Trailer

Directors Comment (Mithun Deb)

The media trailer is based around the story of a psychopath who lives next door to a rebellious girl (April) who doesn’t follow rule in according to her flats society and goes against the rules although she already has had previous warnings. The psychopath has had enough of the constant disturbance and takes action of trying to kill the girl, the police record this murder as ‘April Fall’s.

Video Feedback

Due to problems with the video feedback that I got, when I tried uploading the footage it would to capture as a video and only the sound could be heard. I then tried to put it all together as sound and upload it to my blog which it didnt allow me to join the sound footage together.

After trying several times the problem seems to be that the OS wasn't updated on the Mac's so it didn't work, so we had to use the teachers Mac as he had the newer OS version.

Evaluation and Audience Feedback

Here I will evaulate my trailer that I have produced from everystage of the research to the production based in form of four questions.

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

First of all I researched both theatrical and teaser trailers in order to have an understanding of the conventions of both types of trailers. We then compared both trailers and understood the difference between both of them in order to find the clear differences.

In order to make sure that our trailer was a teaser trailer, we followed the conventions in order to make the trailer as proficient as possible with all the right inputs in order for the trailer to be processed accurately which will result in the output being successful. These conventions of a teaser trailer included being 30 – 60 seconds long, they tend to not spoil the story and introduce the character, they tend to have footage that isn’t in the film but is used to tease the audience.

My trailer as a slasher horror challenges conventions of the killer as he doesn’t wear a mask. We decided for our killer not to have a mask as he doesn’t usually go out to make kills but in this case only does it because of her neighbour constantly goes against the rules of her buildings society, and constantly has parties, and does drugs.

By wearing a mask makes the villains scarier, it would also make them far less capable killers, for example, Jason Voorhees, his face and eyes are disfigured to begin with, which already makes him scary to see, but in order to hide his identity he must be covered with a mask. It's amazing he can’t see at all; striking his terrified prey in near darkness with amazing deadly accuracy.

Masking makes the killer look more terrifying; this is to do with psychology and the fear of anonymous death. For many people, the idea of being murdered by an unidentifiable stranger for no reason is more terrifying than being killed by someone you do know, and for some good reason, which a mask does as it hide the killer’s identity.

Another convention that was challenged is our killer isn’t carrying a weapon, where usually in slasher horrors all killers carry some sort of weapon, e.g. Jason Voorhees carry’s a machete or chainsaw, Michael Myers carry’s a knife, as so does Chucky. Their intentions are shown through their weapons that they are here to kill. Our killer is shown this through his imagery with his hench body, tall figure. The sling on his hand outlines that he is a rough character.

The development of conventions that my trailer, film poster, and magazine front cover hold is the typography and all production details are in the right areas, for example, the production details are seen in the trailer, the title appears at the beginning on the trailer, the release date is pointed out, whereas on the film poster the development was seen in all fonts in the right places and the objects needed in order to make it follow the conventions as was the magazine cover.

The development and compliments of conventions are that the killer in this case which is the psychopath is male, and he only goes to attack her as she doesn’t follow basic society rules, this relates to killers reasons to kill, as they kill for a reason but there is a reason for why they do from the past, or present.

The development of conventions was in the voiceover, in our trailer we decided not to add a voiceover we came to this decision after watching several different horror teaser trailers, and seeing in most of them a voiceover isn’t included, this is to create a sense of realism as it has an effect of isolation.

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

Looking at the different promotional tools that we have created I can immediately tell that it will be appealing to my target market which in this case is both M and F of ages of 15 +, as my promotions are through the most successful platforms which are globalised worldwide, and the most effective for my target market.

Viral marketing is the platform that I have decided to draw my audience attention through mainly; as millions of users have access to the internet with over 90% of them having access to social websites, advertising through social sites such as Facebook will have a huge impact it will raise awareness for the film with a little lack of knowledge, imagery, footage, being shown to the audience which creates a sense of enigma and pushes the audience into wanting to know more. Facebook for example is synergy platform as it can be viewed and accessed from a range of different technologies and forms, e.g. it can be accessed through all different internet browsers as a certain JAVA doesn’t need to be installed in certain internet browsers to have access to it, so it can be accessed on PC, phones, PDA’s mobile devices, etc. Facebook as synergised their corporations as they also have an application for iPod/iPhone and blackberry users can have access to by downloading it for easier use.

An example of this can be seen in the release of The Final Destination where the audience was already set through the previous films so the viral market was already set, so audience don’t need introducing as much to the film.

The combination of my main product and ancillary text is effective because they all link together in sense that they my trailer is in the genre of a slasher horror and I have used a font that foreshadows that, which is a bloody style with blood dripping of the edges of each the letters, we changed this font colour to red and added an embossed effect to give it a 3D effect as I am marketing my film as 3D. We used this font throughout the different types of media that we created from the trailer, poster, to the magazine cover.

Another combination link is the colour of our location matches across all of our different media platforms, this is shown as only mainly two shades of colour is used in the trailer and the marketing campaign. For example the location we used was underground of the school called ‘The Void’ which was dark so we could see much colour so we used only two shades of colour on the pictures of our poster and magazine cover. Also in the trailer we had goring red blood so we made our font bloody and red, so it can connect with that convention.

Overall I thing that the whole process of the trailer and marketing campaign has been successful in promoting my movie as it shows all relevant conventions of these media platforms in which is used to get the audience attracted to the movie.

How was media technologies used in the research, planning, construction and evaluation stages?

Media technologies were used in every stage of the production from researching to filming the trailer. In the research stage we used these technologies to research into current trailers in order to find commonalities between them and how they are constructed and put together detailed research had to be made in order for my trailer to follow these conventions.

In research stage we had to use the apple website to research current and upcoming released trailers, this will help us know what audience expect by researching them. Another form of research was to compare the difference between a trailer and a teaser trailer as we had to create a teaser trailer and in order to do this we had to spot the difference between the two so we include the conventions of a teaser trailer and not a trailer.

Whereas in the planning stage media technologies were used in order to plan the trailer and construct it to then go out and film. The planning was used with the research in order to get all our conventions right from the trailer to the poster. This included all aspects including the typography, imagery, details, in order to make audience aware that it’s a horror movie.

The next stage was the construction stage which was the major section in order to use different media technologies, as we had to construct the trailer and the marketing campaign. Here I and my group used several media technologies from camera to film, digital camera to take pictures, music, image, and video editing software’s, in order to edit and put our whole project together to come up with our final product.

The technologies that we used allowed the completion of our finished product. Other technologies also had to be used in the construction process in order to run the equipment and for it to carry out other tasks, such as a battery to use on the camcorder to film, a charger/power lead to charge the battery and use the camera when battery has ran out, a IEEE-1394 firewire cable to transfer the footage from the camcorder to the editing software, a USB cable to transfer the pictures from the camera to the PC, a DV tape to record our footage on and a memory card to put into the camera to save our images on.

Finally in the evaluation stage we used blogger to type up and upload our research and planning, final products, and our evaluation. Blogging allows somebody to upload their work and publish it into the World Wide Web database so that other people can have access to it in order to view your work, if work isn’t wanted to be shown to a wide span of random people then a privacy setting can be set in order for only certain people to have access to it.

Another feature of blogger is that the page set up to be published can allow photos and videos; etc to upload onto a single platform, so everything is in one page. Other features include the page being customised to meet the publishers and end users needs; this includes changing the page style, changing the layout of the page, the colour of the page/font, etc. In my case I went on to do a extra and I went onto finding a background from an external site to use on my blog to meet the genre of the movie and my needs. In order to do this I had to edit the HTML and re-code the page in order to get my background on there.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback has allowed me have view from other people about what they think of my trailer, this gives an indication on what I need to change and what is good as when giving feedback on a video audience usually outline what is their favourite part and why they like it, with this information from various audience I can look between them and see if anything needs changing, so this information has allowed me to review the quality of my trailer.

Shot factor, shots, and verisimilitude is important in marketing a film. In the trailer we get a slight glimpse of the protagonist, I decided to do this so the full identity of the killer isn’t revealed and his face isn’t seen on the screen more than one time for a fraction of a second, this creates a sense of enigma as the audience question themselves to who is he? This is one of the USP of my movie as the protagonist’s full profile isn’t released and in order to find out whom he is the audience need to go to watch the movie in the cinemas.

Viral Marketing strategies, in this case Facebook; were used to get audience feedback where I have created a page for my film with promotional material such as poster, magazine cover, trailer, which I have uploaded in order to for users to view and comment on. Various users of Facebook and fans of my movie have viewed the page and left their own comments about the movie with all my feedback so far has been really positive, which shows that my trailer has been a success and most of my target market will go to watch the movie if it were to be released in cinema’s.

Other forms of audience feedback that had been carried out were video feedback where I gathered a small amount of people to get their views. This feedback allowed a 1-to-1 interview about the trailer and what makes audience want to go and see the movie when it is released, the areas that are covered in the feedback cover what’s good about the trailer and what not, areas of improvement, and would it be a movie they would like to go and watch in the cinemas when it’s released.

From the audience feedback that I have gathered, it is clear that we have successfully conceived a film that suites our target audience. This is through the comments that were made through our potential target market.

Without audience feedback I would not know what people think of my trailer which will keep me thinking of how many people will actually go to watch the movie if my movie were to be released, so audience feedback allows me to review of what my target market thought of my trailer which gave me an clear indication that my film would be a success.

Problems that Occurred

Problems that occurred I overcame whilst editing our videos was system crashes that I had experienced with the Macintosh computer’s as most of the times when I uploaded the video footage we had captured it would upload and freeze and in some cases crash the software which meant we had to repeatedly download the footage without the system crashing and our footage flowing right, e.g. no freezes, etc.

Another problem that occurred is the production details and title I created using Photoshop wouldn’t upload to iMovie, in order to try and solve this problem I tried saving the image to several formats and uploading it, but this plan didn’t work, so I while trying to upload it to iMovie it comes on the main screen and I had to screen capture it which made the image more fuzzier but allowed me to add it to my video.