Evaluation Question 2

How effective is the combination of your main task and ancillary tasks? on Prezi

by Rebecca Hart

Evaluation Question 1

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

To begin answering this question, I am going to take different shots from my trailer and analyse and annotate them, and assess how well they reflect the forms and conventions of the horror genre.

The first clip I have chosen from my trailer establishes the storyline of the rest of the trailer/film. It is fairly typical of horror films; a group of teenagers are alone in the woods and one of their friends have gone missing, and I personally believe that this initial part of the sequence establishes the story quite well. There are shots of the characters looking worried and upster, with another character then coming into the frame saying "I can't find him anywhere..." This sets up the basis for the rest of the trailer, which follows on and is quite self explanitory. This introduction to a film trailer is very typical of a horror film trailer, with our group noticing in particular the first scene of the "I Know What You Did Last Summer" film trailer.

The second clip introduces the characters individually to the audience. Again, we know this technique is typical of horror film trailers as we noticed it in the trailer for "Scream 4", and it was a technique that we thought was extremely effective. The clips are kept very short, and fade in and out, showing the characters in their everyday surroundings going about their everyday business, with their purpose being to introduce the characters to the audience, and almost make them feel a connection to them, therefore making them slightly worry for safety and well being, which is most likely in danger due to the nature of the film. This grips the audience, and is a convention that is very well and commonly used in professional texts.

The purpose of the third clip is to step the pace of the sequence up a notch. It is at this point that the action of the trailer begins, with the characters becoming suspicious that something unusual is going on, which is a technique used in many horror film trailers.

The fourth shot establishes the creepy plot of the whole trailer, with the ominous black silhouette against the kitchen window working very well to do this. The thought of somebody being outside watching you in your own home is a thought that could scare anybody, and works well in creeping out the audience, as it is a universal fear. 

Our intertitles, shown in the fifth shot, are designed to fit with the rest of the trailer, and give off the same scary vibe. 

Final Film Trailer

Rough Cut Poster, Magazine and Trailer

Here is the rough cut posters, magazine and film trailer, which we are going to put onto Facebook and invite our peers to review them. This is very important as this is our target audience, and they can give us very important advice on how we can improve our products so that they have the most appeal.

by Rebecca Hart

Change of title font

Whilst we were in the process of creating our products, we began to feel that our title fonts was a big weakness and that it could be improved in order to make it look much more professional. I began experimenting with different fonts, particularly after comparing our poster with the professional text poster for 'Last House on the Left', a poster which follows a similar colour theme to our own. I noticed that the font used in this poster was much more simple, making it look much more effective. Here is my own rough draft of a new possible title to feature in the trailer, poster and magazine, shown in comparison to the old copy, and the poster for last house on the left.

I personally think this new font looks much better, and is more suited to a horror film poster, unlike the old one. I think the old font and layout looked very unprofessional, and had connotations of an old cheesy 80's horror film and didn't really give the audience any sense of fear at all due to the very bold and 'in your face' font, rather than an understated and simple font, which tends to be much more modern and scary.

by Rebecca Hart

Initial Magazine Cover and Posters

Here is our initial magazine cover and poster. I am quite happy with what we have produced; I like the general layout, images, colour theme etc, however I feel like the title and the title fonts really weaken our products drastically. I think it looks quite unprofessional, and doesn't convey the right message about the film. I don't think this current title looks scary or sinister enough, so I am going to re-evaluate, do some further research, and attempt to re create our film title image. Other than that though, I am happy with these two products so far, and once I have made the changes we will get some initial audience feedback over facebook.

new credit block

old credit block:

the new credit block:

i made a new credit block as i thought this text and different effects made it look more professional.

by charlotte alderson

filming for our trailer and taking photographs

these are the photographs we took the first day we filmed;

these are the photos we took of when we were shooting some photographs in the studio;

by charlotte alderson

photoshoot

we all started to take some photos in the studio and these are a selection of the ones we took:

i then took some of these photographs and made changed them slightly to look more professional.

i made the face brighter and the contrast stornger so the background looked darker with deeper shadows.

i did the same for this photo, i wanted it to be brighter as i thought the original was too dark. yet i still wanted the background to be very dark so it looked like the clown was coming from the dark.

this photo i moved the clown and i closer and made the lighting different.

i moved clark more centred in the photo and changed the contrast slightly.

i changed this photo by moving the characters closer together, changing the brightness, contrast and altered the curves of the photograph. i thought this made the photograph look more professional and effective

by charlotte alderson