David Perkins Evaluation

Introduction
My project is a promotional package for a British horror/thriller film. The film is called 'The Sight' and the project includes the film teaser trailer, the film's teaser poster and a magazine cover. I worked in a pair with Beth Eddleston. We both contributed to all aspects of the project however most of the filming and photography was done by me with Beth doing a lot of the poster and magazine cover. We both did equal amounts of the editing. We settled on our target audience to be males aged 16-25. We decided that the mainstreamers would be the best group to aim at taking into account psychographics.

What is unique about our product is that we have changed a few of the normal conventions of the horror and thriller genres to try and draw people in.

Genre

Our film genre is horror.

Codes and Conventions of Horror & Teaser Trailers

Some conventions of the horror teaser trailer include:

• tense and/or eerie music
• low key lighting
• extreme moments in the film (however the actual shots are not always in the finished film)
• POV shots (to create tension)
• creepy mise en scene e.g. blood, deformities etc. (our mise en scene included the contact lenses)
• it has to be long enough to catch the audience's eye without giving too much away about the story
• make the audience want to see more

Does our teaser trailer do what it is supposed to?

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Looking at all these things I would say yes it does.

Differences

We have kept very much to the codes and conventions of the genre. It is important for the audience to understand what is happening as they may reject something if it is too challenging.

'story makers depend on this recognition for instant communication with the audience'

G.Burton

 However, we have made little changes to these as we wanted to offer the audience something fresh and exiting without straying too far from the norm.

'the same but different'

N.Lacey

We have changed aspects of the genre by making the protagonist an outcast of society who is wanted by the police. We have also added coloured filters to the film which isn't typical of the horror genre and we have used an experimental sound track.

Where the differences effective?

I belive that the differences in the trailer where effective. Looking at the questionaire our audience stated

• the coloured filters did well in creating the atmosphere we intended
• we were told our use of soundtrack was interesting and effective
• we were told the music was different but it did its job well and created an uneasy atmosphere

Branding & Brand Image


Everything that is successful has a brand image. A brand image is something that the brand is trying to promote. For example, the brand image for Mac Donald's is that it is family friendly food and that it brings the family together. Their slogan to help promote this is 'we're loving it'.

The Brand image that we are trying to push is that everyone is a hero. We do this as in the trailer, magazine cover and poster they all focus on our protagonist being a loner or the fact that he is different. Also the image tries to seem scary, realistic and unique. The colours we use to create the brand image are red and black as together these colours give a freaky feel.

The Brand image is carried through in the poster.

The brand image is also in the Magazine Cover. The magazine cover gives us a freaky feel and it also shows us the fact that our protagonist is an outcast from society.

We can see that films such as The Dark Knight also have a very distinctive brand image and these show in the poster and magazine covers.

Audience

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Listening to the audience feedback and looking at the questionnaires I think that we did a very good job in making the target audience enjoy it and they seemed to give a lot of positive and supportive feedback.


Target Audience

• Our target audience is 16-25 year old Caucasian males in the working class. This is because they are the majority of the cinema audience. (this is good as groups of young men are the most likely to go out and see a horror film)
• According to demographic profiling on a socio-economic scale is D (semi-skilled e.g. assembly line workers, cleaners).(This is good as these are one of the groups of people who usually go and see films at the cinema)
• Looking at psychographic profiling I think that this film should be aimed at the mainstreamers. This is because we are aiming at the largest area of the population and that we are using a well known British brand: DNA Films.

Our secondary target audience is most likely to be:

• Females of the same age and ethnicity as our primary target audience as they are likely to go with groups of males, females or may go on a date.
• I think the secondary demographic audience would be E as these people have more time and they are more likely to go to watch a film for escapism. This is also the category that our protagonist fits into (unemployed), therefore people in this group may be able to relate to our protagonist.
• The secondary psychographic profiling group would be the aspirers. This is because they like smart and high tech things, our film may appeal to these due to the smart and unique editing.

It is important to have a secondary audience as if you don't have enough people from your primary audience going to the film to make a profit then the secondary group will have to make up the numbers, hopefully getting the profit needed.

The group mainly consisted of our primary or secondary target audience. This is good as it means the audience we asked questions to are the people that have given us the feedback. This has helped us as their negative and complementary criticisms have helped us understand what we would do to improve our project.

The audience we tested

Looking at these graphs on the audience we showed our product to, the majority of them fall within our target audience.

Reflecting on the feedback I think that if anything was going to be changed I would try and film the trailer in more locations and more interesting places than the streets and houses. I would have been round and looked for a few places that could be better to create more of an eerie mood. Also to do with the ancillary tasks I would have made the poster stand out a bit more. I would have put more eye catching things on it to draw the audience in a bit more and maybe had a little bit more information about the film.

Use of creative technology

Through the duration of my project I used many different pieces of technology. Some of these included:

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I think now I understand how to use all the technologies I have used in detail, even the ones I had no experiance in using before.

Conclusion

I think the product as a whole has been a success as it does everything that we intended it to do. The trailer helps draw in the audience and also creates enough enigmas to get the people who have seen the trailer to want to see the film. I think it was well edited and that it flows really well. The music is very successful in creating the atmosphere intended. However I think that if it had been shot in more locations it would have been more successful. The poster and magazine cover catch the eye and are both very successful in the way they draw people in to see more of the film products. The pre-production planning was all very successfully carried out and helped the production of the products come along well. The post production and audience feedback was also very useful in helping me to understand what changes I would make to the products if I was to re-create any of them. The products have all been successful, according to the audience, in doing their job and they have all received more positive comments than criticisms.
I think that I have made many improvements and I feel I have made my mark well in the contribution to this project. I feel I have organised well with the rest of my group and that I will be able to do everything again. I think my camera and photography skills have improved along with all other aspects of the work. This project has helped me to understand more about how to create a successful trailer. The next step will be to create a short film along with a poster to go with it.

Evaluation: Bethany Eddleston

Introduction
My Project is a promotions package for a British horror/thriller called 'The Sight'. The promotions package includes a teaser trailer, a magazine cover in which my film is the main article and a teaser poster. I worked with one other person called David Perkins. the work was spread out evenly between the two of us with David doing most of the filming and photography, and I did most of the ancillary task work. The editing of the trailer was done equally between the two of us.
The target audience for my project is 16-25 year old males, the majority of which would fall into the mainstreamers group in relation to psychographics. The pleasure that my film would satisfy in relation to Blumler, Katz and McQuail's uses and gratifications theory is the diversion/escapism pleasure. I think my product will appeal to this audience because it is a British film rather that a Hollywood blockbuster. The age group my product targets is the main audience for cinema and film, and my product particularly targets males because of it's genre.

Question One: In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop Or Challenge Forms And Conventions Of Real Media Products?
TEASER TRAILER:

The genre of my teaser trailer I have created is British horror/thriller. The genre is conveyed through the use of generic conventions. The generic conventions I have used are:

• Voyeuristic point of view shots (shown in picture)
• Low key lighting
• The use of sound/music to create tension and fear
• Typical mise en scene e.g. scary contact lenses

It is important to use typical elements of the genre in the teaser trailer to convey the genre properly. If you deviate from the genre too much it could cause confusion as to what genre the product actually is, typical elements create an instant recognition for the audience and it is this recognition that makes the genre enjoyable.

"The story makers depend on this recognition (of the genre) for instant communication with the audience"

-Graeme Burton (2000)

However, my product does have elements that make it different to other typical products of it's type. These differences are:

• Music is experimental, however the audience said that it was effective
• Colour filters are not very typical of the horror genre but my group got positive feedback about them

It is vital to do something new to the genre because the product needs to deviate away from the norm enough to make it exciting and different, bit not too much as to put the audience off.

"(A product needs to be) a mixture of the familiar and the unexpected"

- Graeme Burton (2000)

I thought that my innovation would prove to be successful because they demonstrate parts of the narrative as well as looking effective. The blue colour filter represents the world that the protagonist sees when his eyes are closed and the red colour filter represents the world through the eyes of the creature. Also, the music adds a more gritty feel to the trailer which is typical of British films.
This teaser trailer for '28 Days Later' (2002) Danny Boyle, has elements in it that are typical of British horror films and therefore elements that I have used in my trailer. For example the shots in which shadows are used to represent the monster:

MAGAZINE COVER:
The magazine cover that my group has created is that of a film magazine called 'Empire' We have used many of the conventions of a magazine cover in our product, the horror genre is also conveyed effectively in the product due to the colour scheme of black, white and red:

As you can see my group have used many of the typical conventions of a magazine cover.
There aren't many differences to a typical magazine cover in my product. However one difference is that we didn't use direct address in our magazine cover which is something that is very typical of magazine covers. I think this worked because it creates enigmas and adds mystery to the picture.

POSTER:
The genre of the poster that my group has created is a teaser poster for a British horror/thriller. It has many of the typical elements of a teaser poster as shown in this comparison with the teaser poster for 'Cloverfield' (2008) Matt Reeves:

None of the posters give away any information about the film, however they do convey the genre of the film. The cloverfield poster obviously shows that the genre of the film is a disaster/horror film, and the poster that my group has created clearly conveys the genre to be horror. This is done through the images such as the destroyed Statue of Liberty in the cloverfield poster and the colours such as the black and red used in my poster.

We gained very positive feedback for the poster in our audience testing, in which they commented that the eyes used in the the poster are very effective in creating fear.

Question Two: How Effective Is The Combination Of Your Main Product And Acillary Texts?

BRAND IMAGE:

The brand image for my product is a scary, supernatural and unique. This is reflected in the logo for our film:

My ancillary tasks also reflect the brand image of my film, they do this in many ways such as:

• The same colour scheme is used across all three of my products, we used black, red and white to convey the genre of the film and also to push the brand image of the film. The connotations of these colours are danger, blood, evil etc. which clearly demonstrates my brand image.
• The music used in my teaser trailer also conveys the brand image of my film due to it being eerie and creepy, to show the supernatural and scary traits of my brand image, but the beat that is added to the music shows that the film is unique.
• The editing of the trailer is of a slower pace than most other horror film teaser trailers, this creates a creepier atmosphere showing the supernatural trait of my brand image.
• When I created the magazine cover I replicated the layer of the two girls stood behind the protagonist to create a sense that there is many of them, they are also in black and white and blurred. This potrays the supernatural side to the film as it creates a sense that the two girls may or may not be real.

The institution that would distribute my product would be a British film company like 'DNA'.

This is the company that we added to the beginning of the trailer to make it look more authentic. This company would distribute my product because it has created similar films before, such as '28 Days Later' (2002) Danny Boyle, and the sequal to this film; '28 Weeks later'(2007) Juan Carlos Fresnadillo. This is the teaser poster for '28 Weeks Later':

As you can see, this poster has the same colour scheme and gritty style that is pushed in our brand image.
Question Three: What Have You Learned From Your Audience Feedback?
To illustrate my audience feedback my group has filmed our class watching our trailer and giving us feedback on it. This is the video of this feedback:

• The target audience for my product would be 16-25 year old males, with a socio-economic status of B downwards.
•  The majority of the audience would probably fall into the mainstreamers group in relation to Young and Rubicam's cross-cultural consumer characteristics. This is a good audience to target as it includes the age group that visits the cinema the most, this also means that targeting this group would be good for the film financially aswell.
• The secondary audience for my film would be independant film fans. This is because my film is British rather that a big budget Hollywood blockbuster.
  We have used audience feedback a lot in our project. The font for the logo was chosen by the audience as we created a sheet with many different fonts on and got the audience to choose which one the felt was the most suitable for out film. The design for the poster was also chosen by the audience as I drew up many different designs and, again, asked the audience which one they liked the most. The audience have therefore had a massive influence on my groups work.
  

The feedback that my group gained from questionnaires that we created after we had created the final product, was extremely positive and showed that we had created something that our target audience would enjoy. Reflecting on the feedback my group gained, if I could have done anything differently the only thing would be that I would have shot the trailer in a few more locations to make it more varied.

Question Four: How did You Use Media Technologies In The Construction, Research, Planning And Evaluation Stages?
I have used many new and different technologies to create my products:

• Apple Mac: All of the work me and my group did was done on an Apple Mac computer. Although the internet was slow, using a Mac made it easier for my group to complete our project. This is because the programs on the Mac, such as the editing software, are much better than those that would be on a PC.

• Final Cut Express: To create our teaser trailer, I used a program called 'Final Cut Express'. This program was quick and simple to use and made it simpler for my group to create our trailer, I found it to be much better than 'Imovie', which is the program i used to create my AS media project last year. However, my group did encounter some problems whilst working with 'Final Cut Express. When we tried to upload some more footage into our project, the footage that we had uploaded before this became corrupted. This meant that we had to upload all of the footage again and re-edit it. This took up valuable time when we were creating our project. Another problem that I encountered was trying to edit a particular part of my teaser trailer. In one scene in the trailer the protagonist is walking down an alleyway and two males are behind him, the boys then fade and disappear out of the shot. This was very tricky to edit as the timing of the fade had to be absolutely perfect or the protagonist would look like he was missing a step and jumping forward. It took me nearly an hour and a half to get this absolutely perfect.

• Photoshop: To create both ancillary tasks my group used a program called 'Photoshop'. This was the most reliable and problem-free program I used in creating my project. It took a while to fine-tune the products, but the products look authentic because of the time spent on them. I found the paint brush tool to be the most useful tool in the program, as this was the tool that was used to create things such as the blood splatters in the title of the trailer and the speckles used on the eyes in the poster. This tool was the most helpful in creating an authentic and professional looking product.

• YouTube: I used the internet in my project to research similar products and the history of the teaser trailer amongst other things. I used 'www.youtube.com' to find and upload similar teaser trailers, and to gain inspiration for my product by watching other teaser trailers.

• Google: 'www.google.com' was another useful website that my group used a lot in our project. The things we used google for include: researching other/similar promotions packages to the one that we were planning to create and finding a copyright-free soundtrack.

Nearly all of the technologies I have used in creating this project were new to me, but I now feel that I can use them with ease.
Conclusion
In conclusion I think the project as a whole has been a success. This is because all three products do what we intended them to do and convey the genre of the product effectively. The trailer restricts the audience's knowledge enough to create enigmas and make them want to watch the film, but not too much as to confuse them. The magazine cover and teaser poster catch the eye and draw people in so they watch the film. The planning my group did beforehand helped greatly in the production of my products. This is also true of the audience feedback my group gained throughout. All in all, I believe this project to have been a successful and productive one.