Rachel

In year 12 my task was to create a music magazine, which consistes of six pages, which are a front cover, a contents page,and a four-page article. I carried out a lot of planning before starting my magazine as this was essential. I gathered questionnaires, analysed other magazines and made flat plans. My magazine genre was R&B and was aimed at fifteen to twenty-five year olds. I was required conventions such as only using a small numbe of colours, one large picture, not many fonts, a bar code, price and date. From mt A1 work i gained a lot of skills, such as photography, planning and using photoshop.

My A2 task is to design and make a teaser trailer for a movie .In my group which consisted of me, Niomi Bolam ( http://www.niomibolam.blogspot.com/ ) and Rachel Allan ( http://rachelsmedia.blogspot.com/ ) we were given a brief with a selection of questions to choose from, and then go on to produce the product for our project: teaser trailer. In my group we decided to make the teaser trailer based on the horror genre, along with a movie magazine front cover and poster which promotes the horror trailer. Before we even started to produce our final pieces we had to do research into who our target audience was and what genre of film they would like.

We found that horror was the popular genre and our target audience was both males and females between the ages of 15-25.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
As I worked in a group for this project we shared out a lot of the roles. I took the role of the editing and I done some of the filming. Niomi Bolam did the planning and story boards and parts of the filming. Rachel Allan took control of photography and locations, as well as some filming. As I was in charge of editing I took great notice of the editing for other trailers. I decided to look at teaser trailers for horror movies on www.youtube.com . I looked at ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’, ‘House of Fears’, ‘Paranormal Activity’ and ‘30 Days of Night’.

By looking at '30 Days of Night’ I found that the common conventions of trailers that I found and used in my teaser trailers are: cuts, flashes, zooms, fades, close ups, and shots. I have also included in my teaser trailer the studio logo, the film logo, the credits, the billing block, voice overs, the producer information, a tagline and the certificate as these are used in every trailer. In all horror trailers they have loud music and usually have a lot of bangs, to make the atmosphere scarier.The mise-en-scene is dark and makes you feel at edge.

In ‘30 Days of Night’. The mise-en-scene is dull and from the very start, the trailer makes you feel uneasy. I have also conventionally used attractive girls which are a common convention in horror films as you always see attractive, vulnerable girls as the main victims within a film of this genre.
I spend a lot of time using ‘Final Cut’, cutting the scenes and placing them in time with our music. I darkened some of the scenes as they were to light, and other scenes had to be zoomed in to fit the whole screen.

We all had to make separate film magazine covers and posters based on our horror trailer.
Like most other trailers, the storyline goes with Todorov's narrative theory. The trailer begins with an equilibruim: everything seems normal, the atmosphere is possitive as the girls are chating as friends do and then there is a sleepover. There is then the disruption to the equilibruim as 'Grace and Katie' drug Angelica and she falls; leaving the girls panicing. From here the trailer doesn't follow all conventions of Todorov's theory as teaser trailers don't want to give away too much. This is a classic convention of horror trailers as the storyline doesn't return to an equilibruim as it would spoil the trailer and the audience would not go and see it if they had already figured out the storyline. I mixed the rest of the scenes and clips up as I didnt want there to be any spoilers and let the audience know the storyline.

We all had to make separate film magazine covers and posters based on our horror trailer.

Looking through film magazines; ’Film’, ’Empire’, and ’Gorezone’.I noticed that they were very similar and all followed the conventions of magazines. I also looked at the film magazine ‘Film Star’ as it is a new established magazine, which promotes new releases and reviews films. After analysing a number of ‘film star’ magazines, I noticed that the text of the name was the same font, size and shape on each of the ’Film Star’ magazines I analysed. I decided to follow this convention whilst making my magazine.

I chose to make the next issue of ‘film star’, so I used the same name and tried my best to get it the same. It was very difficult to get the same text; I did however get one very similar to it. On each of the magazines there was only one large picture which was always linked with the main story. Each of the magazines show the price, bar code and date on which I also included in my magazine. All these conventions were used on my magazine front cover.

As I was also making a poster, I looked at common conventions of horror posters .I looked at ’Wolfman’, ’Orphan’, and ’The Crazies’. Each of these posters had as little as writing as possible, the certificate of the film, the release date, and a very large picture which would attract the audience. As my poster will be published before the film I have put the certificate and the date the film will be released on. I made the mise-en-scene of my poster fit the horror movie genre by using dark dull colours for the background and the picture. I used one large picture of the evil character, with a dull dark background so the main character stands out. I used a large central picture as it will catch the audience’s attention. I made this picture in black in white with only her eyes red; this makes her looks evil. The title, website and certificate are also in red to make them stand out. The quotation is in black and the credits are in white, to make them look visibly different. The credits are also in small print like they are in other posters. I also included other conventions of posters such as quotations. I used ‘two friends, one huge secret’, which is also used in my horror trailer; this links them together. I used this quotation as it makes the audience wonder what the huge secret is and attracts them to the film.

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

Whilst looking at my main product and my ancillary texts, I’ve realised that a film trailer is not the only product that needs to be included when promoting a film. The trailer is the biggest and fastest way to advertise a film worldwide.

They are usually shown one month in advance of the film being released and a teaser trailer is shown 2- 3 months before anything else being released. In this day and age however, a trailer isn’t just shown at the local cinemas before other films are screened. My teaser trailer will be released in June which will be part of a big campaign.

Columbria pictures will help advertise our trailer on the radio or adverts on the television as well as in cinema screenings beside other films they have released.
As more young people are spending more time online, rather than reading print media, there are now a number of other ways to show a trailer. Social networking sites such as ‘face book’ are extremely popular for finding fan sites of films before they are released which clips of the trailer on. Hundreds of websites are now available for everybody to visit and watch the newest trailers released.

A very popular horror trailer website ‘www.bloody-disguisting.co.uk’, is great for watching the newest horror trailers. Putting my teaser trailer on there will be a fast and easy way for people to watch it, as it will be with trailers from the same genre so the audience would be the same. As production company is Columbria pictures, our teaser trailer will be shown on websites with others from the same company. Our trailer also has its own website (www.sweetdreamsmovie.co.uk ) which has videos of the actors on and gives a chance for the audience to give their own views.

As my teaser trailer is aimed at 15-25 year olds, the I-phone was a great way to publish trailers. I conducted a survey by handing out questionnaires to 50, 15-25 year olds to find out what was their favourite and easiest way to look at things on the internet and my results.

I-phones and laptops were the mostly popular answer. I found that I- phones are very well, and attracting our age range group through the I-phone was the most reliable way. I-phones can see everything on the internet, exactly the same as a computer. This shows that our trailer will be watched anywhere: college, work or outside.

In the Media world, film trailers aren’t the only way of promoting a film. Magazines and posters are used to entice the audience to see it and make them aware of what is about to be shown at their local cinema. The film has its own website www.sweetdreamsmovie.co.uk which shows interviews and pictures of the cast. It has polls and comment boxes where the audience can give their own view about the trailer, film and website and they can ask any questions they like. It has links to other websites that might also be promoting out film. Film magazines are usually published alongside the main trailer; a month in advance of the film being realised. The film magazines will be sold in cinemas, local shops and super markers so they will be seen by a wide range of people. It will be part of a larger company including, TV, Radio, internet and interviews will be released. The poster can be released the same time as the trailer to get a wider percentage of the audience. Many people might not get a chance to see the trailer so a poster is also very helpful when advertising. Also, posters can be everywhere; buses, billboards, internet, on leaflets and many more so there is a better change these will be seen when people aren’t surfing the internet or in the cinema.

What have you learn from your audience’s feedback?

Before we started filming our teaser trailer, we sent out questionnaires to our age group; 15-25 year olds, and asked them questions based on horror trailers. We got feedback on music, pictures and the locations we should use in our trailer. This gave us a good idea of what out teaser trailer needed to be like to attract our audience.

Looking at comments on our blogs we have been able to see what our audience thinks of our trailer. Comments on my blog were, ‘Like how you show your progress, ‘The poster looks professional’, ‘I like how you have links to other pages’, ‘ The youtube videos are a good idea’, ‘The I-pod at the top of the page playing music is good, I like listening to music whilst on the net’.

We have also interviewed four people just after watching our trailer to there reactions. We chose to interview two males and two females from our age group so we could get a good idea of what people thought. We asked ‘Would you see the film at the cinema?’ One of the boys answered ‘Yes defiantly, I love horror films’ and one of the girls answered ‘It looks really scary, I don’t know if I could watch it without hiding behind my hands’. This shows that we made a successful horror teaser trailer as we have managed to scare our audience. Another question I asked was ‘What was good about our teaser trailer?’. We got the answers, ‘The music fitted in with the scary atmosphere. It helped to hype up the excitement’, and ‘The fades made it look like a real trailer. The close up shots were good as well it felt like I was getting close to the characters’. We finally asked ‘What was bad about it?’ One of the boys said ‘Some scenes were too long’ with the girl answering ‘Yeah they could have been a big faster, like other horror trailers’.

How did you attract/address your audience?

To attract my audience we firstly chose an age range which we believed would be attracted to our horror movie; 15-25. We addressed our audience handing them out to friends and family. We made questionnaires with questions we knew would help us begin our horror trailer. For example - What do you think makes a good location for a horror film?, ’What name is best for a horror film?’. This way we could find our exactly what our audience liked and disliked about horror trailers so we could make sure to attract the right audience. We also put a range of music which we liked and thought would sound good in a horror trailer and then put a poll on Niomi Bolams’ blog so people could vote for the music they thought would sound best in our horror trailer. I linked my blog up with Niomis’ so we could get a range of people voting for the music, but also that it was fair and we would get a reliable range of results.

I have also looked at theories such as Naomi Wolf and Todorov’s narrative structure. I found that almost every film or television programme has a narrative structure and we made our trailer follow this convention. Each film usually has equilibrium, disruption, realization, struggle and resolution and a return of restoration of new equilibrium. However, as this is a horror trailer it doesn’t have an equilibrium as the clips aren’t all in order and the audience won’t be able to figure out the story line. Having the clips in a different order than the film it makes sure there will be no spoilers. Horror fans will watch my trailer and recognize the genre conventions and anticipate what will happen. They will be able to discuss with friends and other fans their views and thoughts on the trailer. They will watch the film when it is released as the genre fits their sense of identity. These are uses and gratifications for the horror audience.

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

As all of my A2 work has been published on my blog, it is available for millions to see; which is very multimedia. Whilst producing my trailer, poster and magazine I have used a lot of new media technology; some which I had never used before such as the camera order, tripod, final cut and garage band. I used a digital video camera to video my teaser trailer which is approximately 2 minutes long. I used the package ‘final cut’, which I had never used before, to edit my trailer. I used new materials such as laying and sorting all clips out into the order they were needed, adding effects to some clips and laying the clips to fit the track. Niomi Bolam and I used garage band to cut the track for the trailer as the original track ‘Sour Cherries’ was too long for a teaser trailer. For my print work I used cameras to take the pictures and photo shop to alter and edit the pictures, as well as the layout for the magazine and poster.
During all the planning of my A2 work I used questionnaires, polls and the internet to find out what my audience most wanted to see and to find out what was already out there. I used the computers to type and print out the questionnaires and I used the internet to create polls for people to vote on. I used you tube a lot of time to watch horror trailers and to find out the conventions of them. I analysed a few of the trailers such as ‘Last House on the Left’ and posted this on my blog. I also used the internet to look at magazines and posters, as well as going to local shops to see what was available for my audience. I also analysed four ‘Film Star’ magazines and posted these on my blog.
At the start of production work I was a consumer as I researched and analysed a lot of trailers, posters and magazines. However during all of this production work I have moved on to a prosumer as I have produced my own teaser trailer, poster and magazine.