This is my attempt at answering my evaluation questions for media A2!

2.  As a group we have produced a film promotion package containing a
film poster, film magazine cover and a film trailer. Each of these
promotional tools serves its own function for advertising our film. When
we first got together in groups we quickly decided what genre we
wanted to film our trailer in. This was post-apocalyptic. We decided on
this idea because we were all fond of other post-apocalyptic films and
the culture that surrounded the genre. We also decided to pursue this
genre because it has a very niche target audience and as a group we
are all very different, all bringing a different skill to the table. With all of us
being young we really wanted to put together a film promotion
package that is aimed towards a young audience. Our ideal target
audience is between 15-24, both male and female genders. Taking this
into consideration we also had to research film classification. After
reviewing the BBFC website we believe our film would fall under the “15”
rating. This is because we to achieve the target audience we are after
we would need to include some violence and perhaps strong language
because our actors are teenagers. However we believe that our film isn't
your typical “15” because we want our film to be based around the
characters and their journey rather than being blood and gore from
beginning to finish. After we decided what we wanted to do we had to
figure out how we were going to do it.

3.  In order for us to create a post-apocalyptic trailer we needed to research post-
apocalyptic as a genre. We used websites such as www.wikipedia.com and
www.post-apocalypse.com. After viewing these websites we soon learnt that
Post-apocalypse is a sub genre of science fiction and sometimes other genres
such as horror and thriller. Post-apocalypse put simply means the world after (post)
disaster (apocalypse) so the genre as a whole focuses on very dark and
sometimes depressing subjects such as isolation, starvation and death. However
the genre is not to be confused with horror, although similar conventions are
presented in both genres post apocalypse is more about the characters that
have survived and their journey as they continue to battle against the elements.
Popular disasters used in PA films include zombie invasion, alien invasion,and the
up rise of technology. Disasters like World war 3 and virus breakouts tend to fall
into the genre 'modern post-apocalyptic' films. One of our initial ideas was to
make a zombie invasion film but after reading http://www.post-
apocalypse.co.uk/marshall.html we decided to change our idea, one because it
would have been more hard to film (extra actors, make-up etc.) and we wanted
to try and be original as we can. After some deep thought we decided to base
our film on an outbreak of a virus in a college environment, this way we can
include same or similar aged actors and appeal to a younger audience.
Although our film is based around the idea of a virus outbreak we didn't want to
showcase this too much in our trailer, we however wanted to try and build
character depth. We achieved this by shooting many scenes with all our actors
together to try and build the idea that they were close friends and that they were
on a journey together.

4.  Another convention we had to review was the characters within
PA films. For example many PA films have a 'western' type of
character, a lone ranger as it were walking off into the sunset.
This idea is presented really well in the film 'The Book of Eli' where
one of the main locations they use is a run down town with a
'saloon'. Other films try to highlight a partnership between
characters, a connection that bonds them together on their
journey. For example in 'I am Legend' the two main characters
we are introduced to is a man and his dog. Because the dog is
presented throughout the journey to the audience they begin to
make emotional connections to that character and in the scene
where the dog dies the audience is forced to feel sympathy for
the man and sadness for the dog. Often in PA films characters
begin to lose their identity, for example in 'Logan's run' each
character is refereed to as a number and they wear uniforms to
determine their power and status within a group.

5.  Voice-overs are typically used in films to explain narrative and sometimes genre.
We thought it was imperative to add a voice-over to our film. Not only would this
allow us to explain the narrative better but it could also give us more character
depth. Our voice-over is our main character speaking over the trailer, almost as if
he was keeping a diary on his journey. The way in which Jack recorded the voice-
over in the editing suite gives the audience the idea that the characters are in a
bad way. The script we recorded was very brief. We recorded Jack performing
the script as an audio file and then after we uploaded this to Adobe Première we
cut the script into short snippets which we then placed into our piece according
to footage and soundtrack. The tone of his voice is very sad reflecting the
narrative as the trailer builds. We also used other audio in our piece that we
obtained from www.incomputech.com and one piece of audio that we
captured in the home room and edited. We had the idea of people talking in the
background in our piece to try and create the effect of 'before and after'. We set
up the camera in the home room and filmed fellow students speaking for five
minutes or so then captured the footage in the editing suite. After deleting the
visual we slowed down the speed of the audio in the speed/duration tool to 80%
rather than 100%. After this we reversed the audio (reversed speed) to create an
eerie sound that builds up and then dies out to reflect the visuals on the screen.

6.  When filming our piece the initial footage we tried to use as many camera shots that
are typically used in PA films as we physically could. One idea we had was to mimic the
famous shot of The statue of Liberty in 'The planet of the apes' by shooting our
characters on Brighton beach on a quiet day. This shot is known as an establishing shot,
by showing an iconic setting the audience begin to understand where the film is set and
in which period it is set. One of the shots we had that didn't make the cut to our final
trailer was our characters walking along the beach and in the background the west pier
could be seen. The west pier was perfect for the effect we were trying to achieve,
being an already burnt down pier and looking very grungy to begin with. Unfortunately
the shot was badly filmed by myself and on review in the editing suite we decided to
scrap it. Another idea we had was to use ECU (extreme close up) shots in our piece.
Many PA films feature ECU's because their focus is on the character and by using this
shot the emotions of the character can be portrayed much better than shooting them
from a wide shot. We used our ECU's in a montage towards the end of our trailer to
imprint the idea of character development into the audiences mind. Just as the tension
is building with the soundtrack the audience are shown quick ECU's of our characters
looking very sad/depressed. This suggests to the audience that our film really is a PA film
because when the action is building they are reminded that the film is actually all about
the characters, their emotions and their journey. One idea we also had was to use
handheld cameras from the characters POV (point of view). We experimented with this
idea, at one point letting jack film himself as if he were doing a diary. We also used this
technique in a running scene with our characters. The idea behind this was so that the
audience almost feel like they are running with our characters really putting the
audience into the film. The inspiration for this idea is mainly taken from horror films such
as 'The Blair witch project' and 'Cloverfield'.

7.  In our pre-production planning we began looking at other trailers to PA films to see how
they were filmed and how the trailer allows the audience to identify the genre by just
watching two minutes of footage. Some of our biggest inspirations that were spurred
from watching their trailers include 'I am legend', 'The road', and personally 'Attack the
block'. A lot of post-apocalyptic films are produced in Hollywood with very big budgets.
A big budget allows filming to take place in an empty New York City (I am Legend) and
creates stunning visuals but as mentioned above we don't quite have the funds to rent
out Brighton for the day which is a shame but life goes on (post-apocalyptic joke).
However after seeing the trailer's to 'I am Legend' and 'The road' we quickly realised that
we wouldn't be able to shoot the same scenes that they have used. This allowed us to
re-evaluate what we were going to film quickly and help us realise that to create the
genre we were after we would have to be clever about it. This meant early mornings
and desolate locations. We decided on a few locations and times that we knew would
work around the problem of having too many people about whilst filming. Some of
these locations includes Shoreham harbour and local parks in Brighton. By focusing on a
trailer like 'Attack the block', an independent film produced in Britain with a very low
budget compared to it's Hollywood rivals we were able to extract ideas about locations
that we could film in and the way in which we could film our scenes to create an ideas
of desolation and destruction. 'Attack the block' was also a big inspiration to us because
it's main characters in the film are young adults or teenagers. When deciding on actors
to feature in our trailer we decided to use actors of a same or similar age to us.

8.  Our promotional package had to reflect conventions that would attract our target
audience. As mentioned above our target audience is both genders but mostly male
between the age of 15-24. After looking at readership figures we soon discovered that
Post-Apocalyptic films are viewed more by a male audience rather than a female. To
achieve our goal we had to take certain things into consideration throughout the
production and distribution of our film promotional package. We all thought it would be
a good idea to include young actors in our trailer because it was easier to organise
within a short time period but more importantly by using a young cast our target
audience could relate to the characters on the screen. One initial idea we had to build
on this idea was the use of our characters costume. Some ideas thrown up was to dress
our characters in „trackies‟ and „hoodies‟ but we decided against this after looking into
other PA films and noticing how they dressed their characters. We decided to stick to
the script with costumes, dressing our characters in survival coats and bags to convey
the idea they are carrying all their possessions with them on their journey. Although we
decided against the costume idea to portray youth we decided to play about with the
characters personas instead. Rather like „The Breakfast Club‟ we decided that our
characters could be a mix of personalities and styles. For example Steph represents the
„Goth‟ of the group, Seb the „Army cadette‟ and Jack the „group leader‟. In certain
scenes we see Jack take the lead and the others tend to follow after him. Although this
idea is very subtly suggested in our trailer it allows the narrative to grow even further. Our
target audience is also a very niche audience so by using certain stereotypes such as
„the Goth‟ it encourages similar people of that culture or lifestyle to see the film,
therefore broadening our target audience.

9.  To accompany our trailer we also constructed a film poster and researched magazines
to see which one would best to advertise our film on their front cover. We all
constructed our own film posters after researching other PA film posters. We all noticed
that a majority of PA film posters focused on the idea of characters as their USP (unique
selling point). For example in 'The Book Of Eli' the audience is presented with Mila Kunis,
an actress in the film, on a white background with the title of the film. This is a clever
technique used by the production company, almost name-dropping the actors they
have into conversation to persuade audiences to go and see the film due to that
actor/actress's performance in previous films. Other PA posters include setting or scenery
to convey genre, for example in 'Attack the block''s poster they use a council estate
building in the background, letting the audience know that the film is set in a council
estate. The poster also uses costume to convey character depth, for example rather
than dressing their characters in survival wear, typical of PA films (bag, coat etc.) they
have dressed them in very youth related clothing suggesting to the audience that the
film is based around young people. For our film poster we decided to use a different
image to our magazine cover so that we would seem more diverse. In our poster we
used our characters but tried to convey setting to add to the narrative like 'Attack the
block' by using an image of our characters walking towards an abandoned, grungy
looking building.

10.  My job was to research 'Little white lies' magazine and after some pulling
on the other two's leg I managed to convince Jack and Emma that LWL
was the best magazine for us to promote our film with. We discussed
many points before deciding however with Emma mentioning that most
PA films have big budgets therefore are advertised on big brand
magazines (Total Film, Empire etc.). After some in depth conversation I
told the group about how LWL was a much more independent
magazine and is targeted towards to a similar age group as our film is
than it's big branded rivals. Also we researched other PA films that have
been featured on the cover of LWL and we soon found that 'The road'
and more importantly 'Attack the block' had made LWL's cover. Looking
at the covers of LWL the reader can identify that the magazine is very
artistic and very in the know, taking an image of the film it features and
adapting it into an art form. This interested me because post-
apocalypse as a genre has inspired great works of art and visions. I
decided to use a mid shot of jack as our brand image because it's a
common technique used in PA film posters but also the copies of LWL
featuring 'The road' and 'Attack the block' have used the same idea,
taking an image of the main character and transforming it.

11.  When asked how we would promote our product we all sat down as a group and
discussed different ways in which our trailer could be advertised. As well as producing a
trailer we also produced a magazine cover and a film poster. Taking all of this into
consideration we believed that the best way to advertise and promote our film was
through the use of social networking sites. The impact of Web 2.0 has made the lives of
film distributors a lot easier, allowing sites the power to integrate technologies. If we take
www.facebook.com for example, this site allows you to upload, share and like content
between you and your friends. Every time you interact with a text on Facebook this is
documented so all your friends can see what you‟ve „liked‟ and they can check it out
for themselves. This allows texts to be quickly shared between like minded people
quicker than ever. We decided that it would be a good idea to upload our trailer to
www.youtube.com. This site allows its audience to view a wide archive of videos in a
matter of seconds. Web 2.O and sites like Youtube allow anybody to upload their
footage and receive feedback from people they may be interested in what they have
produced. Youtube also allows „tags‟ to be placed on videos, this means that when you
type something into the search bar any video that has the same tag as what you have
typed will be found and sent to you. When we uploaded our trailer to Youtube we used
tags such as „Post-apocalyptic‟ „media students‟ and so on so that people who would
be interested in our chosen genre or students could access our video. We also used
Facebook and Youtube to receive audience feedback on our rough cut. After
uploading our rough cut to both sites we took away any comments that people had left
and analyzed them. Some of the comments from our rough cut included „the narrative
is hard to follow‟ and „perhaps you could work on the costumes of the characters‟. After
seeing these comments we where then able to re-film and with these comments fresh in
our mind we were able to improve on both factors when producing our final trailer.

12.  Even though we believed that social
networking sites were the best way to promote
our film we realised that there were other ways
to try and reach our target audience. This is the
reason we produced a film poster. Film posters
are an imperative tool to advertising a film
because they can be used in many different
places like bus stops and billboards for
instance. The film poster can be seen as a
visual aid, if someone has seen our trailer and
then they see our poster it refresh‟s some of the
emotions of thoughts that they might of had
when first viewing our trailer.

13.  We gathered most of our feedback
from social networking sites such as
Facebook and Youtube. All of us
uploaded our rough cut to our
Facebook wall‟s so that we could
receive feedback from a vast
amount of people. Emma had the
best responses on her post with her
friends leaving more helpful and
constructive comments. Some of
these comments are as followed:
 “I like the effect of the people fading
away”
 “The music is slightly repetitive,
perhaps you could work on that”
 “I like the handheld camera running
scene, very unusual but nice”

14.  After receiving feedback on our piece we
were able to go away and improve on
certain areas of our trailer. In our initial
feedback we were glad that most of our
viewers could identify the genre although
some said they thought our trailer was a
thriller or horror. We believe we‟ve used
some conventions of both of these genres
within our piece as PA is a sub genre it-self
so we saw this as more of a positive than a
negative.

15.  One issue we had to work on was
narrative. In our rough cut our
narrative was very faded and hard
to follow. Our audience feedback
agreed with this. After collecting our
audience feedback we hit the
editing suite to try and improve on
what we already had. This included
re-filming and shifting clips around as
well as using our soundtrack in a way
which complimented the visuals on
screen. In general we were very
happy with the feedback we
received and happy that we could
change our rough cut to improve on
certain points that we had missed
out first time around.

16.  We couldn‟t of attempted to even begin
this course if it wasn‟t for new media
technologies. One of the most simple yet
imperative tools we used was the internet.
Through the use of the internet we were
able to gather all of the data and research
we needed. We were able to use Youtube
and web 2.0 to view other PA trailers and
see what they had created and view
comments on certain videos to see what
people liked the most about the trailers. This
helped us loads in the construction of our
trailer and treatment.

17.  As well as this we were able to view sites that were
strictly all about post-apocalyptic films. www.post-
apocalypse.com was a good example of this sort of
site, allowing us to identify other PA films, hear news
about when the next PA films were coming out and
also to share thoughts about the conventions of PA
films with other members in the site in their forum
section.
 When completing my timeline in my initial research
PowerPoint I enlisted the help of www.wikipedia.com.
Wikipedia is a site that allows its readers to input their
own knowledge onto the site and is a community of
people sharing and growing as one. Wikipedia is a
perfect example of web 2.0.

18.  As a group we also had our blog that we
used to express our ideas that we had in our
group meetings, upload pre-production
work such as the treatment and storyboard
and also to show reel our initial research
into post-apocalypse as a genre. I liked
working on the blogs because it feels much
more creative than writing everything down
and also allows us to simply re-produce
work if it is lost.

19.  When it came to filming the use of new media technologies that
our group used was of course the handheld camera and kit.
Having a handheld camera was ideal for our group because it
allowed us to move from location to location quickly and
proficiently. By using a handheld camera we were also able to
create effects in our trailer that normally we wouldn‟t of been
able to produce or that would of been harder to produce. For
example the POV running scene in our piece ended up being
the best clip we had to separate the ending of our trailer into a
montage. Without this shot our montage would look very basic.
Handheld cameras are also very simple and easy to use. This
allows everyone in the group to have a go at directing and
calling the shots so no-one is left out. When filming we did take
with us the sound equipment and microphone but on most days
we were filming the weather was to bad to use them and we
were normally outside making things harder to record. We
instead recorded our voiceover in the editing suite and then
laced this over our visuals.

20.  When we were in the editing suite we used a programme
called „Adobe Premier Pro‟. This programme allowed us to
turn rough cut footage into some of the ideas we had
when first meeting together on day one. In Adobe Premier
Pro we were able to capture the footage we had, cut
end edit the clips we wanted/didn‟t want and add titles
and music to are visuals.
 Adobe Photoshop was used in the construction of our film
poster and magazine cover. With our magazine cover we
were given a template for Little white lies magazine. We
added our own image and played around with the layers,
adding filters and experimenting with ideas until we
thought we had the perfect magazine cover. The way in
which we made our film poster is very similar to our
magazine covers.

21.  As mentioned above when receiving
feedback from our rough cut we used
social networking sites to achieve this
information. Websites such as Facebook
and Youtube are examples of new media
technologies and without them we would
be lost in the distribution of our trailer. Now
that our trailer is complete we can go back
to these sites with the finished trailer and re-
upload them and try and create a buzz.