Karl Buckel evaluated his group's media project. The group created a sci-fi horror movie teaser trailer called "Pravus". Karl did most of the editing work and some acting. Feedback was positive, though some felt the flatline sound effect was overused. The group effectively combined genres and incorporated branding across their trailer, posters, and magazine cover to promote the film. Audience testing provided useful feedback to strengthen future projects.

1. Karl Buckel Evaluation

2. This project was done in a group of 4 people john Sean Oliver and myself. We decided to do a movie teaser trailer which we named ‘Pravus’. My main contribution was doing most of the editing of the main but I also played some part in the acting. We have a target audience of 16-24.

3. IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS? The genre we used is a sci fi horror, we used this as films such as 28 days later have such great teaser trailers and we wanted to re enact that in are trailer. Films such as rec, and the departed get people thinking in there teaser trailer and we took great inspiration from this. ‘ genre refers to the method of film categorization based on similarities in the narrative elements from which films are constructed’ Im parvus we had a few certain genres, this is a hyrbrid genre film. We have the main genre of science fiction but we had aspects of horror and post apocaliptic in there aswell which is very much shown throught our teaser trailer.

4. Science fiction is a genre of fiction. It differs from fantasy in that, within the context of the story, its imaginary elements are largely possible within scientifically established or scientifically postulated’ In pravus case we did not use the typical sci fi genre with alians and space, we used it where we could ‘break the rules’ of a normal standard sci fi trailer and that is shown through its story line of a virus that spreds out spelling the end of humanity. we still kept aspects of the science fiction genre wen we used a green filter in a POV shot and this green colour carried on thoughtout our posters, logo, trailer and magazine cover. Same green throughout

5. ‘ Post-apocalyptic fiction is set in a world or civilization after such a disaster. The time frame may be immediately after the catastrophe, focusing on the travails or psychology of survivors’ In pravus we follow the typical conventions of the post apocloiptic genre with the shots of deserted streets but I again feel we break the rules as it is not the typical establishing shots but it is a hand held POV cam. These are the establishing shots of the deserted streets This is the POV cam we used

6. ‘ Horror films are movies that strive to elicit the emotions of fear, horror and terror from viewers. Their plots frequently involve themes of death, the supernatural or mental illness’ . In pravus we used the death part of horror with the images we had in the trailer. The EKG flat line and the line up of covered bodies. Also with the hand held camera showing something being chased or something chasseing someone.

7. The way that we did all our work, the trailer, posters and magazine cover the genre is very clear and the audience can establish that from the filters we used and the choice in colour. I think we did this very successfully as it leaves no questions about what genre it actually is and audiences who like films like ours could relate to it and establish the genre very easily, but because the genre shines out very clearly audiences who may not be into this particular genres will also be able to establish what it is. I think our trailer is very different to anything out there, as we did take a lot of inspiration of 28 days, a trailer that breaks the rules of setting t chronologically, we thought we needed to break the rules which is why we had no music or voice over just a EKG line running throughout, this I feel builds up suspense and we got that response with our audience feedback. Very similar in style http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eunaclr-WgU

8. We also had the theme of horror running through our product, we took inspiration from this from the saw movies, the colour there posters use and the way in which they are presented . As you can see the colours are very similar, also the use of blood on both pictures and house hold utilities on both posters, with saw they carried out this theme throughout the whole of there posters but that is because it just a horror and not a post apocalyptic horror, which ours is, so we had to appeal to other fans with our posters.

9. For the magazine cover we choose a very well established film magazine Empire, when researching we found that for some films they changed there logo to fit the film and usually had the staring actor at the front with everything else behind it apart from the text it also has a sub film on the side showing what is in the issue . e.g. Johnny Depp in public enemies Logo of magazine Side article Main character Text in front attracting audience attention

10. As you can see the logo has been changed to suit the film it was covering, in the case for lord of the rings it was the film that saved the magazine from going bust.

11. We stuck to the general layout that empire uses on all it magazine covers as sticking to the conventions of empire would make it look like the company had made it themselves. We used the barcodes, date, website and a featured article of another film to give it a genuine look. Date Magazine logo but with our colour to link it with branding website Our brand logo Main characters in the film Side article about another film barcode Tag line for what the article is about

12. HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE COMBINATION OF YOUR MAIN PRODUCTS AND ANCILLARY TEXTS? ‘ A brand is a name used to identify and distinguish a specific product, service, or business’ Repartition of a advert or poster will stick something in your mind without you even knowing it, e.g MacDonald with ‘im loving it’ campaign which they still use in all there adverts, if people hear such jingle they will relate it to MacDonald’s, and even when the adverts where released a while back people can still relate to them. For pravus we used more visual aids for our branding, we had the green colour, which links to our films narrative with the sci fi genre. Our brand reflects what our film is like, a low budget British film that can offer the audience something new. As if it was a Hollywood made film it would not appeal to our audience of working class British 16 – 24 year olds.

13. All these posters have the same style of editing and they use the branding throught the tag line ‘why so serious’ and the batman logo

14. The same theme is carried out in the website and its general colour scheme

15. This is how we used repartition in our ancillary tasks: These are the teaser posters we created as you can see from them they carry a similar theme as they don't give much away and the have a connection with blood, we took a lot of inspiration from the Saw posters as they have a similar style to the posters we created, we also have a tag line that doesn't give much away of ‘ death in infectious ’ which we also use at the end of our actual teaser trailer. There is also a link between them as the tap relates to the posters that where shown in the trailer itself

16. This is our full theatrical poster, it links in well with the teaser poser as it is the same just not the full image. You can also see the EKG flatline in the background and it is a very striking poster as the green (which is the same as what we use in most of the ancillary tasks) really catches the attention of the audience

17. In these posters we create a lot of enigmas for the audience, the tag line ‘ death is infectious’ asks the audience why is death infectious? The poster with the person on which shows deep red eyes that stair at you createing the enigma of why his eyes are red, and why is there blood on his mask, and why is he wearing his mask. With the tap there is blood splatter and blood dripping from the end of the tap which also leaves the audience asking why. I feel that these enigmas where created very well and is shown in our audeice feedback on them.

18. In the poster we used a medium shot of the two people just focusing on there head and a little of there torso, this is good photography as it gives the effect of the people are staring at you wherever you look, a technique that was used to recruit men for the war in America, it is very effective it does seem that the eyes are following you around and with the editing on the pictures to give a red eye gives it a great effect Eyes staring at you

19. Here is our logo:

20. Even the name pravus asks questions for the audience, it means fear in Latin, we used this as it actually means something and it also sounds good! This creates good enigmas for the audience as well. We choose DNA films www.dnafilms.com , who are a distributor of British films which gave us films such as 28 days later, people who are fans of dna films will interested in ours.

21. The Target audience is for16 – 24 years, working class British males. it gives us a great audience to appeal to as it is a lot of the British people but it is still a niche audience as it is not a mainstream film. We did a survey and found that most people wanted to see a new science fiction horror film, and we met these audience demands. After we finished the trailer we presented it to class and uploaded it to you tube where it got a good reception, the audience felt that with the use of a flatling and no music or speech it had something different to it, they said it asked question which they wanted to know. They only fault with it was the flatline got a bit too repetitive and they felt the lost interest after a while, these problems could be addressed with maybe a break up in sound. some felt the trailer was to slow but other thought it created suspense but the feedback was overall good.

22. Examples of the branding used in real media products Poster Website DVD cover

23. 1) What is your gender a) Male (7) b) Female (3) 2) How old are you? a) <12 (1) b) 12-15 (3) c) 16-18 (5) d) 19-25 (1) e) 25> (0) 3) How do you like to watch films? a) DVD (2) b) Movie channels (1) c) Cinema (3) d) Internet(4 4) How many times a month do you go cinema? a) Never(2) b) 1(4) c) 2(3) d) 3(1) e) 4>(0) 5) What is your favourite film genre? a) Comedy (2) b) Horror (3) c) Science Fiction (4) d) Action Adventure (1) 6) What forms of advertising do you like? a) Billboards (1) b) Bus advertisements (0) c) Freebies (1) d) Posters (3) e) Magazine adverts (1) f) Interviews with cast (0) g) Trailers (4) 7) What is your favourite film industry? a) British (3) b) Hollywood (7) c) other (0 This is a advice feedback sheet of a questionnaire we composed at the start of our project WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM YOUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?

24. As you can see from looking at this bar chart, there is alot more male interest in our film so they should be our main target gender. But the male audience is only half of our audience, so we will also target females as our secondary audience. This graph shows that a large portion of the audience likes science fiction films and horror. So for our product we will be combining both genres and make our film a hybrid to reach an audience of larger This chart shows the age range of our target audience. From looking at it we can see that our main target audience will be between the ages 12-18. From looking at this graph although alot of people watch films on the internet, there is still a large amount of audiences paying to watch films in the cinema.

25. This graph also shows that there is still a large number of people going cinema. Even though they could watch the film for free online. This graph shows that most audiences enjoy watching trailers for films. So for our product we will be making a teaser trailer. Also a large number of audiences like posters because they are very memorable, so we will also make a poster for our secondary form of advertising.

26. We got the class to sit down and watch our final production, we also set them a questionnaire to fill in: Do you think the product is typical of film trailers? If so in what ways is it similar? Does anything make it different or does it stand out from typical teaser trailers? Does it work? Why? Name two impressive/interesting elements from the video? Could the product be stronger? How? Do you think the pace of the video is typical of this kind of product?

27. Here are some examples of the reaction we got

29. Audiences feedback is important to any product that is on the market, not just for films but for any product, as without the customer the product may as well not exist as. This is more important for film making as it the only revenue the companies get from. So audience testing, screening are very important and we have realised this. We where first going to do a British gangster film but we found out that not many people want to see this as the are classed as ‘all the same’ with films such as lock stock and two smoking barrels and green street follow a strict convention list and there is no room for experimentation like we had in this film. The film has two main weaknesses, its main audience will be males leaving 50% of the market excluded, this is because stereotypically girls are more in to romantic comedies with action maybe but there is a lot of exceptions to the rules so many females may enjoy the film for what it is but many may not. If the film got submitted to a BBFC examiner it will probably get a 15 or 18 due to the gore, violence and general theme to the film but I personally think it will be suitable for 12A as its a science fiction film and it leaves the choice with a parent.

30. HOW DID YOU USE MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES? The technology we used varied from the hardware and software. the hardware we used where: apple Mac video camera stills camera External hardrive Pen drive

31. The software we used where: Final cut express Photoshop In designe Safari (internet)

32. The hardware and software advantages Video camera – worked very well, but didn't give the professional finish that i would have liked, also the camera in some parts was too jerky when out side due to the wind and in some parts heavy snow. It was light and easily manageable Stills camera – it gave a very good shot when we wanted it, it was a 10 MP camera which did the job very well, the only drawback was how the lighting didn't set up right and the flash made it very bright or not bright enough External hard rive – was brilliant for transferring big files and no drawbacks to the one we used Pen drive – was good for transferring and storing small files but it could not handle our project of 4.5g on it so the only drawback to the one we used was the size Mac – was hard to get used to at the start, sometimes crashing and being very slow but it did the job well, i still personally prefer windows

33. Final cut express – was tricky to get used to but one we did and played around with it and found all the effects it was easily managed, it did loose the work we had done 4 times and it needed rendering even if you changed a small bit which got frustrating but it is a professional program so it was expect and did do a good job Photoshop – was hard to get used to but one we did was an excellent program, couldn't have done the project in the way we did without it In designee – was easy to use in parts and did a great job with our magazine cover which wouldn't have been as good without this program Safari – was slow in parts but that was the system we where on, easy to use and help us massively with research also connected us with blogger where we recorded all our information

34. Examples of products we did using this equipment: In designee Photoshop

35. In the group we all contributed equally with our project, i did most of the editing with help from everyone else. Sean and john did the full theatrical poster using in designee and Photoshop, the also did with one of the teaser posters. Me and Oliver did the other teaser poster and Oliver did the magazine cover. We all did some filming each with us all playing a role in the trailer and i thought we used the technologies to our full potential, especially when we had a short amount of time to get used to them

36. Conclusion I think we have produced a great product and it was a great team effort and we worked very well together. I can back up by saying the product was done well with the audience feedback that we received. the overall project I thought went well, if you consider we lost our work a number of time due to crashes of the computer and a glitch and we lost a week due the collage being closed with the extreme weather over the winter period, the poster and magazine where amazingly done and i thought they looked very professional with the editing used they could only be told from real product by what was on them not how they where portrayed. personally i thought this was great team effort and we did it very well and to a professional standard and if i was to do it again i wouldnt change any members of the team but i would listen to the audience feedback on our final product and improve on what they said.