Evaluation Question 4:

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
First of all, Joey and I did some basic research into horror movies using the internet. We used iTunes Horror Movies to look at horror movie trailers and increase our knowledge of typical conventions used in them. I believe this helped us a lot in the construction of our trailer as we got to look at horror movies from the past, present and future and use that to make ours appeal to the future generation. Using the internet made our research and planning a lot easier.
To begin filming Joey and I decided we would use his own camera and tripod so that we weren't stuck with the responsibility of someone elses. This made it a lot easier to film as we already knew everything about that specific camera and no more time was needed to learn about it. After filming, we used iMovie HD to do the editing. This gave us the chance to make our trailer look more professional and detailed by adding in titles, music and pictures. Due to our research we knew roughly what we wanted our trailer to look like and iMovie let us do this. Before this task, I had never used iMovie before, so it was all very new to me. Thankfully Joey has had previous experience in this piece of software so he taught me a lot. At first, we just messed about whilst editing. It gave us the chance to see what the trailer would like with and without certain shots, with different length shots and different amounts of shots. The purpose of this was to see what worked best. Whilst doing this, we realised short quick shots worked to build the tension in the trailer which was a convention we saw in other horror movie trailers. I found iMovie the best way to edit our trailer. It did everything and more to help make our trailer look exactly how we wanted it to look.
In terms of our Movie poster and Magazine cover we used Adobe Photoshop to create the perfect poster and magazine cover. During our research we looked at many magazines and movie posters. Before this task, I had used Photoshop before so I found this task a lot easier than the editing of the trailer. I also knew how to use DaFont.com to download fonts and use them in Photoshop. Although I was confident using Photoshop, there were some things I was not sure on doing. Things like adding emphasis on certain parts of the images without it looking fake was very hard for me but after a lot of trial and error with the opacity it worked very well. 
Whilst making my blog, I was worried about making it varied in terms of the ways I communicate with the viewer (i.e. presentations, videos, posts). I am very proud of my blog as I managed to use websites that I had not preivously used such as Prezi.com and Slideshare.com. I personally found using these websites very hard but managed to overcome this difficulty and persevere.

Evaluation Question 3:

What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Joey and I collected feedback in a couple different ways:

• Facebook group
• Video commentary (Audience Feedback)
• Asking people in person

I have made a post on feedback which you can read from this link: Feedback.
We received feedback for our trailer, movie poster and magazine cover when we thought we had finished them all. The majority of people we spoke to were people within our target audience (teens or horror fanatics) so this helped us make our campaign appeal more to our target audience. 
Changes were made after feedback was taken and now on our facebook page, people have said that the poster, trailer and magazine cover looks a lot like a real campaign and the horror genre is really obvious. Our audience feedback gave us a chance to understand what they think of what when they think of horror films and incorporate that into our campaign. Things included colours of titles, images and professionalism.
Charlie Ward was a main part of our audience feedback as he looks at our trailer in a way professional way. His feedback was very positive. His only critique was to emphasise the shock of the titling. This we did with a white flash. Our music also increased the shock and tension and the audience have said the music is a very important part of our trailer and ours makes our trailer a lot more tense and horrific.    

Evaluation Question 2:

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
To promote our new horror movie, Joey and I created many different ways of getting it out and seen by our peers and the public.  

Marketing campaign

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Recognition of genre:
After people watched our trailer, they said the genre of the film was really obvious. This was the main aim of the trailer and to attract our target audience. According to our target audience, our movie poster and magazine cover also represent the horror genre. 
Internet:
Using websites such as Facebook and Youtube made our campaign more accessible to our peers. We found it the easiest way to get our campaign seen as most teenagers use the internet these days and teens are our target audience.  


To promote our campaign, we wanted to find something unique about our trailer to use. Our Unique Selling Point is that it is set in a theatre. We also used the fact that our trailer is very British. Using these facts gave us the chance to reach out to a wider audience; not only those that like horror movies but people that are interested in drama and especially British drama. In terms of our trailer being British, it is very similar to Danny Boyle's 'Shallow Grave'. The pace is very similar and the shots we used are very similar. You can notice the film is British from the trailer, just like you can with ours. 

Evaluation Question 1:

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



Director's commentary.
Joey and I did a director's commentary where we slowed down our trailer and talked over it, explaining where we used, developed and challenged conventions of real media products. 
In many of the horror movie trailers I looked at during my research and planning, there were conventions I knew Joey and I would use such as short, fast paced shots to increase tension, an establishing shot, single lines to establish characters and shocking titles. These are conventions we used to make our trailer resemble many other horror movie trailers. 
Usually horror movies are based around teenagers. We stuck to this convention to some extent as our target audience are teens and horror movie fanatics, but we added a Unique Selling Point (USP). Our USP, besides it being set in a theatre, is that we used a significantly younger child in our trailer and in this trailer it shows a clip of him drinking alcohol. This is to signify the increase in underage drinking today. It is also to shock the audience and make them want to see the film as the trailer never really shows what happens to the young boy. 


The Magazine Cover.

The Movie Poster. on Prezi

This Prezi presentation I made shows how we mainly stuck to conventions used on horror movie magazines. I personally felt this was the best way to promote our film and this was proved true from our audience feedback we collected.

The Movie Poster:

The Movie Poster. on Prezi

I believe our movie poster uses many conventions used in professional horror movie posters such as font, images and production details. When we asked our peers to give feedback on it, they said that our poster really represented a horror movie.
Our trailer really portrays a horror movie. The dark and fast scenes increase the tension and suspense which is what the audience want. It keeps them wanting more and makes them want to go see the film. The thing about horror movie trailers that the audience love is the thrill and fear of it. I feel we have really captured this in our trailer.  

Feedback.

This is one of the ways we collected feedback on our magazine cover and film poster. We asked two of our peers (both teens interested in horror which is our target audience) what they thought of the magazine cover and film poster before changes were made. They both gave both positive and critical comments. We used the criticism to make changes to both pieces of work and make it more appealing to people like David and Lowri as they are a part of our target audience.

Feedback

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This is a slideshow of screen grabs I made of some feedback Joey and I received about our horror movie poster, our magazine cover and our video. (Slideshare.net is one of the pieces of software that we used throughout our task.) The feedback was very positive and it reassured us that what we wanted the audience to understand and feel really came across.

Final Edit.

This is the final edit of our trailer. We took into consideration what Charlie Ward said and what our teachers and peers thought and made our final adjustments. We feel this trailer appeals to our target audience which is mainly teens and horror movie fanatics and with the help from our feedback we received, we believe our trailer looks quite professional and similar to many horror movie trailers out there today.

Charlie Ware.

Charlie Ware used to be a professional editor and we had the privilege of having him come into our lesson and give us some tips on our trailers. 
We showed him our recently more edited one (edit number 2) and he gave us a few pointers on how to make it a lot more professional.
These tips were:

• High frequency sounds to shock
• Strobe effect or moving on titling
• Perhaps white (for above note)

After these suggestions were made, we made some alterations to our trailer and now we have our final edit. 

Second Edit.

This is the second edit of our film trailer. It is shorter than the first one as we cut out a lot of un-necessary shots and made the whole trailer a lot snappier and increased the speed. 

First Edit

This is the first edit of our horror movie trailer. It is a bit longer than we expected it to be so we now class it as our theatrical trailer. As it was a bit longer than we wanted it to be, it did seem to drag on a bit and we wanted to change this to increase the suspense, the tension and the speed. We feel this would make our trailer look a lot more like trailers today. 

Film Poster.

As we had a few striking images, we had to narrow it down to our final image. 
This is the picture we chose to use for our film poster:

At first Joey and I tried messing around with colours and levels in this picture to see what it looked like.

Finally we decided that we would make the whole image darker and then have a spotlight on the dead body in the middle. This would highlight the obvious and make the whole cover look more cynical. 

In my opinion, deciding what font to use for the title was the hardest part of the cover. The font is a very important part as it can be used to hint what genre the film is.

Obviously we wanted our font to represent a horror so we downloaded a couple different fonts from Dafont.com.

We then decided to use the first one as it looks slightly old and has two masks in it representing the theme and USP of our film (being set in a theatre). After changing the font colour to red and adding the word '3D', we finally had our movie cover. Joey and I thought that making the film in 3D would attract a wider audience as it is a horror and in 3D (just like 'My Bloody Valentine 3D).

Our final Movie Cover:

Magazine Cover.

Previously Joey and I had looked at a couple of different movie magazine covers such as Fangoria Magazine and Mad Magazine. Comparing them both, one is more commercial, looking as if the character is posing for the camera, whereas the other looks like a shot from the actual movie. We decided to make ours look more commercial, but keep the atmosphere and theme of the film.
Our original picture looked like this:

Originally this picture was too light for a horror movie magazine and the sides around the cast were too big. So, in photoshop, we cropped the image and using the brush tool, coloured it in all black. We then made the black opaque so the image looked darker.

After this, it was beginning to look a bit more like a horror magazine cover. We then needed to think about all the other aspects of a magazine cover. Things like the title, masthead, font, barcode etc. 

We came up with a few different names for the magazine such as:

• Dark News
• Horror Times
• Terrible Teeth
• The Lost Limb
• Mean Movies

We liked the idea of having using alliteration, so chose to use 'The Lost Limb' to be the title of our magazine cover.

As our image is very similar to a 50's horror cover, and slightly resembles a scooby-doo cover we wanted our font to be very bold and striking. This is why we chose this font and decided to have it in red. 

All of our decisions were made and then changed due to audience feedback we received. This is in a video in another post.

Our final Magazine Cover: