a2 media evaluation scary film

25
The Descese- Lucie Minty A2 Media Evaluation

Upload: lucieminty

Post on 24-May-2015

147 views

Category:

Education


0 download

DESCRIPTION

Lucieminty

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: A2 media evaluation scary film

The Descese- Lucie Minty

A2 Media Evaluation

Page 2: A2 media evaluation scary film

We were given a choice of thirteen briefs to pick from for our coursework, I chose:

A promotional package for a new film, to include a teaser trailer, together with two of the following three options:

A website homepage for the film A film magazine cover, featuring the film A poster for the film

I chose this brief because when studying media at GCSE and AS level for my coursework I s chose the print form briefs on both occasions, by choosing this brief it would be my first time to have a go at using film editing programs and technology, which would hopefully increase my skills, knowledge and understanding of the media. In my spare time I love watching all genres of films, from romance to comedy to horror.

Brief for A2 Coursework

Page 3: A2 media evaluation scary film

To start off my research I looked at professional media posters and magazines, I noticed that they all had a consistent house style , by using appropriate fonts and colours . I then researched horror film trailers, to see what techniques they used to build up tension and create atmosphere. The research really helped me to come up with some initial ideas and gave me all the information I needed to be able to start my project.

Research:

Page 4: A2 media evaluation scary film

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

I partnered my friend Hayley, this was because we work well as a team, both having different skills that compliment each other. We decided we were going to make a horror trailer called “The Descese.” and carried out a lot of research into horror trailers, teaser trailers, posters and magazines. We found that there were certain conventions such as standard use of sound effects, camera angles, editing and layouts which most horror media products would include and follow.

Page 5: A2 media evaluation scary film

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

Research for the trailer:When researching trailers I noticed certain conventions which were used in most trailers, the most common ones were:

•Sound: The use of sound in trailers is very important, its used to change the mood and create and build up tension. I noticed that most recent trailers had a montage of edited scary music, sounds, and voice over. •Opening of the trailer: Most horror trailers mise en scenes and establishing shots are very calm and mundane, I think the point is just to set the scene for the audience. The first couple of clips have normal lighting and not much editing. • Editing: The usual conventions to editing in scary films is as the trailer progresses the clips lighting gets dimmer and darker and the cutting of all the clips gets faster and faster, building up tension.•Ending: The usual ending would be a build up of clips and sounds which would have the audience on the edge of there seats to leave them with a loud bang and ‘cliff-hanger’.

Page 6: A2 media evaluation scary film

In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?The Trailer “The Descese”:Development of conventions...I wanted to set the scene at the start of the trailer, so filmed two best friends doing ordinary everyday things such as laughing, and having a good time. I edited the three clips of them together at a slow pace so could set the scene and make it obvious that they were friends, I also made these clips into black and white so the audience would instantly assume and acknowledge it was in the past.

I used sound effects to create substance to the atmosphere , recent films such as “Strangers” and “Woman in black” were the main influence. I noticed they had a backing sound track which was over lapped with sound effects and occasional voice over's and talking from characters. I used a montage of scary sounds , music and sound effects like door bells, creaking floor boards and screams to create the desired scary atmosphere that the horror film trailers I researched had.

I tried to ensure the trailer had lots of content by filming a wide range of long acted scenes and random short shots of the actress in scary and everyday situations. So when editing I would have a wide range of clips to cut and edit together at a fast pace to give the trailer a real “busy” feel.

Page 7: A2 media evaluation scary film

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

The Trailer “The Descese”:Challenges of conventions ...To challenge the usual conventions scary horror film trailers have we didn't give much of the plot away! Instead we made a fast series of random clips which jumped forwards and backwards from evens which happen in the film, this was intended to give the audience a feel of the atmosphere of the film with out giving much of the plot away. By doing this it leaves the audience with enough to want to go and watch the film. By doing this we found that the film was quite jam packed and didn't really make much sense so to break it up and add a little information we added in a few clips of texts, this gave the trailer the right amount of information to make scene but not enough to give much of the plot away.By using these unusual techniques we challenged the normal conventions of the typical horror film trailers, I found these usually follow the same format of giving you big hints to what the plot is about, and leave you at a important point of the film.

Page 8: A2 media evaluation scary film

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

Was the final media product an effective piece?

Yes I think our final edit was effective, we tried to make the trailer different from the majority of horror genre trailers . Although the trailer has some traditional elements common to lots of trailers we researched, we tried to mix up our edit to challenge the typical conventions to make it less predictable.We used different camera edits and effects such as a shaken camera, sharp camera moment and zoom in to at first keep the audience guessing at the plot, carry them along for a while and lastly leave them wanting to see more of the full film.

We tried to use a wide range of lighting and camera angles to create different atmospheres, for example when we wanted to build tension we used ‘close ups’, this is so it would show the actresses scared expressions with out them seeing much of what's really going on.

Page 9: A2 media evaluation scary film

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

Camera angles:

High angle:High angle shots are used to make it more dramatic. We used it in our film to make the person look vulnerable and powerless.

Low angle:When film we decided to experiment, we wanted to try out the effect of having the camera on the floor. I think this shot works really well

Atmospheric view:The idea of this camera angle was to create tension through the atmosphere. The looking up view of the dark dull trees really adds a scary effect.

Page 10: A2 media evaluation scary film

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

Ancillary tasks:I think that they are very effective, I have made sure that through out I have kept to a similar house style, by using same colours and fonts. To keep our main product and ancillary tasks effective I took pictures for my ancillary tasks of Milly (the main actor in our trailer) to use as the main images on my magazine and poster. All these things help the continuing theme and are easy to connect for the audience.

Page 11: A2 media evaluation scary film

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

I went out with the main actress of the trailer and took a range of photos, this gave me plenty of choice to play around with on Photoshop and find the images I wanted to use for my ancillary tasks.

Page 12: A2 media evaluation scary film

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

After picking the image I wanted to use for my poster I opened it up in Photoshop. The first thing I did was make it black and white because thought it would give the scariest effect.

This didn't have the real dramatic scary effect I wanted so tried using some different filters. I found one which gave the picture more shadow which is what I wanted . Then to emphasise this even more I upped the contrast and lowered the brightness, giving it a much more scary feel.

To finish off the poster I added text. From my research I knew what kind of text horror film posters needed so used and changed different fronts to give the poster a professional feel.

Page 13: A2 media evaluation scary film

My poster The main image: I chose this to be the main image on my poster because I thought it was quite a simple yet effective photo. I wanted to include the actresses names on the poster but wanted it to look professional so didn't want anything too fancy.When researching posters I noticed that they all had this text at the bottom, so to make my poster look effective I wrote up my own and put it at the bottom of my poster.

I chose this text for the title of the film because I wanted something bold which had a scary look about it and I think the cracked faded away bits of the text match the intended feel. Subheading: I made

the sub heading red because wanted it to stand out

British Film Board classification relevant to content and potential audience.

Page 14: A2 media evaluation scary film

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

To keep a similar house style theme I wanted to make the image I am using for my magazine black and white so looked in the same style as my poster image.

I also changed contrast of the image so brought out more detail in the image and lowered the brightness so would take away the highlights. This made the image and lot darker and spookier . I then cropped my image slightly off centred so would fall better on my magazine.

I then added text changing the colour and size of important words, this would help to catch the readers eye. I also placed my poster onto the magazine.

(Crop tool)

Page 15: A2 media evaluation scary film

My MagazineHeading: I wanted the heading of my magazine to be bold so would stand out.

I didn't want my image to have too much going on, because I didn't want it to take all the attention away from the text, I also didn't want a really boring irrelevant image, so found this one which I thinks works really well.

I used the offer of a “limited edition” poster to get added value from the magazine.

Page 16: A2 media evaluation scary film

Construction and Planning for Trailer

Me and my partner thought it would be a good way to construct all our ideas and plan the trailer through a story boards. This meant we could talk through and plan where we wanted the camera, the angles, what we wanted our actresses to do and where we wanted to film it. When it came to filming I found it very helpful that we had the story boards because it helped us organise everything and were a lot more precise in carrying out the project plan.

Page 17: A2 media evaluation scary film

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

Editing:

Once I uploaded my film to adobe flash player, I cut all the different scenes which allowed me to move them around and delete parts I didn't want. To add a more professional feel I added the effect of ‘camera blur’ to the beginnings and ends of some clips. This made the clip fade in and out making smooth transitions between scenes.

Page 18: A2 media evaluation scary film

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

Editing:

To make some parts of the trailer have a spooky feel I added in different effects to different parts of the trailer. The main one I used was ‘Ghosting’ this faded out the image and blurred it slightly giving the clips a ‘ghost’ feel which I think works really well with the idea and theme of the trailer.

Page 19: A2 media evaluation scary film

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

Sound:

Sound is a very important part of the trailer, it adds tension and really helps to create atmosphere.After importing all my chosen clips of sound that I wanted to use in my trailer I cut parts out and edited them around so when there was a jumpy scene in the trailer there would be a loud bang or scream to go with it.

Where I used three or more different sounds and effects I found that in certain places the transaction from audio clip to audio clip was too sharp and obvious, so by adding the sound clip effect which fades sound in and out I found my audio played a lot smoother.

Page 20: A2 media evaluation scary film

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

Text:

Adding text to my media trailer was a lot simpler than I thought, after creating a new folder on the adobe flash player you had to double click on it where this would appear where you then have to write your text, pick a font, size and colour and click done.

Page 21: A2 media evaluation scary film

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

Text:

We also used the ‘camera blur’ effect on the clips of texts, this made the clips fade in and out to keep continuity of the film, I also found that it eases tension off to calm audience after big build up.

Page 22: A2 media evaluation scary film

Audience feed back“I really liked your trailer, you used lots of different editing techniques such as dipping in and out sound and ghosting the clips. I think that it has been effective overall. If you

could change anything, I think you could have added your own sounds!”

• To develop the trailer I would take all the constructive comments from my audience feed back and make the changes.

• I agree with this comment my friend made and we had a few feed backs which are very similar to this.

Page 23: A2 media evaluation scary film

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

Photoshop:

Da font: www.dafont.com

Photoshop was the main program that I used in creating my ancillary tasks. It is a very advanced image editing tool which enabled me to take a basic colour photograph and apply effects to achieve the desired final artworks.

Dafont is an excellent resource for custom typefaces. The chosen font is important to help make an immediate impact and compliment the photograpic images.

Page 24: A2 media evaluation scary film

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

Youtube

Adobe Premirer Pro

We used the internet website YouTube to research and examine horror film trailers. The quantity and variety of trailers make it an exceptional research tool. An added value to the site is that it would be possible to go viral with our trailer when finished to provide additional “free” publicity for the final film.

We used PremierPro film editing software to take the initial colour digital shots, edit and apply various atmospheric effects to produce the final finished film trailer. I found it a very flexible piece of software which made production of the finished trailer fairly straight forward after the initial learning curve.

Page 25: A2 media evaluation scary film

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

Blogger

Blogger is a fairly specialist media website which allows individuals to upload commentary on films and pictures for example. It is a valuable research and publicity tool which allows bloggers to advertise to a large informed specialist audience.