Part 1: In what ways does your media product compare to real-life films? How did your horror trailer fit the horror genre? Through the construction process of our trailer, we aimed to use as many different horror conventions that we could. The main critic behind genre theory, Thomas Schatz talks about the importance of genre conventions in his book “Hollywood Genres.” His clear theoretical view stated that through genre is the best way to analyse films and saw it as the most powerful force in films. Genre helps to sell movies to an audience of fans, clearly presenting them with clear expectations to understand the film. It also helps filmmakers to construct the product by outlining exactly what the fans of genre expect. He felt that genre only changed within its own limits being careful to keep enough variety to maintain interest but not too much that it loses the audience’s sole attention. Some examples of the typical horror conventions we included in our own trailer are: Mise-en-scene Restricted narration is used every time Blank appears on screen. We leave it up to the audience to determine what happens to the characters after Blank has shown himself. We used a creepy location of a woodland setting. We filmed nearly all the shots here to get across the feel of being lost and isolated.
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Transcript
Part 1: In what ways does your media product compare to real-life
films?
How did your horror trailer fit the horror genre?
Through the construction process of our trailer, we aimed to
use as many different horror conventions that we could. The
main critic behind genre theory, Thomas Schatz talks about the
importance of genre conventions in his book “Hollywood
Genres.” His clear theoretical view stated that through genre is
the best way to analyse films and saw it as the most powerful
force in films. Genre helps to sell movies to an audience of
fans, clearly presenting them with clear expectations to
understand the film. It also helps filmmakers to construct the
product by outlining exactly what the fans of genre expect. He
felt that genre only changed within its own limits being careful
to keep enough variety to maintain interest but not too much
that it loses the audience’s sole attention.
Some examples of the typical horror conventions we included in our own trailer are:
Mise-en-scene
Restricted narration is used every time Blank appears on screen. We leave it up to the audience to
determine what happens to the characters after Blank has shown himself.
We used a creepy location of a woodland setting. We filmed nearly all the shots here to get across
Part 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and
ancillary texts?
What key aspects did you include in your poster & magazine cover? How/why did you
include them?
I wanted to create a poster and magazine cover which stood out and caught my audience’s attention
through a sinister vibe.
When creating my ancillary products I made use of the college photography studio and cameras. For
my poster I took a picture of Danny’s eye then manipulated it on Adobe Photoshop CS6 by using
parameters such as brightness, contrast and shadow effects. I added the over emphasised veins in
the corners of his eye by using an image from Google, then layering it on top and deepening the
colour red. The images below show the transition from before the veins to after. Although only a
subtle difference, it definitely adds to the creepy feel that our trailer conducts.
I also took a picture of Danny’s hand to place inside the eye to look as though Blank is reaching out to grab you. I found this fairly hard when trying to get the proportion right in comparison to the small image of Blank inside the pupil but felt happy with how it turned out. Here are the original images.
The main image of the eye is an extreme close-up which makes the audience feel slightly uncomfortable which was the feel I was aiming for. The dark font gives it a sinister edge and works well in conjunction with the bright white text at the top. I acquired the font from Dafont.com and even though it is not the same as in our trailer, I feel it looks just as eerie. The tagline of “You can’t catch what you can’t see” is in a different font as having it in the same font as the title didn’t look quite right. The low key lighting over the whole poster generally adds to the horror mood and sets the sinister tone for our trailer. In comparison to this real life poster, the sense of emotion isn’t quite the same. The real poster here is fairly brightly coloured but still has the dark edges to give it the horror feel. This poster could connote that what you see isn’t always what you get as if you look closely, you can see the character’s reflections in the water but with skull-like faces. This influenced my poster as you have to look hard enough to see the miniature Blank and his hand reaching out, suggesting that Blank isn’t all he seems. This link takes you to my Flickr analysis of this poster.
My magazine cover was very much influenced by this real life Empire cover. Here you can see the
comparison of mine and the real one.
My main image is of Danny Petts who is posing as the smug director of our film, Blank. I chose him
over an image of Blank as I didn’t want to give away too much on the front cover in terms of the
villain. Instead I want the audience to buy the magazine to find out more themselves. The dark
background gives the horror feel and allows the white and yellow text to stand out. I began with the
title and my main image and then began to add text and extra images around him, making sure he
was still the main focal point. Here you can see the process on Adobe Photoshop CS6.
The iconic red title of “Empire” was a definite factor that I wanted to include. Not only does it stay to the magazine’s own typical features, it also connotes blood, staying to the horror genre. Here is the link to my Flickr analysis of the real Empire magazine cover. http://www.flickr.com/photos/94397512@N03/8678221900/
I chose Empire to base my magazine on as it entices more of a mainstream audience than others such as Sight & Sound who attract more of a classy, up-market audience. I feel it would highly benefit
being promoted in Empire magazine as we would get more of a wider ranged audience, thus creating more advertising and therefore more viewers wanting to watch our fim.
How do you poster and magazine cover tie into the style and look of your trailer? What
audience are you aiming for?
My poster and magazine cover have successfully tied into the style of our film trailer. I chose two very
different photos to use as my main image which helps create a sense of enigma as I have left it fairly
open as to what the character Blank actually does to his victims. Our tagline of “You can’t catch what
you can’t see” does not feature in our trailer as we deemed it unnecessary due to the lyrics of the
soundtrack featuring in it instead. Both my poster and magazine cover are in low key lighting which
links to our trailer being dark and dramatic as you can see from the screenshot of an inter-title here.
As mentioned before, our target
audience was concentrated to mainstream fans of psychological horrors which Empire would help
promote. The combination of my ancillary products and our trailer would definitely appeal to this
target demographic as many typical horror conventions are used in all three pieces of work.
By not having the villain as the main image on either ancillary product, it allows the audience to be
drawn in more as they want to know who the villain character is and what his signature characteristic
is. Blank features in our trailer for short periods of time to further entice the audience into wanting to
watch the whole film.
Below are the links to my Flickr analyses of both my final poster and magazine cover.
Finally, all 4 parts of my evaluation have been published using the online publishing site, Issuu. This
site allows you to scroll through my evaluation in a book-like format and allows for pictures and
embedded videos to be shown along with all my written work. Here is the link to the homepage of
the site: http://issuu.com/
Part 4: What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
What praise and criticism was highlighted in your focus group screening? Which of the
points did you agree with? What score did your trailer receive and were you happy
with it?
We showed our rough cut version of our trailer, Blank, fairly early on but due to some technical problems with After Effects software, the inter-titles and effects were not finished and looked unprofessional. Here is a link to our rough cut on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYgH_i_uk3Q Some of the positive comments that were made were: “Good camera angles” x3 “Has good jumps at various points” x4 Some negative comments we received were: “Inter-titles need work – better font and wording” x5 “Music didn’t work all the way through, used it too much” x4 “Needs an effect or something at the end” x2 Here is the link to our focus group screening where you can view the class discussing the final version
of our trailer. Some pupils also read out their personal comments about it, both positive and negative
which greatly helped us in evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of our trailer.
We took all these comments on board and worked hard to improve our trailer before our final focus group screening. We agreed that the ending needed an effect or a jump but explained that we had planned to do this but couldn’t because of software issues.
Which last minute changes did you make because of the focus group screening? How
did you make the changes and do you think they have helped?
Some last minute changes we made were mainly ones involving the soundtrack and sound effects.
This was to make the sounds fit throughout the whole trailer in conjunction with the shot on screen.
We had made sure we kept the original audio files so we could go back and alter them until we were
satisfied. This was mainly because we had gotten mixed reviews about having the soundtrack with
the singing all the way through. We ended up changing it so the singing faded out at parts and was
replaced with creepier sound effects. This helped add to the general eerie feel of the trailer. We also
improved the inter-titles using Adobe After Effects to give the text a professional sheen. We ended up
having two different versions of our trailer. The one we called “final” can be viewed by clicking on the
We couldn’t decide which version we liked best so we showed them both to the class and the vote
was spilt nearly equally. In response to this, I have uploaded both to my blog. In the “final” version,
we took out the wobbly visual effect when Blank is on screen as we decided that it didn’t look quite
right having it in. However we much prefer the soundtrack in the “alternative” version as it faded out
at parts and sounded more distorted which the genre of our trailer perfectly but unfortunately we
couldn’t manage to get this soundtrack onto the “final” version.
Final version with no wobbly effect. Alternative version with wobbly effect.
How did your trailer perform at the final, evaluation screening?
The final evaluation screening of Blank was another helping stage in determining which aspects worked and which weren’t so effective. We received many positive comments, however also received
some constructive criticism which we respected and some of the time agreed with. Some examples of positive comments were: “Soundtrack was good” x6 “Jumps throughout were good” x2 “Really cool villain” x2 “Collision cuts were awesome” It was good to see that our peers connected with our trailer and most liked the contrapuntal soundtrack and stated that the jump scares worked effectively. They agreed that we had improved it significantly compared to our rough cut screening. Some of the negative comments were: “Lack of low key lighting” x3 “Voices are too quiet” x3 “Would have worked better at night” We explained that shooting at night was just unachievable with the situation we had with our group all living far away from each other. We did however agree with the people who said we needed more low key lighting and took it into strong consideration when making last minute changes. Unfortunately we felt that making these changes would be a task we did not have time for so only changed a few major shots to make them darker. On the other hand, we didn’t agree that the voices in our trailer were too quiet. We took the comment on board and re-watched our trailer many times but found that the speaking was clear enough to be heard without it being too loud but we understood that others have their own opinions and were grateful for the comments we received. The two images below are screenshots from our trailer of when there was dialogue.
A full write-up of all the comments can be found on my blog under “3a. Main Product = Feedback from final screening.” The average score for our trailer was 8.17. Here you can see a breakdown of the scores we received, comparing our rough cut scores to our final cut scores. We were very happy with the final scores for our trailer and were pleased that the majority understood the narrative and the reasoning behind the highly contrapuntal soundtrack. As you can see, the scores improved since our rough version with more people giving us a 9/10 and one even giving a 10/10.
Are you happy with your final trailer? Do you think it would appeal to your target
audience? What is your favourite aspect of the trailer and why?
I personally feel incredibly happy with our final trailer. Our group of 4 was put together by the
teacher and we initially did not know each other. However, we soon learnt to work well together and
to bounce off each other’s ideas. We had a few complications at the beginning of the process such as
having to re-film due to continuity issues but I feel we overcame these well as a group and moved
positively forward from any problems we encountered. We made the most out of our time given and
also the resources we had while doing photo-shoots. This is an example of a photo we took but didn’t
use, I feel it also shows the fun we had (climbing into the cupboard!) whilst on this learning journey.
Throughout the whole production process, we always made sure we thought about how to appeal to
our target demographic. We originally decided to appeal to a mainstream audience of psychological
fans with a hint of aspirer influence. We also planned to attract both genders but as seen below, the
predominant image we chose as our main target audience was of a young indie looking female. The
following link takes you to Flickr where you can also view my analysis and some extra information