All three of our media products have the same consistent style and this is mainly demonstrated through the use of font and colour, for example we chose the colour theme of red black and white with both our poster and magazine but also with the inter-titles of our trailer.

All three products clearly link and show the same style, this was done by showing the same main character (Radiya) in our magazine, poster and trailer. The reason for us doing this was so that the audience would be able to recognise and familiarise themselves with Radiya so that they could feel part of the trailer and personally attached to her as they are seeing different sides, images and traits of her.

As a group, we all decided how we wanted both our magazine cover to look like, although we didn’t know whether we wanted our magazine cover to be an Empire magazine or a Sight & Sound magazine. However with the colour scheme, image and storyline we thought that the magazine best suited a Sight & Sound magazine.

Our products have the same representative elements for example the black and white background , the red coloured font to emphasise any danger or curse and the colour white for the writing. The red is used to connote and emphasise on danger, curse and mystery. For example red is used on the poster tagline “only the trees can hear you scream” and on the a “curse” on the inter-titles in the trailer.

All three of our media products have a clear link between them and show that they are all from the same film.

There are various links between the products and these include; The colours – black and white, red in both the magazine and poster The poster is subtle and does not give away too much to the audience, this is similar

to the magazine as there is not much on display but the front of Radiya’s face. Additionally, this is comparable to the trailer as we also see a close up of Radiya’s face/eye at the end

We used the same main character, mainly to show a link and not to give anything away about the film and who is going to be starring in it. This is why we chose to not show Radiya’s full face to the audience so they have a suspense feeling about who she may be or what she may be about.

Both the poster and magazine are in black and white with the same lost soul font In white at the bottom of the page.

The teaser trailer grabs the audience’s attention and teases them with the suspense of the storyline. The trailer shows key shots that puts the story into perspective and also uses the three main act structure by first of all laying out the premises of the story, in our case by establishing that four friends have a day our and enter a forest which they do not know is cursed. Secondly by driving the story further, having a dramatic climax, again in our case by knowing that the forest is now cursed and now the young girl who died in the forest is going to haunt us. Lastly having a visual montage of powerful and emotional moments of the film which is where we had a voice over of whispers and fast pasted shots of us slowly getting tortured.

The trailer links in with both the magazine and poster as it used the same main character and also the use of the black, white and red inter-titles in the trailer gives the same atmosphere as the other two products, all three always linking back to Radiya.

The use of black and white in the poster and magazine was also done to create a misty eerie atmosphere

The Magazine portrays Radiya as being hidden as we never really get to see her face in both the poster, magazine and trailer. This is significant as it gives out the effect that we never really get to find out about her which creates suspense.

The poster which was inspired by the Blair which project, is also significant as it also states where the scene is set which is in the forest . The poster also establishes in the character Radiya, we never get to see or find out about her because her face is always covered and is never displayed. In addition, we decided to come up with the name Lost Soul which also links with the poster as Radiya is a character who is always alone and seems to be lost in the forest and doesn’t seem to have a soul .

The magazine and poster are both very similar as you can easily see a clear distinctive link between them as we used the same style of font and colours and idea.

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

How did media technology help you research into thrillers, trailers, posters and magazine covers? Were there any issues that arose when trying to research?

How did media technology help you plan your trailers, posters and magazine covers?

How did media technology help you construct your trailers, posters and magazine covers? Explain the technology you used (hardware and software) and whether there were any issues with using it? Any problems you overcame? What did you have to learn that you didn’t really know from A/S? Were there problems or issues you had to overcome?

Explain how you used media technology to ‘evaluate’ your product, e.g. to show it to audiences, to survey audiences, to get feedback, etc.

Before we began to create our ideas for our final piece we had to research into the horror genre and look at different trailers and posters. We mainly used the internet to research different horror trailers through Google and YouTube. It was easier for us to Google search for poster ideas. We found different ideas of many ‘teen’ style horrors which helped us decide on our final poster. Although, whilst researching we had to make sure we noted down typical conventions of a trailer so don’t end up making an opening. We noticed that the full theatrical trailers and teaser trailers were different to each other so we concluded on how to layout our trailer and mark it out to make sure it looked like a teaser trailer. Researching posters and magazine covers on the internet and through browsing magazines enabled us to see a different variety of styles which would help us create our own idea for both media’s. By using the website www.comingsoon.net we saw the full campaign for a particular movie which helped us to create a ‘house-style’ for our movie so it the poster, magazine cover and trailer related to one another. We watched some horror movies such as Blair Witch Project which influenced our final idea for our teaser trailer. YouTube was helpful as we were offered with both full theatrical trailers and teaser trailers but we found comingsoon.net far more useful as it offered us the full campaign so we could see how the media platforms would relate. We watched teaser trailers for films such as ‘insidious’. ‘paranormal activity 3’, ‘sorority row’, ‘the grudge 2’ and many more. By watching these trailers we knew what our trailer had to contain such as inter titles, jumps, non-diagetic sounds and so on. This further additional research helped us because it allowed us to correctly follow the typical forms and conventions to a horror trailer. We noticed that the posters related to the trailer through the style of fonts, colours and characters. It was consistent in all three different media’s so we knew we had to create our house style so our trailer, poster and magazine cover related.

To plan for our teaser trailer we needed a basic idea. After the in depth research on the internet and using other resources we had our idea created. By typing in keywords into Google it helped us see a variety of trailers, posters and magazines.

When planning, the internet helped us gain a clearer understanding in what had to be achieved in order for our trailer to be a teaser rather than a theatrical trailer. By watching these trailers online using YouTube we were able to understand what was essential to help create our trailer. This helped us before we could begin constructing our trailer as we were able to understand the key elements to a teaser trailer. Before we could initially start the planning we used comingsoon.net to help us give ideas which would help contribute to our piece. After analysing a few campaigns of different horror movies from the website we were able to begin to plan our trailer effectively due to our knowledge on horror teaser trailers.

To construct our trailer we used the software Adobe Premiere 6.5 to edit and create our teaser trailer. When using the software it was fairly easy as we had previously used it in our A/S task. We noticed that it was more difficult than expected as we couldn’t put our shots into sequence and had to put them in different places which helped create the ‘suspense’ and make the audience intrigued enough to watch the full movie. When editing we noticed that some shots were difficult and couldn’t be used as the sound wasn’t clear enough as we faced difficulties with wind. It was mostly during the voice over section where we fixed the problem by placing a soundtrack over the top and quietening the main sound by playing around with the volume levels. Another issue was that we un-bonded the video from the sound because we used different shots with sound from other clips. At first this was wasn’t a problem but further in the editing stage it became difficult if we needed to insert more clips and move the current ones on the timeline. In a/s we never experimented much on the software so we was unaware how to deal with the problem when our sound was distorted from the original clip but during this process we became familiar and improved which helped finish our teaser trailer. Toward the end of the trailer we also selected a sound clip of a scream from another shot and reversed it and sped it up to lead to our ‘jump’ clip. This was different for us as we used the software and took full advantage of what it offers to help our final product.

During our teaser trailer we wanted to create a typical horror suspense at the end of the trailer. For us to create this we inserted our clip and then searched and experimented with the effects on the software. We tried many different effects but found the ‘invert’ effect. In order to create our flickered inverted clip we placed two inverts onto the clip and then changed the levels and when the invert would play on top of the original clip. The scene of the eye, flickers from the effect back to the original which is what we wanted our final finish to be. This is something we learned during making our teaser trailer as we never experimented during A/S. We used different techniques such as increasing the speed on certain shots and used ‘fade’ to edit some of the clips. During one of the voice over’s, we used a black and white effect. We did this because it was consistent throughout our media’s that whenever the main character was visible she was black and white. For example, the magazine cover she is in the black and white effect just like on the poster. During the build up in our trailer, we used multiple shots to create our montage. During the montage we placed our inter-titles which helped explain the story better. For the montage we selected clips that were significant to use and un-bonded the video from the sound then deleted the sound that wasn’t needed. After placing numerous shots for the montage we tidied it up and sped some clips up to help create the finish. For the sound to match we repeated the section of whispers and chanting we recorded. Although there is wind which was originally a problem we fixed it by lowering the levels in the correct places. After we added echo and reverb to give the sound the final finish to the section.

In order to understand how we could improve next time we used the internet to get feedback. By placing our trailer on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube we was able to get a few responses and critical comments on our trailer. By using these different media’s it enabled to take advantage of all the different available places for our trailer to be shown and commented on.

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

In the production work of our poster and magazine, we used 2 different types of editing software; Adobe Photoshop and the editing website ‘Picnik’. Both editing programmes allowed us to use various kinds of editing techniques, which helped our poster and magazine link to our theme of trailer. To take the set of images, a digital SLR camera was used to capture the best possibilities of what was seen on set. Certain editing techniques worked better when using Adobe Photoshop, as we felt it allowed us to have more control over the lighting levels within the images. This linked us back to the Horror theme our trailer, which gave us the ideas in changing certain elements of each photo. Choosing Photoshop was the best software to use for our images because we had more options when making the image look ‘spooky’ in the emphasis on black and white. For example, using the ‘burn’ tool for adding depth and texture in our magazine image – or boosting the lighting of our poster to make it seem almost abstract.

We wanted to create a mysterious/frightening image for both our poster and magazine, but also thought that using two different types of images would help us keep our campaign connected, without using a repetitive style of photograph for each. On the other hand ‘Picnik’ allowed us to put the structure of our two medias together easily, when it came to adding elements such as text and pugs. This was an early problem that occurred, since we first decided to use Photoshop to create the layout of our magazine, and adding text to the poster. We found that Photoshop had limited resources of font styles, as we wanted something to relate more to the Horror/supernatural theme we were trying to portray throughout our campaign. Therefore ‘Picnik’ was a lot more straight forward in adding text and other elements to both our magazine and poster. We were much more familiar with ‘Picnik’, as we have used this website within our other media related subjects. Nevertheless, Photoshop helped us greatly in selecting certain things from another ‘Sight and Sound’ magazine, and merging it onto our own. For example, the magazine title. Thus, both websites helped us in the construction of both our poster and magazine in different ways. They were both useful and effective in getting the creative end result we wanted.

These are the selection of photographs that were taken on the set of filming our trailer. I took the images in landscape so I could fill up the frame with the surroundings that worked well with the subject. The selected photograph is one that we collectively decided was the most visually appealing. The digital SLR camera that was used had a built in ‘film grain’ effect on the camera. This was used to capture the image, which lessened the time it would take to edit the image using any kind of software.

In the editing process of our poster, we added very little to the original image, as most of what was the important aspects of the image, were taken in the camera. Through Adobe Photoshop, the levels were changed to make the black and white effect stand out more potent than the original. The shadows and dark areas were highlighted better after this effect was added. This creates a mysterious and spooky look to the poster, displaying to the audience what kind of genre our trailer lies in.

We used Picnik to choose what style of text suited our trailer and poster. The website had a wide range of font styles that may be used in horror films today. We faced problems regarding what type of font we wanted to use for our poster. This was because we knew that once we had picked a certain font style, it would be used consistently. We wanted something modern, but something that could relate to the forms and conventions of horror films. The font chosen was called ‘all used up’; it had a ghostly effect when added to our poster image.

We chose the colour white for our poster title because it matched the colour tone that was presented in the image. It blended in with the background, but also the composition of the title made it easy for the viewer to read, compared to if it was positioned at the top.

In the process of choosing a catchy tag line for our poster, we wanted to grab the attention of our audience. This was because in our previous research, we found that a tagline has the affect of sticking in the viewers mind. As this is a poster for a horror film, the tagline has a purpose to scare the audience; it was important to embrace this within our poster. We faced problems in deciding on colour and style of font for our tagline. The editing website Picnik helped in the final decision of choosing the colour red and the style of font. Red contrasted with the white, which was used for our poster title. It also helped with connoting blood and danger through to the viewer.

Here are the series of images that were taken on set of filming our trailer. Keeping in mind that magazine cover’s are in portrait, each photograph reflects the aim in trying to make the same effect as the poster has on the viewer. However, we thought that the background and positioning of the subject was too easily related to the poster. In our research, we found that the covers of Sight and Sound magazines are usually almost similar to the poster of film, but not the exact copy. This is why we used the digital SLR camera to capture a different twist of our main character of our trailer.

• As both the poster and magazine cover were shot in black and white, we felt that it was the best thing to bring out the subject stronger through the editing process. We found the original image not being very effective and did not connote the frightening/horror theme that we wanted to portray. I think this was because the black and white used was too soft over the image, and didn’t bring out a hidden mystery to it - it almost drew away from the forms and conventions we researched. Thus we decided to over expose the subject matter through increasing the lighter levels of the image through Adobe Photoshop. We also found the ‘burn’ tool useful in making the subject’s hands look dirty and unclean. This linked her back to the contents of our trailer; we didn’t want our main character to look even more unrelated to the poster, as our 2 images are different.

• Originally, we had a problem in getting the different aspects of the Sight and Sound magazine onto our creation – as we thought about creating the elements from scratch. Adobe Photoshop helped us to crop out the magazine heading of Sight and Sound, and paste it onto our image. It was a great combination of our font house style and the magazine cover we used.

• However, it was a difficult task in trying to add different sized text onto the cover of our magazine. Picnik enabled us to place the text with ease, without any complications in changing the colour and size of the font. But a problem we faced was making the colour of grey stand out over the subject’s face. The theme of colours presented within the image were of a dark nature, as well as some areas being brighter than some of the rest of the image. It was difficult in making some of the words noticeable; we overcome this by using 2 colours for one phrase. We also decided it would be best to continue with the type of font used for our poster. This was effective in allowing the audience to relate our poster and magazine cover together.