The document summarizes an analysis of a student media project that created a film trailer. It discusses how the trailer challenged horror film conventions by using male rather than female lead characters. Costumes and viral marketing techniques were used to develop characters and promote the trailer online. Audience feedback helped improve the trailer through multiple drafts. A variety of media technologies were used in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages of the project.

1. A2 Media EvaluationChris Smith

2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and convention of real media products?There is a binary opposition in our film, where there are the innocent [good] and the villain [evil] and our trailer shows that there is a struggle between the good characters and the evil. We looked at film trailers such as Vacancy as part of our inspiration. In this film, there are two innocent characters who have a car problem which causes them to stop off at what they think is a normal motel but they end up in a torture room. We challenged the Final Girl theory which states that there is always a last surviving female character who tends to be brave and have a strong personality to defeat the villain in the film. Final Girl has been used in the film series of Scream, where Cindy kills off the murderer in the grim reaper costume. We decided to challenge this by using male characters in our film because we thought having two male characters coming from a house party seemed more typical rather than a male and a female. Also, usually females are more likely to get abducted but we wanted to send the message that also boys can also be in danger too.

3. We have used costumes efficiently for our trailer. The ex-army man is dressed up in a dark army suit, which suggests he is evil. He is seen as a deranged character lurking around in the bushes at night so the audience would see him as a bit of a stalker and very adapted to the outdoors. The victims in our trailer were dressed in normal clothes that suggests they have had a normal night out so the audience would largely favour them more over the army character. We used viral marketing to help promote out film trailer. We set up a facebook page for our trailer and invited people to join it. This helped get some popularity. We also created a website, which has a front page stating “Enter if you dare” and then you reach a page where you can see the trailer and other details about the upcoming film. I have seen viral marketing being used for the promotion of films such as District 9 where the website [d-9.com] had a front page asking you to click on whether you are human or non-human. Then you reach a page that looks like a realistic news website, where you hear a voice talking about how to keep safe in District 9.

4. We included a film poster which followed the conventions of other horror posters where ours has the title of the film with names of the actors, a slogan and a main image. We have also included small production company logo’s at the bottom of the poster. Our image is taken inside a garage which is the venue in which the torture scenes takes place so the audience immediately know what to expect in the will with bloodied tools lying around in a garage.

5. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?We tried to keep a house style between our media products such as using the same font for the title of our film trailer throughout and similar colours so that audience clearly know they are related. The poster has an image of the inside of the garage, where you catch glimpses of during the trailer. There is a point of view shot in the trailer where someone walks toward the garage then the door suddenly opens and all you see is black. This could get the audience exited by showing them what the dark room looks like. The website front page states “click here if you dare” before you get to view the trailer. This helps build up tension before you view the trailer.

6. What have I learnt from our Audience feedback?We got our audience feedback from a questionnaire and via facebook where we posted clips of our trailer and what our storyline was about.We came up with our film idea before asking our questionnaire. Our initial feedback was good as we had a good storyline and our idea of camera shots were effective. The use of text between scenes was also a useful idea to give the audience an impression of what the film is about.Before producing our final teaser trailer, we had already made three teaser trailers, each getting some audience feedback on what was good and what needed improving. Each time we filmed new footage and included more ideas to make the film more realistic. For example, our first draft used different dimensions of footage so it did not go together well and the fuel gauge dropping down quickly to show the car running out of fuel was unrealistic. In our final draft, there is an image of the fuel gauge at its lowest rather than showing it drop to the bottom. We also included a new idea of a court martial, which relates to the military experiences the deranged ex-army man may have experienced in his years.

7. How did we use media technologies in construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?We used the elymediastudies.com website to blog what we have done in our project.We used YouTube to upload our rough cuts and trailers. Also to see existing film trailers which contributed to our inspirational ideas for our teaser trailer.ImageShack was used to upload images to our blog We used Sony Vegas Pro to edit our video and add effects to make some of the scenes look dark and frightening and the use of slow motion so the audience could get a full glance at what is happening.Macromedia Dreamweaver was used to create our website to a high standard. We also used facebook to get part of our audience feedback and as a place to display our ideas and trailers.