A2 Media Evaluation Saba Part 3

A2 Media Evaluation Saba Part 2

A2 Media Evaluation Saba Part 1

A2 Media Evaluation

Eye For An Eye Official Trailer

Eye For An Eye: Website

http://www.stmaryleboneschool.com/studentsite/Media%20A2/saba/index.html

Eye For An Eye: Poster

Eye For An Eye: 2nd Draft

Eye For An Eye: Trailer Feedback

Nicole and I have made significant changes to our trailer, with the intention of making it more scary with quick shots and fast paced non-diegetic music. We have produced a first draft and have received feedback from our teachers, other class members and our target audience in general. We have learnt that our trailer is efficient and successful in the sense that we have been able to incorporate the majority of the key components a professional trailer has. It had taken Nicole and I quite a while to find relevant, fast-paced non-diegetic music that would fit in perfectly with the theme of our trailer. Our first draft trailer did not have non-diegetic music, and therefore it looked very unprofessional and slow. As our film genre is a Horror-Thriller, it has to be quick and sharp, and with the non-diegetic music lacking, it didn't do the trailer justice. We have been told that we only need 1 or 2 seconds of footage to show the audience what is going on. However, Nicole and I have created 5 second clips which slows the essence of the trailer down. This means that when producing these amendments we have to guarantee that we have good music and faster shots, to entice our target audience.

I think that Nicole and I have been too concerned about how our story is evolving that we have included too many shots of the beginning, middle and ending of our actual storyline. This implies that we are giving away most of our storyline which is not an ideal for our target audience. Therefore we will be cutting up each scene and dispersing it through the trailer as we feel appropriate. We have also been given feedback of re-watching other horror trailers consisting of 'The Ring' to remind Nicole and I of how many and in particular how short and ambiguous the shots are. As well as quick shots, longer shots are also needed for the most important and prestigious, whereas the short takes are needed for building up climax. We will use longer shots for the narrative so that the audience can read it easily, because on one of our shots, there is a long text message which will take long to read and therefore we will slow that particular shot down. Other feedback consists of cutting out the text message seen altogether and therefore interpret what the text message says and put it into practice.

There is an antagonist and a protagonist in our film and therefore to show their superiority and inferiority, we need to use a variety of different shot types to emphasise this. As Nicole and I have used a limited amount of shot types, we need to re-shoot at least one scene so that we can incorporate close-ups and extreme close-ups which are extremely frequent within the Horror-Thriller theme. Nicole and I have decided that we are going to use these shot types for the killer so that we do not give her away too soon in the trailer. There is one shot where our killer is immediately revealed and immediately all tension is lost because she is being revealed so early on. Instead, Nicole and I intend to cut this scene out completely as it reveals the killer and it slows down the tempo. Rather, Nicole and I will film parts of the killer such as her foot, hand, eye but not a prolonged shot of the whole figure. With the intention of improving our trailer and getting the highest marks possible in terms of the production mark-scheme, Nicole and I will make a considerable amount of progress for our second draft trailer.

Eye For An Eye: Feedback Poster - Website

Eye For An Eye: First Draft Poster - Website

Editing

Nicole and I have been visiting the muse many a time, with the intention of producing a good first draft trailer. We have been having some difficulties in terms of Final Cut Pro, but we have managed to insert all our footage on Final Cut Pro and have been starting to put the clips and scenes in order to put together the story of our trailer. Through researching different types of sounds that would be relevant for our trailer, Nicole and I visiting sites such as Soundcloud, Jamendo and Free Play Music to explore the different types of non-diegetic sounds that we will incur in the background of our trailer. After having researched sound clips we previously found 'This is the end - Royalty Free Music (Watermarked)" but after having done a substantial amount of work on the trailer, it was a mutual decision to change it to "Death Star" which fits in with both Horror and Thriller conventions. At this point, Nicole and I have been able to put our footage onto to Final Cut Pro and put the clips in order. Nicole and I will be getting feedback on our trailer from our teachers, classmates and our target audience.

Dead Man Down Trailer - Inspiration

Whilst researching other films from the Horror / Thriller genre, I came across this flm, where the storyline is very similar to ours. The main theme covered is revenge and death which is what our trailer is also about. At the beginning it states that the killer killed this man's wife and child and is after him. This is similar to our trailer in the sense that our killer is out to seek revenge on a man's wife, after having killed his mother and father. I also think that this trailer is very effective in its quick shots, fast-paced non-diegetic sound representing the thriller genre as well as the effective narrative, where one states "The Best Revenge thriller in Years" from Radio 5 Live. Overall, I intend to use this as inspiration for the making of our trailer.

Poster Planning

Nicole and I decided to make individual posters for our trailer, but include similar components such as the title, caption as well as the colour schemes. With this in mind, we have made a significant start with our posters, but this is because as our editing was being delayed we decided to work on our posters instead, not to waste time. Given that our trailer is of a Horror-Thriller genre, we both agreed and discussed what certain elements we wanted to keep the same such as the colour scheme which will be mainly black, white and or red. This is because through research from other Horror-Thriller films, these colours are the most sinister and dangerous. Therefore, for my poster, I have decided to use mainly black and white and a bit of red. This is because through research from other Horr-Thriller films, these colours are the most sinister and dangerous. Therefore for my poster, I have decided to use mainly black and white and a bit of red, to hint out and reflect that my poster will be of this particular genre. Nonetheless, Nicole and I also decided that we should keep the title and the caption the same. We saw eye to eye in this respect and thought that the title and the slogan was effective and matches our genre. The title matches the horror aspect as our trailer consists of a villain searching for the victim which connotes the genre of horror. Diversely, the caption emphasises the thriller side to our trailer as it leaves the audience asking questions about what is that is "his deadly past". These are the questions that Nicole and I want to make apparent in our trailer, so that our target audience can be intrigued and henceforth watch the trailer.

Editing

Nicole and I decided to go to the studio to edit our trailer, however every time we arrive it takes a substantial amount of time to set up the equipment and Final Cut Pro has recently not been operating and this has jeopardised our plans for editing, seeing as each time we arrive at the studios it's either occupied or Final Cut Pro has not been able to function properly. As a result of this, it has taken Nicole and I much longer to complete our editing. We are currently working with our shot list to ensure that we have the the footage ion ordder so that when we eventually get to do our editing, the process will be easier and straightforward. There has undoubtedly been errors and difficulties with the programme Final Cut Pro and other operations on the computer. Hence the reason why it has taken Nicole and I several weeks, whether that is during the lessons, after school, study periods and lunchtimes and also contacting the technition to help resolve this problem and continue to edit.

Poster Research

Poster Research from SabaMedia

Research Film Titles

Due to the high demand of changing the name our trailer, Nicole and I decided that we should start to research and suggest new names that would do our trailer justice. In our Vox Pop, we asked questions such as: Do you think the name “Hostage” for a film is effective or too cliché? And for this, the replies were very similar in the effect that our target audience thought that it was so common for a film and in addition to this, there is another horror-thriller named Hostage as well. Another of our questions were: Out of the following, which is the scariest?

1. The Woman in Black
2. Hostel
3. Fright Night
4. 7500
5. Hostage

The most popular scary film was The Woman in Black and Hostage and therefore seeing as people find them scary, we wanted to also add elements of this to our trailer, but if we kept the name “Hostage” for our trailer than we wouldn’t be unique, because our target audience would have already watched it. They would make assumptions that it would be very similar. Therefore we wanted to differentiate ourselves and make ourselves diverse in a way. As a result of this Nicole researched relevant names for our trailer, and she came up with the following:

• Let the Right One In
• The Collector
• The Tortured
• Eye for an Eye
• Vendetta
• Death Becomes Her
• Slaughter

I then thought that the best and effective name for our trailer would be either Eye for an Eye or Death Becomes Her, because firstly Eye for an Eye basically sums up exactly what our trailer will involve seeing as the killer is out to get the wife. However, I also liked the name Death becomes her, seeing as the whole family were murdered and now the last one standing is the wife in which death in a literal and metaphorical sense becomes her. After having researched the titles, we also thought that a slogan would fit nicely for our poster as well as to capture the essence of the trailer without giving anything away. Nicole then researched diverse slogans that would benefit our trailer. She came up with the following:

• Fear can keep you prisoner. Hope can set you free.
• Trapped in Time. Surrounded by Evil.
• His deadly past becomes her cruel reality.

After deliberation, Nicole and I thought that the best slogans were: “Fear can keep you prisoner. Hope can set you free” and “His deadly past becomes her cruel reality”. However Nicole and I haven’t decided yet but we have to choose very soon seeing as we have to design our title for our poster and trailer.

Filming Part 3

One of the main prospects of symbolism and iconography within our trailer is the passing of time. Therefore, after having finished our main bit of filming, the only thing left to do is film a clock to represent this symbolism and iconography. For this part of filming, Nicole and I borrowed a clock and changed the time to 10:00 as this is the time that the scene would take place in. Nicole was turning the hands of the clock around several times very fast, to emphasise the never-ending feeling the wife seems to endure when she waits what seems like a long time before her husband comes and saves her. The clock was symbolic because one of our questions raised of the events of the trailer, was: Will he get there in time? And therefore to reinforce this question, we thought that the clock symbolised these raised question for our target audience. By this point, we finished filming our trailer and this ensured that we stuck to deadlines in our Project Plan and gave us more than enough time to focus solely on our editing.

Filming Part 2

After having successfully filmed a section of our trailer on the 16th November, we decided to move on and accomplish our main scene, consisting of the killer and the wife together. In the past couple of weeks Nicole and I were speculating a lot about the gender of our killer. This is because men are portrayed as being more physically able and masculine to create a sinister end to the trailer. However, we also took into consideration that our trailer isn’t going to be gory and brutal, because it is a Horror-Thriller and therefore decided that if we were to have a woman killer; it would challenge expectations and intrigue the audience. This aside, Nicole decided to film the killer and the wife on Friday 23rd November according to our Project Plan. The location of this scene was to be in our school’s sixth form library at main site, which is in a basement, creating a cosy, but soon to be sinister atmosphere. We used our shot list to experiment and identify different camera angles that would make the killer more significant than the wife. Therefore at first we emphasised high angle shots for the killer to show that previously she was the insignificant and powerless, but now that she’s got her own back, she has more status and power over the wife, and we portrayed this through our low angle shots towards the end of the scene. We used the tripod and wheels to the best of our ability and even though it took us time to set it up, due to the fact that we had a variety of different locations, we still succeeded in getting it done efficiently. This was our second of three filming slots that was stated in our Project Plan.

Filming Part 1

Nicole and I started to get to terms with the filming equipment so that when the day of the filming comes, then we would get on with without any hassle. Therefore we started to familiarise ourselves with the equipment such as the camera, tripod and wheels and the LED light, seeing as we were planning to film in the afternoon. After having done this, Nicole started to film on Friday 16th November which was an earlier date, but this would benefit Nicole and I in the end as we will have a substantial amount of time to edit and perfect our scenes together. We went to our depicted location which was at the Marriot Hotel with our equipment and the husband. However, this location was not meant to be, due to security reasons. Therefore we had to make a quick decision and start to film on the opposite side of the street where there houses and a long empty street which was good enough for our scene with the husband. We filmed a lot of scenes in order to get the right one, and we also re-took lots of the scenes, with the intention of finding the right scene amongst the many we filmed. Overall we found the day very eventful and extremely useful.