Planning And Research A2 Media

Planning and research.

Kathy Pollock.

Introduction. For my A2 ALevel media course, I made a film teaser trailer of a film ;that was of my own choice of genre and

target audience. For this, I had to make many preparations ;regarding research in my chosen genre through analysis of film trailers, and analysing their market campaigns, as like the film trailer I had to produce, I furthered this by producing a market campaign to consort with the trailer, for a professional out look.

From gathering all my research i could then move on, planning the production of the film trailer.. This was all based upon the results and research I had gathered from my research and planning i had previously gathered.

The production of the film trailer was organised throughout the usage of production logs and group meetings between my group which consists of two other people.

Primary research. For my primary research my group and I had already chosen the target audience age range we

were going to target our trailer and marketing campaign at. We all agreed that we were going to aim it at young adults aging between 16-20 year olds. Due to the fact that we are all of this age range, so therefore able to relate to the audiences needs and wants when producing something they will want to watch and be interested in.

But we had not chosen our genre of film, so we made an interview and gather participants of the age range to help us decide which genre to base our film upon.

We did this group interview with 20 young adults ten male and ten female. We showed them clips of different genres ranging from comedy, horror, spoofs, actions and

fantasy. And asked for there opinion of the best trailer and why they thought this.The five trailers we showed them wereComedy- The Hangover.Horror- The Final Destination.Spoofs- Scary movie.Action- the Bourne supremacy.Fantasy- twilight.

RESULTS.

The results we collected were as followed:

comedyhorror action spoofs fantasy0

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5

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When we shown the 5 different types of trailers, there was a major interest in the final destination trailer. And the majority voted as it was the best trailer.

ANALYSIS OF FILM TRAILERS AND MARKETING CAMPAIGNS.

Analysis of film trailers and marketing campaigns.

I have analysed many film trailers and their marketing campaigns, to try and research what are the similarities within each horror/ thriller film, that makes it significant to the genre, and what make the film intriguing to the audience. Mainly within the film trailer itself.

I then furthered this then by analysing the marketing campaigns through the posters and the distribution it has to promote a brand new film. As I ‘m making a market campaign through a poster and a magazine front cover I have chose to focus open that type of distribution throughout the particular film’s marketing campaign.

From doing all of this, is gives me a steady base, on how to approach my trailer and to try and follow the stereotypical conventions of a horror film, and to portray them into my own trailer and marketing campaign. Thus giving me a good start on ideas, storyboards , scripts, scene sets and characters.

Sorority row.

Sorority row. its your typical stereotypical college scene. Lighting gradually gets darker throughout the trailer, showing the seriousness of the murder, and the murderer

returning. A typical hooded murderer, to create mystery.Cutting shots to show the different perspectives of the victims.A particular murder weapon. Black silhouette of all the victims to show who is all going to be attacked, and how they were all involved.All the cuts in the shots, to show the fear within the victims.

Dark colours representing dangers.

Its a simple poster, gets the point across

The photographs, show the stereotypical girlie, friendship thing of taking photographs, but changes it with pictures of scared faces.

The final destination.

• The final destination.

Its following a plot similar to the plots from the other 3 final destination films. It is very exaggerated in every shot.Cutting shots to show there is going to be disaster. The zoom out of the main characters eye, portrays that only he can she what has apparently just happened.‘Tick tock’ indegetic music shows that the victims are running from time. Swapping shots from one thing to another shows how many people ‘death’ is trying to get.One major disaster ‘the explosion; gives the audience an idea of the disasters that is shown with in the film.

Dismembered, broken face, gives the idea that we are going to see lots of gore and pain throughout the film .The blurred and dimmed font gives a spooky and supernatural feeling to the poster.It’s very simple therefore implying that the plot is simple.Dark colours, Shadowing on ht eyes, making the picture look lifeless.

The orphan.

The orphan.

Very dark atmosphere throughout.Starts off with a pathetic fallacy of snow, as the setting, child in orphanage, therefore stereotypically suspecting

something is wrong with her.Close up shot, on her face after being insulted shows there is a hidden depth, along with the anger fit she has in

the bathroom, shows the child is unstable.Pale face, shows apparent innocence, but her old clothing and the darkness in the colour determines an

juxtaposition.The cutting scenes, yet again creates drama around the scenes where it is vital for the audience to see the main

theory of the plot and what is wrong with the child.Having a child as the problem, gives the audience an uncomfortable feeling, as it counteracts all the

stereotypical ideas of children being innocent, this creating and unnerving sense for the audience.

Having blues and greys as the colour scheme, shows that she is a dark character but yet she is secretive but not outright dangerous or dark

Having the pig tails, shows the innocence of a child stereotypically..

The carriers

The carriers.In a deserted dessert. Creating space and insecurity for the audience as they cannot be protected

by anything.‘she’s got it’ creates suspicion and mystery as we don’t know what she’s got.‘The rules’ makes us think, that there only the way they have to survive, so its serious.The music stopping and the camera focusing upon the girl when she get sprayed with blood,

initiates that there is something seriously wrong. But not yet saying what it is; is causing drama along with the girl getting thrown out of the car.

But the whole point of the trailer is about the ‘carriers’ which isn’t mentioned until the very end of the trailer. This making the audience seeing the build up of the story line, catching the imagination, then telling the point of the story, makes them want to know, how bad the ‘carrier’s’ themselves are like, therefore making the story.

Having dusty colours, gives the feeling of death, decay and dirt.

Having the girl based at the bottom of the page, looking up, gives the idea that she has arose as she id looking up, could be necessarily as one of the carriers or as not.

Having the light shining on the side of the face, shows her human form, but having one side shadowed initiates that she perhaps now isn’t human.

AUDIENCE RESEARCH.

I asked 15 young adults to complete this questionnaire to give me feedback on generally what do young adults think about horror/ thriller films, the positives and the negatives.

Questionnaire.

1. Do you watch horror /thriller films? Yes / no2. Do you like horror / thriller films? Yes/no3. If you had a choice to watch between a comedy or a horror /thriller film which would you choose ? Comedy/ horror4. Do you prefer to watch an actually horror/ thriller film, or watch a spoof film? (such as scary movie) horror/ spoof5. Have you seen any of these horror/ thriller films? (tick more then one, if applicable) The final destination. Drag me to hell. Sorority row . The exorcism of Emily Rose. The amtyville horror . The Saw series. The ring. 6. If you have seen any of these can you please tell me why you went to see them, what interested you about the film from the trailer? a. ........................................................................................................................................... b .......................................................................................................................................... c ........................................................................................................................................... d ........................................................................................................................................... e ........................................................................................................................................... f ........................................................................................................................................... g ..............................................................................................................................................

I then did another group interview with ten people asking their opinions on these four different horror/ thriller trailers.

The omen.The orphan.Carriers.Paranormal Activity.

I asked them to watch the trailers and give me both positives and negatives of the trailers. Would they watch the film?Why wouldn’t they watch the film?What’s good about the trailer?What’s bad about the trailer?

Furthermore I asked;

Has anything in particular throughout the trailer stood out to them?Has the lightening made any impact upon the initial impression of the trailer?Can you understand the plot of the story straight away or is it ambiguous ?Does an ambiguous plot make a better trailer then a clear plot?Is the plot of the story interesting or not?Has the setting made an impact?

results

From my individual questionnaire these are my results.

1. Do you watch horror films?

2. Do you like horror films?yes no

6.57

7.58

8.5

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8 out of the 15 people that filled in the questionnaire said that they watched horror films.

yes no05

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All 15 people said that they liked horror films.

3. If you had a choice between watching a comedy film or a horror film, would you rather watch a comedy or a horror?

If you had the choice to watch a horror film or a spoof film (such as scary movie) which would you prefer to watch?

comedy horror6.4

6.8

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8 out of the 15 people would prefer to watch a comedy instead of a horror film if they had the choice out of the two.

spoofhorror02468

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The ten out of the 15 people we asked would prefer to watch a spoof movie instead of an actual horror movie.

We then asked who had seen any if these horror film ( tick more then one if necessary)

14 out of the 15 people have watched T he final destination3 out if 15 has watched Drag me to hell5 out of 15 has seen sorority rowEveryone we asked has watched the exorcism of emily rose7 out of 15 people have seen the amytiville horrors13 out of the 15 we asked has watched either 1 or more of the saw series12 out of 15 have watched The Ring.

the final

destinati

on

drag m

e to hell

soro

rity r

ow

the exo

rcism

of emily

rose

the am

ytivil

le horror

the sa

w serie

s

the rin

g048

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These were the general quotes to the last question.6. If you have seen any of these can you please tell me why you went to see them, what interested you about the film from the

trailer? The final destination : to see the last film of the series. it s in 3D and i want to see how good the effects are. the plot looks good the films looks hardcore and exciting Sorority row : it looks like the film scary movie seems like it has a good plot

The orphan: it looked scary. it looked really mysterious. good mature story line

The carriers: it looks like something that could happen in the future, so it makes it interesting watch. makes you curious to what happens to the characters. you want to find out how the disease started.

The choice of genre we picked was horror/ thriller due to the fact that our audience research lead us to believe that our target audience which is young adults prefer to watch this genre more then any other genre. And we started on the idea that we would keep most of the conventions the same as this gave us a good idea on producing a realistic horror and thriller.

Storyboard.

1. Main character sits in a physiatrist cell2. Character is seen leaving the psychiatric ward.3. Character spies on boyfriend and sees him with another woman.4. She is then seen in a bathroom 5. Then a close up of her looking psychotic.

Locations and Actors. These are the locations for the trailer:

The bathroom: this has been used to shoot the scenes, where the character looks into the mirror, to show her angry. We made this an over the shoulder shot

reflecting to the mirror to show a hidden anger in her but because she has her back to us, this also shows that its meant to be

hidden.

the stair’s and pathway: this is used for when the victim is being chased but the murderer. We used this place as it was good for the different angles we could take this shot.

grass areas, and bushes: these are for the murder scenes and the scene coming up to the murder where the murderer stalks the victim. We use this grass area instead of others because it is enclosed by bushes, and the bushes outlook onto an open space, making it easy to shoot shots from the bushes, when the victim is being stalked.

the cannon diamond theatre: this is used as the ward

that the main character comes out of. This is only used once and that is when she is seen leaving the ward.

Actors.We auditioned some applicants for the various roles:The main character.The victim.

These are the applicants:

This person had a dark look about her, with a mysterious aura, furthermore she looks rugged and worn, so therefore fitting for the murderer part.

this person, looked too weak to be the part of the main character but yet not nice enough to be the part of the victim and she didnt like the story line.

This person was perfect for the part of the victim, she looked good in front of the camera and could act the naive scenes perfectly.

This person didn’t look convincing as the boyfriend, he wasn’t strong enough as an applicant.

Initial layout for poster and magazine cover.

This is the original idea for the movie poster. We wanted to keep the design simple, instead of something that is crowded, therefore making this an oxymoron for the actual trailer itself, as the plot is complicated.

We chose the colour scheme, black, white and red mainly for the reasoning of the dark colour of black, hinting the darkness of the trailer , the red signalling the danger of the main character. Also the white contrasts with the black and the red therefore emphasising the dark and dangerous colours.

We centred the main character on the page as the whole plot revolves around her, therfeore signalising she is the main one and hardly no one else is involved

First draft of trailer.

The first draft of the trailer, was more of a test for us, to try and be able to get the right angles and lighting for the main trailer. Furthermore we had to find the places that were easy enough to film. We found that trying to do an over the shoulder shot looking into a room through a small window difficult to do as the angle was hard to find without having to hide most of the head or trying to move the head out of the way so you can see through the window., at the male and female in the room, thus being the main reason of the plot. Eventually we were able to incorporate movement to be able to be to see both the main character and the people in the room.

We used a lot of close up and long shots within this trailer as they were the easiest to do and easier to edit and be able to combine different shots together. Everything is this trailer is very straight and simple hardly edited as we decided, it was just a trial run to be able to figure out how to be able to get an effective shot.

After doing all of this we were able to start using different angles for different scenes, we also had to try and find if the plot flowed together successfully without and breaks.

Altogether the first draft we thought was poor, as we knew we could do better, but it helped us when preparing for the final trailer.

Production logs.

Date/ location Attendees Purpose /activity Roles Actions

24/09/2009 LaurenMichaelKathy

to all contribute to discussion

To all contribute to discussion and the work they achieved

Everyone to produce storyboardEveryone to produce magazine coverEveryone to produce poster

07/01/2010 LaurenMichealkathy



Lauren- produce main storyboardMichael- find locations, and actors, sort costumes, propsKathy- devise filming schedule, book equipment.

14/01/2010 Lauren Kathymichael



Lauren, final story boardKathy ,final magazine coverMichael, final poster

All start filming.Find music.

21/01/2010 Lauren Kathymichael



All edit

Final movie poster.

This is the final movie poster, we have kept the same colour schemes and fonts, as the initial poster due to the fact that; that was the main signalising of the plot by the colours and fonts.

We made the font ‘times new roman’ because the font its self, is straight and looked more appealing and realistic to the lot instead of another font. Also we’ve added a slogan to make the poster more authentic.

The main character has been moved to the side of the page, looking away as if to the other side of the page this is done, as she looks like she is hiding something.

Furthermore there is hardly any editing upon the picture, due to the fact that the natural lighting we got off the camera shadowed her face, showing a contrast of light and dark, the fact that her body is light shows that she is meant to be a new person after leaving the ward, but the shadowing on her face, portrays she has a secret and might not have changed at all. The character has been lassoed.

Final Magazine Front cover.

Similarly like the movie poster, we kept the same base for the movie poster, due to the colour schemes of black, white an red.

But the picture has been faintly dimmed into the background, but we have gave the main character a background of bushes; where she kills her victim. She is sat down, looking down, to give an ambiguous idea that she could be either contemplating what she has done, or planning what she is going to do. Moreover the lighting behind her, makes her stand out so that the plot is all about her , but yet the lighting has gave her a shadow on her, giving the same effect as the movie poster.

We have contrasted all the colours within the page making everything to do with the film dark, with the black and reds, and making other parts of the magazine that is included light colours, to show the difference.

Final teaser trailer.

Planning And Research A2 Media

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