Critical Evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Originally horror movies used to be low budget, B movie productions, but the major studios started to recognise and respect certain directors, such as Hitchcock, Polanski and Kubrick. From the main horror genre, hybrids have been created when horror has been teamed with comedy, teen and other genres. They have also created sub-genres, in the form of vampire movies, and sometimes thrillers, slasher movies and suspense can also be recognised as there own form of sub-genre.

Most recently, in the past 10 years, horror movies have focussed on epidemic, and the end of the world, the taking over of the living dead, or zombies. They have also produced several films with the theme of possession of ghosts or spirits who are trying to get a message across or justice for their death. This is what we based our plot around.

For the main horror genre there are many conventions to which a film could be made, for example, the hero, the victims, the villains, blood, death, shadows and darkness, eerie music and isolated settings. In the beginning of Scream, Wes Craven uses a lot of the conventions in the first ten minutes, he has the victims, shadows and darkness, the eerie music and of course the blood and death, that come along with the villain.

Within the plot line that Tessa and I wrote originally, we used similar conventions, with an isolated settings, hero, villain and victim. When we made the trailer we tried to portray these, by using chase sequences, showing the threat of the villain and the setting is quite empty and isolated. The full story line for the film follows a simple narrative, very similar to that of Vladimir Prop’s narrative theory. Everything is ok at the beginning, creating an equilibrium which then becomes disequilibrium as the story progresses and things begin to go wrong. Then at the end when the story and problems are resolved a new state of equilibrium is established, where everything has become ok again, but different to that at the beginning.

If a film were to be produced and distributed, it would need to include forms and conventions of it’s genre to be taken on as a project. This is what is referred to as the winning formula, because this is what sells to the audience, and within the media industry audience is key.

For a teaser trailer, it should be under two minutes long, and intrigue the audience by using lots of clips and not giving anything away. To create a sense of intrigue within our trailer we kept our characters without identity, and we did not show the villains face, so that the threat of the villain is present, but the audience do not know who he is from the trailer.

To show the character and the function of the character we used to colour as a symbolic tool. For the villain his outfit was kept quite dark, as villains are usually wearing black. The ghost, or spirit character is wearing a white coat, this also symbolises her innocence within the storyline. The main character is wearing a red coat, this is two shows her importance within the film, but also to symbolise the danger or threat that she could be in.

According to Prop’s theory on character functions the hero is usually male, where as in our film, our hero is female. Although in our full storyline she becomes the victim and her brother becomes the hero by saving her, so our character functions switch.

We filmed about 30 seconds of each frame that we had planned, to cut down and use as lots of smaller fragments. When I did the editing I really wanted the cuts to flash, really quickly, so I left a tiny gap between each clip to create a black flash to separate the cuts.

I think we kept quite to the conventions that a teaser trailer is supposed to be, when we exhibited the trailer both times, the audience was not sure of the storyline, which I think is a positive as a teaser trailer is designed not to give much away, and too keep an air of mystery about the film.

How effective is the combination of your main product and your ancillary texts?


A teaser trailer or trailer is used by the distributor to help market the film, and to create an intrigue about the film prior to its release. A teaser trailer is usually released several months, sometimes a year, before a film is due to be released.

The posters would be seen in cinema lobbies, and would not be shown until nearer the release date, this helps create appeal, and capture audiences. The distributors would decide whether or not a film would have a wider poster campaign in the form of billboards and magazine advertising etc.

The magazine special issue, would be apart of the pre-release press campaign, the distributor hires a PR agency to set up interviews for magazine and television with the stars of the film. Which helps create a buzz around the film and ensures it captures not only the intended audience, but also the ‘drop in’ audience, who would not necessarily go for the type of film being promoted.

The distributor’s have to ensure to the exhibitors that they will gain profit from their film, so having a tight advertising campaign helps them make sure they will capture audience attention. This means completely covering the media in their products, so that audiences can not get away from it. This is total saturation; the distributors make sure that the film is everywhere and is totally absorbed into the media, making it difficult for the consumer not to know about it.

Having the posters and the magazines working alongside the trailer creates a synergy completely dedicated to establishing an audience and ensuring ticket sales, and profit. It is a clever marketing tool, along with saturation that makes sure that their job is done effectively, and that everyone makes a profit.

The combination of our ancillary texts with our trailer, I think works really effectively. If this were a real film these media texts would be seen daily by consumers.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
As a group we decided that our target audience would be 15- 19 year olds, after we had completed our initial research we created a survey to find out what our preferred audience like and dislike about horror movies. This helped us establish what the audience wanted and to come up with ideas that we knew the audience liked. We also used audience feedback after making drafts of the trailer and the posters to see what we could do to improve, and to really make sure that the audience got what they wanted to see to a degree.

The audience is really essential because they are the consumer of the product. Within the film industry, films are sometimes made to winning formulas because institutions know what sell, and they know what the audience wants.

If the institutions an distributor’s did not find out what the audience wanted the film would not sell, and they would not make a profit, so they established forms and conventions for genre’s based on what they audience want to see.

There are many different theories on audience, and how the audience receives and understands the text. One theory is that there are two types of audience, a passive audience, who just sits back and relaxes to watch the film. They do not take in the information, or process it, for example a passive audience watching a horror film already expect to see blood and gore and everything else that makes a horror film.

The other side of audience is the active audience, they take in the text, they read it and they make an understanding of it. They engage with the film, if an active audience was watching a horror movie they would be trying to figure out what was happening, and taking in the information, and picking up on the clues.

In my opinion if someone was a passive watcher, horror movies would not be their thing, as most horror movies have an air of mystery and twist to them, and the audience has to keep up with the film and watch it attentively.

When we first showed our trailer we found that people had no clue what so ever to the plot of the film, and so we had to add more clues in, as we went too far the other way and did not give the audience something to engage with.

Although if we had not exhibited a draft version of the trailer we would not have found this out, so audience, and the audience feedback is important in the film industry to ensure that a film is being perceived in the way they wanted.

How did you use new technologies in the research and planning, construction and evaluation stages?
During all the stages of the production the internet was a helpful resource, we used a blogging website, (https://www.blogger.com/start ) to set up a production blog (http://lyndsay-apb-horror.blogspot.com ), so that we could log what we were doing and so that instead of a folder with the project laid out in it, it was all easily accessible on the internet.
Within the research and planning stages of the project, using the internet for resources was quicker and easier than looking through multiple books; I also practiced using Adobe Premier Elements 1.0, for making a short slide show/ video on the history of the horror movie genre.

When it came to filming, we used a Digital Video camera to collect all the footage we needed. Tessa learnt how to use it more efficiently than I did, as she was the one who was filming. Although we could have used a memory card, which would have been a lot quicker and easier, we used a tape to film with. We put it straight on to the computer using the FireWire cables, and straight into Adobe Premier Elements 1.0. Practising using this software and getting used to it was difficult, I had to figure out how to cut the clips down, add sound, and take away the sound off the original footage.

However once I had got used to how to add in effects and everything, it wasn’t hard to use the programme and create the effect that I wanted.

I also used Adobe Photoshop 3.0 to create titles and the posters, I had used this programme before so I knew how to do what I wanted, and it was only a matter or revising it and remembering how. It didn’t take me long to get the hang of it and design the posters.

On this project I used Macromedia Freehand to create the magazine cover. I had used this software programme before on my As project, but my use of it was quite primitive and was not very skilled, on this project I spent a lot of time practising so that my magazine cover could look the best it could, and so that it had a more professional quality about it.

I also used a programme to edit the sound effects called Audacity; I didn’t do much except for cut down the sounds or lower the levels. It did take a while to learn how to add the echo effect which I had to look on the internet for how to do it.

Audacity and Adobe Premiere Elements were the only two new programmes that I had not used before, so it was quite interesting to learn how to use them. Using all the programmes that I have used before but learning how to do new things on them as well as revising the basics helped me build my skills with these technologies along with learning new ones. It also helped me think about how it would be done professionally, and the similar techniques they would use when making the products I have.