A2 Horror trailer 'Subliminal'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXXi7V1eOnI

Final film poster product.

 

 

 

Final film magazine product.

 

 

 

 

Evaluation Question 3.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Once we felt our trailer was up to a successful standard we then presented it to our class. We asked them each for three positive points and three negative points. We were looking for aspects that we needed to tweak and make better and parts which worked well. We received a wide range of feedback.

Positive points

Graveyard good setting x3

Good shot with mask x3

Good lighting x2

Good head shakes x4

Lurking in trees shot

Good sound effects x7 - "Draws the audience in well","Good, creepy horror feel to it"

Good shots in the night

Good ending shot x3

Nice shadows

The standing out point for our trailer was our use of sound effects to draw the audience in and create a suspense within our trailer. Comments made on this point was that it "Draws the audience in well" and that it has "Good, creepy horror feel to it". The sound was


A feint shot of myself being spotted
by Kieran and Louis.

The main setting of
our trailer.

a key feature in building up the suspense in our trailer and helped define what type of category the movie would be placed in too, so I am very happy people agree with the sound that we produced. We also tried to create suspense with the character played by Louis Caseley, as you are able to see the steps he takes to becoming insane, using the head shakes you see in the trailer. This was another key point we wanted to include in our trailer to show the crazy, delusional side of his character and with 4 people agreeing with it we believe it was successful. Another specific idea we wanted was a setting which gave you ideas of what type of movie it would be and Kieran Browne is looking for his friend, Louis Caseley and stumbles into a pitch black area in the church where myself, Isaac Reeder is waiting for him to appear and notice me as I lurk behind his shoulder, the shot is only a few seconds long and is built up with the suspense of the sound effects to make the shot more effective, two other people pointed this out in our class as well so I am happy other people realised what we were trying to show with this shot.somewhere which no one else would have in the trailer. The abandoned ruins/graveyard which we shot in was one of a kind and not included in anyone else's trailer, making it individual and key to our trailer, three people approved our setting scheme and said that it helped shape the genre specific idea we were looking to create. Our main shot used in our trailer involving two of the characters is where Kieran Browne is looking for his friend and stumbles into my path without noticing. The audience can see what is about to happen but he can't, creating a scary suspense. Three people agreed that this shot worked well with the suspense of the music and worked well at the end of the trailer too. The head shaking in our trailer was to show a suspect feeling of insanity and craziness. We wanted to single out Louis Caseley to have this effect throughout the trailer without creating a storyline in the trailer rather than in the film. People said that the effect worked as it made them watch his every move in the trailer and said it worked well with the aspect we were trying to create. With the night setting in the background of our trailer it created a much more scary scene, we wanted the dark to create a tense and intimidating atmosphere, but it did make it tricky to film certain bits and get the footage across without it being poor quality, which is why we had to use lighting effects whilst we filmed and on the computer. Two people picked up on our lighting effects so im glad they see the effort put into trying to get good quality clips included. Overall I am very happy with the positive feedback that we received as a group for our trailer. We spent a lot of time making specific parts very detailed and to the best standard we could so it is great to receive positive recognition for these areas. 

Snippet of the head shake
in our trailer.

 

                                                                     Negative points

   Could be longer x3

Text too hard to read x5-"Wobbling too much"

Needs more scary scenes x2

Camera work out of focus x2

No storyline x4

More locations x2

No final shot x5

Little pace at ending

One of the settings used in our
trailer, points made that more
settings could of been used.

With the positives come the negative points and criticism. Parts which we thought looked well and had our teacher agree with too, others flagged as amateur and needed remodelling. The one which stuck out the most was the use of our text. The red wobbling text we thought fitted well with the


The red wobbling text used in our trailer.

horror aspect, linking in the colour red with the associated use of blood, which our teacher also agreed with and said looked very nice. However five people thought that it should be changed and that it was "Wobbling too much", the text would be something we would recreate and look at again in a way that people would find it easier to read and flow with the storyline of the trailer.  Something else pointed out was that our trailer didn't follow any sort of a storyline. Before we started making our trailer we were told that they did not need a storyline as we were trying to sell the movie to the audience in order for them to witness the full story line when they eventually saw the movie, so I wasn't too sure why a storyline was a relevant negative point. For or the positive side we had three people say that our final shot was good, but five people complain that we had no final shot. There was an issue with a final shot we had included in our trailer after the final text appeared that it had been deleted the day before we were due to show our trailer to the class for feedback, so we were aware of the no final shot issue that five people picked up on. It was an issue that we were trying to fix but didn't have enough time to remake the clips to the standard and time we had put into the clip, it wouldn't reflect against the other clips used in our trailer. I agree that we could of used more locations within our trailer, as it could of drawn more people in to watching it if more scary locations were used. The out of focus use in the camera was used on purpose to try and give it a more frightening effect, as it was a horror trailer. However I also agree that it could of been longer, but we didn't want to give too much away, and the use of the quick clips keeps you on your toes and drawn into what is on the screen, but others have different opinions and we will take the feedback on board. The full trailer was only 1:30 long, I think it may of been longer but we didnt want our scenes to drag on too much as we wanted to build pace and suspense towards the end of the scene, so we wanted something around the minute and a half mark, some may disagree but we felt it fitted in well.

A shot which people complained about
being blurred.

Overall we appreciated the comments we received as it shew us the areas in which we excelled in and places which needed improvement. However some areas we put in purely because we thought it looked good, others may disagree but we felt it was fitting to the style model we were looking to fill. With the trailer shown I feel we reached our target audience well with the techniques used. The main piece of criticism that I will take on board was more scenery and settings could of been used, if ever given the chance to edit my work I would definitely use more creepy and intimidating settings. 

Evaluation Question 2.

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

Along with the design of my trailer with my team mates I have also designed ancillary texts such as a film poster and a magazine cover for the mass media production and marketing side of my work. As a promotional package I believe that my trailer and my designs work very well together, they follow the same conventions as each other and other trailers. I have recreated scenes involving characters and props for the media production so viewers will know that it follows the storyline. I believe that it advertises the film very well and will attract a wide audience in order for a successful theatrical release.

The mask used across our three advertising markets.

The three strands of the campaign to the film that we tried to reach into was Advertising; Publicity; and promotion. The advertising area was made to try and bring the film to the attention of the potential and current customers. Usually it is focused on one particular product or service, but we had it spread across three platforms; Magazine cover, Poster and the Trailer. These three were our main sources of advertising. The promotion side was to keep the product in the minds of the customer and hopefully stimulate demand for the film after seeing our advertising plots. The ongoing activities of advertising, sales and public relations are often falling under the brackets of promotions, linking it with our advertising schemes. The marketing we done involves a wide range of activities involved in making sure that we were meeting the needs of our customers, first pointed out in questionnaires and online polls to make sure we get profit and value back in return. Marketing is usually focused on just one product, we focused our marketing on three areas, the magazine cover, trailer and poster. Our inbound marketing included to find out what potential customers existed, the main area we tried to get in was the horror fan base. From the results of our meetings with the fans and questionnaires they wanted to see something that had never been made before, they didn't want a traditional horror blood and guts film, so we tried to create a subliminal feature which plays with your mind and makes you think. We would like to think that we had met the clients needs with our spin on a horror film. We analysed the competition to see what most typical horror genres are made, and whether our idea gets recreated a lot, with our research complete it confirmed what style we wanted to make our horror film in. Our niche market would not be the typical horror gore fan but a more sci-fi horror fan who likes a good and thorough watch planned out rather than going all in with chain-saw's. Our outbound marketing included promoting out product through the continues advertising and promoting our film through the trailer, magazine cover and poster. With these markets dipped in to it would hopefully create a public relationship and see our sales rise as the result.



The poster advertising our film.

By having a poster to accompany my trailer it allows me to attract a much larger audience due to the fact you can put a poster anywhere you want and can be viewed by countless amount of people, much like a trailer but it is only specific to the internet and television. It means that the poster will play a vital role in advertising the trailer and as an attempt to try and lure audiences into watching my teams movie. Hopefully a positive outcome will come from the design of my poster and will lead to people wanting to find out more, by searching for it online and viewing the trailer if seen first. The magazine design plays a smaller role as it has to be bought by viewers to find out more, whereas posters and trailers are free to view. However the magazine cover will still play a big role in my attempt to publicise the movie as it is a magazine specific to media and film, so the right people will be viewing the cover if they buy the magazine. The design of these two posters is purely to reach the biggest demographic possible.

The magazine cover advertising
our film.

By advertising my movie into magazines such as Total Film it allows me to create a hype surrounding my product. If people start to see the name Subliminal in articles and posters around it will start to create a fan base for the movie and should help lead to a big release. In order for the advertising and publicity to link together I tied to create products that link up together visually and share links between them. The biggest link between the poster, trailer and magazine cover is the inclusion of the mask on each of the three. It makes it the iconic piece of the trailer and people should begin to question of its use and why is this mysterious mask appearing everywhere around them. Hopefully sparking speculation around my teams trailer. I went against the normal colour scheme conventions and used a Grey theme for the poster, a coloured theme for the magazine cover and a dark and eerie, night gore-filled feeling for the trailer, opting against linking them with the same colour scheme, I felt it would become too repetitive and some viewers may begin to find the same colour appearing everywhere boring. The small details and factors will help me to attract people into watching my trailer and catching the eye of the public too.



Whilst designing my poster I found the use of fading a professionally made poster or magazine cover behind my design so I could see the progress that mine needed or to compare it with ones already ma
de. This allowed me to find out the different conventions included on the posters and so I could include them in mine in my own way. I could also find the right pictures, text to use and titles too. I tried not to copy it too much so I could recreate my poster in a unique way that no one else had seen before. With the iconic mask playing the main part in my advertising I made sure it took center stage in the design of my posters.

I chose the design of Total Film to be my backup picture to my design to make sure I had the conventions of a professional cover. It helped me design my Total Film masthead and tried to fade it behind with a glow to try and put my own unique spin on the title. The main cover was a picture of one of the Protagonist's in the mask and not the Antagonist, who is seen wearing it in the trailer. If anyone had noticed this small change hopefully it could spark confusion and controversy as to find out why he was wearing the mask they would have to watch the full film, as we gave no hints away as to why in the trailer. All of the pictures used were taken on a digital camera by us.

Props, Costumes and Characters.

This is half of the Protagonists, Louis Caseley. 

This is the front and back of the t-shirt that Louis Caseley wore in the trailer.

The jacket that Louis Caseley wore in our trailer.

The Antagonist, Myself. Isaac Reeder.

The prop and costume that myself, the Antagonist wore in the trailer. The iconic mask.

Other half of the Protagonists, Kieran Browne.

This is the t-shirt that Kieran Browne wore in the trailer.

Evaluation Question 1.

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

The majority of the modern day horror trailers will share the similar traits and conventions and will fit into the bracket of the forms perfectly, these will include showing off the genre of the movie, the name of the movie and the production values too.

In comparison with my group and our trailer I believe that we have expressed the same traits as what would be viewed in a professional movie trailer. For example within our trailer we have established different shots which would give the idea of it being a horror trailer and not to be confused with any other bracket such as Comedy or Rom-Coms. The use of showing the hidden scary character only once or twice very briefly also gives off a uneasy impression that he is not meant to be introduced straight away in the trailer, as to watch and to appear later on and cause havoc. As the trailer carries on the titles appear in blood red colour shaking across the screen, which would only be visible in a horror movie, separating it from the rest, but also showing the traditional horror conventions. We aimed to create suspense with the trailer by unveiling the name of the film in time with the music at the end of the trailer, something which is associated with many trailers put out professionally. We wanted ours not to follow in the conventions too much but so people could grasp the idea of what approach we were taking for our trailer. We didn't include the names of the actors in our trailers as we didn't include any 'big names' within our trailer, so they wouldn't have the ability to draw viewers in to watching our film as people such as Brad Pitt and Leonardo Di Caprio would have. But a once called upon trait within horror films is that generally horror isn't known for well known names, but more for its thrill seeking attitude and suspense building measures. I believe outside the bounds of horror films they use big superstar names in titles to draw customers in, immediately separating our trailer from the mainstream set of films available today.

The two Protagonist's at the start of the trailer, following the normal trailer conventions.

Every trailer made must share a bond or connection with its demographic and include key elements that will entice them into watching the film and increase the sale rates. We targeted our trailer to every horror fan but we believed that ages from 15-30 would find our film more interesting out of anyone. By using a complete teenager cast would help swoop in the teen-mid adult range we believed as they could relate to the events that were happening, by starting off the trailer with shots of two of the members setting out on their journey should hopefully show the identification and plot of the cast and where abouts they were heading. We expanded on the identification of the characters with the widely visible appearance of a Protagonist and Antagonist. Kieran Browne and Louis Caseley playing the two Protagonists and myself, Isaac Reeder playing the Antagonist. Evidently shown in the build up of the clips and the repetition of them being included, whereas my character is only included once or twice on a second basis. It also creates a relationship between the film, the characters to the audience members to try and urge them to go watch the full film.

Another trait that all horror trailers build on is the aspect of creating tension by revealing small snippets of the film, along with pacey shots and thumping music. By using these in any order too you can create a sense of confusion that can only be cleared and sorted by watching the film after seeing the teaser trailer. The use of different types of colour helped to build a climax, as we shot most of the work in the dark, immediately making it seem more eerie and creepy, rather than in the day. The use of red text helps too as its always associated with blood and gore, Helping to build a horror picture and tension.

The red text used in our trailer.

Referring back to the use of sound, it was very vital that we had the right sound to match our video, to provide the right sort of atmosphere, build-up and tension we wanted. This followed the normal horror convention with the beat picking up pace towards the end of the trailer, giving off the vibe that something bad is going to happen. Without the added bonus of music our trailer would lose most of its suspension. We felt that we didn't want to over-use the music part and kept it strictly to the beats with no voice overs, we thought the beat done a great job on its own. Over do-ing it could potentially ruin the feel and pace of the trailer too.

The abandoned ruins surrounded by enclosing tree's and gravestones.

Although I have already talked about the traditional horror trailer conventions, one of the main conventions is the locations and settings included. We found an abandoned ruins surrounded by trees, built up by the darkness. The setting complimented the type of film it would be massively, as this type of setting wouldnt be associated with any other genre of film. It creates a sense of unknown, a sense of being trapped and unable to escape, exactly what we wanted to portray through our trailer. Having the more scary clips being built up in the night time helped back up the typical convention of a horror trailer too.

Similar to that of a normal trailer, horror trailers also possess a style of their own. Including different styles of camera shots that would only work for their genre. A prime example of this is at the end of our trailer where a Long shot is used to show the Antagonist praying on the Protagonist, to create anxiety and nervousness. If such a shot used in a Comedy trailer for example, it wouldn't have the same effect as in a horror film. It also backs up the representation of the horror genre.

Finally, the use of the Antagonist character only appearing once or twice in the film makes you focus on why they are only included for such a short time and what effect will their character bring to the film and the behaviour of the other characters. We tried not to reveal too much about the so called 'Monster' so we could entice people more into watching the full film.

The main clip including the Antagonist attacking one of the Protagonist.