Evaluation Question 1

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

Our Media product conforms to many aspects of the psychological genre. Prior to producing our teaser trailer, we carried out extensive research by deconstructing films, which explore a similar narrative to Insidious and The Orphan. Through this research we were able to establish the conventions of the horror genre such as dull colours, low key lighting, fast pace editing and use of eerie non-diegetic sounds. We were also able to explore the different ways of displaying “found footage”. The two films focus on found footage, just in a slightly different way. For example, The Blair Witch Project uses a college documentary style whereas; Quarantine uses a TV show in order to record the events. After deconstructing films that all followed a similar style, we were able to product a media product that focuses on an investigation carried out by college students.

Teaser Trailer

Narrative 
Most Horror trailers follow a traditional linear narrative, which simply displays a series of events in a chronological order, being one of its listed conventions. Based on this, our trailer conforms to this convention yet also subverts it – 90% of our trailer is filmed in a linear style however we do include a series of both flash backs and flash forwards therefore taking on the anachronic modular narrative. This is established at the beginning when our character is heavy breathing and panting (flash forward) followed by TV new reports of missing people (flash backs).

Sound 
With our use of non-diegetic, uncomfortable and eerie sounds, we were able to make our trailer conform more to the supernatural horror genre conventions. The background sound heard throughout the introduction by our first character builds the tension, allowing the audience to image what is about to happen. An exact example of this is when the sound of the music increases as well as lowering in pitch as it shows the audience that something bad is soon going to happen.

Characters
Furthermore we conform to the conventions of the supernatural horror genre as it builds tension and provokes a scare factor among the audience. In combination with our sound and our fast pace straight cuts we are able to create tension and atmosphere, which leads up to our final scare scene at the end of our trailer. However, we also decided to challenge the conventions due to our choice of protagonist. Most supernatural horror films involve male protagonists as well as female; however, we decided to subvert these conventions in order to evoke more empathy from our audience. In addition to this, we used a female antagonist, which appears to conform to supernatural horror conventions in films today, as more antagonists appear to be female. Finally, we subverted and challenged the conventions a second time by not using much gore/blood, however, we still managed to achieve our scare factor due to jump scenes.

Found Footage

We took the idea of Found Footage as featured within Quarantine, Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch Project and developed it into something usinque and unseen within the Found Footage Sub Genre. For example, all of the above films use FF however, the entire film is done within this style. We included a few clips filmed in this style however, a lot of our trailer was filmed in a secondary style, as though the camera isn't there. This enables the audience to understand what the characters are feeling as well as watch the film from an outsiders point of view. 

Secondary Footage ^

Found Footage ^

Poster

When it came to our poster, we decided to subvert conventions by steering away from stereotypical, red, white and black colours that are traditionally linked with the horror genre such as The Blair Witch Project.
Prior to the designing stage of our poster, we decided to deconstruct supernatural Horror posters such as The Blair Witch Project and Sinister. From Sinister, we noted that

• The colour scheme is the generic black, white and red – suggesting blood, gore and death.
• The tag lines makes the audience wonder who they are talking about, this other entity
• The image includes a small child, as they are creepier than an adult as well as having “His” face drawn in blood on the wall behind her.

During the process of deconstructing these film posters, we decided to challenge the conventions of supernatural horror film posters and use the bright colours featured within our trailer in order to make our poster stand out against and subvert conventions. We used Quarantine as our main Source of Inspiration due to the bright colours used on the poster in order to make the film poster stand out.

The main image is a very basic shot that explains the narrative of our trailer within one shot – one the right we see one of the four protagonists, hiding away, whereas; on the left we see a faint outline of the antagonist far in the background, which quite easily displays the genre of our trailer.

We decided to adjust the saturation and vibrancy of the image within Photoshop in order to brighten our colours to match better with our film (as many people suggested that the bright colour scheme works well with subverting the conventions). By adding the Vignette style around the outside of the image, as well as using white typography, we were able to conform to conventions of the colour scheme – white and black, allowing the audience to easily identify the genre of our trailer.

Website

After extensive research about supernatural horror filmwebsites we decided to try and use one of the photos taken during the photoshoot for our Poster however, these photos proved insufficient due to the sizing and positioning. Therefore, we took a still from our trailer in order to make it work well with the size of the screen. After deconstructing the website of “Oculus”, we decided to stick to very subtle dark colours for our typography and links as we didn’t want our image to be too overpowering.

When editing the still shot, we added on some ratings and reviews from imaginary websites in order to make our website appear more believable to our audience. We kept our still shot at the same saturation and vibrancy as we used within the trailer itself. Most of our website is very simple, due to the colour scheme and use of basic HTML – such as simple text, one basic picture, our trailer and a couple of social media links. 

Evaluation Question 2

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

• Our main product was our teaser trailer, "Don't Look Back", which you can view here:

• Here are the 2 ancillary tasks; The Poster and Website Home page:

• Our ancillary task was to make a full promotional package, which includes a film poster and a website promoting the film, so we had to make sure that the teaser trailer, film poster and the website linked together, through the use of typography, colour, narrative and genre.

Conventions of Supernatural Genre

• The genre that we chose, was horror with the sub-genres of found footage, supernatural. So, we researched the codes and conventions of supernatural horror movies, taking inspiration from mainly "The Blair Witch Project", as we had very strong similarities to that film. 
• We deconstructed main plot lines in supernatural horrors, conventions in supernatural horrors and different camera angles used in found footage.
• By researching these conventions, we would create a better understanding to how we could combine all of our ancillary tasks together to create a well thought out promotional package which fitted the genre.

Colour

• We found that the stereotypical colour scheme that was used in the horror genre are the colours of red, black and white, and the posters seem to have a lot of shadows, silhouettes and vignettes to create suspense and to make it representational of a horror genre, because you can't see what is lurking in the dark.
• We stuck with the same colour scheme for the typography that we used for our film trailer e.g. "Don't Look Back" which was in white, so we stuck with the colour scheme of white for our typography which helped to create a link between our trailer and the ancillary tasks as it is present in both the poster and the website homepage.

• For the background of the website, we thought that it would be more effective to have a predominantly black background which fades into one of the characters faces, as we also saw that there was a convention of having a plain background with a side drop.

• One thing that stood out in our teaser trailer, poster and website, was our use of colour in our cinematography, as it subverted conventional cinematography in that we used bright, vibrant colours rather than having that dark and dull colour scheme, which is highly used in the horror genre. We chose this approach because it shows the vulnerability of the students being haunted in a place, where you wouldn't think that hauntings would happen.

Content and Layout

• We started off by researching the conventional layout and content of a supernatural horror poster, by deconstructing various posters. You can view the full article here.
• The content usually contains the main character who is surrounded with the supernatural entity or showing the main location of the film. They are usually placed within the "rule of thirds," where the subject is placed in certain points where the audiences focus is most drawn to e.g. the middle.
• Whilst shooting a photo for the poster, we went back to the location that we used for our film trailer, which was the woods, so that the main location is present and it shows continuity from the trailer. 
• It also reveals the entity behind, so that it reveals to the audience that the genre is supernatural and we purposefully had the main character pose as if she's about to look behind her which juxtaposes our title of "Don't Look Back" and we thought that this would make a powerful image.
• However, to give ourselves more choice in the editing process, we decided to try another shot, which was used in our trailer, where the supernatural entity crawls up from behind a tree, as we thought that this would immediately define our genre and our storyline.



• Like the film poster, we also deconstructed other film websites to find out the codes and conventions of promotional websites. Click Here to view deconstruction.

• Instead of going out to shoot a photo for the website, we decided to use a screenshot from the trailer itself, which also creates a strong synergy between the film trailer and the website.

Typography

• We consistently used the same typography throughout the trailer and ancillary tasks, by using the same font, which was Adobe Garamond Pro and the same colour scheme throughout for the typography, keeping it simple with a plain white on top of a black background.
• The only variation we did for the typography, was using the 'wind effect' on the title, which gives it a worn out effect. We used this title for all of the tasks, to create a synergy and continuity.
• All of the credits throughout the trailer and the taglines on the website and poster used the same typography.

Tagline

• We noticed that there is always a tagline which gives a quick insight to what the plot is about e.g. "The Apparition" the tagline is, "Once you believe, you die."

• We then came to the conclusion, that the poster needed to be able to depict the genre and plot almost immediately with the help of the title and the tagline, and those items were all placed using the "rule of thirds" which means that the most important aspects of the poster are placed in certain places, where most of the audiences attention is attracted to.
• Our tagline on the top of the poster, links in with our teaser trailer, because it uses the exact same caption : "They were warned not to enter..." and it creates a unity between the main product and the poster ancillary task, making it clear that it is part of the same promotional package.
• On our website, the tagline is present next to the title, which were both taken from the teaser trailer itself, which helps to link all the ancillary tasks together with the teaser trailer.

Evaluation

   Overall, I feel that we have definitely combined our main product and our ancillary texts in a way which makes it effective and appealing towards the audience, and the synergy between all the texts are very clear and recognisable. We also managed to follow the codes and conventions of the supernatural horror/ found footage genre that we chose through the use of colour, content, genre conventions and typography and the audience recognises this after having a focus group evaluate our product.

      However, I do feel that we could have put more elements of found footage into our poster and our website to make it very clear that another one of the sub genres is found footage, as that is only currently present in our trailer.

Evaluation Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Titles

•    We first asked for audience feedback for the title of our film, as we had several options to choose from, but we couldn't decide on which one would have the most emphasis.
• We created a survey on Survey Monkey, for us to share around, and we put our title ideas for our target audience to vote on, helping us to decide on which one would be the most effective.
• We shared this survey on our individual social media's e.g. Facebook and Twitter, which meant that most of our responses would be from 16-25 years old, which was useful as our target audience are ages 18 years onwards.
•   Click Here for the full survey that we created including the analysis of the results, which we then sent round for anonymous users to complete.
• Here were the results of our questions:

• Whilst researching titles from horror films, we found that the titles ranged from 1 worded titles to 3 words e.g. Smiley, Paranormal Activity and The Last Exorcism, so we decided to ask for feedback from a target audience, and see what length would be most effective for our horror trailer. 
• 61% of the audience voted for 3 words in the title, which is then reflected in the next question we asked, as 70% voted for "Don't Look Back." 

•   Following the audience's feedback, we decided to go with the majority vote, as "Don't Look Back" was considered the most popular by a huge margin, and since it was our target audience that voted for it, it meant that this title would attract our target audience best.

Focus Group Feedback -  Trailer

• Here is our teaser trailer:

•  We asked a focus group on paper, to give us feedback on our teaser trailers, having them answer 7 questions:

1. What genre is it?
2. Clues to the narrative.
3. Is the typography effective?
4. In what way does this promote the film? Is it engaging?
5. List the most effective areas.
6. Overall comment.
7. Even better if...

• We had a total of 17 responses, and they were from a focus group of 16-17 year old students, who are also doing media.
• The feedback for each of the questions are:

1. All 17 responses understood that our teaser trailer was of a horror genre.
2. The majority of the responses mentioned that the radio voiceover and the typography provided enough clues to the narrative, which made it very clear to the audience what the plot of the film was about, however, we had responses stating that it would be even more effective if we had flashes of a news report, so we tried fitting that in during our redraft, and it did make the impact of that scene a lot more suspenseful.
3. We had 4 responses out of 17 which stated that our typography is effective, but we could have experimented a little bit more, with maybe more colour, otherwise, the rest of the responses said that they liked the simplicity of the typography, along with the clever editing of the flickering, which matched the genre.
4. All of the responses said that our film contained a lot of the codes and conventions of the horror genre and narrative enigmas, but we could have lengthened the silence before the jump scene, to make it more effective, and after trying this out, the focus group agreed, that it made the jump scarier.
5. Most of the responses agreed that our most effective parts of the trailer was definitely the editing, music and the switch between found footage and 3rd person view.
6. The main point that was brought up, was the fact that our trailer looked professional with all the editing and sound and that the jump scare at the end did manage to make people jump. We had one of the focus group members state that there was maybe too many running scenes, so we decided to re-shoot a few scenes, to variate the scenes in the trailer and make it more interesting.
7. Only 4 responses was made to this question, which were: "Maybe if we got a glimpse of the girl at the end." "Lighting is too bright for a horror film." "More locations.""Obscure lighting." 

Evaluation

     In conclusion, I would say that the majority of our responses has been extremely positive towards our finished teaser trailer, especially with our editing and music, with only a few constructive criticisms on what we could improve, as they are not major problems and they wouldn't take much time to adjust such as, extending the wait before the final jump scene, as this would create more suspension, which causes the audience to jump.
   We also made sure to respond with what the audience liked the best in the title, as they are our target audience, so by conforming to their responses, we are making the film more attractive to the age range that we are aiming for which are 18-25 year olds.

Evaluation Question 4

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

• In the researching and planning stages of production, YouTube and Google allowed us to easily explore and research any existing films that fell into the Supernatural Horror Genre when we were looking for sources of inspiration. We also used Blogger, which allowed us to show specific examples of previous trailers that we had analysed, as well as test editing styles that could possibly used within our trailer.

Editing

• We have progressed strongly within terms of technology as when we began editing our Preliminary Task at the beginning of year 12, we were originally using iMovie however the programme was highly limited to what techniques could be used, it was an extremely slow programme to used ad it was highly temperamental therefore we decided to explore other possibilities, leading us to use Final Cut Pro.

• Effects available on Final Cut Pro enabled us to make some of our scenes more convincing. For example, in our Preliminary Task, we wanted to include a hand held scene but due to the lack of effects available on iMovie, we were unable to do this convincingly. However, when we changed to Final Cut Pro, “Bad TV” enabled us to create this effect.
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• Final Cut Pro also gives us more freedom in our creativity, as we are able to manipulate effects and settings more in the inspector and change the colours and saturation of the clips, which iMovie wasn't able to provide us with, as iMovie's focus is to be user friendly whilst Final Cut Pro is meant for more advanced users and is used in the professional film industry.

Typography

• Having access to the internet and Google, meant that we were able to research and find specific examples of typography previously used within supernatural found footage films.

• Photoshop was a large help when creating our Typography for our trailer as well as our Poster and Website design. We used a very basic font for the foundations of our Typography that we would later manipulate. We eventually chose a font called Adobe Garamond Pro, as it was very simplistic and basic for us to manipulate.

• This font then went onto Photoshop were we added effects such as “Dust and Scratches” as well as “Wind” in order to give the typography an older effect, making it look worn and battered. We simply watched a tutorial on YouTube about how to make text look old and then followed these stages in order to create the effect that we have achieved on all 3 parts of our Promotional Package. After creating this final typography, we had to transfer it onto a black background, meaning that the background would not show up on either the trailer, poster or website. This meant that our typography looked professional and very fitting to the overall genre and sub genre of our piece.

• When we decided to do our tag line, we used the same font as our title, however we didn’t manipulate it as much through Photoshop. This is because, we believe that the tag line does not need to stand out as much as the title itself, therefore it should not be as eye catching – we still used Adobe Garamond Pro, however, it was not manipulated in any way.

• This meant that our title and tag line were completed. In terms of manipulation, the typography fits extremely well with our genre and sub genre – instantly letting the audience know what type of film they will be watching.

Sound

• At first we researched the non-diegetic sounds that are usually used in horror films, and we found that the pace at the beginning of the trailer is usually quite slow and calm, but slowly it would pick up the pace, adding to the suspense with a lot of high pitched sounds and low bass drops.

• We tried to make our own music, through the use of Logic Pro 9, adding in sequenced instruments and automating the sounds, however, we felt that the finished product did not seem professional enough, so we decided to search for a seperate non-diegetic sound which was not copyrighted. We managed to find one, through the use of Soundcloud, which is a free music distributing website.

• In our trailer, we have small snippets of diegetic narrative, which we pre-recorded in our music studio, using condenser microphones e.g. the radio overlay. We then took this recorded sound and manipulated it on Logic Pro 9, where we cut the higher and lower frequencies to give that radio effect.

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• We also overdubbed the scream at the jump scene, as the camera didn't capture the right scream that we wanted, so we also re-recorded this in the studio, and we added a slight echo to it as the title comes up, which adds to the suspense of the film and conforms to the conventions of a horror teaser trailer.

Poster

• We also used Photoshop to produce our Poster. We went out of a photo-shoot in order to collect the necessary images for our trailer – this resulted in 30 or so images we had to choose from, for our poster. Once we had selected our final image, we began editing it.

• The main thing that jumps our to our audience, about our trailer, is the vibrancy of the colours; therefore we decided to transfer this to our Poster. We increased the saturation and brightness dramatically in order to increase the colour intensity.

• We took an image from a scene within our trailer to be 100% sure that the poster links with the trailer itself. In addition to this, added a Vignette effect in order to darken the edges of the image. This creates even more of a contrast between the bright colours and the black edges, making our poster even more eye catching.

• We made sure to stick very closely to conventions – making our poster portrait as well as having very few main features on the poster in order to avoid over crowding and allowing our audience to only gain a slight bit of knowledge about the film through the poster.

Website

• In order to create our website, we used www.wix.com to help us edit and produce a website for our trailer. We did encounter a problem being that none of our images taken from the same shoot as the poster, were suitable for our website. Therefore, we decided to take a still from our trailer and increase the resolution of it on Photoshop.

• This meant that we had the correct dimensions on our image in order to fit correctly to the website background. In addition to this, it became easier to edit our reviews onto the website itself. The typography overlaid simply as well as blending in perfectly with the background. Finally we adjusted the Hue and Saturation of the image on Photoshop in order to increase the vibrancy of the image, allowing it to fit in better with our trailer and poster.

Promotional Package

Teaser Trailer

Film Poster

Promotional Website

www.townleymedia.wix.com/dontlookback 

Editing the photo for Website.

Editing Website Photo

• We initially had a photo we were going to use, which linked into our poster photo, however the main aspect of the photo was not in focus, so we had to find an alternative.
• I went through all of the scenes that we did, whether we used them or not so that we could possibly take a screenshot of it and use it for our website.
• This is the screenshot that we got from the original:

• I then took this photo, and edited it on photoshop.
• I duplicated the layer, and I widened the photo so that the positioning of it, would match with the website.

• Then I took a black brush, and I painted in the  left side of the photo, so that when we put the picture on the website, we could put our titles on the left side, without the black boxes showing up.
• To make the picture blend I also lessened the opacity on the brush and I started to blend some of the left side of her face a little darker to create a darker shadow.
• Here is the finished version:

• Then I added it on the website along with the video and the titles:

Film Poster Development

I decided on the following image to use in our Film Poster. This is due to the fact the image is compositionally pleasing as well as the fact, it will be quite simple to apply the Golden Rule to this image.

I wanted to create a darkened edge around the image in order to make it fade to black as well as appearing slightly creepier than the original image is. I did this by:

1. Added a new layer over the top of the original image

2. Filled this new layer with white with 100% Opacity

3. Going to Lens Correction and adjusting the amount manually to 100% darken in order to gain the darken vignette around the edge of the image. 

4. I then adjusted the original image brightness in order to make the colours stand out more in comparison to the typography.

5. The following thing, was the text that appears at the bottom of our poster - I took these from the image that appears at the end of our trailer. I cropped them on photoshop and re-added them in to our poster. 

6. I then needed to add in the typography for the title. I had the original image saves so I used the Magic Eraser. This made the black of the background disappear and allowed me to over the image onto the poster. 

7. There was one final thing I needed to do in order to make the poster appear complete, and that was to add a tag line in. In our trailer we used the phase "they were warned not to enter". We felt this was appropriate for our tag line, therefore it appears on our trailer.

This resulted in our final film poster looking like this - a few changed may need to be made in order to 100% meet the criteria for the film poster.