SOMNIUM TRAILER Final Edit

Somnium from Rosie Chatterjea on Vimeo.

Poster and Magazine Cover Completed

Here is the final edit of our magazine cover. We are thoroughly pleased with the outcome and feel as though we have achieved a high level of professionalism by using all of the necessary conventions.

The final poster edit has again been a great success for the group as we feel it effectively promotes our media product. Furthermore, we believe it attracts an audience which enjoys the horror genre as this is clearly displayed through the various horror conventions.

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

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

Somnium from Rosie Chatterjea on Vimeo.

In addition to our trailer, we intended to design and make a promotional package for our new film. We decided we would produce a poster and a magazine cover as both of these items are effective in advertising and promoting films to large numbers of people. The aim of our poster and magazine are to interest our potential audience by clearly expressing the genre of the film through both. The purpose of a poster is to show and not tell, in order to keep the viewer guessing and wanting to know more. A magazine cover on the other hand is designed to give readers a more detailed and informative insight into the film if they choose to read inside articles.

When we made our first plans on paper we were pleased with the designed and so kept to them almost perfectly but before doing this, we did some initial research into the conventions of both film posters and magazine covers. I found that posters have many necessary conventions for example a masthead which states the title of the film, a tagline, a main image, the release date and a billing black. All of these conventions allow the viewer to know all of the information they need if they intent to watch the film. We included all of these on our poster, with the title large at the top centre of the poster with a smaller font reading ‘A CHILDHOOD NIGHTMARE BROUGHT TO LIFE’ as the tagline. This tagline gives the audience a subtle insight into the narrative of the film, without giving too much away, and is also similar to the words of the intertitles. This links the two together showing that they are a package. Taglines are conventional for film posters as the idea is to keep the viewers wondering, similarly with film trailers.

We also included a billing block including names of various important people involved in the making of the production, for example director, producer, cast and more. Other conventions of a horror film poster include dark colour schemes, so we chose to use a dark grey scratched background with ghost like images of the cast overlaying. These features give a sense of fear and mystery and by doing this we were able to make the genre of our trailer much clearer to the audience, as oppose to if we used bright colours which often connote happiness.  The scratchiness links closely with the trailer as the titles throughout are also displayed on a similar background, and so therefore complement one another.  The scratches coming through on her faced also connote her struggle almost suggesting she is ‘broken’. This again creates questions about the narrative.

Titles from the trailer

Cracks through her face

The images we chose to include are a close up of Rosie’s terrified looking face and a plain and dark image of Evylyn Crick looking directly into the camera. The image of Evylyn appears behind Rosie which creates a feeling that she is watching you and her and makes the audience feel scared and threatened, which should allow the audience to identify that the poster is advertising a horror. This layout also links closely with the trailer itself, where it is evident that Evylyn is following and haunting Rosie throughout. We took the image of Layla on set when she was in full make up and costume. When shooting for the poster and magazine cover, we thought carefully about what kind of image would be best suited to the genre and storyline of our production. We took a variety of images of Rosie looking scared with make up running down her face as if she was crying, as the main narrative of the trailer is that she is being followed and taunted by her childhood nightmare and cannot escape. We have her looking in the opposite direction to make her look lost, alone and nervous. This makes viewers wonder what is troubling her and more importantly what Evylyn has to do with it. We also had her holding her hand in front of her face as this emphasised the idea that she is feeling scared and worried. This frightened image of Rosie links closely to many of the shots seen in the trailer, for example when she is crying on the bed.

We started in the same way for the magazine cover, by making some initial plans on a large sheet of paper. This allowed to mind map all of our first ideas ready to be refined soon after.

We used the same main image of Rosie for our magazine cover as the Poster in order to keep it recognisable for the audience; however we edited both pictures in different ways. While the poster images were quite light and ghost-like, our magazine cover involved us darkening the colours and adding a slightly reddish tone. We did this as the masthead (Grande Films) was also red. We kept this colour scheme of black, red and white constant throughout the whole cover as these colours connote danger and are also commonly seen in horror films. This helps to emphasise the genre to the readers. We chose to have a black background behind the image of Rosie as it creates a sense of unknown as it is unclear as to what could be waiting behind her.

We found that magazine covers, of all genres, also include necessary conventions which again give the reader all the information they need before buying. These include; a masthead, a main cover line, covers lines, a main image, strapline and more. We chose to follow these conventions in order to make our cover look professional as well as fully informing the reader. We positioned the masthead at the top centre of the page in a bold font aiming to stand out to the reader. We then inserted various cover lines about articles for new and upcoming films. The main cover line introduces an interview with the main character of our film which says ‘ROSIE GODDARD TALKS SOMNIUM’. We used the same font from the trailer for the word Somnium with the intention of linking the products together. This allows the audience to associate all of the products with each other.

Magazine

Poster

Trailer

Overall I feel that the combination of all our media products was effective in creating a complete promotional package. I feel we would be able to successfully sell out film through the trailer, poster and magazine cover that we have created, as each of them clearly tell the genre of the film and accurately display aspects of the narrative. The various themes we have used in each of the tasks is what makes them continually complement each other. Choosing to make both a poster and magazine cover allows us to reach out to a much wider audience, rather than if we were to just produce the trailer alone. We are happy with each of the products we have produced and think they will work very well together to promote out film, Somnium, as the connections between them all will grab the audience and make them very aware of the production.

Evaluation 2 - How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

In the media, digital technology is used frequently throughout planning, production and distribution. During the making of our production I used a number of different software in order to present my research, planning, production and distribution in different and interesting ways.  To start I needed to research, which I presented on several mediums. I felt this was a more creative way of displaying information. I decided to present some of my research in presentations using PowerPoint; this creates a more interesting and easy read. It also allowed me to break the research down in to smaller parts using bullet points, which made it easier to reference back to when planning our own trailer.

I used YouTube to select an appropriate trailer to analyse in order to understand trailer production. From this I could see that Shutter Island is a successful and interesting film trailer. I created a PowerPoint presentation for this analysis as it allowed me to be separate my ideas into different parts, like shots and editing, locations, sound etc.  In order to get this research onto my A2 coursework blog I used a website called ‘Slideshare’. By using this I could upload my presentation in the correct format. It also gave me the opportunity to make my blog slightly more interactive and visually interesting.

I have used blogger to present all of my coursework in a digital format. This is useful as it can be accessed anywhere, whether it be a computer or a mobile device. It has also given me a more visually appealing way of expressing my ideas throughout the journey of my production. A problem with this web tool however is that the internet is necessary for its use; therefore if access were not available I wouldn't be able to update my blog. If this was a paper based assignment on the other hand, I would be able to update whenever I intended to with no problems. 

We used word documents for a number of things throughout the project. For example we produced consent letters that we handed to our cast to ensure they were happy to be part of the trailer. We also used word to create various questionnaires both in the research process and also to gather feedback on our final product. We also used word documents for a number of things throughout the project. For example we produced consent letters that we handed to our cast to ensure they were happy to be part of the trailer. We also used word to create various questionnaires both in the research process and also to gather feedback on our final product. Word is a good word processor to use for our planning as it structures the text in a way the blog doesn't. Last year we used Word to create scripts however this was not that suitable. When making plans for the production we used another software called ‘Celtx’ to create the script for the trailer and ‘Scribd’ to upload the script to blogger. Celtx made the script writing process much easier as we were able to make the script more efficiently as it provided us with a proper layout to work with. 

As part of planning, we devised call sheets using Microsoft Excel which included information about actors, locations, filming times and breaks. This allowed us to be organised when filming as we knew exactly what needed to be filmed at exactly what times during the filming period. Using a spreadsheet made it easier for us to put all the information we needed onto one organised page.

To edit and construct the trailer, the main software used was ‘Pinnacle Studios 10’. We used it to create the trailer and arrange our camera work into an order that was appropriate and conventional to film trailers. At the start of the project we were faced with various problems when using Pinnacle Studios as we had some technical difficulties. These were soon resolved though and we were able to create our trailer including everything we needed, to a standard that we were extremely pleased with. We edited the whole film using this software and it was beneficial for us as it gave us a fairly simple method for editing and producing the trailer, therefore helping our production to be successful. Pinnacle although was not as good as using a professional software such as it's parent company Avid, was alot better than using something basic such as Windows MovieMaker. The latter does not provide all of the effects we had available in Pinnacle. 

We also used ‘Audacity’ in the post production stage to change some of the sounds in the production. We found that Layla’s (Evylyn) voice when saying “get the girl” was too high pitched so we edited the tone and pitch to make it sound lower. This was vital for our production as it made this line in particular sound much more intense and frightening but also to make it sound more professional. By doing this we were able to make our trailer more representative of the horror genre.

To film the production we used a range of different tools to get the shots we needed. First of all, we used a Panasonic full HD SD camera to film the scenes we had planned. Sometimes we used the camera to create handheld shots, however most of the filming we done using a tripod. This allowed us to get steady shots which made the production look more professional and clear. The hand held camera shots were effective when edited into the trailer as is gave the scene an eerie tone as it is assumed the camera was standing in for Evylyn. I felt this was an effective use of the technology we had and as the camera was small it allowed us to succeed in creating it. 

After the production was complete, we used another software which was vital for us, Adobe Photoshop. This was used to create the poster and magazine cover for our ancillary tasks. I enjoyed this aspect of the project as it allowed us to express our creativity by making something that would help to promote our film. Photoshop was definitely the best software to use for these tasks as it includes all of the options we needed, for example the blur tool and colour altering. We were able to change the colours of our image so that they became more conventional of the horror, and positions text such as the billing block exactly where we needed them. We used the colour and lighting effects to ensure that the ancillary tasks fitted in with our main production. 

Vimeo is an online software that allows you to watch, upload and share videos. Vimeo and Youtube are used by the film industry as a way to reach out to technology savvy audiences. We used this to share our final production and also for my first evaluation of the trailer. Vimeo also allowed me to to take screen shots of the production where I needed to which I could display on my blog, so overall vimeo was a very essential software we used. Uploading the trailer to an online video sharing website allows us to use our twitter to contact and share it with our potential audience. We have used twitter as a means to further promote our trailer and access the young target audience who regularly use new technologies. Twitter is a way that the audience themselves promote a product instead of the production company. The audience becomes the producers in this respect. 

When beginning to write my evaluations, I decided to present them in different ways using different software, just to make them a little more attractive to read. These include a Powerpoint presentation evaluating my audience feedback and a DVD commentary where I speak over the trailer about how my media product uses, develops and challenges forms and conventions of real media products. I made this in Pinnacle Studio and uploaded it to Vimeo. The reason for using such a wide range of different technologies is because we wanted to make our coursework as interesting and creative as possible, and not just in the production itself and use a diverse range of new technologies.