The document discusses the development and promotion of a student horror media project including a trailer, magazine cover, and movie poster. It describes how the projects use conventions from real media products, such as age ratings and logos. Feedback was positive overall, though some audience members felt aspects like the music or narrative could be clearer. A variety of software and online tools were used for production, research, and evaluation, including Adobe programs, iMovie, social media, and questionnaires to collect audience responses.

1. 1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
Most movie trailers have a green preview screen at the start of the trailer, so
that is shows that it’s suitable fore the target audience’s age group, which in
our case was an 18. This also brings a sense of realness to the trailer.
Another convention, which is used in trailers, is the logo of the production
title. This was fairly hard to create as our previous ones went wrong,
however, I was able to create this by using iMovie. This is effective as it links
in well to the trailer, as it consists of dark colours.
Mise en scene is important in every movie, as it says a lot about the scene.
We chose to do most of the filming in the church, as this is a religious place,
linking it back to the narrative. Filming outside was quite hard as people
would walk by and cars would drive by, so we had to wait around for a bit,
and quickly film when we had the chance. I think by having a mixture of day
and night shots, it makes the trailer feel more real.
Iconography was used, such as blood and a weapon. However, this was
subverted as we decided to use a candlestick that was in the church, rather
than a knife, which is usually used in horror movies. We wanted to keep
blood and gore to a minimum, as when I carried out my questionnaire about
horror movies, 61.3% of the people stated that they weren’t frightened of
blood.
Obviously the editing had to be faced passed in order to build tension.
However, this was done more towards the end because the first half of the
trailer is in chronological events, as this was the build up. So, the second half
consists of shorter shots and many cuts.
We used a majority of different camera angles, such as point of view, and
close ups. Point of view is effective as you can see it from the actor’s eyes.
Also, the use of shadow is just effective; especially as you cant see the actor,
but just her reflection. The dark lighting adds emphasis to this.
For our magazine cover, we got inspiration from this Total Film cover. We
liked the idea of only uses the colours grey, white and red, especially for the
image, rather than having the actual colour.
We used the convention of having the name of the movie on the picture and
the language makes it sound exciting
A main cover convention is that it has the date of release, issue number and
price somewhere on the magazine, but in a smaller font size. Websites are
optional, not all magazines have this, but as we used Total Film for
inspiration, we decided to include this, as they do this too.
Having a button is a way of making the public to want to purchase the
magazine, as they usually consist of some competition, which is what we did.
The barcode is essential too.
Cross in the background connotes religious imagery, linking it back to the
trailer.
Pull quotes are often used when an interview is in a magazine. This quote is
powerful in the sense that it makes you want to read the article, but doesn’t

2. give too much away. Changing ‘bad girl’ to red makes it stand out, and also,
red portrays evil.
Some more inspiration. Shows that other magazines such as Empire use a
similar colour scheme
Used Carrie for inspiration for the poster – liked the colour scheme.
Tagline – doesn’t reveal too much about the film, but enough to give
audience an insight.
We decided to just have an image of a cross on the poster, rather than an
image of the actress, as it gives more information about the film. It
represents the anti- Christ, giving it a devilish effect.
Including the age rating on the poster is a convention, which is used in most
posters – need to inform the audience of the age group which are allowed to
watch the film. By making it an 18, it would allow us to be more open with
scenes and language.
Coming soon – creates suspense. Didn’t want to give a fixed date of release
Our trailer shows that it’s more focused on the villain than the heroin, which
subverts usual narratives of horror movies. We chose to focus on the
monstrous feminine, and this is shown later on in the trailer. The red tint
connotes evil, blood and hell.
2) How effective is the combination of your main ancillary texts?
There’s continuity between all three products. For example, the title of
Damnation, which is in all three texts. Imagery, such as the cross, which is
shown in the magazine cover and poster, and a shot of a cross, is also shown
in the trailer during the church scene. Lastly the colour scheme which runs
throughout.
Same face of actress on the magazine cover as in the trailer – main actor –
this will sell and promote the movie.
We had the same tagline on the poster and trailer. However, they are
different in font and colour, as we wanted it to be simple on the poster,
without it having a glow. The glow links well with the trailer, rather than the
poster.
The font for the Damnation title is simple and effective, making it stand out.
Its also the same shade of red as the cross, showing continuity once again.
Dominant colour scheme
Images – magazine is of the actress as this sells and promotes the movie. For
the poster, having a cross links to storyline and movie title. It keeps the
audience wondering who the actor is, making them want to watch the trailer.

3. 3) What have you learned from your audience feedback?
These are some of the questions from my first questionnaire that I created,
which was to get some feedback from my target audience about what they
expect to find in horror movies and trailers. I used the answers from this
survey to create the questions for the questionnaire about audience
feedback.
We were really pleased with the feedback we got back, as it was rather
positive and encouraging. From the premiere at school, 68% of the people
said that they would be interested in watching our trailer, which is good
seeing as no one disagreed with the question.
Again, majority of the people said that the narrative is clear by watching the
trailer. However, someone had disagreed with the statement and was
confused to whether the girl was actually possessed. This is evident in the
trailer, as there’s a voiceover saying ‘shes possessed,’ which was done
deliberately because we wanted to highlight this point. Also, the voice
change shows this too, as when someone’s possessed, his or her voice
changes as it’s the ‘devil’ speaking.
Most people said they would buy the magazine, because it looks
professional, and the pull quote is also interesting. Some said maybe, and the
reason for this was that even though they liked the cover, they don’t usually
buy magazines and they don’t have the money to spend on it.
58% of the people were impressed with the poster, and would be interested
in watching the film. However, the comments which quite a few people
wrote is that they would watch a movie by looking at the trailer, rather than
the poster.
Even though the feedback from this was nearly half and half, it’s still good as
they’re agreeing with question and saying the music works well. However,
the strongly disagree comment was a horror movie should have music from
Halloween or something with a drone sort of tone. However, we didn’t want
this, and decided to subvert this convention because we wanted it to match
the narrative. For example, when she enters the church, the music changes
and has a religious tone to it, connecting it to the scene, rather than making it
sound scary.
Majority of the people agreed that all three products look professional, which
is most likely why they would be interested in watching the movie.
Lastly, the general comments, which we got, were really good, as most of it
was positive. It seemed as if people enjoyed the trailer. There was some
constructive criticism and points of improvement, which is what we wanted
to get.
I used social networking as well to get feedback from others outside of my
school. I did this by uploading the images of the cover and poster on my bbm,
and sending out the youtube link for the trailer to my contacts. Once again,
the feedback received was positive. There were suggested improvements
that I would agree with and would change, such as changing the pace of the
editing slightly.

4. 4) How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research,
planning and evaluation process?
These are the software’s, which we used in the making of the products. The
ones we used the most were obviously Premiere, and Photoshop. Adobe
media encoder was used a lot as well as we needed to convert files whenever
we filmed something. I used iMovie as well for the text in the trailer, sound
effects and the title credits at the end.
Here are 2 videos of how I used iMovie and what for.
Before we began editing, we printed our storyboards out and made a shot
list, by going through the footage and writing down which shots we would
use. This was very helpful as it saved a lot of time when it came to editing.
Web 2.0 is obviously how we done our research. Websites such as Wikipedia,
Google and IMDB were very helpful as we found out information about other
trailers and compared them to one and another. I used social networking
again in order to find out what our target audience likes in a horror movie.
The software’s and programs used for this was important, as it allowed me to
note down the process of how we did things. This is mainly shown on
Blogger, with the help of Slideshare, as I was able to make presentations and
then upload them onto my blog. Excel was useful for creating pie charts to
show the date received from questionnaires. Using Prezi was a nice change,
rather than having the usual PowerPoint.
Here are some images to show how I used certain programs, and how I used
Youtube for research.
This is how I would advertise our movie. Social networking is growing now,
and it’s becoming the fastest way to reach people, and to inform them about
things. This is why I used websites like Twitter to send the message of our
products, and to get feedback.
For the premiere at school, we printed our posters and put them around the
building, so that people would notice them and come to the viewing, as well
as inviting them personally, which seemed to work well as loads of people
turned up.