I have been constructing this project for around six months now, all my work from it can be found on my blog which is www.benslater.wordpress.com i have kept this blog running in a diary type form on a week to week basis. I have categorised all my work into sections which can all be found under the category A2 media.
I have been working on this task individually, the task was to create a media package, there where several different options but I decided on the package which included a film poster, website homepage and a teaser trailer for a film. I decided to choose this for several different reasons, firstly I had to be sensible and choose a realistic package that I would be able to create by myself in the time given. I then looked at my abilities, I believe my skills on Photoshop and final-cut pro overshadows my creative skills in other departments, so by analysing the situation I decided on this package being best for me because I could express my skills in all three sections. I then began brainstorming different ideas, I decided on the theme of horror mainly because I have a real passion for the genre and I wanted to show this passion through my work. I showed my brainstorm to my class in the style of a focus group and they begun to give me feedback on the basic ideas i had come up with, this was interesting and it gave me an idea of what my audience where looking for.
I then moved onto creating smart targets which was vital to my work because I had set myself specific deadlines for my work to be completed. Smart targets allowed me to keep track of all of my work and I also believe it got me to produce my best work possible because I worked on each specific section of work by itself instead of trying to create three different things at the same time. After completing the targets I went straight back into work because I now had deadlines to meet, instead of carrying on developing my ideas I begun to research and let them develop as I was working this benefited my work because I had more time to evaluate each aspect for example is it realistic to create? and would it engage my audience?.
I realised that research is extremely important to my overall product, I knew this because I didn’t complete my research to its highest standard in my AS work last year and I think that lowered the standard of my end product. So instead of repeating the same mistakes I decided to research the main two aspects to my work which are the genre and how it relates to my work and my audience, I decided that if I good research these two aspects in depth it would allow me to have a great understanding of what I have to do to impress my audience. I started by focusing my research into the genre and looking at how famous horror films used website homepages, posters and teaser trailers to create a tension leading up to the film. I started with researching film poster’s I chose this to do first because I knew how important they can be to a film especially in the genre of horror. I started by analysing successful horror film poster to see what stood out at me and what made me wanted to see more about that film, I narrowed it down to a few different aspects . I noticed that most where very simple and used neutral colours, instead they captured their audience by using a powerful tag-line. I knew to carry this on into my own work because it would save me time because I could create tension through other aspects on my poster not just my image, other successful films such as Alien and The Blair Witch project used the same approach.
I then began to research into website homepages, this was more difficult because I could not find a clear theme used instead every website had different aspects which made me want to see the film. Firstly I looked at how the different websites created an atmosphere or tension throughout, most of them created this through different style fonts and background colours but I don’t think this is enough to draw the audience in. The website that caught my attention the most where the websites for The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity because both told a story which makes you want to no more about the story. They where both quite simple aswell their was no fancy design’s they where both easy to access and showed you exactly what the film was about. I also wanted to have my teaser trailer on my website because I believe that I can interest my audience through pictures and story’s but if I really wanted the audience to go see the film I need my teaser trailer to show them what there missing.
Finally I looked into arguably the most important aspect of the package the teaser trailer, I knew this would take the longest to create and I needed to have a precise idea of what I was going to construct otherwise I would not gain the reaction i wanted from the audience. I researched into 3 main categories editing, sound and colour, I think these are the most important when creating a horror trailer because this is what creates tension I think if I could master these three micro elements it would enable me to shock my audience. I have had some experience in creating horror films, last year me and a team of three others created a short horror film which I was pleased with but I wanted to gain a different reaction from this years work. My aim was to shock my audience in the trailer so I looked a several famous titles which done this in their trailer, I looked at titles such as Halloween, The Blair Witch Project and Friday The 13th all three put the audience on the edge of their seat and shocks them. I found that all use fast pace editing, dark colours and a slow build up of sound im going to try to blend this into my work. Another idea I had was to film some of the trailer in night vision, i personally find this scary when I have witnessed it in other films so it could benefit my work aswell.
After i had researched into the different aspects of my media package I decided to research into other important things which would help me when im in production, I done this because when developing my AS task i felt that i had to go back on myself and complete small pieces research when in production. So I went on a researched into different fonts, i used a website with thousands of fonts which I came across last year and took my 5 favorite which also represented my horror theme. I then evaluated the advantages and disadvantages and found which would be most useful, the fonts where not just for one aspect of the package I looked at them for all three parts. I then started research into my audience i mainly looked at certification and what certificates were allowed to show what, this was important because I wanted to find a specific target audience. I ended up making my film a certificate 15 because the boundaries where correct for my film and it allowed me to find my target audience which was 15 – 30.
Now that I had my research completed I decided to continue to develop my idea more, I thought about horror films which entertained me and asked myself how they did this?. I wanted to come up with a storyline which my audience could relate too so I went with the idea of following teenagers with a video camera, it took me a while to think of how I could make mine different to other horror films about teenagers. I had many different ideas but each had big plot holes which would have been difficult to make realistic to my audience, I ended up merging to ideas together one being a group of teenagers recording a student film whilst playing a trick on a friend and the other was about a girl who lives in the forest attacking people who came through. With a lot of thought the two came together and I came up with the idea that is The Dark Forest a film about 5 students go to the depths of the forest to shoot a college film but a practical joke that they play on a friend backfires and leaves them in the depth of the forest with a psychopath that kills for fun.
After completing my research and having a good idea of my product I chose to start out with creating my film poster, I started out by creating mock poster’s and trying out different ideas until I found one I liked. I ended up merging several different ideas together, the first idea I stuck with was trees at the top of the poster this was to clearly represent the forest, I started by using different images I found on the internet. I found that the taller and darker trees looked better in contrast with my background so when I went to take my original image I had an idea of what I wanted to shoot. I went to Epping Forest to capture my image and I ended up taking hundreds of shots of different parts of the forest, after I evaluated each photo and found which one would be best. Looking at the original photo it does not suit the theme of my poster but by changing colouring, shadows and outer glow the complexion of the photo changes completely and it adds a dark and gloomy atmosphere to my poster. After creating the basis of the poster I began to add text, I started by designing the title of the film this took me quite a long time because I tried out many different fonts but it was hard to find one which was clear and represented the horror theme. After finding one i thought was appropriate for the task set i began playing with colouring, shadow, glows etc… I went for the theme of red,black and white for my front cover I think by using different shades of this three I could create a dark and creepy atmosphere.
After completing these steps i had a big gap to fill in the middle of my poster, so i begun to think about what other horror poster’s have in the centre of the page. My instinct was to take another photo and add it to the page but after a lot of thought I decided to add reviews to the page instead of an image. In my research I saw that a lot of famous horror films had magazine and website reviews saying how terrifying the film was so I knew if I could find the right words it would bring a great effect to my poster. Whilst thinking of the correct words to use I added a five-star rating audience which always grabs the viewer’s attention, I ended up deciding on two quotes from magazines they where “The Most Terrifing film in the last decade” and “Nightmares guaranteed” this reaches out to all horror film fans because it dares the audience to watch.
After completing my poster i moved on to creating the website homepage for The Dark Forest, I started out with a problem straight away i had to decide what format to create my homepage on because I was ahead of schedule I decided to try to formats and evaluate which would come out better. I started by working on windows homepage which was quite tricky because it was my first time using the software i started out by creating a background and a title on Photoshop and moving it from Mac to PC, the outcome from even the basis of the website was not what i was hoping for it didn’t allow me to move images where I wanted them to be, images came up extremely distorted and the software would accept video. I was left with a decision either to try my best to make the windows homepage work or carry on with my initial idea and use the format of MySpace to promote my film, the decision was easy MySpace allowed me to get the best from my work.
So i began creating my website through the format of MySpace, i had an idea of how to use it so I went straight into production. I started uploading my poster to the site I done this because i wanted my package to link up, so I also left a section for my teaser trailer to be uploaded. I wanted to make the website effective in different ways to the teaser trailer and poster so I decided to come up with a story to create tension for the film, I have seen other famous titles like Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity do this. I held a small focus group between me and 5 students in my media class and asked them if there is a short story building up the film does it make you approach the film differently?. All of the feedback I gained led me towards writing the short story, I found that if the story is believed to be true it creates a tense atmosphere before even seeing the film. I begun writing the short story and I decided on making it around 100 words long because I did not want my audience to loose focus and interest of the film, I believe this is what makes my website different from other’s which is needed when creating in the genre of Horror.
I had to begin production of my teaser trailer as time was moving quick, I had around a month and a bit left so I began storyboarding straight away. I created 3 storyboards in total all similar concept but with different endings and scenes I wanted to get other peoples views and opinions so I did not decide straight away I started to cast my actors instead. I already asked an actor if he would play the role of the main character before the idea truely developed so I worked with him to find an actress that would play the part of Hazel. We interviewed 3 girls and got them to perform a small monologue, one girl stood out from the rest so i decided to use her to play the part of the girl and the killer. I sat down with both and showed them the storyboards and explained my ideas after a long talk i decided on which I would use. I chose the final storyboard I drew up because I wanted to film parts in night-vision and the ending was perfect for this style so my decision was clear.
I planned to film on the 23/01/2010 and everything went as scheduled, i had to write to the council and set a date before filming due to legal reasons so I organised my actors and actresses to a specific schedule. I brought along another 2 friends who offered to play the small parts that where the other friends in the film. The style of the film was to be part filmed by handy-cam so I made some improvisation shots as we worked, I ended up filming around 3 hours of footage in Epping forest because I wanted allot to work with when i went back to edit. The weather back worse as the night progressed so it became harder to film also the actors became impatient as they where having to work in the rain but after talking to them I finally got the shots I had planned plus more to go back to the editing room with.
I watched back over the film straight away and immidiatly found that many shots i had to get rid off due to poor lighting or sound, the lighting was a problem overall because I only had torches to work with when filming in the car and the forest. Eventhough a lot of shots were ruined because of this I was still pleased with what I had and I began thinking about how I was going to start work. I decided to edit my work on Final-cut pro wich I have used in previous films, I took the risk of using final cut pro which I would only be able to access at college, this left me with only a small amount of time to edit my entire sequence. I took this risk because I knew that Final-Cut pro enabled me to get the highest standard of quality from my footage. I first started by uploading all my shots and cutting parts with background talking or acting mistakes, because I chose the style of filming it freehand I left the camera rolling at some points just for practice and to see how it would come out so I had to cut all of this.
I began creating the sequence i had originally storyboarded, i mainly used cross-fades to combine scene’s to build the tempo of the story, I also used them to represent time had passed. I then moved back to Photoshop to create titles, credits etc… after i added them I was pleased with my sequence but it was quite long for a teaser trailer which is usually around a minute so i had to cut out some small scenes. Then i came across my main problem throughout the whole of the package i had problems finding the correct sound for my trailer, I knew the importance of sound to teaser trailer’s aswell thanks to my research. I spent hours looking for two sounds which would bring the horror effect to my sequence, i used the trail and error process to find the right sounds which I believe I finally came across, I think I built tension up to its highest point by using sound at the end of the trailer. After fully rendering and uploading my video to Youtube for the world to see i added it to my website homepage and my media package was complete.
Overall the media package was a long and stressful process but i am pleased with the ending result i think i have 3 different aspects that represent the horror genre in different ways. Although i do wish i had made more specific SMART targets i believe that i lost track of them sometimes when in production i think i should have created more quicker and easier to reach tragets so i could of kept up to date with my work easily. I think i have learnt allot from this project because it was the first time i have worked on a project this size alone, i think it was wise to pick the horror because of my knowledge of representation in the genre without this i believe the task set would of been a lot more difficult.
