Figment Horror Trailer - FINAL CUT

Figment Horror Trailer from Ryan Willis on Vimeo.

Ancillary Tasks 1 & 2 - DONE

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

Throughout the creation of both my main construction which is a horror trailer and my two ancillary tasks which are a horror poster and magazine cover, I used various types of media technology.

For my research and planning I used YouTube to watch horror trailers which I used as style models for aspects and the technical codes; mise-en-scene, edits, cinematography and sound.

For the main construction the main program I used was iMovie for editing videos. I didn’t really have any prior knowledge of iMovie therefore I had to learn much about it before I began to use it, I did this by watching some tutorials to get a basic but general idea of how to edit on the program. I didn't need extensive knowledge of editing because of the plain look I wanted to give my horror trailer.

For the creation of my ancillary tasks I used Photoshop which I had a lot of experience using from AS Level therefore I had a base to start from when making my horror poster and magazine cover. I kept a specific colour scheme for both my horror poster and magazine cover and I think they were both reletively easy to put together because of the knowledge I had of Photoshop and also the simplicity of the way I wanted them to look.

Other media technologies that I used were using my blog to upload posts informing the department of my progress throughout the year, I had previous knowledge of Blogger from AS Level because I had used it to upload previous work and this helped me a lot, the one thing which I struggled with was the consistency of my uploads as sometimes I went a few weeks without uploading any information or updates.

For the filming process, I used a moving image camera and tripod which I had a considerable amount of experience with therefore the literal filming process was extremely easy, the one thing which was a slight setback was the difficulty of getting the clips from the camera to the computer to edit on iMovie but I was able to overcome this in the end.

For the evaluation stage, I used various things such as Prezi, Slideshare and Scribd which all show media and information in different ways, I was able to embed all of these onto my blog to show different forms of multimedia.

EVALUATION - In what way does your media product develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our main product which is a horror trailer uses and breaks various conventions used by stereotypical horror films and trailers. When making the trailer we agreed that not only did we need to follow some of the various conventions, we also needed to break some. One convention which we broke throughout the entire construction was the theory by Vladimir Propp to have at least seven characters appear throughout the trailer, we broke this as we only had three, the main protagonist who is a masked figure, the victim who is a teenage girl and the victim’s mother who only appear briefly. The main reason why we broke this convention was to create a more intimate or personal feel about the trailer where the audience has more of an opportunity to form opinions on the characters. The audience can for instance show a strong dislike or fear of the masked figure and sympathise with the young girl, I believe this gives the film a more personal feel which creates a connection between the characters and the audience.

One convention which we did follow throughout the entire trailer is Todorov’s theory of how a horror film should follow; EQUILIBRIUM, DISRUPTION, DISEQUILIBRIUM, SOLUTION and finally NEW EQUILIBRIUM. In the case of a trailer, the latter two (SOLUTION and NEW EQUILIBRIUM), should not be there as this would spoil the full film and would take away any suspense in the trailer. Since we only made a teaser trailer, we did not feature an EQUILIBRIUM in our trailer and we started with the DISRUPTION which is the teenage girl or victim having a nightmare, then the DISEQUILIBRIUM which is the sightings of the masked figure following her around, the trailer then goes on to build up and shows the effect the DISEQUILIBRIUM is having on the girl, the trailer then comes to a climax at the end which I believe holds the most tension in the trailer, building up most suspense with the audience.

As a group we agreed that sound was going to play a large part in creating suspense in the trailer therefore we used various different sounds dubbed over each other, as the trailer gets further on the sounds become louder and faster paced to bring the trailer to a suspenseful end. We also made sure that the way we edited the piece matched up the sounds we had used such as when the sounds get faster, the shots do too. One film which we used as guidance and a style model for our trailer was Sinister which follows a similar structure to our trailer with the main protagonist being a masked figure which the audience don’t see much of throughout the trailer for the film. We incorporated similar camera shots and angles and also sounds into our main construction. We followed Steve Neale’s theory that the pleasure of poplar cinema lies within the “difference in repetition” therefore as we followed various typical conventions of horror trailers, we made sure to break just as many.

EVALUATION - What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Results of audience feedback from ryanwillis212

CLOSED QUESTIONNAIRE

OPEN QUESTIONNAIRE

EVALUATION - How affective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

One conscious choice that I made when creating my main construction and ancillary tasks was to not show too much of the main protagonist, the masked figure. I did this to create more suspense and make the audience when watching the trailer want to see the film more. Both the trailer and my ancillary tasks focus mainly on the lead female character, although my magazine cover shows the masked figure, I chose to use an effect to dull the picture down to see less of it and create a darkness about the character. Another reason why I chose to focus mainly on the young female character who is the 'victim' was to advertise the film to a younger audience and to make the audience sympathise with the character more. Overall I believe that my main construction and ancillary tasks go perfectly well together and complement each other well with both the aesthetics of them and the certain horror stereotypes they show.

Media Screening

To create awareness for the screening and to invite as many peers as possible, we created a Facebook event which created larger awareness and in turn made more people go.