EvaluationA2 Media Studies

Alex Atkinson

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

In order to create realistic and successful products, research into the codes and conventions of existing media products was paramount. Extensive research allowed me to adhere to these conventions but also develop them to create a unique and individual product. By keeping in line with these conventions, my final products would be successful in the current market and appeal to my chosen target audience.The trailer I created employs many of the codes and conventions of existing trailers I found when researching current horror trailer by production companies such as ‘Lionsgate’. Firstly, the trailer runs between 60 and 120 seconds, typical of teaser trailers currently in the market. This is long enough to put the narrative across so the audience will understand the basic plot of the film, but not too much is given away. This way, I was able to entice the audience in to wanting to see the film as they would want to know what else will happen. Another way my trailer adhered to the typical codes and conventions was by the length and types of cuts I used. As my chosen genre was horror, research into trailers within this genre showed that they predominantly used short straight cuts to make the trailer fast paced, exciting and to create moments of suspense. Therefore, I transferred this onto my own trailer to put this idea across to my audience.

One of the conventions I kept to in the narrative of my film was the representation of the protagonist. The victim is presented as a young teenage girl, overcome by guilt to make the audience feel sorry for her. This can be seen in existing films such as ‘Prom Night’. This stereotype originated in the 1920’s when the original horror films such as ‘Nosferatu’ were created. On the other hand, the villain is usually an older male character, but we decide to challenge this convention by making the villain a young girl. In the opening scenes, the audience is made to feel sorry for the villain but this quickly changes as there is a role reversal between the victim and villain.

Another typical convention of the horror genre is the use of dark and mysterious environments to create insecurity. The images I used on my poster and website display this as many of my backgrounds were often black with only small sections of the images and antagonist showing. This also helped create the idea of being watched which links with the narrative of our trailer. Despite this convention, I also decided to film parts of our trailer in daylight. This helps to lull the audience into a false sense of security as daylight suggests that the characters are safe and danger is not expected. This effect has also been used in trailers such as ‘Paranormal Activity 2’. This image that I did use on the film poster shows the antagonist rather than the protagonist which is more commonly used. This is used to directly scare the audience as they are now aware of what the ‘villain’ looks like. I also found that many horror film trailers used enigma codes to create questions for the audience. I transferred this onto my trailer in the closing scene; the protagonist is shown in the front of the car and the antagonist is sat behind her. A short flash of this makes my audience question what will happen as it suggests the protagonist is in danger.

I found that violence and death were commonly only suggested in the trailers rather than explicitly shown. For example , in The Last House On The Left Trailer (click on hyperlink below presentation to watch), flashes of black are shown at various points when something violent is about to happen so it is not explicitly shown. In my own trailer I decided to only suggest this violence for ethical reasons. In the opening scene of the car crash, the girl was not shown to be dead; instead the black screen with the sound effects of the crash suggested this. We had to consider how appropriate it was to show this scene in our trailer, and we had to deliberate the airing time of the trailer as we did not want to scare or frighten any younger viewers. However, parts of our trailer does still have graphic or frightening imagery, and so our trailer would have to aired after the watershed, as it is aimed at an older audience who are more likely to be watching at a later time.

Another convention I challenged in the production of my trailer was the use of music and sounds. Most trailers use ‘creepy’ music to connote horror, and although we did use some parts of this, we also decided to use other types of music. At the beginning of the trailer, the pop song ‘Price Tag’ is playing in the car. This puts the audience into a false sense of security yet again, as it has positive connotation sand they do not expect anything bad to happen. We then used ‘thud’ sound effects in dramatic parts of the trailer to make them memorable. Towards the end of the trailer, we included a crescendo as this is where the trailer is building up to create tension and the cuts became faster. We wanted to put this across to the audience and made them feel nervous as the music builds. Finally, at the end of our trailer, we played the nursery rhyme ‘ Ring Around the Roses’, being sung by a young girl. This links to the narrative of the film, with the idea of a young girl being involved. It is still ‘creepy‘ yet unconventional.

I maintained a consistent house style when creating my website and poster, using a black, white and red colour scheme. These are typical colours used in horror film products. Black connotes mystery and hidden danger; white represented the paranormal element of our narrative, and red connotes death and violence.

On the links below this presentation (labelled ‘Existing Horror Poster’ and ‘My Horror Film Poster’) I have annotated an existing film poster along with the one I have created to compare how far I kept to the codes and conventions. To view annotations, click on the links and roll over areas of the image with mouse.

Doing analysis’ like these made it easy for me to keep to the conventions as I had a constant comparison.

My website generally sticks to the conventions of existing horror film websites . I have combined sound, images, text and moving images to create a professional product that reflects the genre. When researching websites, I found that all of the ones I looked at had interactive elements which aim to engage the audience, and thus I used this on my own product by the means of clickable items, image gallery and page links. On the ‘Enter’ page of my website, the production company logo is featured in the bottom right hand corner. This acts as a ‘seal of approval’ and was a typical convention I found in the research stage, as it creates a degree of prestige. On the main homepage I included comments from well known newspapers and film critics. I found this feature on websites for the films ‘Insidious’, and ‘The Devil Inside’. These short sentences create an effective impact as they give the film credibility and encourage the audience to see the film.

On each page of my website, I used the same font – ‘OptimusPrince’ to create continuity and also maintained a consistent colour scheme that linked with the poster and made the website fluent. I did however use different images on the background of each page so that they were all different. These images had all been edited so that they had the same effect. The use of different images, which is a typical convention , helps give the audience an insight into the content of the film.

The navigation of my website was also very conventional. I researched this area before creating my own. I found that on all pages of the websites, the links to the other pages were always found in the same place and could be clicked from any page. Therefore I made it possible on my own website to could go straight from, for example, the ‘Trailer’ page to the ‘Gallery’ page without having to go back to the Home page in between.

As we certified our trailer age 15, I wanted to make sure my trailer appealed to this age group and older. I incorporated links to the films Facebook and Twitter pages as these social networks used by the young generation, are an excellent source of gaining a wide audience and promoting our film. This also helped make my website interactive.

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

When creating my main product (trailer) and ancillary texts (poster and website), I was aware from my research that they had to closely link and maintain a house style. I was therefore very cautious of this, in order to make my products recognisable and memorable. When filming out trailer, we took still images of the antagonist to use on our individual posters and websites. I edited the image on my poster to create a black haze around the characters creating the idea of being watched. I also chose to use this effect on other various images on my website, to create a consistent theme. Taking images during the filming also meant that the background images on my poster and website had the same setting as that of my trailer ; remote, woodland area. It also created intertextuality so the products would be associated with each other.

The purpose of my poster and website was to promote my film, and thus I had to make them stand out and look attractive to the target audience. Therefore, the designs had to be similar so they were easily recognisable. I used the same colour scheme on both the poster and website and similar fonts. This marketing technique meant that once the audience had seen one product, they was associate these colours and images with my film and recognise that the website and poster had come from the same production. However, there was one significant difference between my poster and website. The site ‘Wix’ that I used to design my website did not allow me to import the font that I had used on my poster and I therefore had to choose a different one, meaning that they were slightly different. The narrative of my teaser trailer was also conveyed effectively on my main product and both ancillary tasks as I used similar iconography and images to convey the story.

On all three of my products, I featured the production company’s logo and institutional information. On my website and poster the ‘Pinnacle Productions’ logo was featured at the very bottom of the pages. This same logo was also featured at the beginning of my trailer. This helps to link all the products together as it shows they have come from the same company, and also acts as a ‘seal of approval’. I also featured the tag line from our film, ‘what goes around comes around’, on both the trailer and the poster. To further combine my ancillary texts, I could have also incorporated this tag line onto the homepage of my website.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Before the construction of our products, I had to gain audience feedback on various areas to ensure my final products would be successful for my chosen genre and appeal to my target audience. I created questionnaires which I handed out to focus groups. For example, this questionnaire was designed to find out which film name our audience members felt was most effective. They were given a copy of out film plot to help make their decisions. After creating the first draft of out trailer, we asked members of our target audience for feedback in order to improve and adjust our work. One of the main things we found from the feedback was that we needed to speed up scenes in our trailer, specifically towards the end of the trailer. We were told that they did not find it was fast paced enough to be frightened and feel anxious as they could predict what was happening. We took on board this valuable feedback and it helped us create more tension in the trailer as the audience did not have time to think what was going to come next. For example, the fast paced scenes were reduced to less than 1 second. One of the positive things we found from the feedback was that the audience liked the length of the trailer. They were able to understand the basic narrative as it wasn’t too short, but they also still wanted to know what happened as it wasn’t too long. When researching horror film conventions, I found that trailers of a similar length to ours held

more tension and excitement than those which were too long. The audience also told us that the genre of our trailer was very clear. From the feedback, we also found that our audience did not understand the initial opening scenes of the trailer as the narrative was not clear. To amend this, we filmed extra shots and edited them in it was clear who exactly was involved in the car crash. This was very important as without knowing the plot, it is unlikely our audience would want to go and see our film and we would therefore be very unsuccessful.

The feedback we received also specified that our audience members wanted to be challenged by and exciting and deep plot. Taking this on board, we created enigmas which made our audience ask questions. For example, ‘is the victim imagining things?’, which was created in the dream sequence as the audience are not aware if the victim has been imagining things or if the killer really is there. A very resourceful way of getting feedback on our trailer was by uploading it to the website ‘YouTube’. On this website, audience members were able to ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ our trailer and also provide us with comments and their views. This like or dislike option allowed to gain a quick overview as to whether the majority of people thought the trailer was good or not.

The feedback on my film poster and website was also very positive. These are some of things that were most commonly said:- Looks professional.- Good use of lighting and focus on the antagonist.- Good editing of the images- - Liked how the transitions on the website linked with the element of paranormal activity in our narrative.

Some of the negative feedback I took on board was:- The website and poster use different fonts.- More images could have been used throughout the website.

However, overall my feedback was generally positive and I did not have to adjust much of my products to make them appealing.

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

Throughout the planning and construction of my media products, I used a variety of different technologies. In the research stage, the internet was the most valuable technology I had available, as it allowed for extensive research from a wide range of resources. I used the site ‘YouTube’ to search for existing trailers, as this site made them readily available, and there was also audience feedback on each video so I was able to see which ones were the most successful and why .For example, this trailer of The Strangers has nearly 3 million views, with a like/dislike bar at the bottom. This bar shows the trailer has 3,684 likes and only 318 dislikes, meaning that it has been very successful with its target audience. I was then able to look at the comments on the video to see specifically which elements of the trailer the audience liked and disliked. I also used the Google search engine throughout the research stage to search for film posters and websites. In my planning stage, I created a storyboard of our trailer which showed the basic plot. Images of these were taken on a Blackberry and then transferred onto the computer. I then used Windows Movie Maker to create an animatic of my trailer, using the pencil drawings of my storyboard that I had transferred onto the computer. On this programme I was able to add transitions and sound to create a realistic idea of how my trailer would eventually look. Any planning and research that I completed was then transferred onto ‘www.blogger.com’, an online blog storage service that allowed me to enter my work chronologically.

In the construction of our trailer, we used a digital SLR Lumix camera for a high quality and professional looking production. We then used the editing programme ‘TrakAx’ to edit our trailer and put the scenes together. This programme allowed us to edit various aspects of our trailer. For example, we were able to add a ‘car crash sound effect’ to convey what happened in the opening of our trailer without having an explicit camera shot of the crash. It also allowed us to create fast straight transitions and speed up the trailer to make it exciting and scary. This programme was completely new to us and was a new skill we had to learn in the step up from AS to A2.

When designing my ancillary tasks, I used the programme ‘Photoshop’ to edit still images I had taken whilst filming our trailer. This graphics editing program is the market leader for image manipulation software and thus permitted me to create professional images. The specific tools I used were:- Magnetic lasso tool: to isolate areas of my image and change the colour filter.- Burn tool: to darken the edges of my images.- Dodge tool: to highlight areas of my images to become focus points.I also used the programme ‘Picasa’ to add a blur to some of my images.

To create my website, I used to online site ‘www.wix.com’, which was free to use. This website allowed me to create and interactive and unique website from scratch. I was able to choose backgrounds, import my own images and text, add music and videos, and create animations. The site did however have some Limitations. For example, I wanted to add a white noise sound effect as each page changed as I also used this effect in my trailer, and could so create continuity. However, on ‘Wix’ I was unable to do this and instead just had to have a continuous soundtrack playing on my final website.