Evaluation: Question 3 & 4

Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

I think after doing most of our filming one night that we would put together a rough version of the film trailer and that is what we would show people, and for good reason to. The main reason was because if all people had to focus on was the clips and the story the clips conveyed when put into an order, it would give us an idea of what clips we needed to film, how we would do it and also what changes we would make to the film trailer project. This was something that both myself and Tom found very useful because it meant we had a chance to give the audience a bite of our idea, then have the audience tell us what they want to see from that idea, it also meant that when we had a final product, it is something very much targeted at the audience. Having a fresh pair of eyes looking at the trailer always helps as well, because if the story line isn't translated through the clips in the film then it's going to be very difficult to bridge that narrative to the viewers.

In using this early audience feedback as our main feedback as opposed to the traditional feedback of showing them the final product meant we could really dig down to the problems with our film trailer and its story. We learnt that our story was weak, we knew it was weak. But with the right planning and the right trains of thought we managed to think of a method where we replace a few clips and delete others to create something completely different, but manage it to be almost the same, it meant heading in a completely new direction, adding a third, main character, but it meant we had a solid story line that people liked the sound of. This taught us to think outside of the box, instead of working with what we had and messing around with the clips we'd already filmed, just by adding some simple touches and a few more seconds worth of clips meant we turned our idea completely around. Another thing it taught us is that names, logos, songs, places and other minor details aren't important, getting a story line sorted so it is a solid bit of script writing is the main thing, and we learnt the hard way by sorting all of the little details of the film trailer first without sorting out a solid plot, story line and characters. In the end we dropped most of the details of the trailer in pursuit of a more suited story line to the Horror genre. 

Question 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

When we started off during our construction, research and planning stages of our project we tried not to focus on the social media side of things, using only blogger, which didn't prove fruitful when we were in the first stages of making our film trailer. To find real, truthful feedback, which is what we needed with our project is incredibly hard online, no one wants to watch a half made film trailer, or comment on a status about an idea for a media project, so we thought it best not to bother with it, only asking people face to face, people who understand the project. 

Other than the social media side of things, we did use a lot of technology as far as planning and research went. Tom and myself spent countless hours getting stock images, looking at horror trailers, magazines, posters etc. just so we got a feel for what a final product should be like for a horror trailer. During the research we used a lot in the way of IMBD, Youtube, Empire, Trailer Addict's various websites etc. so we got a feel for what this product should be like, this also helped us get through the planning stages for our film. After we decided to change our story line, we looked at more videos and trailers for inspiration so we could finally construct the storyline for the trailer and how the trailer would end up like.

Construction of our final products boils down to a small handful of programs. For our trailer I used Youtube to get some of the clips, like the Viewing Audience certificate, this was to give it some legitimacy. For actually editing the film trailer together I used the latest edition of Windows Movie Maker on Windows 8. There were several reasons for this, and it was risky using movie maker, one of the reasons is that the software for the editing should be in line with how it was filmed, with what we had, and Movie Maker is what we had, another is that it is quite a basic video editor, but Microsoft have done some work to it in recent years, I gave it a go to see if it was worth keeping and using in future or retiring it to the recycling bin, and to be honest it wasn't too bad, some things drove me nuts, but it was fairly easy to use with its drag and drop system. Some of the stills such as the two stills at the end were both created in Photoshop, as was the poster that Tom designed. I used InDesign to design the magazine cover, but Photoshop to edit the original image. This was because I find it a lot easier to use InDesign for adding images onto other images, but Photoshop easier to edit one particular image.

In the evaluation stages of our project we decided to split the questions between Tom and myself. Tom took questions 1&2 and I took questions 3&4. Tom decided to take the route of using Prezi, a well known, cloud presentation software. This meant his part of the evaluation was a lot more pleasing to go through and read as the audience, but also meant the work load on his part was manageable. Instead of choosing the route of using cloud based software such as Prezi, I decided to use the normal format of a blog, by using pictures and text to give a message to the audience, I felt like the evaluation is the most important part of this film trailer project, so to shrink all of the information needed in an answer to an evaluation question right down to a powerpoint presentation with 4 or 5 slides on it I thought was a bit too little in the way of information. Had I done the project again I would have tried more online sources of presenting information, but I'd rather have avoided using other methods of presenting my evaluation rather than spending less time on something else such as the magazine cover.

-Ben

Movie Trailer: Analysis

I think on the whole, our move trailer was quite successful considering all the difficulty we had with various things, not that this should be an excuse it wasn't easy. Every bit of technology that could have gone wrong has or did go wrong. From my phone which we filmed it from, to the software on my laptop, to the college's systems it hasn't been an easy thing to complete, but we managed to get the film trailer, poster and magazine cover complete to a fairly high standard.

There are a few rough edges with the final, complete trailer. The thing that sticks out in my mind is the lack of definition that filming at night. It was a long-shot filming the whole trailer from an iPhone, we were never going to be able to create the same atmosphere from the clips that you would normally expect in a film trailer, filmed in high definition. But for the resources we had I feel that the filming side of things were fairly good. There were a few things which weren't as refined as I could have possibly made them, the first being the music, towards the end Movie Maker decided that the volume of the music needed to lower to enhance the sound effects from the video, I don't quite understand how it did this because the editing process for that particular clip was exactly the same as all of the other clips we filmed.

The next problem with the final trailer that I know was an issue was the last clip that we filmed in the trailer, when we filmed it, I didn't think about covering the camera, the idea being that it blacked out and you would hear the sound of the saw being used. To provide the sound we used a block of wood, a wet rag and the back of the saw, and it sounded fairly realistic, but if you pay particular attention to the clip, you will notice that you can still in fact see the saw, dim it may be.

Overall I think the trailer was a successful final piece, although I think the quality of the poster and the magazine cover were a lot better because of the few rough edges we had with the trailer. It's very easy for myself to sit here and talk about all of the things that went wrong with the film trailer because I was hands on with the trailer the whole time, I edited it, I filmed a portion of it, and the clips were on my phone, so I knew what the bad bits of the film trailer were going to be before I even put the clips together in Movie Maker. Although I could have ironed some of the problems out I left them in for 2 reasons, the first is that I don't have 3 hours to spare nitpicking at every slight little detail of the film, I mean I could have edited every single clip in one program to make them look more visually stimulating, and then used an editing suite to edit the whole thing together, but if I was going to do that I probably would have used a DSLR camera and lighting equipment to film the whole trailer. I'm happy with the way it has turned out and the way that the whole project has developed since we started it.

-Ben

Movie Trailer Planning: Acting Upon Feedback

When we came back into Media with our first set of clips we let the rest of our class watch the clips that we had shot and the draft final piece, a bit rough in places, but it showed you all of the shots and the basic story line for the trailer. From this we asked our audience what they thought of our piece, and below are several responses:

Member 1:
"A lot of good shots, some of them very mysterious, but it lacks horror and thrill"

Member 2:
"I like the story line you have I just think it needs 1 or 2 clips just to fully complete it"

Member 3:
"It has potential to be something good"

We expected a lot of criticism for it, I chose to ignore comments about what it was lacking as far as typical codes and conventions of a movie trailer, such as the 'the following preview has been approved for appropriate audiences' and other things like the title of the film and the credits. This was because the version of the film we showed them just showed raw clips, and the basic story line with those clips. From the criticism that we got I think it was fair to say it needed work, so myself and Tom went away with the ideas that we already had and decided to change them to act upon the feedback. For details on the changes we made to the filming and story line of the film trailer see the next blog post 'Movie Trailer: Shooting The Piece'.

-Ben

Movie Trailer: Shooting The Piece

Our original idea for the piece is to only feature 2 characters which would go to the pub for the evening, visiting the pub would haunt them for that evening, and on the journey home, they would have some form of paranormal event, this would in turn tune into the Horror genre with the death of the two characters by weird and odd means, using the car as a way of their death. However we changed this story, we decided to add in a third character who would act as the murderer. We thought that this would be a sensible option because it would be easy to fit into the story line, but it would also at the same time make it more effective and a lot more scary, sort of like the final piece to put the puzzle together. After changing our story we had 3 main locations. One of them was the car and it moving, which provided some fairly good driving shots, the second location is The Chairmakers pub where the original story line was based around and the third location is the garage and yard for Harris', which backs onto Tom's House.

We decided to film the piece on my iPhone instead of using the traditional camera. Although some shots like a lot of the night shots and shots in the dark were fairly grainy and not too detailed I think it was a good choice, the quality was fairly good when the light was stable and sometimes the lack of definition played into our hands, making some shots slightly more creepy due to the lack of light. If I was to go all out I would have tried to source some lights and at least use a DSLR with filming capabilities, even use Go-Pro's for the front of the cars and to get shots that would look effective. The most obvious problem is that equipment at that standard is expensive, so for the equipment we had I think we have filmed some effective shots that fit the story line and all of the combined ideas.

-Ben

Magazine Cover: Evaluation

My aim for my magazine was to try and create a magazine cover that looked like a legitimate Scream Horror Magazine cover, and I think looking at the final product I think it was a success. Comparing my magazine on the left to a published edition of Scream on the right I think I got the basic design layout spot on. Although in general I think the magazine cover was a success there are a few things that I would change had the chance. The first one is to include more smaller details, for example in the Scream cover on the right there are blood splats around the 'HORROR MAGAZINE ISSUE 16', there is also a paper tear border around the image on the bottom right, as well as a blood splat around the bottom right cover line's text.

I think that the successful things that I designed from scratch was the 'The Gear Shift Killer' title text and logo, with the gear stick and the saw combined in the background. The original idea for this would be to have a gear stick just come from the bottom of the logo, just a stick attached to the gear knob, with the gears written on top. This would go in a similar place to where the image is now, but after looking through Google images for stock shots of both a gear knob and a saw for quite a long time the idea sprung into my head to split the image into 2, flatten the colours and join them together, and the only reason I originally thought it would work is because they are both very recognisable figures, the outline of both shapes tells you what it is.

Another thing that I am really happy with from the magazine is the image. Tom and myself were really stuck for this image, because after we changed the title of the film and fiddled around with the story line, we didn't know what to do, so after sitting in his car for 10 minutes or so we thought of the idea of parking the car so that the windscreen was facing the woods by the side of college and putting ketchup on a blue glove we found in his car. Photographically the image could use a little bit of work and I would have liked to use a DSLR camera, but for the ideas we had at the time and the equipment we also had I am quite pleased with how the final product looks.

If I was to do this task again I would have spent a lot more time in the editing process of this cover. I would have liked to design my own magazine, with my own name, colour scheme and other things, but due to time and other subjects I thought it would be easier and probably more effective to use a pre-existing magazine like Scream. Although it isn't anywhere near as effective and nowhere near as fiddly, complicated and annoying, it has however meant we have a fairly solid final piece, and means I can focus more on other tasks within our campaign for our Horror Film idea.

Magazine Cover Planning

For our magazine I want to keep it to the horror genre, this means I am going to base it around the magazine Scream, a horror film specific movie magazine. I will use the scream title and a few other things that feature in the magazine while creating my own logo for our film name 'The Gear Shift Killer'. My aim for our magazine cover is to make it as similar as possible to the real thing, I want to make it look like a legitimate Scream cover.

As long as I use parts of the magazine in the right way and in the right place, the font/logo of the 'Gear Shift Killer' is right and the image looks right it should all come together fairly smoothly. In the pursuit of creating a convincing Scream magazine cover I will need all of the elements of a normal, Scream magazine cover. This includes the following:
- Scream Banner (Website URL and 'Blood, Guts and More')
- Main Image
- Masthead
- Cover Lines - This can include images, but of something relating to the cover line
- Barcode
- Main Cover Line (Gear Shift Killer)
- Barcode
- Pull Quote (The quote attached to the main cover line)

The main image of the magazine has to be something I focus on. Many of the photos used in actual editions of Scream have some sort of filter over them to make them look more dark and mysterious than they actually are. For example take the magazine cover that I have used in this, the image of the housing estate and the people in the clouds are black and white, with a warm filter over the top of it, this brings out the contrast in the clouds and makes the place look a lot more gloomy than it may have done in real life, these kind of techniques will draw the audience into the magazine as this is what they're looking for.

Feedback From Audience

Our feedback from our audience, mainly people in our class and our teacher have all looked at our movie trailer and given us feedback on the direction that we should now take the trailer, poster and magazine in.

The first thing that people said is that the trailer wasn't that scary, it had atmosphere with all of the shots that were taken from the rear of the car, but nothing physically scary that they jumped at. Our idea, which is an accumulation of a few peoples ideas is to include a third character, a murderer, that will act as the horror to the film. We can introduce him in several ways, all of which we will try out, with some of the ideas including a second car driving around and a glove scene - preparing for the murders. Both of these ideas involve adapting the storyline that we already have, from a couple that go out for a night at the pub and then encounter some odd things on the way home to the new storyline of them being murdered. Both Tom and Myself feel that this gives the story more of a punch and will definitely improve the final outcome.

Another suggestion is the name. Originally the film was meant to relate to the pub a lot more, but now the storyline has been changed and adapted several times the pub isn't really included in the film trailer much, so we have decided to change the name, the ideas that we've come out with so far include 'The Gear Shift Killer' and 'The Seatbelt Strangler', although these names aren't amazing, they do however stick in your head, are quite catchy and would make the film fit in a lot more with the Horror genre.

There are a few smaller details that both Tom and myself both think we should change. One of them is the use of titles, and other visual effects for the film, filming alone won't be enough to get a creepy, horror style of fear across to the audience, this will require myself to learn a few more techniques on Lightworks, the video editor we have decided to use for our film trailer.

- Ben

Movie Trailer Progress

To start off with our Horror trailer I watched all of the clips through to decide which clips were usable, which parts of some of the clips were usable and what order I would put the clips in. I then put all of the usable clips into movie maker, cut them down and put them into an order. This has formed the basis for our movie trailer to which we could then build on, adding sound and visual effects. At this point the trailer is fairly bare but it gives us a rough idea as to what our final outcome will be like and it also gives us the chance to see which clips could have been improved if we had the chance to film them again.

So far I would say that filming went fairly well, there were some clips which we had to use which I would have liked to re-shoot, but because of time and the fact that we used an iPhone to film all of the clips I think that it looks fairly good. When you think about the final piece without actually going out and filming it I think the quality of the clips was something I was expecting to be better, but the resources we had to use worked okay, and I'm happy with the way it's coming along.

Aside from a few clips which maybe aren't as good as they could have been I think the trailer is coming along nicely. I now need to finalise the whole process, adding music and some visual effects to make the trailer look and feel like an actual movie trailer. At this point I'm not 100% sure with the music that we are going to use, but I'm sure like the other things we are working on with the project it will be something that will come together when Tom and myself sit down and decide on things like this.

-Ben

'The Chairmakers'

We have named our film 'The Chairmakers'. Although the title is a little misleading in the sense that no one makes chairs in the film it is the name of the pub at World's End, and it is the main location of our trailer.
The idea behind our trailer is thriller. A couple are out for a normal night for a drink, on the way home they are tormented by a strange being. If we were making the full film the tormenting character would be the protagonist.
Our trailer will be based near a a pub named The Chairmakers'. It is located in a isolated, middle of nowhere kind of place.
We plan to shot our trailer in the evening time when it is dark, preferably when it is raining and the weather isn't too good. This will add to a scary affect.

There are a few things that could be a problem with filming, this includes the main issue of light. Filming at night will mean we have drastically reduced light, it will mean some of the clips we film will be too dark, or not light enough to use in our final piece. Another issue will be the sound quality of the film, until we have heard the clips back on the computer we won't know what the sound will be like, this is especially important when trying to include dialogue in our trailer.
Parts of the trailer may need to be re-filmed or edited more extensively.

Location Photos

This is a list of settings and locations we plan to film our trailer in.

This POV shot will be used in our film trailer, it shows a personal view of the setting and gets the audience believing they are part of the film. Allowing them to experience the film a bit more.

This is the kind of setting we will use in our trailer. A place in the middle of nowhere and a place which is quite isolated. This gives the trailer the impression of eeriness and isolation. The affect on the audience will be to scare them.

This picture will be a predominant one in our film trailer. It is a picture of the pub, it is in the middle of nowhere and will be one of the main scenes in our trailer.

Our location for our horror movie trailer is World's End, near Hambledon in Hampshire. The photos above show all of the different aspects and potential places for our film to take place. All of them are POV shots, mostly from the car. This will show you what the character of the film trailer will see, but it also shows it in the perspective of what someone else would see as they drive through World's End.

Although we didn't get of the car to take the photos it does give a good perspective as to what the environment looks like. That day filming clips was the most important thing to do, so getting out to take time consuming photos wasn't something we wanted to do. The photos are quite a good example of what we want from the environment, it was a misty/foggy day. It was foggy enough that the scenery seemed mysterious, but it was clear enough that you could see the landscape quite clearly. We shot photos of several different places that we are positive we are going to use, the main two places are the pub - The Chairmakers, which will be the location for the turning point in the film, and the long road coming into World's End, which will be the location for the main plot and the main part of the film in which the characters will experience their psychological episodes - the mentally thrilling part of the film.