'Somnium' - Final Edit

This is our finished trailer for 'Somnium'.

Auxillary Task 2 - Final Magazine Cover

Auxillary Task 1 - Final Poster

Evaluation 4 - Who are your audience and what have you learned from your audience feedback?

Evaluation 3 - How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

In addition to creating a film trailer, we were set two ancillary tasks to also create, all of which combined to make a promotional package for our film. The ancillary tasks we decided to create were a poster, and a magazine cover. Posters are easily made, and effective in giving the information they're intended to give. For example they're made to be eye catching and luring, intriguing passers by to pursue more information regarding the film being advertised. Secondly, magazine covers are a more descriptive promotional item. This is because a follow up of some sort is found within the magazine; Whether this be an interview of a cast member, or a review of some kind, more information is given about the film.

Our initial research into the conventions of magazine covers and posters involved analysing different magazine covers and posters that we found online, mainly on google images. An idealistic magazine which greatly inspired us was 'Empire' magazine; we found an Empire magazine cover which we liked, and then based our designs around it, using it as a rough template. 

The initial plan we drew out for our magazine is shown below. We used this as a guide, however slightly changed certain things as we were creating it.

The conventions of a magazine cover soon became clear and we ensured we included; a mast head, strap lines, a main image, a barcode, and cover lines on our own magazine cover. In order to link all three tasks, the same font was used for the title of the film for each. This is shown below.

Magazine cover title

Trailer title

Poster title

The main image on the magazine cover is of Rosie, the main character, expressing horror on her face, which is clearly fitting for the genre of the film being advertised. We darkened the image and added a reddish tone, creating more of a dull, horror-like mood, whilst also matching the bold red masthead. Black is a dominant colour on the magazine as it is the background, the purpose of this being to create a feeling in which the viewers are apprehensive as they do not know what is behind Rosie. Additionally, because of the dulled image of Rosie, it may appear as though Rosie is being consumed by the darkness. The colours we have used allow the film to be recognised as a horror, therefore attracting the correct audience. Below is an image of our completed magazine cover.

After the research was done and it was clear which conventions needed to be used, the initial plans for the poster were drawn up on paper in the same way. The plans we drew up were alike with the final product, we didn't deviate too far from them as we were happy with them, and they were accurate. The conventions of a poster which we used were things such as; a masthead, billing block, tagline, reviews, and a main image. Again, as shown above, we used the stylistic font of our film on each of the tasks, in order to link them together. Below is the completed poster.

Above you can see the billing block on the poster. The billing block is a block of writing conventionally in a thin, narrow font, displaying the names of the production companies involved, the director, and the musicians. Below the billing block are the involved production company logos. The tagline is positioned just below the main title, in a smaller font, reading 'A childhood nightmare brought to life'. This tagline will be what people who view the poster remember, making them wonder what the childhood nightmare is? Below is an image of the main title, with the tagline below it.

The dark, dulled theme of our poster conforms to the conventional colours of the horror genre . Black is a dominant colour which connotes evil and the unknown. This black colour combined with the scratch effect, and the faded image of the antagonist dulled into the background, creates an uncertain mood, suggesting Evylin is lurking in the darkness. The scratch effects also covering the main image suggests that this darkness and evil surrounding Evylin is also consuming Rosie. The scratch effect is also consistent with the background of the inter-titles in the trailer. This again demonstrates a link between the tasks, and establishes a unique style for our film. 

Inter titles

The scratch effect on the main image

As shown above, our main image is of Rosie expressing a horrified look on her face, as though she is in fear of something. We played around with different effect and manipulated the brightness and tones of the original image in order to create this more ghostly, authentic image. Additionally, there is an image of Evylin standing, and looking directly into the camera. This is positioned on the left of the poster, and partially explains to the viewer why Rosie may have that expression. The positioning and sizing of the two images suggests to the viewer that Evylin may be following Rosie, or may always be around her. This is a chilling thought, and raises questions as to why Evylin is following her, and how can she be stopped. Rosie is seen displaying a distressed look on the majority of her clips in the trailer, this is another link between the image and the trailer. 

To conclude, I believe the combination of our main product and both ancillary tasks was effective in creating a complete promotional package for our film. Through the use of all three of the tasks I believe we would have distributed a vast majority of our target audience, thus ensuring our film sold was successfully. Each product is specific its genre and appeals to only a certain type of audience. With the help of the tag lines, inter-titles, and overall sequence of the trailer, it is able to narrate to the audience, intriguing them, and drawing them in.

Evaluation 2 - Technologies

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





Multiple technologies were used throughout each stage of our production, allowing us to successfully complete all of the tasks set. In this evaluation, I will be evaluating the use of different technologies at each stage in our production.


Pre-Production and Research:

In the planning and research stages we used softwares, and websites to become familiar with conventions and various other things that we needed to be aware of. Most of our research was conducted on websites such as; Vimeo, IMDb, and Youtube. These websites allowed us to watch trailers for films of the same genre, with similar conventions to ours. After watching the trailers on this websites we were then able to analyse them to single out specific conventions in order to adhere to them in our production. These technologies were successful in helping us gain this knowledge, and complete effective research. The technologies mentioned above were also used throughout our AS production.

Last year we used word to type up a script, this was amateur and basic, displaying a lack of creativity and professionalism. This year we used a software named 'Celtx' to create our script, which is a pre-production scrip-writing software, that enabled us to create a professional script, easily followed by the cast and crew. Below is an image of a standard exemplary script created on Celtx. 

We used a software called 'Scribd' to upload and embed word documents to our blog, this was especially useful when uploading our script to blogger. 'Scribd' allows our script, and numerous other word documents to keep their format. Similarly we used 'Slideshare' to upload power points onto our blogs in their original format.

Microsoft Word was used consistently throughout. Word adds to the professionalism, structure, and formalism of the tasks we used it for. For example word was used to create permission letters which were distributed to the cast members, these were a formal document which required a professional look.  

IMDb (Internet Movie Database) is a dominant source of information regarding movies, TV, celebrities, biographies etc. It is a trusted, popular website with a huge amount of data, including information for over 2 million films. This made it a perfect website to conduct my research on. My secondary research into target audience was carried out using this website. IMDb has user ratings for each film, which gave me an accurate insight into the main target audiences for each individual film. 

We used 'DaFont' to search for a suitable font for our production. We specifically searched for horror fonts as this is the genre of our production. This website gave us a massive variation of different fonts to choose from.

Throughout the majority of the stages I used Prezi and SlideShare. Prezi is a fun, creative online software used to create presentations, and SlideShare is a software which enables you to upload word documents to blogger in a presentable, professional way. The aim of using these softwares was to make posts on my blog more interactive and interesting, adding to my blogs creative aspect. As there are countless Prezis and SlideShare presentations already created, covering a vast amount of topics, they also became important in the research stage.

Construction:

A software named Audacity was used to alter the sound of Evylin saying 'get the girl'. Originally this line sounded too high pitched, and more gentle and feminine like. However after playing around with the pitch and tones we managed to create a more sinister, threatening voice, which is consequently more genre appropriate. 

I have created an online portfolio using blogger in order to express my ideas, and present my media coursework in a creative and professional manor. Blogger is online, which is convenient as it can be accessed easily through any source of internet, or mobile device. However, this also means that if the website was to go down, our work would be lost. Additionally further complications would occur if someone weren't to have internet at home, this would seriously reduce it's accessibility. 

Pinnacle Studios is a professional video editing software which we used for editing our production. This was because it was already installed on the computers, and it is the software we are familiar with as it was used to edit our AS production last year. Due to our raw footage being recorded and uploaded in HD, the software slowed down significantly and became a problem. Numerous problems occurred with this software, for example it wouldn’t allow us to slow a clip down. This wasted a large proportion of our time, and caused difficulties. We did look in to another software to use called ‘Adobe Premiere Pro’, however after discussing it we concluded that it would take too much time to buy, install, and then become familiar with the software in order to utilise it.

For our auxiliary tasks, we created a poster and a magazine cover. We mainly used Google images to find model magazine covers and posters to analyse, we also used previously made SlideShares and Prezis to gain a wider understanding of the different conventions, and how they're used.

We used Adobe Photoshop to create both auxiliary tasks. Adobe Photoshop is a multi-layered professional image-editing software, with features such as; color editing, text styles, and effects. It allows the combination of different texts and images, to become one. We became familiarised with this software in very little time, and found it easy to use. It was very effective in creating both a poster, and a magazine cover, in such a professional manor.

Evaluation and Distribution:

Twitter proved to be successful in gaining audience feedback, and promoting our trailer. As such a vast majority of the population have access to twitter, which is free, it makes it a suitable place to promote our trailer. Below is evidence of feedback our trailer received from a person on twitter.



Both YouTube and Vimeo were useful in helping us distribute our trailer as they allowed us to upload it onto their websites where it could be watched publically for free. YouTube has a massive fan base and is used by billions of people all around the world.

As part of evaluating our trailer we constructed a focus group, who we showed the trailer to. We then recorded them watching the trailer so we could video their responses, in order to help us with our audience feedback. We did this using a Sony Handy Cam, the same camera which was used to record out production.  

Conclusion:

Above I have explained and evaluated many different technologies that were used throughout the stages of my A2 coursework. It is quite clear that without these technologies our production would cease to exist, thereby making the different technologies used extremely important in the whole process.

Evaluation 1 - Directors Commentary

dvd commentary from Alexia Docker on Vimeo.

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

Initially, during the ideas process, our production was going to be a thriller. However in the event of a student leaving our group we combined with another group, and began to create new ideas involving aspects of both previous ideas. After pooling ideas the final storyline we concocted was for a horror genre; theatrical trailer entitled ‘Somnium’.

I did initial research into similar products to get a clear idea of which conventions we should be using. Daniel Chandler says that genres tend to have set conventions shared by all from that genre. I researched the trailers for ‘Black Swan’ which is a thriller, and the trailer for ‘insidious’ which is a horror. I found various conventions that may appeal to our target audience.

For secondary research we searched for films of the same genre and a similar storyline as ours on IMDB. Here we found the main target audience for each film; this gave us an idea of the target audience we should have been expecting.

For our primary research we created and then handed out questionnaires specific to our genre preference and target audiences. The intention of this was to find out which audience our film would attract, we concluded it would attract 15-25 year old males and females. Genre is important to audience and industry, especially with horror films; this is because of the relationship between the institution, the audience, and the text. Ryall points out that the institution chooses a genre, and then the audience watch films based on their preferred genre, the money from these films is then put back into the industry to fund more genre films. This is called the genre cycle.

It is quite clear throughout our trailer that we have conformed to generic conventions of a horror, for example we used conventions such as; alley ways, secluded locations, paranormal characters, vulnerable characters, fast pace editing, and tension building music, which are all expected conventions of a horror. It is important to conform to certain generic conventions when making a film of a particular genre so that the film is recognised by the audience as belonging to that genre.

Trailers have their own set of conventions that producers use, and audiences understand. Conventions such as sound and title order were approached during the research and ideas stage. However, editing conventions such as the order of the scenes and the sting were approached during postproduction. This is because it was easier to put the scenes into a conventional order once we could visualise it. We moved them around numerous times. The sting was also a convention we discovered and applied in postproduction. This is a final video sequence placed after the title in horror trailers in order to give them a final scare.

Our trailer conformed to theatrical film trailers. This is so that the audience understand it’s a trailer for an up and coming film. It did this through its use of conventions such as fast paced editing, tension built by sound, titles that happen in a conventional order, and the sting.

We didn’t audition for actors, instead we asked who we thought was suitable for the roles available, to play them. From the start we already knew who we wanted to play the part of Rosie, and when we asked her she agreed instantly. She was perfect for the role and has had previous experience in acting which made her more appealing. Finding the actor to play the part of Evelin proved to be harder, however when we found someone, we were surprised by how well she fit the part. Next time I would definitely consider using auditions as I think we may not be so lucky, and it also gives us a taster on how those actors ac, giving us a choice.

The conventions used within the trailer ensured it was distinctly recognised as a horror film by the audience. We found this from our audience feedback after we showed the trailer to a group of people. They all recognised the film as a horror, and the majority of them said they would go to see it. Therefore I believe that overall we were successful at making a conventional trailer.

Auxillary Task 2 - Creating the magazine cover

The main inspiration for our magazine was 'Empire Magazine' which is the worlds leading movie magazine. It contains breaking film news, as well as reviewing films and interviewing countless celebrities. This is the ideal movie magazine and therefore perfect to get ideas for our own magazine cover.

Empire Magazine uses a different font for almost every piece of writing on the cover of their magazine, this is very effective in creating a professional and intriguing appearance, therefore we used this idea for our own magazine cover. In addition to this we noticed the large bold mast head was coloured red which allowed it to capture more attention. We also decided to colour our mast head in red for this reason. Where we differ from Empire Magazine's mast head is the white outlining the bold reed mast head. We agreed that this enhanced the mast head and made it appear more fitting with the horror genre of the film it is featuring.



We found a barcode on Google images, and incorporated it into our own cover. The positioning of the barcode is correspondent to the one on Empire Magazine.

Above is a screen shot of the numerous different layers the magazine cover had. It shows the progression from the previous image.

Here, you can see all the different fonts for each different side story. We felt this drew a lot of attention, and really made the magazine cover stand out from other ones.

Auxillary Task 1 - Creating the 'Somnium' poster

We needed a main image for our poster and magazine cover of Rosie looking scared. This is a screenshot of planning when we were going to take it. 

The software used to create the poster was 'Adobe Photoshop' which is a professional graphic design software which uses multiple layers and editing. It didn't take us long to become familiarized with the software and understand the variety of things it could do. 

Firstly, we copied the same title 'Somnium'  that was used for our trailer onto the poster to be used as the masthead. Then we searched 'scratch background' on google and found a suitable black image with faint white scratches across it. This was used as the background for the poster.

Then, we added the tagline 'A childhood nightmare brought to life'. Choosing the font for the tagline wasn't easy, as it was hard to find a fitting font which looked thinner and weaker than the masthead, but as bold and scary as the tagline itself. The font chosen was 'Felix Titling'. 

We also added the reviews which are positioned in both top corners. We found the 4 stars as an image on google, initially they were yellow, however after we'd saved the image we changed their colour to white to match the sinister theme, and colour scheme of the poster. The name on the top right review is that of a real reviewer. The top left reviewer 'Lindsay Cole' is made up, and the magazine she works for 'Grande Films' is also made up. 'Grande Films' is our other auxiliary task - therefore by using a reviewer from this magazine it links our tasks. 

Adding the images proved to be the most difficult part, this was because the edges of both images were apparent and stood out against the unique cracked black background. This made the poster look unprofessional and mean that the poster didn't merge well. The two below images show how we managed to merge the picture well with the background. The outcome of this was that the poster now blends into the background looking in place, and also has some of the cracks from the background over her face. This is very effective in giving our poster the professional horror-like look we were aiming for.

Rosie's Photoshoot

We required a main image for both the poster, and the magazine cover. In order to get a suitable one we held a photo shoot, where we were able to gather a selection of images, and chose the most effective one. 

Initially, we had to apply distorted make up on to her face, in order to create a more convincing image. The smudged mascara made it appear as though she had been crying. Belw is an image of us applying her make up.

As we weren't completely sure exactly what we wanted our main image to look like, we asked Rosie to strike a number of poses, therefore leaving us with a choice. Given the story line and genre of our film, we did have some guidelines as to which emotions she should be expressing on her face. For example; scared, vulnerable, hopeless, and desperate. Below are some of the shots we got.

Below is the final image we used in both the magazine cover and the poster. We found that her hands partially on her face created a more fearful and effective look. 

Auxillary Tasks - Planning

Before drawing up a plan for our magazine cover research had to be done. Mainly we focused on analysing Empire Magazine covers. This is because Empire Magazine is the worlds leading movie magazine, and therefore the ideal template, and inspiration for our own magazine cover. Most of the ideas we had regarding the design of our magazine cover have stemmed from Empire Magazine. This includes; using different fonts for each block of writing, large bold red mast head, the positioning of the main image.

Below is the original plan we drew up for the magazine cover we made for one of our two auxillary tasks. In this plan we included details such as the name of the magazine, and what extra stories we would advertise on the front of our cover. The plan was successful in giving us an adequate and effective guideline when creating our magazine cover.

To get an idea of the conventions of a poster and how professional posters appear we searched for the posters for films of a similar storyline and genre to our film. The one which particularly sparked our interest was the poster for 'Insidious'. Throughout our research process this film has been used as a comparison and point of research a great deal due to the similarities in our storylines and conventions. Using this poster as a rough template and a basis for ideas we were able to draw up a plan for our own poster. The poster for insidious is shown below.

The image shown below is the plan we drew up for our poster advertising our film 'Somnium'. The plan considers different aspects of the poster in detail such as color choices, and tag lines. It is very easy to follow and serves as an efficient guideline. 

Music

Choosing a suitable selection of music for our production was quite a time consuming task as we had to ensure it fit correctly, and created the right mood. After a lot of searching we decided on two pieces of music both of which we were happy with.

The first piece of music opens the trailer, and is used towards the end of the trailer, this ties the production together and makes it seem symmetrical. The music is quiet, soft, and chime-like, almost like a lullaby or nursery rhyme, which could reflect the innocence of Rosie. 

After Evylns first appearance a more eerie piece of music with lower tones is introduced. The pace of this music is quicker and more intense allowing a build up of tension. From this point on the scenes are more haunting and scary.

We added sound effects to our production to build tension and scare the audience further. For example, loud bangs were used in appropriate places to make the audience jump, and be on edge. The scare factor is important in the horror genre, and sound contributes massively to this. 

"Music adds the emotional quality of the film. There is some empirical evidence to support this: fast and loud music arouses, slow and soft music calms. Motion and emotion are often entwined." -Meyer 1956   

Title and Fonts

Our title 'Somnium' needs to be presented in a way that immediately defines the film as a thriller/horror. In order to establish how our title could capture this, we researched different titles from films of the same genre as our trailer. 

Immediately it became clear that the majority of films of this nature had used a black background, and more often than not, the title itself was either colored in red, or white. Evidence of this is shown in the images below. Therefore from this we concluded that our title should be against a black background, and we are more in favor of coloring it in red. 

Black is going to be used for the background of our title, this is because it is seen as a sinister color, with connotations of death, evil, and darkness. Darkness is a key connotation as our trailer is based around a woman having nightmares. 

Red is the main color we are considering using for our actual title. This is because it is commonly associated with horror films due to t's connotations of blood, passion and anger. However these connotations aren't particular relevant to the story line of our trailer, yet red still seemed to be a suitable colour.

20/03/15

Ultimately we decided to use white as the colour of the main title. This is because after discussing it, we concluded that if the title for our film was in red this would suggest to our audience a more blood-filled, gory horror film, when this is not the case. Our film includes a paranormal, ghostly theme, which in turn is connoted by the colour white. This is why we decided to change the colour of our title as it seems more suitable, and appropriate.

We browsed the website 'DaFont' in search of an appropriate font for our film title 'Somnuim'. We specified which type of font we were in search for by browsing the horror category, in which we found numerous fonts to consider. The font we chose matched the scratchy effect used persistently in our tasks, which became the style of our film. Below is an image of the style of font we decided to use.

Inter-titles

Whilst viewing countless trailers as part of our research, we noticed that many of them displayed inter-titles. Inter-titles and voice-overs are a convention of theatrical film trailers, and inter-titles often replace voice overs. They are a way of communicating to the audience, narrating and letting them know what is going on, and involving them in the happenings on screen. An example of a horror film which uses inter-titles is 'Jessabelle', these inter-titles are shown in the images below.

After considering our options we decided that inter-titles would be useful in our production as a form of narration, as opposed to a voice over, or nothing at all. The first inter-title, accompanied by a moderately sharp bang, said 'what would you do', after a clip of the child in bed a second inter-title entered the screen also accompanied by a bang saying 'if your childhood nightmare'. The third and final inter-title entered the screen with a slightly louder, sharper sound effect, in a noticeably larger font, saying 'came to life'. Below are images of the actual inter-titles used in our trailer.

Flat Plans - Poster and Magazine Cover