Final Production - Film Trailer

What have you learned from audience feedback?

Audience feedback played a crucial part in the developing of our trailer and ancillary tasks as it allowed us to shape our products to the desires of our demographic audience,and also find using our demographic audience and what they specifically look for in a horror trailer. We collected the majority of our early audience feedback in the planning stage of our product, from a questionnaire which we uploaded onto the social network site Facebook which resulted in range of people answering our questionnaire which gave us a wider range of feedback to use.
This is an example of one of the graphs

Cloverfield was the most popular horror film and a close second was 28 days later which has alot of simple yet effective scenes which we have chosen to try and incorporate into our film e.g the chase scene across the field. Also close to the most popular was 30 days of night which is also one of the films we have researched into and decided to use aspects of that film e.g the darkness of the entire film and using people that you have to look hard to spot. We also learned from this audience feedback when we researched real media texts so we could invest more of our time looking at the more popular films and using some of the aspects from that film but with our own spin attached to it.

We uploaded our film onto YouTube which allowed people to comment on our finished product which allowed us to learnt what our audience thought about our film trailer. The audience feedback on our YouTube film allowed us to learn to be more careful with our spelling and punctuation which is quite a basic error but shows that without checking the finished product thoroughly there can be mistakes. This taught us that in future projects we have to check our finished product to make sure no mistakes go out. This feedback also shows that our original plan to keep the protagonist character hidden which adds to the suspense of the film, which taught us that in future products an element of disguise is needed to keep the audience hooked on the product so they will want to come and see the film evolve. This feedback also allows us to see that hand held camera effect worked but in future products we need to use the effect less so it becomes more effective on the audience in specific shots where the hand held camera is necessary.

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

During the research and preparation to our trailer we looked into many real media products, and looked into techniques we could use to challenge these and to incorporate into our project. We looked at many things such as title credits, music, location and camera angles to try and see how these real techniques could be portrayed in our own film trailer, and how many be could challenge them.

We firstly thought of genre, and we had selected horror. We researched a lot of horror films through extensive planning and came to our own conclusion of a conventional horror film, and tried to use this is as a foundation of our film through things such as location. The location of our film trailer was predominantly in a dark forest, which is a conventional horror film technique, which we thought would be the general structure of our trailer, clearly indicating that’s it’s a horror film and then we could focus on challenging other forms to trick the audience, but letting them know it’s a horror.

We then looked at camera angles and used a great technique which challenged many conventional horrors and other type of genre films. This was the use of a handheld camera. We used a handheld camera to create tension and realism, and are a great way to challenge normal forms and conventions of a film, as it implies it is real. This technique has been used before, but we thought it would be a great way to challenge conventions of a film, and it did work effectively.

Another factor we looked at was music, most film trailers have one type of music overlaying, or none at all, but normally heavy music when the state of equilibrium changes in such types as ours with a zombie/infected villain. We challenged this normal convention by using two sets of music; one was UB40 – Red Red Wine, which is a generally cheerful song, unlikely to be in a horror film. This cheerful music then turned to Linkin Park – Paper cut, which is a heavy metal song, reversing the mood when the state of equilibrium had changed. Normally you would tend to find just the heavy metal song in a film like ours.

Our film took on a postmodern role in some elements but we used normal horror conventions in some key areas to not leave too much to the audience’s imagination, we thought the foundation of our product could be conventional, with a sprinkle of techniques that challenge normal conventions, aiding our film in many areas.

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

The combination of our main products and our ancillary products of the magazine front cover and film poster all follow a similar dark mysterious theme which adds to the suspense of the film and the mysterious looking characters as the audience will want to see who or what they are. As we took the scene of the scary forest from the trailer this still image from that particular scene is carried on in both ancillary tasks which gives all of the pieces of work a unified identity which viewers of the ancillary tasks and main product will be able to see the trend of all the pieces of work. 

As the trend is the same throughout the work, this will be effective for the audience as they will immediately know the product just by looking at one aspect of our work. Also the use of the mysterious character in our ancillary products leads the audience to what type of film our product is just by looking at the still images of the mysterious character, the dark distorted image of the forest and blood like title of our film which shows its effectiveness in delivering our trailers horror genre without even watching the actual media product which is the main objective of similar look to all the pieces of work as it allows the people looking at the work to be able to identify the film immediately.

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

New media technologies have been critical for research, planning and evaluation stages of our media project, and the overall outcome of the project would have been very different if such new media technologies like YouTube, Corel VideoStudio, new Sony Flip cameras, e-mail and other useful technologies.

Firstly was the research. We decided to conduct a long series of research to find aspects to our trailer such as genre, music and appropriate camera angles. We did this by looking at film trailers on the internet on such sites as YouTube and Empire, where we could extensively look into films such as I Am Legend, The Crazies and The Blair Witch Project to incorporate things we saw into our own media project. New media technologies such as this website has allowed us to gain inspiration from real media conventions and put them into our own practice, which is a big boost for getting an upper hand and stepping stone in the creation of our media project. We used other sites such as Google to find other aspects of research such as target audiences and if films like ours had been done before and how to steer away from the norms. Music sites and online music libraries such as iTunes came in handy for the music selection to our trailer, storing a large amount of music to pick from and try out by overlaying them in our practice trailers. Another big factor for our project was the audience research and what our demographic wanted out of the film. We conducted a number of surveys from things such as what is you favourite music in a horror trailer? What’s your scariest villain? And what’s your age? To find a correct target audience. We did this through Microsoft Excel creating a questionnaire and used social networks such as facebook to give out this questionnaire, this way receiving a larger response rate for a better generalisation. Our whole research part was predominantly on the computer, using new media technologies.   

Planning and preparation after our research was the second stage to our project. New media technologies helped in this process in aiding things such as time, practicality and inspiration. In this stage we had gathered most of our research and was planning our film and constructing scripts, video shooting schedules and storyboards. We did most of this on Microsoft Word, creating these documents. We also found Microsoft e-mail outlook helpful too in order to quickly organise happenings within the group, like emailing each other things such as preparing props for next day, making travel arrangements and ensuring cameras and work at home was brought in. We also used e-mail to ask people to star in our film trailer, receiving responses and requests on that topic. Another new media technique we used for the planning stage of our project was too use Corel Video Studio12 to make practice film edits to see what would be the correct camera angle to use, and to see such things as time and colour manipulation techniques. We also used things such as Microsoft Excel to create graphs and tables clearly showing the answers from our questionnaire, helping us plan around these clearly shown answers. New camera equipment such as Sony Flip cameras came in handy with easy to use one press shoot filming, and easy to find camera captures clearly marked out on the camera. One of our group members also brought in his own personal video camera, which was a Samsung top of the range. This came in handy as it had different modes on the camera itself, instead of doing it on the editing software; this was such things as colour modes.

Our last stage was too evaluate our project, we did this first by putting it on YouTube and taking necessary feedback and criticism which anybody can put forward. We also used sites such a facebook to post our trailer on also wanting comments to evaluate and receive constructive criticism towards our project. These new media technologies have opened doors for media planning, construction and evaluation. 

Filming Practice

This is our practice filming on the software Corel VideoStudio to see what would be the best filming technique to use when we start our project, we used such techniques as full speed, half speed and colour manipulation. We had to get used to other computing methods such as changing the file format to AVI from MP4 to get the full use out of the video. This was extremely helpful as we now are becoming used to editing techniques on the software and the camera.

Filming Locations

These are all of the locations we have taken pictures of and researched for our project. We are looking to film our trailer in these locations and have taken note of the whereabouts and discussed as a group what place would be suitable for what scene. We decided that the forest would be suitable for the camping scenes and the hills for the fast paced running and attacking scenes. The country lanes are for the first scenes and parts with the car.

Video Shooting Schedule

VIDEO SHOOTING SCHEDULE

LOCATION	SCENE NO.	ACTORS	COSTUMES/PROPS, ETC.
Car	1	Patch, Grant, Tom, Lewis	Ordinary clothes, all in a car
Campsite	2	Patch, Grant, Tom, Lewis	Tent, beers and general props to make it look like a campsite
Campsite	3	Patch	Book, ordinary clothes
Campsite	4	Lewis, Tom	Football, ordinary clothes, camp clothes and shorts.
Campsite	5	Grant	Beer
Anywhere	6	Any Character	Phone
Forest	7	Tom	Zombie in scary clothes and blood stained T-Shirt
Field	8	Patch, infected humans	Torn  clothes and ripped blood stained clothes on zombies
Any	9	Patch	Mobile phone reading no signal
Forest	10	Tom	Ordinary Clothes
Forest	11	Tom, Mysterious Figure	Ordinary Clothes, Mysterious Figure in the background wearing torn ripped bloodstained clothes.
Forest	12	Tom, Figure (Infected Human)	“      “ Infected Human attacks

     

LOCATION	SCENE NO.	ACTORS	COSTUMES/PROPS, ETC.
Forest/Campsite	13	Patch, Grant	Ordinary Clothes
Forest/Campsite	14	Patch, Grant, Tom, Lewis	Campsite scenario, tent, fire, beers and all in ordinary clothes
Field	15	Infected Character	Ripped trousers, bloody, muddy foot
Hill	16	Tom, A lot of infected humans	Torn ripped clothes
Field	17	Infected human	Blood on face and anger
Field	18	Infected Humans	Ripped bloody torn clothes
Forest	19	Patch, Tom	Dirty clothes, sweaty and in same clothes.
Car	20	Any character	Blood stained hand
Country Lane	21	Grant, Infected Character	Ordinary clothes, bloody, muddy hands.
Muddy Track	22	Any character	Pitchfork
House	23	Any Character	Keyhole

Script

Script

Scene 1 Shot 1

Scene description:

EXT. STREET

. DAY

Scene direction: TOM driving down the road towards the HIKER

Character name: TOM, HIKER

Dialogue: Music playing quietly in the background from the radio.

Scene 1 Shot 2

Scene description:

EXT. STREET

. DAY

Scene direction: TOM driving down the road past the HIKER

Character name: NEWS REPORTER, TOM, HIKER

Dialogue: “We interrupt this broadcast for a special news bulletin. There has been a viral outbreak within Vicinity 21 known as *AREA*. There have been multiple sightings of the infected. We are urging you to stay inside and refrain from any physical contact with them. They are highly dangerous and contagious.”

This report continues over scenes 2 -

Scene 1 Shot 3

Scene description:

EXT. STREET

. DAY

Scene direction: TOM looks in the rear view mirror and the HIKER is not there.

Character name: TOM, HIKER

Dialogue: Radio report continues

Scene 2 Shot 5

Scene description: EXT. CAMP. DAY

Scene direction: All main characters are setting up the campsite.

Character name: TOM, GRANT, LEWIS, PATCH, OSCAR, JAMIE

Dialogue: Radio report continues

Scene 3 Shot 7

Scene description: EXT. CAMP. DAY

Scene direction: Showing all main characters having fun around the campsite.

Character name: TOM, GRANT, LEWIS, PATCH, OSCAR, JAMIE

Dialogue: Music playing with talking from characters

Scene 3 Shot 9

Scene description: EXT. CAMP. DAY

Scene direction: Showing the no signal on their phone. Worried expression

Character name: LEWIS

Dialogue: Music playing with talking from characters

Scene 4 Shot 11

Scene description: EXT. CAMP. NIGHT

Scene direction: Patch walking into the forest

Character name: PATCH

Dialogue: Music playing in the background

Scene 4 Shot 12

Scene description: EXT. FOREST. NIGHT

Scene direction: Patch walking around in the forest with a mysterious figure lurking behind him

Character name: PATCH, INFECTED

Dialogue: Music playing in the background

Scene 5 Shot 13

Scene description: EXT. FOREST. NIGHT

Scene direction: Mysterious figure attacks Patch. Scared reaction

Character name: PATCH, INFECTED

Dialogue: Music playing in the background

Scene 5 Shot 14

Scene description: EXT. CAMP. NIGHT

Scene direction: Group look at each other thinking about what has happened to Patch hearing his cries of agony

Character name: TOM, GRANT

Dialogue: Screaming from Patch

Scene 6 Shot 16

Scene description: EXT. CAMP. NIGHT

Scene direction: Group discussing what to do now

Character name: TOM, GRANT, LEWIS, OSCAR, JAMIE

Dialogue: “Where’s Patch?” “Not sure, I thought he was with you?!” “Nah don’t worry he’s just taking the piss”

Scene 6 Shot 17

Scene description: EXT. FOREST. NIGHT

Scene direction: Infected sprinting past the camera

Character name: INFECTED

Dialogue: Music kicks off

Scene 6 Shot 18

Scene description: EXT. HILL. NIGHT

Scene direction: Infected sprinting down the hill chasing OSCAR

Character name: OSCAR, INFECTED

Dialogue: Music still going with the screams from the infected

Scene 7 Shot 19

Scene description: EXT. FOREST. NIGHT

Scene direction: Quick shot of Jamie with blood on his face, panting

Character name: JAMIE

Dialogue: Music still going

Scene 7 Shot 20

Scene description: EXT. FOREST. NIGHT

Scene direction: Infected running with an unsteady camera

Character name: INFECTED

Dialogue: Music still going with the noise of the infected screaming

Scene 7 Shot 21

Scene description: EXT. FOREST. NIGHT

Scene direction: Jamie trying to save Tom from the infected while he is being dragged away

Character name: JAMIE, TOM

Dialogue: Music still going with them shouting to save Tom

Scene 8 Shot 22

Scene description: INT. CAR. NIGHT

Scene direction: Grant waiting in the car when a bloody hand bangs on the window

Character name: GRANT

Dialogue: Music still going, hand bangs against the window.

Scene 8 Shot 23

Scene description: EXT. FOREST. NIGHT

Scene direction: Hand comes out of bushes and grabs Oscar round the face

Character name: OSCAR

Dialogue: Music still going

Scene 8 Shot 24

Scene description: EXT. FOREST. NIGHT

Scene direction: Pitchfork scraping against the ground

Character name: OSCAR

Dialogue: Music still going, scraping noise from pitchfork

Scene 9 Shot 27

Scene description: INT. HOUSE. NIGHT

Scene direction: Toms eye peeking through the keyhole

Character name: TOM

Dialogue: Music calming down to an end