My audience questionnaire showed that people are more afraid of something realistic, because I was also thinking about occult we as a group came to a conclusion of having witch craft and schizophrenia as a basis for our film.

Main elements we took from schizophrenia were: voices- a person doesn’t recognize the voice that commands her, voices being explicit and convicting they will actually harm, voices control and manipulate actions. Persecution- where she(Katy) believe someone is after her. Suicidal thoughts – depression.

Which Craft – mother being the witch who is interested in black magic, she is actually manipulating her daughter through use of the candles.

Uses

Title on the top

Main character on front cover

Having bar code, price, date, website and phrase “The world’s biggest movie magazine” – however here I challenged or better say develop it and placed on another place.

Film name – I mage it bold and big to stand out, as most magazines do, however empire magazine challenges this convention itself.

Having “catching subtitles” – Must see of the year/ Films you have to see now etc

Promoting other films as well

Having freebee extra to catch attention – win tickets

I did not have photos from other films however magazines do that often, so to some extent I challenged it.

Use –

Name of the film – also written in film genre style

Main characters names

Credits to those who took part in production

Date

Connection with the audience- I achieved it with close up, normally it would be eye contact

Challenge/Develop

Every film has tag line, but it is not written on every poster, but I did write it

Close up – It is very rare to see close up on the poster, more often it has all the main character on it

Mine trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7CHd-0VgBs

Trailer I was doing comparison to

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0eeAQGGwCU

Uses

Dark colours- to create atmosphere, but also mixed with lighter/brighter- to make audience relax for a second before they will be threatened again.

I used one of the main horror movie conventions – blood.

You see the villain- normally it is not real villain, but through out the film you think it is

Victims- you see someone dying or being hurt

Considering story line- supernatural things- manipulation through witch craft

Isolated settings- woods, or haunted houses for The uninvited

Use of dialogues

Use of music- calm, but getting faster

Use of flashbacks to tell the story

Use of black and white colour- shoving past, or dreams

Both Trailers featuring the name of the film, which company produce, and the time of the release- either date or “coming soon”

Both trailers do not have narrator or texts as narrative tool

Differences:

My trailer is shorter – more like a teaser, when trailer supposed to be around 3 minutes.

Using voiceovers- to give out hints about fake villain, they are not used for narrative.

Extreme close up to the hand

Hand held camera- to give the feeling of a person e.g running, coming close, looking.

I think my promotional package is very effective as all 3 aspect of it have:

• The same colour scheme, colours are quite dark which are the conventions of horror genre.

• Tag line on the poster, magazine and voice over in the trailer are clearly showing connection to each other.

• Using the same fonts to show the relation to each other as it is always done by real media products.

• Using codes and conventions of horror genre – red colour connotes blood, danger, death.

• On poster and magazine the viewer pays attention mostly to the emotions, eye, on the posters is absolute fear, however to some extent you feel that the girl is far away in her thoughts, on the magazine there is no fear but the girl feels “empty”, emotionless and also far away in her thoughts.

• Poster relates to the trailer through scene from the trailer.

• All 3 components relate – having candles in every piece.

• Magazine and poster using same colours- red and white for the writing, grey as the colour of the photo.

• However, poster and magazine very of better quality since I had better quality photo camera than we could use for filming, usually whole promotional package tend to be at the same highest quality possible.

Comments from facebook:

Candles look very effective in the eyes

Names on the top look different to each other and are stretched out too much(I have changed that on my final outcome)

I was also recommended to make the face slightly darker so it looks like in real movie when someone looks directly to the audience (what I have already done later)

Also it was said that there is too much space left from the bottom which I have also changed later.

Questionnaire results:

85% of the answers said that candles are very effective

10% commented on the close up saying it is quite unusual, and even closer than few real poster, however works very well, and gives sense that you are already involved into the film

17% asked if it is possible to squeeze or move the writing even more to the bottom.

Also few commented on the title – red color of the title matches candles and gives the idea of the type of film it is.( As I planned during the construction that red colour does give the idea of the type of film and red also connotes danger,fire, which I also had in trailer)

Facebook results

People did think that the trailer was effective over all especially when considering it is “Blair witch project” type.

There were negative feedback about the quality of the trailer, but we were limited in available technology, therefore we could not change that, we had to make our scenes as lit as possible but still trying to achieve desired result – darkness.

It still was not that clear what is happening and why, as in every trailer I wanted to create that feeling, but possibly worked too much on it, since the trailer has to give at least some idea so you as a viewer will be interested to watch it.

Questionnaire results

(p.s. all the comments from 3 type of audience research were quite similar, so I did not enter same comment)

The scene when legs were dragged into darkness- was very effective on its own, but could work better for the trailer if was accompanied with right music.

Very effective voiceovers which you can clearly hear, giving a hint who is a villain(as I wanted myself, since the real villain is different person)

Effective use of flashbacks making trailer more interesting and creative

The audience did like the closing scene where Katy is looking directly to the camera but I should have given more time and change the music to make it more effective.

Facebook comments

Looks good

Fonts could be changed to more interesting ones – however I still decided to keep standard font to make it appear more professional

Adding pentagram gives feeling/sense of what the film will be about, what it is good so the audience have the rough idea.

Clock suits the storyline

Questionnaire results

Actress doesn’t make eye contact, that way detaching from the audience but it still works well with the film idea

Looks as a scene from film

purple circle looks wrong(as if it is not a part of the cover) but at the same time it kind of works as a free extra sign(what it supposed to do)

You can watch the video underneath the presentation.

Promotional package uses the conventions of the real horror trailer

Candles make all 3 piece connect and also giving the idea of witch craft, magic

Colour scheme is consistent over 3 pieces making them work together as a final complete product

You can easily understand the theme of the film – witch craft, and genre – horror because of the colour scheme.

Clock on the magazine background create the feeling that the girl- Katy is out of time( as in the real film she suppose to die at the end it really works and give the right idea)

Hand held camera in the scene “running through the woods” involves the audience, creates the sense that it is from the actress perspective.

You understand there will be violence – scenes suggest it – dragging legs into darkness

Setting in the woods creates the feeling of isolation what is scary for 60%of the audience(according to the earlier research)

The trailer shows the whole idea of the witch craft being in it, it is as obvious on the magazine front cover, candles in the eyes in the poster connects it as well. Bringing it all together makes is effective promotional package

Fonts and titles are effective, as they standout, grab attention and point on what you as the viewer should be focusing on.

Colour of the font goes well with the idea of the trailer, you also see red in the trailer, understanding there will be gore of some kind.

Title is above the girl on the front cover, sort of selling the magazine

There is website so you can go online

The pentagram above the girl creates effect as she- Katy being targeted- goes well with the tag line “you will never escape her”.

From the audience feedback, I found out areas where more work needs to be done, I saw what the audience like – candles in the eyes, and did not – music at the very end of the trailer did not work together with the video. So next time around I will know more about audience wants, I will know how to look for music to make it more effective, because badly selected music can ruin whole video clip. Audience feedback do help to improve the work – as I did with the poster. It was quite hard to start doing the trailer as I newer done it before, but the research does help a lot in this process of creating the final outcome.

iMovie HD

Used in: construction

What for: Video editing software was used to cut my footage, change the order, add video and audio effects, create title, add audio and voiceovers.

Adobe photoshop

Used in planning and construction.

What for: To draft magazine front cover and poster, and create final pieces. I was changing colour settings, brightness, contras, cropping, hiding & removing unwanted details, in other words to manipulate images in all the possible ways.

iPhone

Used in: Construction

What for: recording voiceovers, making photos of set up.

Digital Camera

Used in: Planning, construction

What for: To draft magazine cover and poster, and to create final piece. We had to go out for shooting several times to make an image that suited each of us.

Video Camera

Used in: Construction

What for: To film our raw footage. Some of the scenes were rerecorded several times to select the best option.

Wikipedia:

What for: to research witch craft and candles colour meaning and schizophrenia.

Mediaknowall.com

Used in: Research. To find out the difference between story & narrative, separating story and plot, genre theory these helped me in creating story for our trailer and in better understanding the genre itself.

http://www.lutz-sanfilippo.com

Used in: Research, Theories of fear, again, this helped me to understand human fears more, where they coming from and how the affect us.

Google.com

Used in: research, to find articles, posters magazine, to investigate codes and conventions.

IMDB.com

Used in Research and Planning, to find top 25 horror movies to analyze the most interesting stories for the audience.

Dafont.com

Used in construction and planning, to find font used for titles, subtitle for trailer, magazine and poster.

Incompetech.co.uk

Used in construction, to find sound track for the trailer.

Youtube.com

Used for Planning, Research, audience feedback and publishing of my work.