CONSTRUCTION

Film Poster

Magazine cover

Main Trailer:

EVALUATION

Evaluation on Prezi

1. In what way does your media product use/develop/challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
During our research for making a trailer, we looked at various horror/thriller as well as other genre trailers such as; The Haunting in Connecticut, X-Men, The Last Exorcism and Paranormal Activity 2. From looking at these trailers, we began to understand/learn the typical conventions used in a trailer of this genre. From looking at different genres of trailers, we both decided that the trailer we wanted to create would be thriller, but including some elements of horror. A typical convention of a thriller trailer is having a twist in the plot, which is what we intended to do for our trailer. We believe that having a twist in a trailer is a good way to hook an audience and leave them wanting to know more, as we found out in our research.
Our research also showed us that thriller trailers generally build up on suspense and tension, to create an eeire atmosphere to make the audience feel uncomfortable. Our trailer demonstrates this convention when strange supernatural events occur in the house the family live in. Such as; the silhouette (the antagonist) appearing vastly in shots, shots of the protagonist looking scared, and lights in the house switching on and off. We included these shots in our trailer because they are commonly shown in the thriller trailers that we have analysed, for example in the trailer for Paranormal Activity 2, the first shot shown is of an object coming towards the audience, this automatically makes the audience hooked, and it is also a jump scare.

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

I think having the combination of a trailer, the film poster and the magazine front cover, work well together to market the film. The title of the film 'Fatal Secret', is demonstrated in the film poster well, because we created a keyhole image effect, which is linked to the narrative having a secret, and when people see a keyhole, they would automatically think of a secret, which is why our film poster is effective. Another way in which our film poster is effective is the photograph we used, which shows the protagonist sitting behind a door with lots of hands coming out, this relates to the narrative, as you can recognise the main character from the trailer, and the hands emerging from the door, make it look more scary, and support the fact that the genre of the film is horror/thriller.

Our Empire magazine front cover is also a very effective ancillary text, as the protagonist is featured again on the front cover, covering up most of the page, we chose to do this because as a main character she is very important, and a close up of her face shows that. The background of the front cover is black, to draw all main focus on the protagonist. The photograph itself is linked to the main product because there are various close ups used of her face, mainly to show the fear and emotion, which is exactly what we have done for the magazine.

The typography used is also the same in main product and ancillary texts, the reason they are the same, is so that the audience can become familiar with the film, and notice it when they see it.

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Having audience feedback is a very important part of selling/producing a film, because the audience need to enjoy the trailer in order to watch the film. Before the making of our trailer, we gave out questionnaires asking the audience what they would expect to see in a horror/thriller film. This was an important part of our research because it helped us understand what we should include in our trailer, for example, we asked the audience how much information/plot they would want to see in a horror trailer, and the majority said that they prefer seeing as little detail as possible, which we took into account, so in our trailer we left the audience wanting to know more by giving little information about the plot, but instead we had the audience questioning what would happen in the film. We created this effect by adding titles with questions, such as, 'will they ever find out the truth?', and by keeping a small amount of dialogue, making the audience wonder more.

We also asked the audience many more questions that we would need to consider for our trailer, such as what rating it should be, locations, props, colours and the length of the trailer. After making several pie charts of the audience feedback, we could then take into account what we needed to include in our trailer.

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

We used many new media technologies in the construction, and research and planning, such as Final Cut Pro, the Internet, Garage Band, Logic Pro, Live Type, Photoshop and Motion. For example, in our research, we looked at a specific trailer to analyse, which was the Haunting in Connecticut, so to demonstrate our understanding of the trailer, and general knowledge on the conventions of trailers, we made a presentation video using a camera to film us talking about the conventions of trailers in the film genre of our choice and the chosen trailer we analysed in depth. We also used Final Cut Pro to create the video, and adding in title headings, to make the the video clearer about what we are talking about, for example, general conventions, introduction to The Haunting In Connecticut, analysing the themes, music, on screen graphics, editing, speed, and order. 

During the planning of our trailer, we used a camera and Final Cut Pro also to film what we were going to include in our trailer, by discussing the audience feedback and what we needed to include in our trailer, in this presentation we discussed, the genre, setting, plot, casting, distribution and production companies, release date, order of the trailer, speed, theme, voice over, on screen graphics, and editing and post production. We also included images and titles in this presentation, making it clearer to the audience who the cast is and what location we are using. 

During our construction, we used many different programmes to create our final production. using Final Cut Pro was the most useful in the construction, as it was our editing tool. We also used Live Type and Motion to create the titles in our trailer, and imported them onto Final Cut Pro, for example, making out title of the film, 'Fatal Secret' move, we used the software programme 'Live Type' to create a thrilling effect which fit our trailer. To get sound effects, we used some sound effects from Garage band, and created the rest of our music on the software programme 'Logic'. By making this music, we could fit it perfectly to our trailer, creating jump scares in the correct places. We also added in other sound effects which were not copyrighted from YouTube. 

To create the film poster and magazine front cover, we used Photoshop, which we had knowledge on already, so we could create effects to make our poster and magazine front cover stand out. Using this programme helped us to create realistic ancillary texts.