Evaluation Question Four

Evaluation Question Three

Evaluation Question Two

Evaluation Question One

Analysis Magazine Cover

The Demented: Final Cut (with annotations)

The Demented Annotations

Below are the annotations you can see in the video for The Demented.

We used these to analyse and evaluate our final product.

0.01

This shows the audience the film is rated 15, clearly indicating it is a psychological horror rather than a gory one.

0.07

Here we used a handheld camera which adds to the sense of chaos.

0.18

We zoomed in on Frankie here to show a close-up of her walking towards the house. The close-up adds to the emotion of the moment, and tells us she’s walking towards somewhere important.

0.21

We filmed a point of view shot at this moment, to establish that someone is behind the tree as if watching the car. Seeing through the eyes of the antagonist is unsettling for the audience.

0.32

We panned the camera here to create a sense of drama and scale to the enclosed location.

0.37

This shot shows the psycho/serial killer peering behind a tree. Her black hair connotes evil, but her white gown connotes innocence. This creates a conflict in the audience’s minds. Can she be trusted?

0.42

For this shot we had the psychotic serial killer on a swing. Reminiscent of similar shots from The Conjuring, this again shows her child-like side.

0.56

A close-up of Libby’s face shows the audience her terrified emotions. It also introduces the idea that the psychotic killer is targeting the group of teenagers.

1.08

The psychotic killer smears blood on the wall, connoting the sense of a murder and the general life threatening danger of the narrative.

1.20

The heartbeat sound effect in the background create a sense of urgency, and offsets the continuous shot to maintain the energy and tension of the trailer.

1.25

This is the vital “jump scare” that features at the end of all horror trailers. This utilises collision cutting – moving from a lengthy, slow shot to a quick one – to suddenly shock the audience.

Evaluation Screening

Draft Evaluation Question Four

What have you learnt about audience feedback?

As a class we were able to participate in many focus group screenings, which allowed us to give and receive both positive and negative feedback about the trailers in the class. This formally structured focus group allowed criticism to be used only for helping the trailer be improved and not for putting others work down. 

Our first screening was when we had just started our trailer and had a rough cut of our idea. We believed it was important to show our trailer so early on in the development process so that if any major issues arose we were able to change them without panicking. The rough-cut feedback was done very formally and in a controlled manner. We had sheets to fill out with a score box out of ten in the top right corner, and then a ‘what you like’ box and ‘what could be improved’ box. This allowed all the feedback to be anonymous and for people to all have their own opinions on the trailers progress.  Not only was this stage vital for the production of the trailer but also it was very important as it was the first time we got to self evaluate our work as a group.  We were able to also fill out the sheet about our own work, being critical about the weaker parts. The self-evaluation progress really helped us as a group to find some stability of where we are and what things we personally felt we needed to focus more on.  With the evaluation sheets I got given back I took it upon myself to type up the results and then write a small evaluation of what had been said. This way I was organized to look back and see what I needed to change and what others thought was already very successful in our trailer. Our score out of ten was an astonishing eight meaning that the majority of the class enjoyed watching our trailer and had many positive comments to feedback on.

The majority of the class really liked our general story line narrative and said that the actual plot really works well for our choice of trailer and would appeal to our particular audience very well. We got a variety of positive comments including a great use of different camera angles, a wide range of shots, a good use of pace and a very creepy location.  You can see the great use of the creepy location when we get a panoramic view of the woods later leading onto the outside of the abandoned house.  This automatically brings the audience out of their comfort zone and shows that the remote location could signify danger and represent a lot more than a mysterious house.

Many more positivity’s were mentioned which allowed our group to really focus more on the negative comments so that we could precisely find the main reasons for the negative feedback and be able to change these to please the audience when watching it.  Negative feedback was a vital part of the production side of making our trailer. We took the negative comments and tried to manipulate them into being things to work on, and in some cases we used the negativities to create something that now stands out in our trailer as being a very successful part.  This is shown in the darkening of the trailer. Our first attempt at the trailer came out very light and did not have a negative vibe throughout it, and the darkness and contrast really needed to be edited.  In our final trailer you can see this improvement and can really see the difference that the darkness can make.

A majority of our feedback mentioned that our quick paced montage of shots needed to be quicker. When analyzing the trailer ourselves we also thought that this was an important part of the improvement stage and therefore took a lot of time to edit each individual shot and make them look and feel more paced and rapid.  We can see this in the shot when Frankie is being dragged away by the demented girl.  In our edited version you can see that the pace really improves the impact of the shot itself and therefore the feedback given was a very good piece of critical advice.

In our second focus group screening (when the trailer was basically finished) it was a chance for us to say the things that work really well and the positive comments on the improvements that had been made on the trailer. This gave us a chance to hear what others thought of our final product alongside hear comments that people thought could have been improved better if we had more time. As a group we found the second focus group more reassuring, and it made the editing worthwhile. The second focus group was more relaxed (as there was less critic to be given with the edited versions) and therefore we were all allowed to discuss what we thought worked really well. All groups commented on our final jump scare at the end of our trailer and said it was a very memorable moment.

I found that audience feedback not only helped with editing our trailer, but also helped me as an individual to take on criticism and make it better, rather than get defensive of my work. Audience feedback helped me to understand my target audience to a higher level and therefore I was able to adapt my trailer and fit the requests of the horror fans.

My Own Poster Analysis

Magazine cover

Draft Evaluation Question Three

Evaluation Question 3:

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

Media technologies have been a vital part in the execution of my main task and ancillary products. Many different platforms of media have allowed me to progress my work ability and enhance my production of each task. I understood that by using a myriad of advanced technology would allow me to present my work in detail with accuracy and better presentation.

Before we could start any of our main products we had to make sure we were knowledgeable on the themes and conventions of the horror genre. Research became a very important process for our workload; we needed to make sure that we understood not only about horror but also about different auteurs and theories. DVD players became vital for allowing us to watch and analyze a variety of different horror films, alongside educational DVD’s about the production and development of horror itself. The class projector was also used on numerous occasions so that we could talk and discuss as a class about our thoughts and opinions on key horror films. We were able to view films such a Psycho, and Dawn of the Dead that are both vital for our knowledge that needed to be known in the exam and the coursework and therefor this helped significantly to allow us all to watch the films together and talk about the horror conventions within them.

Microsoft programs allowed us to focus our attention on generic horror conventions. Microsoft Word helped us type up our research and to plan for future events. Microsoft Word became extremely important within the planning stage of our main task, as we needed it to write essays on particular films. An example of this is when I made a spider diagram on Microsoft Word with different tangents of what could occur in individual scenes. Word has also been very important for our evaluation stage, it has enabled me to express my views and ideas about each question, and allowed me to type it up before putting it onto Microsoft PowerPoint.

YouTube has been the key search engine for looking up and analyzing horror films. YouTube is filled with very influential and inspirational trailers that uphold a variety of different techniques. Not only have we used YouTube to look into other trailers, we have also uploaded our various cuts onto YouTube (Rough, Evaluation, Final) so we could see the progress of our editing.

IMBD.com was another vital tool. It allowed me to research with detail about different horror films. This site allowed me to have accuracy that is vital when researching into particular people such as cast members or the backstage crew from particular horror films. IMBD was one of the easiest sites to use and made my information more precise. Again this helped me understand the work of Hitchcock more and also about his film ‘Psycho’.

Throughout all the stages from the planning all the way through to the evaluation stage Blogger has had a massive input onto my work. Blogger is used to represent all of my work, and to upload all of the relevant work that I have produced. Blogger allowed me to organize y work into each section of progress. Blogger also allowed other people to view my work and leave feedback, alongside making the communication between my teacher and myself easier. (He could access my blog at any time to see if I was on the right track.)

Throughout the planning stages I really needed to organize myself so that my work was easy to read and was in a very structured way. I used Microsoft Publisher to structure my shot list and then uploaded it to Blogger so it could always be referred to by The Demented filming group.

Throughout the construction stage of the production of my main task I was very hands on with using digital media such as a hand held digital camera or a video camera both needing SD cards to then transfer information over to the computers. Without these forms of technology then the actual trailer and photos could not have been produced and therefore are an important part of how things were executed. We also had to take the photos in the college’s media studio with three different light sources that could be manipulated to create the correct low-key or back lighting required to create a horror atmosphere. Using these lights I was able to adjust the shine onto a particular part in the scene (either the demented girls face, or a key object) you can see this in my own work (poster) as the doll has a tad more lighting on it compared to other objects in the scene. The construction of my magazine and poster would not have looked so professional without the lighting and camera facilities that were available to us.

For the construction of my ancillary tasks I needed to use Photoshop to edit and manipulate the photos to show how I wanted them to be presented. Photoshop was used heavily throughout as I wanted my work to be edited in a professional way. Photoshop allowed me to do things that other media technologies could not such as darken my images, add writing to symbolize different meanings and to also make the photos exactly how I wanted them to look like. I darkened the images by playing with the brightness and contrast, meaning I was able to manipulate the work to the level in which I believed worked better to create a more conventional horror feel.

DaFont.com provided the next key stage. This website allowed me to find a font under the ‘horror’ section that was different and suited my main product better than the normal fonts on Photoshop. Photoshop allowed me to add multiple layers and therefore I could edit my work many times until I was happy with the final product. Photoshop had a myriad of tools that helped to edit my particular work e.g., different blending options, drop shadows, stroke, glow, gradient effects, contrast, brightness, image adjustments, color balance, vibrancy, filler effects. All of the above factors contribute to the professional depiction of my ancillary products.

Adobe Premiere was used consistently throughout the construction stage of my main product. It allowed me opportunities to import all of my shots and edit them onto the timeline. The use of the cut tool on Adobe Premiere allowed us to determine the length of each shot, alongside cut things out from the clip that we did not feel necessary to be included in. We decided to use this when figuring out where to place particular parts in our trailer. In our first attempt at creating our trailer this tool was used on many occasions. We used it on the part where Frankie was being dragged backwards as the shot was too long and didn’t have the same affect as a shorter clip. Premiere allowed us to have multiple sound tracks, meaning we could emerge multiple tracks together to create a sequence of music that was appropriate for our style. We used music being emerged together throughout our entire trailer to get different sounds mixed together. This was a good way for use to build tension throughout as we could also decide on what particular music was the most dominant part and adjust the levels for speech and different variations of music. We were also able to put footage over other footage that worked perfectly for our horror genre, as we were able to blend the footage and make it creepy and give it a very ghostly unnerving feeling. Premiere also allowed me to add effects onto my existing video. We could make it darker and give it a low-key lighting feeling by playing around with the brightness and contrast (found under “color correction”). This can be seen when the ‘demented girl’ is on the swing because we had to edit the moving image to create a more darkened and mysterious scene.

Overall, Premiere offered us many key aspects that helped with the success of our trailer. The pen tool allowed us to do different transitions, such as dip to black and fades. Audio affects were very important for making our trailer seem more professional. “Denoiser” helped to remove unneeded crackling sounds and adjust the volume of each soundtrack that we have. We used this in our jump scare scene as we had an unneeded crackling noise. Clearly, Adobe Premiere was vital for the development of our main task, it allowed us to use industry standard equipment and arrange our clips to create our official trailer.

When it came to the evaluation stage, Flickr allowed us to annotate our work in a more professional and “new media” way than Microsoft Word. It allows us to hover over particular photos and a caption/summary to appear of what our reasons were for adding this particular horror convention. I used this to evaluate my own work to a higher level, especially when analyzing my main tasks and ancillary products. Flickr was also interesting when researching into other people’s work as it made it easier for us to read the relevant parts. Flickr was helpful at picking out the ‘quality’ rather than the ‘quantity’ aspect of our work. In my own work I was able to see that key words were more important to categorize things than long and complex sentences.

To finally present our media evaluations we had to use Microsoft PowerPoint. PowerPoint allowed us to present our work more visually and helped to separate each task into sections with detailed examples. I used PowerPoint in my evaluation to separate paragraphs and add in photos.

Draft Evaluation Question Two

‘HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE COMBINATION OF YOUR MAIN PRODUCT AND ANCILLARY TEXTS?’

The ancillary products are a vital part of the production and development of the main product. They help to attract particular audiences and bring awareness of the main product. The ancillary texts are a clever way to advertise to the audience alongside sell the main product. It is vital that both pieces are interesting with subtle implications of that particular horror genre, alongside only minor hints of the plot and the importance of not giving too much away.

I understood the necessity in creating a visual link between the main product and the ancillary tasks and therefor decided to make my poster have many similar aspects to that of my main product (creepy picture, unnerving sentences and dark colors.) There is an endless list of generic features that contribute well to the success of the horror poster. The style of the film title and dark colors enhance the unnerving feeling we get when looking at the frightening poster. In both my main product and my poster I used colors to connote different hidden meanings. Inside the typography was a dark matt black color that symbolized the darkness in the psychological killer and also the fait of the young teenagers. By analyzing existing horror film posters like Shutter (2009) and Hostel (2007) I gained appreciation for the fact they that did not have blood and gore however still managed to be equally as scary as the ones that did. In many cases the more psychological the poster then the more affective it was.  I only added in a mild element of body horror in my own poster because of this but mostly stuck to the psychological factor.

I personally found that the suspense built up quicker when the tag lines were really affective and therefor decided to put very unnerving concrete sentences in my trailer and my poster.

 The poster that I got lots of my inspiration from was Sinister (2012) not only did this help me with ideas for my poster but it also helped me with many aspects for my horror trailer. Below is the photo of Sinister and next to it is a screen shot of one moment in my trailer. We really loved the idea of only using gore if it was being used in a psychological way and Sinister did this perfectly. Dragging the bloody across the walls worked really well and was a part that many people liked in our horror trailer. We decided to take this idea from the Sinister poster however use it within the trailer and made sure to adapted it to be unique and different.

I decided to use a medium shot on the poster due to the fact it was a perfect alignment for adding text in around the psychological killer and having the deathly character directly in front of you was also very affective. Jordon who plays the demented girl is holding a doll that has been destroyed and ripped to pieces this is being used to symbolize the danger of the character and her lack of care and understanding for people. The doll automatically represents her dangerous side due to the fact she has a rope tied around its neck. The poster also needed to have some necessities for example our studios logo and the age rating. These two things also help to make it more realistic and give it a very professional look.

 Next I had to create my magazine cover. Although the ancillary products share similarities I also understood that different platforms offered different ways to sell a product and therefor challenged my film magazine cover and gave it a very feminine outlook. I researched into ‘Total Film’ magazines and saw that many of the magazines had a sophisticated look and weren’t always fixed upon the genre that the person on the cover participated in (e.g. not always a horror magazine even if the person on the front has starred in a horror film.) I decided to make my magazine for a female audience and edited it to be quiet girly and modern, I believe this gave my magazine a really different look however it still sets the syllabus of being a film magazine. I think that my magazine cover expresses genre of film in a very different way and it leads the readers into reading it without being too over the top, it has simple sentences that allows them to understand the context of what is inside without giving too much away. I understood that this could be somewhat of a risk due to the fact many other people were still really fixed upon everything having to be about horror, however many people really liked my idea and decided that the more modern look worked better for their magazine as well.

When choosing my image I wanted a very glamorous look, I wanted the photo to show the actor in their normal everyday life like many of the Total Film magazines do. This appeals to the audience in a very different way to the other two products due to the fact it engages the audience in as they are interested in the actors everyday life.  This technique is being used to draw the audience in as well as sell the film to a wider audience.

Draft Evaluation: Question One

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

Before starting my media product I made sure to educated myself on the key aspects of the horror genre, alongside much research onto what horror conventions work the best for successful trailers. This research allowed me to have a clear understanding of what does and doesn’t work well within our particular media area. Our media product has a strong use of contrapuntal music to build up the tension and create a dramatic feel. Music became vital for our trailer due to the fact when we were looking at our style models the music was the aspect that withheld the most tension and provoked the feeling of panic more than anything else in the trailers.

Our horror trailer was mostly a psychological thriller (a sub-genre of horror) with only a few aspects of gore added in to connote danger and death. I was influenced into this particular part of horror due to the fact I have studied the auteur ‘Hitchcock’ and I believe his talent for building suspense within his films work significantly well. I tried to mimic this suspense in my own work so that the build up of tension shocked the observers. I took on board Thomas Shatz theory and understood how important genre was for the development of my trailer, and therefor researched into who my stereotypical fan was and what they would conventions they would be looking for if watching our trailer. We understood that by using a few aspects of gore we were eligible to appeal to a wider audience (both psychological and gore fans) we were able to do this by using makeup and then editing the look of the makeup by using special effects. We cleverly noticed that many trailers like to show many aspects of horror despite the fact the horror is only one genre. We took this on board and made a success of appealing to both audiences. We received feedback from our class about the genre and both psychological and gore fans said that they would want to watch the film.

We started by making our trailer have a disrupted beginning forming into a broken down suspense and emphasizing the equilibrium being destroyed and normality no longer being a security. The thought of being lost in the woods and getting further and further away from home helps to set the scenes and convey a very uncertain and sinister mood. As a group we wanted this setting to be dark and mysterious and therefor did our best to edit the setting to make it look anonymous. In addition to this we used low-key lighting and parallel music that both automatically suggest to the audience that it is within the horror genre and therefor automatically starts the trailer off with a memorable starting point. This suspense allows us to start the beginning of a terrifying sequence of events that are about to occur. Again this beginning plot allows us to emphasize the work of Hitchcock from his film ‘PSYCHO’(1960). Hitchcock also begins by using an unnerving setting of a young girl travelling alone and a feeling of disorientation being forced upon us from the lack of normality from Norman and his mother. Loneliness is a key horror convention that many auteurs use to relate to a feeling that many people have experienced and therefor sympathies with.

I did an in depth analysis from the INSIDIOUS trailer, and therefor some of my inspiration from my own trailer comes from this. Within the INSIDIOUS trailer I liked how it started of with a basic story line, and then something occurred that disturbed the equilibrium. I thought that by using this method it automatically draws the audience in and makes them curious as to what is going to happen in the actual film. The insidious trailer worked very well at building up tension due to the fact it starts of slow and gradually builds pace. The music is also a key contribution to why it’s so affective. The strong use of contrapuntal music works really well when selling the storyline, we automatically get the impression that something isn’t right, and it is distinctive for horror fans to notice.

Due to the fact we had a female dominated group it made us unconsciously challenge some of the media genres. Normally males are a very active role throughout and the females are normally relatively passive (apart from the ‘final girl’) and due to the fact we only had one male in our group it made it easier for us to challenge this genre convention and make the females become the most important part of our trailer, full of strength and drive to try and escape death. I believe that due to the fact we were a female dominated group it made it easy to reveal our key female protagonists that embrace the strength of the role of a female and are not afraid to challenge gender stereotypes. We further emphasized this by showing that no ‘male hero’ was present and in fact three blonde haired girls were representing a different depiction of the stereotypical ‘bimbos’. We also researched that the final girl normally has dark hair that is tied back or short so we decided to keep a part of this convention and make the blonde girls have their hair tied back throughout the majority of the trailer. Our psychological killer is also a female character. When researching into the horror history, statistics show that the majority of psychological horror killers are normally male and therefor we also challenged this aspect of horror. Our killer was a female however was still able to bring fear to the audience.

We used intertitles not only to signify key words and phrases, this helped to give our trailer some identity and allow it to speak directly to the audience. Not only did this aspect of our trailer work well at drawing in our audience’s attention but it also allowed us to cut between scenes without any disorientation. This is a key way of using intertitles because many real life trailers use them to change the duration of speed throughout.

The use of costumes helped us to signify a personality of each person, for the normal everyday characters we had basic everyday clothes, the pathetic fallacy of the weather meant it was cold, wet and damp and therefor we were able to automatically make our psychological killer stand out as she was dressed in a long white gown which any other person would be frozen in. The gown was originally a pure white, however had been destroyed by two colors that symbolize danger and darkness. The two uses of costumes juxtapose one another and are able to show the big distinction between the good characters and the bad.

Ending with a jump scare is most typically found is psychological thriller trailers and therefor we decided to use one in our own trailer. The jump scare is used to leave the audience wanted more and therefor has to be explicit but also affective. The trick is to cut to black before we find out what has happened to the character. This inconclusive last shot leaves us on a cliffhanger, and makes the audience desperate to know what has happened. As a media student it is important to be aware of not only the part of media we are studying into but also the influences that help to promote it and therefor we added in a intertitle of a hashtag (hashtagGOCRAZY) this shows that as group we have a deeper understanding of the intertwining that the media posses alongside the important role that social networking provides us with.

I am a keen leader and I am able to understand the importance of organization, this particular aspect contributed well to the making of my trailer because I was able to apply this skill to the importance of scheduling the work on the trailer. Alongside this skill I also have an ability to recognize if shots work well or if they needed to be edited/reshot. This is a vital part in the success of our trailer, due to the fact I did not allow scenes to be anything less than accurate, and made sure that they looked to the best of our ability. Andrew Sarris Auteur theory suggests that directors put “their soul” into the producing of their films and therefor I believe that despite the fact I am only a student it still doesn’t prevent me from putting everything I have into making the trailer to the level of success that I have in mind. I was able to recreate styles from existing auteurs alongside adding in our own individual female driven narrative. As a group we opted to create a psychological horror dominated by a feminist viewpoint and therefor I believe that we were successful in our aim to challenge the stereotypical gender roles within horror.