Evaluation question 2

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

The film distributor is in charge of getting a film as much public appeal as possible.  This is done by using promotional techniques and advertising on the right platforms in order to promote their content to the target audience.  As well as getting advertisements on to the right platforms so that their target audience see's the content, the content needs to be attained towards them.  For example a horror movie advertised on Cartoon Network would not be a suitable platform to advertise from as fans of the genre would not be watching it as well as the potential freight it would bring to children.
 

The movie poster for UP looks as if it is aimed towards a younger audience as the art style shown is typical of animated Disney movies.  The Disney Pixar text reinforces this as Pixar movies generally make animated movies for the whole family to enjoy.  The font of UP is bold, rotated and has a swerve effect to fit with the ludicrous picture of the floating house.

On the other hand for the movie poster for Friday The 13th features a much more grim and dark background with Jason holding a machete.  The font much more rigid and colored a blood red.  The background gives an dark a scary atmosphere and features the tagline "WELCOME TO CRYSTAL LAKE" telling the audience where the movie most likely takes place.

As well as strong public appeal it is also important to maintain a strong unified identity as not to confuse the target audience.  Advertising a horror movie as a comedy will attract the wrong audience and then disappointing that audience when they come to watch it.  The DVD cover for Friday The 13th and the poster use the same picture and maintain a unified identity.

The age classification for Black Death is for ages 15+, this is because of the violent subjects such as death and torture but not violent or graphical enough to be an 18.

 The relationship between my movie poster and trailer is that they focus of the plague doctor being the main antagonist of the movie.  In the trailer the plague doctor is featured in a number of scenes from the middle to the end of the trailer and is the main hype of the film.

The poster that I used for the inspiration for my poster was from the modernized adaptation of Halloween.  I have used a similar layout to it as well as having my antagonist centered in the poster.  My tagline is located at the top of the poster with my title being located near the bottom in a distinctive font.

Evaluation question 1

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

Teaser trailers are important in terms of marketing as they are what get the target audience to become interested in possibly paying to watch the film when it is released.  To be a good trailer, the trailer must follow generic conventions for aspects like narrative structure, mise-en-scene, sound, editing and camera work.  These will vary based off the genre and even sub-genre of the film.  Some universal conventions that usual should be met but has been challenged are conventions like the 180 degree rule and continuity editing, these conventions are here to prevent the footage from become confusing.

The horror trailer my group made was called Black Death and aimed to give a more atmospheric experience similar to a movie like The Women in Black.  The horror aspect was intended to be presented in a more mysterious fashion rather than a slasher film.  The aim was to give a more deep connection to the characters rather than being the murderer’s fodder.  Because of this we tried to follow conventions in order to show the audience the main characters.

I am going to show similarities between my groups trailer and other horror movie trailers by capturing stills of both and explaining how they meet the same codes and conventions.

 The still on the left is from a trailer for a movie called The Butterfly Room and share a convention with Black Death because of the close up on the mysterious object giving it a greater importance and plot to the story.

The 4 show a fade transition which is present in both The Butterfly Room trailer and Black Death trailer.  This is a common effect used around more calm part of the trailer and makes for a smooth transition in to the next shot.

The still showing the title is one of the most obvious conventions to include in a horror trailer and has been included in Black Death as well as the trailer for The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh.

These stills are from somewhere in the middle of the two trailers.  The one on the left being from a trailer for The Host and Black Death for the right.  They both relate to the footage that is being displayed and have a visual effect to make them more appealing to read.

The shot on the left is also from The Host trailer and uses a montage of close up shots where if the picture was larger, you could see the common trend that the peoples eyes are a bright blue indicating they have become a host.  In Black Death a close ups are also used for dramatic moments like show here.

Here in these two trailers we have a shot where the supernatural ominous figure appears in the distance they are not very identifiable and are usually shown in this way first before you can get a closer look.  The trailer on the left is for The Woman In Black.

Torture is a common theme in horror movies and is shown in these two trailers here.  The left screen is from trailer for King Of The Ants where the man is holed up in a shed being hit in the head with a baseball bat.  In Black Death the torture element is less focused on but does have a scene where the main characters friend is being cut down the face.

These two stills are shortly captured after each other and indicate some match on action within them.  The first trailer being from Crawl (2013) shows somebody lighting a match then immediately light candles with it.  On the other hand in Black Death the main character is looking through her contacts on her phone.

Finally for the 9th comparison, both of these horror movie trailers have jump scares at the end.  The still on the left is from grave encounters where the bed floats in the air and a scream and loud noise can be heard.  In Black Death you get the closest proper look at the plague doctor and a loud lightning storm sound for more of a dramatic effect.

The use of sound included in the trailer is also similar to that is included in more atmospheric horror trailers for movies such as The Woman In Black.  With no voice over in the horror trailer, the trailer was aiming to aim for a more story driven horror movie then a thriller.

Evaluation question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Feedback is very important when producing an ad campaign and can mean the difference between getting people interested in watching the movie and ignoring it.  First impressions are important and making sure them first impressions are neat and polished will reap the best results.

The video here is for a Horror Movie called The Ghoulies, a rather bad film with a rating of 3.5/10 on IMDb.  From watching the trailer the movie looks as it would be bad to watch anyway even if I did not see the reviews.  The presentation is bad and there is a big lack of tension and pace within the trailer.

The first audience feedback received was before my group made the trailer, this was from the questionnaire and proved to be very helpful for when we developed out trailer.  We all combined our data and found common trends with our data to apply to the trailer.  I have posted this information personally to my questionnaire under the posts titled Questionnaire and Audience research summery.

The second piece of feedback we received as a group where our class would watch every trailer and write down what they liked, what could be improved, what they feel would mostly improve it and the conventions the trailer met.  This information allowed for my group to make some improvements to the trailer based off common trends that people suggested improving, one of the more dominant suggestions being the sound.

 

Overall the feedback received from both the questionnaires and the class feedback on the trailer helped out a great deal in finding out the target audience’s opinion on the trailer.  This has allowed for improvements to be made to the trailer so that the final trailer is of a higher standard.

 

Evaluation question 4

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

Throughout the coursework for this year, I have been using a wide variety of hardware and software to produce and upload my work.  Some technology I was already competent with using such as Microsoft Word to write drafts for my posts and Adobe Photoshop which I had already used for my AS Media project.  However there has also been some programs and equipment that I have not used before.  I will give brief explanations of all the programs I have used and how they have helped me out for this unit.

 

Microsoft Word

A word processing program that has many features but was mainly used by me for drafting posts and spell checking them.  I have not used it for much else as I have only been using it for its reliability as a word processor over Blogger then copying it over to there.

 

Blogger

A website that allows for me to upload posts reliably to the internet for display.  Being a blogging website Blogger had many useful features such as uploading pictures, YouTube videos and links making my products easily accessible and convenient.  As well as the ease of uploading external content I can organize my blog with labels and adjust the layout of the blog to suit my needs.

Dafont

A good website for obtaining royalty free fonts to use for content like my movie poster.  From somebody who is not a talented artist, I appreciated getting help from somebody else.

 

YouTube

YouTube is arguably the most popular video uploading website on the internet and is compatible with more websites than any other video playing software.  YouTube allows for high quality uploads and is easy to use making it perfect for uploading my groups’ horror trailer to.

Garage Band

Garage band was a program available on the mac and was used for some of the sound in the trailer.  This program was useful and made designing music for the trailer easy, while giving access to an array of instruments to make music myself, it also has many unlicensed music clips to use.

Adobe Premiere Pro

This video editing program is what my group used to develop out horror trailer.  After being taught the basics we learned about more features as we played around with our footage.  This allowed us to improve our trailer with unique effects like a dark filter, fades and cinematic sounds.

Camera

We were supplied with a movie recording camera specially designed to record in high definition.  This allowed us to record high quality video making the trailer look professional.  With the camera we also used a tripod so that we could film shots steadily and films different shot types smoothly and with ease.  Film some of the scenes for the trailer I have become more adept at filming.
 

Conclusion

To conclude this area of the evaluation, the hardware and software I have access to have made it possible to change a shot list and story board in to a professional looking trailer for a horror film.  The software has also made it possible to display my content in an organized, refined and professional manner.