Evaluation Activity 1

In the first frame we used a panning shot of the location in the garden. This was effective as it allowed the audience to understand the difference between her lives before and after she grew up, giving in depth prevalence on the young victim allowing the audience to therefore feel sympathy for her. However, as it is a horror the non-diegetic music added over the top created an eerie atmosphere, representing that even though everything does look normal it doesn’t mean it is. Which could create suspense following the conventions of a horror genre. The lighting of the surrounding is quite dim and the autumn season represents cold and darkness. This again is ominous which adds to the genre of our trailer.

This links with the second frame which is a close up of a man’s hand playing the piano. This was used as a special effect as the non-diegetic sound was placed over it and we fitted it within the time scale of his fingers allowing it to be efficacious s and make it look like he was playing this eerie piece. This was a successful prop used as pianos can connote sadness e.g. when played at funerals. Therefore, it allowed our audience to know what emotion to feel and when. These two frames are calming, emphasising the build up to the climax which is effective as the audience would be on the edge of their seat. 

The third frame introduces the victim as a young girl. She is portrayed as playful and innocent with a close up of her smiling and laughing around the table. This shows her family to be a neutral and normal middle class family, at this point. Then the fact she is dressed in her school uniform, looking very natural which emphasises her vulnerability and helps create that atmosphere of everyday life. This is effective as it enables the audience to potentially relate to the trailer which could increase popularity. 

In the fourth frame we used match on action. This is a skilled shot as is effective due to it being the trailer look more advanced, rather than just following the characters around. Through this process we had to trim each shot to make it look seamless in our trailer. This medium shot is effective as again we see the happy home environment, which soon disappears. The fact that when the young girl sits down in the centre, with both the parent immediately standing up to argue could connote she has no protection or support, again allowing the audience t feel sorry for her. The effect of this is that we can see why in later life she has no contacts to report back to and nowhere to go. 

In the fifth frame we are shown a low angle shot of the flat that the young girl has moved into. The effect of having a long shot of this shows the rural area and shows an immediate contrast to where she used to live before. This also helps to create the atmosphere that something is about to happen as the music immediately juxtaposes from calm but tense music to just upbeat music telling the audience something bad is about to happen. The rural area expresses the vulnerability of her as something bad is more likely to happen is a lonely detached house compared the a middle class street. 

This then links with the sixth frame, where we see a man, dressed in all black with his hood up. The fact he is wearing black connotes danger and allows the audience to understand clearly that he is the protagonist. Again in this shot we used match on action just to emphasise the protagonist showing him in the shot for longer. This is an effective shot as I begins to tell the story of the trailer. The fact his hood is up and we are never introduced to his face creates mystery and enigmas. I sit somebody in the past? Who is it? This is effective as the enigma will make the audience want to watch the film which is the purpose of the trailer. 

In the seventh shot we are actually shown the protagonist and the victim in the same shot. Here the victim letting her hair down ready for the bath, with the door slightly open and the protagonist subtly walking past. This is effective as it creates real tension for the audience. This also represents how easy it is to unknowingly knowing somebody Is in your home, making the audience feel uncomfortable to what will happen next. The girl is shown in high key lighting, still showing her prevalence and the fact that she is harmless compared to the protagonist shown in the dark which connotes evil. Having a male protagonist and a female victim follows the conventions of a genre as this is commonly shown in horrors and men are known to be more dangerous compared to females who are always portrayed as innocent and less powerful. 

Then finally as the music increases to its climax and the audience are aware that the protagonist is in the house but don’t know when he is going to attack we are introduced to a medium shot of a hand with a black glove over. The glove is effective as it allows the audience to think what he is going to do to her. Kill her? Kidnap her? It also adds to the mystery of the protagonist. The fact he has grabbed her at the most unaware time (her reaching in for clothing) allows the audience to jump as they did not expect that it was going to happen then compared to the other times where there was an easy possibility. This is effective as it makes our trailer unpredictable which many people enjoy in the horror genre. 

Finally our last frame which is the ninth is our title. The fact of having our title at the very end means the audience have to watch the whole trailer to see what it is called. As well as this the audience are more likely to remember the name of the trailer compared to if it was introduced at the beginning, before understanding the story. This is effective as it could increase our viewers when it is released. Although modern trailers follow the conventions of white writing on a black background, we decided to use silver which had a gradient allowing it to be lighter at the bottom. This is effective as it made the final product look sharper and the white at the bottom adds a glow making it look eye catching, as it still stands out from the black background. The text we used was Felix Titling as it was really bold which we wanted top again make it stand out. The title was coped and rotated upside down and then faded. This was successful as it created a shadowed look which made our trailer look more skilled but also was different compared to just having it in the centre of the screen alone.

Postproduction

From the audience feedback I have discovered what were the positive and negative aspects of the opening two minutes. Some said that I overly edited and tried to add in too many special effects such as transitions and effects on the editing. It is important to keep some of the editing simple and effective. After I received the feedback, I went back a stripped back some of the editing tools I added in such as the zooms and effects on the image. I then realised how much better it was when it was simpler and the shots were the key aspect and not the fancy editing. Another aspect that the feedback taught me was the importance of time management, I didn’t allow myself enough time to film all of the shots I wanted.
The timing of the day was also an important factor to consider, as I filmed it in the summer, it got very dark very quickly and therefore when I filmed all day, it got dark extremely quickly. During the postproduction process I was able to decide how I would develop my skills and techniques when it came into A2 and I was to creating my trailer. I took from the process that I should focus simply on the shots and the quality of them instead of all the fancy techniques I could include. When I filmed my trailer this year I faced a similar problem when it came to lighting. That is why I reshot some of the scenes when the lighting was right. I made the film have more continuity. It also made it more professional and seem as though the film was high budget. 

Using conventions from real media texts

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

My film has conformed to many media products, some examples are: in thriller/horror opening two minutes, there were often actors name at the beginning that he audience can see and recognise. Ours were extremely effective as we made them out to be famous as they were along side the actors faces. Some other conventions were those of the establishing shots at the beginning of the film that allowed the audience to get a clear understanding of the background of the characters and locations. This also helped the audience to gains a relationship with the actors. With close up shots of the girls, allows them to see the girls up close and personal. This is often shown in the conventions of these kinds of films. One of the conventions of a horror/thriller is often the use of crime such as guns, knives etc., this proved to be extremely hard to achieve successfully, this therefore meant that it didn’t look as dangerous as the real movies. Another problem with the film was due to the different locations, often a convention is to have shots in main cities such as London and New York, I found this hard to achieve due to money and practicalities and therefore I could only shoot in surrey. 

I believe my work was fairly experimental due to some of the edgy shots and editing techniques I used. Due to some of the conventions being conformed to, some aspects of the film were generic. Without doubt the film is exiting and thrilling however if I was to improve I would make it more experimental. Pierre Morel (the director of the three taken films) influenced me to create a tension building film leading to a kidnaper. When moving into A2 I discovered that to make the film effective and suit the audiences needs, it is important to conform to the conventions of the genre.

Creativity

how did you use media forms to come up with something new and original? 

Initially we researched different trailers and the conventions of different genre’s, from this we decided we wanted to create an action trailer as we thought It would be a good way of making the film look high budget and exiting. However due to practicalities and personal opinions, we decided we would rather create a horror/thriller trailer as we were more familiar with the conventions of this trailer and we also felt more of a personal connection with the genre. To make it creative and different, we decided to hit a new audience of 15 year olds by bringing in characters that they could connect and grow a relationship with. We also used a young child to create a more daunting theme. Our initial idea’s came from influences of other films we had watched such as the lovely bones and taken. We felt like the idea of a young girl growing up in a broken  home and then growing and moving in to a house where she isn’t safe showing the importance of family.

As a group we have a very good connection being friends already, it allowed us to come up with a good idea for our film. We made a brainstorm of ideas so that everyone’s ideas were heard and we could have a wide range of genre’s before we devised our final piece. By using Adobe premiere pro, it allowed us to make our production more visually interesting and imaginative. We could add in fades to black to create suspense and interest and therefore more professional. To appeal to the audience, we decided that we would add some music that would get their hearts racing and make the fear the trailer. We made sure the music have a large build up leading towards the kidnapping. Additionally we wanted to make the titles snappy and interesting in order to capture the audiences attention and inform them about the qualities of the film- for example the titles of other films that were made by the same distributer.

Our intended outcome of this film was to make our young audience have a sense of thrill and dangers, looking at the young girls grow and get in danger from a kidnaper. We also wanted to send across the message to youth’s that you must be careful being outside alone in the dark. Our main aim was to put the audience of the edge of their seats, by achieving this we added tension building non-diegetic sounds, fast paced editing, prevalence on the main character, shots of the kidnaper hiding around the house, and many other codes and conventions of a horror/thriller movie. During A2 we have developed some of these skills and devised ways of building tension into the kidnaper. Music is a key component in the process of creating a tension filled trailer/opening two minutes. During the process of moving into A2 I discovered new pieces of music and what would work and what wouldn’t. There has to be a steady beat to cut the shots too as it gives the piece a professional edge and keeps the continuity.

Target audience reaserch

Who would the audience for your film be?

Due to our film having an age certificate of 15, this set us a good idea that our target audience would range for the 15 to younger adults such as 22. After doing research of the demographics for the majority of horror movies we found that this age category was the most appropriate for our trailer. This is successful as allowing our target audience to be 15 allows a wider range which could potentially increase profits. The typical ratio to watch our trailer would mainly be girls, this could be represented in the female cast, relating about a troubled girl. Therefore,many females could relate to this character and find this as a coping mechanism to escape from their own lives.

Although, the percentage of males watching horror movies can still represent huge interest in this genre, but this could just be because males and females are more likely to attend a date to the cinema to watch a movie, stereotypically for the female to cuddle up to the boy. As we found out from our survey our target audience enjoy horrors that create a mystery as their favourite TV programme Sherlock Holmes, we uncovered the meaning of this and it was proven they found the mystery in the programme engaging, getting them excited to watch next weeks episode. Our target audience listen to quite a lot of pop music, in the charts, to keep up with the trends in day to day society.This allows them to have something in common and mingle as a friendship group providing a topic for conversation.

We tried to create this mysterious effect in our trailer by having a secretive villain out to get this young girl, where hes face in never exposed throughout the whole trailer, only as man with a black figure. This young age category tend to shop again in the most trendy places such as River Island, Misguided, Topman where it allows them to go out and interact and enables them to become a fashionable idol whether it is only in the environment of school or work.

Digital Technology

 How did you use media technologies in the construction and research?

We used a Sony CX405 Handycam camera to film our production as there is high quality footage. Having a good definition of the camera allows the shots to be clear and sophisticated making it seem like a high budget movie. Also the camera had different effects on it to suit the lighting of surrounding and time of day. This helped us to create the best image and work around the change in lighting during the shoot. Additionally the camcorder also recorded audio very well and therefore we didn’t need to prerecord the audio. I decided to use Adobe Premiere Pro software in order to edit this trailer. Initially, I was going to use Premiere Elements however it believe that Pro has a more sophisticated and advanced software and can allow  me to be more flexible with the editing. I did, however, find it slightly hard to work around the new programme as I edited at home and therefore didn’t have a teachers help to edit the piece. 

Some cons of the digital technology during this process were I shot some of the opening images on an iPhone, as I found some establishing shots of the location that I wanted for my film, while walking to school one morning. This therefore meant that the image was slightly different as the cameras have different quality of footage. Another problem we occurred with the compatibility of the camera to the editing software was the difference in lighting, despite remaining in the same location. This was disappointing because despite how precisely i made the cut, the lighting was still disorientated which made it look like we changed location or lighting, affecting the theme of continuity.However some of the pros during the process were that I spotted some nice shots while out and about and managed to create a really nice opening of the film. Even though the iPhone was as high quality, I managed to sharpen up the image in order to make the shots look seamless to the rest of the film. Another element that made the opening two minutes effective were the diegetic sounds I achieved by placing the camera outside in the garden to capture the sounds of the birds. The audio on the camera is very clear and picks up sounds from very far away. I played the sounds over the top of the non-diegetic music to create an earie atmosphere. 

In A2 I have developed some of the skills I gained in Asand became more confident in the technologies I used. Although I used the same camera in As in A2, I have been able to experiment with new angles and setting within the camera and have become more experienced with how the camera works. Additionally I have learned how to successfully use a tripod when using the camera to create steady and professional footage. When looking back at the opening two minute I realise how armature it looks compared to my trailer this year due to the carelessness of the shots, I understand the tripod controls this. Additionally last year I had problem when it came to the lighting changes as I filmed it in different times in the day. However this year I filmed two or three shots in the same time of day so the lighting was the same and therefore made the trailer seamless and professional looking. Another skill that I discovered when moving into A2 was the use of transitions of the software we used. As the trailer had to be quick and snappy, we used fades to black to create suspense and also to build tension. The last thing that  became better was the use of the premiere pro as I became more confident in how to use it and also discovered some new tools within the programme.  

Character reaserch

How does your media product represent particular social group?

This is our protagonist character Serafina, She appears very innocent and childish with her school uniform. As she is the victim of the danger within the family the audience feel empathy for her and therefore dislike the parents. by having a young child as the protagonist at the beginning, helps the audience understand her paranoia when she grows up and therefore allows the audience to understand her like from beginning to end.
By showing the journey of her life and the obstacles she has to overcome, the audience feel a greater connection to her and therefore can feel more empathy when things go wrong. we decided to show her laughing along with her family to show that she is a very sweet girl who has a very innocent personality and then juxtapose it with the scenes of her parents arguing and telling her to go away. We thought we would keep her in her school uniform as it created an element of normality from the audience and they would feel the connection from when they were younger.

This is the young girl from the lovely bones, she is the protagonist within the film and plays the victim in a kidnapping. We believe our character follows the same conversions as this girl as they are very innocent looking and are separate to the rest of society. Our character isn't blonde like this one, often the blondness connotes innocents and angelic nature however, Serafina is very young and beautiful and therefore gives the same effect. In the lovely bones, she has parents that often argue and cause he to get very upset, this follos a similar sequence to our film as we thought it had a good impact on the audience.