How do your products compare to the industry?
Film poster:
At first we all made individual film posters which meant we could progress with each draft we did until and then we had a meeting and put our best ideas together to make a final group film poster.
Our film poster used the conventions of typical film posters as it had a large image. The large image on this poster portrays the image of someone having a lot of pictures of a young girl, and the heart shape enforces the idea that she is being stalked. The image in the centre of the heart was originally on my film poster but as the group decided it portrayed her innocence well it was put on the final poster. The other images suggest she is being followed a lot as they have clearly been taken at different times and because they edges are not perfect it shows it is not being shown in a romantic way. I think this image worked well with our genre, Horror, as it showed something that should be romantic in a creepy way and the scared and innocent looks on her face in the pictures show she either doesn't know the pictures are being taken or is scared by whoever is taking them.
Our film poster also has a colour scheme and the colours are a typical convention of a horror poster. On my own drafts I had used dark colours because it fitted in with the Horror genre and the rest of my group also agreed this because our poster would have looked more like a romantic comedy if we had used a lighter colour. The colour scheme we used is very simple - black for the background (this meant we could use lighter colours for the text) and then white and red for the text. I think this made it fit in with our genre well because we wanted it to be clear what kind of film 'Click' was going to be.
When I did my own drafts I used experimented with eerie fonts and then my favourite one is on my drafts as it worked well with horror posters; this gave a scary effect without making the poster look like too much was going on. On the group final draft my title 'Click' was chosen as the film title as on my drafts I had used a Times New Roman font and then liquefied 'Click' to make it look scary so the group decided to use it. 'Click' uses the conventions of horror posters as liquefy is something that is often used to give a scary effect on a poster. On the final group poster the fonts varied from basic for writing that just needed to be seen clearly (e.g. the release date) to the tag line being in 'chiller' font, this made it noticeable and more attractive than the plain writing. I like the variety of different fonts on our poster as they serve different purposes and it is obvious which fonts are more noticeable.
When we did our poster we used the conventions of film posters as we used a billing block. On my own drafts I had included billing blocks but just with letters and not actually information. I did this because it made the billing block a quick task so I could focus more on other parts of my posters. The billing block on our final poster is small so it is not very noticeable, but it is white against black so it can be seen if people want to read it. When I was doing my own drafts I experimented with different colour billing blocks but having a simple white billing block makes sure it doesn't take information away from anything else.
When we did our drafts on our own we all included tag lines as we knew they were an important part of film posters. We wanted one that made the film memorable so 'it lies beneath the trees' seemed suitable. The tag line being a different font and colour from the rest of the film title made it stand out, even though when we got feedback it said the tag line wasn't that easy to read. If we were going to do our film poster again that is something I would suggest changing so people could easily read it. I think the tag line was good as it gives the effect of blood which enforces our genre. The placing of the tag line is something I experimented with when I was doing my own drafts as I wanted to make sure it didn't cover anything else important but was in a place where it was easy to see, and I think this makes it easy to see as people would glance at it when they look at the image.
Magazine cover:
We all made individual magazine drafts and then came together in a meeting with our best drafts and decided on the best ideas to be put in to our final magazine cover. We had our other magazine covers there too just in case someone liked something from one of them.
We subverted the conventions of magazine covers in some ways with our final group image because the images are normally close up's and this is a mid/long shot. We all liked this image and I thought because it was surrounded by darkness it was very attractive. I like the pose is she doing in this image because it shows her looking off camera at something; this makes it seem like someone is watching her off camera. I think the darkness presents our genre very well as if it was any other colour it could make the image look very different. I like the light in this image because it is a dark light rather than a bright one, it goes well with the darkness because a bright light would be overpowering and take away the scariness from the image.
We used the conventions of magazine covers because we used a colour scheme. The colour scheme was simple and very similar to the poster. This meant these worked well together because if they were different they wouldn't look like they were advertising the same film. The masthead fits in with the colour scheme as it is black and red; it does not look like a scary masthead which is good because we wanted the masthead to be normal. On my own drafts I used colour schemes and I think this is most evident in my second draft where the grey and red contrast. I went with colour schemes that suited the Horror genre throughout my drafts and used red, black and white a lot. I knew these colours worked from doing research on other horror magazine covers. I made the text stand out by putting one colour behind another and also using effects such as emboss to make the colours more prominent so attention wasn't taken away from them because of the poster.
On my drafts and on the final group magazine the conventions of magazines were followed because of the text. Text is always a prominent feature of magazine covers and I think having different fonts and effects on fonts on magazine covers works very well. On my drafts I liquefied 'Click' to give that a scary effect, and I also made the text round the side of the image have different effects in all of the drafts. As I went along with my drafts I feel the text I used got better as I had experimented with more fonts and different things you can do to the fonts (e.g. change the size of the beginning letters, change the text to be slanted.) For my first two drafts I used the same font for the masthead but changed the colour and on the third draft I changed the draft; I did this so I could experiment with different fonts. On my first draft I think the masthead appeared to be too big but now I look back on it I think it is a good size as it is eye catching.
When I created my drafts I knew I had to have relevant cover lines because they are a necessary convention of magazine covers. When I was doing my drafts I knew I wanted to make my magazine a horror special so I wrote 'horror special by the masthead. To re-enforce the horror special I wrote 'top 40 horror films of the 20th century.' I also knew I had to make the readers seem important so I wrote 'viewers reviews', and 'posters inside', so it advertised a free gift and also included the readers. I like the cover lines we used on our final magazine cover as they fitted in with the genre, 'SAW 3D' and also advertised a free gift to the audience when it said 'posters inside.'
Teaser trailer:
Our group decided to do a teaser trailer for a horror film. We thought about all of the new conventions of horror films and what makes them scary and we put these into our own trailer e.g - the scary eye to make people confused and scared about what is going to happen. We also used a plot which is realistic because horror films are usually about real life situations that could happen. Our trailer is also a bit of a thriller as it is not just a simple horror plot, but instead it has a deeper storyline and you do not see blood which is something that often symbolises just a horror. As a group we all came up with what type of thriller it was going to be and I didn't really like the idea of being just a crime thriller but a crime/psychological thriller. Everyone in the group had the idea of our genre being thriller/horror because everyone had the same ideas about the trailer having a deeper storyline than just blood. After we had decided our genre we all had ideas about what we wanted our trailer to look like and the end product is a mix of every one's best ideas.
Our group met the conventions of an eerie film with the plot we came up with. At first all of the group made individual storyboards but we discussed the basic plot first so every one's storyboards were not completely different. We all had our own ideas that weren't that different to everyone else's in the group so all of our storyboards were going to contain variety without them being too different. At the beginning of the storyboard it was a normal day with a young girl walking in the park (originally walking her dog but that was later changed), and then she ended up in the trees scared because someone was following her. I didn't think much about sound or camera angles at first but I knew the music should get slowly scary and I liked the idea of white noise. I also thought that the trailer should contain quite a few close ups to get the details of the scared look on the actress' face. When I did my storyboard I liked the idea of it getting slowly darker so just from the trailer you can tell it gets scary. I liked the innocence at the beginning of the storyboard because I had the image that when people were watching the trailer they were not sure what type of film it was going to be, and on a questionnaire someone filled in they said they were not sure, so I feel this was successful. In my storyboard I liked the shots that would become fast shots because I felt they really added the thriller feel to the trailer rather than it losing that to just become a horror. On our final trailer we used Sally's idea for a shrine and although I like it now I wasn't sure about it when she first introduced the idea to us because I felt it could give too much away and make the trailer not seem as scary. We decided to have one actress in our trailer and if we needed to add a dark figure in to play the stalker we would do that later. It was a good idea to focus on one character rather than the focus being split between characters because it would have made her innocence less effective and this is something I think is a key part making the trailer successful. In the end the plot was a girl left her house to go and meet her friend but got followed by her stalker and she doesn't see him at first, just hears him and the clicking of the camera and then she sees him when she is looking at the shrine at the end of the trailer.
We used typical shots in our teaser trailer so therefore followed the conventions. We all had ideas of the shots we wanted from when we were making our original storyboards and I wanted an establishing shot at the beginning to enforce she thought she was living a normal life, and the long shots and close ups when it got scarier. After we had completed our individual storyboards and had our ideas we had a meeting where we made a final storyboard and decided the shots we were going to use. As I am director I had the final say on what they looked like when we were shooting them, and sometimes they were just a bit our of shot or didn't look quite right so we re shot them. We used conventions at the start as we established the setting very well by using establishing shots, pan shots and wider shots. This makes the setting seem secure so the viewer was in a false sense of security which left people either not sure what genre it is going to be, or if they did guess it was a horror they were waiting for the scary parts to happen. I liked the close ups of Kate when she was scared as I think they really showed the detail in her face, and I also like the spontaneous shot of the sun setting as that shows that it is getting dark and worked better than we thought it would when we filmed it. At the end of the trailer it is completely opposite to the beginning because it is all fast takes to build tension, rather than the beginning making the audience feel secure. The shot takes create panic among the audience which makes our genre successful, and when we have got people to watch our trailer we have seen that it creates panic. I also like the hand held shot because it gives the sense that someone is hiding in the trees filming Kate, which is the effect we wanted right at the beginning. I think her feet being filmed is really good because it shows just how much the stalker is hiding to be able to film her. Mt favourite shot is the eye one as I think that is really disorientating and scares people right from where it is seen as the beginning.
Aimee was our main editor as we all had prominent roles either in the recording process of after - I was director, Hannah was camera and Sally was sound so we decided it would be fair if Aimee was editor. This meant Aimee spent most of time using Final Cut Pro, even though we all helped her. When we were editing I looked at a lot of transitions which we could use and also me and Hannah created a few producers logos and the group got to choose the one they think would look best on the trailer. When I was looking at transitions they all didn't seem to suit the genre or they made it looked like we had tried too hard, so in the end we went with a simple transition but it worked best. I especially like it on the producers logo as I think it looks very professional. Aimee was the main person who imported shots and changed the lengths of them, but she also consulted us on if we wanted the length changed, or which part of the shot we wanted to use. Aimee changed the lighting on the trailer to give it a scary effect and I especially liked it when there was the close up of Kate's face really bleak so you could see a lot of detail in her face.
We used transitions in our trailer so we stuck to conventions. Although straight cuts show reality, if we had used them all the way through it would have looked very harsh and would have made the trailer look less effective. We used fade in's to make the trailer look professional, but we didn't too a wide variety of transitions as that would have made the transitions more noticeable than the actual trailer. When we got to editing the short takes we used straight cuts as we wanted them to be straight to the point rather than taking their time fading in and out. I liked the transitions as I feel the right ones were used in the right places to create the right effects.
Sally was in charge of sound throughout the process. It was decided that except the gate noise we would film without sound as we wanted to add most of the sound on later and had no need for sound to be added in while filming. Sally recorded herself playing guitar on Pro tools and also sound the other sound effects in Pro tools. I helped Sally find the sound effects and also listened to her playing the guitar to see if there was anything I would change as I play the guitar too. We all made the final decisions of sound together as I am director and because the trailer was a group effort so every member of the group was consulted on different matters. I think it was a good idea for nothing to be recorded while we were filming as it would have distracted us and the actress from recording properly and also because having speech in the trailer would have lessened the horror/thriller effect.
We had text in our trailer when we had the tag line and also the quote from Empire. I didn't like the text as it was bland and grey but we couldn't change it as it came with the transition and as it is not the most important part of the trailer it doesn't have a massive effect on it. I like the text at the end where it says 'Click' as it is copied off the magazine cover so that style with become associated with the trailer. I also like the release date being in a simple but bold text as it would not have been as noticeable if it was not and the main focus of it was just to get noticed, not necessarily to draw much attention to the trailer as it is at the end.
I think the title is represented really well in the trailer as the effect of the hand held camera gives it that someone is watching the girl in the trees, and the clicking noises at various points in the trailer show that the film is about a man following a girl with a camera. The shrine at the end re-enforces the 'Click' idea because it shows someone has been taking a lot of pictures of the girl, it then goes to the screen with 'Click' on, so overall I think the film title fits in well with the trailer.
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
We decided to keep the style for all of the products the same as it would make that style be assosiated with our promotional package, and it would have also have looked un organised and un professional if we had did them differently. When I was making my own drafts I had this idea as after doing research I knew how importantly it was to keep the style the same. The best way we could make all of them link together was giving the name of the promotional package a distinct title and make the title look distinct. We all decided on different names when we were making our individual drafts, and then we all voted on the name we thought would be most effective for our promotional package. A majority of the group chose my title 'Click' for our group title as it represented what we wanted our trailer to be about the best; the only problem with the title is that on the poster and the magazine cover the liquefy is done differently so this stops them being exactly the same, but they are not completetly different.
The colours of our trailer had to fit in with our horror/thriller genre. This meant the colours couldn't be bright but instead we had to have darker colours so our genre was easily known. The colour for 'Click' was white all the way through as this contrasted with the dark background and the other darkness on our final products; these colours are stereotypical colours for our genre so we knew they would represent horror/thriller. When I was doing my own drafts I used red, black, white and grey a lot because after doing research I knew most horror promotional packages used them colours, the red usually representing blood, the black and greys representing the darkness of the film, and the white being used to contrast with the dark colours. Using the same colours throughout our promotional packages stopped them from conflicting and made them fit well together.
Our group originally did our own taglines and mine was 'was he only being friendly?', I put this on all my posters in the font I chose and carried on using, this made it become an important part of my film posters because it was placed in different places in each one in order to develop where it looked best. We chose Aimee's tagline for the final product as a group as every part of our promotional package linked to the tagline, we had it in our trailer as after doing research we saw that that is what usually happens, we also put it on our magazine cover and film poster so it becomes recognisable.
We decided to have one character in our promotional package as it would make it easier to control and make the character become recognisable as they could easily fit on every part of the promotional package. We kept our actress in the same clothes throughout the filming process and we had photoshoots, but at one point in the trailer her shoes had to change as it was too dangerous to walk through the woods with sandles on. Keeping her clothes the same made it all link together well, as if they were different people might not have recognised the actress as easy.
When I had made my drafts and had my input in the final poster I always had the idea of the girl being innocent and stalked by a man who had been stalking her for a while, but she didn't know. I think my images show her innocence as she is mostly looking away from the camera with a shocked or scared look on her face, as if she had seen the man, or she is standing in an innocent way oblivious to what is going on. The image in the middle of the heart on the poster is my image and it was used in the middle because the group liked Sally's poster layout but liked my image as it showed her innocence, they also liked how it had been edited as it gave a warm yet distant effect. The title of the film is my original title and this linked well to everything as the whole idea for the film was a man taking pictures of a girl, and 'Click' represents him taking the pictures. Our magazine cover was a horror special so it was mostly focused on horror and this meant we could really advertise the film, the poster was obviously a horror as it was focused on just our poster and then our trailer was a horror so I feel the genre was shown really well throughout the whole promotional package.
3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
We got audience feedback two different ways. We firstly made a questionnaire and handed it out to year 11's and some year 12's, this did not work that well as most of them did not fill it out properly or give detailed enough answers. We then printed the poster and magazine cover off and handed them out to people so they could write positives and negatives about them both and give them a rate out of 10. We asked year 11 and 12 to do this and this worked a lot better and we got a lot more feedback. Some of them commented about them being blurry but this was just how it was printed out because it ended up being moved around so they could both fit on the page. This was good as it was clear what we did well and what we needed to improve on as a majority of people gave the same feedback, but it was a lot more detailed.
For our poster some of the positive feedback was that the images were good and the tagline was good. This has shown that the image is definitely the most important thing about our poster as it was the thing most people noticed. The other positive feedback shown me that the way in which is was laid out was good as it was easy to read because it wasn't too packed and it was laid out in a good way. A negative was that it lacked some conventions such as production logo, but as this is on our trailer I feel it was not neccessary on our poster. The negative feedback also told me that the red font could have been made lighter so it was easier to read.
For our magazine cover sone of the positive feedback was that the image was very effective for a horror image, it was easy to read and the tagline was good. This links to the poster as the image and the tagline were also commented on there. This positive feedback shown me that people do look at the tagline so it is important. A negative comment is that the image could have been larger. This shows that not everyone has the same opinion and some people didn't like the image. The negatives comments have shown me we could have made the magazine cover a bit simpler by not having so much round the sides and instead have a bigger image.
For the trailer we gave people a questionnare asking questions such as what was your first impression?, your overall opinion? and what did you dislike about the trailer?. For the first impression there was a mix of answers, one saying that they didn't know it would be a horror and one saying they didn't know what to expect. For the overall opinion people put stuff such as 'WOW!!' and 'good' and the for the dislike question people either didn't answer it or put things such as the woods bit went on for too long. These are all things I would take into consideration if we could redo bits of the trailer so we could edit it to make it up to the audience's standards.
4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
IDVD
I used IDVD to burn the trailer onto a disk and I created a menu for the trailer on IDVD too. On the menu I print screened the speeded up eye shot from the trailer and placed it on the menu. I also added a link for the trailer to be watched on and added details such as my name. The dvd only took minutes to burn but the menu gave the dvd a professional look. I didn't add sound because after looking at the sounds there were none I wanted to use and I thought it still seemed professional without it.
Cameras
When we were filming we used two different cameras - the school cameras and Sally's cameras. The cameras were operated by Hannah but we all used them at different times when we were practising and so everyone could work the camera. When we were taking photos on the green screen of Kate we all used the camera then to take various photos at different angles and used things such as zoom. When we were taking photos of Kate we used the lights in the media suite so we could get exactly the right look with the camera. We took photos outside school in the woods for our first photoshoot, and although the camera quality wasn't brilliant it gave us an idea of the shots we wanted so we could plan them for later photoshoots. Because we used two different cameras one was widescreen and one was standard but when they were changed you couldn't tell any big difference between the two cameras.
Final Cut Pro
Although Aimee was the main editor and therefore used Final Cut Pro the most I did use it to look at templates and at the beginning of the editing process everyone in the group practised with Final Cut Pro so they could get the basics. I also helped Sally look at the sounds in Final Cut Pro advising her on the levels and I had an input on where to sound should go and the shot lengths. When I was looking at templates I looked at them to see which ones would suit our trailer best, a lot of them didn't suit our trailer but the one we used did the best as it was simple so didn't make it look messy and un professional. We all listened to sounds to see which ones would suit our trailer and then we all discussed them after. Aimee was the main editor for Final Cut Pro but I watched what she was doing so I could come to terms with the program too and advised her on contrast, how fast the shots should be and which parts of shots should be used, and also if anything didn't look right and needed to be changed.
Protools
Although Sally was sound I worked with her on Protools listening to different sounds and giving my opinion of which ones I liked best and where they should go. I also gave my opinion of if they should be turned down a bit so they didn't sound bad on the trailer. I also listened to the guitar Sally recorded so I could tell if it sounded good or needed to be re-recorded.
Apple Macs
The editing software we used was on the Apple Mac's and I didn't feel confident using it at first but after using it a few times I became more familiar with it and the programs on it. I found it easier to go on Final Cut Pro to look at templates and also to find programmes on them.
Photoshop
I used Photoshop in AS Media so I knew had to use the basics but I feel I have progressed on Photoshop this year as I now know how to do more effects and make things look more professional. I did all of my drafts on Photoshop and I learnt how to experiment with different effects to see what looked best and also what looked more professional. I learnt how to liquefy successfully on Photoshop and now my title 'Click' has been used liquefied. Me and Hannah also created the producer's logo on Photoshop, we created three different drafts which meant adding three different pictures and adding text over the top. We experimented with different texts to see what looked best and although making the producer's logo wasn't very complex I feel it looked very professional.
