Welcome.

Welcome to the online blog of the Obsessed Movie! This blog consists of our movie teaser trailer, our poster and magazine front cover promoting our teaser and all of the research and planning surrounding. Any links that do not work on this blog have alternate links located underneath the original. ENJOY!

Evaluation.

In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop Or Challenge Forms And Conventions Of Real Media Products?

A typical convention of a teaser trailer was that the footage lasted no longer than a minuet and the clips did not give the story away nor were they placed in order.

We used this convention in our own teaser as not to give away too much of the plot, create suspense and mystery but to still give audiences an understanding of the back story. We decided, like many other horror teasers, to only show one death. However, we used a title half way through stating "He thought he would teach them all a lesson" to imply that this was one of many killings.

We did a lot of research around the slasher horror genre and conventional killers within that genre. I analysed 6 killers from various different teasers and theatrical trailers including A Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween II. All of the protagonists such as Jason and Freddie Kruger followed a strict pattern. All were male and wearing masks. We decided to follow this convention in our own teaser and so gave our killer a 'secret identity' by using a mask. The use of the mask allowed audiences to understand that our killer was an outcast without any humanlike qualities.

After reading through many synopsis' of slasher horror movies it became apparent that the killers were committing these mass murders as some sort of revenge for what had once happened to them. In our synopsis we have expressed that the reason for our killings was because he wanted to be famous, known all around the world. He believed that his victims were too popular for their own good and he wanted to teach them all a lesson, referring back to our tagline on the poster and the still in our teaser.

A convention that we decided to challenge was the idea of a voiceover. Many of the existing teasers and theatrical trailers that we watched included a voiceover. We decided that that by not using a voiceover it would create more suspense and mystery for the audience. We developed this convention by adding in a still title which helped the story to progress.

I also looked into the conventions and typical features of horror movie posters. I found that many of the posters contained an image of their killers, looking their scariest within an establishing shot such as a forest or scary house. We decided to challenge these conventions by styalizing our poster and placing him in a plain black background, with blood running down the wall. The use of the bloodstained wall helped portray our genre and also stuck to conventions. The colours used were also conventional. it became apparent that typical colours used in classic horror movie posters were black and red.

Similarly to the poster, we looked at existing magazine front covers to decide which forms and conventions we needed to include in my own. We took inspiration from existing magazines such as Empire, a well known film magazine, and Fangoria, a magazine dedicated to horror movies. We decided that our magazine would be called Film Extreme as we felt that this would appeal to audiences of all backgrounds and ages. Our research into masterheads was extensive as we wanted to make sure that it was eye catching yet not too overpowering for the reader. We also believed that this would set our magazine apart from the rest because as soon as you see the masterhead, you instantly know that it is dedicated to films and films only. After thorough research it also became apparent that the protagonists on the front cover were always dominant and usually employed a mid shot, and so decided to follow this convention in our own magazine. This gave us enough space around the image to include various subheadings indication what audiences could expect inside the magazine. We chose articles that related to the horror genre and also gave our magazine a subheading indicating that this edition was a ‘slasher horror special’.

We followed these conventions as closely as possible to ensure that our trailer complied with conventions and to fulfil our brief.

Evaluation.

How Did You Use New Media Technologies In The Construction And Research, Planning And Evaluation Stages?


Throughout our entire project many media technologies and applications were used. Both a still digital camera and a video camera were used to shoot the footage, which was later uploaded onto the computer using a FireWire. The film footage was then edited using iMovie where we were able to delete unwanted scenes, cut clips, and add titles, sound effects and a non-copyrighted soundtrack. The soundtrack we used was downloaded from the free website www.freeplaymusic.com along with the heartbeat and typewriter sound effects.

Our production titles were created using Adobe Photoshop, along with the magazine front cover and poster, and then imported onto iMovie. Once we had finished the editing process, our teaser was converted into a Quicktime file and uploaded onto our online blog.

Our still images, taken whilst filming our footage were also edited in Photoshop. They were resized and stylized in order for them to correspond with the teaser. The images were then used to create the film poster, film magazine and blogger template. The font and texts used on the poster and magazine were created using a free website www.dafont.com.

The teaser trailer along with the poster and magazine cover were then uploaded onto our blog where external links and video footage were also used. Our audience feedback video and our directors commentary, alongside the teaser can also be found on http://www.youtube.com/user/ObsessedMovie1as some computers are not compatible with the blogger video footage.

We also decided to use www.facebook.com and www.twitter.com to create an established audience and also to gain important feedback to improve our products. (The links to our facebook and twitter can be found on the Links. page on this blog.)

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Evaluation.

How Effective Is The Combination Of Your Main Product And Ancillary Texts?

The marketing campaign we created was successful as we have used a number of promotional tools that can easily be accessed nationally and globally by our specific, teen target audience. The teaser trailer was posted on youtube and facebook and audiences were able to follow our progress using twitter. All of these social networking sites are both easily accessible and used by millions of ‘computer savvy’ teens across the globe. Our objective for the teaser trailer was to create word of mouth. The limited footage allows audiences to recognize the slasher horror genre without giving too much of the back story away. This created hype around the teaser, causing audiences to discuss its content and encouraging them to find out more information online, using facebook, twitter and youtube. This made it easier for us to gain an established audience so that when the poster and magazine was published they were more confident to give both positive and negative feedback.

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Final Teaser Edit.

After gaining valuable audience feedback and criticisms we edited our trailer one last time in order to make it as realistic and true to the brief as possible. We added a soundtrack that would suggest both the slasher horror genre and also a teenage feel and also added in the title stating ‘he wanted to teach them all a lesson’ as it corresponds with our poster and also suggests that a mass murder will take place. I believe that the trailer is now more effective in teasing the audience and fully answers the brief.

Trailer Commentary.

This is an edit of our final teaser but without any sound effects or music track. The idea of this commentary is to explain each shot, why we used it and what effect we intended to have on our audience.

Audience Feedback.

To gain important audience feedback we created a facebook account. The account included pictures from the filming, production work as well as the actual movie trailer. Audiences were able to become fans of the movie and were also encouraged to leave comments, both positive and negative. From the comments we received, we were able to make changes and improve our teaser trailer in order to make it more appealing to our target audience.

-Screen grab from our facebook page-

Our facebook can be found by clicking on this link

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?ref=profile&id=100000485536746

From our feedback there were some comments that frequently came up:

- Our USP was obvious - Acland Burghley school location (gym), mention of Camden Ripper.

- It was clear that the teaser was made for teens.

- Held back enough information to keep audience in suspense.

- Well filmed and edited.

- Good at concealing killers identity.

- Music was both scary and 'teen-like'

However, our facebook could only gather a limited amount of feedback, so we decided to set up mini interviews with people ranging from the ages of 15 onwards and filmed their response.

http://www.youtube.com/user/ObsessedMovie1

http://charliejoseph.blogspot.com/2009/12/evaluation-question-3.html

From our audience feedback it soon became apparent that we had created a both successful and scary teen slasher horror teaser that attracts our target audience. Many of our interviewees said that our teaser was excellent and that they would defiantly pay to see the whole movie in a cinema or on dvd.