Evaluation. Raw text.

1.In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms
and conventions of real media products?
Our trailer partly uses the narrative code of Todorov’s theory of equilibrium. The theory is
based on how that there is a state of equilibrium then a disruption occurs, then there is an
attempt to restore equilibrium and a new one is created. There is a clear state of peace as the
boys are firstly depicted as happily playing a game the voiceover matches this.
Disequilibrium is shown when the noise comes and their ears bleed. There is not a clear
effort to restore equilibrium and neither is there a new one shown, we deliberately did this in
our trailer as it would not entice the audience to see the film in the cinema if they knew what
happens in the end.

The start of our trailer was going to contain the conventional green still with information of
what audience the trailer is suitable for. However after further research into when this is
used, we found that this green still only appears at the start of trailer which is being viewed
on the internet. There is no need for information for cinematic trailers like ours; it just goes
right into the footage.

Our Trailer conforms to convention of withholding great character development, only

making the characters develop when it is necessary for the clarity of the story, this is used in
the Grudge film trailer. In our original script the split screen was much longer and included
more character development we decided that this development was not needed and the split
screen was too long for the trailer to keep the audience’s attention. With not so much focus
on the split screen we were able to include more footage of elements of horror, such as the
blood dripping on the controller.

The editing of our trailer does conform to the basic conventions of film trailers containing
lots of quick cuts and sudden change of scene.  Our first draft, constructive feedback from
our focus group suggested that the cuts were quicker and more edgy. Two of the suggested
changes were when the character Mark goes to hit his girlfriend and the other was when the
door was slammed. We decided to cut Marks scene so the hit goes right into the blood. We
did the same with door as soon as the slammed. With consequential feedback from these
changes we found that the trailer had suspense and action of a conventional horror trailers
like The Crazies or The Fourth Kind.

We were very restricted with the lighting we used in the production of our trailer as we only
had the choices of natural daylight, domestic lighting or the light from the video camera. The
most effective shot that conforms to the convention of dark and eerie lighting in horror
trailers would be the shot of Travis’ eye. I find that this conforms to the convention of dark
and eerie lighting of horror trailers as all the focus is directed on the eye which creates more
suspense and fear as the lighting allows the viewer to only focus on the eye.

Our trailer conforms to the convention of all film trailers, ending with a cliff-hanger we
noticed this in the trailers for Dawn of the dead when the question is weather the dead break
in and attack and also in the trailer for Drag Me to Hell where the question is weather the
curse kills her or not. Our trailer ends on the question of whether Abdullah is caught by the
virus or not. We did this by having the last shots of Abdullah shouting that the virus cannot
him, but then having a shot of the red light being reflected in his glasses. The other questions
which could be asked from our trailer are weather the virus spreads further and there is a
global endemic or weather its not the Xbox, it could be something else.

We conformed to the conventions of film trailers and horror trailers in particular, of having a
voiceover we found that the use of a voiceover is most effective in the Saw series trailers. At
first we recorded our actor Abdullah performing the voiceover on the video camera, however
when we uploaded this audio onto Garage band we could not edit the audio and change the
pitch, which is what we wanted to do because we found the original audio too high pitched
and not scary enough. To be able to edit the pitch and add an echo effect to the voiceover file,
we had to record the voiceover on the Apple Mac and then edit it on Garage Band. I feel that
this voiceover is the element which fits the most to conventional horror trailers.

In our research and particularly looking at the final destination trailers, we had found that
we needed to have some kind of non-diegetic music to create tension and suspense. We
researched where we could find music and came across a website that  let us download
copyrighted music for free and legally. We found two pieces of music one named ‘twisted
nerve’ which we used for our trailer and the other called ‘fatal ending’ which we used for our
ten second teaser trailer and the menu of our DVD.  Both pieces contain conventional
disturbing discordant, jolting, dynamic sounds which we hope manipulate the nerves of the
audience as they view the trailer.

In trailers, we found that costume should be in keeping with the character representations.
In order to get the audience to suspend their disbelief , actors should be costumed according
to their age, class and personality type as audience verisimilitudes is more likely then. This is
true in The Grudge as the protagonist does wear the costume of a typical female student
respectively. This is also true in our trailer Mark, Richard, Sam and Abdullah were styled in
typical everyday wear for teenage boys such as ‘hoodies’, polo shirts and chequered shirts
which are currently trendy. We went against the idea of using a ‘damsel in distress’ as the
only girl featured in the trailer was also wearing a chequered shirt. It is on trend for girls and
it is not the conventional way women are presented in trailers, as we found that in most,
women are dressed very provocatively, such as the characters in the trailer for ‘Scream 4’ as
one woman is shown in her underwear exploiting females so males will watch the film, which
is what we didn’t intend to do.

 We did not have the chance to conform in the similar area of make-up. Typical conventions
of horror film make up contains a lot of prosthetics with very high quality products which are
designed to react in certain ways with studio lights. Luckily the time we were buying our
props was around Halloween so fake blood was being widely circulated and we were lucky
enough to be able to purchase  4 tubes of fake blood  and 2 tubes white cream make-up for
£1.98. we only used fake blood with no other make-up to cover up blemishes and to enhance
features of actors faces, I believe makes the film more accessible for the target audience. I
don’t want teenagers to see the trailer and think that it is a typical horror film such as The
House Of Wax (2005) wax where a group of beautiful teenagers get graphically murdered.
Our actors look more like the target audience poses more fear in the trailer as the fact that
the actors look like they could be regular people you would see on the street, gives the trailer
a sense of realism which  turns the attention away from the bad quality of the fake blood
used.

We wanted the trailer to end in a conventional way  after our research, we found that we
need to show the title of the film and after have some information of roles of the crew, as
seen at the end of the grudge trailer. After watching the trailer for ‘The Ring’  we thought of
making the title more scary by animating it, we did this on final cut express as I created the
title on Photoshop using the same font which I downloaded witch used for the ’28 days’ film
series and put this graphic on top of the footage of the red light. At first we thought this had
worked however we found that after watching it on a TV, you could see where the graphic
had been put onto the video footage. Because we really wanted to title to be animated so it
would fit conventions, I went onto Photoshop and made a still of the graphic blended with
the red light and one with no red light and played these really fast in our trailer so it appears
as if the red light is flashing. We also made a conventional last still at the end of credits, this
was fairly easy to make on Photoshop and we also included a fictional website for our film
trailer and made it stand out in red and green.
Altogether, I believe that our trailer has a balance of conforming and contesting typical
conventions of both film trailers generally and more specifically horror films. It conforms to
important and essential conventions but also goes against them in a way where an advantage
is gained in promoting the film.
2.     How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary
texts?

I believe that the combination of my trailer, the promotional poster and the film magazine
cover are effective in the promotion of ‘Game Over’ because they present an eye-catching
house style which is easily identifiable which also directly appeals to the target audience and
others outside this. It was also essential to create a Brand for ‘Game Over’ to allow for
merchandise such as a soundtrack, games and other systematic practices as well as using
cross media convergence for promotional exposure.

I used a striking title graphic for the title of the film, which I imported into final cut from
Photoshop and also features in the promotional poster. I did not use the same graphic on the
magazine front cover because it is eye-catching but would ruin the focus from the picture so
in order to keep a house style, I used the same colour as ‘OVER’ on the magazine cover to
keep a continuity and easy identification. Throughout my trailer, my poster and my
magazine cover, there is a focus on the horror genre. There is a shot of blood dripping onto a
controller in the trailer and I kept the continuity and focus on horror by incorporating this
image into the poster and magazine front cover. The use of this image is significant in
attracting the target audience  because it is only in this image that it is clear that the virus is
in the Xbox360 console which is very popular, as we found out that  this had sold 50million
units up to January this year as well as being around in 2008 when games outsold DVD’s, it
has a wide user base and the use of the controller has the potential to attract Xbox players
who wouldn’t have necessarily gone to see the film.

The poster and the magazine have been designed to attract a t different target audiences.  A
promotional poster for a film appears almost everywhere a such as bus-stops billboards as
well as cinemas so many will see it, this would attract the majority of our target audience
which are teenagers. A film magazine however would not always be purchased by teenager,
as many film magazine buyers are film fanatics who generally want to know everything about
certain films. I designed the poster with much more focus on blood and horror with a ghostly
looking picture of Mark on the front cover with highlighted blood; I believe this ghostly
image would attract more teenagers than adults. I designed my magazine cover with not so
much of a focus on blood and horror, the picture of Mark is much clearer than the one on the
poster and the blood blends in much more with the cover. I think that both my poster and
my magazine cover represent my trailer in way that can only entice the target audience and
others outside the target audience to see it.

I feel that they complement each other excellently; the images, colours, fonts and slogans
work well towards creating a brand for ‘Game Over’. I would supplement this if producing
my film for real by having a business deal with a game making company such as Blizzard
Activision and a games magazine such as the Official Xbox 360 Magazine in order to extend
the range of target audiences even further.

 
3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We had a focus group which the majority of were individuals from our target audience, for
the first two parts of our feedback we video recorded for our own records,  we were unable to
do this for every piece, so we made note of the others. The main points that came up in the
feedback of our first draft were that how the split screen was not split evenly, the music did
not change smoothly, the cuts were too slow in some parts and we has a huge problem with
the ending title and credits. We did know about the problem with the credits as they were not
showing at all because the media was offline. I learned that audience feedback is extremely
important in this stage as often viewers picked out faults that we were unable to pinpoint
because we had watched the trailer several times and needed fresh eyes to help us improve
our trailer. For the feedback on the last draft of our trailer we decided that instead of having
the same focus group, we posted the trailer onto our facebook pages and asked for comments
from our friends letting us know what they think, with over 900 facebook friends between us
we thought this is the best way to get feedback as the majority of our friends are within the
target audience and we would get a diverse range of feedback. In the feedback of our last
draft, there was not much criticism, but it did point out that there was a gap between the
boys in dialogue of the split screen which was too big, however we did this deliberately for
effect as it is the calm before the storm as we hoped that the quiet space would enhance the
virus’ attack.

For my ancillary tasks I had two focus groups, one was the same and the other was the new
one contained a group of slightly younger media students which were all over 15. I believe it
is important to have feedback from individuals that have not seen the trailer before viewing
the poster and magazine cover someone would in public with no previous knowledge of the
film. I also believe it is important to have feedback from those who had previously viewed the
trailer and could indentify continuity and a house-style. The criticism I got from the new
focus group for the first drafts to me was much more valuable as they pointed out that it was
unclear of the horror genre, and it needed a much more striking picture on the poster and
that the secondary pictures on the magazine cover did not look professional enough and
looked more like family pictures than those promoting a film. The same focus group
highlighted other aspects which needed attention such as the blood on the controller was not
dark enough and looked much too false and how the green was too bring and contrasted too
much with the dark red used and how originally the credits at the bottom were not enough
conventionally stretched to appear very long and narrow. I found that it was very significant
to get feedback from a range of different individuals as the feedback is more valuable when it
is constructed in a way that a random member of the public would address the poster and
magazine cover as well as the trailer.

The use of social media in order to get feedback was undoubtedly successful and if making a
second film with the same target audience I would make further use of this tool in all stages
of pre-production research and planning, post production and evaluation.

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

We used all types of media technologies in all stages of producing our film trailer, from
simple search engine to software and hardware at semi-professional levels. We made use of
everything we had access to; such as mobile phones to contact our actors as well as using the
GPS Google maps application to get maps to the locations.

The first media technology we used Google which gave us access to websites of horror films
such as the website for The Final Destination which is where we were able to see the trailer
we also used YouTube to watch lots of horror film trailers to identify the codes and
conventions of them. Once I had identified them I created a digital brainstorm on Bubbl.us
which was really easy and let me keep my ideas organised. Google was also used to find
examples of real media texts for my ancillary tasks, as I found examples of Empire magazine
front covers and posters for other films such as The Hills Have Eyes and The Crazies.

When I had originally drawn my story board, I had drawn it the traditional way on pen and
paper. However I attempted to make the best of the digital technologies I had available and
scanned the sheets of the storyboard onto a word document, then onto scribd and then onto
flickr in JPEG formats so the drawings were clear and the writing was easy to read.

We filmed all of our footage on a Panasonic HD digital video camera; we found that cameras
that are HD and record straight onto an SD card were much smoother in both video and
audio than the video cameras with traditional tape. We also used Samsung and Fuji digital
cameras both 14 megapixel which ensured that all of our casting shots, location recees, stills
and photo shoots for our ancillary tasks were all at the highest quality possible and were on a
professional level. In terms of producing sound for our trailer, we used the HD video camera
to record Shayla’s Brother Travis screaming and to record the annoying high-pitched screech
which represents the virus. I downloaded an app onto my iPhone which was called ‘Dog
Whistle’ this created high pitched noise with a frequency of choice. I chose a frequency that
was high, but low enough for the microphone on the video camera to pick up and record.

For the voiceover and the news reports, we recorded this audio from the microphone on the
Apple Mac we were using. At first we did record the voiceover and news reports on the video
camera but in that format, the files were unable to manipulate in Garage Band. In terms of
other sound used in our trailer, we downloaded the audio for our main and teaser trailer on a
website, this was very easy to use and easy to download files which were of great quality,
were copyrighted but free. We created a production company animation at the start of our
trailer, the software had millions of combinations and it gave us a huge range of choice in all
aspects of our animation which was particularly useful in keeping to our original
storyboarded visions.

We used Final Cut Express to edit all of our footage and create our trailer file, our teaser
trailer file and our footage for the menu on the DVD. At first final cut was very hard to use
for the both of us had never used it before. I did do a preliminary editing task and my
ripomatic on Windows Movie Maker and it was big transition for me in learning to convert
my skills from the basic level of Windows Movie Maker to the sophistication of Final Cut
Express. I used Adobe Photoshop to create the title for the end of Our trailer and the credits
afterwards. Photoshop was also used to make both of my ancillary tasks, many of my peers
used Indesign to create their posters and magazine covers but I found that my skills in image
manipulation and design would come to more use with the use of Photoshop. Before creating
my preliminary tasks I did plan of each and took a picture on my Samsung digital camera to
put on flickr.

I used iDVD to put all drafts of my trailer onto a DVD disk. I enjoyed using iDVD as although
it is a professional piece of software it was surprisingly easy to use. We could upload our own
DVD menu footage and chose a design for the menu itself. The menu we chose is what we
believe to be the most horror-like despite the menu tab being bright pink. Ideally, we would
be able to change the colour of this pink to a red; however we were unable to do so and had
to stick with it.

In our evaluation and feedback stages, we still used our HD video camera to its full potential.
After creating our first draft of Game Over, we filmed our two individual from our focus
group watching our trailer for the first time simply because we had access to the camera. We
then recorded their feedback for our own records, and then looked at the trailer together and
filmed ourselves looking at the first draft after feedback and pointing out to our selves what
we need to change. To get feedback on our final draft, we uploaded our trailer onto
Facebooks and asked for constructive criticism on it, we did this to see if it really does appeal
to the target audience, and we think it does as our trailer got many ‘likes’ and many positive
but constructive comments.

Almost all of my important videos (excluding actual footage) has been uploaded to my
Youtube account where should others feel the need, they could comment on it.

My blog is the centre for all levels of planning and research, production, post-production and
evaluation stages as it has helped me organise my work and my pictures and has also allowed
me to out my Youtube videos on something other than Youtube which was really useful as I
could write more accompanying text to keep my ideas organised. The use of my Blog also
helps me out by allowing others to comment on my posts and let me know what they really
think of my work. My blog has helped be collaborate all of my other uses of digital technology
together as I can out scribd files on their along with bubbl.us files and my Youtube videos.