Evaluation 2: Main and Ancillary Products

How Effective are the Combinations of Your Main Product and Ancillary Texts?

https://youtu.be/ixAXNz4a4Nk

For this task, I have made a voice over that will play over my psychological thriller trailer, including images of my poster and magazine. I have gone into detail about how I have linked my three main products through synergy and how effective my final products were at conveying the intended genre.

Script:

I have used stereotypical conventions of the psychological thriller genre and typical conventions of real media products in my trailer. I have used lots of synergistic elements that will allow my audiences to recognise my product even through different media platforms such as posters and magazines. Audiences will be able to recognise my main text through fonts, stylistic choices and characters. Saturating the market with synergetic references and links to our main text will help our title and any information be remembered, increasing the number of cinema-goers and revenue.

I have tried to use classic conventions, suited to different media platforms, for three media products. This was crucial when producing traditional and realistic outcomes as well as texts that are suitable for the designated genre. In each of the products, I have included conventions that will attract our target audience of 17-25, this range of audiences would be most likely to go to the cinema and enjoy complex narratives.

For my film poster, I decided to focus on the key scene from our trailer. I used a mid shot of a girl's legs, hanging off a bed and the girl holding a bottle of vodka. In the background, I have used a close-up of a hand, that I cut out, coming out from a dark area under the bed.

 I took inspiration from 'The Snowman' poster as they have used a direct scene from the film. However, real psychological thriller posters commonly focus on a main character's face's as they will be well known and will create star power, meaning they are recognisable and are likely to bring more audiences to the cinema. I used Photoshop to create this image and I used the gradient tool to create a dark and mysterious atmosphere from the left side of the poster and from under the bed. I used the magic wand tool to cut out the area around the original image of the hand and I placed the cut out in front of the background layer and behind the girl's legs. This creates the illusion that she is about to be grabbed which links to the narrative of the film. Our film focuses on a girl who loses her best friend and starts to go insane. Therefore, I have included a vodka bottle in the poster to refer back to her struggle in the narrative. Teenagers are stereotypically known for partying and being out with friends; to show this representation of an alone and distressed teenager may cause some concern and intrigue from the audience. I have added the actor's names at the top of my poster as this is a convention that is found in real media texts as it increases star power.

I included a reference to the antagonist in my trailer and poster although, it is uncommon for psychological thrillers to reveal their antagonist. However, I think that the way we have hinted towards them in our trailer and the vague reference I have made to them in my poster is ambiguous enough to create a bigger intrigue from audiences than not showing the antagonist at all. This will attract a thrill-seeking audience as well as teenagers who maybe be able to relate to the main characters.

Another way I have created synergistic links between my texts is by using the 'Brio' font. I have used this font for title and information in my trailer, poster and magazine cover. The title 'Left behind' has consistently been used in the same font ensuring audiences recognise it across all platforms. This convention makes my products look more professional and improves the effectiveness of my promotion.

For my magazine, I included a close up of one of the main characters in our trailer. Magazines classically focus on character's face's, looking directly at an audience to pull them in. I struggled at first with the main image as I didn't feel that a face would be recognisable to an audience because our trailer is quite vague and audiences wouldn't be able to match the trailer to the magazine. In the end, I settled on using a mysterious close up with a black to transparent gradient around the edges as well as the title underneath to link to our poster and trailer. I have included a barcode and production logo in the bottle right corner, as well as an issue number, price and website. These are real magazine conventions which further increase the effectiveness of my product.

In the trailer, we used special effects to create the illusion of a corrupted news report on the mother's telly. I did this by using static overlays and sound effects when editing. I cut up the static and used them over the original clip, leaving gaps so that you can still hear what is being said. News reports are very trusted sources and some people rely on them to be told about the world. I decided to create a corrupted report as this can create an uneasy atmosphere as when they go wrong it can create panic.  We also used filters over some of the clips to make them darker which links to the gradient effects I have used in my poster and magazine. Low key lighting and dark mysterious atmospheres are commonly found in psychological thrillers like 'The girl on The Train' as it plays with audiences primal fears and gets inside their heads.

In conclusion, I think that I have successfully used synergy across a combination of different media outlets allowing an audience to recognise and remember my products. I have tried to appeal to a teenage and young adult target audience by using stereotypical and classic psychological thriller conventions throughout my main product and ancillary texts. I know my target audience will be interested in our products as we have received positive feedback from our demographic when posting our trailer on Facebook.

Evaluation 4: New Media Technologies

How Did You Use New Media Technologies in the Construction, Research, Planning and Evaluation Stages? 

iPhone and iOS: My iPhone was the main technologies that I used throughout filming and planning. This technology allowed me to use apps that would let me communicate with Rachael. The apps I used for communication were iMessage and Snapchat. Snapchat was used to plan the cast and ask our friends if they would take part. I used the reminder app to send myself notifications for when to meet up with Rachael and when I needed to bring in equipment to school. I used the notes app on my phone to keep a 'to do' list that I could tick off as tasks were completed. The camera was also used on my phone for filming and planning. I used my iPhone camera to take pictures of our hand-drawn storyboards and mind maps to post on my blog. I also used my phone to take photos of our locations and characters when planning our trailer.

Facebook: I have used Facebook to send Rachael links to our trailer on YouTube and photos that we took for our poster and magazine cover.

Blogger: All of our research and planning for our trailer has been posted on blogger. I have found it really easy to use as it is accessible from school and at home.

Youtube: YouTube is a platform for sharing films and videos. I have used it throughout producing our trailer as I have posted every draft on my channel.







iMovie: We used iMovie to edit our trailer on. We chose to use iMovie as it is most compatible with other Apple software like our iPhones. This meant that when we footage or images from our iPhones to my mac book there was no need to convert or adjust them. I also used iMovie as I have



Photoshop: I have used Photoshop massively throughout producing our product. I have used it to make all the text transparent and create black backgrounds that fit the trailer. I used Photoshop when creating our production company logo. I did this by using the straight line tool to create a basic rectangle. I created small angled rectangles that are translucent for the windows. For my film poster, I used a plain image of some feet hanging from a bed next to a vodka bottle. The original photo I took was landscape but due to some unwanted details in the full image, I decided to crop it and make it portrait. To make the image longer I used the clone stamp tool on the floor and brought the wooden effect down to create the illusion of a long shot. I layered a black to transparent gradient over the bottom and the left-hand side to increase the illusion of a full image. This gradience also darkened the whole piece which links to my research on psychological thriller posters. I cut out an image of a hand I took and placed that underneath the girl's leg to make it look like she's going to get grabbed.

Powerpoint: We have used Powerpoint in the planning stages of our product when creating a pitch to present to our class about our initial ideas. We made different slides to discuss each topic such as the title, plot and cast. I used Powerpoint to create the text for our titles as this was the only application that had the font we wanted to use. We used a font called 'biro' and screenshot several different texts and used photoshop to adjust them to create our final texts.

Evaluation 3: Feedback

What Have You Learnt From Your Audience Feedback?

Throughout producing our psychological thriller trailer, we have created and posted several drafts which we have received feedback on. Each time we have taken the feedback on board creating another improved trailer. 

The comments we received from our first draft were mainly about the sound effects and the pace. To improve our trailer we shortened our clips to 1.5 seconds to keep the pace exciting and included dramatic sounds throughout. 

The ways we could further improve this draft were to make sure there were focal points within the trailer as we were told audiences wouldn't know where to look. We made sure to zoom in on some areas such as the phone when Sophie's mum is calling the police so it obvious that this is the focal point. 

The feedback we received for our third draft was to make some shots even fast to a create contrast against the slower ones that contain narrative. Our peers said that the beginning could be less chronological and we needed a stronger link to the title. We took this feedback on board and we sped up the trailer also including a quick pace montage consisting of 8 clips at 0.3 seconds just at the end. We added a written note, reading 'You've been left behind' to create a deeper link to the title. 

Draft Four Feedback

We have used Facebook to post our fourth draft to gain feedback from our family and friends. We felt this was a really good way to present our trailer as we can see statistics of how many people liked the video, shared and commented on it. Less than 24 hours after the video was posted we received  80+ interaction and 350+ views. 

Feedback

Build up in suspense is very effective

Enigma code is built

Enticed to watch the whole film

 

Improvements

Include more voice overs

Include intertexts

 

Audience feedback has taught us how to directly address our audience and appeal to our demographic. Feedback from our friends on Facebook was really helpful as they are all similar ages and they fit our target audience. All the comments we got from them were positive which tells us we successfully advertised to our planned audience. 

Evaluation 1: Media Conventions

In What Ways Do Yours Media Products Use, Develop or Challenge Conventions From Real Media Products?

Titles

Throughout creating our psychological thriller, we have tried to keep the classic conventions which we have found from researching already existing films and trailers.

For our title, we have used a handwriting font called 'Brio' which is similar to other fonts that can be commonly found in the thriller genre as it can have a chilling impact. We agreed on the title 'Left Behind' and we think this sounds more intriguing and thought-provoking than scary. We decided on a vague title name to get the audience asking questions like who’s left behind and why. This will get an audience interested and want to watch the film. We knew that our title and font would be used across multiple platforms like magazines and poster, so we chose to use a recognisable font.

We have kept our title short as titles usually only consist of one or two words like The Purge or Se7en. This is important as it makes the title rememberable for an audience as well as being vague enough that they will want to watch the film to find out what it means. Psychological thrillers commonly use white titles on black backgrounds so we kept to this convention to successfully convey the psychological genre.

‘Left Behind’ is a suited title to our film because the trailer we see that the main character’s best friend goes missing, leaving her behind. The title is said in the trailer, although it isn’t obvious if this is misleading to the audience as we have used non-continuity editing. Therefore, audiences will want to see the film and find out the true story.

Handwriting in thrillers is often used to be suggestive of communication from children, the terrified or the dead. Children are often used in psychological thrillers such as 'The Hand That Rocks the Cradle' because they are stereotypically very vulnerable.

The word ‘left’ suggest that this is a choice-less decision, the character has no choice but to be left behind. This word choice will leave audiences with a desire to know the situation in which they’ve had to be left behind. This adds another element of interest for an audience, enticing them to see the full film.  I think this title will appeal more to active audiences who will analyse and be interested in the details of our trailer.

Settings

The settings we have used at the beginning of the trailer are all homely and comforting like the kitchens and the bedrooms. We actively decided to use a house that we knew would create a sense of safety and establish equilibrium in the beginning. These settings are also very familiar to middle-class citizens and normal people, these people are also most likely to be regular cinema-goers which will create more of an impact on them as they may believe that the situations could happen to them in their own homes or to their families.

The settings change to more unfamiliar and harsh settings as the trailer moves on. For example outdoor locations, hostile and unwelcoming rooms. This has been done to make the audience feel uneasy and unsafe. E.g. Jenny's bed is not made in the last few scenes of our trailer which coveys an uncomforting and hostile environment. This element is also telling of how 'messed up' Jenny has gotten by this point of the film.

We avoided using country or rural settings as this is more representative of the horror genre.

Storyline

Rachael and I have tried to create a trailer that resembles a psychological thriller rather than a horror. As these two genres are very similar this was quite difficult. We tried to steer away from horror by not including jump scares in our trailer or lots of screaming. We left our trailer with on a cliff-hanger to entice the audience to watch the film in the cinema to find out what happens. We have created an ambiguous ending by showing a hand coming out from under the bed and then a voice-over of the main character saying ‘Sophie?’ This leaves the audience asking more questions than being scared or traumatised. Throughout the trailer, there is no obvious antagonist which leads the audience to imagine the worst thing they can. This can bring more fear and suspense to an audience than actually showing the face of the antagonist like they do in quite a few horror trailers.

Characters

Psychological thrillers often have many characters as some may go missing or there may be multiple storylines happening at once. We have only introduced four characters in our trailer. We think this makes the trailer and storyline easier to follow and understand. The antagonist is never fully revealed to the audience which keeps the audience in suspense and will mean they need to watch the film to see the reveal. This is conventional as antagonists are really identified in psychological thriller trailer and in the films they are either revealed at the end or not at all to increase the distress. For example, in ‘The Snowman’ we never see the killer. The outfits we chose for the characters to wear all came from our research into already existing psychological thrillers. It could be said that it isn’t obvious from our trailer which is the main character as they all have important roles in the synopsis. However, Jenny has the most screen time and helps the narrative develop the most, suggesting that she will be the main focus of the film.

We have portrayed Jenny and Sophie’s characters as best friends but as Sophie’s character goes missing in the first 10 seconds of the trailer, we never see them being best friends. There is evidence in the trailer that suggests we will be shown some of their friendship in the full film for example: when Jenny meets Sophie at her house before school and when they have been taking pictures together. This will be relatable to our target audience as most female teenagers have best friends who they do everything with. This will create sympathy from the audience as they will understand. We also have cast a mother character in our trailer. We think that this will provoke emotion in any older women who watch the film as they may have children of a similar age.

We have used teenagers as this is the demographic of people who are most likely to go to the cinema meaning they will be able to relate the most to the content. Teenagers are often seen as children by adults as they can be vulnerable and irresponsible. This could bring more fear to the adults watching as they are worried about the youths.

Props

The props we have used within our trailer are commonly used within the psychological thriller genre. For example the alcohol and the pills. This is because they have a psychological effect on your mental stability. The main character is seen drinking outside in the rain to create a pathetic fallacy and she is seen with pill packets in the kitchen. These props connote the desperation and despair of the character once her friend goes missing.  However, these props are more commonly linked to the antagonist as they are usually represented as unstable. This means that our representation of the protagonist in our trailer could be counter-typical. Additionally, the representation could be misleading; audiences would need to watch the full film to know if Jenny's character is really the protagonist.

We have used mobile phones in some of the scenes of the trailer as iconography. The use of phones shows the age of Jenny's character as it is stereotypical for teens to use their phones a lot. The phones also create verisimilitude within the trailer and make the situation feel more real to audiences.

Camera and Editing

For the shots that we wanted to be really steady like the bed shots and establishing shots of settings, we used a camera stabiliser, Dji OSMO. We kept some shaky hand help shots in the trailer to create an uneasy atmosphere and make the footage feel more real and gritty. Unlike successful production companies who have budgets for technical hardware, we have had to use our phones to film our trailer. We felt that the unsteady shots represented Jenny’s character and her journey from being normal and happy through to in despair.

We tried to show a variety of different shots as this is very important at keeping an audience interested and actively watching the material. We have used a variety of short and long clips throughout, gradually building to all short clips, creating a climax. We have used rhythmic editing in our trailer where the cuts are in sync with the music. The music we have used, we edited so that it gradually built up to a climax to match the visuals. This is very conventional in the majority of trailers throughout most genres. This technique can be found in ‘The Snowman’ which shows that we have linked to our research and have used technical conventions found in real media products.

We have used non-continuity editing which is heavily used in trailers. We have created non-chronological editing by including lots of clips that would make sense once you’ve seen the film in between key narrative points of the trailer. This is a stereotypical convention of the structure of trailers in general.

Special Effects

For special effects, we used filters over some of the shots to make them appear more visually grungy and dark as when we filmed it was full daylight and we thought this would ruin emersion of the trailer. To create the news report I used lots of effects when editing. I used a static overlay and cut to black transitions to make the footage appear corrupted. We avoided distorting the footage too far that it became unrecognisable because we didn’t want to disorientate the viewers or ruin the verisimilitude, decreasing the suspense and anxiety. When doing research into existing trailers, we did not find many special effects such as colour overlays or distortion. For the flashback moments of the two girls being best friends, I used the romance overlay filter on iMovie that blurred the edges of the footage, suggesting Jenny is drunk and this is that her vision looks like. This element also exaggerates that these images are from the past as they are fading memories.

Magazine Cover

I have created an unconventional magazine cover. Film magazine covers typically have a main image of the character from the feature film they are promoting. As we don't believe that our film would be recognisable from a face we have chosen to use a scene from the trailer that could be identifiable as Left Behind. I have created synergetic links between the trailer and the magazine by using the same font that we used for the title and release date at end of our trailer. I have tried to create a magazine cover that conveys the psychological thriller genre by using dark colours, white and some elements of red. I tried to avoid using too much red as it would become a horror magazine. I have used classic conventions of real film magazines such as; cover lines, pugs and gratifications.

Film Poster

From researching already existing film poster or psychological films we found that the posters commonly feature an image of the main characters face. I chose to focus on the key part of our trailer as I felt this was more significant and recognisable. I used the main image of some feet hanging off the edge of a bad with the person holding a bottle of vodka. I have edited a hand coming out from under the bed to create a direct link to our trailer. I started with the main image in Photoshop and blocked out under the bed with a black gradient. I selected the vodka bottle and copied it onto the layer above so it was unaffected by this. To make the hand come out from under the bed, I took close-ups of someone’s hand and cut it out. I pasted it onto a layer behind the girl's legs as if they’re about to be grabbed.

Draft Four

https://youtu.be/RcpeNIXzwfk

Draft Three

https://youtu.be/pQbt-fmJE6I

Feedback:

Make the shots even faster

Mix up the beginning, even more,

include a written note that relates to the title 'Left Behind'

Left Behind Magazine Cover

I have tried to link back to my research within my magazine cover as I have used red for the cover line titles and white text to help convey the psychological thriller genre.

 To create this magazine I used an image that relates to the trailer as the main image. I have used a filter over the image to create a dark and ominous atmosphere. I have used the font Impact for the cover lines, title and tagline. This is a typical convention found in already existing magazines as it is a strong, bold font.

I have used pugs and gratifications where the audience have been promised that they'll see certain things inside the magazine. I have included an issue number, prince, website, barcode and publication logo as these are found in all existing magazines.

The composition of this magazine is not entirely traditional as the image is off centre. Main images on front covers tend to be in the centre and are the first thing you see. As a close up of a characters face would not be the strongest synergetic link between the magazine and the trailer, we have used an image of a female looking out the window. The picture is off centre meaning that in the centre of the piece there is nothing interesting to look at.

After some feedback I received about my magazine cover, I have made some changes to the main image. I have changed the main image to be conventional and suitable for the genre. I have included the face of the main character from our trailer as this is more true to the psychological thriller genre. 

I have added more pugs and gratifications to fill up the empty space on the cover. 

 

 

I have moved the magazine title behind the characters head to create more of a mainstream magazine cover. Popular and mainstream magazines can cover some of their title as fans and readers will recognise the format.