Evaluation

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

The structure of every horror film tends to follow the typical themes of death, the supernatural, mental illness or a masked killer, which the central villain is usually representative of. In order for directors to obtain their goal of producing an effective horror film successfully, they need to include all the characteristics that make a horror film frightening and strike out the emotion of fear and terror from the viewers. The following characteristics are listed below, which were previously mentioned in my textual analysis of Scream.

• Blood/gore
• Dim lighting
• Prosthetics
• Eerie music
• Weapons
• Villain/killer
• Victims
• Strange noises
• Screams
• Masks
• Mirrors
• Running and hiding
• Dolls
• Clowns
• Death
• Haunted houses and isolated settings
• Chase sequences
• Darkness

The horror genre includes many subdivisions such as slasher films, psychological horror and gothic horror. Each subdivision take conventions and find ways of amending them and making them more thrilling and exciting for the audience. My media product uses and challenges forms and conventions of psychological horror, which I will now go on further to explain. Psychological horror relies on a characters fears, guilt, beliefs, eerie sound effects, relevant music and emotional instability in order to build tension. Psychological horror is much different to traditional horror as is contains less physical harm, as it mainly focuses on the factors of mentally affecting the audience instead of displaying the graphic imagery that is usually seen in the slasher genre. Ultimately the psychological genre creates discomfort in the viewer by exposing common psychological vulnerabilities and fears. Well known examples of psychological horror films include:

• Blair With Project
• The Strangers
• The Shining
• Gothika
• Paranormal Activity
• The Ring

The film industry consists of the technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking, i.e. film production companies, film studios, cinematography, film production, screenwriting, pre-production, post production, film festivals, distribution, actors, film directors and other film resources. The United States has the oldest film industry, and the largest in terms of revenue.

The Hollywood film industry produces products which typically are all similar with winning formulas. Although psychological horror has gained popularity with the industry over the years, the Hollywood film industry mainly focuses on ‘slasher films. Many American ‘slasher’ films tend to follow the storyline of a group of youths who have gathered together for one night to celebrate their free time. Characters in the film will usually include the rude/obnoxious guy, the promiscuous girl, the peculiar one, and the one who holds the brains in solving how to defeat the killer, or finding out the true identity. The rude/obnoxious character will normally suffer a death in the most brutal way, just after a few other victims have been targeted and murdered. This method has proven to be effective as directors give the audience enough time to develop a strong dislike for this particular character. The survivors towards the end of the film will have definitely endured several close brushes with death. Overall this has proven to be a successful formula for the Hollywood film industry and can be seen in such films as:

• Scream
• The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
• Friday the 13th
• My Bloody Valentine
• Nightmare on Elm Street

In contrast, an independent film company produces films that are outside of a major film studio. Independent films are often produced and/or distributed by subsidiaries of major studios. In order to be considered independent, less than half of a film’s financing should come from a major studio such as an American distributor.

Commenting on similarity of my product with real media products, my trailer focuses on the themes that are commonly associated with the psychological genre. Firstly, within my product, there is the theme of reality which refers to the value of something or someone being real. The victim often tries to determine what is real and what is not within the narrative. There is the use of perception, which is the character’s own interpretation of the world around them through their senses. Often a character will misperceive the world around them, of their perceptions are altered by outside factors within the narrative. There is also the obvious theme of death.

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

A film is marketed with the aim of achieving the maximum number of target audience. Over the years, film producers have spent a large sum of money on promotion techniques, particularly in the Hollywood industry. In the UK, distribution is very much focused on marketing and sustaining a global product in local markets. The two most commonly known forms of distribution in terms of marketing are film trailers and film posters.

Trailers or previews are film advertisements for feature films that will be exhibited in the future at a cinema. Film trailers have now becomes extremely popular on the internet as over ten billion videos are watched annually with film trailers ranking in third place. A film poster is used to effectively advertise a new and upcoming film. The poster usually contains an image with text, though this has evolved over time from image-free bill posters to the highly visual digital productions of today. The text on the poster will contain the film title in large lettering and often the names of the main actors. It may also include the tag line of the film, the name of the director, names of characters, the release date etc.

A teaser poster or an advanced poster is an early promotional containing a basic image or design without revealing too much information such as the plot, theme, and characters. The purpose of a teaser poster is to incite awareness and generate hype for the film. A tag line may be included. There are some instances when teaser posters are issued long in advance before the film goes into production, although they are issued during the film development. A good example of a teaser poster is the poster for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

In the media industry, synergy is the promotion and sale of a product throughout the various subsidiaries of a media conglomerate, e.g. films, soundtracks or video games. Walt Disney pioneered synergistic techniques in the 1930s by granting dozens of firms the right to use his Mickey Mouse character in products and ads, and continued to market Disney media through licensing agreements. These products can help advertise the film itself and help to increase the film’s sales. Another example of the use of synergy within the media industry is the Spider-Man films, which had toys of webshooters and figures of the characters made, as well as posters and games.

Teaser trailers consist of small, cryptic, challenging, advertisements which anticipate a larger campaign for a product launch. Teaser trailers are often made while the film is still in production or being editing and as a result they may feature scenes or alternate versions of scenes that are not in the finished film.

Recent examples of major motion picture events that used teaser trailers to gain hype are the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Disney/Pixar film Cars, the newer Star Wars films and the Spider-Man films. Some teasers have appeared over a year prior to the movie’s release date. The teaser trailer for The Incredibles was attached to the May 2003 film Finding Nemo, a full eighteen months before The Incredibles was released. Other examples include Star Trek, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and Alice In Wonderland.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

My questionnaire’s helped me with a great deal during my pre-production as the responses given to each question assisted me in producing a much more effective teaser trailer for my target audience. The second question, “what is it you mostly like about a horror movie?” the majority of the participants answered a twisted plot. Straight away from the popularity of this answer, I knew in order to gain the attention of the audience, I was going to have to construct a story line that is not always typically viewed by the public. For example, instead of following the slasher genre and typically producing a plot that revolves around a masked serial killer who terrifies and taunts its victims before brutally killing them, I decided to produce a trailer that relates to the psychological horror genre. Psychological horror intentionally strives to mess with the viewers mind, sense and judgement of their surroundings and of the people they are enclosed by. Ultimately this creates a twisted plot and lures the audience into the narrative slowly as the story unfolds. Also from analysing the effectiveness of my questionnaire, I knew that in order for my teaser trailer to prove to be even more successful, I had to create the elements of fear, excitement, tensity, and suspicion within various scenes of my teaser. Overall this heightens the viewer’s anticipation to see the trailer again and to see the actual film.

An audience theory that has been discussed in the past is the Reception Theory. This theory emphasizes the reader’s reception to a text. It focuses on the area for ‘negotiation’ and ‘opposition’ on the part of the audience. This means that a text, whether it be a book, movie or any other creative piece of work, is not just passively accepted by the audience, but that the viewer interprets the meanings of the text based on an individuals cultural background and life experiences. Overall this theory stresses that the essence of a text is created by the relationship between the viewer and the text itself.

Another audience theory is the Hypodermic Needle Model. This theory implies that the mass media has a direct, immediate and powerful effect on audiences and can infuse a message into an individual due to the images that they see. However, as research continued it became apparent that the media overall have selected influences on people. Therefore not everyone is influenced by the images they see within a movie or by what they hear.

Once completing my trailer, I then gained feedback from several viewers on what their overall thoughts were about the trailer. The majority of the comments that I received was that the trailer was an overall success as it was very fearful, psychotic and the use of the fast paced editing that I had essentially incorporated, effectively drew the viewers into the narrative of the film. Thus presenting my product to be a huge success with the public.

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

The media technologies that I have used in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages are iMovie, Garageband and Photoshop. I used all these applications on the Macintosh.

In order to produce a teaser trailer, movie poster, magazine cover promoting my movie and a logo for my production label, I brainstormed ideas regarding current themes and my interests.

I decided to focus on a psycho-thriller as this is the most effective sub-genre by far. Psychological thrillers ultimately prey on an individual’s fears, self beliefs and the mental state of not just the character’s mind but also the mind of the viewer. This overall keeps the audience enticed and drawn into the plot of the movie.

Teaser Trailer

Firstly, I made a story board for my proposed trailer. I shot the footage and then used iMovie to edit the content. In terms of editing, I organized each clip so it followed the storyboard I had made previously before. I shortened the duration of some clips in order for the trailer to be quicker and more effective for the audience to view so they would be kept enticed. I also changed the pace of some of the clips e.g. some were slow paced and some were quick paced, as some of the trailers that I had viewed within my research and planning have used this technique. Examples include: Scream, The Panic Room and My Bloody Valentine 3D. Applying this technique to my own trailer would ultimately have more of an impact on the audience as the fast paced editing of the clips would keep the viewers enticed.

Movie Poster

I created and edited my movie poster in Adobe Photoshop. As the movie focuses on psychological horror and on the illusive mind, I decided that the most appropriate image to use would be an eye. I took an extreme close up photo of my main character’s eye and imported this image into Photoshop. I then applied filters to the image and overlayed with colours. I’d also imported screengrabs from my movie trailer and overlayed these with the same colours. It was important to overlay the images with colour so that the theme throughout the whole project (magazine cover) was kept consistently branded.

The typography used for the poster was taken from a website called dafont.com and again, I imported this into Photoshop to apply filters. I then placed the tagline and age rating of the movie clearly on the poster to make it look authentic. The last task I carried out on my movie poster was taking a screengrab from the movie trailer of the villain's face and placing it in the centre of the eye image. I then reduced the opacity to make the overall image subtle yet sinister and natural as seeing the villain's face within the eye gives the impression that it is a reflection.

Magazine Cover

Again, I created my magazine front cover in Adobe Photoshop. The influence behind the magazine title, “Redrum” was taken from the horror movie The Shining. Redrum is murder spelled backwards and I came to the conclusion that this would be an effective title for my magazine as this is what is typically seen within every horror movie belonging to any sub-genre. Taking inspiration from Empire and Total Film magazine covers, I layered the eye image used for my poster and applied a gradient mask tool to make the image fit in with the black background of the magazine cover. I then layered the text over the image, which was all applied in the same font in order to achieve consistency and then added the term ‘sleeper hit.’ This term is used within the film industry to describe a movie that is an unexpected hit and that relies on the word-of-mouth and reviews rather than big publicity.