Audience and Genre of our trailer

WHICH OF THE AUDIENCE'S USES AND GRATIFICATION DOES YOUR TRAILER APPEAL TO? HOW HAVE YOU CONSTRUCTED THIS?

Bulmer and Katz came up with this idea of how the audience choose how to consume media for different purposes. Our trailer meets some of the ideas that Bulmer and Katz came up with. Our trailer reflects how the audience can escape from everyday problems and routines. This shown when the protagonist is investigating into the house and this allows the audience to following along with the protagonist as she tries to find out more about the house which causes a distraction for the audience from there everyday problems as they can apart of someone else problem and see how it get resolved. Personal relationship is also reflected in our trailer as the audience get an insight into the two sister and how they go and look into finding out about the antagonist. The audience would then follow along how they would end being separated in the film and how the protagonist copes with the emotional strain. the main purpose of our trailer was to entertain the audience, as putting in the plot of having a mysterious antagonist in an abandon house, recently being brought by a new family, allows the audience to be focused and following along how this plot is created.

HOW HAVE YOU APPEALED TO THE MALE GAZE IN YOUR TRAILER? IF YOU HAVEN'T, WHY DID YOU MAKE THAT DECISION?

For our trailer we did not consider about appealing to a male gaze because we wanted to gain a wide audience as we portrayed the protagonist as quite independent and confident in facing the antagonist. This would challenge the conventions as we wanted to keep a confident female, who would deal with the situations on her own or would have another member of family help her i.e her sister helps he in finding out about the mystery. We kept the focus mainly on the plot of the film as we thought that audience would intrigued to find out about what would happen next as the trailer presents enigma codes makes them eager to find out about the story as we have hinted that it is based on a true story.

WHAT GENRE IS THE TRAILER AND HOW HAVE YOU CONVEYED THIS TO YOUR AUDIENCE?

The genre of our trailer is a horror. The way we have conveyed this by meeting the relevant conventions such as having a mysterious antagonist who will be lurking around the film and will as much as they can in order to torture the protagonist. We have done this by having a long shot of the antagonist hiding behind the a tree in the forest which is then complemented by the eeire non diegetic sound, leaving a unknown identity and leaves the audience an enigma code, making them intrigued about what the intentions are from the antagonist's perspectives. We also included some sort of investigation for the protagonist to be confident in researching and allows the audience to follow along to find out more. The location that we used also meets the conventions of a horror film as we used a haunted and a forest to show the connection of the antagonist being present as it lurks around allowing the audience the presence of it being there. This would create a this unknown, tense atmosphere for the audience as they watch the film.

WHAT MAKES YOUR PRODUCTION DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHERS OF THE SAME GENRE? WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?

The unique selling point of our film is that we wanted to make the story dominant as the we gave linked our antagonist as having a close ancestor link with the family and will be revealed the history behind it and how the house was abandoned, due to the distinctive cut in relationship, leading to long term damage of losing people close to them within the film. It shows a way of the audience watching an broken history still being resolved by modern links in the present. We thought that having this element to our trailer would allow the audience to interested as it shows a continuation of the past, and how it impacts the characters in our trailer. 

EVALUATION 4

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

We used Youtube as apart of the construction of our production for this year, as it helps us record and gain ideas about what ideas we can put together to create a new idea fr our trailer. This included of watching opening two minutes to popular film trailer and then gaining ideas of which help format the conventions of a generic trailer, then we narrowed it down in terms of genre, which helped us choose which genre we were interested in making for our production. It gave us a lot of inspiration for our planning in terms of how to creating our mise-en-scene, making sure it was conventional to our trailer. We also used Youtube to help us learn how to use the adobe premiere elements 10 software for the editing software in order to create something new and develop upon our current editing skills.


We used blogger to help illustrate our ideas and thoughts building up to our final trailer. It allowed us to review our progress, which kept us on track of our plan for our production.

We use a computer to help us edit our trailer using the software called adobe premire elements 10, we have learnt a lot from this software as we were able to experiment using the different transitions for our trailer such fade in and out into black. 

The camera that we used was called the Nikon Coolpix L330 20MP 26x, we thought that the quality was much better compared to last year as be experimented with different cameras to make sure we didn't end up with low quality footage for our trailer. I have learnt how to playback the footage, to make sure we were happy with how they turned out.

We also used a tripod to help create a better quality of footage and its something that we improved from AS as we didn't have a tripod making the footage shaky. This vastly impacted our production this year as the footage more still and increase the viewing experience of the trailer.

Evaluation Feedback

I know you have been working on your responses - make sure they are uploaded as and when so I can support you further!  I'm looking forward to your annotated final production being uploaded, along with your voice over!

In your responses to your final production make sure you are clearly referring to choices and outcomes in an evaluative way - make sure you are addressing the areas outlined by me below:

What did you do? Explain a transition or effect you opted for in the editing process.  What effect did you achieve?  Explain how the choice you made was intended to make the target audience think or feel.  How does this show progression in your use of skills? Explain how this is better than your AS production's outcomes by linking to what you did in your portfolio last year.

These choices are really important for you to reflect on to show you fully understand how you have developed your skills - and make sure you evaluate the comments made by the test audience (the class) using specialist terminology.

We do not have long until the deadline for this final stage of your portfolio - so make sure you are pushing yourself and achieving the marks your efforts this year deserve!

EVALUATION 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

With the audience feedback on our trailer, giving us the strengths and weakness of our trailer from a public perspective. From the audience feedback some of the strengths of our trailer were our use of titles were used conventionally and professionally to the horror genre, also we had good pace of shots throughout the trailer which leaves enigma codes for the audience to watch the film to find out why certain events happen in the trailer. The props that we used such as the blood on the knife and the location eg. the haunted house and the forest as these met the expectations of a horror film to create tension and scare for the audience. The strengths of our trailer was that compared to last year there has been an improvement on the sound and the quality of the footage and it was one of our main improvement areas and so this year we wanted to focus on these target and thought that we had achieved this by buying a better quality camera and to establish this we tested out some of the other camera beforehand, comparing the quality of some of the other camera making sure they would turn out well when we uploaded it for editing. Also the sound being another aspect of which we focused on, as last year are sound was very unclear making it difficult to understand the storyline of the opening two minutes. However this year we decided to improve that by recording the dialogue separately then add it to make sure it was clearer for the audience to understand the trailer, as this is important for them to get to know the story and the dialogue and the voice over adhering to the convention of a horror film trailer as this would allows the trailer to engage with audience making them aware of background of the film, which may intrigue them to watch the film further. 

The weakness to our trailer included of needing adding more quick shots to show more of an insight of the investigation which would then draw the audience more into the plot of the film as this creating more enigma codes. Also another area was to add more scarier sound effects to build tension for the audience about the film. The titles shown in the trailer, could have been shown a little longer giving the audience time to read them and gain information about the film. I would agree with these weakness as this improvements would help to create a better viewing and understanding for the audience about the film.

AS Coursework Reflection

Digital Technology
The media technologies that we used to help construct our research and planning is that we used YouTube to find current and popular opening two minutes of different genres and start to analysis them picking out the relevant conventions which are stereotypically to that genre. Then we narrowed it down to looking at a few romance opening two minutes and analyse them closely in terms of what they include to attract there audiences. Using YouTube helps us to gain ideas and gain inspiration for example our hair tutorial we got inspiration and used it for our opening. We used YouTube to upload our preliminary task, as this was more quick and efficient rather than directly upload to blogger. We continued to use YouTube as we thought that it was one of the best way for us to gain inspiration and we further developed that at A2 making more detailed analysis and making close reference to the unique selling point of the film and how it make the film popular.

We used power point to help us to generate a tables and mind-maps to show the typical features of an opening two minutes and gave some example of the films to shows which one represents the most. We also compared some of these features to well-known film as they would have different ways of presenting their conventions. We thought that using this would give us a clear idea of what to expect in certain genres would help us later to make sure our ideas related to these expectation in order to attract the target audience.

We used blogger to illustrate our ideas and thoughts and the processes of making our opening two minutes, which shows where we got inspiration from and explained what we have used and why. We used google images to get images of our location, to show where the exact location for our filming was. However in A2 we decided to take the location pictures on our phones to show that we actually looked for a particular setting and went to go and see it and this is reflected though the photos on our A2 blog. The camera that we used for our AS production, the Sony handy-cam DCR-DVD 92E to film and to take pictures; however one of the major issues that we had with the camera is that it produced low quality footage, which had impacted our overall production. We also used the same camera to take pictures which resulted in low quality photos of the cast. However at A2 we introduced the cast during the consent video reflecting more professional outcome and made sure that we got permission to film them, instead of putting photos up of them before the consent. During filming of our AS project we had a lot of issues with the light as it varied a lot throughout our opening two minutes, as it became quite patchy. But at A2 we were more aware of the lighting and decided to film the footage more than once to make sure we were happy about the outcome of the footage and made sure we had backup footage just in case it did not reflect the same when editing. At AS we did not use a tripod, which then resulted us, getting a lot of shaky footage which made it more low quality, however at A2 we invested in a tripod and a better camera as we checked the quality before filming to make sure we did not repeat the same mistake. At A2 the quality of our footage was much better and clear and it was more still as it allowed the audience to follow what was going on in our trailer.

When editing our opening two minutes we used the Adobe element 10. This was the first time that we used this software, and so it took us some time to get used to it. AT AS, we should have spent more time with the editing as our opening two minutes has a lot of jump cuts and some of the shots were too long. We also had poor quality sound as our background sound was more dominant and overpowered the dialogue so it became more difficult to hear what is going on. At A2, we improve this by cutting down the footage to make sure the trailer is quicker and can build tension for the audience leaving enigma codes. At A2, we re-recorded the dialogue and put it over the footage to make sure it was clear and understandable about what was going on in the trailer.

Creativity

For our initial ideas at AS, we analysed a lot romance opening trailers, we got our ideas from watching current romance film openings and we made a table to show the features that we liked and compared them to other films and reflect the convention a romance film. We talked a lot about what we wanted to include in the opening two minutes of the film and put these, as originally we wanted to based our idea on having a texting theme where the female protagonist would have an online relationship and would plan to meet this guy in person, however we had to change this idea due to the fact that it would be difficult to capture and there would be too many shots of the text messages, which may go against some of the convention of a romance film. However at A2 we decided to generate ideas on a mind map and then combine them together to make one idea. We thought that this would be a better outcome as it allows us to see an overview of some of the other ideas, instead of sticking to one idea and having change it last minute like at AS. Also at A2 we improved our initial ideas through audience feedback, so we made a question to the public showing them the ideas that we came up as a group. Then we analysed these responses, allowing us to improve and gain inspiration to develop our production further, this is a major improvement from AS as we have thought that it was important to gain audiences perspective on what to expect in a horror film trailer and used them as a base of our trailer. This is important as we want to make sure that we attract the target audience with things that they personally like in horror films gaining popularity for it. By using Microsoft excel to produce charts, helped us as a group to discuss the audiences ideas and combined them to generate a better final idea. 

At AS and A2 we used the Adobe Premier Elements by adding additive dissolve in our production titles to make them more conventional to opening and a trailer. However at AS, we made our title directly on to the software and we did not experiment beforehand. But at A2 we improved this by creating and practiced making all our titles in PowerPoint by putting them on to word art and only having the stencil so that we could fill it in with something else. Also we improved at A2 we added more transitional effects in between our shots such as out fading in black for most our shot in our trailer, to leave an enigma code for the audience about what may happen in the film. We thought this was more effective than in AS we didn’t use a many transitional effects, making some of your shots very long and by adding transitions could made it bit more interesting and leave enigma codes. The practical methods that we used at AS in order to appeal to our intended audience is by using Youtube to look up makeup tutorials for the female protagonist in order to make sure she met the expectations of a romance film and used some ideas and substituted it to make it look similar on our protagonist, however at A2 we developed this by practising these techniques and putting them on to our blog pages to show how we would use the technique shown, of how to create a scary antagonist in order to scare the audience. For our production for AS we wanted to show clear indication of a romance film, but the outcome came out more like a drama as there were not many shots to show a fluency of what was going on making it difficult to understand the story-line. However at A2 we experimented with different shots by having higher angle shots, close up shots which engaging and have more going on in a trailer as we thought that this would intrigue the audience more to go and watch the film. We were unable to achieve our outcomes in our AS productions as we has long journey for the female protagonist to look around her new school, which became irrelevant to the convention of a romance films. At A2, we improve this by having many different shots such as the protagonist researching about haunted house, then persuading her sister to take part alongside the antagonist is lurking around and tries to take revenge. Then show intense scenes of her getting away from the antagonist. This allows the audience to have many scenes which would build tension for them about what may happen next.

Research and planning

For our AS research and planning, we researched into a lot of opening two minutes analysis, however we lacked going into depth about the key technical areas such as mise-en-scene ie location, lighting, costume e.t.c editing, sound and camera angles. Taking that feedback from there we developed this at A2 by looking at these areas and picking out the conventions and how it would suit the purpose of a trailer and identifying the unique selling point and how they used it effectively to make the trailer more popular. Also at A2 we used the Pearl and dean website as part of our secondary research to help us identify the specific audiences for a particular films such as sinister 2 and paranormal activity, and found the exact percentage of men and women, who would most likely watch it. We thought that this would be better for us to gain a sense of idea of which particular audience we want to appeal to our own trailer. 

We recorded our research on blogger to show our thought process of planning our trailer. The primary research that we conducted at AS was a questionnaire to the public about their interests about film they like and finding about particular genre that they prefer to watch, this made it bit more generic for us as a lot of these findings went against our idea and when putting these ideas together they became outnumbered or was biased towards a genre that we weren't as comfortable with creating. However we developed this at A2 by picking a genre, ie horror film trailer and decided to create a specific questionnaire about that genre to see what the audience would like to see in a horror film trailer and we gave them some ideas with closed questions to give them an option about what they would prefer. We thought that this was much better as giving a restricted options allowed the audience to show what their preferences would be, and would suit us better and being about to film in certain areas such as location, we gave the public a choice from such as the woods, the park, the haunted house. We thought that this would be better as this would make it easier and affordable for us to film.

 At A2, we developed our research and planning by practicing some of the makeup tutorial as in AS we did not trial the makeup and we improvised it, which led to not meeting the expectations such using the right makeup ensuring that they light fitted well with it and not create any dark spots. At A2, we trailed the makeup beforehand and we added some different styles when making it as this developed our outlook for our antagonist as we decided to add the black and red face paint under the eyes instead of leaving it plain white as shown in the tutorial. We thought that this would be better as this would help create a better effect by practicing this by putting our personal perspective on it and show up well on the camera whilst filming the trailer. At A2, we developed our initial ideas by asking the audiences about their view about which ideas they liked and which one we could develop, this was a better ideas than at at AS as we were continuing to develop our ideas to make our film trailer look better.

Our AS storyboard was not as clear and was very basic in terms of illustrating our ideas for our opening two minutes as the pencil drawing started to fade, making it difficult to show what was going on. However at A2, we develop this by making a storyboard and adding colours to show the specific mise-en-scene and it clearly showed some of the camera shots such as the long shot of the forest to show exactly where the film was set. We also used black screens by colouring the the screen to show the clear cuts between the shots making them quick and enigmatic. At AS we didn’t use much dialogue as there was a problem with the dialogue being overpowered by the background noise which made it difficult to understand what was going on in the opening two minutes. At A2, we improved on this by having a scripted and we re-recorded the sound so it was clear for the audience to understand what was going on.

Post-production

From our audience feedback on our the weakness of our AS production included of needing to use a tripod as some of the footage came out looking shaky, We also needed add more conversation in the two minutes to allow the audience to know what was going on in the trailer. We had a lot of problems with the sound as it became overpowered and which led it to be more low quality in footage. Also In our AS production we got feedback to add more camera shots such as close up of the characters and long shots of the setting. I thought that there were a lot of jump cuts, losing the focus of the storyline. We didn't use much editing tool in our AS production as a lot of it was very cutty. The audience feedback also showed us that our dialogue was very poor as the background noise overpowered it making it difficult to understand what was going on.

At A2, we took this feedback from our post production last year and enhance this by adding a range of shots in our trailer some including, a long shot of the forest, high angles of the protagonist running down the stairs, we had medium shot of the two sister discussing about making plans on the investigation, we also had more of a dark lighting with the over the shoulder of the protagonist doing individual research, we had many long shots of the tense moment when the protagonist is running and close up shots to show the audience what the protagonist was doing. Also we invested in a tripod to make sure that our footage was not shaky and this increase our quality of our footage. Alongside, we brought a new camera, Nikon Coolpix L330 20MP 26x Zoom Bridge Camera in black from Argos costing us £70 and we made a post about us trying out the camera making sure it would create a better viewing of the footage that we filmed, as our footage last year had poor quality making it less appealing to the audience. In terms of editing we improved this by adding additive dissolve in our production titles to make it look more professional and cinematic. We also decrease the length of the footage or shot length in a trailer as this would adhere to the conventions of trailer as it would create enigma codes for the audience to be intrigues to watch the film further. Also we added bit of a flash to some of the photos at the beginning to show current place and situation in which fades to black to show where it all began. For the dialogue we improve this by recording the sound again and muting the audio of the footage and put it on top of the footage to make sure that the conversation was clear and easy to follow. The audience feedback was useful as it helped us improve on our performance from last year as this was fairly new to me in years production and now having some experience with the feedback back, I can develop upon my skills further creating a better product as shown in my A2 production.

Using conventions from real media texts

At AS, our production lacked meeting some of the major conventions of a romance opening two minutes, which the made it quite generic. Our opening two minutes lacked in meeting some of the convention due to the length of our shots, ie the long shot of the protagonist walking became more dominant in the opening two minutes, which then didn't show meet the conventions of a romance film. The setting of the film at the beginning was not conventional to romance film, as the lighting and the quality of the footage affected this, as it was unclear to the audience where the setting was and how it would reflect upon the protagonist life. for majority of the opening two minute relied on the voice over to lead the story, the shots did not correspond with them making it difficult to understand the storyline, which would make it a bit long extended which goes against the conventions of a romance opening scene.

However at A2, we developed this by analysising horror film specifically after analyzing many different types of genre trailers. this was important as it helps us look at the conventions of a trailer and how it is formatted, giving us an idea of how to create our trailer accordingly to other popular ones making sure we meet the basic expectations of a trailer, for example having a green film rating screen and then having an introduction to the production titles, and then many quick scene to show parts o of the film. We developed this from AS as we did not look into the format of a romance film and how an opening would be formatted, which resulted us having a long introduction of a journey of the protagonist, this would lose the audience focus of what is going and lack a story at the beginning. At A2, we then developed this by making a table of different genres exploring the typical conventions of a horror film trailer ie using PowerPoint to generate a table on the different convention such setting being in a haunted house or a forest. having the antagonist at part of the trailer to start to scare the audience. take some ideas to help us format our own ideas. making sure it fits with the horror genre.

We have developed our A2 production to make sure we meet the conventions of a horror film trailer, as we experimented with our plans, such as the makeup trial we decided to find a tutorial that we could do and then practiced it and made some changes and adapted it to fit our genre and storyline. We thought that would be better compared to AS as we didn’t look into the makeup of the protagonist which led to the makeup not be being reflect on the camera. Our A2 production met the conventions of a horror film trailer as we include a long shot of the forest to show the audience where the film was being set and by showing hints of the antagonist. This would show the audience a background of the plot and how the antagonist is introduced. the props that we used were effective and met the conventions of horror trailer as we used blood connoting death and danger and using the knife show the capabilities of the antagonist.

The format of our AS production titles did not meet the conventions as they were out of time when the shots were changing for example when the directors names come up they faded out at different times, resulting it to be out of time. However we developed this by making the production titles beforehand which would relate to our film such as getting quotes from well known magazines, “SCARIEST FILM OF 2016”suggest that we promoted our film as well by putting in quotes from other people make the film seem more popular.

The director which influenced our style of work was Oren Peli , who directed the paranormal activity films. I thought that he influenced our ideas on our film trailer in terms of the features shown as having including the choices of location for exmaple a house with dramatic events happening there, alongside having the characters being close ie family member investigating into the house and the past of it. we analysed his film trailer and found this as common theme at occurred a lot throughout them, and it is a way of telling a continuous story of a new family experiencing scarey events. This help us form our ideas and how to format our trailer making sure it fit the convention of a trailer.

EVALUATION 2

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

We added annotations to our trailer to explain some of the shots that we used in our trailer.

Directors commentary

EVALUATION 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. of teaser trailers/poster/magazines)

The title of the film is conventional to a horror film trailer as it is expected by the audience that are aware of what the film is called, making it easier for them to research the film for later updates. We decided to have a hidden eye in the wall to show indication of the antagonist of our film, which is more personal to our film. It creates this suspension for the audience as it come out searching for the protagonist, however, has direct contact with the audience, making them feel apart the trailer, making them intrigued about what will happen in the film. The stencil font that we used is called Adobe Caslon Pro Bold size 7, but when putting the titles together we did adapt the size so that it would look more prominent in the trailer looked more self centred and noticeable for the audience. We also thought that decreasing the brightness and contrast of the background on Photoshop to create a more darker atmospheric look, which connotes a mystery for the audience to figure out by watching the full film. We have also kept this consistent throughout film poster, by having the same background image but we have changed it slightly to show a more darker transitional effect, showing the most powerful side of the antagonist. By having this allows the audience to remember distinctly about the film as this is the unique selling point which the audience will be able to remember.This is conventional to the horror genre as usually it shows how the antagonist is lurking around to get rid of the protagonist and hints the audience about the antagonist personality.

For the location of the film, we decided to film in an abandoned house where most of story happens in there and is usually where the protagonist tends to be more eager about the house and investigates. The antagonist is also quite prominent in this location as it usually lurks inside the house, torturing the protagonist at the same time making it more difficult to complete her investigation. Also the woods is another main location for our film as this is where the antagonist will be introduced and the dark lighting also contributes to the convention of a horror trailer as this creates more scare and tension for the audience about how the story will unfold.

We used a variety of camera angles and shots including establishing shot of the wood location, shot reverse shot with the medium shot between the sisters as they are talking about doing the investigation together. And the trailer begins with a lot of quick close up shot of the photos where one of the girl has been killed, we also use close up shots of the newspaper to show the plot of the film, giving the audience an insight into what to expect in the film, we also used angle shot at some of the more intense moments to show the protagonist being tortured and being alone fighting the antagonist. Also there is a clear sight of who is given more prevalence with the over the shoulder shots of the protagonist researching about the history of the house. This allows the audience to have a main focus as this would immediately show that they would side with her and follow her as she investigates. Alongside as the camera pans around the protagonist whilst they set up for there overnight stay at the forest, suggests that we have presented the protagonist as quite fearless, but yet vulnerable to which she is unaware of the consequences that causes the antagonist to go after for revenge. This adheres to the conventions of a horror film trailer as usually the protagonist is the more confident, but yet target harshly towards the antagonist and this is effective as it starts to builds tension, as this puts the protagonist at danger. But this leaves enigma codes to which the audience would continue to watch to find out of the protagonist would survive in the film or not.

The trailer begins accordingly which meets the expectations of a typical trailer as all trailer have an official start showing the age restriction for the film, which has been provided by the film rating website as they watch and judge the suitable audience for this trailer. So we thought that by adding a this would make the audience aware about the age of which this film can be view, so for our film we have put that there needs to an accompany adult for people under 17, as there are some some language used throughout the film, which the audience should be aware about. Then the green screen fades out and we are introduced to the production title which to created on Photoshop and added it to our trailer, alongside it we also used some special effects such as adding the additive dissolve to the title and the picture to go from black and white to colour making conventional to a trailer as it shows that the film has been created by a highly budgeted film.

Some of the other titles that we used allows to give the audience some information and some background information about the film, as this would make them more intrigued and interested to find out about the storyline. Having one of the titles as "BASED ON A TRUE STORY" adheres to the conventions of a horror film trailer as this makes the trailer more believable to the audience knowing that it has happened in real life, and this is a key element of which will grab the audience's attention towards the film.  We also added some quotes from magazine, to show the popularity of the film, by having well known magazine helps to promote the film by sharing audience bases across both the magazine and the trailer. We decided to have the cast names in the film trailer as this allows the audience to identify who is in the trailer, and may recognise them from provided films. We used the same font style, but we changed it by having the white font then fade into another title or scene as we wanted to keep a them going and it makes the trailer seem more serious for the audience to gain a sense of what is going on in the film.