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

For our media project, we created a teaser trailer, a poster and a website. The product we made is called ‘Twisted Truth’ and is of the sub genre Psychological Horror. When we decided we wanted to create a psychological horror and looked into the codes and conventions of previous films. Looking at how psychological horror has changed over time was fascinating and we wanted to make sure our product was as modern as possible. We researched films that were psychological horrors and looked at the different ideas that directors had thought of. Look at Deconstructions for more of our research into previous pyschological horror films. Obviously wanting to grab the attention of the audience from the teaser, we did not want to give anything away so they would want to find out more about the film and see it when it is complete. Our initial idea has been adapted and changed a huge amount as our primary research influenced us a lot.


Trailer

Sound
As we were producing a psychological horror, the sound was very important as we wanted to build a lot of tension and draw the attention of our target audience from the beginning so they would want to watch the whole trailer. Codes and conventions of horror films usually include slow eerie music to start and then fast pace music to increase the pace of the trailer and wanted to use these conventions as they are well known and people would know when the trailer starts what kind of film and genre it is. We didn’t include any dialogue because we didn’t want to give too much away in our trailer and wanted to leave our audience guessing because then they would want to research it and see what it would be about. However, we did include a scream that we found on a free download website and edited it to fit in with our trailer.

Mise en scene
The mise en scene was very important because we had to make sure it looked like a horror film for it to be successful. The conventions we had to use was dark lighting, dark hair for our main character to be dark and mysterious, colours such as red to represent blood and danger etc. We dressed our protagonist in a white baggy top and grey leggings and this was to make her come across as someone who didn’t bother about their looks and had other worries on her mind.

Editing
The editing was another important factor because we wanted the editing to be conventional of the psychological horror genre. We looked at different teaser trailers to see the editing techniques and the use of shots such as Hostel and Gothika. When deconstructing them we noticed there was a lot of anchorage included in the trailers and there were a lot of different cuts for shots so most clips are extremely short – no longer than 2 or 3 seconds. We also used a range of different effects such as fastening up the speed of the shot and different colours and contrast e.g. black and white.

As we didn’t have any dialogue giving away any clues as to what the narrative is, we used anchorage at the beginning to entice the audience and make them want to watch the film as they were left guessing. The title we came up with, ‘Twisted Truth’ was developed from our ideas of our trailer having a twist at the end and as it was a psychological horror, we wanted to have a mystery throughout that will leave people guessing after they have seen the trailer. It also contradicts itself, the audience may be confused by the idea of what it perceives e.g. the truth is being twisted into a lie or the truth is not what is expected.


Theories
Our trailer links with Barthes Enigma code as throughout the trailer there is a mystery of what is happening. The narrative gives clues about our protagonist and establishes meanings and functions which then resolves the mysteries that our audience is feeling. Our teaser trailer is ‘open’ in terms of being able to interpret the shots in many different ways. It also links with Todorov’s theory but challenges it because it starts and ends with disequilibrium and his theory is that the disequilibrium is in the middle.


Deconstructions
The films, trailers, posters and websites we deconstructed were extremely useful when look at what conventions were typical and which ones we could afford to use or not. Look at Deconstructions for in depth deconstructons.


Twisted Pictures
The institution we used was ‘Twisted Pictures’ which coincidently sounded similar to our title. This institution has been known to produce films that are in the horror genre such as ‘Saw’ and ‘Dead Silence’. When we were researching different institutions, we wanted one that had created films in the past that were very popular and ‘Saw’ instantly stood out to us. We looked at the trailers for ‘Dead Silence’ and incorporated some conventions into our own product such as blink shots (shots that only last for 1 second with black in-between as if someone is blinking).

Institution logo used in our trailer, we felt it fit with the rest of our teaser trailer

Our chosen font and title shown at the end of trailer fits with the logo of our chosen institution

A film poster of the film 'Dead Silence' produced by Twisted Pictures

Poster

We found from poster research that the codes and conventions were:
• gothic colours (e.g. red, black and white)
• an image representing darkness, blood, horror
• a title that stands out against a background
• a short and simple but effective catch phrase

Research of horror posters inspired our own

An example of a previous poster using the colours red and black

This poster is effective as it used the colours red and black and a small image to intrigue the audience.

Colours
The colours we used for our poster were very typical of the horror genre which were black red and a little bit of white for text. The handprint stands out as it is covering most of the page and people’s eyes are automatically drawn to it due to the red colour of it. The hand is very dominating, which suggests the person whose handprint it is could be dominating. The handprint was iconic as there were shots of the protagonists hands when they had blood on and she was using them in most of our shots e.g. crawling, touching something such as a window or a wall. This is the reason we used the handprint as the main focus of the poster. We found some previous film poster that had handprints on them and the poster from ‘Sufferance’ gave us inspiration to use blood when representing her hands.

Anchorage
Anchorage was important on the poster because we wanted it to stand out and be short enough for the audience to ask themselves questions. Our catch phrase was ‘Everyone has secrets’ which leads the audience to asking themselves who has secrets and what they have done. We researched fonts that would stand out to the audience and creep them out and our final chosen font for the poster fit with the rest of the design and met the codes and convetions of a horror poster.

Images
We had a range of ideas that we could use as a main image for our poster. When we were filming we decided to take pictures as our protagonist was in character and had her costume on. Our first idea was having bloody handprints on a wall but we decided this was too similar to another poster we had previously seen. Another idea we had was a reflection of our protagonist in the mirror where her reflection expression was different to her actual expression which gave a hint to the audience she was had psychological problems.

One of the images taken of our protagonist in her costume, using bloody handprints on her t-shirt

Webiste

Looking at other website of horror films, we wanted to use obvious conventions to promote our film and have audience relate to the products we were creating. Technology is developing extremely fast and using a website to advertise our film was the best way to promote it as more people are getting familiar with digital technology everyday. On our website we were able to promote our trailer, information about the film and our widgets to social networking sites that were also promoting our product. The colours on the website were black and red so it connected with our genre and we incorporated the handprint background to link the website with our poster.

We were inspired by the official Gothika webstie: http://gothikamovie.warnerbros.com/

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

The poster we made in Photoshop is made up of layers of pictures we took and an effect downloaded from the Internet. One of the ending shots of our trailer was our protagonist walking up to a window and resting her hand on the glass. We did this shot because our poster idea involved a blood handprint and thought this could be a lead on from our trailer and a clear link. The blood that is involved in the trailer is actually our actress’s imagination playing tricks on her which the audience would find out at the end of the film but we did not want to make this obvious in the trailer as it would give away the main twist at the end.

Original picture of our protagonist for poster

Original handprint photograph before it was edited in Photoshop

In the process of editing in Photoshop and adding new layer

Final Poster

As the genre of our trailer was psychological horror, we needed to make it evident when advertising it, making the audience aware that it was a horror film. To do this we did research and looked at previous horror film posters and the colours used.

Inspiration from Gothika - a psychological horror. Similar narrative

We knew we would be using dark colours but the main colours that we found were black red grey and white. In our trailer, website and poster we have created, we have used the same font and the same colour for the font. This will help audiences to recognise the typography and automatically think of the product made. The typography is important because it is a clue about our genre and we have used conventions of a psychological horror.

Similar genre and protagonist story (psychologically ill, not aware of previous events). Use of red writing is bold.  

The font is gives the audiences an uneasy feeling and had the look of a heart monitor. We have used the red font creating connotations of blood and evil on a black background as this links to conventions of our genre and makes it stand out. We have incorporated our protagonist into the poster and website from our trailer because she is a very important part and represents our products. Because we took pictures when we were filming that we planned to use for our poster, she is in character and has her hair, make up and costume the same. Audiences can relate the poster to the trailer and keep being reminded in different ways of the trailer. The homogeny was very important and we used the handprint photo (without the character in it) for the website background and the poster and it linked to the last shot of our trailer when she has her hand on the window.

Film from 1976, psychological horror focusing on female villain as the protagonist.

The websites we looked at for current horror films were extrememly helpful and inspired us a lot. 

Black background with use of fire and characters in shape of a skull. Inspired us by using things in different ways.

Use of red for writing, trailer automatically playing on website. Character is a disturbed manner to show film is disturbing.

All the websites were very dark and as they were all for our genre so we knew we had to make our website dark. We made sure we used conventions of film websites such as widgets for the use of convergence, sound automatically playing on the link pages and the trailer automatically playing on the homepage of the website.

Subverts our genre,

Use of red and black, little white. Research for poster. Red title, documentary image on front

3) What have you learnt through audience feedback?

Online Survey
Audience feedback has helped and guided us in making decisions in the planning and research of our teaser trailer, film website and poster. We posted an initial questionnaire on survey monkey for our targeted audience to answer, which was mainly 15 years or over females. Overall we got 40 responses, which helped us in deciding our narrative because we asked the audience what type of sub-genre that they preferred to view and the majority said psychological horror. From other questions we were able to determine what location, characters and mise en scene we would be using for our full promotional package. The feedback was immediate and was very helpful; the questions were short and simple and did not require a lot of effort. From the responses gained we had to make sure that our products appealed to our audience taking into consideration all of the answers received from the survey.

Facebook and YouTube
After completing our full promotional package, we posted the teaser trailer onto YouTube and Facebook, made our website live and printed posters to put up around the school. Putting the trailer onto social networks allowed us to receive comments and feedback of our completed products. Using we-media allowed us to get our product out to a wider audience.






Feedback on YouTube








Facebook Page

 

Film Screening
We then organised a film screening, where we viewed other groups’ trailers and gave each other feedback on the quality of the teaser trailer. The other students evaluation our product and showed us what people thought of our trailer, whether they liked it or not and what aspects could have been changed. This enabled us to see how well we used the feedback from the initial questionnaire to meet the response of the target audience. This also helped us to evaluate our own product.

All the participants that took part in the evaluation thought the film was a horror which is good as thats what genre our trailer is and 2/3 of this group knew it was psyhological horror.
18/27 thought that the trailer fitted the intended genre "very well" and 7/27 thought it fitted "perfectly".
when the students were asked what they thought the most effective elemnt of the trailer was, there were varied answers. 12/27 thought that the props and mise en scene was the best element, 8/27 thought that sound was the moest effective element, 6/27 thought that it was the camera work and editing and then one person thought the lighting was most effective.
The last evaluation question we asked audiences was the most memorable moment in the teaser trailer for them. 11/27 thought this was the writing in blood that appeared on the wall, 5/27 thought it was the heartbeat sound at the end. Other peoples answers were varied e.g. feet in woods (first shot), backwards talking, fastened shot of her dreaming in bed, the blood on her hands and the shadow walking past.

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

For the duration of our research and planning, we were using the Internet and computer for most of our work. We set up a blog to display all of our work so that people could access it and comment on it. We also set up a facebook page, which we advertised to all our friends and media students, which showed pictures and has status updates where we could advertise or survey and blog. An advantage of facebook is that when we updated the group, people would find out on ‘news feed’ even if they do not visit the site. We did our questionnaire on survey monkey which is a website we could advertise and email to multiple people to get their feedback and handed out questionnaires in case people could not access the site. The surveys were aimed at our target audience. Go to Questionnaires to view the survey answers.

We used the internet for the majority of our research and could find previous teaser trailers on youtube that we could deconstruct and get inspiration from. In the post-production stage of our trailer the two main programmes we used to edit were iMovie HD and Garageband.

A print screen of editing our teaser trailer using iMovie

We had used iMovie before so we were experienced in the programme and able to include more than the basics such as effects, changing the audio etc that would compliment our genre and enhance shots we had taken to make it more horror like. Using iMovie we were able to edit clips to make them look professional and input anchorage, which is essential in teaser trailers. We used effects such as black and white, we could speed up and slow down shots and were able to input overlays of sounds from audio, Garageband and the Internet.

Using garageband to create sounds

Adobe Photoshop was used to create the poster we made for one of the ancillary tasks of our coursework. I had never used Photoshop before and it was challenging at first but once I got used to it, I understood it more. I first had a black background (which was the first layer) in Photoshop and then the second layer was the picture I uploaded that I had taken and it was a handprint on a piece of glass. The handprint was out of blood made from red food colouring and golden syrup and to get a plain background we put a white piece of paper underneath the glass. I selected the handprint from the second layer using a magic wand tool which meant I could have the black background with the red handprint on top. I used different effects such as ‘blur’ and ‘colour balance’ to blend the hand in to the black background but still make it stand out. The next layer was our characters face which I blended into the hand and enhanced the colour to make her eyes stand out. The last layer was an overlay which I downloaded from the internet which added a grainy effect.

To create the next ancillary task which was a website we used wix.com. This was a flash website that was very straightforward and we were able to insert our finished teaser trailer easily. We created a main homepage with 3 pages linked to it and we created a website which represented our genre. The website allowed us to edit it in a way that best suited our genre and represented our teaser trailer as well as other real media products do. Editing features included colours, fonts and animations. We chose to create a dark website that was slow and eerie because it best suited our genre of psychological horror. Animations that we used included a slow appearance of the website heading and a change of colour when the mouse hovered over the link. We used the website maker to its best ability by adding photos and video clips so that the experience created for the audience was scary and intense.

We used YouTube.com to upload our trailer onto the website giving the whole world access to our teaser trailer. This enabled the audience to leave comments about our trailer which aided us in evaluating our own product. From the comments were able to see what was good and what was bad about our trailer from the audience’s opinion.

Posting the teaser trailer onto the social network site Facebook also allowed our target audience to comment on our teaser trailer giving us helpful feedback.


In order for us to have a unique font, we researched scary fonts on the website Dafont.com. It offered a selection of fonts that suit the horror genre. The website allowed us to download our chosen font and put it into iMovie. We changed the colour of the font to red in order for it to show conventions of the horror genre. We were able to add our unique film title to our teaser trailer that was called ‘Pulse virgin’. We chose the font because no one else had it therefore our title would stand out.

Finished Poster

FINISHED POSTER :)

Finished Teaser trailer

Making of the poster

I made the poster in Adobe Photoshop as I had easy access to it at home. In our designs, our favourite idea was a handprint of blood on a window with our character in the background. We adapted this idea to have the handprint with our character merged into the palm of it. We used photos that we took when we were filming she looked similar to our footage.

The original photos:

In photoshop, i had to make the poster in 'layers' meaning putting photos/ backgrounds/text on top of one another. I started by having the background layer which was just a plain background which i filled in black using the fill toolbar at the side of the program. I then added the second layer which was the photo of the handprint and selected the handprint using the magic wand tool. This meant i could select the handprint and have it on a completely black background. After using effects such as the 'blur' tool, 'colour balance' and much more which are available on photoshop, i was able to make the hand print look very red and distorted to give it a scary horror look.

I then had to put in another layer which was our characters face and the idea was to merge it into the palm of the hand. After editing her face to make it a bit brighter and clearer making her eyes stand out, using the tools such as the 'overlay' I was able to dissolve her face into the palm of the blood hand print.
To make the poster look a bit more edgy, i downloaded a texture from the internet which i could have as another layer in photoshop on top of the palm to create a grainy effect over our characters face.

I then added the title and text in which i could choose the font for and the colour. We chose the title as red as it has horror connotations and represents blood and the white text stands out against the black background.