Evaluation question 4 How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Evaluation question 3 Audience Reactions

Evaluation Question 3

Evaluation Question 2 How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Evaluation Question 1 How does your film follow or challenge established media conventions

Makeup

There are many techniques that makeup artists can use to help make characters more realistic and animated. From simply adding blush to make the lighting reflect better off of the actors face to completely remodelling the actors face using clay moulds and prosthetics to create fantastic creatures and hideous monsters, here are a few of the simpler tricks that can be used to change a persons appearance.

Firstly makeup pencils are used for drawing on eyebrows to help accentuate emotions

  

Secondly stickers can be applied to the eyelids to add or remove wrinkles

Then eyeliner can be applied to darken the area around the eyes and add mystery

Obviously lipstick can be added to bring more attention to that area

Foundation can also be applied to change skin tone and cover blemishes

Different blushes can also be applied to give a natural range of skin colours

Lighting

Lighting

Romance Lighting

Comedy Lighting

Horror Lighting

The lighting that is used in any production is vitally important to creating an emotional response with the audience. Lighting can be used to highlight features on the faces of the actors or to hide props or pieces of set. But the most common and perhaps most important is the use of lighting to create mood and establish tone. For instance in horror movies such as my own the lighting is normally very dark to reveal less to the audience and thus make them afraid. However in comedies and romance the lighting is often very bright to create a feeling of warmth and openness. These techniques can be used to great affect in trailers because it immediately gives the audience a feeling of what the overall tone of the movie will be.

This is a standard lighting setup and one which I would like to replicate within my own film. Whilst I may lack the funding for the exact same lighting setup I will very much try to place my own lighting equipment in a similar layout to this.

Props

Props

Theatrical Property or props are normally considered to be anything on stage that can be moved that are distinct from the characters costumes and the set. Props are a powerful tool that can be used to provoke emotional response, further the narrative or add depth to a character. I intended to use several props in my film however I am unsure as to how many I will include them within my trailer. For instance one prop I am sure I will use is the laptop/typewriter. This prop is designed to establish the belief that the character is a writer without having to denote it. This happens because the laptop symbiotically linked to the audiences’ perception of what writers do. The method for determining the audiences’ reaction to different objects or symbols is called structuralism which is also the name of the belief that humans only understand what is around them because of the connections that they build with other objects. The props that I was unsure weather to include the empty whisky bottles because I was unsure weather or not to introduce the alcoholic aspect of the character in the trailer before the audience has fully grasped the intimacies and motivations behind this addiction. Overall I believe prop selection will have to be limited to only the most important of props to avoid overloading the audience with too much detail without any information to contextualize it.

Reflective analysis

Overall I think the trailer was a great success despite many changes and problems along the way. The addition of the alter ego was a large change to the narrative and I had to add it in to a lot of my other posts but ultimately it ended up enhancing the overall narrative and adding a more pronounced sense of psychological depth to the trailer. The original shooting was something of a failure due to a malfunction in the camera that seriously distorted the images. However I learned many things and the second shoot added a great amount of cinematographic variety such as the shot where Michael is walking down the central corridor and the camera rotates giving the perception of the entire world shifting and leaving an inception style perception of the fragile nature of this dream world.
 Originally I decided to use incompetech a site for music which is both free in terms of royalties and finance however the selection is fairly limited and it was extremely difficult to find a track that fit the tone of the trailer. Later however I discovered that Itunes offer a selection of royalty free music that is also free of charge. All they ask is that they are accredited in any piece of work you use the track in which is why at the end of my film it says that the music was made by Itunes. This gave my film a more professional appearance and allowed me to build suspense throughout the trailer. The titles within my film use a midnight starlight background as a blue mist descends over a serif font. This title looks extremely surreal and continues the horror theme because the theme of night is something that has become synonymous with horror and mystery. The blue mist and the serif font add more to the already established surrealist theme. The curvature of the letters add to the sense of fantasy and the mist continue the theme of mystery and the obscure.
 The shot selection of my trailer also underwent serious changes and redos as the creative process moved forward for instance in the beginning there was a shot of a dyeing tree standing on its own and despite this image looking powerful and spooky it didn't fit in contextually with the other shots  and ended up detracting from the overall message of the film. As a result I replaced that shot with a shot of Kayles arm with a several eyes drawn all over it. This shot whilst it fit in contextually still didn't seem powerful or scary enough so I added a night vision filter over it to give the feeling that it was being recorded by another character making the experience more immersive, so I believe that this piece of editing helped to enhance the overall effectiveness of the mise en scene. Many of my shots were also far to bright than I originally thought they were this made the film seem less scary so I had to add a filter over it with after effects to darken it and help create the feeling that this was going on at night.
The use of the camera within the fridge as Kayle opened it and looked for food had the effect of making his character seem more relatable, whilst it wasn't scary as such it did establish Micheal (the character) as a genuine human being who struggles through normal everyday problems. Also the fact that it is still dark and the music playing is still dramatic music helps to avoid a break in the build up of tension.
The addition of the after credits scare was also something that provoked a lot of thought during the editing process because whilst this film is primarily a psychological horror there were very few things in the trailer that actually left a fearful emotional response from the audience. So I had to think of a way in which to frighten the audience without compromising the overall eerie tone of the trailer so I decided to break convention and wait until after the credits had rolled to introduce the monster, the audience feedback I received from this was that this particular decision was effective because the majority of the audience were expecting the trailer to be over and therefore relaxed just before the final scare. Also it didn't compromise the integrity of the rest of the trailer because as it happened after the credits had rolled it felt detached from the rest of the trailer.

Final Magazine Cover

The evolution of psychological horror

Psychological horror is a genre that plays off of the audiences own preconceived fears and anxieties by using a combination of micro and macro aspects that the brain is trained to respond to with fear. Films within this genre however do not often engage in shock or gore but rather rely on the build up to make even the smallest actions inspire fear and terror. The focal characters within these films often have mental or sociological issues which the directors use to allow the audience an insight into the problems experienced by these characters.
The Black Cat is a 1934 horror film that became Universal Pictures' biggest box office hit of the year. The picture was the first of eight movies and was one of the first films to be truly characterized as a psychological horror movie.
Cat People is a 1942 horror film produced by Val Lewton and directed by Jacques Tourneur. DeWitt Bodeen wrote the original screenplay which was based on Val Lewton's short story The Bagheeta published in 1930.[3] The film stars Simone Simon, Kent Smith, Jane Randolph and Tom Conway. Cat People tells the story of a young Serbian woman, Irena, who believes herself to be a descendant of a race of people who turn into cats when sexually aroused. Cat People was very controversial at the time of it's release because it was perceived as a disguised attempt to comment on the issue of nymphomania. The film does use several jump scares which is uncharictarstic of the genre however ultimately the narrative structure and controvasy caused after the release earns Cat People its status as psychological horror.
Roman Polanski directed two films which are considered quintessential psychological horror: Repulsion (1965) and Rosemary's Baby. The plot of Repulsion focuses on a young woman left alone by her vacationing sister at their apartment, who begins reliving traumas of her past in horrific ways. Whereas in Rosemary's baby a pregnant woman who fears that her husband may have made a pact with their eccentric neighbors, believing he may have promised them the child to be used as a human sacrifice in their occult rituals in exchange for success in his acting career. These plot devices and many others are what qualifies Roman Polanski as a real influence on the genre of psychological horror.
Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film The Shining is another particularly well-known example of the genre. With an I.Q well over 180 this film has been subject to so much analysis over the years that almost every moment of The Shining has been thought to be of hidden significance to someone. However whilst thoughts and opinions of The Shining may differ greatley it can easily be argued that Kubrick is at least partially responsible for how psychological horror is made and viewed today.

Pivotal Shots

Maleficent Trailer Analysis

                                                     Maleficent Trailer

The trailer for the film Maleficent use’s micro aspects that convey fear and a sinister tone to great effect for instance the use of sound instills a eerie effect upon the audience almost immediately with the use of quite and high pitched piano notes that gradually raise in tempo right up until the point in which the non diegetic sound of the music meats the diegetic sound of the witch beating her staff against the floor. This sudden and unexpected fusion of sounds leave the audience shocked at the power that the witch has, they are lead to believe that her power can almost break the third wall and control the very trailer itself. From that point on in the trailer every cut is marked by a loud drumbeat adding a sense of haste and urgency to the trailer.

 The editing of the trailer is fast paste too to complement the rising tempo. The quick cuts that build up a sense of intensity are broken briefly by the scene in which sleeping beauty is frolicking in the woods with fairies. This relent of editing speed may be due to the fact that the trailer is trying to portray a sense of innocence to sleeping beauty’s character and to highlight the fact that she is perhaps a bringer of peace herself and that she and the things she is associated with are inherently good. However this feeling is immediately replaced by the sense of shock that the audience receive when the dragon billows into screen and whilst this may not be particularly shocking to an adult audience it is important to remember that this is a children’s film and therefore many of the themes and portrayals throughout this trailer would be considered very mature for that target audience.  When the dragon breathes fire the fire continues burning even onto the title screen where the words Maleficent and Disney are written in bold serif font. Serif font is typically synonymous with fantasy and adventure however the fire burning in the background may perhaps indicate the darker more sinister undertones to this film because despite the fact that it’s a Disney film it has been marketed as the mature take on a classic fairytale.

 This more mature setting is a theme witch is complimented by the mise en scene for instance the symbolism of the candles being blown out in the castle could easily be interpreted as a representation of the ‘darker’ direction that Disney have decided to take this new film. Also the scene when the witch summons a green mist to envelope the cradle of a baby is an extremely powerful metaphor. It is fairly obvious that cradles are symbolic of safety and innocence however the colour green is often associated with jealousy and other sinister motifs so this concept of the juxtaposition of these two symbols would fit in well within the theme of the more mature and emotionally complex rebranding of sleeping beauty that Disney is trying to convey.

 Finally the cinematography of the trailer does an excellent job of establishing the genre and setting of the entire film for instance the long distance pan shot of the castle shows the audience immediately that this is a fantasy film and the medium shot that cuts straight to a close up of the needle shows that this item is clearly of significance as it is a generally established rule that one doesn’t cut straight to a shot of the same subject matter without any change to the object or angle of the shot. Again this adds an almost third wall-breaking message that the needle is so important that even the conventionally established rules of cinematography do not apply to it. Finally the fact that the witch almost always occupies the foreground, with other characters repeatedly left in the background to middle distance, shows that this story is going to be more centered around the witch than the original story or other adaptations of the story have been. In conclusion the sound, editing, mise en scene, and cinematography have all been used to great effect to create a feeling of suspense and fear and also to add a sense of maturity to a subject matter many consider to be mainly for children.          

Additional Art

Magazine cover first draft

Magazine Cover Second Draft

Final Trailer

Preliminary Task

This was the trailer remake of the Internship that me and another group did together at the start of the year to practice our filming and editing abilities. Whilst the editing and continuity leaves much to be desired, I fell that we all learned a lot about the equipment and software that we were using that ended up being greatly beneficial when we each went and filmed our own final project.

Directors Interview Announcement

Poster

Accrediting Music

When I was looking for music I found a beautiful piece that fit the genre of my film perfectly however it was created by Itunes so I immediately believed it to be copyrighted and therefore contain royalties which would therefore be illegal if I used it in my film. However upon closer inspection of the piece I discovered that it belonged to part of the Itunes royalty free music selection which was created for artists and creatives to use for their own projects. The only stipulation is that in the final product Itunes must be credited and so in my film credits it now reads "Music by Itunes royalty free music selections"

Genre

Deciding upon a genre is essential before you make any kind of creative decision involving a trailer. A genre defines and categorizes the product that you wish to sell. Whereas a trailer is intended to advertise and inform people about that product, therefore trying to sell a product to an audience before you the creator have decided what that product should be is extremely counterproductive and may ultimately lead to misinformation being spread to your target audience and thus seriously damaging the potential for profit. This was summed up well by Denis McQuail when he argues that genre is an ordering process that simplifies the process for producers to make media that the audiences wish to consume. I have chosen the psychological horror genre for my film and whilst horror is a very well established genre the psychological horror subgenre is far more specific and has not been explored by mainstream media as much. Psychological horror is driven by characters’ fears and focused more on psychological dread than on murder, mutilation, and gore. it can often be supernatural, but is more often associated with twists where the protagonist turns out to be insane or has some other issue with coming to terms with their own mentality or even just society in general.