Media Studies A2 – G324 Advanced Portfolio

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

Throughout my coursework I have had to research into other existing products. This allowed me to look at the codes and conventions of other horror film posters, trailers and websites, also how these products have been made successful. It is very important that I followed these conventions as this would make my media products as successful and professional as possible. Some of my codes and conventions were different to the typical conventions as I felt that I wanted to create a better atmosphere. To make sure my products would fit in the current media market today I had to follow certain criteria and conventions to ensure this would happen.

A big amount of research was undertaken to help me understand the amount that goes into creating a poster, trailer and website. This then enabled me to use the correct codes and conventions that go into products to make it as successful as a product in the current media today. My trailer has used conventions and codes that well established film companies have also used, for example; Lionsgate and Sony Pictures. In my film poster I have followed all the successful conventions such as; used a main title at the top of the poster, I have then put the caption underneath the title of the film. This is one of the main conventions to a successful horror poster has. My main image of the girl is just a little off centre; this is one of the conventions that I have challenged as usually you would see the main image in the centre of the page. I also made sure my credits on my poster were in the centre of the bottom of the page. One of the main conventions that I followed when creating my trailer is that I made sure it was no longer that 90seconds. This is something that popular film companies have started to do. This is because they don’t want to give away the main plot to the film; also they want to leave you wanting to watch more; to ‘tease’ the audience. I have also incorporated the film company information and logo in all 3, website, teaser trailer and poster.

As we had to create a horror teaser trailer, we had to make sure all of the cuts sped up the pace of the film, this added suspense and a tense atmosphere. We had to match the pace of the genre and narrative to the speed of the trailer itself. One thing I made sure was the hit and run was shown quickly, just so you get the jist of what has just happened, and the main plot of the film. We also decided to show a quick flash of the main characters faces to allow the audience to see who is playing what role etc. The convention of quickening up the pace of the trailer was a must do when we were editing our trailer. Without the increase in speed the trailer wouldn’t give off the desired effect that I wanted to achieve. When editing my trailer I made sure the cuts were fast cuts, and no slow edits were used. This also helped create the desired atmosphere I wanted, tense and fast. This then will hopefully keep the audience engaged.

Within a horror film there are certain conventions that the trailer must feature, for example, a dark environment with a main protagonist (the girl driving the car) and an antagonist (young girl who was hit by the car). There is also a main victim. The way you will figure out who is who, it the way I have portrayed each person in the images I have taken of them. You will see that the evil girl, will be in a dark, eerie image which will make you understand who is who. Throughout my trailer and website I will be using creepy, dark and tense music to create a scared quite atmosphere and create moment of fright. This is a convention that has been used by many well-known film companies when creating a horror film trailer. By using this sort of music, will leave the audience wanting more; as the music is a suggestion as to what is about to happen.

A classic example of a conventional horror film is ‘The Ring’ (2002). My trailer got some of its inspiration from this type of psychological film. My trailer generally fits to these conventions of having similar characters. There is a young girl who turns out to be the killer and also an older girl who ends up being the victim. This is a lot like this film. There is violence in this trailer however, this is shown indirectly. This is another conventional code that other film companies have done. When I was researching into other horror film trailers and found that most horror trailers have mainly darkness in them. However I challenged this when filming my trailer and film some of the scenes in daylight. This then makes the audience fall into a false sense of security thinking everything will be ok in the daylight; the reality is that it isn’t. However; as soon as the light goes and its darkness again, the audience will get a feeling that this is when something bad will happen.

Throughout the trailer you will see that we have followed all the conventions of mise en scene. However there were some parts where I challenged this, and created a false sense of security. Making the audience feel like nothing bad will happen now. This I think was a good idea, as it mixes up the conventions and creates an unusual atmosphere, confusing the audience. An example of this is when the girl in the car is driving in daylight, and everything looks like its ok until she suddenly hits the young girl crossing the road. This goes from a settled atmosphere to a disturbed atmosphere.

Throughout the trailer, there had been no violence as such shown directly. As you will see, we didn’t show the incident with the hit and run. We decided to just show the blood and mud on her dress. We also decided to rip the young girl’s (Alice) dress to almost suggest that she was really hurt in the hit and run. I then wanted to make her facial features look messed up. I did this by using black eye shadow to darken her eyes and a white powder to make her look like she is dead. We wanted to make the audience shocked once they see that a young girl had been hit by a car, and the driver of the car didn’t even stop. We wanted to make the make-up as shocking as possible. Seeing a young child get killed by a hit and run is not something an audience would want to conventially see on TV. This then creates a ‘shock factor’ because the young girl is seen as innocent, (an innocence has been taken), then creating an emotional attachment between the audience and the young girl. This then grabs the audience’s attention because what they have just seen is morally disturbing as a child has been hurt not an adult. A juxtaposition has then been formed as they audience have just sympathised with the young dead girl. However, she then turns out to be the ‘baddy’ as such. Eventually when the audience realise this, their sympathy will change over to the older girl who was originally driving the car.

When filming the hit and run incident we decided to not include any form of seeing the young girl get hurt. This was because this might cause discomfort to the audience, as it is not morally correct to be able to view this in a trailer. The time when the trailer is advertised will have had to beat a late hour as to not frighten younger audience members. However we want to be able to be able to show our horror trailer on TV in the day time just as much as the night time. This is because it would be beneficial to us as more people would then view the trailer and hopefully want to then go and see it at the cinema or by it on DVD or blue-ray.

Conventional sounds were used to fit in with the genre of the trailer. For example, sounds like ‘a girl screaming’ have been used. This sound is more suggestive rather than obvious; it then makes the audience want to know why a girl is screaming? What has happened? It makes the audiences imagination kick in and think on their own.

We decided to make the young girl Alice wears a pink dress. This made her look innocent and made the audience think that she is the one who you should sympathise with; the dress suggests that she is innocent and nothing she can do would be bad. However, in my poster, I changed the colour of the dress into more of a dark red. This then made the audience know exactly who she was in terms of who is good or bad. I had to make it clear if she was the villain or not because I didn’t want to confuse the audience when they were looking through the website or viewing the poster. The dress is red, this is suggesting violence, blood, danger and death. However this then contrast with the young girl who you would expect to be innocent and kind. When we edited our trailer we decided to just use small snippets of different scenes. This then helped to not give away the main storyline of film and just give away small parts that would then leave the audience wanting more. Therefore making they want to go and watch the film.

The music I used in my trailer was chosen because it created a tense atmosphere. The use of music in trailers is conventially used in most horror trailers. By using a soundtrack that fits with the genre and narrative, this helps maximize the impact of the drama upon the audience. Also we decided to include a loud but soft bass sound. This was used when the trailer intended to make the audience jump, this would then emphasise what is going on. If this trailer was shown in the cinema, the bass would rumble the audience’s seats adding even more effect and make the viewing more exciting.

Once our trailer was created we decided to show it to an audience and get some feedback, after doing this we found that sticking to the general conventions of a horror trailer has made our trailer successful. However challenging some of the conventions have almost made our trailer more successful because it’s changed some of the typical expectations and turned parts of the conventions in our trailer into something the audience wouldn’t expect. This then challenges the audience’s expectations from all other media.

The story line of my trailer is more of a modern take on a horror film. However there are some conventions which we have taken from old horror films. An example of this is ‘The Exorcist’ (1973), they used a young girl who had been possessed by the devil, in our trailer we have also used a young girl, around the same ages as the girl in The Exorcist who also acts like she has been possessed and wants to take revenge on the older girl Isabella (girl who was driving the car). Throughout my trailer I made sure the victim and the antagonist didn’t ever come face to face and interact with each other, this was one of the main conventions that I needed to follow to insure our trailer was a success. To show the protagonist and antagonist interact would be very unconventional and not something that has been done before by successful film companies when creating a horror trailer. However when I edited the trailer I wanted to make sure it was obvious that the antagonist was in the protagonist’s life, I decided to do short edit cuts of each to make this visible. From not letting the villain and girl collide in the trailer this will make the audience want to see more and want to watch both interact. This is what I want to happen, to insure that people would then go and watch the film.

Before creating my website to go with my trailer I decided to research into multiple horror film websites. These included films such as; Prom Date, The Descent and Incidious. These all had similar codes and conventions. From analysing different websites it gave me a clear indication as to what I needed to include in my website for my horror film called ‘The Retribution’. This also gave me an idea about how to position all of the images, text, the film logo, certification and interactive buttons. Whilst creating my website I decided to keep a generally theme throughout the whole website, including colour schemes and fonts etc. I also wanted to try and take images of the antagonist which were similar to each other, i.e. lighting and colours etc. By sticking to a strict colour scheme this enabled the audience to recognise the website, this will also make the viewing of the website more enjoyable as it would be seen as well made.

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

Both my main media product (trailer) and ancillary tasks (website and poster) have been created by following the main codes and conventions. This is why I feel like my products are successful. I made sure I had a consistent theme running all the way through all 3 of my products; (poster, website and trailer). I had to think of a way they could all get recognised, this is why I decided to keep the theme consistent. I also decided to use my logo the same in all of the products, this then kept the audience remembering what company it was etc. By keeping a theme the same throughout it allows the audience to recognise that all three products are related.

I made sure I kept the colour scheme the same throughout; this was again so the audience could recognise that all three products were related. By keeping the font the same as well, this then linked each media product together. To keep the theme the same I had to make sure the images were similar. I.e. the colour of the images needs to be dark keeping the connotations of danger and violence involved.

The reason we had to do an ancillary task was to allow us to promote and advertise the film through alternative media products. In this case, a poster and website. By doing these it also allowed me to put more information about the film on them also. This will then make the audience go to the website or poster to find out more about the film; a good way to market ‘The Retribution’. Throughout all the three products I decided to keep the colour scheme the same, i.e. I used black, red. These colours connote evil, death and blood. I also used grey in some parts to vary my colour choice and on the main image of the antagonist on the poster I made it have a slight tint of blue on the texture I layered over the main image. This gave a cold feel to the image.

I wanted to keep the conventions that other horror products have used, for example; keeping all the colours dark. From keeping to a colour scheme it allows the audience to sub-consciously recognise the other media products and relate them back to the same line of products.

When filming the trailer I decided to take my images for my website and poster at the same time. This then allowed me to get images that fitted perfectly with the trailer. This would also help the audience again link all the products together. For example; I took an image of the evil girl hiding behind the door. This then left the audience wanting to see the whole of her face, thus making them want to see the trailer. When creating my website I decided to make a page called ‘Gallery’. This was a page of different images which I took throughout the making of my trailer. When choosing the images to put on this page, I had to be careful to not give away too much of the plot. This helped the audience get the jist of the synopsis though. Another theme that I wanted to try and achieve was the theme of daylight and the darkness of the night. I wanted to try and achieve the subtle settled feeling of the daytime, and then create the tense atmosphere of the nigh time darkness. I wanted to try and achieve a connotation of day light to be safe, like nothing bad will happen. Then create a connotation of the darkness in the night to be scared, tense like something bad is about to occur.

I have made my three media products synchronise well together; however I needed each product work well individually as well. If the audience didn’t see all three products and only saw one, then that one needs to be just as appealing and enticing on its own.

One thing that I needed to make sure I did was, place the ‘Pinnacle Productions’ logo in each of the ancillary texts, this then links all three products together. Also acting like a seal of approval to the audience, as it shows them each products are from the same company.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We decided to get some audience feedback and see what we could change to make our trailer even more viewable. From this research we found that we needed to speed up specific parts of the trailer. For example; nearer the end of the trailer we were told that we needed to speed this up. By doing this it created more tension and suspense as to what will happen next. However, we got good feedback as to the length of our trailer. It wasn’t too long, or short. From making sure the trailer is shorter rather than longer it allows the audience to not feel comfortable whilst watching the trailer. From my own research into other successful horror teaser trailers I found out that the shorter the trailer the more I felt insecure, uncomfortable and ‘jumpy’. The longer trailers allowed me to feel secure and at ease. This audience feedback helps me understand what needed to be changed in our trailer.

When filming our trailer I used lots of different shot types to help create a specific atmosphere. From using different shot this has allowed us to change how secure the audience are feeling whilst watching it. For example; an unusual shot type would make the audience feel uncomfortable. Whereas if we put a normal conventional shot type then the audience would feel secure and it wouldn’t have any desired effects on them. We have used some extreme close-ups to show the expression on ‘Isabella’s’ face when she sees the antagonist. However you don’t actually see the villain you just see her expression. Thus making the audience wants to go and watch the film to see what the villain looks like at that moment in time. One necessity that I had to do before I even chose the name of our trailer was conduct a questionnaire. This was a simple a4 size questionnaire which had easy questions to give to the target market. Once getting these back we then knew what the name should be for our film, what sort of genre or horror it should be, what I should involve on my website, where my trailer should be viewed and what people’s expectations of my trailer were. This then helped me to decide what to put into my trailer, website and poster to make sure it was a success.

(To the left is a print screen of my questionnaire ).

After taking this information on board i realised that the main reason for people to go to see a horror film is to ultimately scare them and make them jump. I then went on to editing my trailer; to do this I used an editing programme called ‘TrakAx’. To make sure I created the right atmosphere, I made sure I changed certain parts of the trailer. For example; techniques such as changing the white balance of some scenes to create a more eerie effect. Also, colour filters to change the appearance of some scenes. From our questionnaire and audience feedback I found out that the audience like to be challenged mentally when watching a horror film. They want to see a film with a deep interesting plot with scary, weird twists. An example of this is, the audience wouldn’t expect the little innocent girl to turn out to be the antagonist. This is juxtaposition in roles. To get even more audience feedback I decided to upload our trailer on to YouTube. This then allowed me to get feedback in a matter of minutes. This gave me a large group of options to read through, as there is a comment box below for people to express what they think. There is also a ‘Like or Dislike’ button, so I can see what majority of people like or dislike the trailer.

I received audience feedback from a variety of ways; I used questionnaire, surveys and focus groups to allow me to get quick feedback without consuming too much time. I then created another questionnaire after we created our first edit of our trailer. This then allowed us to see what needed to be adjusted to make our trailer more successful. Once we got these questionnaires back, we found that it was mainly positive feedback with some constructive criticism to ensure our trailer was up to its full standards. For example; we needed to speed up the end of the trailer to create more suspense etc. From showing our class our trailer we found that there were some bits that needed tweaking, for example; in the dream sequence we needed to make the lighting more of a white light, this would be done easily by changing the white balance on the shot. This would then allow the audience to see that this scene was in a dream, not in real life. Also the class said we need to change the speed of the trailer, as it was too slow. This would then create more of a tense atmosphere. The negative feedback was the best as it allowed me to change what needed to be changed, to make our trailer a success.

The feedback for my teaser poster was very positive. The audience said it looked extremely professional, and it was hard to fault anything. They said it had all the conventions and codes it needed to make it look legitimate. For example; it had the company logo on the bottom left of the page, this was small next to the credits, which is the most common place where a real film company would have placed this. I also had credits, tagline underneath the name of the film. I also had the film name at the top in the best fitting font I could find. The main image was eerie, showing part of the antagonist’s face, however not too much as to giving her full identity away. This was successful as it made the audience want to then go and see the trailer because they want to see what the actually looks like. Almost teasing the audience. I made sure my poster linked well with our trailer, this was important because they wanted to see visually the link between both media products. I needed to make sure there was a clear theme throughout my 3 products. From seeing the poster I wanted to make the audience want to see more.

I made sure I got some constructive criticism from my target audience as this would then help me make my poster look even more professional. I got told that my poster didn’t need the age certification as the posters that I analysed earlier on didn’t have this on their posters.

To complete our audience feedback we decided to create yet another questionnaire, just a small one to help receive any other important constructed criticism to help us see if there are any other things to change to make our trailer, poster and website as professional as possible.

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

Throughout my coursework I used a wide range of media technology to allow me to research, plan and evaluate. The main technology that helped me research was the internet. This allowed me to bring up other film company posters, trailers and websites. From getting these off the internet this then allowed me to be able to annotate and analyse these Medias. I needed to analyse other media products as this showed me the main codes and conventions that I needed to follow to ensure my products were as successful and professional as possible. I then used search websites such as YouTube; this allowed me to watch horror trailers that would help me create mine. There are so many you can watch on YouTube, some with over 2,000,000 hits. I looked at popular, well established and recent trailers to help me see what was successful, the similarities between horror trailers and the positives and negatives to the trailers. Google was another search engine I used to help me look at posters, I could then save them from this website and evaluate and annotate them. To start planning our trailer I decided to create some drawn images to create a story board. This would then help me decide the narrative and helped me to plan it. This also helped me decide what mis en scene codes we will use throughout different scenes. These images were drawn, and then we took images of them from a camera then uploaded onto a memory stick. We also had to decide on where our trailer should be filmed, who should be acting in it, how long should our trailer be and how the plot/narrative should work. After doing this I then decided to create a small mind map, this had locations and actors/actresses on it. This helped me a lot to decide on these criteria. I then uploaded all of this research and planning on to my blog. (http ://kateparratt-mediaa2.blogspot.co.uk). Throughout filming our trailer we used a Digital SLR Lumix camera. We decided to use this camera because we wanted the quality to be high. We felt that if the quality of our trailer was rubbish the audience would feel like it was un-professional and then they wouldn’t want to go and see the film if they didn’t like the trailer. By filming our trailer in HD this would then allow our trailer to fit in with recent horror trailers as it makes the trailers look professional and successful. When filming our trailer we decided to use a tri-pod. This allowed us to have a steady shot and enabled us to use shot types like tracking, zoom and tilt shots. When researching into other trailers on YouTube I found that these were the most common shot types used to create the correct atmosphere. When editing we decided to change the white balance of the dream scene. This was because you couldn’t tell what the dream was and what reality was. This also creates more of a dream-like atmosphere. To edit we used a programme called TrakAx. This allowed us to combine different shots together to create a professional looking trailer. At the beginning of our trailer we decided to put our film logo on at first, and then fade it out to start the trailer. We then used music such as a little girl singing ‘ring around the roses’, and then she laughs at the end. We chose this clip of music because it linked in with the antagonist being a young girl. The laugh at the end also created a tense spooky atmosphere.

When editing we placed the clips together, starting them off slowly and then gradually making them faster to create more tension and to quicken up the pace of the trailer. As the narrative of the trailer sped up near the end, we had to speed up the shots to make them fit.

To make sure there wasn’t a gap between music clips, we decided to fade in another sound clip. This made the trailer flow better.

The research for my website was easy as I could access hundreds of horror trailers on YouTube. The research involved, looking at well-established and successful websites. For example, film companies like ‘Lions Gate’ have created websites such as Saw6. From looking at other horror film websites I have gained knowledge on the codes and conventions and this has then helped me to achieve the look I want on my website. When it came to creating my website I used a programme called ‘Wix’ (www.wix.com) . We decided to use this website as it is less time consuming than other website creator programmes. When creating this I had to keep in mind my theme that I wanted to keep throughout the 3 media products. My theme had strict colour schemes including mainly red, black, and white and greys.

After creating my website, I needed to do my film poster. I decided to create this on Microsoft Word. Purely because I find it a lot easier to work with that than Publisher. Firstly I had to create the layout design for my poster. Then I decided to use my Cannon 1000d camera, I chose to use this high quality camera because then I’d get the best images that I could of. Here is a screen shot of the main image I used before and after editing. As you can see from this image, I edited it to make it have a scary textured effect. I also decided to give it a blue tint. I felt this gave a cold and tense atmosphere to the image. I chose this image out of all of them because I feel that it shows the antagonists identity but not all of it. Therefore leaving the audience wanting to see more. From choosing this main image it allows the audience to understand if it’s the antagonist or the protagonist. There is a clear indication to this. To edit these images I used Adobe Photo Shop CS5, this allowed me to achieve the look I wanted. After I had created the image I wanted. I then added the name of the film ‘The Retribution’. The font looked like it had been written by a child – thus keeping with the narrative. I then added the slogan underneath and then date etc. When evaluating I used PowerPoint to write it up, this was because I could then upload this PowerPoint onto my blog. http://kateparratt-mediaa2.blogspot.co.uk / . Once my trailer, poster and website were done I then uploaded them to my blog as well.