Redraft of Poster . . .

After some last minute peer evaluation about our poster and realised that it would be better if we didn't have the pig face at the top of the image, this is because we had been taking notice of film posters when we had been out. From this we came up with the conclusion that it would be more effective to just have one main image. We took away the face as this image is already used on the magazine, although we did think it was a vital piece of our marketing, we felt safe with the fact it was still on the cover. We left the girl headless so it is still ambiguous and keeps the mystery of our trailer running through the poster.

DRAFT ONE.

This is the first draft of the magazine. Although we realised it was too square which is not a convention of film posters, to change this we decided to add a movie review from the well known film magazine 'Empire' - this makes the review seem reliable and more realistic. We also added 4 stars as you rarely see film posters that have less than this - no one wants to make a bad review public, also it would seem over the top if we gave ourselves 5, so this seemed like a good middle ground. By having this review it would make the film more appealing because there are professionals saying it is good/well made.

FINAL DRAFT!

I think that this final poster is the most successful of all 3, this is because it advertises the film clearly and concisely and there is not too much going on so the basic information is easily accessed - date, title, review etc. The title and information are set out on the poster in order of importance, at the top is the film title which is the biggest so stands out the most, next is the release date - not as big as the title but still easily seen in the middle of the poster - by having a black box around the white text makes it separate from the image and jumps out of the page. Then the review is shown, this is still quite big because we would want the public to take notice of this information used as an advertising tacit as it may persuade them to come and see the film, the stars connotate success universally, so by just seeing these you automatically know the film has the potential to be a 'hit'. Lastly are the credits and institution images - these are almost unreadable, as they are not there to take away the attention from the film they are just there to give credit and support to the people who helped during the production and distribution. 

How did you use media technology in the construction and research, planning and evaluation?

These are some of the technologies we used during the making of the teaser trailer and the ancillary tasks.

• Nikon L110 
• Apple Mac
• Canon EOS 1000D
• Toshiba Video Camera

These were vital ingredients in the production, we used these in order to get the best footage, editing equipment and images we could. We could have used a better video recorder but we could only use this with the supervision of a teacher, Carlaina and I wanted a better scene to film in so we decided to take this video camera instead. 

The two digital cameras seen here were used to take pictures for our ancillary tasks in order to get the best quality images we could. We thought this was essential to make the work look the most professional we could.

The Apple Mac computer was mainly used for the construction of all 3 tasks, the different programmes I used were; Adobe Photoshop cs3, Final Cut Express and Garage Band.

The two top images are ones from earlier in my blog of my actual work and the different programmes, whereas the latter is an image I found from the internet as I couldn't find a print screen I had taken myself.

Adobe Photoshop cs3 (image 1) - I found this programme hard to use, this is because I hadn't used it before. I realised that using 'YouTube' video's helped out tremendously. Such as the ones seen here - magazine blog post.With these I learnt how to use the different tools on the programme in order to produce the magazine I did.

Final Cut Express (image 2) - At first Carlaina and I really struggled with Final Cut Express but we wanted to use the best software we could and to make sure we could edit our footage in ways we wouldn't be able to with software such as Windows Movie Maker or iMovie - as we used iMovie last year I thought we should be upgrading and becoming more sophisticated with our editing. But eventually we managed to work out the programme for ourselves and use; effects, how to quicken up footage, delete the sound and make shots tiny.

Garage Band (image 3) - This was the first time I had used Garage Band so at first I messed around with the different settings and made some songs, but eventually Carlaina and I started to make our own clips on here using many different techniques. Firstly for the 'booming' noise you hear at the beginning of the trailer - we achieved this by cutting down a longer clip to the bit we wanted. Next we made the whispering noise you can hear towards the end of the clip - Carlaina and I recorded ourselves whispering into the mac and layered them one over the other to give it more depth. This leads me to the screaming sound that comes in at the end -  we recorded this clip off 'YouTube' into Garage Band and clipped it down to the length that we needed. So in the end this turned out to be very successful and useful when coming to make the sounds in our piece. This is a little more about the music in our piece music post.

WAYS WE USED TECHNOLOGY TO CHANGE THE WAY OUR WORK LOOKED.
 
These are some images I have created in order to show you how we used technology to create our final piece - click on them to make them larger.

This is another example of a close up in our teaser trailer, although it is similar to the print screen above I thought I would talk about it in more detail. Our use of close ups is unusual because the purpose of a close up is to show emotion, but as ours are wearing masks you can't tell how the character is feeling - making it seem abnormal for the audience.



If you click on this link you will see our moving story board that I made on Windows Movie Maker, it made our original idea 'come to life' because it was better when we got to see everything come a little bit more to life. ANIMATIC. Although our work changed from this I think that it is still successful and that we didn't actually need the town scene.


Another use of technology during my research was watching different trailers on 'YouTube' and analysing them. If you click on this link here you will be able to see the videos I looked at, I think these inspired me in the long run.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

If you click on these images you will see that I have analysed both the magazine and poster in more detail.

You will be able to tell that there are many similarities in the poster and the magazine cover, these are to connect them with the film. These similarities are;

• The use of the font 'The Story of a Lonely Girl' - this font is used on both and at the end of our teaser trailer. We wanted to use the same as this font would then get associated with the film itself and would become recognisable. Although on the magazine I did change the colour of the font from white to black, this was just so it would stand out on the magazine and be different from the standard white font I'd used.
• The used of the pig mask - the mask is a code of our trailer, there are close ups of the mask throughout the trailer. Instantly it becomes something seen often and important, it backs up the fact that she is the main character and will be shown throughout the film. 
• The background - the background of both images is the pieces of paper and the magazine, you can barely read what they say leaving a sense of mystery, but what can you see may be seen as 'weird' or 'unconventional' such as images of models with 'fat' around the and will there eyes scribbled out. They are violent images that link to the violence of the film, even though this isn't seen it is shown through different clips such as the tying up of the hands or the feet and the code of blood.

Click here to see our final teaser trailer.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Results

This slide show shows most of the results we gathered on a power point, I think it is easier to show results in this way because it is visually  easier to understand that looking at lots of writing.

Here is a mind map of what people thought we should change about our teaser trailer, from these I have gathered that we should have left up the date of release and name of the film for longer. But Carlaina and I didn't do this in the first place because our intention was that the magazine and the posters we produced would be alongside the teaser trailer. Personally I thought that to have a shorter teaser trailer would raise public awareness and confusion. BUT looking back I can see what these people mean without knowing our thought process behind the shortness of the teaser trailer, so if I were to do it again I would probably change it to be a little bit longer.

This is another mind map filled with another set of opinions, this one holds the answers to what people found effective in the trailer. There is one answer in particular that comes up a lot; this is that the audience find the music effective and that they want to see more. I think that these answers are helpful because they've shown me that the music we picked was the right choice and that we should have maybe made the teaser trailer that bit longer as in the top mind map above it was a criticism.  

This mind map is for why people thought our teaser trailer fitting the conventions of the usual psychological horror. We had more answers than this but a lot of them repeated themselves, so I thought I'd just put down vital ones. I am most interested in the answer that is "The colour and the music breaks the conventions but the sound effects were fitting" - I like this because I think it shows what Carlaina and I were trying to achieve, the fact that we did want to make it obvious that it was meant to be a horror, but add in our own twists to make it different to other films out there.

This is our videoed audience feedback, that I posted earlier on in our blog. I think that it was an effective way to gather information - even if they did laugh - but I think this was because they were camera shy. I thought that this was an effective way to gather information because you could see how they actually reacted to the teaser trailer. The only downside is that because they were speaking directly to us they might not have been as honest towards us as the anonymous questionnaires. 

How does your media product use, develop and challenge conventions of real media texts?

These are pictures of our main character, the murderer.

Contrasting to our 'strange' main charactrer,
an 'innocent' and 'pretty' young girl.

We challenged the conventions of the usual murderer because we had a girl - they are usually seen as innocent characters and the victims in most film, they are usually seen as weak which means they can leave the audience shocked as they will wonder how she managed to kill these people and get them to the woods.

The costume we chose was specially to challenge the conventions of how your 'usual' murderer would look, we wanted her to look like a small child and have the innocent look because we wanted the audience to feel slightly sorry for the character and her lack of friends. So I think dressing her in this way could provoke that emotion and the empathy from the audience.

A famous mask in film, this is from 'Hannibal'
And I think it is equally as scary/weird as the mask
we use but maybe more sadistic

The pigs masks were inspired by different films such as; The Strangers, Saw, Hannibal. We wanted to play on the fear that a lot of people have which is the 'fear of the unknown'. I also personally think that the masks add to the idea of the game we have created in the teaser trailer, it shows that she doesn't take things too seriously when it comes to her murders. The fact that we dressed the other characters in the masks showed that she wanted them to get involved in the 'game' with her, linking to fact that we decided she wouldn't have had any friends and these would've been the motives for her killings.
(Click on this link to look at other famous Scary Masks used in horror films)

In some sense the masks are conventional as many films do use them, but I think ours differ because they are cartoon and seem more innocent to the the ones that are usually seen in films, as are children's masks. Ours is also different from the usual conventions because we have put the masks on the victims, not just the protagonist/antagonist - this was intentional for us, so that the audience didn't become attached to the victims and lack empathy for them. Although this seems like a strange tactic it's because we wanted the audience to feel a certain feeling for the main character, whether that is hate, love, sorrow - we wanted to make an impact with her when uncovering her life.

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Our other two characters. The Victims.
These are the two victims of the murder that we see fully, at the beginning you will notice there are 3 pairs of feet. One of these are mine just so it would look like more people were sitting around the picnic blanket but I didn't want to be a main part in the production as I was more interested in what was happening behind the scenes.

Similar to Jack, the main character from Buried
is kept against his will.

The character on the left (played by Jack) was still alive, this challenged the conventions because we wanted to show that she didn't mind if the 'players' were dead or alive. It also added to the weirdness of the situation. This is where our teaser trailer becomes psychological horror, rather than the usual horror - as it messes with the head. I think that this did this because you can't tell if it's a trick of the camera or if he is actually moving, this is against the usual conventions of a horror as the victims are usually dead, although we have the character on the right (played by Ellis) who is clearly dead - this is shown through the blood dripping from his ear and the limpness of his arm these are definite signs that he is dead, or that something is wrong. Having Jack alive makes the audience question if he is significant in the film and why does he get to stay alive?

We contrasted the way that Suzanne (the main character) was dressed with the way that the two victims dressed, these two are dressed completely normal and not really set to any trend. We did this because we wanted to show that to this killer it doesn't matter what you look like or what clothes you wear, it's almost like she wants to be accepted for so long, so she'll take anyone.

This is the location we used. 

I think that it fitted with the stereotype of psychological horror because it is in a forest and they are secluded areas which seems the perfect place for a murder scene. We wanted to change this by filming in day time. I think it shows how protagonist isn't afraid of being seen by others, it also makes the audience wonder how she got the people there in the middle of the day without anyone seeing. 

Childlike/Tea Party.

We used the idea of the 'tea party game' to challenge what usually happens in a horror film and makes the audience question the killers motives, if she does just wants to play a game with them (the story line is explained here).We contrasted this game with the images of Jack and Ellis tied up and the blood running down the characters face as it is although she acting normal. The animal masks are another aspect of the maturity of the main character, clearly showing that she isn't in a normal state of mind.

Violent Images.
Although you don't actually see any violence in the teaser trailer, it is constantly suggested with small clips. Here are two examples of Jack's hands being tied together and Ellis' feet - these show the audience that neither of them want/wanted to be there so you know that they have been captured. It is unusual that we decided to keep one person alive and make one dead, we did this to keep the audience guessing.

Sound.


The sounds used in our teaser trailer are against the conventions, yet also linked with them. It seems impossible that this can be so but, for the first part of our teaser trailer we use a sweet lullaby which links to the tea party and what seems like innocence. The whispering and screaming at the end were mine and Carla's idea of making it that little bit more scary and creepy as it is unexpected. The sound of the screaming is eerie and clearly connotes fear/pain  as this is the last thing the audience would hear it would stay in their head, keeping it on their mind making them want to watch the film.

Final ancillary tasks . . .

This is the final product of the poster that Carlaina made, I think it is a successful way to advertise our film because it has the date that it is released which is vital information - it links with the analysis I carried out on the other posters that included the date, title and the companies that had collaborated with the making of the film, obviously we didn't actually work with companies so Carla added the actors names at the bottom to fill out some space.

This is the magazine cover I made, I am really pleased with how it went because I think I followed the usual conventions of a magazine well. I included the barcode and the price because I thought it made it look more realistic because you obviously have to sell a 'real' magazine. If you look at my magazine cover and ones of a similar genre I think I have made a good attempt, although I think that I could have been a bit misleading with my use of colours - pinks and blues. But by making our magazine horror specific it is clear that if you brought this magazine you would only hear about that genre. To make my magazine look more realistic I added different names and made up information such as; 'The Strangers 2 Bryan Bertino is Back' - I thought that this linked because we really looked into 'The Strangers' and Bryan Bertino is actually the director. I also added the name 'Tim Burton' because he is a huge director who makes quite weird films, similar to ours.

Magazine So Far . . .

As you can see from these two images, they both have different titles. This is because I started off by choosing all of my font and making the basic layout, this came to be a problem when I uploaded my pictures, I found that I couldn't put them over my image without there being a white box around the font, this meant that I had to start all over again. 

As you can see from this image it is completely different from the picture above, the background is a common theme in the magazine cover and the poster as we wanted to keep them linked. I had to navigate myself around the different layers on the side in order to help me layer them on top of the other. My plan is to add more writing onto the front cover, that is inspired by things I have seen written on professional film magazines.

These are a selection of 'YouTube' videos I had to use to help me with the Adobe Photoshop cs3 application; 

The video above defiantly helped me the most as it taught me how to cut out the pictures I needed - in this case it was Suzanne, I tired this technique to cut out the words I needed but it was far too hard.

FONT.

I continued to use the website www.dafont.com to get the fonts for my magazine, in this scenario I used a font called 'Zombie' which is different from the one I had originally chosen. I am going to use this for the magazine title and for the main sub-headings.

BACKGROUND IMAGE.

This is an image of what I used for the background on the magazine and Carlaina also used it as the background of the poster. We chose to use the same image as it made them both connected and as it is meant to be part of the movie franchise there should be some connection between them all. With this image Carlaina and I used a 'YouTube' video to help with cutting around something that we wanted and using it somewhere else and then layered them all on top of each other.

But as you can see this is a different colour to the one used on my magazine, this is because I used the image effects to change the gradient of the colours to make it look like a darker image and more eerie. Also it made the colours of Suzanne's dress stand out more against the grey and drew the eye towards the middle of the magazine - the front cover.