Script:
In
what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
Firstly, the title of a film is one of the
most important components when you want to engage an audience into watching a
film.
We decided to name
our trailer EVE, since it is the name of our main character, and many films have eponymous
film titles. However, we had
previously thought of a variety of different titles such as
The Past is coming
Found You
But we felt that
EVE was very short and concise, and the marketing for the film would be more
effective since it would sound catchier and look better.
One theory which
we used but also challenged when making our trailer was Todorov’s equilibrium
theory. His theory states that there is a timeline of events which a majority of films go
by.
There is firstly the state
of equilibrium
When everything is
as it should be and in a state of balance. You then have the Disequilibrium when there is a
disruption in the balance.
Then there is the recognition of the problem and the
moment of resolution when the main
characters are trying to fix the problem.
Since our media
product is a trailer, we only used these components of Todorov’s theory and
left the remaining one which is the new
equilibrium.
We challenged this
theory by using this layout, but slightly changing the equilibrium, by having
the main character Eve living with the crime she has already committed, which is killing her best friend Madison. When looking at
the Mise En Scene, we went with some very classic horror film settings such as the woods
and a graveyard.We felt that these locations gave off a very eerie tone,
and since one of the sub genres of our trailer is paranormal, we thought that a
graveyard was very appropriate.
The only characters that we see in our trailer are Eve, Madison and we hear the voice of Eve’s councilor
and they are all females.
This isn’t very typical of the horror genre, because
there are usually more than two people within a storyline, and there is usually
a mix of females and males.
But our story is very female driven, which also links
into the fact we used themes of feminism within the plot of our trailer.
The two characters
are trying to gain something or achieve a goal and it doesn’t end up with them
being undermined in any way or revolve around a romantic interest.
However, we do play to the stereotype of innocence. In
many horror films, the females are seen as innocent and vulnerable, and at the
beginning of our trailer, we see this when young
Eve and Madison are running through the forest and laughing together.
Innocence is also
shown when Older Eve is trying to escape from Madison and we see Eve’s terrified
facial expression. When editing our
trailer, we used a lot of common horror trailer editing techniques, sound
effects and visuals. Some examples of this are when Madison scares Eve in the
middle of the trailer. This is mainly
referred to as a jump scare, which are extremely common in nearly horror
trailer. We also used many sound effects which show a transition or add more
emphasis onto a transition. We also used them to increase the scare factor of
the jump
scares.
Existing film
trailers like ‘The Gift’ and ‘The Forest’ really influenced and helped us to
make these decisions, because in both trailers, there are many fast cuts
accompanied by sound effects to increase the intensity.
When we had
created the first draft of our trailer, we realized that the opening was too
long, it was approximately 1 min long and since most existing film trailer
intros are very short aprox 20s long, we decided to shorten it down, in order
to keep it very slick and simple.
In the majority of
trailers, black boards are added to create a cinematic tone, so we decided
to also add this to the finished product.
How
effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
During the process
of making the film poster, I looked at a selection existing film posters and analyzed
them. Even though the majority of film posters are portrait, I wanted to
challenge this and make mine landscape.
Many of them are a
perfect reflection of the plot of the film, and some of them are more
aesthetically pleasing, with a slight hint to the plot of the film. I wanted my
poster to show that the film has a paranormal element but also an ambiguity to
it. So I decided use a screenshot from a clip in my trailer, because I felt it perfectly
showed the plot of the film without giving away too much.
Similarly to my film poster, I looked at many existing film magazines when creating my own magazine
(mainly empire). I took the basic layout of Empire and followed it exactly, but
I then took different components of Empire magazines and merged them together.
During my photo shoot, I really focused on the poses I wanted my actors to have. In Empire
magazines, the actor on the front of the magazine is always posing very
dramatically, and I wanted to replicate this for my cover.
I think that my ancillary tasks perfectly
show the exact tone my trailer. I feel that this is mainly because of the
colour and undertone of my ancillary tasks. I have tried to use the same dark
and dull colour palette throughout my work. This in turn has made each of my
products have the same quality.
What
have you learned from your audience feedback?
When looking at my
audience research, I noticed that my selected audience members liked it when
stories had a high level of tension and an element of suspense, because it made
them feel excited and it kicked up their adrenaline. They also enjoyed a fast
editing style and quick jump cuts like the ones in the trailer for the gift.
So when it came to creating the trailer. I made sure that
I had a good amount of tension build up and jump scares
Two of the candidates also mentioned that they liked it
when a film made them think and question the reality of the situation in the
story.
So we decided to have one of our horror sub genres be
psychological and we had the character Eve question whether or not she had
committed the crime of killing Madison (when she secretly knew that she did)
When we asked our candidates about what they thought of
our plot, they thought that the character of Madison should appear as if she
was a real person, so it would create more panic for the main character Eve
Overall, the audience research
allowed us to see what people preferred from horror trailers, and what factors
are key when they watch a horror film. It also let us see what we should and
shouldn’t include in our work and what we needed to tweak.
How
did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and
evaluation stages?
While conducting
my research for the trailer, I used Youtube to watch existing horror trailers.
While analyzing the trailers, I looked at the style and
common themes within each trailer such the pacing, editing style and the type
of jump scares. I then thought about how I would combine these components
together into my storyboard. We also used Microsoft
word to write our script, pitch and treatment.
When filming our
trailer, we
used a Canon 700D camera, Because we felt
that this was the best way to capture high quality footage and be able to
adjust the focus and depth of field in various shots. I also used this camera
to take the pictures for my film magazine.
In post-production
of my trailer, I used a combination of final cut pro, sony vegas pro 10 and Photoshop.
Firstly, I used
Final Cut Pro to edit my trailer together and colour grade certain scenes. I then used
Photoshop to help with my tone cards,
Finally, I used Sony Vegas Pro to do further colour grading and add the black bars for the
cinematic tone. While editing in
final cut pro, I changed the speed of certain clips and made them very slow, I
mainly did this in the dream sequences, because I felt that it added to the
eeriness of the scenes.
For my ancillary
tasks, such as my film poster and film magazine, I used Photoshop to edit
everything together.
