The document discusses the production and evaluation of a horror film trailer created by the author. It summarizes the conventions followed in the trailer, such as dark lighting and close-up shots, as well as some conventions that were challenged, like having a female antagonist. The author describes changes that were made during production due to difficulties with casting, scheduling, and length. Audience feedback indicated that the plot should have been made more ambiguous and props added to make it seem more authentic. The author used various new media technologies at different stages of research, planning, production and evaluation of the trailer.

1. Evaluation. Kathy Pollock.

2. In what ways does your media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? For our media product we followed the main conventions of a horror thriller trailer. We concentrated mainly on lighting, shot angles and editing. We took inspiration from a lot of the horror trailers that we analysed, mainly for plots, then creating the story board and for the props, costumes and actors. The conventions we mainly followed was to make the trailer enigmatic, to not give to much of the plot away to the audience along with yet making it easy enough to comprehend. We used many close up shots along with long and over the shoulder shots. We found from the research that many of the antagonist within a trailer were male, so we changed this convention and made our antagonist and main character a female, to give the plot an edge to unnerve the audience. We kept the lighting dark throughout, also following another convention, we did this to set a spooky and dark atmosphere, as our main character has many secrets, but in the third scene we made the lighting brighter as she is leaving the psychiatric ward and is free, we wanted to give the audience that she is free and safe, furthermore giving a false sense of security to the audience, as we made the character smile as she is walking away from the ward creating the idea that she could be happy, but by the fact that its a mischievous grin, could also tell otherwise. We have used written dialogue like in most horror films such as the final destination, the orphan, sorority row, to give another dimension of hints to the audience, instead of portraying it through a voice over or through the acting. All over we followed most conventions for the horror genre, and took much inspiration from the similarities we seen in each horror trailer throughout we have also challenged and developed the original conventions used.

3. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? Throughout I found it very hard to keep to the original ideas made at the very start. The storyboards had changed profusely, along with casting and the group itself. Throughout the whole journey from ancillary research and planning through to the final product being made it has all been about mainly trial and error, realising that there was something we couldn’t achieve and having to either adapt to the problem or change the idea completely. But we kept to the original idea of the plot and conventions to give us a grounding. For example we have always kept the antagonist being female that has been in a psychiatric ward and she was always going to murder another female. But the original storyboard anticipated she would become jealous over her partner talking to another woman and killing the woman and her partner would realise it was her after finding evidence. We tried to shoot the original storyboard but found it very hard to cast a male that was convincing for the part also, it was extremely time consuming, and hard to shoot with all the props in place. As we only had a very short amount of time to shoot with the specific equipment, furthermore the cast were also at a time limit so we had to find a time that was accessible for everyone, which in the end wasn’t very much. Lastly the trailer only aimed at being a teaser trailer was too long, as we were only looking at it lasting between 30-60 seconds long. So from this we had to change the complete storyboard, cut out a lot of the unnecessary scenes and replace them with something that was easier to shoot and less time consuming, so we removed extra characters , such as doctors and the boyfriend and shortened them to just the antagonist and the victim, both being female. And have the sole focus on them too. So throughout there was many changes made and much rethinking a lot of ideas, but throughout it was a major learning curve, as we only improved through the trial and error that we caused.

4. Audience feedback. I had an interview with 5 people that had just watched the trailer and asked them thoughts on the trailer and there opinions on how it could have been improved . These are the questions I asked: What is good about this trailer?7 What would you do to improve this trailer? Would you go and see this film? Has the trailer gave away too much of the plot? Answers: The trailer’s music goes really well with the trailer The character’s are convincing for the parts they are playing The plot is good the editing goes really well to create suspense and speed in the trailer. Have the scenes flowing better make the plot more ambiguous have a voice over and dialogue have the casts names at the end of the trailer, for authenticity Yes yes Yes no yes

5. yes, because we seen the victim dead yes, we knew she was a psycho right at the start of the trailer, therefore already being able to predict the plot. yes, it would have been better if you had one or the other not both. From this I determined that the trailer was a success, only we needed to make the trailer more authentic through more props and not making the plot so obvious. But considering only one person said they wouldn’t go and see it, and her reason was that she doesn’t like horror films, I think it was a great success.

6. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? Throughout this process I have used many media technologies to construct my final product, ranging from programs on apple Macs, to importing pictures off the web 2.0. For my research I used the web 2.0 to search for trailers to analyse them to find the normal conventions of my chosen genre I then imported the trailers onto imovie, a program on apple Macs, to be able to analyse thoroughly. I also imported the movie campaign through film posters supporting the film, to go into more detail of analysis, to support my research around my chosen genre. Through using imovie it gave me the opportunity to be able to cut different parts of the trailers and be able to edit them in a way to be able to explain my research and how to plan the trailer i was producing, i was also able to produce, text upon the trailers so show evidence of my analysis. I then transferred all of this to a PowerPoint to show all of my findings and evaluation. I used photoshop to produce my magazine front cover and poster, to create a professional finish, using photoshop gave mw the chance to edit the photos i had shot, through using a camera, and importing them onto the page, I created a back ground and a mast head through the different fonts and editing tools, such as shadowing, dimming the edges, placing overwrites, over different texts, different layers of editing to create an individual result of editing. I did all of this around my photos, which were hardly edited but yet lassoed, cut out the background that wasn't needed, to give my photos a professional finish. I used premier pro to produce my final trailer, this gave me the opportunity to cut scenes, delete parts and add in different transitions such as zooming and dimming, It also let me create scenes that were just text, and it let me add in music, and be able to change the volume at certain parts and stop and play it at wish when it was appropriate to the scene.