Q4 - How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages? Shaquile

 

Construction: final cut pro is the main program I used for video editing. As I was new to this program, initially it was difficult to get familiar with the language and unusual setting however, the more I used the program, the more familiar I became. Most of the language used was in the semantic field of video and so I had to learn about specific terminology such as ‘transitions’ ‘credits’ and ‘titles’. Transitions are the effects used in between clips and they are used to give off different effects. For example, in my trailer I used the static transition to give off the effect that the person filming the clips was using a bad camera. I also used video effect such as the camcorder effect to imply the clip was shot using a camcorder.

I used YouTube to look at video effect tutorials, which assisted me and provided tips to manipulate video clips for a desired effect. For additional help I subscribed to particular YouTube channels so whenever the person uploads a new video clip, my YouTube account will immediately inform me. I also used YouTube to upload my horror trailer as YouTube has statistical features, which inform you of who from around the world is viewing your product. It also tells you which country has viewed your product the most times and it also allows people to leave comments.

Logic pro is the program I used to record my sound effect and manipulate sounds. I also used this program to orchestrate my teaser trailer soundtrack. This was a difficult task as I found it hard to create a sound track which would compete with mainstream horror films, however, I then realised that horror soundtracks do not have to have the most impressive soundtrack and that sometimes simplistic sounds are more effective, for example in the Human centipede trailer the amount of sounds used are kept to a minimal whereas in the ‘Saw’ trailer the soundtrack was orchestrated as a as a music piece with percussion instruments.

 

Blogger is a website which has many functions, it can be used as a personal diary where you can upload your thoughts and ideas, it can be used more constructively to upload college projects and work it can also be used as a personal space to voice your opinions on specific affairs. Most importantly, a blog can be used as whatever you want it to be. My blog was by my production group ‘Tempa Productions’ to keep note of our production, research and planning/ progress of our main project: creating a horror teaser trailer. Additionally it was used to keep progress of our ancillary texts, the Horror Poster and the Horror magazine cover. The blog also allows subscribers and viewers to give feedback in a comments box, which is situated underneath every blog post.

Photoshop is the program used by many professionals such as graphic designers, video editors and art students to manipulate and enhance photos. In my project it was used for many purposes, to create the ancillary texts such as the Horror Poster and the Horror magazine cover. I found it difficult to use Photoshop as I had not used in a long time since my first media project however, as soon as I used the program I became familiar with its language and functions. Interestingly, I used Photoshop to create a significantly interesting mood board where I brainstormed images in a collage format to trigger different ideas and inspirations about horror.

 

Planning and research: Blackberry is a modern technology used significantly by the urban teenager/young adult demographic. It is a ‘Smart Phone’, which consists of the feature IM (instant messenger) also known as BBM (Blackberry Messenger). With Instant messenger promotion for my product has become extremely simple and easy. It has a feature called broadcast where you can type up a message and send it to all the contact on your BBM.  Thus, when promoting my Horror Trailer I was able to copy the video link off of YouTube and send it so that everyone on my BBM can see.

Google is a search engine used by most people all over the world. It contains features such a ‘search bar’ that you can type in any keyword relative to the information you desire and in response the engine will suggest millions of websites related to you search. It is effective as it makes research relatively easy however, it could be argued that it encourages people to be lazy as the Internet is only one source of information, which may deter people from doing primary research with resources such as books and newspapers.

I used Google to find some really interesting images, which helped as inspiration for my group to create the ancillary texts; I also used it to find websites, which provided inspiration for my group to create the teaser trailer such as ‘YouTube’. On this site I was able to search up some existing horror teaser trailer and get ideas on how I could create the soundtrack and ideas on editing. For Photoshop I needed some interesting fonts, so in the Google search bar I typed in ‘Photoshop fonts’ and the website ‘DaFont.com’ came up. On this website it provides a variety of different fonts and font themes. For example, for my product I need a font with a digital format, and so on the website I chose the ‘Techno’ theme which had a category of fonts called ‘LCD’. This is where I found the font for my product entitled ‘Liquid Crystal’. Downloading fonts are free however you have the option to donate to the creator of the font. Similarly, I needed nice brushes for my product and so I types in Photoshop brushes into the search engine on Google and the website ‘Brusheezy.com’ appeared which enabled me to download brushes in the same way I was able to download fonts on ‘Dafont.com’.

Distribution: Face book and Twitter are both social networking websites where people can publish information, pictures and videos to all their friends. This is a good platform of promotion as you can have up to 5000 friends and on twitter these friends are called Followers. This means that from one ‘Tweet’ or broadcast 5000 people will be able to view my trailer and if they choose to ‘ReTweet’ or ‘rebroadcast’ my post everyone on their friends list will also be able to view my trailer, friends from all over the world!

 

EVALUATION Q4: How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages? (Nhung Pham)

Planning and Research (Development + Pre Production)

As part of the planning and research, technology has played a huge part in our project. As a group we planned to use blogger to produce our work and ideas. This is because a blog publishing service would allow us to upload as many blog as we need to without any limit. To illustrate our ideas and plans we needed more space to work with this is why we have decided to create a blog account for ‘Tempa Productions’. We could also design the blog of how we desire it to be, from different backgrounds, colours and themes. Blogger is also useful for uploading videos from either our computer or YouTube to present all our inspiration in working towards the teaser trailer. We are also able to upload pictures in just a simple click, showing different aspects of our ideas and presenting it through multi-media during the process of planning this project. Furthermore the service shows us how many people have viewed our blog, how they viewed it and also what country they are from. Our blog can easily be accessed by people through our link blogger has provided - http://www.tempaproductions.blogspot.com/

Search engines such as Google and Wiki helped us develop our product on the genre of ‘slasher’ horror. These resourceful sites lead us to expand on our knowledge of different types of techniques which we could apply to our horror poster, magazine and trailer. We had to analyse the mise-en-scene, sound, camera shots and editing. We were able explore over a wide range of information and images which allowed us to research into our sub genre ‘slasher’ leading us to look in depth into famous slasher movies such as ‘Scream’ studying the genre where we all felt comfortable to take this forward in the production of our teaser trailer. 
To help us in our analysis, websites such as www.imdb.com gave us all the sufficient details of when the movie was released, the sypnosis, the trailer and starring actors. We were also able to access different magazine websites such as 'EMPIRE' analysing the techniques and conventions of a magazine which we could apply to our own when it comes to making the product.

As we needed to have inspiration for our teaser trailer, we browsed through YouTube to check out different sub-genre horror trailers and figure out the similar conventions seen in most of them. Our trailer is based on a video camera filming through the camera mans view therefore this makes it more realistic and that the audience would be able to relate to it. We searched for movies such as REC, Paranormal Activity and Grave Encounter, where it is similar to our trailer studying the different techniques in the way the video is edited and added effects. We was most intrigued by the idea of how Grave Encounter was edited and took inspiration from it because it is how we envisioned our trailer to be like.

We also found inspiration for the look of our antagonist through YouTube. We browsed through Halloween tutorials where there were makeup gurus and artists teach the viewers step by step how to achieve the look and what equipment will be needed. This is highly useful as we are inexperienced with makeup effects and are able to access through YouTube and take it as a free lesson. We brainstormed some ideas on how we wanted our antagonist to look like. We found the ‘unzipped face tutorial’ most intriguing as it gave the killer effect in slasher movies and tells a story behind the zipped face in similarities to Freddie Cougar where he has a distinctive, scarred and unpleasant face. To create this effect we found a video that simplified it because as we didn’t want it to be time consuming.

For our audience research feedback we used multi media to interview people and came up with 21 questions that are related to horror. As our trailer is classified as age 15 we was aiming the movie more towards students therefore we wanted to know their opinion and aspects of horror movies. We recorded some response via our camera phone, blackberry messenger and gave a couple of questionnaires out.

3. Q4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? (kieron)

Media technologies played a big part in the making of my media product. We divided responsibilities and from my group I was left in charge of researching, designing and making the horror movie poster. The main piece of software that I used in designing the poster was Photoshop. For taking the image I used a digital camera and for the initial research I used the internet extensively.

In the construction stage the first thing that needed to be done was to create a useable image for the poster. I took the photo for the image by using a Canon EOS 400D camera. This is a digital single lens reflex (SLR) camera made by Canon in 2006. It took me a little time to get used to this particular camera as I don’t usually use SLR’s to take photos. At first I had the shutter speed at a really low setting so my photo came out really blurry but I found out how to change it and got it to the right speed that would work with the aperture setting. One big problem that I had to overcome was that the image of the killer was consistently out of focus; this was because we wanted the image to have low-key lighting. We found out that the shutter speed was too low (1/6 of a second) this shutter speed will only be used in a photo where moving light would be captured, also to get an image in focus it would have to be on a tripod or on a surface that does not move. This shutter speed makes the photo to too light as well, this lead me to making the killers face a bit smaller than originally planned.

The other piece of camera equipment I handled was a Canon EF-S 10-22mm lens; This is the lens in the photo on the poster, however it was featured more for its size than for a technical reason as it was the widest one I could find and therefore allowed me the largest space to place the image of the killer.

Probably the most useful piece of software that I used in laying out the poster and am still learning about is Adobe Photoshop. This piece of software allows you to edit images. Although my Photoshop skills are quite good I was still learning new things about the extent of the software and how it can be applied. One of the new filters I learnt to use was a cloud filter, this allowed me to make my image very spooky and I used it in my poster experiments. I also learnt a lot about colour schemes and how to have colour around the text.

Another vital piece of software I use was the internet for my research; Google is a search engine that started in 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Google images was the most useful thing about it as that’s where I could find images for inspiration, research, the conventions of horror film poster design, I was also able to compare images with my own poster design.

As well as Google I also used http://www.imdb.com/ (an online movie database) launched in 1990 by Col Needham, ‘imdb’ was good for researching film trailers at the start of the project for conventions and ideas. http://www.dafont.com/ (a font sharing website) Dafont is one of the best website to download fonts and find font, this is where I got the font (Liquid Crystal) for the title in my poster and the ‘Steel Tong’ Font for my credits.

3. Q4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? (kieron)

Media technologies played a big part in the making of my media product. We divided responsibilities and from my group I was left in charge of researching, designing and making the horror movie poster. The main piece of software that I used in designing the poster was Photoshop. For taking the image I used a digital camera and for the initial research I used the internet extensively.



In the construction stage the first thing that needed to be done was to create a useable image for the poster. I took the photo for the image by using a Canon EOS 400D camera. This is a digital single lens reflex (SLR) camera made by Canon in 2006. It took me a little time to get used to this particular camera as I don’t usually use SLR’s to take photos. At first I had the shutter speed at a really low setting so my photo came out really blurry but I found out how to change it and got it to the right speed that would work with the aperture setting. One big problem that I had to overcome was that the image of the killer was consistently out of focus; this was because we wanted the image to have low-key lighting. We found out that the shutter speed was too low (1/6 of a second) this shutter speed will only be used in a photo where moving light would be captured, also to get an image in focus it would have to be on a tripod or on a surface that does not move. This shutter speed makes the photo to too light as well, this lead me to making the killers face a bit smaller than originally planned.



The other piece of camera equipment I handled was a Canon EF-S 10-22mm lens; This is the lens in the photo on the poster, however it was featured more for its size than for a technical reason as it was the widest one I could find and therefore allowed me the largest space to place the image of the killer.



Probably the most useful piece of software that I used in laying out the poster and am still learning about is Adobe Photoshop. This piece of software allows you to edit images. Although my Photoshop skills are quite good I was still learning new things about the extent of the software and how it can be applied. One of the new filters I learnt to use was a cloud filter, this allowed me to make my image very spooky and I used it in my poster experiments. I also learnt a lot about colour schemes and how to have colour around the text.



Another vital piece of software I use was the internet for my research; Google is a search engine that started in 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Google images was the most useful thing about it as that’s where I could find images for inspiration, research, the conventions of horror film poster design, I was also able to compare images with my own poster design.



As well as Google I also used http://www.imdb.com/ (an online movie database) launched in 1990 by Col Needham, ‘imdb’ was good for researching film trailers at the start of the project for conventions and ideas. http://www.dafont.com/ (a font sharing website) Dafont is one of the best website to download fonts and find font, this is where I got the font (Liquid Crystal) for the title in my poster and the ‘Steel Tong’ Font for my credits.

Q4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? (Kieron)

Media technologies played a big part in the making of my media product. We divided responsibilities and from my group I was left in charge of researching, designing and making the horror movie poster. The main piece of software that I used in designing the poster was Photoshop. For taking the image I used a digital camera and for the initial research I used the internet extensively.




In the construction stage the first thing that needed to be done was to create a useable image for the poster. I took the picture for the image by using a Canon EOS 400D camera. This is a digital single lens reflex camera made by Canon in 2006. It took me a little time to get used to this particular camera as I usually use SLR’s to take pictures. At first I had the shutter speed at a really low setting so my picture would come out really blurry but I found out how to change it and got it to the right speed that would work with the ISO.

One big problem that I had to overcome was that the image of the killer was consistently out of focus; this was because we wanted the image to have low-key lighting. We found out that the shutter speed was too low (1/6 of a second) this shutter speed will only be used in a picture where moving light would be captured also to get an image in focus it would have to be on a tripod or on a surface that does not move. This shutter speed makes the picture to too light as well, this lead me to making the killers face a bit smaller than originally planned. The other piece of camera equipment I handled was a canon EF-S 10-22mm lens; This is the lens in the poster, however it was featured more for its size than for a technical reason as it was the widest one I could find and therefore allowed me the largest space to feature an image.

Probably the most useful piece of software that I used in laying out the poster and am still learning about is Adobe Photoshop. This piece of software allows you to edit images. Although my Photoshop skills are quite good I was still learning new things about the extent of the software and how it can be applied. One of the new filters I learnt to use was a cloud filter, this allowed me to make my image very spooky and I used it in my poster experiments. I also learnt a lot about colour schemes and how to have colour around the text.

The most vital tool in my internet research was Google; Google is a search engine that started in 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Google images was the most useful thing about it as that’s where I could find images for inspiration, research trends, industry conventions and also to be able to compare images to my own poster. As well as Google I also used http://www.imdb.com/ ( an online movie database) launched in 1990 by Col Needham and http://www.dafont.com/ (a font sharing website) Dafont is one of the best website to download fonts and find fonts is this is where I got the font (Liquid Crystal) for the title in my poster.

Q4 How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? Tyler Mason

The web 2.0 has been essential to our group in terms of gathering research and innovating ideas.
Video Site youtube has helped us come up with ideas as it allowed us to watch trailers and analyze them to full affect so we could see what we wanted to use in our trailer. As well as this it has also provided helpful tutorials on editing using final cut as none of the members with the group has had experience using it.Before we started to create out trailer we used you tube quite a lot the tutorial provided us with an idea of how we would edit the video and how we would go about doing so.Out of all the technologies used I have to say this was one of the most important as it allowed us to be creative and helped with the design for the antagonist of our trailer.How ever there was some flaws when using you tube.We found that the videos did not give us all the information we needed in terms of were to purchase equipment.For instance we got the idea of the zip face from a video tutorial via youtube how ever the video did not tell us were the equipment being used was available for purchase so we had to find out are self.
Secondly despite having a lot of videos on editing it did not have all the information we needed for example we originally wanted  a dark blue colour grade similar to that seen in Batman Dark Knight how ever it was very difficult to come across a video that showed us exactly how to do so.


Black Berry Messenger and Facebook were used in order to gather our audience research the use of instant messaging allowed us to contact people of different ages and groups instantly so we could get feed back on what they are interested in when watching a horror film.The responses they gave were then typed up and posted on blogger.I personally found the use of blackberry more efficient then the use of Facebook. This is due to the fact that Facebook seems to have died out among our age group and that who our trailer was aimed at.How ever on the BBM service it allowed us to have instant communication with people our age and we got a instant response which allowed us to get our research quickly and rapidly.As well as the speed of getting the research, it was also easy to extract the information from BBM and place it onto a computer.As blackberry has a feature called screen capture which allows you to take a picture of what ever is on the screen, you can then upload it to the computer with ease.Despite this facebook was much more use full when it came to getting feed back on our media products as it allowed people to instantly view it with out having to click to links to alternate sites.

Google has been very useful as it has allowed us to search up information on props for example the cost of fake blood and latex.It also allowed us to research directors of horror films and gain knowledge about there history and were they got there ideas from when creating films. Also we used google to research the conventions of horror which was vital in order to create our teaser trailer.As mentioned before we could not find information about the equipment via youtube so google allowed us to search for the products we needed  and showed us exactly were they could be purchased.

Evaluation Q3: What i have learned from my audience feedback on the trailer - Shaquile

Here is a list of some of the positive and negative comments made by my target audience after releasing my horror trailer...

Good feedback:
unusual title
"good documentary style"

"good transitions with static effect"

"good POV shot"

"good grading"
"good filters"

"suitable soundtrack"
"clock ticking built suspense"
"strongest point was the 'POV' shot with girl running towards fence"

Positive Criticism:

unusual title
"not sure about zoom at the end"
"too long"
"could of sped up the end"
"deeper scream at the end"


My target audience did not comment on my products genre however, there were signs which showed that they acknowledged the conventions used and challenged in my trailer. For example, someone commented about the length of my trailer, they said that the duration of my trailer was too lengthy. Teaser trailers are usually between 30 to 60 seconds and my trailer was 60 seconds. The genre of my trailer was a monster horror, there was a comment from my target audience which commented on the documentary style i used with the voice over. This feature seemed popular as it directed the audience towards the narrative of the horror film however, i tried not to give too much information away by making the voice over very vague.

There was mixed feelings shown about the horror film title '3.15'. One person commented that they did not understand the title however, another person said that although they did not understand it, they liked it. This may be because the title '3.15' is very abstract, it gives the audience no hints towards the narrative, however, the voice over clearly tells the audience that "three school students were abducted from the school gates at 3.15" and so this may imply that the target audience did not effectively listen to the voice over or that the voice over was not communicated clearly enough.

Another convention that was acknowledged was the convention of building suspense. Someone from my target audience commented that they liked the ticking sound in the soundtrack as it builds suspense. This feedback shows that the ticking sound had the desired effect on the audience that i intended. Additionally, the audience liked the static transition that i used to give off the effect of a camcorder, yet they did not like the zoom transition that i used at the end of the trailer on the antagonist. this transition was used because i did not want to show the audience too much about the film, i wanted the antagonists identity to be hidden in order to tease the audience and make them want to go and see the film.

Based on the audience feedback there are a variety of ways which i could have made a more effective product. Firstly, i would have made my trailer shorter in length as i feel that the audience were given too much footage for a teaser trailer. Secondly, i would have experimented with more horror sounds used in most trailers i.e dark synths or more diegetic sounds like screams. I probably wouldn't do another voice over because i believe that teaser trailers shouldn't reveal too much information about the narrative and my voice over did. I also would experiment with the clip speeds by using the re time feature as this was a skill that i learnt after creating my teaser trailer. Using the re time feature i would have speed up the shot of one of the students being pulled from underneath that table to give off dramatic effect, i would have also used the same feature on the last shot of the antagonist instead of using the zoom transition as this was not favoured by my target audience.

In order to accumulate more effective feedback i would have changed the way in which i promoted the trailer. my main platforms for promotion was Facebook and twitter, in future i would have used more platforms such as Bebo, Myspace, Instagram, Skype and Blackberry.In addition, i would have made an online  multiple choice poll, asking the audience what aspects of my trailer they preffered and why i.e the soundtrack, the camera shots or the grading. this is because a lot of people don't have Youtube accounts and so allot of my target audience will be unable to leave comments on Youtube as you have to have an account to leave a comment. It would have also been possible to do a written survey however, the Internet is a much faster and efficient way of promotion if you can persuade your target audience to watch your product.

internet trolls Q3 (kieron)

Internet trolls

An internet troll is a person who creates or does something usually off topic and can be offensive to another internet user or group to get an emotional response out of them. The online groups that are usually attacked are blogs, discussion forums and chat rooms. This act is known as ‘Trolling’; in the earlier days of the internet this was known as ‘Flaming’.

There are predominantly three types of trolls: ‘Mischievous Trolls’, ‘Mindless Trolls’, ‘Destructive Trolls’,

Mischievous Trolls:

A Mischievous troll will have a very small game and will not be that annoying and maybe even funnier, they have no intention to start a fight but just to be in and out with using just a picture or response.

This is an example of Mischievous trolling, a Reddit user has claimed that 4chan will always have better original content (OC), to this a group of playtime trolls have pretended to not know what OC stands for and flooded the thread with potential answers. This is not is meant to be malicious but a little bit annoying and funny.

Mindless Trolls:

Mindless trolls will write a post which will be so unintelligent that it will create a response from the user group, normally one of annoyance but can also be funny. These kind of trolls can also destroy a site, for example Yahoo Answers which was developed to ask and answer questions has been mostly taken over by mindless trolls who use it to create funny stories and questions to anger or make people laugh.

This is an example from Yahoo answers of someone who has put a ridiculous question up; because of this mindless trolling, serious questions can often be overlooked or misunderstood. These types of trolls have given birth to a new kind of troll called the anti-troll, these are trolls that troll trolls e.g. they will reply to a statement made by a troll with an even more brainless answer.

Here the troll has asked a silly question of how to win a Facebook poke war and the anti-troll has reply with an impossible suggestion to win thus shutting down the original troll. Anti-trolls are also known for making fake videos to annoy other trolls or make up a myth e.g. the Slenderman. On June 8th 2009 a paranormal Photoshop picture contest was held on the ‘Something Awful’ forum, the idea was to take a normal photo and make it look creepy and the winning picture would be posted on paranormal themed sites and blogs with full credentials. One contestant submitted two images containing a mythical being that was named the Slenderman, this was then accidently pick up on 4chan’s /x/ board and spread. On June 20th 2009 the YouTuber ‘Marble Hornets’ started to upload video’s of tapes that his friend who was being stalked by Slenderman had made, this gave ‘proof’ that Slenderman existed. This freaked out and fooled so many people including myself and is still one of the best examples of an anti-troll at work.

Destructive Trolls:

Destructive trolls can be very dangerous they will usually be in groups and target one person or a site until the site or person is forced offline. A case of destructive trolls targeting a person is the Jessie Slaughter case. Jessie Leonhardt was a micro celebrity in the StickyDrama community on YouTube known for her attention seeking behaviour. A user on YouTube made up a rumour about her to which she replied to via video, this got posted on 4chan (the home of trolls). Soon she started to get trolled by Anonymous and 4chan and she made the mistake of replying to them personally saying negative things about 4chan and its users, this led to Anonymous finding out where she lived and her phone number, this lead to her getting prank calling and things getting delivered to her house, but she kept replying to the troll and got her dad to reply which just added fuel to the fire and soon she started getting death threats, this lead to police getting involved and Jessie being not allow online for three days this only made her create an apology video.

There are a number of websites that are home to trolls, the main one is ‘4chan’. ‘4chan’ was started on the 1st of October 2003 by 15 year old Christopher Poole, 4chan is an image posting site with 52 boards. On the internet it is known as /b/ which is the name of one of its boards called ‘Random’ this is a board with no rules where a lot of trolls will plan attacks on sites. 4chan are famous for high profile trolling attacks one example of this was when they hacked into the ‘Google’ website and planted a Nazi Swastika on the hot trends page, this was there for a few hours before Google could remove it. Although 4chan are responsible for a number of these trolling events they also keep an eye on inappropriate material and have been known to ban users and give info to the police about users who act inappropriately.

I believe that trolling can be playful and funny but can also be very serious. I think that if the serious trolling leading to police investigations keeps happening that the internet might have to be regulated, yet this would stop the whole point of the internet and its freedom of speech.

Q3.What have you learned from your audience feedback? Tyler Mason

After finishing creating my horror magazine cover , I decided to get feed back from my potential audience about the product. To do so I advertised it on 3 platforms.First of all I sent a BC on blackberry service BBM and then I went on to post it on to social networking sites such as Facebook and twitter. Facebook provided the most feed back quickly and possible as it allowed the audience to see the product instantly with out having to click on alternate links and it appeared directly on the live feed so it was available to see by all my friends on facebook. It was fortunate that I had over 2000 friends on Facebook as it mean that more people were available to view the image.
One of the main criticisms I received for the magazine cover was that there was not enough images on the page and that the main image was not strong enough to stand alone by its self.I agree and disagree with this I think that it goes against the convention of a horror magazine to cluster the page with other images how ever the magazine cover could do with a bit more filling out as there is a lot of space. I think I could have added more headings and tittles and make it look less spacious.Also  I should have placed my image in the center of the page not to the left or right hand side this way it would have allowed me to add subheadings on both left and right hand side of the page and would not have put a limit on my creativity and given me much more space to work with.
A positive was that people liked the colour scheme many members of the audience felt that the colours were a good representative of the genre which is good as that means its clearly visible to people that it is a horror magazine and that is the main thing I was attempting to portray.How ever looking back on it I think I could of spent a bit more time making sure all the colours were exactly the same. For example the  colour used for the subheading "God Of War" is a brighter red then used in the other subheadings a consequence of this is that it stands out a bit to much and is very visible.I did not notice this until it was pointed out in my audience feedback. In hindsight I should have made sure all colour were the same on photo shop, how ever it was only a minor mishaps and I personal don't feel it has much affect on the final product.
Also quite a lot of people liked the use of synergy of the sub heading 3:15 having seen the poster and trailer as well they like how we used that as an icon to represent the product.Many people were satisfied with the font sizes in proportion to each other and stated that you could clearly see that 3.15 was the main focus which was the main goal so I was happy with that.
Most people seem to have liked the title and have said it looks very professional and was alongside the tag line and slogan used.

Evaluation Q2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? - Shaquile

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNLCe3NJm-w&list=UU8FFGpOx2MG1MbUAnx7BDUA&index=1&feature=plcp

EVALUATION Q2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? (Nhung Pham)

Our main products and ancillary texts are cross promoted through a wide range of media contents and are easily accessible. We tried to maintain continuity between our products so it could be identified as being part of the same campaign. This would mean that our products, such as the poster, magazine and trailer have to somehow to link visually.

We created mock ups of ways to promote our product and visualize how they would link together if it was real. The idea of creating a continual buzz through cross media convergence such as technology e.g. IPhone and Blackberry applications, posters and trailers all joint as a whole product so that the audience are able to distinguish our product as a brand. Due to the success of The Dark Knight (2008), it became well known highly due to its viral campaign utilizing the films ‘Why So Serious?’ tagline aiming to interest fans by having them try to earn what they wanted to see end.

Technological convergence is a trend of technologies to merge into new technologies that bring together a myriad of media. Through technological convergence, devices are now able to present and interact with a wide range of media. We made a mock up of what it would look like to promote our trailer through phones such as Blackberry and Iphone.  Technology has been growing rapidly during the recent years and these phones are the perfect example of how it has been evolved. Both of these phones are known for being ‘leaders’ in the smart phone industry. They have the functionality to navigate websites and watch videos to a greater extent. Furthermore to feel the full functionality of the device, it contains different application ‘apps’ to get hold off to therefore they would be able to download an app of our movie and get the whole trailer and website link that goes with it. Besides that, we are able to access the internet onto Facebook, Twitter and Messengers such as BBM and Whatsapp to promote our trailer to get more hits on our YouTube page.

Through these technologies, the audience would be able to access through the internet to go onto our site or download apps such as games, by doing so it persuades the audience to go and see our film in the cinema. It contributes different aspect of the film before going to watch it, as the audience would want to do their research and find out what the movie is about because they are spending money on it. They would also be able to access cinema sites such as odeon and vue to read reviews and ratings given by the public furthermore checking out the time they would be able to watch it.

There are various ways to advertise our product. This can be seen around London through billboards, bus shelters, double decker buses etc which are hard to miss. I did a mock up of a poster on the London underground billboard as transport is essential in our everyday life, it is compulsory, therefore it will be effective to advertise our product where it is used by the public everyday.  

Our film could also be advertised on sociol networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace but also YouTube where videos are viewed by millions of people across the world. YouTube provide development kits for the creation of several variations of these adverts therefore it would not be difficult to create and organise.

During the process, we have tried to keep our identity of our film continuous. We have kept the same font throughout the trailer, poster and magazine for '3:15'. 



Q2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?(kieron)

The main product is the trailer we produced. Conceptually the trailer is the main marketing piece for a film. The trailer then is in the same medium (moving TV and film) as the film it is marketing. The trailer’s marketing strength comes from putting all the best bits of the film in to the trailer, so when a viewer see’s it on a TV break or in the adverts before another film they will want to see it.

Ancillary to the Trailer but also marketing support to the film is the poster. The poster and trailer are clearly different mediums (moving film image and still printed image) but have to be linked to sell the film.

The poster and trailer are selling the same thing but just in a different way. The Trailer is the lead product because it is the closest to the film that everyone will go to see and it will be easier for the trailer to sell the film as it’s already being shown to film and TV watchers. The poster on the other hand will have to persuade the viewer to go and watch it, this is why it will be placed everywhere so it is drilled into people so they think about it enough times to go and see it.

As the main product (the trailer) and the ancillary text (poster and magazine promotion) are combined very well; I’m going to be reviewing the combination of the poster and the trailer.

From a design point of view the two are very similar in terms of colour scheme. In the poster the whole feel is dark and edgy (the colour scheme is black, blue and red), I placed a dark blue filter over the poster in Photoshop and this is very similar to the trailer (mostly at the start) as it has a very dark moody feel to it. At the start of the trailer there is an actor running away from the killer, I have included the same actor (the girl holding the camera) in the poster. The image in the poster is set in a dead-end, I did this because all the victims in the trailer are chased in to dead-ends. All the text is in the same font (liquid crystal), that is very important for franchising our products and making sure the consumer can link together all the products.

The trailer gives away some of the killers face and to follow suit the poster has the killers face revealed as well. Another big theme to this trailer is that some of it is filmed through a hand held camera so there is a lot of point of view shots; this is why the main prop (the camera) is in the poster.

In conclusion I believe that the combination of the trailer and poster is very effective from a selling point and an aesthetic point of view, the similarity between the trailer and poster make it very easy to franchise and aesthetically they both look scary enough to draw in horror fans.

Evaluation Q1: How i used, develop and challenged conventions of teaser trailers - Shaquile

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wu88ENEgaqI&list=UU8FFGpOx2MG1MbUAnx7BDUA&index=1&feature=plcp

EVALUATION Q1: In what ways does your media production use, develop or challenge forms & conventions of real media products? (Nhung Pham)

As a group, we explored different genres and conventions in horror. Each of us did a textual analysis for our planning and research where we analysed real media products such as posters, trailers and magazines in depth to gain a factual understanding of them. By doing so, it inspires us to take different aspects of horror ideas forward and incorporate these ideas as our own. We thought of lighting, mise-en-scene, techniques and costume for our trailer and how it could be interpreted in terms of conventions and forms of horror.

There are a wide range of Sub-Genres in horror and the forms and conventions that are attached to it. Conventions are used to help our audience recognise what type of horror genre our film would belong to and whether they are interested and would want to watch it or not. Conventions come in a format that we recognise like a list of ingredients which are almost as seen as a set of rules in the industry which should be followed by. Therefore when releasing our products these form and conventions should be taken into consideration as it generate a buzz before its release giving the audience a little taste of what is about to head their way.

As we began planning towards our products in September we had to work as a group to figure and understand what type of horror we were going to do. We started researching and analysing horror trailers such as Scream, Halloween and others which all shares the typical conventions of Slasher horror. We wanted our trailer to be unique so we also try to find ways to challenge the conventions. By doing so, we took inspiration from the ‘Grave Encounter (2011)’ trailer where we intend to use a handheld camera as the characters are filming their project. This challenges the convention as we usually see the killer approaching the victims whereas the victims are now seen through the eyes of the killer, who is holding the camera.

The antagonist wears a mask or has a mutated face to protect their identity. We wanted our antagonist to have that gory, realistic effect as the antagonist is usually a person who has suffered or is traumatised by some sort of abuse. An example is Freddie Cougar in ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ who is a disfigured dream stalker and wears a glove armed with razors which the audience will be able to identify him as the Slasher in Nightmare on Elm Street. Therefore we searched through Halloween makeup tutorials via YouTube and found what we thought most intrigued us and gave off a sinister feeling.

A convention we also included was a red herring where there is a clue or piece of information which is intended to be misleading. We included this in the final scene, where there are four students in a group but however only three is seen being captured in the end with one person still filming. Red herring are seen in teaser trailers such as Scream to create tension and provoke the audience to want to find out.

(Red Herring used in Scream 4 trailer)

Q1 In what ways does your media product use develop or challenge, forms and conventions of real media products? Tyler Mason

The magazine follows the conventions of most horror trailer magazines how ever I have broken a few conventions to make the magazine unique and separate it from competition.
The title of the magazine is located at the top of the page in the middle, this is a convention of all magazines with the exception of music magazine Q who locate their title on the top left of the magazine. The title is very large in comparison to the other subheadings this is to make it stand out and dominate the page.
Horror magazines generally have san serif fonts with sharp edges. I have used a gothic font which suits the genre of the magazine, the sharp edges represent knives and other sharp objects that are used in horror films.
The title is red for two reasons. First of all the colour red portrays blood and violence and they are features you will often see in the horror genre. I made the red very dark so it complimented the dark background in order to create tension and suspense.

Secondly the colour red was used to match the colour scheme.For the magazine we used a very simple colours,red and white.The white stands out amongst the dark back ground and makes the most important subheadings on the page stand out. To make sure the white subheadings  fitted the colour scheme I put a red stroke around the text. The red stroke gives the text a 3D affect and makes it seem as if it is coming out of the page.
I used a wide range of fonts for the magazine cover, this is a convention used by all magazines as the different fonts represent a different section to the magazine or story. I used the font liquid crystal for one of the subheadings.The font is that of are magazine cover and teaser trailer and is the font we have used to represent our film. As the film focuses around time, the liquid crystal font is similar to that of a digital clock.
I have followed a convention by incorporating the films font and title onto the magazine cover. When a film is the main focus of the magazine they tend to use the films font when displaying it on the magazine. This is an example of synergy,which is used by every magazine in order to help promote a film.
The subheading 3:15 is the largest subheading on the page it is the largest to show it is the main focus of the magazine which is a convention of all horror magazines.
At the bottom of the page I created a montage of clips into a visual picture show reel, they show behind the scene footage of how the film which is the center of attention is being created.I got this idea from various magazine from Fangoria they use this feature quite a lot so I decided to incorporate it into our horror magazine.

From my research I have noticed that majority of horror magazines base there theme around there main image and hardly have any other images on the page,so the main image appears dominant along side the use of sub headings.I have followed this convention as I think this is what makes a horror magazine a horror magazine and if we did not do so then we would be going against a convention of horror magazines.

Despite following the majority of horror conventions we did break a few, for example the bar code is often located in the bottom left of the page. However in ours we placed it at the top right by the title.We broke this convention simply because it looked better structure wise and we did not want to much stuff going on at the bottom of the page as it would take the attention away from the show-reel.
If you take a look at most magazines you will notice that the the sub headings are usually located in the left hand of the page how ever  I broke this convention and place them on the right.Again this decision was made due to the structure of the magazine and simply because it looked better on the right and did not obstruct the image like it would if i located it on the left.

Overall we have followed all majority of the conventions used in horror magazines and the only conventions we have broken were due to the structure and layout of the magazine how ever they are not that visible and our magazine still looks like a its part of the horror genre so overall I am very satisfied with the finished product.

Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (kieron)

Having researched the conventions of horror posters design I have learnt that they mostly follow a specific style. They are normally portrait in layout with a very dark or black background, with the subject coming out of the dark. The title and film information is usually white and or red and placed at the bottom of the page. Some of these conventions I decided to use because I think they are effective and some I decided to change and develop to make my poster different.

Image

In my research of horror poster design I discovered the killer is not usually included in the poster but it is normally a scared looking person/character (mainly female) from the film and looking directly at the viewer either asking for help or trying to frighten them. The subject is frequently placed in the middle of the poster but not all is shown of them.

In my poster I decided to include the killers face because I wanted to present to the audience a vision of who they would encounter in the film, and also have the killer viewing the audience in a menacing way instead of a victim calling to the viewers for help. The idea is that the character is looking through the lens and seeing the killer; this image also gives the viewer an idea of the themes and content of the film.

The traditional lighting in horror posters is very dark, it will usually show a bit of the subject e.g. if it’s a person it will show half of their face to not reveal much. Professional movie posters will often have their subject lit from one direction so as to create a dramatic shadow effect, highlighting the evilness of the killer or the desperation of the victim. I decided to follow the convention of lighting my subject from the top right to create the dramatic effect and make the killer look even more sinister.

I took the role as photographer and with my group we decided we wanted a landscape photo with the subject offset from the centre so that I could use the out of focus space to place the text. I decided to make the focal point the lens with the background being out of focus so I could mirror the killers face into the lens. I chose a female model to follow the convention of most horror posters and I placed her in a dead end like she is about to be killed.

I had to find a setting that would give the impression of an enclosed space so I looked through the college building to find an appropriate setting and came across a cupboard which fitted the criteria of being dark and creepy looking. The only props I needed was an SLR camera, the first problem I encountered was that the camera I had, had a small lens which wouldn’t of worked for my image, so I had to get a new one with a wide angle lens so there was enough space to Photoshop the killer in to it.

As I only needed a close up head shot of the camera and my model, she didn’t need to wear a particular costume

Layout

The conventional layout of a horror movie poster would be dark image with the subject in the middle and the text at the bottom, the tagline is generally placed with the title at the bottom but can be placed at the top.

Most of the posters that I researched had a portrait format for their layout but we decided not to follow that convention but challenge it by making ours a landscape format, making it useful for billboards and posters outside the cinema.

I placed the main body of the text to the lower left hand corner and the title of the film in the upper left hand corner, because although most of the text is at the bottom of the poster, I still wanted it offset from the centre, to be unconventional like the poster for the film ‘The Crazies’.

Typography/font

The conventional font used in the credits on the horror poster is ‘Steel Tong’, this is used for all movie posters; I kept to this convention and used ‘Steel Tong’. The title and tagline is normally in a font that relates to the movie e.g. in the poster for the film ‘Mirrors’ one of the R’s is mirrored the same also goes for the film ‘Rec’, here the designer has used the recording symbol used on video recording equipment. I took this convention and choose a text that related to my film, the title is ‘3:15’ so the most obvious font to use was a digital clock style font called ‘Liquid Crystal’. I was able to find this easily on ‘Dafont.com’.

Colour

In the professional horror posters that I researched the majority of them consisted of the same colour scheme. They would have a dark or black background with usually red text. The colours that are most common are blood red and toxic bright green, and sometimes a night vision effect will be used as well.

Often the colour is used to create an atmosphere that is cold and ominous, for example the photo used in the poster for the film ‘The Crazies’ is a steely cold grey which suggest a mental hospital or psychopathic feeling. The darkness of the posters is often highlighted with the white of the subject.

I used these conventions for my image, first off I placed a cold blue filter over my photo to create a cold unwelcoming atmosphere, then I darkened the edges of my photo to add to the hostile setting, keeping the central image of my model lighter so people could see my killer.

I used a white font that would stand out against the background as is the convention in horror posters and I added a red glow to the title, which matched the red on the killers face and kept to the colour scheme.