EVALUATION Teaser Trailer, Film poster & Film Magazine

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

My media products use forms and conventions of real media products due to thorough research on professional products which enabled me to construct a product in a similar style. My Teaser trailer was in the genre of horror so in order to achieve this, I planned and researched my chosen genre to meet the audience and genre expectations. For my first product, I chose related professional teaser trailers to undergo analysis i.e. Woman in Black, Dark Mirror and Scream 4 to look at what ideas I could generate from these products and incorporate into my own. From this I was able to review each teaser trailer and look at what they have done to establish the conventions of that genre.

I used a range of conventions which I will aim to explain. The first important feature to my product was the music which was vital to create a different atmosphere. Alternatively the music creates the tension needed to build up the narrative and create arousal through the audience. The music initially came from a royalty free music website in which I used two soundtracks from the horror section. I edited sections of the music to match visual action within the teaser.

Pop goes the weasel (double click to play track)

The house of leaves (double click to play track)

Chosen Genre

My product also uses forms and conventions through elements of Mise en scene. I felt props and costume created a significant meaning so I decided to use a quick fade of a knife being held several times which established in my teaser that something bad was going to happen with this prop. I decided to use some ‘fake’ blood to make certain scenes looks real. For costume purposes, my main character Emeline only wore black clothing throughout the teaser to show she is different and there is no life within her as black is a dark brooding colour.

Location helped to aid conventions of my genre. During analysis on professional products, I came across scenes being established in houses so this was something I thought to include in order to give the impression it is an ordinary house but sinister things will happen which is why I used an entire semi-detached house as my main location. My teaser trailer deliberately had no logical order as this is what teasers do.

Camera shots/angles were of big importance when it came to using forms and conventions from real media products. From research, I noticed professional teaser trailers (especially horrors) only use a small variety of camera shots because this creates tension and mystery towards the narrative and also character’s facial expression briefly tells the audience how the character is feeling and then this meaning created from the camera shot is reflected into the audience to become aware and react to this expression. With knowledge of this, I decided to use more medium shots, close ups and medium shots alongside others.

For continuity to be invisible, during editing I used several fades as I liked how they were used in Scream 4 and text transitions to make the narrative clear. The fades were an important aspect because it restricted the audience to understand and see much of the narrative as used in professional teaser trailers. The texts transitions add to create mystery by explaining parts of the narrative as I thought the audience would engage by reading something than listening to audio. Red was a big theme connecting my three products together to symbolize potential danger and darkness. I went with the convention of the American date format at the end of my teaser trailer seeing as I researched horror films from American film makers.

For my film poster product, I decided to follow forms and conventions from real professional posters. I will explain the conventions I used from my analysis of the three film posters. To begin with I wanted to establish the actors names on both right corners of the poster influenced from the ‘After Life poster so the audience recognize who the main actors are within the film.

This is known as Hollywood credits used in many film posters to advertise the production companies involved, writers, story maker and finally director. For my product, I challenged the convention of making the directors name appear in big font as the main focus was advertising the actors as I thought they were more important but in professional cases, if such a film was made by Steven Spielberg, then his name would need to be obvious on the poster.

I decided to make the film title a different colour from the rest of the Hollywood credits so the title of the film would effectively stand out. I also did this for my teaser trailer making the title, and the ‘coming soon 3.13.13’ text appear in red so it is easily recognized. An age rating icon was put in my poster to make audiences aware of the preferred audience along with a tagline used in all film posters.

Whilst thinking about connecting my genre to this product, I made this evident during the editing process as I took photos with an SLR camera because most film posters are taken with high quality cameras for printed purposes. This was a clear close up of Emeline’s face as her identity is not revealed. Whilst editing on Photoshop, I created a shadow circle around Emeline’s face to emphasize the main focus should be kept on her appearance because of the two identities revealed through her makeup.

Hollywood credits(including actors Names, age rating, film title and credits)

Alternatively, my finished film poster product brings across a strong image which questions Emeline’s true identity which is what the whole narrative of the film is trying to impose.

My Magazine cover uses forms and conventions of real professional media products as I tried as best as possible to research professional mainstream film magazines and acknowledge their professional practices used to produce print products. I looked into Total Film and Empire but decided to use Total Films 2011 spring issue featuring Charlie and the chocolate factory featuring Johnny Depp as an example to re create a magazine like Total Film to near professional standards.

Firstly, I decided to use the same font ‘Eagle Bold’ used in Total Film but change the masthead to ‘IFILM’ instead of Total Film. This is because I am thinking of media in the contemporary as everything is now interactive or in some form of a webpage on the internet. The reason for ‘IFILM’ is because film can be accessed interactively and it will aim to bring its audience interactive content at a fixed monthly price via IFILM.COM for those who do not want a printed copy. Alternatively, the magazine print industry in some cases may benefit from this and as mentioned before expand consumerism of their product.

Like Total Film, my product featured a medium shot of my main character Emeline holding an important prop connecting this product to the teaser to separate and allow the audience to distinguish her two identities. The image uses conventions of a horror because its overall appearance seems dark and mysterious and makes you almost question which side to believe. The Taglines, cover lines and overall layout helped to make sure my product adhere to conventions of a real magazine cover. I have annotated my magazine and broken down every element added to show this.

Finished ProductProfessional Product

Masthead The masthead is ‘IFILM’ in eagle bold font

Taglines & Cover lines The taglines used helped to promote the magazine content. ‘the ultimate Movie Magazine’ (corona font) supports the masthead.

Barcode & Price£3.79

Recognising the Actor(Sans serif font)

Website recognitionwww.IFILM.COM

Main Background ImageFeaturing Emeline

Title of film

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

The combination of my Teaser trailer, magazine and Film Poster is evident in the way there are links and connections between the three products. Having looked closely at one of my chosen film magazines for professional product research, I noticed that the Johnny Depp image has lots of detailed aspects that link the overall appearance of the magazine. The magazine correlates a colour scheme as the eye and the glove he is wearing is the same colour (purple) as symbols and text used. As a result, Depp’s eye would have had to been edited in Adobe Photoshop along with symbols and text to correlate. Because the image is powerful in the sense that it combines and supports the taglines, evidently we know that the human eye cannot possible be purple so this does draws the reader into the fantasy of the film’s narrative through the magazine.

Colour scheme from professional film magazine

Because of this, the magazine’s tagline draws attention to the audience and supports the masthead. My film poster’s title stands out from other text making this extremely important for the audience to identify the name of the upcoming film.

For example, my film poster and magazine make good use of the colour red drawing attention to certain texts i.e. the ‘Ultimate Movie Magazine’ and the film title ‘EMELINE’ as well as presenting a sense of danger.

(colour scheme from my film magazine)

The Teaser Trailer also proved effective in combination with the other products as I used font colour red for the film title, release date and fade transitions. Decisions for this were because I wanted to correlate a meaning between my film (the 1 second montage of blood hands seen and the last two text transitions at the end of the teaser each separated by black fades).

Likewise I decided to use this colour scheme convention by using the following on my film magazine;

A black backdrop for the photography stage of my character and using a knife with a black handle linking the knife and background image to create a dark atmosphere.

Most importantly I wanted my film magazine image to be the powerful aspect of the magazine so I used a lasso square tool to highlight & edit the right side to Emeline’s face making it black & white. By doing this I aimed to blur the lines between fiction and reality showing two hidden identities and representing the two effects (black & white and colour) as two hidden identities colliding through an image. I feel that the image adjustments used on Photoshop interprets this.

Black creates a sinister mood

Most importantly I wanted my film magazine image to be the powerful aspect of the magazine so I used a lasso square tool to highlight & edit the right side to Emeline’s face making it black & white. By doing this I aimed to blur the lines between fiction and reality showing two hidden identities and representing the two effects (black & white and colour) as two hidden identities colliding through an image. I feel that the image adjustments used on Photoshop interprets this.

The overall effectiveness of the three products is due mainly to the constant use of the central character in all three products which gives us a different viewpoint of all three proposals.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback has taught me a great deal of planning and preparation for each production stage (pre & post). This was vital because it enabled me to acknowledge the preparation that comes before research & planning, filming and editing, acknowledging audiences different interests, favourite film genre’s, hobbies, occupations and income. From this, a professional production can make initial changes and decisions based on audience feedback.

Once completing my ancillary task, I conducted a focus group survey explaining the task and then presenting them with my initial ideas for my teaser trailer. It helped me to know what to include, what not to include and what would be preferred whilst directing my teaser.

Myself and my focus group discussed my overall ideas and They were happy with my three final products. As I took their feedback into much consideration. However before this they were shown ‘The woman in black’ to act as a style model to get a general idea of what my product was aiming towards.

As a result I learnt that my focus group thought location and setting was important, the genre has to be obvious through forms and conventions, and the use of a central character would create a better understanding of narrative of events like ‘Woman in black’.

Everything I have learned from audience feedback was put into practice through the following teaser ideas;

Basing my teaser around Emeline (and other characters) assuming she imposes a normal lifestyle.

Quick fade transitions by not revealing much of the narrative

Violent & horrific montage shots to achieve the conventions of the chosen genre

Text transitions for audience to receive a clear understanding of the narrative.

Having completed the product, I arranged for my campaign consisting of three products to be shown to a media student. I created a few questions to be answered based on the products being seen.

Do you think the poster, magazine and teaser trailer is effective enough for advertising a film?

Yes I think it is very effective and there are many aspects (including the following of conventions of chosen genre) between the three products that link together enough for it to be effective.

What links can you identify between the poster and magazine?

The fact that the central character is used throughout all three products, helps better understanding of the film campaign. The magazine and poster both have interesting tag lines that support the narrative by telling us that there’s something unusual about Emeline.

Which sections of the magazine, poster and teaser trailer could be potentially improved?

The magazine could have included more taglines as to promoting more content from the magazine There could have been a stronger colour scheme, as for the film and poster nothing could be improved.

Which part of the magazine and poster looks the most professional?

The Poster looks the most professional as it does exactly what a film poster should do, it doesn’t give away too much but it shows the elements of the genre. Looking at the tagline and the image makes us want to know what is wrong with the character Emeline as one side to her she looks very normal but then the other half of her face looks distraught/deranged.  

From doing this, I learned from the feedback that my products linked together because of the input of detail. Despite this, there were some problems as to finding the right characters who would potentially be able to portray the characters I had in mind, Trying to achieve a smooth tracking shot in an exterior location and non professional equipment. To improve the narrative, I made an initial decision by changing the intended camera shots and sequence of the teaser because I was not satisfied with the original sequence and shots. This was because I wanted to keep the mystery throughout the teaser revealing slowly revealing the narrative as it got to the end.

Overall, I could have included more conventions to make my genre even more obvious. I feel I could have improved the spelling mistake made in my teaser acknowledging that a professional production company would be less likely to make this mistake. My poster could have been improved by the use of a different exterior background giving the poster some realism to it.

These improvements will need to be understood for any further film campaigns/products. The audience feedback during all processes helped me substantially which I am extremely grateful for.

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

Several media technologies were used during the construction (filming & post production), research, planning and evaluation stages. Without the use of these technologies the products would not be the way I had initially planned. During each of these stages, I took full advantage of media technologies for the following;

Research & Planning

At this stage, I made use of the Internet using a search engine (Google) researching existing media products that I would be able to relate my chosen genre to. Google allowed me to gather information and images about existing teaser trailers acknowledging me about how much profit was made from the film, the actors starred and several other important factors. I was able to perform a screen shot of images using (Command-Shift-3) and then put onto a word document.

YouTube was used to actually view the professional teaser trailers likewise I was able to perform screen shots explaining the information I had retained from research. I also used websites like slideshare for presenting information in a different medium and Excel for collecting research on audiences.

However the Microsoft office was the best media technology as it allowed me to present my information in graphs, paragraphs and presentations. www.wordpress.com was where I produced my own page and then putting my word documented information onto it. Wordpress is a blog which allowed me to incorporate information making my production stages appear visual.

(Click to view word document example)

Construction (Filming & Post production)

During the filming of my teaser trailer, I used a handheld Cannon HD camera. For better shots, I filmed scenes several times to achieve the chosen shot/angle so that when it came to post production, I had a variety of shots to edit with. Because I already knew what shots I would perform, I still decided to do different things than to what was drawn on my storyboard. We used the light source from the camera which was very useful as I was filming in an exterior location in the evening. To capture sound I used a fish pole and microphone although these sound equipments were not needed throughout as I retained sound from a free sound source website importing this into final cut.

After gathering all scenes filmed, I began using an Apple Mac to edit the teaser through Final Cut and editing software but first I had to log & capture the film so final cut could be aware of my filming. With the aid of a 2TB hardrive, I was not restricted to using a specific Mac just to edit which I found very useful. Final cut helped create the idea and formation of my teaser trailer as I wanted it to look like because I was constantly using professional tools to move, cut and add transitions to my film.

I mainly used the fade in and fade out transitions, razor tool to cut sections, change and compress the footage. The effect that worked in particular for my teaser was the changing of speed for footage and sound as this helped to slow down the narrative and create attention to that scene. In order for my music to not be interrupted with this change of speed I had to lock the sound timeline. During my AS year Final cut was a major problem for me but now I feel that I have overcome this as I am fully aware of Final cut’s potential to edit high standard films. I feel that after hours of editing I have gained so many new skills using this software which will help me in the future.

Change sound levels

Log & capture

Timeline (where I edited the film from)

Browser Main tools

Change film speed

My film poster & magazine was created with a professional image editing software called Photoshop. With previous knowledge on Photoshop I was able to add adjustments to get a good colour balance within my images as well as using several layers to add text and effects with no problem. The only problem encountered was creating the oval shadow on my film poster which I used the internet to find a tutorial for. The problems encountered for the magazine was trying to replicate the small icons promoting content. I was able to complete both poster and magazine because I followed and used examples for both products.

Having said this, I feel that in order for me to create these products, the skills learnt in my AS year, have allowed me to develop those skills further and learn more with the software’s used. As as result, I am happy with my finishing products and know that in future I will pick up more skills for similar tasks.