Question 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction, research & planning and evaluation stages?

Super-8 Footage

Unfortunately, despite investing in a super-8 video camera, film, processing and conversion, due to the extensive time process in which the vintage film takes to be sent off and prepared, we ran out of time and therefore could not use this unique technology in our trailer. We thought this would have introduced something original and very recognisable within our trailer that our audience would have appreciated. The effect the style of film would have created would have suited our genre perfectly and fitted in with the conventions and forms of the Horror genre. If the process was not as complicated and time consuming, we would have included this element in our trailer .

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Evaluation Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We recorded the reactions of nine members from our target audience of teenagers/young adults aged between 16-21 as they watched our trailer. All of them appeared to show that the trailer was having an affect on them, mostly an emotional response and a sense of shock, others felt a visceral response and showed disgust through facial expressions. One member of our target audience even removed her headphones (1.22) and wanted to stop watching as she was scared the trailer was going to make her 'jump', which is what we aimed to do when we first initialised our target audience research.

We uploaded our media products to social media sites such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube and allowed the advantages of Web 2.0 to take place as our audience not only watched and viewed our trailer, poster and magazine cover, but they also commented, liked, shared, favourited and retweeted. This is relevant to the Uses and Gratifications Theory which allows the audience to become involved via the internet, this has affected the production of our work as by receiving feedback from the audience, this has allowed the audience to almost 'control' our media product to suit their individual consumerist needs, as well as our media product to 'control' them in the sense of the Effects Model, allowing them to be influenced by our products.

This allowed us to gain feedback on what our target audience actually felt about our project, the majority of the feedback and comments we received were positive. All of the comments and feedback is shown in the pictures above.

Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

How do they link?

Each of our three media texts link together and use synergy to intertwine and support each other, such as the font, colour scheme and images. The main relations between each of our texts are the style of font and colour scheme consisting of dark colours, low-key lighting and shadows. Our audience will be able to recognise that both our theatrical poster and magazine cover link with our movie trailer, Durlock, not because of the title being displayed on each, but due to the specific colours used, dismal theme each and the antagonist character of Elsie appearing throughout, which we attempted to use as a form of an iconic figure, seen in other horror films such as 'Scream'. We took photographs to be used for our magazine cover and poster at the same time that we recorded shots for the trailer, this was to show a continuation in the use of the setting as we wanted each of our products and texts to portray the setting of the main trailer. This would allow the audience to recognise that each product links together due to the recognisable scenes.

In our trailer, there is a consistent clip of the villain antagonist, 'Elsie' who appears frequently between clips, allowing the audience to realise that she is an important character and therefore should be feared by our audience. This iconic image of Elsie slowly walking towards the camera has been overlaid onto the theatrical poster as a movie still/photograph, a similar image is also used on the front cover of the magazine we created. This shows synergy as the image is a consistent theme running throughout our main product and ancillary text, it allows the audience to recognise the main basis of the storyline and recognise that our products are linked, hopefully creating an effective combination that would be expected from our target audience.

Our film's logo is the text (Roman Antique) which displays the film title 'Durlock' clearly on every text we have created.

We also used the image of Elsie walking towards the camera as an iconic logo and unique selling point in which our film will hopefully be recognised by. Such as in Scream there is the 'mask' and in The Ring there is the girl crawling towards the camera. This part of our trailer/poster/magazine cover has already proven to be effective with our audience, as seen in our audience feedback video (evaluation question 3) the viewers stated that this particular scene was very effective. 

The combination of our main product and ancillary texts could have been more effective. If we had more time, we would have finalised and completed our teaser posters, (see teaser poster blogpost). We thought this idea would have been effective as once again, it uses the image of 'Elsie' slowly getting closer to the camera and therefore audience. We would have used this as a metaphor to suggest that as the film is closer to being released, the closer 'Elsie' gets to the audience. In a marketing plan we would have released a teaser poster every couple of weeks to show the progression that 'Elsie' had moved to and to initiate that the film is getting closer to being released.

Evaluation Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

A few of these slides do not work properly for some reason, for The Conjuring trailer (and analysis) see blogpost titled that and for Durlock trailer, see blogpost below.

Slide 15 is a link to our target audience research post :

http://twistedcarousel.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/target-audience-research.html

with the accompanying text "Target audience research post shows the extensive primary research we carried out to directly gather an idea of what our target audience wanted. We managed to satisfy their consumer needs in our main product and ancillary texts.

Durlock Trailer Final Cut

Magazine Cover

Designed by Kate Barnes

The magazine front cover was based on the real media product of 'Empire Magazine' (see evaluation question 1). The main image is a close up of the villain antagonist 'Elsie' which directly addresses the audience through the use of eye contact. The image has been edited using the online website www.picmonkey.com which allowed me to change the temperature, exposure, saturation and edit the eye colour of the image to appear darker and therefore conforming to the forms and conventions of the horror genre.

The masthead was overlaid on the image using Photoshop and InDesign, where the other headlines, plug/puff, banner, barcode and general layout of the magazine were formed together. 

The storylines/headlines are relevant and would therefore appeal to the target audience of a film fanatic who would be reading this magazine.

I incorporated iconic rating stars to show the audience that their has been a review of this film despite it's new release. This element requires shared knowledge from the audience and therefore entices and encourages them to read the magazine and take an interest in our other ancillary text and main product.

Magazine Front Cover Process

We decided to select this image as a magazine front cover as there is a large amount of space around the main focus of the image, this is also a dark and plain background which allows us to add clear cover lines that will be easily read by our target audience. There is use of eye contact which shows that the model is directly addressing the reader and therefore drawing them in. The image is also a close up as this shows detail and draws the audience in as the main image is clear and large.

The image also presents the audience with an image of one of the main protagonists 'Elsie', this is recognisable for the audience as this image is used in our trailer and theatrical poster as an iconic image and use of synergy. 

We edited the images on Photoshop and adjusted the exposure levels and reduced the saturation by laying a grey filter over the top to give the image of the protagonist as little colour as possible. This connotes death which is a convention for our Horror genre.

We came up with the idea of calling the magazine 'Cine' as it is a term that is recognised and widely used in the film industry. We also took inspiration and found the title of the magazine relevant to our actual film trailer as we will be using a cine camera (super-8) to give an aged effect.
We wanted to use the colour red as it is the first colour seen by the human eye, and therefore attracts the attention of the target audience. We used this font as it gives a vintage look which is relevant to the title of the magazine, we also laid a copy of the title text over a lighter colour to give the pale shadows.

We are unsure of the colours and placement of the magazine title at the moment, as the shade of red seems almost too contrasting with the black background of the main image. The moon in the image is also in an awkward position so we have decided to remove or possibly move the moon to make the image seem more realistic and fit better.

We edited the image on picmonkey.com and applied a focus zoom effect to give a ghostly and more transparent look to the image, we also darkened the eyes and increased the level of shadows to draw more attention to the eyes from our audience.

After careful reconsideration, we changed our magazine cover to represent an actual media product, 'Empire Magazine'. The logo was transferred and overlaid across the image as a masthead on InDesign and Photoshop. 

This images show the process and effects we used to create a realistic layout of a film magazine that represents a realistic media product.