PRODUCTION: Asylum Teaser Trailer Final Cut

EVALUATION: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback is crucial in producing any type of product. The reason for this is that the product is being created for them, and so therefore needs to be centred around what they want or desire and not what you want yourself as the producer. Also it is likely that as the creator of the product, you are going to have a bias opinion as to how good it is, therefore a neutral point of view is required.

One method of feedback that I used was through the social networking site 'Facebook'. I posted images of the poster and magazine cover and allowed other people to comment on them and say what they liked about it and what I could do to improve it as shown below.

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This was a very helpful way of receiving feedback, however a problem with it is that the people who are giving their opinions most likely don't have an education media production and so their opinion may not be as valued as someone that does.

Another way that I received feedback was through the use of focus groups. This was done with my class and media teachers where people would present the first draft of their products and then be told what was good about it and also would could be done to improve. This was a more valuable source of feedback as they all have an educated background in media. For example, on the first draft of my poster it was noted that there was too much empty space and that the header was too small. From learning this I was able to know what needed to be done and could therefore concentrate on these particular points.

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

Technology was a major part of the project throughout. For research the internet was a highly valuable tool. YouTube was exceptionally helpful in providing examples of teaser trailers to view and analyse which were all in one place. Were it not for this resource, the alternate options would've been to browse the internet for single videos at a time which would've taken far longer, or even would've meant that we had to write to film studios requesting them to send trailers, which again would've taken far longer.

Facebook became useful for our audience feedback. To do this I posted images of the poster and magazine cover and allowed people to comment on what they thought, and how it could be improved.

During production, technology and the standard of it was highly important. Firstly to film, we used a HD camera in order to get the best possible definition quality considering our budget. Then in order to edit the footage we had recorded, the software Final Cut Pro was used. This was particularly helpful because it is professional standard software. This meant that a wider range of effects, editing etc could be used compared to software such as iMovie which is an entry level product and so is very basic.

For the production of the magazine cover and poster I used Adobe Photoshop. Again, this is professional standard software and so we weren't limited by there not being the right tool available for example.

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

The ancillary products consisted of a advertising poster and a magazine cover. From the start I felt it was important to build a brand image or symbol, with the result being that every time the image is shown people are able to relate it to the film itself. The image I used was the shot of the antagonist holding an axe. I thought that this was probably the best shot that we had taken because of the lighting effect that we used.

Most films would typically use images which clearly show the star actors that feature in the film. However due to our film having very little budget, the actors we used of course hold no star quality. Therefore there would be little point in using them to advertise the brand.

I am particularly happy with the the final poster due to it's professional clean cut feel to it. I am still happy with the magazine cover, however I feel it could be improved were I to add an extra colour to the colour scheme.

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

The teaser trailer I have produced follows many of the conventions of the genre. A horror film is defined as an unsettling movie that strives to elicit the emotions of fear, disgust and horror from viewers. In the vast majority of horror films there is very little movement away from the main conventions, such as dark lighting, violence, mystery and suspense.

A horror's main conventions are typically to have darkness, violence and mystery to name just a few. In this particular genre, there is very little movement away from these conventions. This is because a horror audience have certain expectations, and so why should producers go against what is already successful.

The use of darkness and lighting, as I mentioned earlier is a significant part of an effective horror film. In the teaser trailer we created we managed to bring in many different lighting effects, for example with the shot of the antagonist in the alley way. Here the effect of the torch manages to form a silhouette on the character, and as a result manages to keep his identity a mystery, another convention of the horror genre.

Another shot that we used where lighting plays a major role is the quick shot of the industrial light flickering as our first clip. The idea of a flickering light is another very commonly used feature of the horror genre, again because of the idea of the unknown lurking in the dark.

Teaser trailers often use very quick cut shots, lasting only a second or so. The intention of this is to tease the audience as the viewer is unable to make much sense of what is happening from such a short clip. We used this for all of our shots, where as a result we have managed to only give away the theme of the movie and very little detail about characters or the storyline.

EVALUATION: Final Poster

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Here is the final version of my film poster. In creating it I have taken into account the research on existing professional posters and also the feedback I have received from my initial draft.

I have chosen to keep the content fairly simple as I see it to have more of an impact this way. By having the image of the axe man in the shadows it manages to keep a level of mysteriousness, and will therefore mean that people that see the poster will take an active interest into looking further into it. I decided to use the image of the axe rather than a picture of the main actors used (which is what the vast majority of posters do) as the actors aren't well known and don't have any star quality, so therefore wouldn't have any effect on the audience.

The colour scheme is kept to 2 main colours, which are black and gold. By keeping to just two colours it makes the poster easy on the eye and means that viewers are more concentrated on the image in itself rather than the colours included within it. The black is of course stereotypical of a horror because of the connotations of the dark, shadows and the unknown.

The text credits at the bottom follow the typical conventions of a poster. Generally the persons name will be in larger size than their role and the font used is very narrow and long.

EVALUATION: Final Magazine Cover

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This is the final version of my magazine cover.

It was clear after receiving my feedback that the main problem with my first draft was that there was too much blank space. I corrected this by filling the cover as much as possible by having more headlines, making the main image larger and the main title bigger.

Looking back on it, I think to further improve the poster I could've introduced another main colour besides just having gold and red as I feel it may look at little bit too plain and dark currently. I think it would've been more effective to have used a brighter set of colours as they seem to attract the eye far better than dark colours.

For headlines, I have tried to relate to other films that have been made by other people in my class. For example 'INSIDE: We take a look at Priyen Jani's Delusions' and 'Upcoming films for 2012'. I felt that this would better add to the originality of the magazine cover rather than just using well known films.

For the main image, I chose to use the same image as I have done for the poster. Many professional films do similar as it becomes recognisable in the same way as a logo does for a brand.