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

As a group, our main form of communication was via Facebook Messenger, as we set up a group chat where we could have conversations purely about the film. We were able to discuss filming schedules, so that we could avoid clashes, as well as being able to talk through solutions to problems if anything went wrong and we weren't together. It was also useful as we always knew who was responsible for equipment at any time, and we could use it to share photos of locations, the storyboard, equipment and links of trailer on YouTube.

However I also used Direct Message on Twitter, to speak to the artist Charlotte Campbell, whose track we used. As she follows me on Twitter and we've had several conversations on the platform, I messaged her asking if we could use her track, and she replied, granting us permission. This was an important step as we needed to have permission from the artist in order to be able to use it in our trailer, and without social media this would have been a lot more difficult.

Blogger is an important website throughout the entire creative process. I was able to document all my research and planning in one place, so I was able to keep a track of it, as well as my teachers. I was able to receive online feedback on how to improve my blog via blogger. I could also upload my draft and final trailer, poster and magazine cover. Blogger means that my blog is easily accessible to everyone, including myself and those marking it. To a certain extent, I have been able to embed other forms of media into my blog (such as photos and videos).

Bandcamp was one of two sites we used to get music for our trailer. I bought 'If She's An Angel' by Charlotte Campbell from Bandcamp because although I had previously purchased the song elsewhere, I had no access to iTunes on the computers at school. Therefore Bandcamp seemed like the easiest way to get the track in the correct format onto the trailer.

Freeplay Music was the second site we used to get music for the trailer. Obviously it was important that we only used music without copyright or that we had permission to use, so Freeplay Music was ideal. Despite struggling to find a track on this site for a long time, we eventually found 'Pretty Parties' which we were able to download for free and use on our trailer. Freeplay Music enabled us to search for tracks in many different ways, including searching a feeling, an instrument, a style etc.

Before creating the trailer, the only editing software I had used was Final Cut Pro X, however due to a change in circumstances, we found ourselves using Premiere Pro this year. Although being slightly tricky to pick up at first, we soon got used to it as it bore similarities to Final Cut. We were able to cut down footage, re-order clips, darken shots, add fades to footage and audio and more. I was also then able to use Premiere Pro to create one of my evaluations. I took the video, removed the audio and then recorded my own voice while talking about the synergy of my texts. I then edited it onto the footage and added in my print texts.

I used YouTube both to research and to upload. I was able to search through and watch lots of horror and thriller trailers for my research in settings, trailer conventions, music, plot etc. In addition, my group and I uploaded our pitch, our draft trailer, our final trailer and evaluation tasks. This meant that not only were they easily accessible for us but also that we could embed them onto our blogs. 

Throughout the process of creating the trailer and the print texts, Photoshop was used many times. We used Photoshop to create our production company logo, institutional information and the title. 

I also used Photoshop in my research as I recreated a magazine cover.

 Lastly, I used Photoshop to create my print texts, the poster and the magazine cover. I cut out the photos I wanted to used, created the texts and chose the fonts, added glow effects etc to produce these.

 




















I used Popplet to create a semi-interactive brainstorm for my 'What is a Thriller' research. I was able to colour code different sections of the brainstorm. However, after many attempts to embed it into my blog, I discovered that Blogger would not support Popplet in the way I wanted it to. Therefore I had to take a printscreen of my brainstorm and put this onto my blog instead.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

After creating the first drafts of my trailer, poster and magazine cover, I was given a lot of feedback by my teachers, peers and friends, some of which I decided to use and some of which I disagreed with.

I got the least amount of feedback on my poster - the only suggestion for improvement I was given was to make the photo of the main character Holly brighter as she was barely visible. Although this was my intention, I still decided to make her brighter as many people told be they didn't notice her for a long time. I got a lot of positive feedback, however, including that range of fonts, tagline and general layout was good. Although only a subtle difference, I do think that the feedback I received helped me to improve my poster as a whole.

I found it far more difficult acting on feedback of my magazine cover, as I received so much. The initial feedback I received was that the masthead, background image and font for 'In The Shadows' were all effective but there was a lot I should change. It was suggested that I add more colour, some of my fonts were 'too blocky', the barcode was too big and some of the text was unclear. In addition, a recurring comment was that it looked too similar to a poster. In addition, I decided I was unhappy with the layout. I then made several changes, moving almost all the elements of my magazine cover around the page to try and get an idea of what would work. 

Firstly, I made the barcode smaller as I agreed that it was too big and took away from the more important elements of the magazine cover. I added another photo (of Eva who plays Natalie) in an attempt to remove its poster-like appearance. I went down several routes in hope of improving my magazine cover, as at no point had I been at all happy with how it looked. I took out the pastel colours used for the film titles in the bottom left hand corner and eventually settled on a red theme to add more colour to the black and white cover. One suggestion I received was to remove a lot of the content and go for a 'minimalist' theme, however I was then given conflicting feedback when I was told this made the magazine cover look even more like a poster. 

I therefore changed the magazine cover again, adding more elements in, changing and swapping the formats of some, changing positions of text etc. After advice, I also added a tagline. Overall, I am happier with my magazine cover after the changes I made, despite struggling to get to that point due to being given so much different feedback and making so many changes.

 


















Lastly, we got lots of feedback to help us to improve our trailer, as well as some positive feedback. Our peers and teachers said that the second half of our trailer effectively built tension and our final shot, of Holly saying "help me" after the institutional was also powerful as it left the audience feeling tense. However, it was suggested that we add intertitles to the trailer as this would make the narrative of our film clearer, however as a group we came to the decision that intertitles would not work with our trailer.

A lot of feedback we received on the trailer related to the sound. We had a lot of problems with the sound when creating the draft so this was not surprising. It was suggested that we should change one of the tracks (the trailer featured two) as they didn't fit together. However we knew this was going to be difficult as we had struggled to find two songs in the first place. Our only idea as to try a softer version of our second track 'Pretty Parties' but when this did not work we made the decision to go back to our original track, 'If She's An Angel' by Charlotte Campbell. 

Therefore, we decided to focus our efforts on improving the transition between the tracks: another piece of feedback was to smooth this out. This also proved difficult as we lacked experience in the technology we were using to edit (Premiere Pro) so we weren't entirely sure how to solve this problem. We tried several things to try and improve this small section of audio, including removing the silence (before deciding this made it worse and adding it back in again), adding small fades before and after the voiceover and adding a longer fade onto the end of the first track. In addition, we added a quieter sections of 'Pretty Parties' before the faster section started to ease the change of tempo and style in rather than it being so sudden. These changes were effective to a certain extent, as although the transition is smoother than it was, it is perhaps still not as good as it could be.

Lastly, we were told that due to the first shot being of one of the characters talking, it looked like that character was saying the voiceover, out of sync. Therefore, we changed the order of the shots so it no longer looked weirdly out of sync.

How effective is the combintion of your main product and ancilliary texts?

There are many common elements between my three texts – the poster, the magazine cover and the trailer. Firstly, the title of ‘In The Shadows’ appears in all three, as a focal point. To create the title we used two fonts together (one serif and one sans serif), and they appeared exactly the same to make it recognisable for the audience, linking the three texts. The title was a quite big on the three texts as it was very important to emphasise it. In addition, our main character, Holly, played by Shauna Ellis appears in the poster and the magazine cover, as well as appearing several times in the trailer. Therefore the audience could recognise that she was important to the story. This could help us attract the audience as Shauna would be part of our demographic, meaning that people may feel like they can relate to her. This links to Lacan’s mirror theory.

There is also a general greyscale theme throughout my texts. As well as the title being black and white, all the photos on my magazine cover are black and white. This is a stereotypical convention of horror films. Other conventions of horror films include the woods, as a setting, which can be seen in both the trailer and on the magazine front cover. The woods connote the illusion of being trapped whilst simultaneously creating a feeling of isolation. Another genre convention is shadows, and the theme of light and dark. This is obviously featured heavily within our film and this is clear from the title ‘In The Shadows’. 

As mentioned, Shauna as Holly appears in all three texts, while Eva as Natalie appears in two, myself as Amy appears in one. This suggests the significance of Holly’s character throughout the film. There are many elements of her appearance in the texts that connote something about her character. Her dark clothing and make up in the print text connote darkness and a lack of innocence as we want the audience to believe Holly could be capable of evil. However it is possible that this portrayal is countered in the trailer as Holly appears in lighter colours and expresses how scared she is. This will give the audience the overall impression that Holly is a mystery, and very changeable.

As only three characters are really featured throughout the texts, there aren’t many suggested relationships. However the trailer clearly shows Holly, Amy and Natalie all laughing together which connotes their friendship, and Natalie and Holly both featuring on the magazine cover emphasises their closeness.

The narratives of the story have been left deliberately quite vague as we want the audience to be curious about the film. Therefore, not a lot is made obvious but it is clear that Holly is the main character and that she is scared, and perhaps lonely or isolated. This is especially emphasised in the poster as she is alone. There is also some suggestion that something or someone is haunting and terrorising Holly and her friends, and although this is not obvious from the poster or magazine cover, the potential repercussions of this can be linked to the print texts.

The colour scheme for the magazine front cover is red, white and black. Although this theme is not as obvious in the trailer and poster, there are subtle hints to the red. The red connotes danger which is conventional of the thriller genre. The fonts for our title are the same on all three texts so the audience can easily associate the three. In addition, there are some fonts, such as Orator Standard, used in both the magazine cover and the poster.

As well as the title, there are elements of institutional information seen on a combination of the texts. The billing block features on the poster and in the film, as does the production company logo, which is conventional. We want to emphasise to the audience who created the film. 

Overall I think the campaign for ‘In The Shadows’ was effective. There were elements that linked the three texts together, such as the title and our main character Holly. The colour schemes and fonts fitted with the thriller genre and to an extent, with each other. The theme of light and dark emphasised the genre as well as the plot of our film.

In what ways does your media products use, develop or challenge forms of conventions from real media products?

The first screenshot shows three teenager girls (who are three of the main characters), who are stereotypical characters in a thriller film. Due to their age (and gender) these girls will be seen as vulnerable, which is a key part of creating fear in a film. We decided to conform to this particular convention because we thought it would help us attract our target demographic (15-25 year olds) as they might feel like they can relate to some degree. For example, the first half of The Last House on the Left is focused on three teenagers (although the focus mainly shifts to adults during the second half).

The second frame shows the character of Natalie walking through an alleyway at night - which conforms with the convention of darkness and low key lighting in a thriller film. Lack of light helps emphasise the idea of the unknown and is seen in almost all horror or thriller films, including the Woman In Black.

The third photo is of the main character, Holly. This is an example of a trailer convention as it is a strong introduction to her character. Although not the first time she appears in the trailer, it is possibly the most telling moment. She whispers "Help Me" which shows she is scared and reaching out to someone. The audience can also tell other things abou
+t her, such as her age, roughly, as well as the fact she is wearing make up so probably cares about her appearance. Character introductions happen very noticably in the film trailer for Catfish with a combination of sound, visual and intertitles. Although we didn't use intertitles to literally introduce our characters, we still tried to give the audience an idea of who some of the characters were, subtley.

The next frame is a section of my magazine cover. I have used some stereotypical conventions here, such as a masthead (PREMIERE), a barcode, date and price, a tagline, and a photo of the main characters of the film I am trying to promote. In general I wanted to use usual conventions of a magazine cover, so it was recognisable and didn't look like a poster. However, I didn't want to base it on just one magazine cover as I wanted it to look unique. Therefore I used a greyscale theme throughout, apart from the red text, which challenges conventions of magazine covers that are usually bright and eye catching. 

The middle shot is a convention of a thriller film as it is a recognisable location. In thriller films, the unknown, including new locations, can be scary but sometimes it is scarier when the scenario is completely recognisable in everyday life. Therefore several of our scenes are set in a park - this is a stereotypically happy environment that was twisted to create fear. This can be seen in many films, for example, there are scenes in Carrie which take place in her bedroom, and as everyone has a bedroom, this is an instantly recognisable location and the audience may then make a connection between their bedroom and that film, which intensifies the effect the film has on the audience. Another example is A Stranger Calls, which opens on a scene in a fairground. Although the scary action is not actually taking place in the fairground, the audience may still make an association due to the combination of visual and sound.

The sixth frame is a section of my poster. The title, institutional information and tagline can all be seen in this section, as well as 'Coming Soon'. These are all conventions of a film poster. The title is obviously important on the poster, so we made the font easy to read. The title includes both a serif and sans serif font, which is perhaps less conventional but it was white against black which is quite stereotypical. To understand the conventions of posters I looked at many, and annotated The Avengers film poster. Even though this was not a thriller film it provided a strong basis of what should be included on a poster.

The seventh frame represents the audience not knowing who the antogonist is. In many horror films, the source of fear and destruction isn't revealed until the end, which is a convention we wanted to conform to. It helped us emphasise the suggestion that the antogonist was supernatural - something we wanted the audience to believe.

The eight photo shows Holly in the woods which is a stereotypical 'creepy' location. By using locations such as the woods, we were able to create tension due to the feeling of isolation it creates. This was seen in The Last House On The Left as the main characters are trying to run away, but can't get help. Therefore we wanted to use this stereotype, however we didn't want to feature it too heavily as I felt that horror films set in the woods can be 'cliche'.

Lastly, the film features violence, injury and death as shown in the ninth screenshot. Destruction of some form is a very important convention of horror and thriller and we decided to portray the destruction in many ways, including the death of a main character. Many horror and thriller films do this - including The Exorcism of Emily Rose which focuses on a teenage girl who gets exorcised, but then dies. 

In general, I tried to conform to the conventions of film trailers, by using fast paced editing, appropriate music, quick cuts, institutional information etc. as it was obviously important to be recongisable as a trailer and intriguing the audience about the film. However, there were some conventions of film trailers that we decided not to use. Despite feedback and advice suggesting we should, as a group we decided not to include intertitles in our trailer as we didn't think they would fit with the music or the trailer.

Poster Draft

Magazine Cover Draft

 

Final Order of Shots

• Age certificate information
• LEV Productions logo
• Tracking behind friends
• Mid shot of Holly and Amy sitting and talking
• Mid shot of Holly and a friend
• Close up of phone
• Long shot of Holly, Amy and Natalie
• Long shot of Amy and Natalie on swings
• Tracking behind Holly
• Fade to black screen
• Long shot of power cut on stairs
• Tracking shot of Michael's feet
• Close up of a phone call coming in from Michael
• Close up of someone ringing a doorbell
• Close up of car window
• Mid shot of Amy getting attacked
• Long shot of empty moving swing
• High angle Holly waking up in bed
• Mid shot Holly waking up in bed
• Close up of turning keys in ignition and starting a car
• Canted angle of Holly running upstairs
• Low angle of rain coming down at night
• High angle of dropping phone
• Close up of hands banging on door
• Mid shot of Holly sleeping
• Long shot of Holly walking through trees
• Long shot of Natalie walking down alley
• Close up of Natalie's face
• Close up of candle going out
• 'In the Shadows' intertitle
• 'Coming Soon' intertitle
• Institutional information
• Close up of Holly saying "Help Me"

Levi-Strauss' Theory

Claude Levi-Strauss' came up with a narrative theory of binary opposites, and this theory can be applied to In The Shadows. There are many binary opposites in our film, mainly emphasised by the characters Holly and Michael - some examples are:

Good and Evil: Although cliché, we found that towards the end of our film there is a very clear divide between good and evil, despite that line being blurred throughout most of the film. This is represented at the end when, at the end of the film, Holly realises that one of her best friends has been kidnapped - by Michael. She goes and helps her while Michael has clearly hurt her. However the lines are blurred once more when Holly realises that Michael has turned himself into the police.

Introvert and Extrovert: The main character, Holly, is represented as being quite extroverted in the first part of the film. She is confident and enjoys going out and spending time with her friends. However as she begins to believe that she is 'haunted' or 'cursed', this starts to change. She spends less time with her friends, thinking that she is protecting them, but makes herself and her mental health worse by completely isolating herself. The idea of being introverted is also seen with Michael as he spends most of his time alone, when he isn't out committing crimes.

Male and Female: This is another obvious 'opposite' and wasn't seen much until the end, due to Michael's role being so downplayed until the last section.

Private and Public: Another opposite we tried to emphasise in the film was how people behave in public compared to how they behave in private when no one can see them. Holly is confident, happy, friendly and popular when in public, but when she's alone she is often seen as being low, upset and scared, and sometimes angry. However the contrast is clearer with Michael as he behaves fairly normally when lots of people can see him, but when left alone he is completely erratic, fuelled with jealousy and obviously incredibly violent.

Mulvey's Theory

Laura Mulvey came up with the theory of the 'male gaze',  referring to the way that visual arts are created and structured with the male viewer in mind, usually by sexualising female characters. Despite the fact that males between 15 and 25 are a key part of our demographic, there are many reasons why this theory cannot be applied to our film.

Males are only half of our demographic as we hope that females will enjoy the film just as much. Therefore, even if we assumed that all males would be interested in females, and all females would be interested in males, we wouldn't want to tailor something that could be seen as a main element of our film to just half our demographic. Therefore we have made an effort to not unnecessarily sexualise any characters in our film. This decision was emphasised by our group's mutual hatred of oversexualisation of women in the media, believing that how a woman is represented should be her own choice, not the choice of those that will be looking at her.

Feedback from First Draft

The first draft of our trailer (above) was reviewed by our peers and teachers. The feedback we got was both positive and negative.

• Add intertitles to help explain the narrative: we recognised that the narrative wasn't necessarily completely clear to the audience. However after discussion, we decided that despite being a convention of a movie trailer, it wouldn't fit with our trailer as there was nowhere appropriate to put them. In addition, it is important that due to a twist at the end, we don't reveal too much of the true nature of the plot.
•  Make the transition between the slow and fast section smoother: originally, there was a second of silence between the first track and the voiceover, and then the voiceover and the second track. However this made the transition sound very jolty. We got rid of the silences, added fades to the sound and added a quieter section of our second track 'Pretty Parties' before the full drum version kicked in. Although still not completely smooth, we have found that the transition isn't as jolted as it was in our first draft. 
• Open with a different shot: due to the first shot being of one of the characters talking, it looked like that character was saying the voiceover, out of sync. We decided to change the order of the shots so that the shot playing at the time of the first voiceover was not of anyone talking.

• Change one of the tracks: the general consensus was that the two tracks that we had chosen did not fit together. As we had struggled to find a suitable second track, we agreed that we should try and change the first one. We trialed a softer version of 'Pretty Parties' but this did not work at all, leading us to revert back to our original song. After consideration, we decided that the tracks worked better together now that the transition wasn't as awkward.

• We also received positive feedback. Our peers and teachers said that the second half of our trailer effectively built tension and our final shot, of Holly saying "help me" after the institutional was also powerful as it left the audience feeling tense.

Storyboard

To give  us an idea of what our trailer would look like, we made a rough storyboard with all the shots we wanted to use. (shots go downwards) 

 

Changes: Script

Despite not having a long or extravagant script in the first place, we found that when it came to filming some of the speech we had written seemed unnatural, so we made a few subtle changes to the script. The final script is:

[film production logo fading to black]

Holly (voiceover): Weird things keep happening to me. [show scenes of Holly looking happy, with friends and family]

[cut to black screen]
Amy (voiceover): What do you mean?
[fast cuts of bad things happening to Holly and her friends]
[cut to black]
[film title]
[institutional information]
[cut to Holly]
Holly (looking scared, talking to the camera): Help me.
[cut to black]