1. Name : Charlie Zazzera Candidate No : 1336 Name : Dean Kay-Barry Candidate No : 1324 Name : Emily Greenwood Candidate No : 1091 Name : Lauren Persaud Candidate No : 1364 Media Studies Unit G324 Evaluation

4. How we interpreted these conventions in relation to our trailer. Our establishing shots similarly feature a familiar and relatable setting to our target audience, a school. We also used bright, natural lighting for contrast later in the trailer. A shot of our main protagonist’s (Wesley) legs dangling while he hangs himself to death is used as a vivid turning point. Unnatural top lighting is used to create a sinister shadow and a lightning effect is also used to reinforce the change in atmosphere. Our end montage includes many shots all using darker lighting to create a feeling of panic, isolation and helplessness reinforced by shots of doors and locks closing. Our title shot appears just after the fast paced end montage and an eerie rare close up shot of the killer. It uses a dark background with a blunt and contrasting colour for the text along with an earthquake effect, reinforcing the sense of urgency and panic.

10. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks? By the main character being on the front of the film magazine; his character promotes both the film and him as an actor. Our main character features in the trailer most predominantly, so when the audience see the trailer, he will be the biggest association to the film. By having him on the front of the magazine, as you can see on the right, when the audience see his face they will automatically get a sense of recognition. The Preliminary Task: magazine & How it promotes our film (Clip from trailer to be inserted) Our character features in every scene from this clip which is why we used him for the ancillary task.

12. Unlike most movie pictures, we have used an image of a school shirt, to represent a geek in school. However, the blood on the knife in the pockets, gives the audience an idea that it is a horror film. The strong red colour on the background white of the shirt is brought to the audiences attention and is a great way to summarise the film and the genre of a teen horror film. Other conventions of an image for a film poster will be the actors in an scenario from the film for example….. We decided to follow the film poster that use a particular image to capture the film and a symbolic image that will make an automatic link to the film. Both symbolic icons are famous and have been the main associations to the films.

13. Whilst creating the magazines our initial idea layout was to follow the conventions of the most successful film magazine, ‘Empire.’ In order to make the film recognisable, Empire magazine always make the font of the magazine name in the same theme as the film for example Film-Hell Boy Theme Flames We wanted to employ the same conventions to make the film more noticeable by having the title of the magazine in a geeky font The background was going to be black and the font red to portray horror again to summarise the film and make it as familiar as possible so once the audience had seen the trailer they could pick up signals from the magazine. Empire magazine are the most successful film magazine because they advertise the particular film as much as possible to increase audience recognition.

15. What have you learned from your audience feedback? Research & Planning Target audience research before production of trailer helped our group recognise what our target audience would potentially want to see in a horror trailer. The research provided us with a fundamental basis of what sort of location, characters, music, lighting and colours our target audience would expect to see. Our graph of results for the question ‘ what colours do you expect to see in a horror trailer ?’ From this graph, we decided to use lots of black in our trailer. Obviously, opinions varied depending on individual students taste and preference, but we took an overall statistical average from this. Mark scheme and general conventions did preside over audience opinions.

16. Construction We reviewed our trailer part-way through editing in the form of a showcase, open to other students in our school. The students were all roughly around the age of our target audience. Approx. 30 students viewed the showcase, which allowed a wide range of reviews and opinions of our trailer. Made appropriate changes, such as lightening shots, deleting and re-shooting others, etc. Seeing the trailer up on a large screen with a decent sound system helped us see the effect it had on an audience. From this, for example, we noticed that the music was generally too loud so we turned this down on pinnacle.

17. “ i think the dark shots in the cupboard scene are very effective and appropriate. Yet, throughout, there could have been more lighting effects to add to the horror theme” = from this, we decided to use a few more flash- effects in transitions between scenes. Quotes from students reviewing our trailer included: “ Good soundtracks – the beginning one was very catchy!” = this helped us conclude that our tracks were appropriate for our genre and appealed to our target audience. “ the lighting was a bit too dim in some places” = We realised that the shots appeared a lot darker on the showcase screen in the room, comparatively to the laptop screens we had been working on. To ensure a viewer would be able to see every shot clearly, regardess of the type of screen it was viewed on, we lightened everything slightly. “ i feel that the title was a bit irrelevant to the story” = After lots of difficulty in agreeing on a title for our film, we stuck with the name ‘Monkeyshine’ for our rough-cut showcase. Opinions like this helped us decide we needed to change our title, and after some research, we settled on the name ‘Deadbeat’.

18. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? Research – Used Fronter to create pages, upload documents, links and embed videos from ‘YouTube’. Used ‘Google’ for research and images. Planning – Took photographs and stock shots uploaded onto Fronter Construction – Video camera with crane for high angled shots and dolly for movement. Edited images using Adobe Photoshop CS3 and footage in Pinnacle Studio Evaluation – Powerpoint and Podcast.