Evaulation

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

The genre that I decided to use for my film trailer is thriller/horror. If thriller/horror films are produced to a really good standard they tend to be really popular with the audience. The top ten horror films at the minute are Grave Encounters, The Possession, Insidious, Kill List, The Thing, Woman in Black, Sinister, The Innkeepers, The Cabin In The Woods and Evil Dead. All these films have been very successful in cinemas and through the shops, DVD purchase and online download. There are five main types of film trailers, these are narrative, performance, abstract, animation and film.

There are many different types of genre that film trailers can have, these are:

Action - Action films usually include high energy, big-budget physical stunts and chases, possibly with rescues, battles, fights, escapes, destructive crises (floods, explosions, natural disasters, fires, etc.), non-stop motion, spectacular rhythm and pacing, and adventurous, often two-dimensional 'good-guy' heroes (or recently, heroines) battling 'bad guys' - all designed for pure audience escapism. Includes the James Bond 'fantasy' spy/espionage series, martial arts films.

Adventure - Adventure films are usually exciting stories, with new experiences or exotic locales, very similar to or often paired with the action film genre. They can include traditional swashbucklers, serialized films, and historical spectacles (similar to the epics film genre), searches or expeditions for lost continents, "jungle" and "desert" epics, treasure hunts, disaster films, or searches for the unknown.

Thriller/suspense – Thrillers are often hybrids with other genres - there are action-thrillers, crime-caper thrillers, western-thrillers, film-noir thrillers, even romantic comedy-thrillers. Another closely-related genre is the horror film genre. Thriller and suspense films are virtually synonymous and interchangeable categorizations. They are types of films known to promote intense excitement, suspense, a high level of anticipation, ultra-heightened expectation, uncertainty, anxiety, and nerve-wracking tension.

Comedy – Comedies are light-hearted plots consistently and deliberately designed to amuse and provoke laughter (with one-liners, jokes, etc.) by exaggerating the situation, the language, action, relationships and characters. This section describes various forms of comedy through cinematic history, including slapstick, screwball, spoofs and parodies, romantic comedies, black comedy (dark satirical comedy), and more.

Science fiction – Sci-fi films are often quasi-scientific, visionary and imaginative - complete with heroes, aliens, distant planets, impossible quests, improbable settings, fantastic places, great dark and shadowy villains, futuristic technology, unknown and unknowable forces, and extraordinary monsters ('things or creatures from space'), either created by mad scientists or by nuclear havoc.

Romance - A sub-genre for the most part, this category shares some features with romantic dramas, romantic comedies, and sexual/erotic films. These are love stories, or affairs of the heart that centre on passion, emotion, and the romantic, affectionate involvement of the main characters (usually a leading man and lady), and the journey that their love takes through courtship or marriage. Romance films make the love story the main plot focus

When doing my research, I watched numerous film trailer videos on YouTube and I also went to the cinema a few times to see films and watch the film trailers that are screened before the actual film, after doing this I looked into the codes and conventions of these genre trailers. I looked at the cinematography, editing and mise-en-scene. I did this so that I could see what to include within my film trailer.

Here are some of the video's that I watched:

House At The End Of The Street - Seeking a fresh start, newly divorced Sarah (Oscar-nominee Elisabeth Shue) and her daughter Elissa (Oscar-nominee Jennifer Lawrence) find the house of their dreams in a small, upscale, rural town. But when startling and unexplainable events begin to happen, Sarah and Elissa learn the town is in the shadows of a chilling secret. Years earlier, in the house next door, a daughter killed her parents in their beds, and disappeared - leaving only a brother, Ryan (Max Thieriot), as the sole survivor. Against Sarah's wishes, Elissa begins a relationship with the reclusive Ryan - and the closer they get, the deeper they're all pulled into a mystery more dangerous than they ever imagined.

Paranormal Activity 4 - The Paranormal Activity film series continues with this fourth entry from Paramount Pictures and returning directors of the previous film, Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman.

The Apparition - When frightening events start to occur in their home, young couple Kelly (Ashley Greene) and Ben (Sebastian Stan) discover they are being haunted by a presence that was accidentally conjured during a university parapsychology experiment.

The Pact - After their mother passes away, sisters Nicole and Annie reluctantly return to their childhood home to pay their last respects. While staying overnight in the house, the sisters sense a mysterious presence in their midst: noises startling them in the night, objects moving about, a fallen picture of an unknown woman posed next to their mother. Annie begins experiencing a series of intense and disturbing dreams -- visions that lead her to uncover something terrible about her mother's past that is finally revealing itself.

The Possession - Inspired by Los Angeles Times writer Leslie Gornstein's article "A Jinx in a Box," this horror film from Ghost House Pictures and director Ole Bornedal (Night watch) tells the tale of a broken family that comes under attack from a malevolent supernatural entity of Jewish folklore. Shortly after her parents (Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Kyra Sedgwick) divorce, a young girl purchases an ornate antique box at a yard sale. In the weeks that follow, the young girl forms an intense fixation on the box, her behaviour growing increasingly bizarre as she falls into the grip of a diabolical apparition. When the girl's father discovers that the relic is in fact a holding cell for the disconnected soul of a deceased person who has been denied entry into the afterlife and needs a human host to inhabit, he fights to rid her of the evil that threatens to consume her body and soul.

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



In all honesty I am quite pleased with how my trailers and two ancillary texts, a website and an advertising poster have used cross-form synergy which reflect a professional media campaign. 

When watched the film trailers, the cinematography stood out to me the most. The camera work for my film trailer is very confusing as the title of the film is Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Amnesia is either a partial or total loss of memory. I want my trailer to look confusing to the audience, as if they can't remember what's going on. I wanted to create the illusion of being followed by a masked man, who takes their memory away from them.

I wanted to keep the same colour scheme throughout my products so that you could see that they were linked together. 

I have used the same colour scheme throughout my ancillary texts. This is the red, white and black colour scheme. I have used the same range of images too, on the advertisement and on my website.

As you can see from the images, I have also used the same colours for my website, the colour shows continuity.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?
My audience feedback has shown me that I should've taken more time editing my video and figuring out what sounds to use rather than spending the majority of time on my ancillary texts, which were my advertisement poster for the film and the website. I chose three people at random from my A2 Media class and asked them a series of questions. These were, 'What type of media text is this video?' 'What genre is this video?' 'What are it's positives?' 'What are it's negatives?' and 'Would you go see this film in cinema or even buy the DVD?'. Each of the audience members gave a different response. I used GoAnimate.com to produce three short videos. The videos consist of each of their responses to the questions. I chose to use GoAnimate.com as I have never used it before, I had also seen someone else use it and it looked like a fun way to show work.

My audience feedback has shown me that each of the members can clearly see what genre the film trailer is. They can also see that the ancillary texts match up with one another as well as the trailer. This due to the colour scheme and the link with the title of the film Amnesia: The Dark Descent. 
My audience said that they really liked the music track that I have chosen to use for my trailer, it is Sleep Hollow - Nightmare. 



                 

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

For my planning, which was done during the summer, I used a range of technologies to find out information on film trailers and advertising. I mainly used YouTube on the Internet to find the video clips of the horror and thriller film trailers. I watched endless amounts of film trailers, from each of the Saw films to the Paranormal Activity film trailers as well as many more. You can see the ones I watched on my summer work, which is the first post I made. After watching each of the film trailers, I picked out my favorite three trailers and wrote out all the dialogue for each of them. I chose to use YouTube as I use it on a daily basis to listen to music. I'm very familiar of how it works and what to do to get what I want. I find it is the easiest way to find a video clip that you want to watch. To produce one of my ancillary texts, the advertisement poster, I used Photoshop CS 5.

Film Trailer

To produce my film trailer I had to start by making a plan of what I wanted it to entail, for instance, the genre, the characters, costume and story line as well as the name for the film. So to start I drew up a plan, then produced a story board to reflect on when filming. After this I gathered together a few names of who I thought would work really well in my film trailer. Unfortunately due to inconvenient problems I had to change my cast. So I had to redo the previous stage a recruit a new cast. The cast members chosen were India Whiteley (myself) and Luke Bolton.

To photograph the location of my film trailer I used a Canon 1100d camera. I chose to use my own camera as it took better quality photographs than what the college cameras took. To also show the location of my film trailer I used Google Maps to show where the location was situated. I've produced an insert for the examiner to see where it is.

Whilst filming I came across some difficulties with the weather, but so would everyone else. As you can see throughout my trailer is hail stone or rain, but we had to power through and deal with it as the weather was pretty rubbish every night that we were available to film. All we could do was stand with an umbrella over the camera to protect it. The hail stone isn't too visible but because I can tell it’s there it really bothers me.

Another problem with my film trailer is that I personally don’t think I have a big enough range of shots to use so therefore I have to use one or two shots a couple of times or I even had to extend the shots so that they lasted for a few more seconds. If I were to do my film trailer again I would most certainly make sure that I had a big enough range of shots to choose from. I also came across the problem that because I’m not doing a music video, I have to create and add my own sounds. This was a problem. Due to the fact that it was hard to find the sounds that I really wanted to use, I had to ask the technician to help find sounds that could be used in a horror film trailer. The technician and I sat down together and downloaded a huge amount of film trailer noises onto the editing suite. I was then able to import the sounds on to the audio track to use. Just as you would cut down a clip you could also do this with the sound clips. Unfortunately I was not able to find all the correct sounds that I wanted. For instance, I was really hoping to find ‘white noise’ but because we couldn't find a sound clip to use I had to find the next option, I managed to find the sound of water running really fast, this sounds a lot like the white noise that I was looking for.

As we know, horror film trailers aren't slow and peaceful, they’re fast and creepy. Some of my shots were too slow for what I wanted them to be, so I used the ‘speed duration’ tool to speed up the video clip. I did this for a few of the clips because they didn't look as effective when they were at their original pace.

Website

 To produce my website for my film I used a piece of software on the internet called www.Wix.com. This website gives you the chance to produce a website of your choice. Wix can be used to advertise anything you please, you can also publish your website for the public to see. I found using Wix quite easy, but I think that’s because I like creating and trying new things. I have never used Wix.com so I thought that it would be really confusing to use and get around, but it wasn't.

 As the colour scheme throughout my coursework tasks is red, white and black, I knew I had to use it on my website as well as my advertising poster. As you can see from the insert there are several images on my website. The images are mainly of the main character, the man in the mask. The images are in black and white because I feel this is more effective and relates  more to horror.  I made a scroll bar to go across the center of the website, this is so that the audience can see the range of images provided. I think by using the scroll bar it looks a lot more neat as to what it would if the images were spread out all over the homepage.

I wanted the background colour of the homepage to be black so that the red and white writing would stand out against it. I think the colours have worked really well throughout the pages of the website. The colours also look good with the black and white photographs.

On a whole I’m really pleased with how my website has turned out. If I could change anything I would maybe have added a few more pages to my website such as ‘screenshots’, however I do like the pages that are provided already which are, home page, reviews and a join us page. All these pages have been published so that anyone can look at my website. You can find it on Google. 

 
To start my front cover I needed an Image which would advertise my film. Over a few hours I took several photos, then picked the top 5 that I like the most. I had to narrow it down to one final image which I would put onto the poster. I really like this image due to the tilt of the models head, also the light works really well when highlighting the masks main features, which are the grin, the eyes and the beard. I chose to do my images in black and white as I thought this gave a more thrilling effect, due to there being no colours and certainly no bright colours such as pinks and yellows. Black and white also makes images look a great more classic. I also wanted my film trailer to be in black and white as I think it looks better than it being in colour.

To start off I used Photoshop CS 5 to cut around this image so that I didn't have the background, this is because I only want the model on the poster. First of all I used the 'Quick Selection tool' however this was really annoying due to it selecting parts I didn't want to select. So I used the 'Polygonal Lasso tool', I found this a lot more helpful as I could draw around the edges of the image, this way I could select each individual line. After doing this I selected the image and copied it onto a plain white back ground. (As you can see on the left.) Then I could start editing, other parts on to it. After I'd copy and pasted this image onto a plain background I re-sized it by using 'Free-transform'. I then used the 'Blur' tool to smudge the edges, this was so that it looked neat and tidy. As you can see from the insert all the edges are smooth and not rugged.

To start my title I had to think of a name for my film, I had a list of names that I could use and pinned it down to 'Amnesia: The Dark Decent'. I chose this name because I found that it sounded quite creepy. I know that there is a video game named Amnesia, I took the idea from that. I then had some influence from my brother with the Dark Decent part, as he came up with the name.To make the title I used the Paint program. All I did was select a font from the list provided. After doing this I   then zoomed in on the writing and used the eraser tool to rub  fine lines and chunks out of the writing. This was to make the writing look old and rugged. I then used the red paint to fill in the gaps, this was so that the writing looked as if it had blood going through it. The next step I did was copied and pasted the writing onto the poster background (As shown on the insert) I then positioned it around the image. I thought it looked good all straight and horizontal, but I thought it looked even better with the Dark and Descent joining together by the same letter, they merge together. I also re-sized the writing so that it stood out more and expanded across the page.

I used the internet to find the 18 classification certificate logo so that I could put it onto my cover.Whilst doing research I looked for where about's the logo is placed. Also on most posters, the 18 logo is roughly small but visible  Due to the back ground of the poster and 18 logo being different to the colour of the models jacket. I used the 'Colour Sampler tool' so that I could paint over the parts which weren't the same colour. This blended quite well, however you can tell slightly that it has been coloured in. However it looks the best that it can, its not that noticeable when you zoom out to the actual size.

At the top of my poster I needed the name of the director, editor and main actors. It took s matter of minutes to think of three names to put at the top of the cover. I used my own name and then made the other up. I once again used Paint to do the font for these names, I feel there is a better choice of fonts on Paint than what there is on Photoshop. I used the eraser tool to shape down some of the edges on the letters. I find that the writing looks a little more interesting when its rugged, rather than straight and plain. Since my colour theme is black and white, I did the writing colour black so that it stood out against the white background.

I had to think of a few sentences which made the audience/buyer want to purchase a ticket to see the film. I thought that 'Original, Compelling and thought provoking, as amnesia takes over.' sounded very interesting and draw the audience in. I chose to do the writing bold and white so that it stood out against the dark background the writing   colour also sticks with the theme. Underneath this writing I have put 'The Ultimate collectors edition' This is to show that its one of many DVD's and that there is a collection of them and not just the one.

I typed in Google 'Photoshop Blood Splats' on the internet and came across several images that looked rather good. I then copied and pasted them into a new Photoshop page. Like in previous stages, I used the 'Quick selection tool' to select the parts of the blood splats that I wanted. I found five that fitted and worked really well with my image and layout. I think that the blood gives it more gore and scariness. The blood also fits in all the right places. for instance, I found one that hangs perfectly from the name Sherman. I also really like that one that's placed over the word Dark.

Throughout my coursework I have taken pictures to show my progress and for the images in my work. I used a Canon 1100d camera. The quality of this camera is really high definition. I also used it to film as well as take images. It is a multi purpose camera.

Before I put my work onto Blogger I usually type it up in a Word Excel document, this way if there is a fault with Blogger I can always carry on doing the work on word. I use Word Excel in the majority of my lessons whether it's to type up an essay or to take notes. I have used Word Excel for many years, throughout school and college as well as home life. I think Word is an easy way to organize your work as it can be used for many different tasks, such as typing up information, producing a table or even making a CV, in this case it is for course work. From past experience I have not had any serious fault when using Word.

Blogger is where I put all my work for my teachers, examiner, family members and the public to view. Blogger is an easy way of showing the work you have done. I really like using Blogger to show my work as it's a creative way of showing work instead of just showing it in a word document. You can also see how many views you have had on your Blog. The teachers or even other students can leave comments on your posts. The work that you publish is presented all neat and tidy as you create posts for your work to be displayed in.

 Paint is just a basic program in which you can make your own images or edit images on. I used paint to add colour to my Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Originally the writing was just plain black and white. I added red paint in the cracks so that it looked like it had blood over it. These colour tie in with my horror colour scheme or red, white and black. If you look closely you can see where I have added little splats of red paint.