2. In what ways does your media project use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? USE: Our teaser trailer uses conventions that have been used in many past horror films; old and recent. We have tried to replicate a Dogme 95’ style film. Examples of Dogme 95 horror movies are Paranormal Activity 1 & 2 and the Blair Witch Project. Whilst filming, we did not use a tripod and all filming was done on location. We tried to make the film as realistic as possible, as if we ourselves were camping out in an abandoned field. Although in order to make our film easy to view, we had to use artificial lighting from low light torches and the video camera itself.
3. DEVELOP: Our teaser trailer takes on specific conventions from the horror movies we have researched, for example, Friday the 13th (2009), the Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity 1&2 and Let Me In. Whilst conducting our research we found that the idea of ‘reality’ and ‘hyperreality’ was of key importance in creating an effective horror movie. Therefore, we decided to play on the fact that our trailer was set in a non-artificial setting and focusing mostly on the characters expressions and body language, rather than on the ‘villain’ itself. We developed some of the conventions which are used for a horror/thriller genre of film, for example, using blood on the ‘dead body’ *see 0.21 – 0.25* and screams in the darkness - *see 0.19 – 0.21* The use of close up shots of the characters faces are used in order to create a sense of familiarity with the certain characters and also a sense of fear within the audience. We felt that using a hand held camera was more effective than using a tripod, as the audience is able to feel like they are part of the action, experiencing events the same was as the protagonist.
4. CHALLENGE: Instead of keeping the killer of our movie anonymous, we decided to reveal what the killer looked like instead of keeping it hidden. We decided this would be more effective in developing the narrative of our trailer, as it is only 30 seconds long and with short, sharp editing. Therefore, we felt it would not give to much away to the audience, and it would still create a sense of fear which was our main aim whilst creating the trailer. For the font used in our trailer, we used Courier New which is very similar to the font used in the Paranormal Activity movies. This form is symbolic of murder/police investigations. We also used the colour red for our font as it signifies danger, blood and violence which is what our teaser trailer is solely based on!
5. How effective is the combination of your main and ancillary texts?
6. I believe that our magazine cover, poster and teaser trailer combined together to create an effective media production. The same actor was used on both the magazine cover and the poster, which created continuity within the texts, yet we used different pictures which makes both of the texts more interesting. I feel that the genre is instantly recognisable within all three texts, and this is important as we want the audience to feel as if they can identify with the genre and the characters, engaging with the text as much as possible. The continuous use of the colour red and the presentation of blood helps to create the dramatic feel within the reader and during our research we found this was used widely throughout the horror genre films. The images used on both the cover of the magazine and the poster are similar to the image portrayed when the girl lying on the ground dead at 0.20 of our teaser trailer. Although the model used for the poster and magazine was not used as an actor in our movie, it is more interesting for the viewer as they are unaware of who the model is and what she represents
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8. We used 8 questions, with some being open ended and some closed questions where you can chose from set answers.
9. A survey that can be answered by the general public on our media production is the most effective form of research for making our trailer to the best of our ability and being able to internalise the ideas and criticisms the audience gives.
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11. Quotes from the answers for question 2 and 3 on our survey ‘I really liked the busy telephone at the end as this shows that they were really in danger and gives a sense of abandonment’ ‘The transitions between shots was good as it was fast paced and it reminded me of previous horror trailers I have watched’ ‘The screaming in the dark was tense! The close up of the girl holding the camera as she was scared was brilliant as it is realistic and she looks very scared’ ‘I think that you should have used red font instead of white as red signifies blood and horror movies regularly use red when advertising their products’ ‘The teaser trailer was quite short and it could have been longer’ ‘There should have perhaps been some opening credits with the film production companies logo’
12. From the audience feedback we received, we decided as a group that one of our main improvements needed to be on the font and colour of the text, as well as having perhaps more action shots. We changed the font to Courier New and changed the font of the text to a deep red, which in the end piece actually looked a great deal better than in our first draft. We found that people’s opinions often differed on how long the trailer should last for, as some saying that 30 seconds was enough, where as others believed the trailer should have been longer. We decided that we included all the footage we needed within the 30 seconds and that if it had been any longer, it could have been compared to a conventional trailer rather than a teaser trailer, which was our main worry whilst creating a trailer and editing the footage. We feel that the narrative and plot of the trailer was made successfully and that it is easy for the audience to understand what is going on and how things may develop.
13. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? PICASA: Picasa is a photo editing software which I used in order to create a professional, finished look to our images that we were using for our ancillary tasks. We took the photographs on a 14.1 megapixel camera which does not produce the best photo’s, however we used the tools on Picasa to make it look as if we had used a very expensive camera! I believe Picasa helped us to create really successful images in a short amount of time, and it is also very easy to use. In Picasa you are able to use the ‘tuning’ tools for example, to create highlights and shadows and adjust the amount of black and white colour you have in each photograph.
14. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP: We used adobe photoshop for both our ancillary tasks, to edit and create text for our images. Adobe photoshop took a very long while to get used to as it can be quite complicated at first, but as we figured out how to make different layers and create images and text effectively, we ended up with both of our ancillary tasks made to the best we could achieve Adobe photoshop was easy for us to access as we were lucky enough to have it on the computer’s at our school. Therefore, we could spend time together as a group and edit the tasks together.
15. BLOGGER: My group used www.blogger.com to record all of our research and we would update it when we had completed one of our tasks or found something useful for creating our project, for example, a website or youtube video telling us how to ‘have good horror make up.’ Blogger was very useful as we all had access to the username and password so we could edit postings or look at what each other had posted and gain ideasand knowledge from one another. Blogger was also efficient as we could gain audience feedback from that, with teachers regularly viewing our blog and our peers from other classes. We used blogger for both research, planning and evaluation and as we used blogger for our AS level, we gained great knowledge on how to use blogger effectively.
16. iMovie: iMovie was readily available for us to use on the apple Mac computers that we could access at school. We used many of the iMovie sounds for our trailer. For example, ‘ Night camp, alien impact, police car siren passing and telephone busy’. We found it difficult to find sounds from other movie websites as most of it was copyright and we were thus not allowed to use it in our own trailer. It was also very difficult to find the right sounds that we wanted on iMovie and so we had to improvise with already existing sounds and putting them on top of each other etc. We found iMovie very easy to use as all of us had previous experience with this software, and the editing process was done sufficiently due to the help iMovie gave us.
