Recce Report

Evaluation 4. How did you use media technologies in the construction research, planning and evaluation stages?

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

Evaluation 3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

The audience feedback that we collected in were all generally pointing out the same flaws in our trailer and they were that at some points the sound didn’t fit the shot and that none of the trailer really made much sense.

When we made the trailer we tried to make the storyline fairly hard to understand but because it was nearly everybody that gave us feedback on this we most likely made it too hard for people to understand. The original idea of this was to make quite an obscure trailer showing almost a different story in each shot which we hoped would get the audience interested and want to know how all of these things are pieced together but if no one can really understand anything that’s going on then no one will want to see it.

With the sound when our group attempted this we tried to keep with the same obscure theme of putting strange sound into our trailer. Everyone said that the sound was good until one part where there was a babies laugh and when we watched it back in front of everyone we all agreed that it didn't really fit the shot that we put it on or maybe even the whole trailer.

If I could do this again I would definitely try to have a more solid story line one that is easily understandable but doesn't give a way too much. I wouldn't really change the sound I think if I was to do this again I  believe that I would just need to put a little bit more of my time in to finding what shots suit the sound effects.

I think that the sound is something that we will need to work on, maybe try out software like garage band and try to find more suiting sound clips to fit our trailer. I think that long droning sounds work well in horror trailers  and that is why they are used in most horror trailers because they create suspense up until the montage of the trailer which is where the musics tempo is changed (normally made faster) until it reaches the end where it tends to fade out . 

however there were a few pieces of positive feedback that we got from our audience. Most of it had to do with the locations that we filmed in and the cinematography of our trailer and i agree with them. i believe that we did take some time deciding what shots to use and where what locations to film them in which we have shown on our shot list. I believe that it is important to get the right shot because it tells people whats  happening without any words being spoken, like our running shots you can tell someone is running away from the killer because the shot when its moving looks like someone is running with it and the previous shot showed the killer. 

Evaluation 2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
I believe that my main product is effective in the way that it would draw people in to want to watch it due to our unknown story-line. When we created our trailer we did have a full idea for the piece but we wanted people to not really understand the concept of it to an extent so that they will want to go and see the full film. This trailer may not be as gripping and as powerful as we may have once wanted it to be but I do believe that our trailer does give a certain effect wanting to know what is going on within in the trailer and how all the different shots connect to each other.

When we filmed our trailer we had the shots of the computer, these shots were quite important for our full film idea as you may have guessed from the title ‘.Com.’ We also had the religious shots which shows the killers story to a certain extent and hopefully after watching this trailer people will want to see how these two things are connected and why the killer is doing what he does.My ancillary texts don’t really show anything to do with the story other than a part of the killers face however I still think that they both give off a strong effect. I used the same image for my poster and magazine cover, but I changed a few things to the image so they weren't the complete same, I did this because I believe that it was a strong image, an image that would get people to want to see the story behind this dark and gloomy picture.

I believe that the combination of my products do work together and also will want to make people want to see the film. I think that my ancillary texts will make my audience want to see the trailer, due to the obscurity of my main image, then will go on to watch our trailer and as I have previously wrote will want to see how the film will come together and what will all of the shots that were filmed end up resulting in.

When creating my ancillary texts i had this in mind, i wanted to keep the obscure theme of the trailer when i did my movie poster and my magazine cover. I can understand how this may not bring in much of an audience as i have found out from the student feedback that we have collected but i like the idea of not really knowing what is going on and keeping everyone wondering until the film is released. 

More ways in which my ancillary texts and trailer are connected are that they both briefly show the killer. My poster and magazine cover both have a slightly distorted look on the image which happens to be the killer, you wouldn't be able to tell who it was if your saw them out in the street. My trailer also shows hidden shots of the killer where his hood is up and the shots we have with the killer in them have been either shot in a dark place or have been made darker in the editing stages after we made our trailer. 

Evaluation 1. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products

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

The Story – The story of our trailer I believe doesn’t and doesn’t follow the normal forms and conventions of media products. I believe it does in the actual storyline where it is basically just another slasher film on where a murderer goes around and kills teenagers. I think that it differs from real media products in the way that the two different sides to the story the religious views of the killer and the idea of a horror film based on social networking, its like two different horror films have been put together.

Music – The sound that we have used in our trailer was normally long, held, low notes as well as the occasional creepy sound of a baby laughing or a door opening and these I believe are all forms and conventions of a similar media product

Editing – I think that the editing that we done on the shots of our horror trailer are very similar to what you would see on a real horror trailer there was plenty of fading, a slow motion scene, all things that are present in current horror trailers. This has been done to help the effect that the trailer has on the viewers.

Locations – The locations that we found I believe would most definitely be used in any horror trailer with a similar story line. The church and graveyard has been seen in many horror trailers for years and the shots that we filmed in college would also be most likely seen in a teen horror movie due to the concept of it. The grassy hilly area that we filmed the running scenes on I also think would fit the forms and conventions of a real horror trailer.

Characters – The use of character in our trailer I believe is very stereotypical due to the use of gender. Our killer was a male and throughout the whole trailer you never saw another male scared or in distress. The only shots that we did which showed the murderer and a victim at the same time, we used a female for the victim so this is definitely a normal thing that you would see in horror trailers.

Costume/Props – The costume that we used for the killer was just a few plain pieces of clothing that we could find as well as the wellington boots and the upturned hood. We did this to try and make him look like a serious character and keep the attention of what he is wearing rather then what he is here to do. The prop we gave this character was a cricket bat, a very typical weapon for a horror film killer. The use of fake blood is also a must have on a horror trailer so we went with the normal forms and conventions on this one aswell.

Magazine cover

Film Poster

Filming Schedule

Before we started the filming process we wrote down what we would be filming where we would be filming it and for how long, this is all shown on our shot list. We looked for local places that we may be able to get to and that would suit our film. Also all the locations that we chose would have had to been close enough for our whole group to get there so we could pitch ideas to make our shots better once we were there.

17/12/12
This was when we began filming the college shots for our trailer. we filmed it during the afternoon because everyone was more willing to film during this time and would put more effort in to it. Also we we chose a time during the day where there would be a lot of people around to make it look more realistic and actually give it a college life type of atmosphere.

18/12/12
We uploaded the shots that we had collected from the previous day onto our system so we could get the starting shots in order and see where we should go from there.

28/12/12
On this day we filmed the computer shot at my house. i had the whole group come round during college time so we could all be there and all give our ideas on how to make it look better. we shut the curtains to give it the night time feel that we were going for, we also tried to just get the camera pointed at the computer screen and nothing else so it would give a better effect.

5/1/13
This day we filmed our alleyway shots which were the first shots we had filmed of the killer. We done these shots around midday and in a relatively secluded area because we didn't want people walking around in the background of the shots. We filmed the three friends walking down the alleyway, the running sequence and the killer dragging the cricket bat across the brick wall.

7/1/13
On this day we filmed our religious the shots, the church and graveyard sequences. For this we had to get permission to film on the churches premises. We also chose to do this relatively early in the day so there wouldn't be many people walking past in the backgrounds of the graveyard shot.

20/1/13
This was our final part of filming which was filmed on Caister beach we chose this beach because it had a hilly landscape which would be good for seeing the victim before you could see the killer we also chose to film this shot on a dark afternoon so the sky would look dull and eerie to create an atmosphere for what is going on within the shots.

Props and costumes

Props

. Knife

. Car

. Cricket bat

. Crucifix

. Fake blood

Costume

Victims/ Friendship group

. Everyday clothing

Killer

. Denim jacket

. Jeans

. Wellies

General Audience Research

The audience that watch horror are are people that are wanting to be scared and frightened, mainly a teen audience is is what fills up the cinema when a new horror movie comes out.Some people enjoy the blood and gore in horror films other people enjoy the psychological aspect of them and both of these sub-genres are very popular in the horror community.Also males are a popular audience in the horror genre so a lot of films will show the females in the film getting killed for a lot longer than the male characters because the majority of the male community would rather see a woman on the screen for longer than a male character.

The reason that horror trailers are such a big hit is because it gives people feelings that other films just wont do like comedy will make you laugh and and action films will make you feel excited these are all positive emotions but horror films make you feel unnerved, frightened and sometimes paranoid, these are feelings that people don't like to feel very often but something psychological makes people want to maybe challenge themselves to see how scared that they can be. This also shows why teenagers are a big money maker for horror films because they will want to prove to themselves or someone else that they aren't scared of what they are watching, it makes them feel older than what they are.

Audience Research Independent

When deciding what our horror trailer was going to be about we wanted a idea that effects everyday life, something that people use a lot. So we came up with the idea to do a horror trailer based on the social networks. The idea for this came when we created a questionnaire to ask our target audience which were teenagers from around the ages of 16-19 and this is how we would see if this idea we had would work. On our questionnaire we asked our audience about social networking sites and how they affect their lives. we had questions like "how long do you spend on social networking sites a day?" And "Do you feel social networking sites are a big part of the world we live in today?" Questions like this gave back the responses that we were expecting, they both ave us positive results to which would confirm the idea to create our horror trailer on this topic.

Shot List

These are the shot lists our group came up with before shooting our trailer throughout the filming we came up with new ideas and changed some of the original ideas, we wrote the changes and new format of the trailer on the page at the bottom right on the photo

Full Film Idea

Full Film Idea Our movie trailer is called ‘.Com’ we came up with this name because it revolves around the dangers and potential threats of social networking in this day and age, we made a trailer to portray one of the worst scenarios from the social networking world. Our trailer is based around the idea of a person signing his group of friends up to a what seems to be harmless website called ‘how you will die’. Having this sort of thing on a social network you wouldn't usually think anything of it but throughout or trailer you see not to always trust what you think is just a bit of harmless fun between you and your friends. We came up with the idea to get one person to sign his friends up as a bit of fun but little do they know on the other side of the website is actually a killer waiting for innocent naive students/people to sign up to it. and little does Chris (character signing them up) know that the killer will try kill them off one by one exactly how he’s told them on the website. We decided to make the killer highly religious to put that religious twist on the trailer to show there is a reason for killing the people on the website and it’s not just random killing. The story behind the religious part is we went for the message from God idea telling him to kill people who have sinned and to do it he has to set up the website to pin point the sinners amongst the area he is in. By doing this we challenged the whole idea of God sending a message down to Jesus to sacrifice himself to save us as we done the opposite God sent down a message to our killer to kill the people to save them. We believed this gave our trailer a bit more of a gripping deeper story line and would test people’s beliefs in good and evil. We all agreed our target audience was mainly the male gender aged around 16-20 because it’s based around college students and based in a college setting so many people this age can relate to the surroundings and the characters involved. We came to the conclusion our film would come under the sub-genre under horror as a religious slasher. We have similar aspects to ‘final destination’ where the students are toying with death and trying to dodge faith after seeing how they are going die. Also we followed the brutal and bloody deaths. Our trailer contained binary opposition, as it had the idea of good vs evil in the killers mind. He believed that he was doing good by listening to God, when in reality all the viewers and people in society know he was going against all forms of social norms.