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

During the research and planning for the trailer, poster and magazine cover, we looked at the conventions used and what functions they perform. For example, theatrical trailers are longer, and they have voiceovers that concentrate more on the narrative whereas teaser trailers focus more on portraying the atmosphere of the film and highlighting the stars and/or director. We needed to understand the commonalities so we that could make our production work capable of properly marketing the film.

The Trailer

We decided to go for a very common teaser trailer convention: using short clips edited at a fast tempo. We leave the title and release date highlighted at the end of our trailer to maximise the duration and drive home the main message - a common technique. Teaser trailers are increasingly found online. Online means smaller screens, lower resolution and poorer sound quality. We had to consider all this when making our trailer, as it will be shown online: for example on Apple’s trailer site and on my blog.

A teaser trailer is also supposed briefly to introduce the main characters and the basic relationships between these characters. Our trailer does this through individual ‘interviews’. These are intended to convey the personalities of the main characters in a brief snapshot. My character (Alfie) challenges the stereotypes of the main protagonist (the killer) in ‘slasher’ horror films. He is not a typical scary character. The costume – glasses, curly hair, tie and blazer – is not typically scary. However, in some ways he does conform.

In my research I did notice that the killer would generally have some sort of inner moral (at least to him) reason for why he is killing. The reason why Alfie has become a killer is because he has been bullied and become so frustrated and distraught that he has turned insane. He thinks his group will never be able to get him a passing grade and therefore he kills them all to finish it by himself. This gives the film narrative a logical rationale, allowing the audience to become more involved, and it ensures that Alfie conforms to the conventions of a mainstream ‘slasher’ movie killer.

From my research I noticed that ‘slasher’ movie killings are usually a result of an amoral action from a group of teenagers, taking drugs, underage drinking or sex, for example. In this case we have bullying and not doing your media coursework. A common theme in ‘slasher’ horror movies, I know!

We noticed that theatrical trailers generally had voiceovers but teaser trailers did not. The teasers that had a voiceover used it more for dialogue and to reinforce the text on screen. We decided not to use a voiceover because we were striving for verisimilitude and thought that a voiceover would change the mood and atmosphere of the trailer making it less scary and involving.

I would say that the teaser trailer we made both challenges and conforms to various different conventions. We tried to adopt those conventions that help to ensure that the trailer is successful in attracting audiences but we also challenged some of the stereotypes - the Alfie character and the 'interview' technique used to introduce him and the other characters, for example.

The Poster

The poster is more conventional. It uses tried and tested techniques to grab audience attention. A common technique is to have a face staring out at the audience. This engages them and draws them in. Hence our face looking directly out of a black background. Most posters have minimal wording and big, bold titling. many also have a witty strap line - we did our best with '4 eyes are better than 2'.

We felt that it was better to adopt and mimic some of the better examples out there than to try and develop our own non-conventional techniques. We used the Movie Poster Addict website to look for examples we felt were strong and dynamic and then tried to come up with our own visual montage to reflect the narrative and theme of our movie. There are quite a few examples of the types of posters we felt were strong and successful included in an

 earlier post - Researching the Poster. Here are two other examples.

Obviously we had to ensure that we incorporated all the necessary components as well, such as credits, stars, logos, certificates and so on. It was the main visual though that was hardest to get right. We needed to have something that conveyed both the menace and the slightly surreal and ironic quality of the movie. Using the blood-dripping typeface was a real aid to achieving this. I feel that we very much re-inforced the typical conventions of a horror movie poster.

The Cover

In a similar way to the poster our magazine cover uses many of the conventions and techniques employed by publishers - particularly film magazine publishers - when trying to attract readers. The title of the magazine is strong and clear so that regular readers won't miss it on the newsagents' shelves. The title of the main article movie (our movie) is prominent as well, with a very recognisable image from the movie used (the same one as in the poster). There is an overall them to the magazine for that issue - Halloween. And there are a number of other highlighted features and articles around the cover. Once again we felt that using the best of the available techniques was a better way to go than trying to challenge the conventions in any significant way. Good magazine covers work, and trying to achieve that affect whilst breaking new ground or pushing barriers would be difficult.

Overall I think we did a pretty good job of it all, considering time and budget limitations. I think we tied in the trailer to the poster fairly well, considering we had a change of heart late on, and delivered a fairly professional teaser trailer that conforms to the primary conventions of a ‘slasher’ horror movie trailer, whilst we challenged some of the conventions through the use of a-typical protagonist. The trailer is short, punchy, atmospheric and clearly gets over the message: that a great new ‘slasher’ movie called Attack of The Nerds is coming out on October 31^st. The poster and cover are strong visually and work well in our opinion.

The movie is aimed at a target audience of people aged 15 and above. Filmworks also want the movie to appeal to independent, creative and aspiring adults. The intention is to have produced a trailer, poster and cover that fulfil both those objectives. I believe we have done that. The nature of the movie is an almost automatic lure to teenagers – who love ‘slasher’ movies. By using less conventional film techniques and effects when shooting and incorporating those shots into the trailer, with highly atmospheric music and little additional audio, other than brief dialogue snippets the trailer should also appeal to the ‘art house’ movie crowd – in a similar way to the Blair Witch Project.

What have we learnt from our audience feedback

In my opinion the way that we handled the questionnaires was quite professional and organised.

I think that the questions were useful and there weren't too many. It was good that we put the results into a spreadsheet as this made the results easier to analyse and to put into pie charts, so we could gain useful information about our findings.

The results were very useful in the creation of our trailer, magazine and poster and had a good effect on the campaign as a whole.

However, we then showed some people our products and they had good points and bad points to make about our work. We took it all on board and then decided to change some things. I talked about this and what changes we made in the post 'A change in direction'. 

This piece of audience feedback was more informal as we just showed our teacher and other pupils our work in school, and asked them opinions. Ultimately it was probably the most important feedback we had had.

I also have a poll on the website, but you can only ask one question - Would you like to go and see Attack of The Nerds?Although the poll has had not enough votes to be useful yet it can still be useful in evaluating whether the marketing campaign has worked on the target audience, in that it will provide me with direct audience feedback.

Another way that we achieved some audience feedback is by setting up a new facebook group for Attack Of The Nerd. We did this as facebook is a young social networking site that many people in our target audience, teenagers 15 and above, will use. The Facebook group has been very successful in achieving some real audience feedback from our target audience. We got some really positive feedback from our trailer and now we have 65 members. One of the main outcomes of the feedback is that it gave us confidence that we really had successfully targeted our target audience.

The Facebook group was useful in weighing up how effective our campaign might be with our target audience. Here are some of the comments made about the trailer.

Evaluating the combination of my main product and ancillary texts

When I review the main product and the ancillary texts, the trailer, poster and magazine cover, I feel that as a team we have delivered on the brief. We have created a movie concept that appeals to teenagers and the art-house audience, and we have delivered a teaser trailer that successfully conveys this to those target audiences and that commands attention. The overall image is of a movie that will be scary but that has sufficient 'alternative' production values that it will attract an audience beyond the core 'horror' movie crowd.

The trailer was probably the hardest piece to put together, as the production process and techniques for filming, audio recording, mixing and editing were really new experiences for me. I know that we could do more with more time but all in all I am pleased with the end result. I wanted to ensure that the trailer would work online and simplicity seemed to be the key to this. 30 seconds is not a long time and we ended up with a 60 second trailer. You still can't get too much information over in that time so you have to focus on conveying an overall impression of the movie: the style, atmosphere and directorial feel. You also need to get the main marketing message over: a great new slasher horror movie with a difference called Attack of The Nerds is coming out on October 31st.

Putting the poster and magazine cover together was something I was more used to doing: working with Adobe Photoshop to work on the image and to lay out the 2 documents. I think that we have really delivered a professional result here. A really striking central image to draw the eye that, when combined with the title in the typeface we have chosen, successfully conveys the correct marketing message: this is a scary slasher horror movie with a difference. The image, with the wierd techie glasses, ties in to the Nerd in the title. I believe the poster would stand out and successfully draw attention and create interest and demand.

The magazine cover is a slightly different challenge. It needs to work as a magazine cover as well as successfully promote the movie. It has different content requirements from the poster and requires a different layout approach, as it needs to work close up and needs to inform about other contents of the magazine to attract the potential reader in the newsagent. Magazine publishers like to have images of people/faces looking out at the reader on their front cover, as these have been shown to increase 'pick-up'. That is why we changed our image in the poster to one of Lima's face looking out directly at the viewer. then, when we use the core image and title on the magazine cover it will work well to sell the magazine.

The research on Film and DVD magazines really helped us gain an understanding of how the best ones work and why. It also made us realise what we would have to include on the cover to make it appear to be a real cover and so it would demonstrate to the Filmworks production company how our marketing materials could be used in this way.

One of the understandings I gained during the whole process was how inter-linked the process of developing the different materials is. You need a narrative to work out what to include in the trailer, but also to give you a title for the movie. You need a title for the poster and also to help you create the right image for the poster. You need the image used to work on a magazine cover.

As we worked on one of the products we would constantly have to refer to the others, and frequently would have to go back to the others to edit them to make them all work together. Overall I feel we did a pretty good job of bringing them all together and that they deliver a suitable professional media package for Filmworks.

Of course the marketing campaign is more than just the 3 components we created - it is about how they are used and where they are deployed. There needs to be a synergy to the whole campaign so that it hangs together and each part works to maintain and grow the 'buzz' and interest. It helps to have a USP.

Our USP is 'classic slasher horror movie with surreal twist' and I think that we successfully put that message over. But we would want to ensure that the campaign as a whole was properly co-ordinated. The trailer should appear in cinemas before films that are likely to appeal to our target audience. The trailer should also be used as a web marketing tool - using viral techniques and special interest forums to generate word of mouth in advance of release. Possibly a TV advertising campaign could be developed, though the budget would be high for this.

The poster could be used in cinema foyers and on billboard poster sites (bus shelters, tube and rail stations, bus sides, etc.). It could also be used as a press advertisement in magazines and newspapers that are relevant to our target audience.

A strong component of any marketing campaign is PR. Making sure that Film magazines (and others) highlight the film is a key part of that. By designing a cover that shows how effective the cover could be is a great aid in this process. But ultimately good PR comes down to creating and providing materials and press releases that are attractive to the publishers and broadcasters so that they will want to help you to promote the film because they believe that the 'story' will be of interest to their readers. This will create the necessary buzz.

Of course, with stars like Jake Kirby in the movie that should be rather easier! But having a different kind of slasher movie also helps - having a techno weedy nerd as the killer provides a useful hook on which to hang articles. Having Jake Kirby play that weedy nerd just makes it all the more fascinating.

With the right timing and placement the campaign as a whole could generate real awareness and interest ahead of the launch.

Evaluation of new media technologies used

We used a whole range of different technologies during the production and research for this project, without which the task would have been very much harder, if not impossible - certainly within the time available.

During the research and planning we used the internet (primarily using Google) a lot to review examples of trailers, posters and film magazine covers, so as to understand what the key conventions are and what make them work well. Google is a fantastic tool for carrying out research. It is amazing what you can find out there on the world wide web. Google images alone provided a whole range of movie posters for us to look at.

I also used a website called Box which allows free storage of files where I can store up to a gigabyte worth for anyone to access in the world. I did not know about the box website before this campaign and it could come in very useful in future situations.

We used Microsoft Word to take notes on our findings from our research and to create our plans for the progress of the project. Microsoft Word is the most common word processor application used and has become a part of almost all our lives. It allows one to write, edit and lay our work very quickly - although it does still have some annoying quirks when it tries to auto-format stuff you don't want formatted. We also used Microsoft Word to create our questionnaire.

We used Microsoft Excel to capture the results of the questionnaire and to analyse them, create charts etc. Excel is a great tool for this. It has some really powerful data analysis tools, although to be truthful we didn't really scratch the surface of what it can do. It also has some great charting tools, which make it really easy to take some numbers, tables etc. and convert them into a good looking chart which displays the numbers as an image. This is important as some people find images (charts) a much better way of gaining an understanding of what the numbers really mean and imply.

During the production of the poster and magazine camera we used a digital Kodak stills camera to take the primary image used as the basis for the two artworks. We then downloaded the pictures onto an Apple Macintosh computer and used iPhoto to view them and pick the one we wanted to use.

We used Adobe Photoshop to work on the image, to clean it up and create the core image. We could have used Adobe InDesign to lay out the poster and cover but we decided to stay within Adobe Photoshop, especially as we were working on just single page documents. We are all more comfortable working with Photoshop and using the layers really helps with putting the documents together, especially when you are combining text and images. Photoshop is a really amazing piece of software and it allows anyone to access exactly the same tools that the professionals use. Frankly you could do almost anything you could want to do with a still image or a single page document. I love it.

To film the trailer we used a Sony Digital video camera with a microphone attached. We used a tripod so as to keep the camera steady. The camera was very simple to use and we used all the automatic features (focus, aperture, etc.) because we do not have the expertise to use the manual settings. The camera did not produce the high quality footage that a professional crew would be used to, but considering our low level of expertise it was probably perfect for us.

After filming we uploaded all the footage (the rushes) to the Macintosh computer and reviewed it in iMovie. We edited the whole trailer in iMovie. We imported still images for the start and endframes and music for the backing sound track (which we found on a royalty free music site). iMovie is a great application for us. It does not have all the high functionality of applications like Final Cut Pro, but it is much simpler to use and has more than enough for our needs. We needed something that would allow us to put something together quickly at reasonable quality and iMovie was perfect for that. I also used iMovie to record a video answer to a question on my blog.

Furthermore, for the evaluation process I created this blog using Blogger.com as you can see. I also used a USB microphone to upload an audio file to the blog. Blogger.com is a great site to use to create a blog. It is pretty straightforward to use if you just want the basics. Some things were a little trickier like embedding a YouTube movie and providing a link to a word document (in the end I had to create the document as a GoogleDoc and then link to that), but overall it was a really brilliant tool for the job.

We also created a Facebook Group for sharing our ideas and work with others, which helped with audience feedback. The very fact that we could show people a trailer, a poster and a magazine cover on a site demonstrates how all the media are so rapidly converging.

At the end of the process I can safely say that I have learnt a lot about the use of new media technologies and new media overall. One major factor for me is that less than 5 or 6 years ago it would not have been possible to undertake a project like this with the time and budget constraints we had and the lack of much previous experience.

The technologies we used were all readily available and affordable and yet in most instances were either the same as those used by professionals or not far short of it. The actual production processes have become much more straightforward due to the use of digital tools. 10 years ago the idea of walking around with a 60 second trailer master edit on a thing that fits in your pocket (my USB drive) and cost £15 would have seemed almost like science fiction.

All the software used was on one computer - the Mac, so it was easy to incorporate the same elements in the multiple media we produced. There was no scanning or file format conversions needed, it all just worked together so neatly.

Of course, these advances in technology are something my generation tends to take for granted, we have grown up with them after all - we all our comfortable with watching a movie on TV, DVD, a computer, a Playstation, an iPhone, a whatever comes next. We are saturated with imagery and information like never before but are so conversant with all the media types and so unconcerned with the specific channel being used that we forget that for many they are still considered very separate. Of course we don't use them exactly the same and you can't create for them all in exactly the same way but you can re-purpose so readily that you can make a multi-media campaign very much more readily than was possible in the past - despite there being so many more media.

Electronic Evaluation: Video answer to 'Evaluate the combination of your main product and ancillary texts'

Here is another type of electronic evaluation that i have included. It is a short video describing the combination of my main product's and ancillary texts.

Directors Commentary

Here is an audio file of a directors commentary for our teaser trailer. Explaining what shots we used and why, the sound effects and what we thought were good shots utilised in the making of this teaser trailer.

Different Stages Of My Film Magazine Cover

Here are the 3 different stages of production that we went through to get a final magazine cover that we were happy with. We decided to do multiple stages of production so that we could get feedback on the previous stages and make corrections and adhere to the audience feedback from students 15+. This is because teenagers 15 and above are our target audience.

The first stage:

The second stage:

The final stage of production:

Different Stages Of My Poster Design

In this post I will show you the various different stages that our group went through during our design of the film poster. We did this so we could eventually achieve a poster that we knew would have the desired effect of our audience. This effect is making sure that the poster was eye catching, intriguing and professional to attract a big as audience as possible.

The first stage:

The second stage:

The final stage of production:

Re-editing the trailer

It is really is quite hectic now.

We have completely re-designed the poster and magazine cover and we need to make the trailer fit with that new design. We also want to incorporate some of the feedback we had when we showed the trailer around. Plus I want to get in some of the things that really work in the Paranormal trailer, if I can.

We changed the endframe, added some more sound effects and we also made the text bigger so it is easier to read. As these were the things our audience feedback should pay some more attention to. However, the still is quite small and hard to read. But the main selling points and release date at the end have been made more clear and bold. We have also added an image in at the back to give it a more of an iconic ending making the image stick in people's heads.

Flat planning the magazine cover

Now we have the poster finished we have to work on the magazine cover.

We started with the main image and made it smaller so that we had room for all the other elements we needed to put on the page.

We spent a lot of time making up the magazine title because we wanted it to look really professional.

We then put on the barcode and the price, issue date and issue number.

We put in the title and the strapline and added a cheeky edition to the strapline.

We decided to make the whole edition focussed on Halloween.

Then we laid out the Special Features and the blurb about the movie. We spent a lot of time on this as we wanted to make the text wrap around the image nicely. Luckily we could write our own words so we could change things to fit.

Of course, I am making it sound much easier and quicker than it really was but after a couple of goes this is what we ended up with.

Paranormal Activity Trailer - some great ideas

This is a YouTube clip of a teaser tailer for the movie Paranormal Activity. This is an incredibly low budget scary movie that is having amazing success in the USA and is just being released here in the UK.

I saw this trailer today and think it is really excellent. It uses the idea of showing the audience reaction in the cinema to demonstrate how scary the movie really is. This works amazingly well. I want to go and see it !! I was planning on recording an audience watching my trailer to show how scary it is. This will attract a bigger audience if they see the fright the audience gets in the short video. Unforntunately I didn’t  have enough time.

There are some clips of the actual movie, but they don't tend to give too much away. One can see that the production values are not particularly high, as you would expect with a low budget movie. But, as Blair Witch Project readily demonstrated, you don't need high production values to produce a really gripping and very scary movie.

I have provide a link to a Guardian article about the movie here.

I will see if I can get any of the ideas into our trailer before the deadline.

Redoing the poster

OK. So we've got our final image now. And we have got our title and strapline design. Now we need to combine it all together to come up with a really great poster.

We thought we should make the background black so that the image really stands out and that will help with the title too.

We need to get all the elements together. Most of it we already had but we had to make up a FILMWORKS logo.

We re-wrote the credits too.

The other fonts we used were:

Burghley Entertainment: Gill Sans Regular
Star's names: Onyx regular
Credits: Gill Sans Bold
Launch date: Gill Sans Bold

As you can see we kept to the same font family for the most part.

Then it was on to laying it all out: chosing font sizes, position on the page and exactly how all the type should look.

We put all the elements on the page and then laid them out. This is where Photoshop layers is so useful.

It all took a lot longer than I am making it sound, but in about 6 hours we had something that we all liked.

The final image

Here it is. Photo production over.
Photography and retouching in 24 hours!
Now for the poster itself.
I've updated the main image for the blog too.

Retouching the image

Well, once we had picked the best shot we took it in to Adobe Photoshop and we retouched it to make it look more dynamic. We edged the dark further in to the face and we cleaned up a few things: made the eyes whiter, lost some of the stray hair, put more colour in to the hand, and so on.

We blended the shadows around the face in to a solid black and resized the whole image so that the face would sit well within the poster format.

Then I found some great and wierd glasses in a picture on the web and I cut out the glasses from the rest of the picture and scaled them to fit Lima's face. I then just slightly blurred them to make them look like they were really in the original picture.

Just a few extra tweaks to get all the colours looking good and to add a filter or two and we were there - some hours later!!!

Very happy with the result though.

Here is a picture of Lima after retouching and before the glasses and one with the glasses on.

New Photos for the new poster design

Well, we have come up with a new idea for the main image for the poster. We needed to take a picture specially for it.

This lunch break we headed out with the Kodak.

To take a photo we were absolutely sure that wanted to use for our poster we took a range of shots to make sure we happy with one.

A change in direction

There is no easy way to say this ... people don't really like the poster image as much as we do, and the trailer could probably do with a bit more work too.

The main comments we got about the poster were:

• Not polished enough. It needs to be laid out more carefully, with more thought about where the elements all sit.
• We need to get all the elements on the poster that should be there: we kinda knew that one.
• Maybe it should be portrait rather than landscape
• We should try and find a better central image

Not much to change there then!!!!

As for the trailer, well the main comments were these:

• Needs to have better endframes to bring home the message loud and clear
• Can't really read the star's names
• Maybe there should be some more captions to promote the movie: ratings from newspapers and magazines, for example
• A bit tighter editing

And if we change the main picture on the poster we will need to make it all tie in together somehow.

Not much time left to complete the project now, with the deadline coming up quick, so we got to get a move on. I guess the good news is that, apart from research we haven't done too much work on the magazine cover yet, so we won't have change that so much. We want to base it on the poster so we will get that right first.

Flat planning our poster: Step Five

We decided it made sense to do the poster first, before the magazine cover. So we worked on that quite a bit.

Using the research we had come up with a list of things we had to have on the poster. Our list went like this:

Main Image (we will use a shot from the trailer footage)

Movie Title: Attack of the Nerds

Stars (that would be us)

Credits: producers, director, all that stuff

Rating symbol: 15

Logos and certificates: Filmworks, Dolby, etc.

The Launch date: when the  movie was coming out

Strapline: 4 eyes are better than 2

The production company: Burghley Entertainment

We wanted to keep the poster very clean and clear of clutter so we tried to include everything you should have but no more.

Here is what we cam up with.

Of course, we want to go and show it to people and get some feedback - so it probably isn't finished yet. We need to get some more of the elements on too, but overall a pretty good start.

Researching the Magazine Cover

Today we did a bit of research on the magazine cover.

We went to a large newsagents and looked at a whole load of Film and DVD magazines. We even bought one so we could refer to it.

We also looked on the web for specific horror movie film magazines here is an example of one.

We realised that the featured movie was generally used as the basis for the whole cover.

We also made a list of other things we would need on the cover:

• Magazine Title: we have gone for FILM EXPRESS
• Price
• Barcode
• Issue Date
• Issue Number
• List of movies included in this issue
• Special features in this issue
• Mentioning stars was a common theme too

Need to get the poster finished first though.

Researching the Poster: Step Four

We used Google images to look at some examples of horror movie posters and to analyse what conventions they use. Here are some examples of the posters we looked at:

1. The Eye
   
2. One Missed Call 
   
3. Rocky Horror Show 
   
4. The Mist 
   
5. Friday The 13th 

These were very inspiring and gave us lots to think and discuss about. We knew the main image was very important, it had to be shocking and eye catching.

Editing the trailer

Wow, editing is pretty tricky. there is a lot to get your head around.

You have to pick the bits of footage you want and then decide on exactly which bits from that footage you are going to use. You have to pick your starting image and your end frames.

Then you have to think about the sound track. What music are we going to use? When will we have dialogue and when not? Should a voiceover be included?

Anyway we did a pretty good job. Thank heavens for iMovie - it's a great bit of software.

Here is the end result of today's work.


Of course we want to show it to a few people and get some feedback so it isn't finished just yet.

Shooting the Trailer: Step Three

Today was the day of the shoot and we brought in a load of props and costumes. We decided that the mise-en-scene is an important part of expressing character. We used a wig, glasses, tie and blazer for the nerd costume and for that chav-tastic girl look heavy makeup, big hoop earings, slick back hair, tracksuit trouser's.

Props and costume list

• Wig
• Glasses
• Hoop Earings
• Make-up
• Tie
• Blazer

Designing a shooting schedule was very useful in the planning for the shooting of the teaser trailer. We filmed our interview's first as it was the easiest to film because it was in the drama studio. This introduces the character's straight away to the audience. The audience is given some information but must use some of their own imagination to develop the characters and what might what happen in the film.

We then found an outside location that suited the atmosphere we wanted: dingy, dark, woodland area.

We then set out to finish the rest of the filming that day. We filmed about 10 minutes of footage overall using a range of shot lengths and type. We filmed most of the shots twice to capture exactly what we wanted. We also used different levels as well by using an upper level of a tree to film from almost birds eye view.

The shoot was great fun and I hope that we got all shots that we need. We looked through the rushes a couple of times and we think we are good to go for the edit.

The Shooting Schedule

Now we have done our storyboard we can make up the shooting schedule, so we can be organised about filming and get all the shots we need. Here it is:

1st shot: Interview of nerd (Alfie), displaying his character traits. (mid shot)
2nd shot: Interview of Megan not doing the work and you can hear Alfie getting annoyed (mid shot)
3rd shot: Interview with Leela bullying Alfie (Mid shot/zoomed in and out)
4th shot: Leela and Megan running away through tree's (long shot)
5th shot: Leela and Megan's feet running through leaves and grass (close up)
6th shot: Close up of Leela looking scared
7th shot: Close up of Megan dead
8th shot: Mid shot then zoomed in of Leela dead on the floor
9th shot: Long shot of the killer walking towards megan against a wall
10th shot: Long shot of the killer walking away from Megan dead on the floor
11th shot: Shot of Leela running around a corner then falling over
12th shot: Alfie the killer walks towards Leela very slowly wielding a weapon (Mid shot/Long shot)
13th shot: Close up of killer with weapon looking crazed
14th shot: Leela and Megan running through the woods (long shot)
15th shot: Killer walking through the woods after the two girls (long shot)

Just got to shoot it now!

Title Decisions

Here we decided to create multiple titles to see what would have the most affect from our audience feedback. We talked about each font and the different effects that the font and it's colour have.

However, we did not feel that any of these would the effect we want. We did choose another font from the website Da Font to find the most appropriate text.

The Storyboard

Today we put together a storyboard for the trailer. Unfortunately we did it on paper and I don't have a digital copy so I can't show it to you.

It took us a while to put it together. This is all quite new to us.

Designing the Title and strapline

Having looked at a number of existing horror movie title designs, we needed to pick a good typeface.

We went on to the DaFont website and had a good search around.

We obviously wanted something 'scary' for the main title. Eventually we found one we really liked:  Cold Night for Alligators (Regular).

We had also decided to use one of our other possible titles, 4 eyes are better than 2, for a strapline. So we needed a font for that too.

We used the Alligators font for the numbers: 4 and 2; but we wanted something else, still a bit 'horror-ish', for the rest: we chose Nightmare 5. We kinda like it.

Here is a picture of them.

Design Research for the Movie Title

How the title of a movie is designed is very important. It is one of the key design factors behind a marketing campaign. 

To choose a design for the title we looked at other slasher horror title's and analysed them.

We realised that the text was usually always bold and stood a out from the page having an impact on the audience. We wanted to try to recreate that in our title.

I will write a blog later about how we do that.

Deciding on the title for the movie

Well, we have our synopsis. So now we need to come up with a name for the movie.


We started by writing out all our ideas on a long list. We then narrowed it down to the following choices:

•  Nerd Killer
•  Revenge Of The Nerd
•  Four Eyes Are Better Than Two
•  Attack Of The Nerd
•  Geek Attack
•  Beware Of The Geek
•  Greedy Geeky

In the end we went with Attack Of The Nerd.

Deciding on narrative and name: Step Two

Using the results of our research and the questionnaire we started the task of deciding on a story line for our movie.

This is what we came up with:

A group of A-level media students are filming their coursework together in a small group.

The group is in disagreement in what should be done and by by whom. This is because the only one person (Alfie) in the group who cares about his education and therefore his media grade too. The other members of the group (Megan and Leela) could not care less about the coursework or Alfie’s feelings.

As Alfie is bullied by these amoral teens he is pressurised to do terrible things. Alfie becomes more and more frustrated and panicked about what to do as he can see his A grade slipping away.

Alfie decides to make his own trailer. Alfie has become completely psychotic by now and has confused fiction with reality. He chases Megan and Leema through the trees at night and kills Megan horribly slashing her multiple times with his mum's bread knife. The tension mounts as he then hunts down Leema and we watch Alfie getting madder and madder as he slowly traps Leema - with the same horrible result.

The movie is set in a modern day school during the day and in the park at nightfall, which will allow us to create a good balance between realism and a good atmosphere for the intense scary situations.

So, we have a slasher movie with teen thrown in. Plus we have the Nerd aspect to provide some wry humour (nothing slapstick). The story has a "play within a play" feel to it as the audience watch a film of a film with the line between the one and the other becoming increasingly blurred. What is real and what is not? And the main character is a male. It all seems to fit with our research.

Now we need a title, a storyboard and a shooting schedule before we can start shooting.

Progress this week

Wow - another week gone by. This week we focussed on doing our research and the questionnaire, so we can put a narrative for the movie together.

We also did a little work on the flatplans for the poster and magazine cover. Just planning out what we need to do and how we would go about it.

Questionnaire, Results and Conclusions

We wanted to try and find out what our target audience might want to see most so we could make sure that our work was as effective as possible.

First we created a questionnaire, then we went out and asked 25 people the questions.

We took their answers and put the results into a spreadsheet and then we analysed the results. We made a series of pie charts up to help us see the findings more clearly.

You can see what we did using the 3 links above.

In a nutshell though, here is what we found:

• Of the 25 people we asked only 20 went to the movies at all or went and liked horror. We didn't ask them anymore questions.
• Of the 20 left only 16 met our target age criteria: aged between 15 and 30.
• Of those 16:
• 38% preferred slasher horror, 25% preferred horror comedy and 19% preferred teen horror
• 94% preferred a male killer and 81% thought that the gender probably or definitely mattered
• 31% thought the title was important and 50% thought it was quite important
• 38% were most influenced to go to a movie by the trailer, 37% by a magazine article and 25% by a poster

Conclusions

For us the implications of the results were clear:

• We should make a slasher horror movie with some teen and comedy component if possible
• The killer should be male
• We needed a good title
• All 3 marketing channels were important, but we had to do a good job with the trailer

Nothing really unexpected here but at least we have the data to back us up.

Researching the concept for the movie

We decided to look at multiple movie synopsis on the website http://www.imdb.com/ and find the main themes and characters across the genre. This gave us idea's for the narrative concept for the film as we could look at the different motives for protagnist killers and also note the iconography, themes and common plots. This was very useful in highlighting key things to give a true understanding of what a slasher horror should be like. Here are couple example's, with a key, of this research.

Key – Protagonists (main characters), Stock Characters (minor characters), Plots and Stock Situations (predictable storylines), Icons (Star’s, backgrounds and objects), Backgrounds and Decor, Themes (e.g. Good Vs. Evil)

Pyshco (1960)

Marion Crane is a Phoenix, Arizona working girl fed up with having to sneak away during lunch breaks to meet her lover, Sam Loomis, who cannot get married because most of his money goes towards alimony. One Friday, Marion's employer asks her to take $40,000 in cash to a local bank for deposit. Desperate to make a change in her life, she impulsively leaves town with the money, determined to start a new life with Sam in California. As night falls and a torrential rain obscures the road ahead of her, Marion turns off the main highway. Exhausted from the long drive and the stress of her criminal act, she decides to spend the night at the desolate Bates Motel. The motel is run by Norman Bates, a peculiar young man dominated by his invalid mother. After Norman fixes her a light dinner, Marion goes back to her room for a shower.... Written by passionate_libra21

The Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

Based on true events that happened in Travis County, Texas, in 1973. The movie begins with the state police and FBI searching the Thomas Hewitt farmhouse, where they have discovered a large collection of body parts. The movie flashes back several days to a VW bus with 5 young people returning from Mexico. They almost hit a girl in a state of shock, walking in the middle of the road. They try to help her and put her in the bus. She thinks they are taking her back, and she pulls out a hidden gun and commits suicide. The young people on the bus contact the police, and unfortunately, they end up at Hewitt's farmhouse, where the grisly killings began. They encounter the leatherface killer, who is wearing a mask made from the flesh of his victims, and his waving chainsaw. Don't get in his path! 

The Generic Conventions of a Teaser Trailer

We looked at a number of teaser trailers to try and gain an understanding of what the primary conventions are. What do you need in a teaser trailer to make it work? What is the function of a teaser trailer?  We identified a number of key elements and I wrote these up along with some brief analysis of a number of existing teaser trailers (click here to view the document).

Research and Planning: Step One

In the last week Lima, Dee and I have spent quite a bit of time researching horror movie trailers (scary work) and trailers in general - the conventions they use and the different types and styles that exist (we used the table below as a starting point). We looked at the various strategies used, the reasons behind them and we started making decisions about what we were going to do.

Oh yeah. I set up this blog too.

Now we are going to decide on a narrative concept and start working through a storyboard for the trailer and a 'flatplan' for the magazine cover and poster. Looking forward to that.

We are going to start by writing a questionnaire and finding out what other people think.

Day One: Finding out what are going to do

Today we first went through the possibilities for our media project. Mr. Mazzochi took us through the requirements using a document he had put together. He explained that we had to design and create a horror movie poster, a film magazine front cover featuring that movie and a trailer for the movie. We also had to write this blog.

He put us into small groups. I have Lima Begun and Dee Wade with me in my group. I guess we have to start by deciding on a theme and narrative for the movie.