The codes and conventions in media can be separated into 3 distinct groups - technical, so camera shots etc, symbols/mise en scene and written and audio parts. These explain the product and influence the response of the viewer.
We notied that they always had a company logo towards the beginning as well as a shot that established the scene. This shot added effect because it makes the place seem more isolated and therefore lonely, tieing in with the horror and instantly, if the music is quiet as well, the audience start to feel uneasy. In quite a few of the trailers we found there were a couple of clips of writing in the middle for dramatic effect, but also helped tell the story. These appeared to let the audience know what was going on, but also hint that something was going to happen, depending on what it read. There were a range of shots used, but in perticular we found that there were a significant amount of close ups. This adds tension because we, the audience, see a lot of emotion e.g. panic and with it being a thriller, a lot of the audiences emotions are caused by the character's emotions. It also means we cannot see much else if there's a close up, which makes us a bit nervous about what's there and what's happening. Finally there is always a climatic ending where the pace of the clips is even faster and the music escalates until a sudden finish. These points are the typical conventions of a thriller genre.
These are comparison shots from our trailer, 'one hour photo' and 'the descent' all of which show similar traits of a thriller genre. As you can see we followed a similar style and have used images such as these to visualise what we needed in ours in order to stick with the thriller conventions.
Lighting - Another way we followed the coventions is with the lighting. We used the natural light only, but this was great anyway because it was autumn/winter so it was quite dim and dark. The woodland also looked quite bare, excluding the evergreen plants which gave a sense that Kat was all alone and that it was deserted. Above, in the second shot of our trailer, of the trees, we really liked the lighting because the trees are really dark and the light is going out of the sky which represents the scary, dark side of the woodland taking over the usual welcoming day side. The camera is also pointing up to make the audience feel overwhelmed and the trees empowered. It portrays also how vulnerable Kat is in the woods.
Print - For the print typical posters and magazine covers for thrillers had dark colours and it was one image that was made to stand out, probably to make it more memorable to the viewer and also make it more dramatic and 'in your face'. Consistently black, white and red were used which are predictable for the genre because these colours are associated with death and lonelyness and the unknown. Therefore they were perfect to use for our print work.
- This edited shot was a particular favourite because a picture of Aiden fades in and then out of the running footage of the woodland. It suggests that he's always there, watching and it tells the audience straight away that he's dangerous because he is now asscoiated with the woods.
The clothes kept a lot of mystery to the characters because they covered them up a lot, especially Aiden (stalker) where we used a hat and a hood to see as little as his face as possible. We also understand that in a lot of horror films such as the decent or the grudge you dont see the creature/villain much and if they are shown it is very quickly or it is a built up moment. This is another way this genre manages to build tension which in turn makes it more exciting.
Overall we had a teaser trailer, billboard poster and a magazine front cover as our complete final product. Obviously because they were all linked we had to ensure there were noticeable and clear connections between the print side of our project and out trailer.
Woodland is shown in all three to set the scene. It is a typical thriller setting aswell so it helps create an eerie impression in the print. It is shown behind Kat (the victim) in both print and at the beginning of the trailer which I have shown above through a screen grab.
Dark, murky colours that appear drained. Mainly black dim green (nature) and for the print red as well to make them stand out more but make it seem threatening and also to represent danger. No vibrant, happy colours.
Both ancillary texts have a close up of the victim in order to show her panic and in the billboard poster it gives off the impression someone is following her because she’s looking over her shoulder. Also she is a reflection is someone’s (stalkers) eye which means someone is watching her. These tie in with the theme and storyline of our trailer. The trailer includes close ups
3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
Throughout the making of our trailer we asked other students opinions because they are the demographic we are appealing to. We wanted to ensure we kept to the typical thriller genre, but after showing our final product to our friends and other students we found their comments were quite similar. We asked students that weren’t media students as well as those who aren’t to get a wider range of opinions from people expecting different things.
One of the non media students we asked was charlotte who said that she thought the trailer kept you on edge and left you intrigued and wanting to watch the film. This was good because we wanted the audience to be slightly confused and intrigued to mirror what the girl felt like who was being stalked. Also, Charlotte said that she particularly liked the music choice because it was very dramatic which helped add to the build up of tension and it was suited well to the genre of our trailer. It was pointed out that the woods was a great setting because it is typically associated with horror and with the added effect of the natural lighting made it more exciting. We asked if she thought it lacked anything so that if we were to do it again we’d know what to improve. Charlotte said that maybe there could have been more shots to explain the story and that it may have been worth trying a voice over to make it more like a trailer.
Generally, all comments were similar to this, but that the main comments that were said was that our trailer built tension which made it dramatic and that it fitted the usual thriller guidelines.
The response from media students was that it was edited well, with the fast pace being used to make the audience more on edge. They understood what was going on well and that there was a clear storyline, helped by the clips with writing on, which many agreed were very effective and useful. Some said that we had successfully followed the media conventions of a thriller trailer by using small clips that jumped around especially towards the climatic ending. The music we used was also praised for the fact that it fit perfectly with our trailer and its genre, this comment was made by most people.
Audience feedback was very important because we are making the product for their entertainment so it is useful to listen to their commets to see how we can make it better.
Within all the stages of us creating our product it was necessary to use a lot of technology especially the internet and various websites.
All our research came from you tube.
We searched for various thriller films that had the same ‘stalking’ idea that we did. After watching and making notes on many thriller trailers, the main film we found was ‘one hour photo’ and then ‘the decent 2’ which was useful for referring to for its shots and typical horror editing. We also used a small project that we mentioned earlier which was called ‘Shutter’.
Both of these trailers can be found on you tube.
Using ‘You Tube’ we managed to see the conventions of a good thriller trailer (taking into consideration that the trailer was a teaser and should only be 90 seconds or so long so it gave the best idea as to what we needed to add to get our point across).
Using ‘You Tube’ we immediately were able to see sources that would relate to our own work. We were able to see different formats of work, different shots and locations which we were able to involve into our own work, whether we needed to use speech and how to create the best dramatic effect for our piece.
When it came to the print work of our piece, we used Google images to research ‘empire magazine’ to see the different variations of front covers. We were instantly given a selection of different covers which all represented different genres of movies, including horror and Rom-Com and showed different layouts. We could relate this to our work and choose a design that best suited our work.
Front covers included ‘Spiderman’ ‘Batman (the joker)’ ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘The Grudge’.
These covers were best because they were dark and dingy, they were supposed to represent something scary and show the readers that this wasn’t a typical film, it was a horror film. We also used Google to find images of typical billboard layouts and what to include on them because we weren’t as familiar with them as a magazine cover. We discovered it was the image that was most important and then most included a critics review, date of release and the title.
This screen shows how we edited, with the cutting tool being on the bottom right toolbar which we used to cut our footage and on the left under the 'effects' tab is where the list of effects we used are such as cross fade for the basic cut.Throughout our work we recorded our progress and efforts on ‘Blogspot’.
We inserted text, such as ratings from magazines which best suited our trailer to become eye catching and to best relate to trailers we had researched.
We changed the fonts and style of this writing in able to suit out genre.
Through out our trailer we used different shots such as close up and far away shots, positional shots and over the shoulder. We filmed using a canon camera...
The best edit was at the beginning when we were doing a situational shot of the woods after seeing the guy and at the end when it zooms into his eye.
We sped the whole trailer up to give a rushed panic effect which we think worked well.
We used Photoshop to edit the photos and used tools such as layers, crops and color films to give a different look to our magazine.
We added blends to insert the writing into the tree and smudge when making the girls eyeliner look as though it had ran.
Finally, we also used the college email system and social networking sites such as ‘facebook’ and ‘hotmail’ to arrange meetings and filming dates between each other or pass on information.