QUESTION ONE

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

 Develop and Challenge

• Our final trailer took great inspiration from the thriller genre and from 'The Silence of the Lambs' which is a film of the same genre as our final trailer. We noted conventions and key ideas in the film and developed them to create ideas and a new narrative for our own teaser trailer. We found the trailer for Silence Of The Lambs and many other films of the thriller genre and used this as further inspiration.

• We deconstructed trailers to see what elements were common in the thriller trailers we found. Deconstructions can be found in the research or deconstructions section of the blog.

• Similarly to the film, we used the idea of kidnapping in our trailer. We chose to feature kidnapping as it was an issue that had recently been in the news. We researched the kidnapping stories and posted our findings in an earlier blog post. 

• We used elements from these stories in our trailer. We read some 'true life' books about children who had been kidnapped and abused. We showed shots of girls tied up in a cellar, and taped up as this leaves the fate of the girls and the reason behind their kidnapping open the the imagination of the audience. By leaving factors open to the imagination, we have used an element of the narrative in The Silence of the Lambs, but also created intrigue which is important in a trailer. By doing this we were also conforming to the ambiguity convention of a teaser trailer.

• We used photography/stills of dead and injured bodies in our trailer as well as anchorage (i.e 'amputation...') as this further allows the audience's imagination to decide the ending and the narrative to increase the intrigue. By only displaying these photographs for a small amount of time we were not allowing the audience to focus on the image, therefore adding confusion. 

• We developed the convention of female victims by using multiple victims. In the trailer they appear innocent victims that the audience can identify and sympathise with, but if we were to make the whole film, the audience would later discover that they aren't entirely innocent (bullies). This subverts audience expectations thus creating EVEN MORE INTRIGUE!

• The killer/villain in The Silence of the Lambs kidnapped and killed his victims so he could collect skin to make a costume of a woman's body pre-surgery (he wanted a sex change). We used the same idea of kidnapping which is seen in our trailer through the unclear anchorage, shots of girls kidnapped and the use of stills of human body drawings

• This suggests our killer has a deep/mysterious fascination with the human anatomy.

• Our trailer conforms to teaser trailer conventions as typically teaser trailers are 30-60 seconds long. - Ours is 62!

• Trailers of the thriller genre as our trailer starts off slow and with a state of equilibrium (Todorov) and builds up speed and tension towards the end.

•  Trailers also use music that is in keeping with the mood of the trailer/genre. Our trailer conforms to this convention as the soundtrack is not only synchronous to the editing and pace of the trailer, but it also is parallel to the mood and genre of the trailer.

• We challenged the conventions of the trailer as teasers are typically released/made 1 year prior to the film's release. The films are usually high budget films. Ours was not a high budget film!

• We also did not use voice overs in our teaser trailer as it would have ruined the tone and genre conventions of or trailer's genre.

• Although it is not directly featured in our trailer, our villain is female; this challenges genre conventions and audience expectations.



QUESTION TWO

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

Our teaser trailer is combined effectively with our ancillary tasks. Our poster and website all collectively contribute to the thriller/crime genre. 

The common themes are the use of images. Our wound photographs are used on our website, our trailer and one is used as the image for out poster. 

We used the wooded images on our website as a background and these also feature in our trailer.

We used the same colour scheme's on out website and poster.

Our poster is particularly effective as it draws on one of the still images that becomes almost iconic to this genre. As with films such as Silence of the Lambs, the image clearly DEPICTS a violent death and yet only displays part of the body thus leaving the true horrors of the crime to the audience's imagination.  

We combined black and white images with colour images to create intrigue.

The visual connection between our teaser trailer and ancillary tasks helps to brand our product and promote our trailer. The colour schemes, locations and still images all compliment each other and are evident in both our ancillary tasks and our coursework production. We used a shot from out teaser trailer as the profile pictures on our facebook and twitter pages. We used a crime - thriller colour scheme on our youtube channel.

  

Our task was to produce a promotional package. Producing the ancillary tasks and keeping audiences updated on the progress of our trailer via  facebook and twitter meant people were more aware of what our teaser trailer would be like

We deconstructed and drew inspiration from other posters to make our final poster realistic and of the same standard/in keeping with our teaser trailer and website.

These posters were are main inspiration due to their colour scheme. We noticed through out deconstuctions of films that blue and grey were common colours reflected in the crime - thriller genre.

QUESTION THREE

What have you learned through audience feedback?

Before we started filming we sent our a link via facebook, twitter, deviantart, and e-mail to a questionnaire on piratesurvey.com.

As a group we had a rough idea of what genre we wanted our trailer to be like, so we created questions that let the audience tell us how best to produce a teaser trailer they would enjoy.

The feedback we received from the questionnaire influenced us when starting to film our trailer, we knew we needed convincing and intriguing characters. We needed images the hooked the audience but didn't give away too much of the plot. This was some of the results we received from the questionnaire.

Before we started filming, we knew that make-up would be one of the main things we would have to experiment with.

 

 The make-up had to look realistic so we looked up 'how to' video's on youtube for inspiration. When practising with make-up we went to a possible location and took photographs as we worked. We posted these pictures on several social networking sites to gain feedback on how effective and realistic our make-up looked.

When we started filming our teaser trailer, we were posting video's on youtube of our progress, so the public could comment and leave us constructive feedback. We also created our own twitter, facebook and flickr pages so people could leave us feedback, and we could let people know how our trailer was coming together.

As we came to the point of editing our footage together we asked our media teachers and other students for advice on what aspects looked more appealing to them and what could be improved.

When we had a roughly edited version of our teaser trailer we exposed it on facebook and youtube.  

We also posted links to this video on our twitter page and deviantart.

We knew there was still work to be done on our trailer and the feedback we got on youtube and deviantart allowed us to create our final edit as the audience wanted it.

Our group and other media students were involved in a showcase to year 12 students. Our teaser trailer was shown, and because we had a small focus group, we could collect more detailed feedback. The feedback we received told us that we had conformed to audience feedback from our questionnaire at the beginning of our coursework.

We learnt that the shots we deliberately placed at the end of our trailer were effective as these were described as people’s favourite/most memorable shots. Our choice of placement was well chosen and correct.

The focus group feedback let us know that the sound in our trailer was effective because it had been edited and layered to fit with how the images were being shown. When we collected the results from our questionnaire, people said that sound was one of the main things that could ruin a trailer but our feedback for sound was positive.

From the feedback at the focus group we learnt that our trailer fitted our genre ''very well'' and that overall camerawork, editing and sound were the most effective elements in our trailer.

Audience feedback allowed us to create an effective poster. We did not have much experience with making a poster so we collected small groups of people and asked them about the visuals in our poster. We had two examples, one where the image was fully in colour and one where only the wound was in colour. The feedback we received told us the the second option was more appealing, therefore we used this one for our poster.


The audience had initially commented on the importance of anchorage and later highlighted that our ambiguous anchorage (i.e. "Amputation...") is one of the most terrifying aspects of our trailer. 

Overall we have learnt that constantly keeping the audience updated and asking for their feedback, allowed us to produce a teaser trailer that fulfills audience expectations.

QUESTION FOUR

HOW DID YOU USE NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH, PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGES?



Construction

·         With access to more advanced modern technology and an understanding of the proccess/software (cameras using SD memory cards and imovie HD editing software) we could create a more professional finish to our trailer during production and post-production. For example we could add effects to our shots to enhance the feeling of fear/shock/serenity that they give or to make it look like something else entirely. An example of this is a long shot of one of our main characters walking down a country lane [seen below] where we increased the saturation and contrast to make the image starker, and therefore, more unnatural and eerie. The newly edited image and the fact that the girl was walking slowly combined with the broken up images makes that audience feel tense and also creates a sense of equilibrium to further emphasise the contrast and disorder later seen in the trailer.

·   After downloading and extracting uncopyrighted sound from the internet*, we used garageband to edit and cut sounds to create our soundtrack. We also used sample music saved to the MACs and incorporated them into our soundtrack. The modern and simple programme, Garage Band, allowed us to easily change the tempo and edit the non diegetic sound to fit with the mood and the editing of our trailer and well as conform to the conventions of our psychological crime thriller genre. We also cut sound effects from music videos and other trailers (of all genres) by recording them on our Panasonic video camera, importing and editing them on Garage Band and iMovie.


* Youtube.com, video2mp3.net

 As we became more skilled in using this software we were able to time our trailer more precisely so that the shots, the sound, editing, anchorage, and still shots were all synchronous to one another. One of the opinions expressed in our questionnarie results that we took into accoutn, was that sound that is parallel to the genre and mood of trailers is better than contrapuntal sound.

·         We learnt how to use the Adobe Photoshop CS4 and Serif DrawPlus7.0 software’s to edit and enhance our crime scene photographs and create unique fonts that we included within our trailer. We also used these programmes to produce our poster. (click here to view our poster development process.)


This enabled us to enhance certain aspects of the still shots. For example the paleness of the “dead” body’s skin in contrast with the redness of a wound for example in our poster as seen below.

Research/Planning

·          Creating a blog on the website www.blopspot.com gave us an area with which to gather and collate our research so that it could be better analysed and each member of the group had easy access to it.

·         We used the Internet to search through www.youtube.com to search for tutorials on imovie techniques in order to brush up on our existing editing skills (uploading and using photographs) and learning new ones (how to create a green screen).  The Internet also gave us easy access to films and past trailers that we could deconstruct for inspiration and researching genre conventions.

·         As we were going to make our characters look as though they had been injured we also searched through make-up tutorials on how to create realistic looking scars, wounds and bruises and practised these before filming whilst posting photographs on deviantart, facebook and flickr.

·         We also used the Internet to research pre-existing texts and trailers to get some ideas for our own, we 'favourited' these video's on youtube so we could constantly use them as references.

·         Again, using the Internet we created a questionnaire on piratesurvey so that we could gain specific ideas from out target audience as to what they feel makes a successful/enticing film trailer.our questionnaire we made on piratesurvey at the beginning of our project let people answer our questions about our intended trailer.

Evaluation

• We posted our finished teaser trailer onto the Internet (www.youtube.com) so that we could gain feedback from the general public and gain an overall view of how it has been received. Our video was also shown at a media screening/focus group where audience gave their feedback on our final trailer.