Our media product uses and develops forms and conventions of real media products. we did this to make our project seem more professional and to try and make it as effective as possible. Here are some shots to illustrate some of the ways we thried to achieve this.
The first screen shot shows a point of view shot of a text on one of the characters mobile. The shot helps to set the scene to the audience as the shot is long enough for them to read the text about the rave in the woods. It also informs the viewers that the chracters are likely to be teenagers as texting is often seen as a stereotypical way which younger generations communicate. The slang used in the text (for example "2night") also conforms to many stereotypes of teenagers. This shot also shows that the film is set in modern day times because of the mobile phone used.
This shot now shows that the characters are packing a car and informs the audience that they are attending the rave. We choose this long shot to show all three of the characters and so that the audience would be familiar with them throughout the rest of the trailer. The shot also shows the car which the characters are driving which is a VW Polo and is a common car for yong drivers and again reinforces the stereotype of teenagers. We filmed this shot in broad daylight so that the houses in the background were easily visible giving the audience an idea of where the characters are from.
This long panning shot shows the characters driving into the woods. This shot sets the scene by showing that it is in an area surrounded by trees. It also shows them driving off of the main road and onto a smaller track in denser forest. We choose to use a pan shot to show this best as it pans from the main road then following the car into the forest. The angle of this shot is alos important as it shows the sun setting in the background which shows that it will soon be dark. This was one of the key things which we notice whilst looking at other trailers, especially 'Hills Have Eyes'. Loud music can aslo be heard coming from the car. We used this diegetic sound to reinforce sterotypes of teenagers who play load music whilst driving as these are the people who are likely to go to raves.
The next screen shot is of some text which appears atraight after the above shot. It goes well after the above shot as the characters are literally taking a turn for the worse. We choose white coloured text on a black background as it stands out so it can be read easily in a short time which matches the pace of the rest of our trailer. We noticed that quite a few other horror trailers also used text instead of a narrative voice and we choose to use this in our trailer to build tension and make it more generic to the horror genre we choose.
This is a POV shot from the 'killers' perspective. It is hand held shot and shows the killer peering over a straw bale watching one of the characters walking inot the forest when looking for help after they brake down. We choose a hand held POV shot so that the killers indentity remains unknown making our trialer more mysterious. The shot is an extreme long shot to show the woods in the background and to show that the character is being watched. The lighting in this shot is darker than the previous to show that it is getting dark. The low lying mist is another element which many horrors use to make scenes scarier and seem more eerie.
This shot is a stationary tripod shot filmed from a low angle. It shows an axe hanging from an overhanging branch. The characters come actoss this whilst looking for help and is when they realize that there is something weird going on. We used a low angle shot as it gave a good siluet of the axe making it stand out and look creepy. We got the idea from the Severence trailer which includes lots of mysterious objects and traps scattered in a forest. An axe is also often associated with death and murder and is a popular prop in many other horrors. This shot is also edited as we darkened the corners of the shot giving it a fisheye effect.
We used this POV panning shot to show the inside of the mysterious hut which the characters come across in the forest. It is a mid shot to show that the hut is quite small giving the audience a clostrophobic feel. It pans from left to right revealing mysterious objects such as an axe, pots and pans and lit candles which shows that someone has recently been there. The lighting is dark and the only light source is the candles and the tourch which follows the shot as it pans.
This shot follows the one above and is an over the shoulder shot of the door slamming, trapping the characters in the hut. This shot is quite fast and just shows the door slamming and then a scream can be heard. We used and over the shoulder shot so that the door could be seen slamming and it was clear to the audience what was going on. We used this shot as a point in our trailer where the pace increased and the music dropped. we noticed that many other horror traileres also started slower then hit a point where something happened and the pace increases. We choose this point as it was when it was clear to the audience that the chracters are in danger. The quiet build up to this point should have the audiences attention as they are expecting something to happen. We found that at the point where the door slammed many of the people who watched our trailer jumped even though they were expecting something to happen any minute. This was a good indication to us that the pur trailer was succesfully building up tension and making the audience anxious.
This is a had held shot of one of the chrarcters running through the forest in panic. Heavy breathing can be heard which shows they are tired and scared. The shot is fairly blurred and not many objects an be made out. We choose to do this as it shows how scared the chraracter is and makes the audience feel scared asswell as they dont want the character to die. It also goes well with the increased pace of our trailer and music.
This is our final shot in our trailer and is a close up of the tourch being dropped on the floor. We used this as our final shot as we thought it was a good short clip which marked the end. The shot is very dark so that the tourch can be seen easily. We saw that many other horror trailers used a shot like this to mark the end of the trailer. For example in Severence a close up of an axe is shown being hit into a tree. At the point where the tourch hits the floor the music stops and all is black as the tourch rolls out of the shot.
1). How did your research into genre contribute to your production work?
After watching and analysing a number of different trailers we decided to go for the horror genre. We choose this as we thought we had the right resources to create an effective trailer which would appeal to the public. For example we had access to a forest which is a common location in many horror trailers we watched. We also noticed that horrors often have less characters than for example an action or comedy film. With the limitation of only having the three of us to create our trailer we believed that we could create a horror trailer more effectively than any other genre which required a larger cast. Aswell as researching into trailers we also asked friends and family for feedback on what they wanted to see. We found that most of them would be more intrested in seeing a horror/thriller than other genres. Also after watching trailers for films like 'Pararnormal activity' and 'Blair witch project' which are both filmed on small budgets we decided that horror would be the best choice as we obviously wern't going to spend much money on making our trailer.
After conducting this broader research into genre we than narrowed it down just to target the horror genre. This helped us to decide things such as location, time of day to film, props and costume. The research into horror trailers also gave us ideas for narrative, camera angles, editing techniques and music. Research into posters and magazine covers helped us decide on things like text size, color and font, type of image to use, colour schemes and taglines. To research into these areas we simply looked at and analysed existing horror posters and magazine covers in order to get ideas for our own.
2). How did your research into audience contribute to your production work?
Firstly it helped us to decide on a classification for our trailer. After reading the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) classification guidelines we decided to makeour trailer a 15 age rating. This allowed us to use mild violence and language which we wanted to use in our trailer but still appeal to a larger audience than if we were to make it an 18. Our research into audience also helped us to decide how we would promote our trailer. For example most 15-20 year olds (which was our target audience) watch TV in the evenings so we thought that from 8 til 11pm would be a good time for our trailer to be on TV. Also it helped us decide where would we put our posters in order to get the largest number of people to see them. We decided that bus stops and also outside nightclubs would be good places because most teenagers who cannot drive use buses. We choose 15 to 20 year olds as our target audience as most pretty much all of the people we conducted our research on were in this age group so it made sense to make this our target audience. Also being in this age range gave us greater knowledge and understanding of what the audience like. Many aspects in our trailer and other production work has influence from our audience research. An example is the music we used for our trailer which has quite alot of bass and is similar to the 'dubstep' genre of music which our research showed most of our target audience were into.
3). How did your research into institutions and regulation of the media influence your production work?
Research into the BBFC helped us choose our target audience and what we could and couldn't include. After deciding on a 15 age certificate we looked into what we could include in order to remain within the classification guidlines. These guidlines can be found here: http://www.bbfc.co.uk/classification/guidelines/15
4). What pre-production planning techniques did you employ? Were they effective and how did they help?
Firstly we watched and analysed a number of different horror trailers to try and get ideas for our own. We found these really effective and they gave us many ideas for elements such as camera angles, music, locational settings, props, narrative, costume and editting. One trailer which helped us inparticular was 'Severence'. From this trailer we got many ideas for our story line and also different props to use. The trailer for 'Severence' includes a group of people lost in a forest which is scattered with traps. Although we did not mimic the trailer exactly we tried to use and develop many of the ideas used in order to make them our own. For example in the trailer it shows someone standing in a bear trap. This is where we got the idea to include a shot of someone walking under a branch with an axe swinging past them.
Our story board was another technique we used and it helped us to develop our plot and alter things such as camera angles. Although not as effective as watching other trailers it was helpful at organising what we needed to do and how. We ended up creating two story boards. The secound one included more developed ideas which we used after conducting additional research after our original story board.
Our anamatic we used to get basic shots and locations. By creating this early on it helped us to get feedback on how to develop it and improve it before filming for our final trailer. This was helpful as it gave us something to work with and develop in order to make our trailer appeal more to our target audience. it allowed us to create questionnaire based on our animatic.
General group discussion was also very helpful as it got ideas going round which we could talk about together and come to a conclusion as a group. By combining all of our ideas we were able to come up with more effective final production pieces.
5). How have you used audience feedback to influence your production work while still in progress?
We showed our trailer to people before in had music to see what type of music they thought would go best with it. We also handed out questionnaires to 20 people asking them what they like and disliked about our two poster designs. The feedback we gathered then helped us to decide which one to pick as our chosen poster. Apart from this most research and feedback was collected and used before we began production work so that we did not have to change things after we had already put time and effort into making them.
6). What digital technologies have you used in the planning, research and construction stages?
In our planning and research stages we used various websites to help us. We used Youtube alot to watch trailers and analyse them. We also used Facebook to ask people for feedback and ideas. Obviously Blogger was used alot to record our progress and ideas. It was also good because it allwed our teacher to give us feedback and ways to improve our work other than in lesson time. For our animatic we used Slideshare which allows power point presentations to be seen by the public. This was helpful as it gave us feedback we needed to create our final production. During the construcion stages we used Imovie alot for editing our trailer and animatic. We found this good but sometimes a little complicated and awkward to use. Garage Band was used to make our music for our final trailer. This was nice and simple and provided lots of sounds and other features to experiment with. Although a better programme may be requird if trying to make a more complex piece of music. To film our trailer we used a Canon DC310 camcorder. Similar to ther camreas it was easy to use once familiar eith the controls. However a HD camera would have been proferred to improve the quality of our trailer although none were availible at the time. For our posters and film covers we used a programme called Paintshop Pro. This allowed us to do all the things we wanted when making the pieces but having not used it before meant that time was lost whilst learning how to use it.
7). Taking into consideration the above points, how could you have improved all staged of your production piece?
Although we our all happy with the overall outcome of our production, there are however several things which we would change if we were to do it again. Firstly looking back at our trailer we thought that there were too many hand held shots. Although we wanted to include a few to make it seem more documentry style and to try and put the audience in the characters shoes, we believe some shots (e.g. the one where the killer is watching them) could have been better on a tripod. Also better preperation and planning of when we were going to film would have been useful as it took us three filming sessiones to get all the shots we needed. The first time we went out it was too early and we were unable to get shots for the later stages of our trailer which required it to be darker. The secound time we over compensated for this and by the time we got into the forest it was pitch black and only a couple of shots could be used for the ending of our trailer (e.g the tourch dropping). The third and final time we manged to time in perfectly and got all the shots we needed. If we were to do this again timing is deffinately something which we would spend more time planning in order to work more efficiently. Another thing we would change is the camera we filmed our trailer on. Because most of our trailer was filmed in low light conditions, the camera we had made didnt really pick up movement very well in these conditions meaning we had to film film in lighter conditions that we would have liked. However at the time this problem couldn't have been helped as the camera we used was the only one availible.
During the planning and research stages of our production i feel that as a group we did a good amount of research and gathered a good amount of feedback in order to create an effective trailer, poster and magazine cover. However as an individual i feel that i should have tried harder to get work done in earlier in order to be more organised and to spread the work out over a longer time. I was genrally pleased with our perfomance as a group as we co operated well which resulted in succesful final products.
