For my media trailer I chose to stick to the conventions of real horror products and follow them rather than challenge them. This is explained previously in the project. Conventions that I followed were typical of this genre such as the protagonist being an innocent girl, and the killer being a male, creating, Good Vs Evil and Male Vs Female tension and the outcome is that good defeats evil. A very common concept in Horror films is isolation, to create this we only cast two characters in the trailer, to keep the verisimilitude of the isolated helplessness we filmed in an empty house and empty alleyways and fields.
The editing has been done effectively as it works in the same way as most horror trailers, picking up pace, making the audience jump, and creating tension. Following Freytag's triangle. To create this the footage was cut into short scenes, and using stretch tool to create suspense. I think the use of an instrumental Evanescence song in this trailer gives a chilling effect on the viewer, the music fits in time with the trailer.
For the magazine cover and poster I feel we have kept in with the conventions of real horror products through the use of colours, imagery lighting and chiaroscuro. The use of black, white, dark blue (and poison pen) are typical colours used in horrors, they portray darkness contrasting with innocence. The image of the female character is pale and with the smudged running make up demonstrates she's been through trauma, behind her is a hooded figure with a blacked out face which intrigues the audience as to why is his identity hidden? The killer in many horror films identity is often hidden with masks, large hoods, or balaclavas etc. The poison pen fits into our trailer as the use of poison pen is present. Also the font used is a trademark movie font used in majority of film posters, its simple to use with each lower case letter providing a role that has been used in the film such as Directed by..---
The magazine cover is a typical film magazine its title indicates film with the use of 'That's A Wrap', this is often said at the end of making a film, so is very fitting to be the masthead of a film magazine providing up coming films, just released films etc. Keeping in the theme of films we used a film role to place images in the spaces of films that are inside. Like every magazine sold the date, barcode and price are present as well as an issue number for those who collect or miss an issue they can catch up. The lighting of the image highlights the wide eyes of the character filled with fear capturing the audiences attention.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
The combination of my main product and ancillary texts work very well, they have particular parts of the trailer interlocking them associating them as the same film. Individually the trailer, poster or magazine cover are not enough to promote the film effectively. They are seen in different aspects of media from magazine to bus stops/buses and to cinema screens. Using each product the film reaches a wider audience. The colours used in each of these products relate together, the blue background, the paleness of the skin, as well as the mise en scene. The settings used for the background of the film poster was a location we found whilst filming, its an alley way through the trees, its dark and scary which was ideal for our poster, the background shot was taken at night so little colour effect was needed to create the dark blue, the shots of the characters were taken separately. The way the killer is standing behind the female is very similar to a shot in the trailer where she looks behind her whilst running. The magazine cover was also shot in the same location as we filmed, in the house. However with the colouring it black this is unrecognizable. However we used a different shot we took on the day of taking these photos so the same eye make up was the same, along with a similar expression. Down the left hand side of the magazine in the film strip you there is the a close up image of the female protagonist on the film poster. Each of these tie the three individual products together.
What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
Audience feedback throughout this project has shaped the outcome of our products, the majority of our feedback was positive with more ideas suggested by the audience. Which we tried to use and develop on to create a wider audience. However one criticism we found creeping up was that unlike real media trailer which create tension and disequilibrium by not flowing in order of events in the film. Ours ran in order from start to finish. This is why we cut and changed footage in an order that was more effective of telling the story and building suspense. This was after adding further footage as the trailer ended too abruptly this has taught me to continuously film the same footage at different angles, more to choose from than limited for choice. One large criticism was our previous name title Agoraphobia, this caused some confusion amongst some of the audience trying to work out what the phobia was. This taught us to keep it simpler, use a title that fits better with the contents of the trailer. We asked a sample group of 20 if they proffered the new title 'Love Kills' over 'Agoraphobia' 100% voted for 'Love Kills'.
This project has familiarised me with the programme Adobe Premier Pro, the programme was easy to use with lots of clearly labelled tools and functions to produce a proffesional video. The tools mainly used as mentioned previously were, the razor, the stretch tool and the click and drag tool as well as many effect functions. One problem I did encounter with the audio part of the programme was that in my case the audio track could not be placed on audio 1 to 6, meaning our track was on the last possible line of audio meaning that we couldn't cut, mute and play other music over it, we had to use one track only. This problem could not be overcome with the help of any of our teachers, however I feel that this didn't overly effect our final product. Premier Pro was not the only programme I used I also used Photoshop to create the magazine cover and movie poster. I was already familiar with this program as this is what I used to create my coursework at AS. I used a variety of the tools with different layers to create the final products. To produce my research I used the internet to research different theories proposed by various people using google, further information on film Noir, these theories were then used in planning and construction of our trailer. This informatio was then uploaded to my blog constantly keeping up to date with work. I used Powerpoint to create a pitch for our film which was presented to our class. To put this presentation on my blog I had to upload it to ScribD where I created my account this was helpful as its an easy way to display alot of information quickly , this was the same to put my video on Youtube to get it on my blog. In the construction part of my coursework I used my camera to upload images onto my blog a long with scanning images in. As well as using the video camera to film footage, which the files were then copied to the computer and uploaded to Premier Pro.
Overall I feel that my project was a success based on the audience feedback. Any changes have been made and I feel there is nothing further I could have done to improve our products.
