of photos which I then displayed on my blog as a slideshow. This was difficult as I had to find the html code for this and then embed it in the html section of my blog. I did want to use a special slideshow gadget on blogger and link the photos from flickr.com, but this was too complicated and kept saying ‘error’ so I decided to use a different website for my photos. Despite using a lot of the technologies and websites before hand, I certainly learnt a lot with new technologies and even developed my skills with some of them.
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