Joseph used various media for research and planning his horror film project, including IMDB to find inspiration from other films, YouTube to watch trailers and features, and Flickr to analyze magazine covers and posters. He was most influenced by the trailers for Paranormal Activity, Cloverfield, and The Woman in Black. For his ancillary products, he created a poster and magazine using Photoshop. He edited his horror trailer using Premier Pro and After Effects, making adjustments to shots like reversing them and changing brightness. To evaluate his work, he used his blog, social media, surveys, and SlideShare to gather feedback from a wide audience.

1. Joseph Donaldson

2. For research and planning, I used 3 different types of media; IMDB, YouTube, and Flickr. IMDB
was really useful in getting inspiration from other horror films as it gives you a detailed list of
the best psychological horror films with an in depth plot and reviews. I was able to quickly find
out information on horrors such as ‘Hide and Seek’ (2005) and ‘Silent Hill’ (2006).
YouTube was very helpful as I was able to watch loads of horror trailers with a touch of a
button. This enabled me to compare trailers such as ‘Carrie’ (2013) and ‘Mama’ (2013) to see
what type of trailer I wanted to create and watch horror features I wanted to use to comply to
Thomas Schatz’s Genre Theory.
Flickr was very useful when I had to look at and compare magazine covers and horror posters.
This useful website let me annotate popular posters to see what type of information I should
include in my own poster and it let me look at other students work so I could compare their
work to mine and make improvements if needed.
The trailers that most influenced my work were probably; ‘Paranormal Activity’ (2007), ‘Cloverfield’ (2008) and ‘The Woman in Black’
(2012). Paranormal Activity was a highlights trailer that showed quick-paced shots that builds tension and interests the audience.
Cloverfield is more of a scenic trailer that sets the scene of the film and then the action starts, a little bit like our trailer and The
Woman in Black is completely made up of highlights with a quick montage that builds tension throughout.

3. With my ancillary products, I mainly used Photoshop as I found this was the easiest way to create a poster and
magazine. With my poster, I wanted to create something like the ‘Mirrors’ (2008) poster as I thought this poster
was very cleverly created as it is quite vague and invites a lot of questions. It draws the audience in with a
subtle but scary way. I took photos of Caitie whilst she was wearing her ghost make up and wig and used that
as the main image for the poster. I built on top of this by using the spot healing tool to blur out her nose ring
and the hair on her face. I then added a new layer and coloured in her lips with a dark red and used the
blending options to combine the dark red with her already pink lips. After this I layered the text on top to build
up the poster. One thing I particularly liked about my poster is how I got the stars name to look very blurry
and paranormal like. I done this by creating two layers of the names and I added a motion blur to the bottom
layer so it looks like it is moving, but I kept the top layer still so it was easier to read and therefore creating a
spooky font.
For my magazine photo, I dressed myself up in smart clothes and got one of the other members of the group to take photos of me
in various positions. I tried to make myself look like a director as my magazine was for the higher class audience and I felt like this
would appeal more than a typical villain photo that you see on most film magazines. On the main photo, I used a certain filter over
my face to try and make myself look a little older and more sophisticated. I also cut around my head and added this to a new layer
above the name of the magazine so my head was covering part of the name, to give the illusion that magazine readers feel
exclusive and more important than people who don’t read my magazine, like Total Film does.

4. For my horror trailer, I used two main programmes; Premier Pro and After Effects. Premier Pro was
used to cut all of my trailer together and general editing purposes and After Effects was used for
the intertitles in my trailer. Once we had put all of the trailer in the correct order, we then had to
change some of the different things on the shots like the speed and colour. One thing we did a
few times was reversing the shots, which give a really cool and spooky effect. We highlighted the
shot and right clicked and went down to the speed/duration. From then you can click to reverse
the speed and speed it up or slow it down. When you see Joe being dragged up the stairs, we
reversed the shot and sped it up to 180% to make the shot short and more realistic. Another thing
we had to do quite regularly was changing the brightness/contrast and colours of different shots
as we filmed on different days so the lighting wasn't always correct and the continuity didn't flow
very well. As certain shots would be light and then it would go dark in the next shot.
This shot follows the scene where Caitie hangs herself, and we filmed all of that at night time
to get some really cool low key lighting, but this next shot we filmed in the daylight so we had
to change the brightness when editing it. We done this by going onto the effects menu on the
left hand side and selecting the brightness/contrast button and by using sliders we were able
to gain the right balance. When Joe finds Caitie hanging, it is meant to be the next day so it
wasn’t that the day time was a problem, it was that we wanted to continue the low key
lighting but couldn't in the day time, which is why we edited on Premier Pro afterwards.

5. When evaluating my work, I used a number of different media technologies ranging from social networking
sites to slideshare and issuu. My blog was definitely the most important thing as I was able to upload all of
my work and keep it in one place. This helped me a lot as I was able to see what work hadn’t been
completed and I could easily improve work if I needed to. One way in which I shared my horror trailer to a
wide audience so I could gain feedback was through social networking sites. My teacher uploaded the
trailer to his YouTube account and from there I was able to post the link onto my Facebook and twitter
accounts for all of my friends to watch so they could give me feedback. I also set up a survey on my blog
where people could give me feedback on my trailer from scoring it from 1-10 and I think this really helped
as I was able to get a general view from a wider audience, not just media students who look past the
trailer at all the technical details.
Because I done all of my evaluation on PowerPoint, I had to use a clever website called slideshare
where I can upload a PowerPoint presentation straight onto the internet. This helped a lot because not
only did it show I can experiment with a wide range of media technologies, but I was able to break my
blog up a bit so it isn’t just post after post after post, it makes it my blog look more interesting.
The last media technology I used which is probably one of my favourite ones, is Flickr. This is a great
way of sharing loads of different images/posters/magazine covers. Through Flickr I was able to
compare and write about my own work that I have completed and other people’s work as well, which
really helped me in understanding the perfect ingredients into things such as a magazine cover and
horror poster.