When it comes to Toderov and Propp’s theories, our film trailer doesn’t seem to follow either of them entirely. Propp’s theory that there are certain types of character that are included in the narrative is loosely followed in our trailer. Although there are main characters that appear more in our trailer than others, it is not clear whether they are a hero, villain etc. This is where our trailer challenges the conventions of Propp’s theory. We did not want to give away in our trailer who was the murderer so we had to include a variety of out main characters to keep the audience guessing.
Toderov’s theory suggests that every narrative follows the pattern of equilibrium, disequilibrium, equilibrium. Our trailer does not follow this theory; our trailer does indeed follow a structure of equilibrium then disequilibrium, but it does not end in equilibrium. Our trailer follows the conventions of a horror trailer; one of these conventions tends to be ending in disequilibrium to excite the audience and draw them in, then leaving them in suspense. Our trailer follows this convention.
Our trailer follows the conventions of other horror trailers; it includes the typical screams, fast pace achieved through editing and shots from the killer’s point of view. Also our music could be seen as conventional to that of a horror trailer, as it creates tension and suspense and keeps in time with the pace of the visual shots.
Our trailer, poster and magazine front covers didn’t really have a house style; we thought it might be more effective to focus on each media product individually and look at what would work best form them as a single piece, rather than try and link them all together and make them similar.
Even though all three products aren’t very similar I think they work together well. While our poster makes the theme of the film very apparent and clear, it also provokes a lot of questions in the audience’s mind; “who is doing this? Why is this happening?” etc. My magazine front cover breaks the conventions of a normal film magazine featuring a horror film. Rather than having an image that is featured in the trailer, or a sinister shot of one of the characters, I decided to do something completely different and have the actors at an award show. I got the inspiration for this idea from the success of Slumdog Millionaire; they won loads of awards before the film was launched in the UK and people were talking about it and anticipating its release because of these award wins.
Our target audience is 15-24; there are a few reasons for this. Firstly this is the age group that tend to go to the cinema the most. Also, our age range could be no younger than 15 because of our age certificate. Finally, we thought this would be the age group most likely to want to see this film because they may either be in full time education or have just left it, making it a more relatable film for them. From our audience feedback (see the blog below) we can conclude that our audience is definitely giving us the reaction we wanted; they are gripped by the trailer and would go to see it if it were in the cinema. Also they understand the plot but are not given away any spoilers as to who they murderer may be. They all liked the trailer the best out of our 3 products and thought they worked well together.
In the research and planning stages of making the three media products, I spent a lot of time looking at real examples of horror trailers, film posters and film magazines. I looked at whether or not the products worked together and why, what made them powerful and whether or not I think the techniques they used would be affective in our three media products.
In the construction stages of our products many different programmes on the computers were used. To construct the poster and the poster and the magazine pictures were taken and we used Photoshop to edit them to how we wanted them to look, for example making the blood on the poster a much deeper red and placing the actors over the ‘backdrop’ on the magazine cover. At first Photoshop was quite hard to figure out, but we got there in the end. Our trailer was edited on Windows Movie Maker, this programme was very easy to use which really helped us get through editing our trailer faster. The music was created and recorded on MAGIXS Music Maker Generation 15, and of course we had to use these blogs to keep track of our progress and present our final products.
Overall I think my trailer, poster and magazine cover were all huge successes which reflects the time, effort and fun that went into making them. If I could do this project again I don’t think there is much I would do differently… maybe have a word with Mother Nature about all the snow putting us behind schedule on our filming :P
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