Evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media texts?
We decided to create our teaser trailer based on forms and conventions of real media texts. For example, the story line and setting is very similar to other existing horror films. In order to do this we had to research similar teaser trailers and analyse how they used different conventions which we would be able to use in our trailer. For example, the narrative structure (text/ voice over), mise en scene, music, camera shots etc. Our teaser trailer can be compared to the horror film "Creep" because the story line is similar. It is about a girl who appears to be isolated and running away from some type of evil. However, in the trailer of "Creep" you don't see what/who she is running away from and that is what we did in our trailer. We did this because it leaves something for the audiences imagination when you don't reveal everything and makes them want to watch the actual film to find out what happens. We also decided to display quick shots of text in between parts of our trailer instead of a voice over which is the same as the Creep one. The fact that there is no voice throughout the whole trailer makes it more mysterious to the audience. Another similarity between our trailer and the creep trailer is that the music gets faster towards the end which is common in most existing horror film trailers as it creates tension. By keeping the construction of our teaser trailer similar to existing horror trailers, our target audience will feel more familiar with the trailer.

How effective is the combination of your main project and ancillary task?

Along with our teaser trailer we also created other forms of promotion which consists of a poster for our horror film and a horror film magazine cover. Our intentions of creating other media products to go with our trailer was to attract a larger audience. In order to make the products look as realistic and convincing as possible we kept the style of both products consistent. For example, the colours we used on all three products are very similar. We used a variety of red, white, grey and black shades because they are the most common colours used for horror related products and there is alot of symbolism involved. For example, red symbolises blood. We used the main character of the teaser trailer on all of the products as it makes the audience more familiar. If we had used another person, it wouldnt have been as strong. However, on the magazine cover the main character is shown in normal clothes and appears to look happy. We did this on purpose as many people like to see what actresses are like off the camera and it creates a relationship between the two. To make our combination of our teaser trailer and the other products more effective we decided to match our poster with the storyline of our trailer. For example, in the trailer it is clear to the audience that there is a girl who appears to be being chased through the woods, so for our poster we decided to put the main character in front of a background which consists of the same type of setting (trees,moon etc). This is effective as it helps the audience familiarize with the products.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

During the process of creating our media products, we recieved various audience feedback which had helped us alot when it came to making all the decisions from what the storyline was going to be about to where the setting was going to be. All the audience feedback counted as it enabled us to produce products that would attract a large audience. We decided to create questionnaires about horror trailers which we delivered on social network sites such as Facebook. This is because we wanted to find out what it was that attracted people to horror trailers and we then decided to look at the most popular options that were chosen so that we could try and use as many of them as we possibly could in our teaser trailer to gain a larger audience. For example, we decided what the storyline was going to be about before we recieved any audience feedback. However after we'd recieved the feedback we realised that the most popular setting for a horror film is the woods and so we filmed ours there. Our idea before was to film everything in a house. Also, initially our teaser trailer was going to feature two victims but when we found out that more people would be most interested in watching a horror film with one victim we changed our idea. If it wasn't for the audience feedback that we recieved, our trailer may not have been as successful.

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

If we didn't have access to new media technologies during the process of planning and creating our media products it definately wouldnt have been as much of a success as it was as we relied on advanced technology to create the effects we wanted. For example, we have been using this website (http://www.blogger.com/) since the beginning of the year to create, present and update our written work which consists of our research and planning. We now know how to create a blog and upload text, images and videos. To even be able to do certain aspects of the research in the first place we needed technology. For example, to view and analyse the various horror trailers we needed access to websites on the internet such as YouTube and Google to find relevant images for our blog. Another time where we depended on new technology was when we had to film our teaser trailer as we needed the appropriate equipment such as a camcorder. It took a while learning how to use it but after reading the user's manual it got easier. Another time we used technology that was useful but hard to get used to was the programme on the iMac computers called Adobe Premiere Pro. We were able to upload our filming onto this programme so that we could cut and edit it. Lastly, we had access to Adobe Photoshop on the iMac computers where we created our magazine front cover and poster to go with our teaser trailer. Without Adobe Photoshop we wouldn't have been able to edit the background, images and text the way we wanted to and it wouldn't have looked realistic enough.