The document provides an evaluation of the student's media project creating a horror film trailer. It discusses how the trailer used conventions of the horror genre through its nonlinear narrative, dark color scheme, diegetic sounds, and gore elements. Feedback from test audiences is also analyzed, noting that some scenes were too long and the daytime filming needed darker lighting. Overall, the student learned the importance of audience feedback and focusing on their target demographic of psychological horror fans. Changes were made to address the feedback and improve the flow and visual tone of the trailer.

1. My media evaluation
A2 MEDIA.

2. Evaluation PT. 1
In what ways does your media product use, develop, or challenge terms and conventions of
real life media products.
The first reason as to why my horror trailers fit the horror genre is its non-linear sequence. A horror trailer that follows this non-
linear sequence is Eden Lake.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9kuMFPW0YI
This is extremely important when filming a trailer as the trailer shouldn’t give too much of the narrative away. I believe my trailer
does this very well. For example, whether Frankie will survive after being dragged across the floor and out of the shots view, or
what is happening to Ryan when he is face to face with the camera. All the events in the denouement of my horror trailer are non-
linear and contain only the basis of what my film would. This successfully teases the audience, encouraging them to watch the full
film to find out the full plot details.
In terms of uses inspiration from real life products, my horror trailer also uses conventions such as colour to portray the horror
genre. Our trailer is dark and gloomy and conveys horror by using this melancholy and ‘low key’ colour scheme. Diegetic sound
was also used within my horror trailer this is sound that is within the ‘film world’. An example of this within my horror trailer
would be both Libby and Frankie screaming when they are attacked. Extra-diegetic music is added to certain points within the
trailer, for example, when the sequence speeds up, this emphasis the diegetic sound. In terms of mise-en-scene, our horror trailer
contained traditional gore elements, for example our gory makeup. For gore elements we used traditional makeup such as white
face paint, blood packs and red paint. We also used the grenadine syrup or ‘Bottle of Blood; for blood spills and squirt to create an
oozing blood effect. The ordinary clothing that our media filming crew used was to show that the mundane setting of everyday life
had been interrupted and disturbed by this obscure haunting. In many way, our trailer resembled films such as Evil Dead (2013). A
scene where gore is used well in Evil dead is when one of the main girls is attacked by a something paranormal, here it is
suggested that she is being raped by a tree, this scene shows a good use of gore.

3. Throughout the entire trailer, intertitles are used to explain the narrative. This helps to easily distinguish between the different
settings and what is going on within the scene. We did this without making the trailer look disjointed or deformed. We used
intertitles and based them on the text from Evil Dead (2013), we did this to create a sense of darkness spreading like the shadows
of trees.
As with all trailers and horror films, editing was vital to our trailer. We started our trailer with a slow montage reminiscent of the
scenes building up the shower scene in Psycho. We created this by slowly establishing the isolated location because the shocking
moments are at the end. Towards the end of our final chapter, after all the gore and quick paced shots, there is a shock ending
where one of our survivors (Libby) is holding another survivor’s (Frankie’s) mouth. Once Libby moves around to see what’s going
on behind her, she turns back revealing to our audience that she is no longer holding the victims mouth, she is in fact holding the
dead girl’s mouth. This is a jump scare and is emphasised by the diegetic scream and extra-diegetic sting.
In terms of auteurs, we primarily took our inspiration from the auteur George A. Romero. Although we did not used the classic
zombie apocalypse we used his idea of a group of individuals fighting to survive. We believed the idea of group disaster was a
brilliant idea in making a slasher movie with a psychological twist. I believe my influence on the film was the more gore element. I
believe to make a successful psychological trailer, it still has to have an element of gore to generate brief shocks. I also believe I
brought an element of feminism. The final girl is in fact blonde, not just the victim. The killer is also a strong, brunette woman. A
film that resembles our trailer is The Descent (2005) as it is an almost all female casted horror film, just like ours. ‘Female gaze’ is
also a huge feminist point within our trailer. This is because it’s a female killer spying on the teenagers as they arrive. This is an
adaption of Laura Mulveys ‘Male Gaze’ theory, which is set out in her essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.

4. • Yet despite our creation of gore effects, our plans also clearly suggested our interest in psychological horror. So although we
did use gore in our horror trailer, it was not explicit and did not give too much of the film away: this is called restricted
narration, a scene where this is used is when i am seen biting at the knife, this scene doesn’t give any idea of who I am or
why I am there. This again showed the importance of genre in creating a horror film, based on the theories we had studied
by Thomas Schatz in his book Hollywood Genres (1981). If we followed enough conventions, we increased our chance of
making a successful trailer.
• To get a full overview of different types of horror trailers and conventions, we watched and reviewed many trailers across all
horror sub-genres and from different times. These trailers included older films such as Psycho (1960) and newer horror
trailers such as The Haunting in Connecticut (2009). This helped us as a group to understand the change in horror over the
years but also what had stayed the same and was vital to create a good horror trailer.
• Newer trailers used shorter takes to create a faster pace. This helped us construct our contemporary horror trailer. Our
trailer for The Demented begins with a journey into the woods with a group of friends, then we are shown the car from
another person’s point of view, suggesting the group is being watched. The beginning of our trailer starts of slow, with longer
scenes, as it reaches the climax, the horror trailer speeds up and begins to unravel what the group has found out about this
mysterious place. An example of a real life trailer that starts in the same way as our trailer is Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark
(2010) and this trailer clearly starts the same way our trailer does.

5. Evaluation PT.2How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
In order for our horror trailer to be marketed as a product, I formed a poster and magazine cover to tie everything together into
an advertising campaign. I knew the campaign needed to be a ‘synergy’ that worked together to sell The Demented. My poster
included many of the typical aspects found in many horror posters but with a few differences. Firstly, I used a dark, grainy looking
background and then added blood splatters to give it a more horrified, gory feel. This was similar to The Haunting in Connecticut
(2009) poster.
On top of this I added a picture from our group photo-shoot which contained me dressed up as the ‘Dead girl’ holding a toy doll.
This helped to give my horror poster a psychological feel. The black wig covered the face and left a red eye showing to connote
blood and danger. This was important for someone who was possessed. To make these pictures more horror looking, I edited the
contrast of the picture in order to create more dense shadows.
The image on my horror poster was placed to the right. This off-kilter approach is similar to a canted angle, it startles the audience
as they’re used to images being centred. This added to the horror feel of my poster, and was to similar to the “top heavy” poster
for Mirrors 2008 and Prom night.
Our film was rated at an 18 and this certificate found on all the group’s movie posters. This immediately gives our audience the
chance to decide whether or not they think the violence is suitable for their taste. To complete the whole poster, I also included a
title and a tag line. Our title; ‘The Demented’ and our tagline; ‘The Body of a Women, The Soul of a Psychopath’ are in the same
colour of red and really push the idea of our horror trailer. The combination of both red and white against a dark background
connote danger/purity and good/evil.

6. Evaluation PT. 3
How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?
Throughout this course I used multiple different technology platforms to create the final product. During the research stages we
firstly used the DVD player, computer and projector to watch various films and trailers. This also later became a quick and easy
way of distributing the film to the whole class in order to show our trailer. I then used Microsoft Word to analyse and annotate 3
movies which we were prompted to study, Psycho (1960) and the two Dawn of the Dead films (1979 and 2004). We then carried
our individual research using YouTube to search for trailers and horror clips to evaluate. Some trailers that I found particularly
helpful when filming our trailer were as follows;
Eden Lake (2008)
Paranormal Activity- The Marked Ones (2014)
We Are What We Are (2013)
We then were promoted by our media teacher to use the website IMDb.com to get details and further information about our
chosen films, for example, the cast and crew of these films. was then able to upload this information to my own blogger. Blogger
required some alterations to be made to the design of the blog. Subsequently changing background and texts, the posts looked
enhanced and better suited for the blog design of my own personal choice.

7. To start the planning stage, I used Microsoft Publisher to create a shot list before going in head first into the main production. The
shot lists was later altered (in many ways!) before the film was up to standards. We then had to rearrange the shots to ensure that
the storyline basis throughout the shot lists would lead to a good horror trailer. To help this process, Google Images and
Photoshop helped us create a mood board which focussed our visual ideas.
During the construction stages of my coursework, there were also many chances for technology. Firstly, when filming our trailer,
we filmed the whole trailer on a handheld HD camera, where the footage was automatically saved onto an SD card. My group and
I then had to transfer the footage from the camera onto the iMac computers and upload the footage we had shot to Adobe
Premiere Pro.
Using Premiere pro we were able to edit the brightness, balance and contrast as well as edit clips using simple cuts, fades, speed
up/down tools etc.
One of the more challenging aspects of filming (and then editing) was the lighting as most of our filming members were only
available during the daylight hours. To overcome this problem we had to alter the contrast and brightness on Premiere, in the
hope that this would make our horror trailer more appealing and scary to our genre specific audience. Here is a prime example of
contrast and brightness before and after on another film, illustrating the denser blacks it creates.
We also included intertitles which were created on Adobe After Effects. The animated text was also created through the copyright
free ‘Evil Dead’ preset from rendaastudios.com. This helped us to quickly convey the narrative of our trailer. The footage was also
overlaid with soundtrack music and special effects using the multiple layers on Adobe Premiere. These various music sounds came
from our own filming as well as copyright/royalty free files found on YouTube which we converted. A sound effect that we found
was the creaking of an old swing; this gave our trailer a more eerie feel.

8. For the ancillary products, everything was created using Adobe Photoshop. To get the exact image I wanted for
my magazine cover I used a digital camera and uploaded the images to edit using Photoshop. Upon choosing
my image, I used to ‘lasso’ tool as well as the ‘eraser’ to feather around my shape in order to get the image I
wanted. I then placed my photo on a grainy background and changed the opacity in order for the picture to
look faint and old-fashioned. The background image was made up of a number of different layer and photos.
The grainy effect was a copyright free texture I found on Google Images. I then faded it into a plain black
background which created my darkened look. I also changed the brightness and contrast of my poster in order
for it too looks like a horror poster. To give my work an eerie look, I used font from ‘Dafont.com’. My choice of
font (‘House of Horror’) was found under the sub-heading of ‘Horror’.
I used the same techniques for both my horror poster and my magazine cover although obviously both of my
images are not the same. I used nearly almost every tool on Photoshop to edit my poster and magazine. The
‘selection’ tool helped me to move around and place my images where I wanted them. The ‘lasso’ tool was
again another useful facility that I used. This tool helped me to reshape and editing my photographs and
helped me to erase any parts of the photo taken that I did not want. When using the lasso tool I erased the
whole of my background in my poster photo in order for the image to look correct upon editing it.
The final stage in which I used technology was during the evaluation stage. Having extracted and saved all of
our trailers as the appropriate files, the first rough cuts were put on to YouTube. We then had screenings in
front of the class which were projected onto a screen and shown and accessed. The class them have us both
positive and negative feedback in order for us to enhance our trailers, making sure that they were the best they
could possibly be. After we had made our adjustments, we then went through this process again for the
Evaluation Screening, making sure that all the feedback given to us was taken on board and accessed/changed.
Finally, we all uploaded our evaluations to our Blogger sites. I firstly converted my evaluation’s word document
into an Adobe Powerpoint presentation as well as saving the original copy onto my college computer. The
benefit of all of these stages was I always knew – unlike paper – my files could not be lost. They were safely
stored on the college computers and on “cloud” sites such as Blogger and Flickr.

9. Evaluation PT. 4
What have you learnt from audience feedback?
Having had all of our feedback, I have learnt that not everybody enjoys what you make. Genre specific trailers are risky if the
viewers are not fans of that genre. Our main aim was to reach out to psychological horror lovers who may also appreciate a slight
amount of body horror. Upon making the first rough cut of our trailer, our group focused on feedback on psychological horror
techniques in order to satisfy the class and their opinion.
Upon getting this feedback we realised that everyone was different but the majority of psychological horror fans liked what we
had done with our trailer. We decided to take on their feedback as ‘crucial’ and suit the needs of our psychological fans first. After
watching the trailer through twice, our media group gave us suggestions by which we tried to follow and these were discussed
within our media group. These suggestions can be seen on my Blogger pages.
Overall, our trailer received an average score 7/10 upon first viewing and my filming group were moderately pleased with this
outcome, although we fully understood that we needed to edit and change pieces of our trailer in order to boost our average
score. The primary element we realised was that psychological horror is all in the eye of the beholder. We wanted to include more
jump scares, but realised this was overloading the viewer with short takes. Therefore we minimised the dose of fast takes,
because too many of these events could cause our trailer to look unprofessional and choppy.
The compliments we received were encouraging. The audience liked our narrative which was extremely important and they also
liked certain parts, and one feedback referred to ‘the dead girl swing’. Many people liked our music and we were happy to hear
this feedback as my filming group had worried about what people may feel about our eerie music. A quote that was used during
feedback was ‘the music was exciting and eerie’. Thankfully, most of the feedback was positive.

10. As for the negative points, we were told that our trailer didn’t flow and that some of the scenes were too long. An example of a
feedback quote we received was ‘some of the scenes were too long and resulted in me losing track of the plot’. Of course we re-
shot these scenes and we took on- board fully any negative feedback. The only negative piece of feedback we found hard to
overcome was the fact that people had noticed that we’d shot our film during the day. This was because each piece of filming was
at different levels so individually we had to take turns adjusting each shot to ensure the light/darkness was roughly equal
throughout The Deranged.
Adjusting the footage to ensure that it was all in low key lighting was another part of the contrast/brightness changes. We realised
this was extremely crucial upon filming a horror trailer that it must have dense shadows. After hours of changing (and mostly
increasing by 20-40) the contrast we received positive feedback on the changes made and this was music to our ears.
Overall, the big issue that our group had to overcome was the fact that our free time all differed dramatically due to work, other
college deadlines etc. This made it extremely difficult to film on a regular basis. This meant long hours of filming on certain days.
This set us back but we did catch up on lost time. Having made changes in general, I am happy with the final outcome of our
trailer, I believe it looks professional and clean cut and believe this is extremely important when making a horror trailer. Our
demographic target audience was viewers aged 18-35 belonging to a mainly mainstream psychological fans, outsiders (gory fans)
and reformers (because of the feminist edge). I still believe our film appeals to all those groups of people due to its blend of
psychological aspects, characters and blood effects.
Overall, my favourite part of filming was the horror makeup, it was extremely enjoyable (even though I had to wear a lot of white
make-up!) and I thoroughly loved filming. Editing was hard and making a piece of work look professional is harder than it looks.
Using all these tools to try and figure out how to change different parts of your trailer is difficult and took some getting used to,
but I believe our trailer is good despite losing crucial filming time at the beginning. Another part of the trailer that I am extremely
proud of is our professional intertitles.
The final sequence is also another part of my trailer which I am proud of. The jump-scare at the end where Libby swaps Frankie
for the dead girl during the “shush, quiet” sequence. We hid the cut very discreetly and believe this shot was edited perfectly in
order for the jump scare to work.
Overall, I believe that both the horror trailer and ancillary products went very well. Although time wasn’t of the essence due the
various demands, I’m happy we all pulled together in time to produce a very effective horror campaign.