Animatics

The first Animatics is the original version myself my group first created. As time went by, we decided to change the whole order and plot of the teaser trailer and began to work on the new version.

Storyboard

 

Below is the new storyboard that has been created. This is becuase one we were filming the sound quality was not as great as we thought it would be so we decided to come up with a better conventional and more professional version with less dialogue and more intertitles to help tell the narrative properly.

Mood Board

A mood board is like a mind map produced by a designer/producer to help them get a clear idea of their specific topic which is made up of collages (images, colour samples etc) which can either be actual or virtual.

To create this mood board I had the help of the World biggest search engine Google. Google Images gave me a good range of quality images to help make up the mood board. I had searched words like ‘’ Horror’’ or ‘’Horror Wallpapers “. By typing the word ‘Horror’ will automatically search for images from that phrase. This helped narrow down searches just to images that were appropriate or appealed to the genre of Horror for my teaser trailer.  The colours were mostly black, white and red. This conveys most Horror films as most of them use this particular colour scheme to represent more of a bloodcurdling, dangerous and horrific theme.

This is a specific mood board which is related to the theme of mine and my chosen group’s genre of the horror trailer we are going to produce. This mood board designed by myself is to create a little glimpse of what the plot of the trailer is about. The mood board itself portrays that the trailer is more of a slasher and paranormal trailer with the images resembling this very well. The images show the trailer would be about young teenagers/students which would be at a setting of a dark gloomy house. The rest of the images are different shots that would be used in the trailer with mid shots and closes up to show the facial expressions and body language well.

These images are used which will base my ideas on my Horror teaser trailer. The help of this mood board is crucial as it gives me more of an idea on what is expected to present to my target audience. Visually this will develop my ideas to take the best video/picture at the right angle to be put used in my teaser trailer. This will also help me filming as I will bring props and tell the actors to dress accordingly. Finally, this will give me more of a visual idea to develop all my idea on to making the best outcome by researching colour schemes, images etc.

5 Trailer Analysis

Here, I have analyzed five different movie trailers to help gain more knowledge on conventions which are currently used in modern day horror films. This will help show how the movies or trailers have developed over the years drastically. The movie trailers I have analysed are Saw, Paranormal Activity 3, Sorority Row, Scream 4 and Friday The 13th. After analysing these trailers I have learnt key common conventions which are included in trailers in today’s society. An example of this would be the slow pace increasing to face pace editing, colours used in the mise en scene and the different and range of camera angles used.

What Is A Marketing Campaign And Why Is It Needed?

The film making industry is very cost effective and a saturated and competitive market where most films in today’s society would need a significant amount of money to cover the cost of production,  investors, shareholders and other expenditure in order to make it a box office hit.

A marketing campaign plays a big major role in creating and developing advertisements for a variety of large organisations. Film organisations tend to pay large amounts of money for the expertise and skills to create a successful marketing campaign. The competitiveness if very high between the current market as each organisation will need develop new ideas which will promote their film further than other films launching. If this goes to plan where the film does make a box office hit, than the film investors would be very happy as they would acknowledge that people over the world are actually willing to spend their hard earned money and watch the film at their local cinema. This would mean a high return of money and profit would be made at the same time allowing any shareholders/stakeholders to benefit. In the long term, this would benefit as the popularity of the marketing campaign would increase and any future investments or films would mean people would acknowledge it is the same company that produced the box office hit.

Genre Of Horror

Genre is a term which a category of a form of culture. The term genre originally comes from a French word for ‘kind’ or even ‘class’. The genre I am going to be focusing on is Horror. Horror is a form or type of genre which is then controlled with intentions to help generate feelings of fear and horror to the target audience. This is done by the genre showing scenes to help cause shock, tension and distress. Also, there can be elements in the horror genre to help build a supernatural effect such as zombies, demons and ghosts thoroughly in the horror genre. Over a long period of time, the horror genre has changed some conventions. The main convention which has been altered is the use of colour. In previous years, the colour in a horror film was produced in black and white. In today’s society it has changed to full colour but with the same convention to help produce an improved audience reaction to briefly build up an adrenaline.

A sub genre is a sub-category within a larger genre. An example of a sub-genre can be comedy, teen, slasher, supernatural, paranormal and so on. A fresh film genre will need to be developed regularly to keep their audience entertained otherwise movies will become recurring and won’t be in any use no more. A hybrid-genre is when two films are combined. Horror hybrid genres would include; Horror Romance, horror-drama, horror sci-fi and horror war. An example would be Zombieland which is a horror-comedy.

 

Purpose And The Importance Of A Trailer

To make a film is expensive where they would need to be produced and then release in cinema for a short period of time where if majorly successful it would be shown in the current box office. Therefore, the film industry or institution must be able to advertise the film to help increase the target audience awareness in order to convince people in the world to visit their local cinema to spend their money to view it. To increase the awareness of the film, the industry must be able to use different media platforms. This would mean showing previews on TV, adverts in cinema, posters, and advertisements on the internet or even on radios. Some platforms are more effective than others. An example would be, a TV advertisement would be able to use multimedia to show what the film is really about, whereas a poster would capture audience’s attention straight away but can only be limited to the mass audience. Another platform can be the use of social media. A film institution can make use of social media such as Twitter or Facebook to increase the awareness and make the film more of a trend on the Internet which can help increase the popularity as it would become the talking topic over the World Wide Web. More and more people are using these two platforms which can be a key element as the use of this can be cheaper than advertisement on media platforms like a TV. This approach can be more interactive as the teams on Twitter and Facebook can reply directly to their target audience and answer any feedback given.

Trailers are used to allow people to view a snippet of the film showing significant parts of the film and cliff-hangers in order to attract the target audience. The key aspect of a trailer is to show what actors are starring in the film, the plot of the film and to never give the unique selling point away. For example, in the trailer of Saw, the USP was Jigsaw. Jigsaw was a character that no one knew of and was dominant where he was not given away as a character in the trailer itself which helped keep the enigma and tension further. This is an aspect which I must be able to adapt to the trailer I am going to produce. A trailer itself would consist of scenes crucial in the film helping to achieve a common duration of 2-3 minutes or less which would be the final maximum length allowed.

The importance of a trailer is to make money increase awareness. The trailer is very important as it can determine whether a film is successful or not. Once the film becomes a box office hit, the profit for the film would increase. This would also allow the film to be nominated for awards and to be rewarded more by winning awards where more celebrities and people over the world would acknowledge the film and cast/producers more. A good acceptable trailer would need to create a sense of atmosphere to the target audience. This can be achieved by the use of sound, moving images and special effects all combined to create a more effective approach for the trailer. This can lead to the audience knowing what the film itself has to offer and can further engage the target audience with the film with the use of creative and attractive advertisements.

Introduction

For my Media studies A2 coursework, I have been given a task to create a promotional package for a new horror film. This will include the following; to create a teaser trailer, poster and a front cover for a magazine for the film of my choice which will be based on the genre of Horror. Parts of this project will be carried out as group work but the majority will be independent working. The independent work will mostly be the research and analysis side of the task to help me develop my knowledge on key conventions so that I can work more enthusiastically on my trailer to be able to create a better finished product. Here, I will be researching horror codes and conventions aswel as analysing different horror movie trailers. For all this to be done would create a successful promotional package.

Overall, this task will help me to understand more of the media products and platforms that I will go on to produce to help me further reach my full prospective and to reinforce my creative and production skills. After this point I will begin to be more creative and come up with ideas and then start to plan my trailer fully. For several reason I have decided to select the genre of horror which are that I find horror films intriguing to watch and that many film institutions use a reasonable amount of money to create these films and promotional campaigns for the upcoming films. An example of this would be that Paranormal Activity took $15,000 to actually produce and release the film but then over time it became global where it had made a staggering $196,681,656 worldwide. This fact itself motivates me further to create a simplistic horror promotional package for a new horror film where it must be effective with enough common codes and conventions used to reach out to my target audience. In my opinion, I believe I am capable of carrying out both primary and secondary research to successfully meet the target audiences requirements on a effective horror promotional package overall. Along with my knowledge from AS Media, I still have the knowledge on the hypodermic needle theory and other common topics covered I can create this promotional package successfully to satisfy the target audience further.