Movie Teaser Trailer

This is the completed teaser trailer for "Torment of Luna".

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

montage
Originally uploaded by kpilgrim91

This is a photo montage of the new technologies I have used, please click to view more information.

I have used a lot of different new technologies to create my main product and ancillary tasks. The reason we use so many different things is to make the most of the technology we do have and this helps to maximise the effect of our products, for example: Without photoshop we would have very basic things like posters, there would be no effects to images etc..
New technologies are just a way of make products better, the new movie that has just come out called Avatar would not even be possible without new technologies so it just goes to show that the film industry would be extremely lost or wouldn't be as popular as it is without the new technologies.
I think that the fact we used Flickr and Blogger as a better new technology way of presenting our work and our evaluations for this project is far better than resorting to older methods such as writing essay because with the new technology we can create more visually pleasing work that we won't get bored of and that we can also split into different blog posts and go into more detail with rather than being told to just sit an write an essay.












This is a more indepth look into my useage of Final Cut Pro.

FCP - Still
Originally uploaded by kpilgrim91

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

We recently held a screening in one of our media lessons to show everybody's trailer and to get feedback from the rest of the class, we watched each others trailers and wrote down what we liked or disliked about them and when our trailer was shown we wrote down what our class mates liked or disliked about ours.
Our target audience was around the age range of 18 - 30 years old and by screening the trailer in our class we got our exact target audience's feedback.
My audience research was taken purely from the feedback my media class gave back to my group as we did not have the time to interview and hold a screening for other members of the college to gain feedback from.
I think overall we discovered where the strengths and weakness's of the trailer are and how we can improve on them.

Positive Feedback

Many members of the class liked specific areas of the trailer because of the elements of horror that we had used in certain scenes. *

- Well edited and well timed throughout. *The pace increased heart rate and had a good suspense.
- The walking scene at the end of the trailer. *This is very conventional of the horror genre since "The Ring" came out.
- The dragging away scenes. *Creates a sense of danger/death.
- Red filter to create a sense of blood.
- Extreme close up of the eye at the end.*This is shown as staring the killer in the eyes which can cause the audience to feel quite awkward/scared
- Fuzzy/distorted filters. *A sense of unfamiliarity.
- Lighting.
- Head grab scene.*Scary and also panic for the female character.
- Shaky cam in the running scenes.*Panic due to the illusion of the character being chased.
- Dream like quality. *A sense of dreaming/unrealism


The target audience disliked certain elements of horror and they also disliked certain aspects of the teaser trailer.*

Negative Feedback
- Too much of the same shot - Tree walking shots. *A good sense of suspician about the killer but too over used so it isn't seen as scary any more.
- A bit too slow paced. *Not much of anticipation to get the audience scared.
- No narrative. *No continued story to create a familiarity to the characters.
- Interior shots. *Not as good as the exterior wood shots.
- Unreadable inter titles. *Unable to understand the titles so you can't really become scared by the story.
- Too much of one character. *No collaberation between the other characters so it only really shows a one person storyline.
- Needed a jumpier ending. *No jumpy ending to make your scared and anticipate worse scary parts in the film.

The music used in the trailer had a mixed review within the class many people thought it didn't quite go with it because it was quite slow, others thought it was good and dreamlike and then a small selection thought it worked in some areas but not in others.

The negative feedback about there being no narrative is good but we did actually have footage of the characters driving to the woods, getting things out of the car etc. but we decided not to use it because it just didn't fit in with the effect we wanted to achieve and it just went on for a bit too long and I think that this was the main reason that some people may not want to watch the film, many members of the class said that if the trailer had a narrative then they would want to watch the film.

I think the feedback we received was really good because it gave us an insight from the audiences point of view rather than that of our own and we now know where the areas in the trailer are good and where there is room for improvement and I think that as a result from our screening and seeing the trailer from another persons point of view there would be several things that I would change.

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

I think that the combination of our main product (the teaser trailer) and the ancillary texts (the poster and the movie magazine cover) are really effective in grabbing the attention of an audience.

The teaser trailer works really well to tease the audience into wanting to go and watch the movie and to also tease the audience as it gives a small sneak preview into what you can expect but I also think that they work extremely well to promote and advertise the film to the target audience.
I think that I could improve on certain aspects of the ancillary task such as better aspects of publicity and a better campaign to circulate the word of the movie.
The trailer is there to create a wonder in the audience by them watching it and having to piece together the story as the snippets only create a small part of what the narrative is all about and it gives a small insight to the plot of the film. The teaser trailer is one of the most important parts of advertising as it will be shown on TV and it will be the main thing that everybody will see. The trailer needs to be able to capture the attention of the audience because there are so many trailers on TV at the moment that its like a competition to get the attention of the audience. I think our trailer works really well to be able to capture the audiences attention because even though it shows only a slight narrative the whole thing is very dream like and it doesn't hide the villain in the plot so you're left wondering whether its going to be a general straight forward horror or if its going to be a psychological thriller that's all in someone's head. The things I would change between the link of the trailer and poster is that the tag line I have used on the poster isn't featured in the trailer and this could have been a key point to link them all and we also decided to withhold the start of trailer which showed the characters getting out of the car, showing them all together etc but unfortunately it just dragged on for way to long and unluckily for us this is what the trailer is really missing. I don't think we identified with a protagonist enough because in the trailer it showed way to much of one character who is male without there being enough of the other characters and there is also the fact of the intertitles being unreadable so there is no sense of the audience being involved into the story if they can't even read them.

The poster I have created is very heavily manipulated on photoshop with several layers changing what the villain looks like and making it more scary and have a better shock factor. I focused in on the eye for my poster because of the contact lenses we used had a really cool ringed effect to them and this adds the the whole scary look. I used different textures to overlay on top of the image to make the villain look decomposed/hollow, almost bone like but the good thing I like about this poster is that because of the dream like quality to the trailer this adds to the mystery as we never actually see the villain looking like this and it could be a bigger insight to the movie. The poster is an important part of the advertising for a film because it can be put up in bus stops, on bill boards and even on buses so there is always a circulation of it being seen by all different audiences so if you haven't seen the trailer you might see this poster and then end up looking for the trailer on TV or even searching for it on youtube but either way it will have a wide circulation of people which starts turning into things like recommendations to see it from friends or word of mouth.

The movie magazine cover is also an extremely important part of the advertising as many people will buy a magazine like Empire every time it comes out and even people who don't buy that particular magazine may pick it up because of the shock value of the image on the front. The magazine also features many other elements on the "film reel" on the magazine cover so it's quite versatile in the way that the magazine isn't focused on one genre of film so this can also work to the advantage of the film as many people will buy it because its quite versatile and even if they aren't interested in horror they will still read the article/flick through it and see the images/know the name of the film. I think the magazine works well because of the editing to the image and it makes it really stand out .

I think that all of the products combined are very effective because each one is slightly different to the next and that keeps people interested and they aren't being shown the same image over and over again.

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

I feel that in our horror movie teaser trailer we have used quite a lot of the conventional forms within in such as:

• It gives away just enough of the narrative within the footage for the audience to understand what the film is about but not know the full story so it will entice them to go and see it to find out.
• The use of titles throughout the trailer helps the narrative to roll along nicely and build up a sentence gradually to help the audience with the narrative.
• The general mood and atmosphere shown through the footage to familiarise with the audience on what genre the film is.
• Some information is shown to the audience but not too much so they have to guess the missing parts of the narrative.
• Dramatic camera angles to show desperation etc.
• The title doesn't appear until the very end of the trailer along with the date.
• The sound makes the atmosphere for the trailer and without that it would not be as effective.

We have used quite a lot of horror conventions such as: blood, darkness, deserted location, forest/woodland, white contrasting make up, a supernatural villain, supernatural elements, frightened characters etc ; We have used this to our advantage but we haven't over done it so it looks extremely student made or very fake. 

Many teaser trailers are around 1 minute 30 seconds long, a lot less than an actually theatrical trailer. Our trailer is slightly shorter than that at 1 minute 22 seconds.

This is the first set of stills I analysed. Click on them to read the analysis.

First set of stills.
Originally uploaded by kpilgrim91

This is the second set of stills I analysed. Click on them to read the analysis.

Second set of stills.
Originally uploaded by kpilgrim91

This is the third set of stills I analysed. Click on them to read the analysis.

Third set of stills
Originally uploaded by kpilgrim91

Finished Ancillary Tasks

Movie Poster:

My final movie magazine cover:

Ancillary Tasks - Original Photographs

This is the original photo I used for my movie poster:

These are the original photographs I used for my movie magazine:

                   

Textures used in Photoshop over the photographs:

Magazine Cover Research

I have researched a lot of different movie magazines, here are a few that I think are really good to base mine around and to get some inspiration from.

I think that the 3 magazines above are really good representations for a movie magazine because they aren't overly powered by information and they let the main image dominate the rest of the page which has a good impact and this is something I would like to try with my magazine cover.

Horror Movie Poster Research

 have begun to research horror movie posters as I will soon be making my own for my group's horror movie trailer and I would like it to look as professional as possible and I also want it to be something people will look at and make them want to go and see the movie.

I have found that most horror movie posters give a little bit of the story away e.g. location, maybe even part of the story but many of them do have a certain bit of mystery to them for example The Ring movie poster doesn't give anything away and the only way you will find out what the movie is about will be to either watch the trailer for a teaser or go and see the whole movie.

I think that with the trailer that we have made my poster will have elements that give some certain aspects away just to create the sense of intrigue but without giving too much away.

    Old horror movie posters:

   

New movie posters:

There is a vast comparison against old vintage movie posters and new more updated movie posters and it's because we now have things like Photoshop along with other programs where we can make the images more graphical and with better effects compared to old hand made methods.

Media Horror Movie Trailer: Storyboard

 Below are the story boards for our horror movie teaser trailer "Torment of Luna"; The ideas on the story boards will probably change when we go into production and find out which things work better than others etc.

   

   

   

   

Audience Questionnaire Research

1. Are you male or female?

Male = 16

Female = 14

2. Do you like horror films?

Yes = 24

No = 6

3. What kind of horror films do you like? (2 each)

Supernatural = 8

Blood and gore = 7

Slasher = 11

Psychological = 12

Sci-fi = 13

Zombie/undead = 7

Other/none = 2

4. What scares you the most within a horror film?
Sounds/noise/music = 10

Jump/shock = 7

Dead people = 8

Everything = 5

5. What would make you want to go and see a horror film at the cinema?

Word of mouth = 9

Trailers = 12

Film reviews = 7

Posters = 2

 

Movie Trailer Mood Board

As we are working in groups for this project my film idea may not be the one that is used for the final trailer idea; But this is the mood board for my personal film idea.

Horror Movie Idea

It is approaching Halloween and a group of friends start planning what they are going to do on the night, after passing on the chance of several parties they decide to do something a little more scary. The friends begin researching on the internet and come across a haunted museum that contains mannequins dressed as different killers from famous horror movies.


On the night of Halloween the group of friends set off on their journey to the haunted museum that is miles away from anyone or anything......


Arriving at their destination the group find themselves the only people there, they are greeted by the owner where they pay for their tickets and enter the museum.

The group split up to explore the museum, joking around with the mannequins and props until things take a turn for the worse..... .
The mannequins, horrifying figures such as Michael Meyers from Halloween, Freddie Crewger and Jeepers Creepers begin to come alive and kill off the teens one by one in the ways that their character would from a movie.

 One surviving teen is left, she tries to escape finding that the doors have been locked but eventually breaks out. She runs into the dark forest until she comes across a cabin which belongs to the owner of the museum, she knocks frantically but there is no answer and eventually she is found by the murderous mannequins in which she is attacked and taken back to the museum.
Falling in and out of conciousness she see's her friends all propped up in the museum as some sort of new sick display, she is eventually killed too being placed with her friends as part as a new display.

 A year later a new group of teens visit the museum but as they approach the murdered girl and her friends we hear the doors slam shut, the girls eyes open and it is clear that they are now part of the murderous clan.

Media Essay: How does the horror genre represent women?

We have recently been watching and discussing horror movies in my A2 media studies class, this is when we were presented with the question of how the horror genre represented women in the films; We have watched two films in particular in which I can discover the answer to this question.

The general representation of women in the horror genre is they are seen to be either very innocent and domesticated or they are shown as being sex objects; Women are often shown as being weak and that generally if the woman is not shown as the sex object she ends up being the main protagonist that we eventually identify with as she is the person who survives; where as if we are presented with a young woman who is very pretty and often has a character role such as a cheerleader etc they are killed off first.

To back up my answer I have added some information from the two horror films that we watched in class.

The first film we watched was Halloween which is an old horror film from 1978; We are presented with four main female characters Judith Myers, Annie(Middle), Lynda (Far left) and Laurie (Right).

The first of our female characters is Judith Myers she is looked at as a sex object after being seen having sex by her younger brother Michael who then kills her. Michael is sent to a mental institute but he breaks out on Halloween, this is when we are presented with the next three girls.

Annie is one of the friends and she is seen as a sex object, we begin to learn this when she reveals that she uses the houses she babysits in as a place to have sex with the boyfriend and later that day as she babysits a young girl Lindsay she gets her clothes messy and changes into just a shirt, she then gets her friend Laurie to take Lindsay in whilst she goes to pick up her boyfriend but as she gets in her car she is killed by Michael Myers.

The next girl is Lynda she is seen as a sex object from the very start as we see her talking to Laurie about the fact that she is a cheerleader and that she is also very popular and doesnt have time for all of her social activities, later that day we learn more about her being a sex object when she turns up at the house where Annie is babysitting at and has sex with her boyfriend Bob shortly afterwards both Bob and Lynda are killed by Michael Myers.

The last girl is Laurie she is very domesticated as she helps out her father and babysits, she also talks to a young boy called Tommy who she is babysitting that night and they discuss carving pumpkins and making popcorn; Throughout the movie we see that she is continually stalked and looked at by Michael Myers and he even attempts at harming her but he never succeeds which leaves her to be the main protagonist that we identify with at the end of the movie; The girls are also shown as being weak as their attempts at fighting back are very feble or even non existant.

The next film I have chosen to back up my theories is "The Shining" a horror film made in 1980; The Shining is a film in which a family moves to a hotel after the father takes a job as a caretaker in which he wants to pursue his dream of writing in the five month stay of which they will be there; There are a few twists in the movie as Wendy and Jacks son Danny has a special gift called "Shining" in which he can connect with others and see bad things that will happen in the future and as the film progresses we learn that Jack is mentally unstable.

We have only one main female character in this movie and her name is Wendy but firstly I would like to talk about a brief part in the movie that involves a woman in the bath at the hotel.

Jack goes to investigate Danny's claims that there is a woman in a hotel room and as he enters she is a young attractive woman getting out of the bath, this is where she is seen as a sex object until Jack kisses her and looks in the mirror and discovers that she is actually old/mouldy/dead looking and so in connection with my theory this woman is seen as a sex object but is infact already dead.

I will now talk about the main character Wendy she is not seen as a sex object at all throughout the movie and she is definately not seen as being strong as she often looks scared of Jack and doesn't really stand up for herself much and when she does it is always a feeble attempt at it; Wendy ends up being the main protagonist and the person we identify with. In conclusion I believe that my theory that women seen as weak and as sexual objects die much sooner than those who are domesticated and not seen as sexual objects in most cases is right.

The Role Of A Distribution Company

The role of a distribution company is identify and then deliver the largest audience that is possible for every type of film, they can then continue on to target companies to book the film for their cinema. The distribution company has to calculate how much money will the film will make and then they will release a budget to release it and then their goal is to get back all of the money from the costs and gain a profit overall.

There is a 6 step plan of a distribution company, these are:

Focus on the audience

Distributors need to be able to understand their target audience, this is often achieved through questionnaires and surveys which help them understand what kinds of things they need to do to promote the film. For example: Twilight is a film aimed at mainly teenage girls so there would be no point promoting that particular film at 80 year old men because they wouldn't go and watch it and then the distribution company would come to a loss. Distribution companies tend to try and create the largest range of target audience as they can but they also need to make sure they don't lose the films core audience because if they did so there would more than likely to break even or end up with an overall loss.

Rolling the distribution dice

Audiences vary in tastes and this makes them very unpredictable which causes a lot of problems for the distribution companies because even with the experience they have, they will still not be able to tell or even predict what will be a hit or miss at the box office. This has also been the case with a few films in the past where the first film has been a hit but the sequel may be a flop at the cinemas.

The competitive jungle

There is a lot of competition when it comes to distributors releasing films because they have to think about what films will be released on that day or around that time for example: Releasing a new horror film on a Friday during the half term holidays and then another distributor releasing a film like Toy Story which will be a major success because of children being off school and the fact it's a film aimed at children, the first distributor has the decision of rescheduling the release or going ahead and possibly having an outcome of a loss.

Satisfying anticipated demand

When the distributors are going to release a film they need to work out whether they are going to release the film to cinemas everywhere if it is going to be a box office hit or for example a foreign film or a student made film will more than likely be shown at a few cinemas rather than many.

Digital regeneration

When digital release was introduced there was a very positive impact on the distribution companies, this is because disks are less expensive to be duplicated and there is also a better chance of new releasing and also programming opportunities such as animation films, 3D films, and HD movies which are shown in high quality and they do not deteriorate or damage.

Budgeting the release

When the distributor has seen the completed film and has then confirmed the release plan they then work out the budget. Distributors in the UK pay the release costs which include marketing, print duplications and advertising this also covers the launch of the film post-release.