Update

The project is almost finished we are now putting in the final filters and clips to make it 100% complete.

Zoe's Evaluation.

Zoe Hartshorn’s Teaser Trailer Evaluation.Group: Zoe Hartshorn, Adam Armstrong, Anthony Eadson.
Film Trailer Name: The Uninvited.

My evaluation is of a Teaser Trailer that we have created in the last 12 weeks. In the group I worked with Adam Armstong and Anthony Eadson and together we produced a Teaser Trailer called “The Uninvited” which is about some teenagers who go into the woods that discover a strange presence. Stories of two other people who go into these woods never returned. The teaser Trailer that we decided to produce is of the horror genre. We have researched the different conventions of the horror genre and also the way in which horror is branded.


In what ways does your media product, use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

For my research on genre I looked at many different existing media products which are both for my ancillary task and for my video project. Firstly I looked at a number of different teaser trailers and posters from horror films of which have already been released. I looked at recent and also some old media products to see how conventions have developed over time. We looked in class at the first ever teaser trailer and this was Superman and we discussed how it is successful and the conventions of this.  We discussed this and also the development of teaser trailers today. I looked again in detail at the very first teaser trailer ever shown which was for the film, Superman (1978)
Please click the clip below to view this teaser trailer.

This teaser trailer was very basic, however it still showed me that to make a teaser trailer it is not a necessity to show the audience a great deal of information. There doesn’t need to be any actually footage form the film as many teaser trailers are made in advance of filming just to let the public know this film is going to be coming out. It also isn’t necessary to introduce a character as this is developed throughout the film. The teasers trailers that we looked at as a group are more recent, such as, Paranormal Activity, Signs and The Fourth kind. Please click the link below to watch the teaser trailer for Paranormal Activity (2009).



The trailer that you just watched is an example of a more recent trailer for a horror film that has been successful.  As a group we decided that we wanted to make a teaser trailer that was the genre of horror.  We did lots of internet research and looked into different types of horrors that have been produced and distributed and found that there were many different sub categories of our horror genre.  From the research that we did these of the results that we found for the different sub categories and films that linked into these.

Gothic horror –The Bloody Chamber/Dracula
Body horror – Dawn of the dead-Dead of Night
Torture porn - Hostel / Saw
Techno horror -The Paradox of the Posthuman
Psychological horror - The sixth sense/The others
Zombie horror – 28 Days later/ 28 Weeks later
Stalk and slash- Halloween/ the Texas chainsaw massacre

Together in our group we decided to make a genre hybrid.  The reason for this was for us to ass extra conventions to the final product to create a wider audience viewpoint and appeal. During our editing we experimented with different filters and decided that we could try to use the surreal effect as this linked well with the theme of our film. To get this effect we used the colour corrector video filter from the options and also the glow distortion effect in video filters as we tried to give the footage we had created a red and glowing glow as it can be seen above.  We really needed to make the editing effects fit with the theme of aliens in our film and this is where we developed our ideas of a red haze and tint from. In our initial plans we decided that using the effects of hand held camera shots would work very well, so to add to that effect we used the video recorder effect which made the film look as though it is live and filming.  I thin k that this worked very very well and am pleased with the outcome of this effect. We also knew that we wanted our film to create enigmas from almost the very start of the film. Realism was such an important factor that we wanted to establish in our footage so the audience could believe it and also the effects used show that this could have been filmed on mobile phones or camera as many things are today that teenagers film. The effects of handheld cameras and also making it look as though it has been filmed on a phone have become very popular as we saw when we were looking through popular and successful trailers.  It is very successful in making the audience feel as though they are there.  There are many examples of the success of hand held cameras that we have looked at as a group however we decided as a group that this trailer "REC" is a good example.

How effective is the combination of your main products and ancillary texts?

The most important thing we had to do was to get the correct kind of branding for our project. We all decided that after doing our research we all liked the genre of horror and could all relate to horror films that we had seen.  We talked about different horror films that we liked and looked at clips and trailers from, REC, Blair Witch Project, The Others and we saw that they had many thing in common.  The main similarity is that it is mostly handheld camera movement. Blogs are also another important factor that we looked at as they give other peoples opinions on what they like and gives us ideas of what would please the audience.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFWYUehm7cM


This is a good clip for showing the successful use of hand held camera work and the cinematography.  The Blair Which Project is a Indie production however still had the great success as big Hollywood productions.
From the research that I have done I found that the innovative use of handheld shots in The Blair Witch Project was definitely a turning point as other films decide that this was a great success.The horror genre become more realistic and much more popular as apposed to a vampires and people rising from the dead. The effect of handheld camera shots has become very very popular these days and sine The Blair Which Project turned peoples heads by their use of it and the realistic approach it takes.


The audience is a very important factor of our project and to think about what audience we were aiming our project on so I set out our groups GRASS.
GRASS stands for the following,

• Gender


• Race


• Age


• Social Economic


• Status

1. Both males and females are the desired audience.
2. Males and Females of any race because from our research we know that this age range are the most likely to visit the cinema.
3. The age range is 16-23 year old.
4. Any Social Economic Status.

Working through GRASS we realised that to appeal to the younger audience of 16 we couldn't have too much violence, swearing, drug abuse, sex and gore in the film as in wouldn't be able to be rated at 16 and would decrease the desired success as younger audiences couldn't watch this at a cinema.

As a group we wanted to discover if our target audience also enjoyed the use of handheld films.  We created a quick and simple questionnaire asking if people like the horror films that they watched to be realistic or not.  All of the questionnaires that we received back said that they prefer realism.

Our project's advertising campaign be used to show that the film is realistic. I used my camera to take still images of locations to use so that there was realism in the images on your posters. We also likes the ideas of taglines as they have been used in The Blair Which Project and also REC. They are useful in drawing the viewer into a film by the information that they are given.  Also it informs them before hand on maybe what they are going to be dealing with in the film and supports the genre. The films that we looked at in groups had very good taglines and as a group choose two trailers who's taglines were most interesting, informational, and eye catching taglines that made you want to watch more.

The two that we found most interesting for their taglines were from Quarantine and The Blair Witch Project.



Quarantine:

“On March 11, 2008 the government sealed of an apartment complex in Los Angeles. The residents were never seen again


No details


No witnesses


No evidence


Until now....”






The Blair witch:

“In October 1994 three media students disappeared in the woods near Burkitts Ville, Maryland whist filming a documentary….


a year later there footage was found....”



These tag lines create enigmas for the viewer even before they have seen any of the film.  This is what the tag lines aim to do and its clear that these do it successfully.  Personally when I read these tag lines I want to watch the films because it draws me in with the reality and excitement. We all decided that when I make the posters i shall include tag lines that we will create as a group and all agree on and also we could put in our trailer. Our final teaser trailer managed to challenge some forms of the handheld horror genre.  This was by using the red tint and non diegetic music.  I think that we managed to create a project that is similar to some of the successful films of horror genres however it is also different.  We took into account throughout this all the different aspects and put it together the best we could.


How I used media technologies in the…

• Construction,


• Reasearch,


• Planning,


• Evaluation Stages.

I was familiar with some of the technology that we used as a film and photography student i had used the cannon video cameras and tripods. However last year in AS level media we used the program Imovie for editing our videos. This year we used Final Cut Pro which is a great program and you can create really amazing effects when editing.

Different websites and programs used in research, planning and production;

• http://www.blogger.com


• http://www.photobucket.com


• http://www.google.com


• http://www.creativecommons.com


• http://www.wikipedia.com


• http://www.totalfilm.com


• http://www.empireonline.com


• http://www.youtube.com


• http://www.slideshare.net/



Capturing technology used:

• Samsung st550 digital camera


• Cannon Video camera


• Tripod



Editing software used:

• Photoshop


• Illustrator


• Final Cut Express


The media technology we used the most during the production process was www.blogger.com. We posted at every stage of our production our initial ideas on here as evidence of what we are doing.  This makes it easier for people to see what we are doing and to see where our ideas have developed from.
We found using Blogger was very useful as we all had access to it at any time and from anywhere and also being fee we were able to use it as much as needed. The ability that you have to change the layouts, themes and colours is useful as you can choose one that relates to your theme and genre. Our theme was called the dark woods skin. This was good because it set the scene of where our location would be. There were several issuses that we had with Blogger when we were using it.  It crashed frequently whilst uploading images and footage and also went very slow at times but apart from that it is very useful and we managed to use it to its full potential.

During the project we also used Photoshop, we used Photoshop to create our ancillary tasks during filming we took stills around the area while we were filming these were used in my ancillary poster tasks.  I am very good in photoshop after having an Alevel in Photography.  I used my skills to create the best fim posters that i could. For my posters I used photographs that i had taken and ajusted the exposure.  Making the image darker to give it a duller effect iillustrated some eyes and placed these in the background.  I used the skills to the best of my ability and am proud of what i have created.

Photoshop was a useful application in the making of our project it allowed use to crop and edit out parts of the pictures that we did not need. Also it allowed us to place in other pictures on to seperate layers to help make the poster look authentic. On my poster I inserted the certificate 15 logo by using the magnitic lasoo tool and then inversing my selection.  Therefore this alowed me to clear the background using the background eraser tool without damaging any of the certificate.  I find photoshop easy to use beacuse of my experiance and am glad i could use my skills to my advantage.

The studio we thought our project would best be created by this was Fox searchlight. We spent time on the internet researching the best studio for us and the mose successful one for the genre.  We came up with Fox searchlight as they have created many good horror movies such as 28 Days Later and The Hills Have Eyes these films alone made a gross profit of 86.7 Million dollars. We discovered this on this site

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1667431/top_10_highest_grossing_films_from.html?cat=40

Another application that was very critical to the creation of the project was Final Cut Express. Final cut express was the application we used for the uploading and editing of your the raw footage that we gathered. It is a very complex package that enables you to do many different things however we used the tools and filters that worked well with what we intended our final product to look like.  The application allowed us to crop, add and edit almost anything I wanted.  We all took turns during the editing stages so we could input things that we though would improve certain parts and discuss whether it worked or not. One of the most useful and also interesting tool on final cut express was the various video filters the video filters.  I use these very often on Photoshop and know how they can effect a picture to create a theme and mood.  Using this in Final Cut Express i was able to now the different feeling and moods that can come across through the filters.  It allows you to transform one shot to another and create interesting viewpoints.  The time line is very useful because when adding the sound track it is easy to see it layered over the footage and makes to easy to see where the music fades in from and out and the timing. What made final cut even more useful was the ability it gave us to add music. I uploaded the mp3s for the two non diegetic music tracks we used in our project these were long walk and teddy bears picnic.  We decided that this track would definatley create a mixed emotion with the use of contrapuntal sound. Both tracks were copyright free and uploaded from Creative commons websites which we were advised to use. Another advantage with using final cut express was the ability to fade in and out different footage and sounds such as the music at the end of the teaser I put in an fade out audio transition and fade out video filter to introduce the other non diegetic music and final clip. 

What I have learned from audience feedback.



The audience feedback that we gained was usefull in finding out if our project was a succes or not it was intresting to hear how different people reacted to the project and what different people thought had made the project good and bad. Here is the interactive questions and the auidience responde.

Audience Feedback

I am really very please with the feedback that we got.  It proved that all the research that we did and the conventions we added did do the jobs they were intended to do.  Mainly to make the viewer want to watch more.

By Zoe

Adams Evaluation

Introduction

The aim of our media product was to create a teaser trailer similar to existing material. The teaser trailer we decided to make was of the horror genre. So I knew that we would have to research what the similar conventions are of the horror genre and how horror is branded.

In what ways does your media product, use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

For my research on genre I looked at existing media products for both my ancillary task and for my video project I looked at firstly different teaser trailers and posters from horror films that had already been released I looked at some very recent and some old media products to distinguish the different conventions that had occurred over time. For the teaser trailer I looked at the very first teaser trailer ever shown this is the teaser for the film Superman this can be viewed on YouTube under this link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSmaEJW3fCgcom/watch?v=aSmaEJW3fCg the teaser was very basic it showed me that too make a teaser trailer it is not a necessity to show the audience a great deal. It is not even necessary to introduce a character. The teasers that I looked at that were a little bit more recent where the teasers trailers for paranormal activity, Signs and the forth kind. The link to the trailer for paranormal activity is here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSSqxrh5kp8 this is an example of a more recent trailer for a horror film. When our group decided that we wanted to make a project that was in the genre of horror I looked into the different types of horrors that were out there I found that there were many different sub categories of the horror genre I found some examples for each of these different subcategories the subcategories come under the headings of

Gothic horror -Frankenstein/Dracula

Techno horror -The Paradox of the Posthuman

Body horror – Dawn of the dead-Dead of Night

Stalk and slash- Halloween/ the Texas chainsaw massacre

Torture porn - Hostel / Saw

Psychological horror - The sixth sense/the others

Zombie horror – 28 Days later/ 28 Weeks later

The group decided on making a hybrid of the genre we wanted to add different conventions into the final product. During editing I attempted to create a surreal effect it was my desire for my product to create enigmas from almost the very start of the film. To achieve this I used the Colour corrector video filter and the glow distortion effect in video filters to give the footage we had gathered a red and glowing tint which can be seen to the left. It was my aim to make the setting of the teaser alien to the audience. Another factor we took into account while we were filming our footage was to gather shots that were handheld. We wanted to establish realism in the footage so that the audience would believe that the events could be filmed using a mobile phone these types of films are recently becoming popular this can be seen in the films paranormal activity, The Blair witch, REC, Quarantine and Cloverfield that all use handheld realistic camera shots to provoke the audience into a sense of realism that the events could actually occur. An good example of this could be taken from the REC trailer below.

How effective is the combination of your main products and ancillary texts?

It was essential to get the right kind of brand for our project. During research I searched the internet for inspiration after we decided that we wanted to do a horror project that was mostly handheld I began to look at other products that were similar such as the Blair witch etc. I watched clips of YouTube and looked through various blogs and forums discussing movies. Here is a link to one of the videos I looked at during research
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMQQpmm5u3w it is a clip from the Blair witch project I looked at the way that the shots were gathered and looked at how the cinematography was unique to other films. It was good to look at the Blair witch because of it being an Indie film making it able to shoot a film that was alternative in format as apposed to Hollywood films which follow conventions established by the specific genre focusing on “The same but different” the Hollywood films in 1999 were more focusing on other genres I discovered this by looking at a page on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_in_film I felt although the innovation used in the handheld shots in the Blair witch was a turning point of the horror genre it focused on horror being more realistic as apposed to a killer diving out of your cupboard or raising from the dead.

It was necessary to think about what audience we were aiming our project on so I set out our groups GRASS. GRASS stands for
Gender
Race
Age
Social economic
Status

Our audience was aged 16 to 23 Males and females of any race this is because people at this age are the most likely to visit the cinema. The GRASS also influenced the creation of the teaser because we were aiming at a younger audience of 16 the film wasn’t to be certificate 18 this meant that we couldn’t have too much violence in the trailer. To discover if our target audience also enjoyed the innovation of handheld movies while making the audience questionnaire we wrote a question asking if people liked horror films to seem realistic everyone we asked answered yes. From the beginning of the project I believed that the advertising campaign for the project must be used to show that the film is realistic. An effective way that films promoted there product was through they’re use of taglines. The two I found most interesting were the taglines from Quarantine and The Blair witch.

Quarantine:
On March 11, 2008 the government sealed of an apartment complex in Los Angeles. The residents were never seen again
No details
No witnesses
No evidence
Until now

The Blair witch:
In October 1994 three media students disappeared in the woods near Burkitts Ville, Maryland whist filming a documentary….
a year later there footage was found

The taglines for the two films alone make the consumer interested they establish enigmas even before viewing I thought that this was another factor I would need to take into account whist creating the Ancillary task and the teaser. An advantage with my research into the Genre and Brand was the fact I managed to accumulate an idea of what films of a similar genre were like and the conventions that they followed and how in my project I would be able to create a project with a few different conventions. Also the Branding research taught me various things I would need to do in order to create an effective ancillary task. I believe that the final teaser managed to challenge some forms of the handheld horror genre by using the red tint and non diegetic music I think that I managed to create a project that was similar to projects of a similar nature but would provide the audience with something that was the same but different.

How I used media technologies in the…

construction
research,
planning,
and evaluation stages

In the creation of the project i was introduced to alot of new technology. In my first project in AS level i had only used Imovie and a cannon video camera and tripod to capture and edit my work i think that the technology used this year has helped me to develop new skills and create a better project.

Different websites and programs used in research, planning and production;

• http://www.blogger.com/
• http://www.youtube.com/
• http://www.photobucket.com/
• http://www.google.com/
• http://www.creativecommons.com/
• http://www.wikipedia.com/
• http://www.empireonline.com/
• http://www.totalfilm.com/
• http://www.associatedcontent.com/
• http://www.slideshare.net/
• Microsoft Powerpoint
• Microsoft word

Capturing technology used:

• Digital stills camera
• Cannon video camera and tripod

Editing software used;

• Final cut express
• Photoshop

The media technology we used the most in production of our project was blogger this is where we have put all of our research and work onto. Blogger was very useful to use being accessible from anywhere was one advantage allowing the group to visit whenever and add any information they may have thought was relevant to the project. I also liked the ability to change the background layout to something more fitting in our case we used the Dark woods skin. There was however some issues with blogger it frequently had issues with uploading videos and photos onto the sites database. For the ancillary tasks and research I frequently used http://www.photobucket.com/ I set up and account for the purpose of uploading our posters and some research pictures onto the blog by using image HTML codes. This abolished the issues of uploading onto blogger. Below are two print screens of Blogger.com and Photobucket.com

During the project we also used Photoshop, we used Photoshop to create our ancillary tasks during filming we took stills around the area while we were filming these were used in Zoe and Anthony’s ancillary poster tasks. For my poster I took a freeze-frame picture from some of the footage we had gathered I did this because I liked the look of the hand after I had put on the colour corrector filter on it also I found in my research that in some film poster advertisements shots from the actual films are sometimes implanted into the advertising campaigns examples of this are posters such as Predator.

Photoshop was a useful application in the making of our project it allowed use to crop and edit out parts of the pictures that we did not need. Also it allowed us to implant in other pictures to help make the poster look authentic. On my poster I inserted the certificate 15 logo by using the insert cut and paste options on photoshop. I found photoshop difficult to use at times the use of keyboard shortcuts were the main issue i had the reason being is that i did not know them i sometimes even had to look on google on how to copy and crop the poster.

The studio we thought our project would best be created by this was Fox searchlight. We choose this because Fox searchlight has created many good horror movies such as 28 Days Later and The hills have eyes these films alone made a gross profit of 86.7 Million dollars. I discovered this on this site http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1667431/top_10_highest_grossing_films_from.html?cat=40

Another application that was very critical to the creation of the project was Final cut express. Final cut express was the application I used to edit the raw footage that we gathered. The application allowed me to crop, add and edit almost anything I wanted. The most interesting tool on final cut express was the use of the various video filters the video filters allowed me to change a very normal woodland setting into a completely new design helping in the creation of the alien surroundings, final cut express allowed me to crop the footage up into sections that we needed and place them onto a timeline. What made final cut even more useful was the ability it gave us to add music. I uploaded the mp3s for the two non diegetic music tracks we used in our project these were long walk and teddy bears picnic. Both tracks were copyright free and uploaded from Creative commons websites. Another advantage with using final cut express was the ability to fade in and out different footage and sounds such as the music at the end of the teaser I put in an fade out audio transition and fade out video filter to introduce the other non diegetic music and final clip. This transition was useful for the concluding clip of the teaser I think the use of the nursery rhyme with the image of a hand falling down a window was effective in creating enigmas for our audience.

What I have learned from audience feedback

The audience feedback that we gained was usefull in finding out if our project was a succes or not it was intresting to hear how different people reacted to the project and what different people thought had made the project good and bad.Here is a slideshow showiung the questions and an example responce gained from each.

Audience Feedback

View more presentations from adam151.

The results and feedback we gained from the audience feedback was mostly positive areas for critique were mostly from the start of the trailer. I originally planned to make the teaser slow pace but it was a factor that did not recieve praise from the audience so if i was to redo the project i would take this factor into account. When asked the audience confirmed that the project is similar to teaser trailers and media texts of the same brand, this positive praise gained from the target audience makes me belive that overall the project was a success.

Adam