FINAL PRODUCTS

Research and planning

When researching and planning the making of our horror trailer, poster and magazine, we had to have excellent examples of what we were going to achieve in the final design of our products. The easiest ways of research we have found so fast, is spontaneous conversations with in the group and brainstorming ideas and conventions of what we have seen in previous media products from the horror genre. Another excellent resource is the local library, the internet, and a resource we found extremely helpful is Blockbuster.

We have used search engines, but the most useful and the one DRP is most familiar with is Google. This has helped us drastically by giving us links to different websites. The secondary resources we have used were Wikipedia. We had to be careful as this website is edited and the information shared is from the public; however all of the information we have used from this website has been reliable.

The best resource we have used regarding the internet is YouTube. The efficiency and the content we have watched on here helped us a lot. It helped us more so in the area of research and planning for our teaser trailer as we were able to find other teaser trailers extremely quickly.

Blockbuster is our favourite type of research, as a production company we have watched various horror movies to help us with looking at the conventions of horror movies.

Our local libraries also helped us, as there was a wide range of horror movies there also.

Evaluation question 4

Evaluation question 4 – planning.

Planning of our teaser trailer.

When planning our production we had to go into great lengths of planning. Firstly we all had to decide on what genre we wanted our production to be part of; we decided we wanted our media production to be part of the thriller genre. We decided to make the story boards for the trailer, first as that would require more time and attention. We all came up with separate ideas on what we wanted in our trailers, we was very diplomatic and decided on the best story board out of all of our ideas.

We thought it would be a good idea, to all make another separate story board for the final ideas, so we could photocopy each storyboard, and then cut them up and incorporate all of ideas as one. Once we had finished our story board we moved on to the planning of the poster and magazine.

Once our story boards where finished, we decided to create a script as this is the general thing to when producing a film, we also had to do this, so the actors where aware of what they needed to do.

We also had a group discussion and we listed all the qualities and attributes that we need for the character roles in the trailer. We decided to go for the conventional Caucasian male to play the victim as we did not want to break this convention, as we wanted it to fit in with other films in the horror genre. we also decided to use a male model who looked younger as this would emit his innocence and convey the more evil qualities of ‘Satan’s Mistress’ even thought they are already shown in the trailer, this would heighten the hysteria for the audience as they would pity the actor as he looks young and innocent.

We attempted to watch various movies with female killers in, but the choice of films were very vague, we wanted to get an idea on how she might act or how she might walk and certain qualities the ‘creepy’ killer in movies normally have. For instant, in ‘Halloween’ the killer walks very slow, and this is something we wanted to use, in Halloween, the killer walks really slow, although he still manages to catch up with the victim and end up killing them. This shows their almost subhuman nature and adds an effect and tension for the audience; the audience are aware that the victim is going to get killed, even though the killer is walking really slowly.

The costume

At first we wanted to use contact lenses for the killer to wear. We wanted to use white ones to create an inhuman character; however we thought that this may lead the audience astray when they saw our poster/magazine or trailer, as they would have thought there was a different kind of supernatural power that the killer had, and it would divert the attention away from the plot of the film. The lexis ‘mistress’ suggests that there is a sexualised and secretive relationship between the two. This is why we wanted the actress to wear very promiscuous clothing, because she was a teacher, this would break the stereotype of all teachers being ‘unfashionable’ and ‘old’. We wanted the character to wear black and red, which is the connotation of evil and darkness. The red also connotes love and also blood. All these things are actually linked into our trailer and the theme of the plot. We decided on a black blouse which was unbuttoned a bit, with a red bra which you could see through the blouse. We also decided on a black body con skirt, which had a sip down the middle. This connoted the teacher’s promiscuousness as the skirt is easily undone and we wanted to also show the naive attribute she has, as she has let the Devil seduce her very easily.

The costume was the only real thing in which took the most planning.


 In the planning stage we practiced taking different shots on the Canon Eos 400D camera.

In the planning stage we practiced taking different shots on the Canon Eos 400D camera.

Follow this link to show the research and planning. http://thedarkroomproductions.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-and-planning.html We used various internet sites to research the forms and conventions which where used in horror films, and how we were going to use them, whether we was going to develop theses conventions or challenge them. One of the most useful resources we used was Blockbuster as we could choose so many different horror films from different sub genres. We sometimes watched these as a group, or we watched them individually and talked about them in our meetings.
We were familiar with the equipment, so we didn’t take too long setting up, the only real problem was getting the lighting correct.

Other media technologies we used include the website surveymonkey.com. With this website we were able to discover what elements we were going to include by surveying people on their preferences.
 we used computer scanners to upload our story board ideas to blogger. Using blogger allowed us to have a shared network, as we could save drafts and were all able to edit them when ever we liked.

Another technology we used was Microsoft Word, we used this program to write much of our drafts before copying them onto blogger, and this was very efficient.

 

We had some huge problems, and this shows that we may not have planned our teaser trailer properly, we all knew how we wanted our trailer to be’ however there were some huge problems which we had to overcome. Our original idea was to have a demonic teacher, and by doing this the audience would find the idea of a teacher harming children more thrilling as it was more realistic, instead of someone coming back from the dead. As a group we had to think of horror movies which were set in England. We could not think of any films which were set in schools and where not set in America. The only things we could think of which were set in England where mainly horror comedy movies. So we had to think of another idea quickly. We decided on still having a demonic teacher as the main character, but we decided to leave more to the imagination, as when we were filming the scenes that involved a classroom it looked very professional as we had huge problems with the lighting where it was reflecting of the boards and windows. The new scenes which we filmed only took us a week to film, instead of the months in which we took to take the shots in the classroom.

We thought about creating a new story board, but we thought this would be time consuming as the second time we knew exactly how we wanted it to be. We had a lot of pressure on our hands as the release date for the teaser trailer had to conform to the same date around the time where the posters where coming out, so people could relate to them. The new shots which we took worked really well, much better that the previous ones we made. Another reason why we had to change our ideas, is because some of our work went missing and we would of had to take the same shots again and these where time consuming in themselves.

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

Here is a sound recording of me talking about the research in the project. Research was an important part of the project and needed to be done carefully. In the recording I talk about some of the technologies we used to do our research.

Evaluation Question 3

Evaluation question 3 – audience feedback

We promoted our trailer on social networking site Facebook and on YouTube. On YouTube we had very positive feedback on this website, we was hoping to get more constructive criticism so we know how we could improve, but people generally enjoyed watching the trailer.

We also had various people who posted our trailer on their Facebook page in order to get feedback from their friends in order for us to have a wider audience. Regarding Facebook we have targeted our target audience as most of our networks on this site are from the target audience. Although we wanted to target a certain age range, many other age ranges also watched and enjoyed our trailer. Over all we had a lot of positive feedback from our audience.

We also received feedback on Blackberry Messenger to receive feedback on our trailer.

Another way we promoted our trailer was through Microsoft office.

YouTube feedback.

Demographics

This was something which didn’t surprise us, as the majority of people within Dark Room Productions networks are females. The majority of people who watch horror movies are males, but because our audience was mainly female this did not shock us. The age range of people, who also watched our trailer, was something which did also not shock us, as when we were promoting our trailer, we did so at a peak time when most teenagers would be online. From this feedback we saw that there were around 34% of people who were over 18. This could be that people lie on YouTube saying that they are 18 so they are able to watch some content which requires the viewer to be over 18.

This is some of the negative feedback we received due to the content of our teaser trailer. We were aware that this may happen, as everyone has different views on what is acceptable in films.

Evaluation of poster

Audience feedback- I went to Asquared salon which is situated in Catford. I wanted to get feedback from the ladies that work their on their view on the poster. How did it make them feel to know that the villain is a female?

Here the women discuss the fact that


CHRIST THE KING SIXTH FORM COLLEGE:


When getting feedback from our film posters we posted the posters around our college and noted down peoples reactions to them. The reason why we choose a college to be our predominant feedback location was because our target audience for our film is from the ages of 18 and upwards. In college there are plenty of 18 year old who are willing enough to give us feedback.



From what I gathered the most common feedback with the poster starring the female villain was the issue of her face being covered. This was interesting for the audience because they were eager to know who the character was. Questions such as…
`Who is she? And why is her face covered? Popped up quite a bit. It seems that the public do not like to be left in the dark and the fact that the characters face is covered frustrated them a little. Selina Mensah said and I quote` the fact that I can’t see her face reminds me of a secret puzzle, I’m trying to find the missing pieces to solve the mystery and the fact that I don’t know who she is makes me want to go and investigate the story behind the image’.


This was very good feedback as this was the reaction we wanted to receive. We wanted the audience to think when they looked at our posters and to wonder why this woman is torturing these young males. Other feedback about the female poster was that the advantage of using candles to circle the woman brought huge attention to her power and status. The use of her being in the centre reflected her importance and there was links to her and the devil and ideas that maybe she is queen of the underworld. The audiences definitely got the feel of the supernatural when they looked at the female poster. Other feedback included that the text unfortunately was too small in the middle and with that people struggled to figure out what it said when in deed it said `coming soon’. Other negative feedback included the fact that the lighting should be more darker around her body so that it really brings out her silhouette and power, but because the poster is all in the same colour contrast she doesn’t stand out as much as she would if she was the only section of the image which was light.

Dark Room Productions made two posters, the first one was a image of the female villain standing in the middle of candles made in a circular shape and the second image was of a young male probably around the ages between 16-18 tied up to a crucifix with the facial expression suggesting that he is in a great deal of pain. His mouth is open so this could suggest that he was screaming in agony. Feedback on this poster was that they liked the image. The photography really looks like you captured an event that was happening. This in comparison to the female poster which some people suggested like the villain was posing; the second poster really looks like the character is in pain and is really being tortured. The facial expression look realistic, this adds to the dramatic effect. The advantage of using dark colours in this poster such as black and green really add to the horror genre.