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

Evaluation new media technologies from Lucy Bennett

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

Cross-media advertising is one of the most important ways of marketing, and especially when marketing films. Along with the trailer, we made ancillary products (poster and magazine) to further promote the film and to experiment in different forms of media. http://www.getmemedia.com/DB/market-insight/cross-media-advertising.html

Links between advertising products are important for reminding people of the film's existence, and constantly reinforces and triggers the idea of wanting to see the film into the audience's mind.





Our audience feedback informs us that there are clear links between the magazine and poster. Because magazines are made separately from film marketers themselves, they don't tend to follow as many conventional patterns to promote films. They do sometimes mimic ideas to present the film in the same way that those who made the film would, taking on board similar colour schemes and fonts so that there are many similar connotations being fed to the audience.

Evaluation: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

After finishing our products, we decided to interview groups of people in order to get some feedback from them.

Group 1: 




Group 2: 




Group 3: 




Most of the feedback we received in these interviews was positive and constructive. Generally, they all seemed to agree that:

• the trailer fitted the conventions of a thriller, and is recognisable as a thriller
• the lighting, pace, editing and music build tension and grip the viewers' attention
• the layout of the magazine matches conventions/expectations of film magazines 
• the incorporation of social media links and the magazine's own mobile phone app are modern and up-to-date, and allow readers get more involved with the magazine

Suggested areas for improvement are:

• the captions being moved closer together in time within the trailer
• the poster being more identifiable as a thriller - tended to make sense having seen the trailer, but looks like it could be for a horror film if the trailer hasn't been watched

Other feedback came from posting links to our trailer on Facebook: 

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

From all of the research my group had conducted on thriller films, we were able to learn from these to create our own media texts. From these discoveries, I made a word cloud using Wordle to present them. [click here for word cloud of conventions]

 

 

TRAILER. 

 

Narrative:

• Most films follow Todorov's narrative theory, e.g.

1. Equilibrium - villain walking round town on his own
2. Disequilibrium - drugging/kidnapping other characters
3. Recognition of Equilibrium - kidnap victims wake-up, realise they have been kidnapped
4. Attempt to Repair - attempts to escape
5. New/Restored Equilibrium - because our production is a trailer, we didn't reveal anything after the attempt to repair as it would give away too much of the plot. We created a cliffhanger before this point so we co draw auldiences in and intrigue them into watching the film itself. Had we included the resolved storyline in the trailer itself, this would not be effective advertising as people wouldn't be interested in going to see the film itself.

Thrillers tend to incorporate elements from many other genres of films, but one element that makes them stand out as fitting into this genre is the inclusion of an aim/target in the plot that the protagonist is trying to reach as there is often some motivation for the characters' actions. The villain's target is initially to have more involvement in Ashley's life (we see him looking at her Facebook, longing to be with her), which then develops to her kidnapping her and also her boyfriend (Nick) who Brian is targeting as revenge for him actually being with Ashley. Ashley and Nick's aim is clear - to escape.

Characters:

Most films follow a clear structure of character types. Propp stated that there are 8 character types that appear in most stories (hero, villain, princess, princess' father, donor, helper, falso hero, dispatcher)

We wanted our villain's character type to be blatantly obvious to audience members, so we ensured the mise-en-scene (see below) would portray him in this way.

For our other characters, we deliberately wanted to create confusion so audiences would question the film itself and therefore be interested in viewing it. We challenged conventions by allowing Ashley and Nick to take on multiple character roles.

Ashley is clearly the princess for Brian's character, while Nick and Ashley are each other's helpers. It is conventional for heros in thriller films to be stereotypically "weak" characters, so Ashley and Nick's youth conforms to this. It is unclear which one of them is the "hero" in the plot, which is to create deliberate confusion and to attract an active audience who will form their own conclusions. There is also the possibility that when watching the full length film, one of them is actually a false hero.

Mise-en-scene:

 

• Low-key lighting is necessary for thriller films. We used bright lamps to create as much shadow as possible when filming, and lowered the saturation of all the colours in the editing process to make all the shots a lot darker.
• The costumes that the characters were wearing were deliberate so that the audience would understand their roles within the film. The villain was dressed in dark colours throughout, and wore red shoes to signify the passion he had for the character of Ashley, and the danger he was to put her and Nick in. The flowery scarf worn by the character of Ashley was to signify her femininity and innocence, along with the white t-shirt worn by the character of Nick. 

 

 

• Make-up was used on all characters. It was intentional that the audience would see Ashley's make-up, as the fact it was there in the first place signified her femininity and possible vulnerability, while the smudges signified her distress. The make-up worn by Nick was very subtle and not noticeable by the camera. Brian had make-up under his eyes to look like bags due to his tiredness. These are very noticeable to the audience, and are deliberately focused on in the ECU of his eyes.

 

Editing: 

• We used lots of jump cuts and very fast takes so signify the pace of the trailer
• We also put flashes and fades between some shots to represent the passing of time or a change in location
• This is similar to the trailer for Shutter Island

 

Sound: 

• Little dialogue
• Intense music / eery music
• Amplified sound effects
• This is similar to the trailer for Panic Room

Camera shots/movement: 

• Establishing shots

 

 

• Close-ups/Extreme close-ups

• Panning
• We challenged the convention of not using hand-held cameras to film the shots of Nick and Ashley running. We liked how these turned out as they added realism and makes you feel as though you're running with them

 

MAGAZINE.

 

We based the layout of our magazine on other magazines.

 

 

 

Although the other magazines don't have thriller films on the covers, both Total Film and Empire market many different genres of films. The idea of having an extreme close-up of the villain's face is conventional and very effective. The detail visible, and also the positioning of the eyes, draws people in and grabs their attention.

 

A convention of magazine covers is not to have text on both sides of the page as it can confuse those reading it. Although there is a slight overlap with ours, it is clear which order to read the text in due to the gaps left.

 

 

POSTER.

 

Our poster both matches and challenges conventions of thriller film posters.

 

 

 

The use of red writing for the title, a black background and white writing for the credits appears to be very conventional. Red and black are the main colours used on the posters for Panic Room and Shutter Island. The silhouette of the villain featuring on the poster is very similar to the Panic Room poster, as is having the actors' names as the very top of the poster. We also placed our tagline near the top, which is similar to  The Machinist's poster.

 

Our poster challenges conventions because you can't actually see the villain's face on the poster as the picture was taken from behind. Apart from the red font, our poster is black and white, which although it may not be conventional, it is very effective and focuses attention on the silhouette and title. The colour on the Panic Room poster is very withdrawn, and The Machinist poster has very saturated colour. Before we made our image black and white, there was very little colour and we decided to go for black and white to take focus off the slight colour that was there.

Product: FINAL POSTER

Product: FINAL MAGAZINE COVER

Product: FINAL TRAILER

Planning: Contact Sheet

For our magazine cover and cover we took various photos of our actor Phil, who plays Brian (the villain) in our trailer.



 

By adjusting the lighting and taking multiple shots, we managed to choose the most appropriate images from the selection we had.

Planning: Music Source

The music sourced for our trailer cam from royalty-free websites that allow people to download their tracks and use them in their own productions.

The intense instrumental track that will be used during the running/chase scenes is by and artist called TeknoAXE. We used this as it gave a modern edge to our trailer, and this genre of music appeals to the people in our target audience. http://teknoaxe.com/cgi-bin/link_code_2.pl?287

The eery ambient background music was sourced from http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?feels%5b%5d=Mysterious&page=1

All of the sound effects that we didn't record for ourselves were sourced from soundbible.com (gunshot, sound of rifle butting Nick etc)

Planning: Magazine Drafts

Paper Draft 1:

 

Paper Draft 2:

Digital Draft:

Planning: Production Schedule

DATE/DAY/TIME	SCENE	INT/EXT DAY/NIGHT	CREW	CAST	PROPS/RESOURCES/ REQUIREMENTS
Friday 14th December 09:00-11:00	2	Day	Faith Murphy - Camera Lucy Bennett - Lights Jack Cranston – Sound	Charlotte Houlbrooke Joe Kitteringham Philip Groves	Costume – casual clothing  Makeup – blood and bruises Props - gun, rope, alcoholic drinks, pills Equipment = DS100 camera, tripod, lights, Zoom H4, XLR cable, gun mic, boom pole, clapperboard, glide track
Sunday 16th December 18:00-20:00	2	Night	Faith Murphy -Sound Lucy Bennett - Camera Jack Cranston –Lights	Charlotte Houlbrooke Joe Kitteringham	Costume – casual clothing Makeup – blood and bruises  Equipment = DS100 camera, tripod, lights, Zoom H4, XLR cable, gun mic, boom pole, clapperboard
Sunday 9th December 10:00-17:00 Sunday 16th December 09:00- 13:00	1	Day	Faith Murphy - Lights Lucy Bennett - Sound Jack Cranston – Camera	Philip Groves	Costume – casual Makeup – natural with dark shadows under his eyes  Props - flower Equipment = DS100 camera, tripod, lights, Zoom H4, XLR cable, gun mic, boom pole, clapperboard

Planning: Font used for the film's title "Captive"

As a group, we picked the font we will use to show the title of our film to be used by using dafont.com as a resource. This font will be used in both our trailer and poster, and possibly on our magazine cover too.

Before deciding which font we definitely wanted to use, we shortlisted 10 and tried them out on our digital poster mock-ups, before eventually deciding on using 28 Days Later (number 1 on the picture below).

After playing around with various colours, we decided to use a dark red on a black background.

The black connotes the darkness of certain aspects of the film, and the deep red represents the danger within the plot.

Planning: Shot List

Shot No.	Location	Shot description	Framing	Angle	Movement	Shot Complete
#1	EXT. RIVER.DAY	Brian walking	Establishing shot	Level	Pan	Y
#2	EXT. RIVER.DAY	Brian watching the river	Behind the shoulder	Level	N/A	Y
#3	EXT.PARK.DAY	Brian picks a flower	Wide shot	High	Pan	Y
#4	EXT.PARK.DAY	Brian picks a flower	Close up	High	N/A	Y
#5	INT.HOUSE.NIGHT	Brian looking on Facebook	Medium close up	Level	N/A	y
#6	INT.HOUSE.NIGHT	Hand scrolling across the mouse	Close up	High	N/A	Y
#7	INT.HOUSE.NIGHT	Computer screen	Wide shot	Level	N/A	Y
#8	INT.HOUSE.NIGHT	Brian looking at Facebook	Close up of eyes	Level	N/A	Y
#9	INT.HOUSE.NIGHT	Spikes the drinks	Medium shot	High	Pan	Y
#10	INT.HOUSE.NIGHT	Pill dissolves	Close up	Side	N/A	Y
#11	INT.HOUSE.NIGHT	Ashley’s eye opens and looks around the room	Extreme close up	Eye Level	N/A	Y
#12	INT.HOUSE.NIGHT	Ashley looks around the room	Medium shot	Level	N/A	Y
#13	INT.HOUSE.NIGHT	Feet walking down the stairs	Close up	Level	Pan	Y
#14	INT.HOUSE.NIGHT	Conversation between Brian and Nick.	Shot reverse shot	Level	N/A	Y
#15	INT.HOUSE.NIGHT	Brian hits Nick with the gun	Point of view shot	Low	N/A	Y
#16	INT.HOUSE.NIGHT	Hand grabs a saw (insert shot)	Wide shot	High	N/A	Y
#17	INT.HOUSE.NIGHT	Ashley picks pliers with her feet	Wide Shot	Low	Pans up	Y
#18	INT.HOUSE.DAY	Ashley and Nick hide behind a door	Medium Shot	Level	N/A	Y
#19	INT.HOUSE.DAY	Hand opening a door	Close up	Eye level	N/A	Y
#20	INT.HOUSE.DAY	Couple run down the stairs	Long shot	Low	N/A	Y
#21	INT.HOUSE.DAY	Dark room	Wide/ point of view shot	Eye level	Pans across	Y
#22	INT.HOUSE.DAY	Feet running downstairs	Medium shot	Level	N/A	Y
#23	INT.HOUSE.DAY	Brian watches them run out the house	Point of view shot	High	N/A	Y
#24	INT.HOUSE.DAY	Brian points a gun at them	Medium shot	Level	N/A	Y
#25	EXT.GARDEN.DAY	Couple running	Long shot	Level	Pan	Y
#26	INT.HOUSE.DAY	Brian points a gun at the couple	Medium shot	Level	N/A	Y
#27	EXT.GARDEN.DAY	Ashley looks back	Medium/close up	Eye-level	N/A	Y
#28	INT.HOUSE.DAY	Brian points a gun at the couple	Extreme close up	Level	N/A	Y
#29	EXT.GARDEN.DAY	Couple running	Wide shot	Low	Pan	Y
#30	EXT.GARDEN.DAY	Brian walking	Behind shot	Level	N/A	Y
#31	EXT.GARDEN.DAY	Couple running	Close up	level	N/A	Y
#32	EXT.GARDEN.DAY	Brian walking	Wide shot	level	N/A	Y
#33	EXT.GARDEN.DAY	Brian shoots the gun directly at the camera	Medium shot	Eye-level	N/A	y