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

Product	Problem & How Overcome	How it helped? (Beneficial?)
YouTube	Not being able to access YouTube in college& sometimes loosing connection. These problems can be easily overcome by using YouTube at home.	It is beneficial because you can view other movie trailers that other people around the country have created to get ideas for my own teaser trailer
Phone	Using this to send texts and emails to participating actors and actresses so that I have people to perform in my teaser trailer.	It is beneficial because it is a quick and easy way to send and receive messages about when the actors are available to do the filming.
Email	Emails wouldn’t open and/ or send. This was solved by  just trying to open them in different places as some internet worked better than others	It is beneficial because it is an easy way to send and receive work on different parts of the project.
Word	Sometimes it becomes ‘un-responsive’ and this means that it would shut down. It would luckily automatically save the files that we had open before and this means that I can just continue with the work	It has helped because it is a very good way of writing out your work before you post it onto blogger as it detects any grammar or spelling mistakes.
Wikipedia	Some of the information which is posted on Wikipedia cannot be trusted as anyone can post an article on Wikipedia without knowing whether the information is correct	It is beneficial because I can use this to look up statistics on films and how well they are received by the audience and critics so I can base parts of my trailer around these.
IMDB	I couldn’t find any problems with this website	This was probably the most useful website so my project as it has a huge range of films which you can use to view trailers quickly and easy. It also meant that I could watch the most popular trailers in a certain genre to know what is popular with an audience.
Digital camera	The digital camera that I was using for my behind the scene shots, movie poster and film magazine front cover had quite a small battery life which meant that I had to charge it up quite often in order that it wouldn’t run out of battery.	The digital camera was very useful as it meant that I could take a range of high quality images for my movie poster and my film magazine front cover.
Film camera	At first it was quite complicated to use but as I used it more I got used to how to use all of the controls which means that I was able to easily record what I wanted too.	The film camera that I use to film my footage for my teaser trailer was a very high quality camera and it also had a very large battery so it meant that I could get all of my clips done in one taking which meant that I saved time.
Photoshop	Sometimes Photoshop was running very slow and there was no reason, this meant that sometimes I couldn’t use it. I overcame this by using Photoshop at home where it ran a lot quicker than it does at college.	Photoshop was very beneficial as it is a useful editing program as it has many features to completely changes photographs. I also used it to create my magazine font cover and my movie poster; it was good for these as you can create a magazine look easily.
Premiere	I had quite a few problems with premiere but that was probably because of the pure amount that I was using it. Firstly sometimes it wouldn’t even open as I had the problem of it saying ‘the program is un-responsive’ I had this problem many times but apparently it is quite common for this product. The second problem was that whenever I went to add a title to any part of the film in college it would freeze, then shutdown. I couldn’t solve the first problem so I had to just  keep trying until it would finally open and with the second problem I just had to add the titles at home as it wouldn’t work consistently in college	Overall premiere was a very good program to use as I could easily learn the basics on what to do. It really helped in placing my film together and editing it together. If I didn’t use this program I don’t think I would have been able to achieve the final product that I did, simply because of the range of features that you can use to create great effects.
Blogger	I only had one problem with blogger and that was that sometimes that blogs weren’t posting and I just solved this by trying them on different computers as finally some of them would work.	Blogger was very useful when posting my work as it would display it in a very nice way where all of the information is clear.
FreeSound. org	You had to search through lots of sounds to get the ones you wanted so sometimes it could be more time consuming than you wanted it to be. Although this was a minor inconvenience the sounds on this website were still very useful.	It really helped with the sound that I wanted to include in my teaser trailer as it had a wide range of sound effects which made the teaser trailer sound better.

How have I become more creative?

I have become more creative in the way that I edit the teaser trailer as the first time I edited it I put some transitions that did not look professional. When I re-filmed it I made sure that when I edited the clips together using smooth transitions which made it look more professional.

I have also become more creative in the way that I use sound in my teaser trailer as the music that I used fits together really well with the genre and the sounds also overlap each other which creates different effects.

3. What have you learnt from the audience feedback?

I have had continuous audience feedback all the way from the research to the final product and this has helped me because it gives me a good idea of what is most popular at the moment and what would be best received by my target audience. It produces a better final product as it means that you’ve had the input from the audience which supplies you with what you can improve on and what is good about your final product.

My audience helped throughout the production process as they constantly supplied information which meant that I knew what the best ideas were, and I could always improve any of the ideas that I had using their feedback.

The changes that I made because of audience feedback mainly relate to my teaser trailer as had received a lot of feedback on my first draft and I made lots of changes and even re-filmed most of it so that it would attract the largest audience possible. If I would not have received the feedback from the audience I might have given in my teaser trailer as it was and it would not have been very complete as it would be missing some key horror features.

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

The three media products I created were the film poster and film magazine which were ancillary tasks and the main product which was the teaser trailer. The way that they all work together is that they all have the same conventions so that they all fit into the same theme of horror. They also have to have the conventions of what product they are; for example the film magazine should have a masthead, images, logos and text, which mine has. Some of the genre specific conventions for horror include the dark colours which are included in all three of my products and also tension which is created and in my teaser trailer it is created throughout the first part of it. In the film poster it creates tension once you see the knife coming around the door. In the film magazine it is mysterious and creates tension by only revealing a small amount. They all have to portray the image for which genre they are targeting as if the genre is not easily recognisable then people will be confused and may not be as interested.

The characters have been represented as innocent people throughout the whole teaser trailer and I think that this is a good representation because people immediately feel sorry for them but then when the text comes up with ‘Trust No-one’ people will begin to see another side of them as they don’t know who the murderer is. In the film poster the character that is holding the knife is hidden and this also creates tension for the teaser trailer as they know that it could be any of the characters who is the murderer. In the film magazine it focuses more around the murder rather than the characters but it can still be linked to the tension of not knowing who the murderer is.

I have targeted the same target audience for each of my ancillary tasks by following the same conventions of my teaser trailer for my film magazine and also my film poster. This meant that people who were interested by my teaser trailer would also be interested by my magazine front cover and also my film poster. People who enjoy watching horror movie normally enjoy being jumped and there is one part in my teaser trailer where this happens.

The theme between them all is ‘Mystery’ and in the teaser trailer this shows from the way that you never see the murderer and you do not know who he is. In the film magazine you’re wondering where the knife has come from and whether it has been connected with the murders, and in the film poster you want to find out who is holding the knife as then you will know who has been committing the murders.

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

Question:

1.       How do you develop/ challenge conventions in your film poster relating to Mise-en-scene?

2.       How do you develop/ challenge conventions in your film poster relating to Location?

3.       How do you develop/ challenge conventions in your film poster relating to Camera features?

4.       How do you develop/ challenge conventions in your film poster relating to Layout?

5.       How do you develop/ challenge conventions in your film magazine relating to Mise-en-Scene?

6.       How do you develop/ challenge conventions in your film magazine relating to Location?

7.       How do you develop/ challenge conventions in your film magazine relating to Camera Angles?

8.       How do you develop/ challenge conventions in your film magazine relating to Layout?

9.       How do you develop/ challenge conventions in your teaser trailer relating to Mise-en-scene?

10.   How do you develop/ challenge conventions in your teaser trailer relating to Location?

11.   How do you develop/ challenge conventions in your teaser trailer relating to Camera Angles?

12.   How do you develop/ challenge conventions in your teaser trailer relating to Sound?

13.   How do you develop/ challenge conventions in your teaser trailer relating to Character Representations?

14.   How do you develop/ challenge conventions in your teaser trailer relating to Make-Up?

 How do you develop/ challenge conventions in your teaser trailer relating to Dialogue?

Answers:

1.       I decided to develop the conventions of mise-en-scene in my film poster as I wanted it to make it look as though it would fit in with other film posters on a board. I therefore used a setting which was in the night which relates to the theme of horror. The positioning was important as it had just the right amount of the arm showing through to keep the mysterious feeling.

2.       The location which I used developed conventions as I used one of the main characters houses’ which is where the murderer is normally placed in other horror movies.

3.       The camera position for this poster was challenging as usually you just have the camera looking directly at a person in a movie poster, but this one only shows part of the arm from a side angle.

4.       The layout of this film poster is developing the conventions of a typical movie poster as it has the actors, directors and production companies along the footer and then the title and release date just above them. By placing the text here it meant that the main focus was still on the image.

5.       The mise-en-scene of my film magazine challenges conventions of a typical movie magazine as normally you would expect there to be an image of the actors when involved in the actual movie whereas mine is showing a shot outside of the movie which shows how people will need to read on inside to find out more about the movie itself.

6.       The location which I used for my film magazine challenges conventions as I had the pictures taken down one of the streets where the movie was filmed whereas in a typical movie poster the location would be in the middle of filming.

7.       The camera angles in my film magazine follow conventions of a typical film magazine as the shot is face on and it includes an image which is similar to other film magazines. I also think that the style of the camera shots should be the same on most film magazines as it is stereotypically known as the right thing to do.

8.       The layout in my film magazine follows conventions of a typical film magazine as I have the same structure as the popular film magazine ‘Empire’ and by doing this I think my film magazine will attract the largest audience.

9.       The mise-en-scene of my teaser trailer is following the conventions of a typical horror trailer as the lighting is low throughout the trailer; this creates the atmosphere of tension.

10.   The location of my teaser trailer follows conventions of a typical movie trailer as the woods where the first scene is filmed is very common for a horror movie trailer because it is a place where people don’t know what the area around them is like.

11.    The camera angles of my teaser trailer follows conventions of horror trailers as I use a large range of camera angles which means that people get shots of the surrounding area, facial expressions and discussions

12.   The sound of my teaser trailer challenges conventions of other teaser trailers as most other horror teaser trailers use one soundtrack which lasts throughout the whole trailer whereas I have decided to mix it up so that it creates tension.

13.   The character representations in my teaser trailers follow conventions of a typical horror trailer as it has the killer, someone who is being targeted and then the friend of this person and I would say that these people are typical in horror trailers.

14.   The make-up in my teaser trailer is following the conventions of a typical horror film as the innocent civilians look as though they are in their everyday clothes whereas the killer has a full black outfit and has a horror mask.

15.   The dialogue in my teaser trailer follows conventions of a typical horror trailer as near the beginning the dialogue is very calm and slow paced whereas the dialogue near the end is very panicky. 

Evaluation: Plans

QUESTION 1.
In what way does your media product use develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
• At least 9x still shots from trailer and analysed
• Comparisons with ‘real’ text (images/ embedded videos to support)
• Trailer poster/ magazine conventions? (logos, references, titles, layout, image, masthead
• Include references to real media texts that have influenced your production

Plan

(this will be the style of the interview)
Have the movie poster in the background which is on a large piece of white paper which shows what the interview is based around. I am then sitting in a chair in front of the poster and answering questions relating to question 1.


QUESTION 2.
How effective is the combination of your main products and ancillary texts?
• How do your 3 products work together (relationship between them)
• How have you used codes and conventions to portray the genre?
• How is the film genre suggested in all 3 products?
• How have you targeted the same target audience?
• How have you created a theme between them all?

How I will present this question:
I will present this question by having all 3 products rotating between each other in the background and then when certain themes come up they will be shown in the images. I will then commentate all this information over the images.

QUESTION 3.
What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
• Talk about how you have had audience feedback the whole way through and how this would produce a better final product
• There should be a link here to the entry on your blogs where you have audience feedback questionnaires results, graphs
• Post-it-notes, interviews, photographs
• How has your audience impacted on your production process?
• What changes did you make because of the audience feedback?
• How did audience feedback help you meet audience expectations and/or challenge expectations?
Plan for Answer:
For the first part I will have me commentating on all of the audience feedback features which I have had which includes: graphs, tables, photos e.g. for the second part I will have me asking a few questions to the members of the public who have seen the film as I want to know feedback on what they thought.

QUESTION 4.
Plan for question:
There will be images of each of these and then will have a voiceover describing all of the points below.
How I used: (Any problems& overcome?) (Beneficial?) (How it helped?)
• YouTube
• Phone
• Email
• Word
• Excel
• Wikipedia
• IMDB
• FindYourTribe
• Digital camera
• Film camera
• Photoshop
• Premiere
• Blogger
• FreeSound
How have I become more creative?

Final Teaser Trailer

Outtake Collection Movie

Final Film Poster

Final Film Magazine

Editing Stages

Editing Stages



This is the first stage of editing as I had just input all of my clips into premiere and I then re-organised all of them into the order that I wanted my film to be.

This is when I then added the sound into the background to create the tension effect. It gives a good atmosphere as without the music the movie is quite plain and boring.

This is where I added the titles and the titles which I added get the user included as they read them and try to understand what they mean.


This was the final file where the whole film has been edited together and the difference between this one and the last one is that this one has all of the sound edited so that some sections become louder than others and vice versa.

Two Film Magazine Drafts

Behind the Scenes photo's

Second Drafts of Film Poster

Audience Feedback - First Draft of Teaser

Audience feedback

Person 1:

“It’s a good first draft but I think that some of the clips could have been improved if they had been filmed with a tripod? Would have made it look a lot more professional and that’s what I think you should do, just re-film the bits which could be filmed using a tripod.”

Person 2:

“I think that it was very good, it is god at giving the perspective of the person who is trying to escape, could show less of first person perspective though, and if you showed more in the third person view it would show more area around the person as well.”

Person 3:

“I didn’t really understand the storyline just from the clips and I think that they could be broken down into shorter clips, like horror trailers normally are, so that they show more about what is happening.”

Person 4:

“I thought it was a very good trailer which only needs a few things to improve like the text and stuff.”

Person 5:

“I think that the film footage is good but I would change the text in-between each one of the clips as I think that it is too simple and could be improved with different effects.”

Positive

Good first draft
Some good clips
Good at giving perspective of civilian

Improvements to be made

Cut down some of the clips
Re-film some clips using a tripod – would make more professional
Make sure that it shows some more of the storyline
Show more in the third person
Improve the text between the clips

Timeline for Production& Evaluation

Timeline for Production& Evaluation

Friday 30th September – I had a rough draft of my film which I received feedback on and then realised that to improve it I needed to re film lots of sections because most of them could be done using a tripod.

Wednesday& Friday - 5th and 7th October – film all content which needs to be re-filmed to produce better quality material. On both of these days I will also need to take behind the scenes shots. I also need to take some high quality pictures which I can use for my film poster and film magazine.

Tuesday 11th October – I will discuss some media theories which can be applied to my trailer in order to see whether they fit in with a stereotypical horror trailer.

Friday 17th October – I will have the final edit for my teaser trailer, my final magazine cover and my final movie poster completely finished so that I can move on to the evaluation.

Monday 7th October – this will be the final deadline for research and planning but considering as I have almost finished this I can just move straight onto the evaluation.

Monday 28th November – this will be the final deadline for the evaluation as I will have received feedback and improved my evaluation by this deadline.

Friday 2nd December – this will be the final deadline for all of my A2 media coursework and I will have improved all of it by now and it will be ready to send off.

Shot List

Click on to zoom in.
Examples:
http://www.mediacollege.com/video/shots/

ELS (Extreme Long Shot)
The view is so far from the subject that he isn't even visible. Often used as an establishing shot.



VLS (Very Long Shot)
The subject is visible (barely), but the emphasis is still on placing him in his environment.



MS (Mid Shot)
Shows some part of the subject in more detail while still giving an impression of the whole subject.



MCU (Medium Close Up)
Half way between a MS and a CU



CU (Close Up)
A certain feature or part of the subject takes up the whole frame.



ECU (Extreme Close Up)
The ECU gets right in and shows extreme detail.



(OSS) Over-the-Shoulder Shot
Looking from behind a person at the subject.



Point-of-View Shot (POV)
Shows a view from the subject's perspective.

Hardware Used

Hardware used

Video Camera is a Sony Handycam

This video camera is very good as it is very easy to transport and produces high quality clips for recording. It runs on simple tapes which are very cheap so you don’t have to worry about buying memory sticks to put all of the footage onto. It also has very long shooting times so that I can film outside for a long time which means that I don’t have to always go back inside to recharge the battery. It also has a LCD touchscreen which means that it is easier to view the clips, and understand whether I think that I will need to redo them or whether I can keep the clips without having to go inside and watch them on the computer. It is also very simple to use and doesn’t take much getting used to.

We also used a new tripod for the cameras for steady/ still shots so that it was still for some shots where you want the audience to focus on what is happening in the shot. This tripod was good because it was large enough to hold up the camera and can be used at different lengths so that you can have high shots and low shots. In my first drafts I didn’t use a tripod and some of the shots looked really un-professional because the camera was moving when I would want it to be still. That is why I am re-filming quite a lot of my film as I think that I could get even better quality.

Software used for editing

Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 is the editing software that I use for the film and I think that this is a very good software to use because once you pick up on some of the simplest editing techniques then it is easy to use and you can create a movie in minutes. You can change colours in parts and slow other parts down so it has a wide range of options for all different genres of movies. It is also good for editing the sound which you are using as with one click you can lower the volume to a lower level and you can also have sounds overlapping so that you can have tension building up in certain parts. The reason that we didn’t use different editing software like Sony Vegas 9 is that those programs take some experience to use and first time editors will have a very hard time in learning all the different techniques of this program.

Adobe Photoshop CS5 is the photo editing software which I used for editing the photographs for the film magazine front cover and also the film poster. I have used this software before and this meant that I knew quite a few of the tricks to get the effect that I wanted in the photographs, it is easy to make some of the effects like black and white and other effects, but then it is also good for adding effects to the text because you can use a default text and still make it look as though you have downloaded the text from a website. The reason that we did not use a different software such as Fireworks is that the other image manipulating software have too many options spread around the page which can be quite daunting for anyone using it first time, Photoshop has a huge range of things you can do with it but only if you want too, the simplest options are given so people can easily add simple effects.

Drafting for Film Magazine

Drafting for Film Poster

Storyboard (Final)

Planning the Costumes& Props

Costumes and Props


Props

Knife – I used a knife as the killers weapon because I think that it is a traditional weapon in a horror film and I think that any other weapon would have made it un-realistic as knifes are easily accessible and also cheap.

Map – I used a map as a location finder of where the killer was going to strike next and this meant that people could see the pattern that the killer was following. It can give the storyline for the killer which will contribute to the film.

Deserted Street – I know that it is not really included as a prop but I thought that it was an important factor which contributes to the storyline that the place was empty and he was the last one remaining.
Suitcase& Clothes – the suitcase and clothes is to show how he is in a rush to get everything packed so that he can quickly leave this village and arrive at his new house. This creates tension that the killer is near and he is the next target.
Car – this will be shown shortly at the start of one clip and this will show that he has arrived at his new house with all his stuff, expecting to be safe. This makes the audience think that he is now safe.
Text on Wall – this will be the end turning point as it will show the person who thought they had escaped that they in fact, have not. It will give the audience a surprise and the text which I am using will not look very good before editing but I think that I can edit it so that it mixes in with the background.

Costumes

Killer: dark outfit in all dark colours to connotate that there is an evil background.

Mask – the mask is what is how people recognise the killer and I think that this shows how I am trying to connect with the stereotypical features of a horror film as every killer has their own mask.
Everyone else will have stereotypical clothes for someone in the modern days.

The stereotypical clothes for someone who is included in the film will be: