A2 Media Evaluation

By Rebecca Robertson

In what ways does you media product use forms and convention of real media

products?

(Teaser trailer)

Characters

I started off doing some research into the codes and conventions of a horror film and I came across the type of characters you usually find throughout horror films. The

picture below are the actors from my trailer and the labels show which character is which.

Care-free character Sensible character

Stacy is the care-free character and so I dressed her in a red top to represent danger. Emily is the sensible one however she is always carrying the camera and is never seen until she has been possessed. Even so I wanted her to seem innocent and child like and

so I dressed her in a flowery dress.

Music and sound

I also did some research into how music and sound is used in similar products and found that quite often there is slow, creepy, piano music that starts off slow and quiet and gradually climbs until it reaches its climax. The music is the replaced by wither silence or a scream. I decided to replace mine with a scream as I feel silence represents death and in the case of my trailer, this would give off the wrong impression to my audience.

I used the website http://www.mobygratis.com/license-agreement.pdf to request and download my music.

The two pieces of music that is in my teaser trailer is off this site.

Similar products like my own

Other products out there that are like mine are; ‘Paranormal activity’ and ‘The Blair witch project’. Due to my own knowledge and research things are more scary when they are real or based on a true story. This is how I came up with the story behind my teaser trailer of two friends exploring a house. (Found footage)

(Poster)

Main image

In my poster research I found that the classic horror poster is often made up of one main image (usually in the centre of the page) with various information around it. In my poster, the main image is eyes. My film is about ‘The unknown’ and so my poster mustn't give too much away. I think eyes are a good image to use in my case and I feel they are simple but effective. Other posters include this such as; ratings out of five, a tag line, a website, when the film is out and most importantly, the name of the film.

Film titleMain image

Rating out of five

Date the film is out

Tag line

Colours

Reds, blacks and whites are used a lot when it comes to horror posters and my main colour scheme is red, black and white. White is referred to as a ghostly colour, black is the colour of darkness and the unknown and red is the colour of blood and danger. All the colours I use in my poster symbolises what my film is about.

(Magazine)

Front page My magazine is simple and not too over crowded. This is because during my

research I found a lot of other film magazines are jam packed full of stuff that is not necessary have to be there. I used the same image in my

magazine as my poster as I liked the idea of the eyes looking up at the film title. When thinking of my film title I decided to keep within the theme of magazine it is. I finally decided on the name ‘Reel magazine’. The black

strip across the top, which says “Top horror movie magazine in the UK” is added in there as other film magazines have this. I also noticed most of the magazines I looked at have a border, and so keeping in with my title I had a film reel as my border. I also added in a bar code as all magazines need this in order to be sold in the shops. I also smudged the image on photo shop to make the eyes seem like they are on fire. This hints towards the audience

that the film has elements of danger in it.

Film reel border

Fire effect

Magazine title

Information strip

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

Combination

The image used in my poster is also used in my magazine. This is for audience recognition. If someone was to walk past a magazine and recognize the

image on the front page they are more likely to purchase the magazine. The tag line “Curiosity kills.” is in both my trailer and my poster. This is a very important clue as to what the film is about and this is just about the only

thing that is given away about the films story line.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Statistics

Overall, I had good feedback and one particular part in my trailer received positive opinions. The part in which Emily is crawling up the

stairs is, “Vey creepy” and “Good at building tension.

I asked 10 friends and family members to watch my teaser trailer as well as looking at my poster and magazine and the charts below show

their feedback.

Disliked itUnsureLiked it

Teaser trailer

Disliked itUnsureLiked it

Poster

UnsureLiked it

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

Equipment and technologiesFor the filming process I simple used my own home camcorder. This is because I

wanted my film to seem more realistic and more like found footage (Like in other similar films) I also wanted the camera to be shaky and frantic at times to add to the

tension.

Both my magazine and poster were done on photo shop.

All my research was done on my laptop and I used various websites such as YouTube to research other trailers to find out more about camera angles and colour schemes.

I also used good to look up film posters and magazines to help me along with my own.

For my planning I used my laptop (Microsoft word) to type up the script and the call sheet. I also used my IPod to take pictures for my poster and my magazine as well

as recording various sounds.

For the evaluation process I used Microsoft PowerPoint to create a slide show.