Evaluation

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

In making our own media product, we used forms and conventions of existing media products so that our movie would fit in to its genre and be recognised as a horror trailer, specifically a teaser trailer. However, we also developed several of these conventions to make our product individual, and produce a unique selling point.
-Binary oppositions: We used opposing pairs to create contrasts, such as good and evil, supernatural and natural, introvert and extrovert, and sane and insane.
- Propp's character theories: As put forth by Vladimir Propp in 1969, we used several stereotypes of character used in most media products today such as: The protagonist, the villain (ghost) , the dispatcher (Counsellor) and the helper (friend).
- Conventions of horror setting: We used dark isolated scenery to show the protagonists seclusion from the rest of the world, portraying a sense of helplesness.
- Mirrors- The idea of having the villain appear extremely rarely at the beginning stages of the film is very conventional of horror films. They tend to appear in unlikely places such as mirrors and doorways when the protagonist leasts expects it. We decided to use this convention of appearing in the mirror for our own film. Shown above is an image taken from the film "The unborn" next to a screenshot from our own movie. Both show a scene in which the protagonist sees the ghost in a mirror.
- Conventions of music: The music we used was dark, ominous, orchestral music to denote horror and familiarize the audience. This is very conventional of trailers within the horror genre.
- Editing: In terms of editing we used varied shots and fast paced editing to heighten the suspense. We also flipped and sped up some of our footage to make it appear supernatural. This is something very stereotypical of the horror genre, as disturbing images have proved to be one of the key features of its success.
- Camera shots: High angle tilts were used to show a power balance. Tracking shot to show running.
- For our magazine we used several conventions of Empire and Fangoria magazine as shown in our research.
As shown here, our magazine cover was based largely on the conventions of Fangoria magazine. We used the idea of images down the side, as well as the large central image, and a pug to increase the success of the magazine. We also enlarged the name of the film the magazine is currently advertising, and what the main image is of. This is shown on the Fangoria cover. This ensures that the audience are aware of this new release and attracts and sustains their interest, making them want to not only read on, but go and see the film.
- Our research has shown that iconography is extremely important within the genre, as well as in terms of synergy. The cemetery was our prime location, and can be seen as very iconic due to its links to the supernatural and the macabre, something very conventional of horror films.
Conventions we developed:
-Theory of equilibrium: We did conform to the conventions of this theory somewhat, however not completely. Instead of beginning with a state of equilibrium, we began with the protagonists childhood trauma that leads us into the main part of the story. It is only then that we see a state of equilibrium as she has began her new life. This is disrupted when she moves back to her home town, and finally restored at the end when she faces her fears and confronts the ghost.
- We identified the fact that the font should be one of the most important features in a horror magazine, so we therefore enlarged it significantly. However we did not make it central. We positioned it at the top left so that attention would not be taken away from the images and the rest of the page, however it would still be noticeable and effective.

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

From our research, we have learned that synergy and cohesion of media products is extremely important for the success of any film, and we focused on this specifically within the horror genre. In order to create synergy, we had to make sure that we effectively combined our main product and its ancillary texts. I felt that we did this successfully and that each one linked to another. In each product we drew on the existing conventions of the horror genre and developed them in our own way. We created our own specific themes and iconography and made them apparent in each of the products. We felt that it was important to create products that could stand alone as media products, but also compliment and support eachother. In terms of iconograpy and mise en scene, something that we used to link the products was colour. Black, white and red are used in all three of the products therefore the audience can associate them with one another. These can also be seen as subliminal codes for theme. Black reflects the theme of death and darkness, red represents blood and anger, and white represents the innocence and purity of the protagonist, making it seem even more disturbing that they are being punished by the supernatural villain or ghost. As shown here, the colour scheme is red and black in all three products. We also used very similar fonts in all three of the products, which helped create synergy, and of course the images can also be associated with one another. We wanted to promote the face of the villain and the protagonist so that our audience would be familiar with the actors. Therefore we featured an image of one of them in each of the products. Another example of this synergy would be that for our film poster we used an actual shot from our trailer. This will enable our audience to identify the film we are advertising. If they have not seen the film or trailer, using this image will encourage them to see it, therefore we felt that this was very useful in terms of advertising. In conclusion i feel that our trailer combined very successfully with its ancillary texts, and that each text related to eachother cohesively and effectively.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

One of the most influential things in the construction of our media products was audience feedback. We had to take on board their positive and negative feedback and use it to our advantage. We tried to question our target audience as much as we could to gain feedback during the production process. We asked media students of this age group from our own school, as well as others outside of school in order to gain varied opinion. The majority of the feedback was very positive, however the small amount of constructive criticism we gained was used to our advantage. For example a few members of our target audience felt that the original image we were going to use for our magazine wasn't as effective as simply showing the face of the ghost. Therefore we decided to use that instead, and it proved to be highly successful. We took on board suggestions from our target audience about colour and images. This involved ther ideas for colour scheme and where to position certain images that we had. They suggested reds and blacks which we used for the magazine cover. They also said that they feel it would be good to see the face of the ghost more, so we decided to include a shot of his face as a ghostly image over the beaker of spilt acid shown in the trailer. In all, audience feedback definitley helped the success of our final media products.

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research planning and evaluation stages?


In our A2 coursework we had to use several different media technologies to present and create our products. One of the most important media technologies we used was blogspot. I had previously used this website in my AS work, therefore i had no problems with using it and was able to upload posts correctly. It also was extremely convenient in that myself and my teachers could easily track my progress, and they were able to access it online in order to give me any neccesary feedback.

In terms of websites, another important one was Youtube. This was extremely helpful in the research and planning stages of producing our trailer. It allowed me to access a wide range of videos and analyse them, which inspired me for my own trailer. To enable me to post videos from Youtube directly on to my blog i had to use the embed code, which i was already familiar with from my AS coursework.


When we began the filming, we had to use a HD camera to shoot footage for our trailer. I personally was not familiar with these, however another member of my group was. This was very useful as he was able to show me the different functions of it and how to use it properly. I had to learn to use a tripod which was vital to the proffesionalism of our trailer. A particular shot that needed a tripod was the running scene. We used a tracking shot to follow our protagonist down a dark alleyway as she runs away from the villain. Using a tripod made this shot alot steadier, and the audience could clearly see her being followed by the camera in a proffesional way.

When the footage had been shot we had to use Adobe Premier Pro to edit it. I found this fairly difficult to start with as i had not previously used it, however the uploading of footage and cutting and dragging it in the editing bar was fairly easy, it was just the experimentation with effects that took a while to get used to. This programme was vital to the effect of our trailer, and offered us several different tools to get the intended effects that we wanted. An example of this is when we reversed a short shot of our villain walking away from the camera, and made it appear as though he was walking towards the camera in a frightening and unnatural way. This made our trailer seem more proffesional. We were also able to blend shots in to one another smoothly to fit with the eerie feel of our trailer.

For the ancillary products, we used a canon digital camera to take photos, and then used Adobe photoshop to edit them. I was already familiar with both of these technologies from my AS coursework so using them was not difficult. However i had never before created a product within the horror genre, so some experimentation was neccesary.

Trailer feedback

After completing our trailer, we had to collect feedback in order to see how successful it was. We posted it on social networking sites such as youtube and facebook to collect feedback from our target audience, since these sites are very popular amongst our particular age range. We also showed it to various other media students within our target audience. The feedback we received was largely positive. The most positive feedback we received was through social networking sites. We received some encouraging comments on youtube as seen here where we posted our video; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYk70ObCgeA. The majority of people asked when the release date of the movie was, we took this to be a very positive thing as clearly our film could be mistaken for a real movie. We also were asked a number of questions about the rest of the plot such as "does the girl die", and this clearly highlights the interest of our target audience. The short, creepy shot we used at the end of the trailer proved to be highly successful, and we received some shocked and alarmed responses which is what we originally intended to do.

Re-shoots/Re-edits

Luckily the footage we originally filmed was good enough for us to use it in our trailer, therefore we did not have to do any re-shooting. Although, we took several shots of the same thing and then looked at which one of them would be best to use. We experimented with different angles and camera shots. However, we re-edited our actual footage several times to make it more effective and appealing to our target audience. The main reason for our re-editing was audience feedback. Throughout the whole editing process we frequently asked our target audience what they thought of particular shots, for example the length of them. We edited five parts of our trailer altogether.

1) The first shot that we had to re-edit was the chemistry lab scene, where we showed the boy walking through the class, getting tripped up, and getting acid spilt on him by our protagonist. We showed a close up of the beaker that spilled the acid on him. However, we edited this footage so that it was not in chronological order. We showed a shot of the spilled acid from the beaker first before showing what happened. This was proved to be the most effective way of presenting our footage by our target audience. It gives the audience a sense of suspense, and an understanding of what happens. We then cut to the shot of the boy walking before he gets tripped up, back to the beaker, and then shows the liquid spilling on him. The final shot of the beaker fades out gradually to give it a mysterious feel, and the feeling that something is about to happen. While this flashback scene is happening, we used the audio from our first clip of the protagonist and psychologist talking to each other about childhood trauma. We also sped up the scene to give it a sense of panic, and used an ominous piece of instrumental music to give it an eerie feel.

2) The second part of re-editing we did was within in the same flashback scene. Our target audience found it to be simple yet effective. For the original shot we had of the slow fadeout of the beaker that split the acid, we decided to use a ghostly image of the boys scarred face behind it. This is a contrast with the fadeout of the beaker, as the protagonists memory becomes more faded, the boys face becomes clearer. This denotes the idea that bad things are about to happen. Its almost as though his life has ended, but his new life as a psychological horror has begun after death. We did this by stretching and cutting the scene with the close up face to make it a slow frame. We then put it on another video track to make it the main image. We made the opacity roughly 40% to make the ghostly face look faded and mysterious.

3) The next piece of editing we did was in the graveyard where we edited the gravestone moving away from the flashback scene. This is the part where the boy/killer first appears in front of the gravestone. The first shot we did was of the gravestone by itself by the church. The second was the boy appearing by it looking straight in to the camera. We made this transmission smoother with a cross fade giving it a ghostly appearance. We also sped up the shot to fit it in with the pace of the rest of the trailer. We simply added the cross fade between scenes and used the stretch tool to shorten the shot.

4) The fourth piece of editing we did was the final shot after the credits, where the killer comes towards the camera quickly and unexpectedly. We did this after the credits to shock our audience as they think the trailer is over, therefore do not expect a final disturbing shot. The shot was initially backwards, and not as startling, so the movements appeared to be more natural, but we felt that an unnatural movement would be more effective. We sped up the scene significantly so that it is so fast it is almost subliminal. This was to leave a lasting flash of a gory image with out audience.

5) Finally, we re-edited the audio track. In order to use the track most effectively, we slowed it down while the psychologist was talking to the protagonist, not only to give it a creepy sound, but so that the audience can understand the conversation and aren't too distracted by the music. We also added an exponential fade at the end of the audio track to give the trailer a fade out as opposed to an abrupt and quick end. This made the trailer look alot smoother and it flowed together better.

Editing process

The editing process was the most important part of constructing our own trailer. The first step in doing this was simply to impport the video files from the camera into "premiere pro". To do this, we clicked file, import, and selected the folder that contained the files we needed. All of the imported clips are found in the side panel to the left of the preview window.

The main tool used in the editing process is the razor tool, this is used to cut a single clip into multiple clips, in order to move them around, edit them separately and shorten clips.

This is what the clip will look like once cut. In order to move it all you need to do is drag it and drop it where you like.
There are several tools on the toolbar, the only other one we used however, was the stretch tool.
As mentioned this tool simply stretched or shortened the clip or audio track we chose, this would speed up or slow the FPS (frames per seconds) and the speed of the audio clip, speeding up the audio track would make it higher pitched whereas slowing it down would make it slower, so editing the audio is difficult and not recommended. When this must be done in order to synchronize the audio track with the video, audio transitions can be used to blend both audio clips together

We imported the audio track in the exact same way as we imported the video clip. When editing an audio clip the tracks will appear on the bottom few rows, they look like this. The top of the 3 is the main (default) audio track, the picture of the speaker in the top left corner is to toggle the mute option. We used this for all of the audio sections of the video clips we wanted silent. We then dragged the audio into the second lane labelled "Audio 2" and muted that lane.
When we needed captions in between frames rather than editing them on premiere pro, we decided to create them on photoshop and import them as image files

The images are imported the same way as everything else, the images will appear with a purple square beside them, whereas an audio track will have a green square next to it and a video, will have blue.
Like every other media type, the images are dragged onto the work area under the video section alongside videos.

The eye in the top left determines the visibility of the media. We used the "video 2" lane in order to change the visibility of the scenes which we wanted the audio of.

When the image is placed on the track it will look like this.

When it is placed in the window it will look like this. Originally it didn't fit the screen, so we had to click the image and drag it into the correct size. when the image fits the screen, simply press the enter key and the image will stay in that position, this process was used with every picture uploaded.
Transition effects between frames and images were very important and made the difference between a smooth video and a jagged, messy video. The main transitions i used were the dip to black and cross dissolve. The fade to black scenes are useful to fade into the captions and images because the background for these images are black.
The cross dissolve transition was used between captions to make one word appear as the previous one disappears because this transition blends two clips together. This is also how w managed to get one subject look as if it was appearing as if from nowhere. We did this by using the cross disolve effect between two video clips

Effects are always just dragged onto the clip, and can be stretched out to make the effect last longer.

The title sequence at the end uses the transitions Iris box, dip to black and cross dissolves.
At the end of the audio track we have used an exponential fade to give the audio track a fade out, and to stop it from sounding so abrupt i stretched the effect to make the fade gradual.
The yellow line on the audio track determines the decibel level, for the music track we increased the decibels to roughly 5.67 making the volume higher.
The yellow line on the video layer changes the opacity, taking advantage of this allowed us to ghost an image of the killers face over an image of the corrosive beaker by putteng it under the "Video 4" layer

The video may not work very well and run slowly unless it is regularly rendered. To do this, simply press the sequence drop-down menu and press render entire work area, this will make the video run smoothly and apply all effects.

Final movie poster

This is the final copy of our movie poster for our movie "Memoria". From my previous analysis of movie posters i have learnt that simplicity is often best, as it leaves the audience wondering, and poses several unanswered questions for them that make them want to see the movie. For this reason, we decided to keep our poster fairly simple, however still conveying the conventions of the horror genre; darkness, the macabre, and isolation. In terms of mise en scene, we have simply used a picture of our protagonist staring back behind her towards the camera in a cemetery. The idea of cemetery denotes the theme of the macabre, and also sets the scene for our movie. It is also conventional of horror film, therefore doesn't give too much away about the plot of our film. The title is placed in the top corner. We used relatively large font so that it is easily recognizable, however does not dominate the whole poster. The font we used was appropriate in terms of relating to our movie. The swirly writing gives it a mysterious and surreal feel, and the red colour stands out as well as represents blood and death, this relates to our plot. The caption "your past will find you" is also very appropriate for our plot, we felt it to be a short but memorable caption that would sustain the interest of our audience. It would also help in terms of success for our movie, as it could be used as a type of synergy. It would be the official caption for the movie, printed on any other merchandise that would come from it. This would mean that our audience would associate it with our film, and therefore it would become more memorable and eventually more successful. For authenticity purposes, we downloaded a small font for the names of the actors positioned at the top of the poster. We also included a website adress and release date at the bottom.

Final magazine cover

This is the final magazine cover for our movie "Memoria". I felt that previously analysing magazine covers was extremely useful in constructing our own, as we were able to create an effective and eye catching magazine cover that related to the horror genre and reflected its conventions. We felt that the main image we used would be appropriate as it is rather gory and shocking. This is something we have found to be extremely common in our previous analysis of the horror genre as a whole. Gory and shocking images tend to appeal most to our target audience. We enlarged this image and used it as the background so that it is clear to the reader that this is the main story, also that it is new and exciting, making them want to read about it. The image also blends into the colour scheme of black and red very well, giving it a professional look. This is a technique i discovered when analysing "Empire" magazine. The masthead we used, "Asylum" was the most preferred name out of our original choices that our target audience saw. We felt that it best reflected the genre, and our own movie. It reflects the surreal entrapment that our protagonist experiences throughout the film. It also reflects the idea of restraint, and denotes the idea that the magazine is the place where all the famous horror villains are held and can be seen by the reader within its pages. We decided to choose the font "Cold night for alligators" from www.dafont.com as it was proved the most popular amongst our target audience. It appears as though the title is written in blood, something stereotypical of the horror genre. We also included a barcode, issue date, and issue number for authenticity purposes. At the top we included a promotional offer against a gold background to draw attention to it, as it contrasts to the red and black seen on the majority of the page. We felt that this would attract the reader, as they have the chance to win a luxurious prize. Also in gold, we placed a pug on the page to attract the audience. Along the side, we have included sub stories to show other upcoming films within the genre. The images and stories we used for these are relevant to upcoming films in the horror genre today, so it would be relevant to a modern audience.