FILM POSTER - Final edition

• When evaluating how effective our poster was, we decided to make a few minor changes. Above is our final edition of our film poster, that we hope will be interesting and eye catching for our target audience.

- 'The Unwelcome' moved to the top of the image to stand out more
- Tagline 'they say we all have voices in our heads' moved to above credits and made landscape instead of horizontal
- Credits slightly changed to include our actors names instead of famous names - to highlight credits were made ourselves 
- Colour of title changed to stand out more
- Tagline colour changed to simple black, to make simpler to read

To make this film poster we used an array of tools on photoshop.
- Lasso tool to draw around eye, then paintbrush tool used to make eye black and demonic
- Levels tool used to change contrast of image
Full description of how we edited this image can be found under 'FILM POSTER - experiments' post.         

MAGAZINE COVER - New Empire Cover

 

• Recently, when we were looking over our magazine cover and film poster, we decided our magazine cover did not look genuine and effective enough, so we decided to redo it completely, with a different image etc. Above is our new 'Empire' cover, which we have made look much more professional by using different conventions.

- Bigger barcode to highlight authentication
- Sticker highlighting gore
- Month and price in both sterling and USD
- More text about what is to be included in the magazine special.   

To make our new cover we used different tools on photoshop, which helped to make it look authentic. 

- Lasso tool to cut round actual 'EMPIRE' lettering and mask to change levels of brightness and contrast
- Opacity tool to make 'The Unwelcome' name look spooky and ghost like
- Text tool to create our text, and then colour tool to change the colour of certain words
- Eraser tool to put 'EMPIRE' lettering behind the masked head
- Ellipse tool to create coloured circle.     

Feedback

R&P = 19
Trailer = 25
Film poster = 7
Magazine cover = 8
Evaluation = 14

Total = 73 B

Targets:
Evaluation activity 4 - discuss the impact of marketing campaign on audience; you have used all of this new media to create a campaign directed at attracting a target audience. Could you link in audience expectations of seeing a high quality product etc?
Evaluation activity 1 - for each screen shot, say whether you have conformed to or subverted a convention of horror trailers and explain why you made that choice.

Feedback

Your evaluation looks detailed and thorough.

Make sure you update your audience feedback if you get anything more on Facebook or twitter.

Also, in evaluation task 2, you could discuss in more detail why you have used the central image of the eye in all of your products - you do mention using the mask but I think you could explain why you felt the eye was an appropriately disturbing/frightening image to use. I think it is this that ties all of your products together. Could you explain where you got your inspiration from?

EVALUATION ACTIVITY 4 - How did you use new media technologies in construction & research, planning & evaluation stages?

The pictures above shows all the equipment we used when creating our trailer. As you can see we used lots of different pieces of technology and learnt a lot about the different devices.

The equipment we used included a Lumix camera, a Dell computer (with a keyboard, mouse and screen) with the programs Adobe Premiere Elements 10 and Adobe Photoshop CS4. When creating our trailer we used this hardware and software’s a lot as it enabled us to create good quality shots and detailed editing. These programs allowed us to create unusual titles and fast cutting of shots.

If technology hadn’t developed so quickly we would not have any of the hardware or software that we used to develop our trailer:

 

· The special effects in our video from Adobe premiere elements 10 might not exist, which means that we would not be able to create the effects on our film such as fast blur, CCTV, fade in and fade out. This would mean that some of the interesting and unusual shots that we took would not make sense or look professional in our film. 

• If we had not had such a high Tech camera the footage would not have looked as professional and as we were filming in the dark the quality of the footage was of a much higher quality.

 
 

·         Another feature that we used was YouTube to broadcast our trailer to our target audience. By doing this it meant that we could get feedback from a wide audience rather than a local audience. This meant that when we had finished producing our trailer it could become viewable worldwide. If this website had not existed we would have had to advertise it to a wide audience in a different way such as a media producer or advertiser to show it publicly and get a wide audience feedback. Another advantage of YouTube is that you can get feedback from the form ion the comments box at the bottom of every video.

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  ·         In the first few stages of our research and planning we used You Tube a lot to research and analyse other film trailers on our blogs. we also used YouTube to show our animistic which as very helpful in the production of the film as it meant we has a rough idea of what our final film will look like. We then uploaded our film trailer which meant we could get feedback from a worldwide audience. This website is very effective as it is very accessible and helps the videos look like a high quality.

  

  
  

• We used blogger to post analysis and research about our whole project. We probably used it the most out of all the software. This is because we blogged about our research and planning before creating our trailer and then we analysed our three different pieces of texts. There are lots of helpful tools and icons on blogger which help in the production of making a film such as embedding YouTube clips and Pictures on to your blog.

• Another piece of equipment we used was Adobe Premiere Elements 10 for producing our film trailer. We used this to edit and put shots together when creating our trailer and animatic. This software was useful for adding transitions to our trailer and putting our own music and scenes together in the correct order.

• We used this software, Adobe Photoshop CS4 and CS6, to create the two other texts for our film trailer. These were the magazine and the film poster to show how we would advertise our film. This is a very high quality software with very helpful tools such as the lasso tool, dodge and burn tool, gradient tool and opacity tool in order to give a ghostly appearance.

•  We used Cubase 5 to create the music in our trailer as we wanted our music to be original, and also wanted the sound effects of a music box and nursery rhyme. Cubase 5 enabled us to record a triangle, vocals, music box, keyboard and glockenspiel and through 'direct input' layer them on top of one another instantly to create music with lots of depth. We also used an effect called 'reverb' which made our sound echo making it eerie and sinister.



•  Another aspect that would have been difficult not having is social networking sites for example Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. If we had not had these sites we would have had to think of other ways of advertising the film such as posters and leaflets although the production and printing of these advisement's would have been very expensive in comparison to online social networking sites which is free.

THE EFFECT OF OUR MARKETING CAMPAIGN ON THE AUDIENCE

• By marketing our film with a teaser trailer, magazine cover and film poster, we have used this new media to create a campaign directed at attracting horror movie gooers. Using a marketing campaign is very effect as it broadcasts your media products to a wider audience, and gives an insight into what the audience should be expecting from our film 'The Unwelcome.' The conventions of horror teaser trailer's we have shown include fast shots to disorientate the audience and not give away too much at any given time, disturbing imagery to highlight the horror genre and make the audience feel uncomfortable, close up shots of the villains masks, to make the audience feel as if there is no escaping them, and sinister music with a childlike reference to contrast the two ideas of horror and sanctuary. 
• From looking at our marketing campaign (teaser, poster & magazine cover) our audience would have the expectations that our product would be of a high quality and worth seeing. Our target audience of horror movie gooers, would expect a film with plenty of past paced scenes, and the feeling that the villain could be hiding anywhere and our victims have no chance of ever escaping. Our audience would also expect to be frightened and kept on the edge of their seats the whole time so that the feeling of 'anything could happen' is present. 

Important tools that we used on Premiere Elements

In this part of our trailer we have used the Time Laps Tool to speed up the time of the intuition video at the beginning of the film. We decided to do this because it made it more interesting for the audience and the pace of the clip fitted better with the fast reeving of the car.


We used the time laps tool on this piece of footage as well as we thought that slowing the piece down would be more frightening for the audience and change the pace of the trailer in the middle. We thought this fitted well as it was contrasting with the very fast paced shots that it was entwined between.







In the clips above we have used the cutting tool so that we could cut the clip up and put other footage between them. We thought that this worked well in our trailer as it makes the audience feel uneasy as they are not sure when or where the villain is going to pop up next. They may also find it disturbing as the scary face of the villain is very close to the camera and they may feel like they cant get away from it.

We have used the time laps tool on this clip as we felt that by slowing down the image would make the footage seem scarier and show the character rocking slowly. This also meant that the image of the girl wearing the mask would stay in the audiences mind and make them remember the disturbing footage.

EVALUATION ACTIVITY 3 - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

In the video above it shows the feedback from our class about the trailer of ‘The Unwelcome’ that we made. This was good as the people in are class are around the same age as our target audience. We have learnt quite a lot from their feedback, here is the information that we gained:

The Conventions of horror teaser trailers that we used:

• The horror genre is clear

• Some of the trailer isn’t clear what the storyline is which makes audiences want to watch it to find out more

• Fast paced cuts which makes it daunting and scary

• The music sounds childish because of the lullaby. This gives the idea of uncertainty because of a quite happy memory of childhood paired with the genre of horror

 Strengths:

• Really short clips put together which makes the audience concentrate on what’s going on which keepings their mind going
• The music is very creepy
• The change of location makes the audience not sure of where they are due to the fast cutting
• Short clips keep the audience engaged with the trailer
• The use of high angle and low angle is really good because it made you see how the character was feeling and gave the audience more of an idea what the storyline was about
• The costumes and the use of masks as they are very scary and keep the villains identity hidden. This is frightening as the victim nor the audience know who the villain is
• Appeals to the target audience
• Use of a new original idea of the camera reflected in the mirror which appeals to a young audience 

Improvement:

 

• The font looked like something that the audience would be used to and was too simple and didn’t convey the genre enough

We didn’t get many improvements about our film which shows that they like it and appealed to the right target audience. The one improvement that we received was about the font. We felt that we didn’t agree with this point as one of the audience members said that they didn’t think that it was very good that the writing was simple and something that the audience would be used to. However the reason that we made it like this was because firstly we did not want to detract from the shots that were being shown very close and wanted the statements to be easy to read. Another reason was that we wanted to create to contrasting emotions for the audience members as we tried to put them in their comfort zone by seeing the normal writing and then as they read it they can feel quite perturbed by the scary and strange statements. Also the white against the black could make the audience think that something could jump out at them from the darkness and when continuing onto the next shot it is entirely unclear as to what could be waiting.

As we received hardly any improvements from our audience in class we decided to put it on social networking site to increase our amount of feedback.

From putting our film on the social networking site Twitter, we have gained many comments from unbiased people as we didn't know the audience who were giving us feedback however later on we the put it on Facebook. This may not be such a reliable source as we know the audience so the opinions are bias.

EVALUATION ACTIVITY 2 - How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

 

Our trailer annotated and evaluated above.

EVALUATION ACTIVITY 2 - How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

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

We believe that all our three texts (teaser trailer, magazine front cover and poster) all compliment each other.  We think this because they all have the common factor of having a mask or sinister image which could be perturbing for the audience. In each of these advertisements we have not given too much away to the audience as we think that less is more. We have used different forms and conventions to get our audience involved and interested in our film.

• In our film poster we have used the tag line 'they say we all have voices in our heads' to engage the audience in the film and make them want to find out the story line. Also to create questioning around who the 'voices' are, whether they are good or bad, whilst still keeping the idea around our teaser a secret, that the audience will only uncover by watching our film. 

• In our magazine, below the 'Empire' logo we have written 'horror special.' This encourages people to read on about our film as it has been given the Empire front cover, and that issue of it has been dedicated to our film. Also by having our film on the front cover of Empire magazine, it gives the idea that our film has been recommended by Empire, so people will think it is worth while to see it. 

• In our teaser, we make sure the audience are fully aware of the masked murderers. We have them popping up a lot, but towards the end where the 'victim' is wearing a mask it creates confusion and questioning as to whether she really was a victim all along, or if the 'voices in her head' finally let her be who she was destined to be. Thus, encouraging audience members to go and view our film to discover the story behind it all. 

Our three texts also appeal to our target audience and compliment each other, as through the use of image and text, we have made it clear what the genre is - horror.

• In our teaser, the horror genre is made clear through the masked murders following our victims holding various holding various weapons. Their intentions are clear through the vibe given off around them, catching the attention of horror movie goers.

• Our magazine front cover highlights the horror genre by the 'top 100 must-see horror films' and the use of including other horror films that are soon to be released and the text under our film name saying 'discover the horror that awaits.'

• Our film poster shows the horror genre through the darkness surrounding it, and the blacked out eye almost making it demonic. All three of our texts make the genre of our film well known through the use of darkness and hidden identities, which reaches out to the audience we are aiming for, being horror movie goers.

All together we feel that when our main product and ancillary texts are combined, they are very effective at highlighting the genre, and suggesting what the film will be about, without giving too much away. We also feel that the way we have created them, intrigues audience members to research into the film more, in order to try to understand it, which is also helpful in creating anticipation for our film. Also through the use of us creating a teaser trailer, it will encourage people to view our trailer which would come after. This being similar to the viral marketing campaign for The Dark Knight Rises where information and parts of the film were given away in sequences building suspense and excitement for the full film to be released. Through advertising our film like this, we would hope that we would be able to build a big enough audience for our film to be a box office hit. 

- Our inspiration for our trailer came from a few different films we had researched. The idea of a concealed identity was formed by watching trailers such as Friday the 13th, The Strangers, Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, Texas Chainsaw Massacre etc. All though not all of these films use masks, they use different aspects on the face to make the villain much scarier and patronising; whether that be burns, masks or disfigurements. 

- In our film poster and magazine cover, we felt that using an eye and mask was appropriate as they are disturbing and frightening images. We used the image of the mask on our magazine poster, as we wanted to ensure that audience members knew how the villains would appear, but we also used an image of an eye, as it creates wonder and questioning around it, as the person in the image is having their eye being pried open. This allows audience members to make their own judgements into what they believe is happening and could also suggest that the victim within our horror teaser trailer, may have been evil from the start due to a 'demon' inside her eye.