The SIXTH SENSE trailer

The sixth sense is a horror film based in America, created for 16+ audiences with a basic trailer length of 2 minutes 20 seconds. There is a lot of camera work throughout the trailer. Long and mid shots are there to portray the surroundings of the scene. Close ups are portray the facial expressions on the main characters faces, and zoom-ins allows the camera to focus on particular characters. There is a low angle on door subjecting to the audience about to jump out.

Sound is very important in all sorts of media especially trailers. Music and sound in trailer allows the audience to catch the genre of the film itself. In the sixth trailer sirens are heard, a connotation of danger. Also the dialogue of the boy in the trailer is so innocent and frightened that the audience is drawn to that and sympathise with him. This is evident as he speaks to his mum about the accident telling her the woman that was hit by the car is standing right next to his window although the audience and the mother herself cannot witness this unnatural situation. The ending of the trailer consists of scenes that dramatically change in a quick and snappy transitions with flash of light, a fast pace rhythm, sounding like a heartbeat, illuminating the boy’s fearful emotions within the trailer. Most trailers happen to have a three-act structure similar to a full length film at the beginning starting with a scene that gives the audience an idea of the story. For example the young boy having dialogue with his mother through the first scene of the trailer telling her he sees dead people and they speak to him. This demonstrates to the audience that the young boy has supernatural powers and such things are not normal in that world as his mother did not believe him at first. Moreover Dialogue lines such as “I see dead people” half way through the trailer rises tension and suspension for the audience, and it is also introducing us to the characters and narrative.

The flaring of flame in the first shot warns the audience of danger, setting a negative tone. Furthermore, the floating of the red balloon in the middle of spiral stair cases is connotation the young boy’s curiosity and the discovering dangerous things. The non-diegetic gives us an awareness that as he walks up the stairs with curiosity to explore the big house, he will encounter something dangerous and open doors to danger in his life. The trailer also shows him in class being the odd one out, illustrating his is an outsider, a different child from his classmates. Even in the hospital the young boy is not safe. There seem to be nowhere to hides setting a horrific genre within the trailer through tension and narrative. No friends to talk to and his mother seem to find him strange except from the man (Bruce Willis) in the trailer he seems to be around with. The girl under the hospital bed allows the audience to see her just the way the boy is seeing her in the trailer. This shows the boy has nowhere to hide. Even a hospital which has mise en scene for being a place of healing and safety, these dead people seem to be able to find him.

Editing is seen through smooth fades in traffic seen to illustrate the length of the traffic. Quick flashes of light and darkness after each camera shot to demonstrate the rapid and danger of the situation the little boy is into. The second act is the dramatic climax from the film is shown through the trailer as the boy seems to be going through a petrifying stage in his life and things must be done quickly to prevent him for hurting so the pace of the music and shoots increase to emphasize this. The third act is the few last seconds of the film as it has powerful orchestra illustrating the emotional moments of the film and through this the audience is drawn into watching the film. In this trailer the only voice over heard is mostly of the boy and the dialogue he has of the man (Bruce Willis) and his mother. The voice of the little boy draws the audience in as his voice is so sweet and innocent adding sympathy from the audience as he seems to be haunted by ghosts. There no hardly captions as the dialogue placed in the trailer explains all the audience need to know about the film from a trailer.

The editing, sound, mise en scene and the fast heartbeat pace of the trailer makes the audience nervous but curious. Also the clear plot works well as it does not give away too much. Just through this short trailer the audience is able to depict the film genre, which is horror, they also learn what the film is roughing about (a young boy that can see the dead) and the narrative of the film is that he is a scared lonely boy going through a traumatic stage in his life with no friends or parents to support him except for this man (Bruce Willis) who seems to be his only companion.

HALLOWEEN 1978 Trailer

Music is a big key in the trailer of Halloween. Non-diegetic sound is immediately heard as the first image we see is of a house in what is seen as a safe and recognisable neighbourhood. We are now taken into a home where a scream is heard and the camera is wearing a mask, holding a knife. This is an awkward position for the audience as the point of view shot makes the audience seems guilty for the crime that has just been committed. Non-diegetic sound is heard through the loudness of the piano and diegetic sound is heard through the screaming. When we are taken outside the house, a hand held camera is used and played as a character. This leaves the audience confused as they later find out the killer was a little boy. The confusion on the boy’s face is the same confusion the audience are feeling and enigma codes are raised to how could a little boy who seems so innocent can committed such a tremendous crime.

The caption then appears with the word “Halloween” with a voice over reading it as it comes on the screen. This is to reinforce the title of the film and that the film is based on the day of Halloween. An older man is then seen giving out a dialogue to the audience, implying a sense of narrative that the boy is not of a normal nature. The dialogue of the older man who seems to be the benefactor in this slasher film warns the audience of the danger in this boy who has now become a man and has escapes. The next scene is of three friends walking in a suburban area coming from school as one of them hold they’re books, and they stop to look behind, suggesting someone was following them or something had just happened out of their knowledge.

Non-diegetic sound is well played in this trailer as the actions of the characters speeds up, the orchestra also speeds up creating dramatic tension. Diegetic sound is heard through dialogue of the benefactor explaining the mad man on the loose. And also the voice over portrays a sense of horror through his deep voice as he narrates the trailer. Moreover the screaming of the victim is a woman, who happened to get away from the monsters attack. Her strength is fighting him off shows she has a better chance of surviving then the other characters seen in the trailer. She is not feminine and does not resemble the male gaze theory of women being portrayed vulnerable and weak in media through their physical representation but rather she is masculine and tough, making it easier for the male audience can identify with her.

There is also a sense of binary opposite through the surviving girl and the monster. Claude Levi-stauss introduces the theory of binary opposite when he looked at narrative structure and set of opposite values. An example would be good and bad, and in this case the monster seems to be the villain in this film and the surviving girl (Lorrie) is the good person. The monster is typically a man as men are seen strong and powerful bringing a sense of hierachy, and the victim is a woman who is seen as weak and vulnerable by society but Lorrie proves other-wise and manages to escape him.

A close up camera shot of the benefactor is emphasized as he speaks suggesting he is of importance to the film which helps to build tension and suspension creating enigma code of what importance he might have to the film or if he will be one of the heroes. The shots of the woman in the car being attacked, most likely by the little murderous boy who later grew up and escaped his mental institution, as the dialogue and shots reflects to this scene, he is seen as capable of harming anything without mercy. The murderous ma’s face is not shown, raising enigma to who this man really is? And why his face is kept in the dark. However by doing so, this allows the audience’s imagination to run as wild as they would like in image for themselves the kind of vicious person he might be? From that shot to having girls walk with her friends through a suburban streets and one the girls head turning back as if she heard something suggests to the reader that this monster is out to get her and her friend and that she is not safe.

The shock that the killer disguise himself into wearing a white sheet pretending to be the sexual active girl’s boyfriend is very sneaky. As the sexual active girl does not seem scared but rather comfortable, dramatic irony is raised for the audience know the man behind the sheet is not her boyfriend but rather the man that is about to take her life. At this point the audience may feel hopeless as they are incapable of warning her.

Although there is not so much editing such as flash, or quick pace in changing scenes, the non-diegetic sound, and the steady pace enables the audience to catch he narrative and the plot of the story without giving out more than it should about the movie itself.

BURIED (poster analysis)

DARK WATER (poster analysis)

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY (poster analysis)

EMPIRE (magazine front cover analysis)

GOREZONE (magazine front cover anlysis)

LITTLE WHITE LIES (magazine front cover analysis)

REPRESENTATION in THE KISS OF DEATH

Representation is one of the key elements that make a great at film successful and original. We have taken into consideration that our target audience have expectations to the codes and conventions of a horror film. We have therefore applied all the necessary iconography and semiotics to produce a meaningful trailer with correspondence to mise en scene.

In slasher films, or any horror films, there is always some sort of monster who comes to disrupt a normal routine for a group of people or person. This is evident in horror films such as ‘Drag me to hell’ as the young lady has a routine of going to work, meeting her boyfriend and attending family matters. However during one of her normal days terrible things began to happen to her. This sense of equilibrium is seen in all types of horror films. The monster in our trailer is a school girl. We have broken the codes and conventions to make the film more exciting and unpredictable for our viewers as it is common to always have the monster being played by a male role. This is seen in films such as ‘Halloween’ and ‘Prom Night’. Monsters are usually played by the male role because the monster is usually sexually deprived, trying to take the virginity off the final girl who is sensible and mousy by trying to kill her. The final girl is usually masculine structured so that the male audience could identify with her. The monster in our trailer is called Holly. She is presented as the final girl on a quest to take revenge for all the hurt she has been caused by the popular and loud kids in school. Formulaic is presented as Holly is mousy and sensible setting the codes and conventions of a slasher film. However there is a sense of subversion as the final girl becomes the monster. 

Her characteristics can be identified by the theory of Femme Fatale (Deadly Woman). This theory came about the 1930s when women began to demand equal rights in society and homes. Femme fatale was women who dressed and looked beautiful and pleasing to the male’s eyes. She was seductive, mysterious and dangerous. However she was the reason why so many men would leave their marriage behind. She was the reason why so many men would fall into debt s; throughout all the down falls femme fatale always left the scene uncaught.  This is evident to ‘A Kiss of Death’ as Holly begins to grow up looking beautiful and sexually deprived. When she gets hurt by her boyfriend, that almost seems like it is the last straw and she strikes losing her mind and killing everyone who have affected her in a terrible way. In our synopsis Holly does not get caught. At the end of the storyline she escapes from the mental institution. This is also evident in the film Halloween when the ‘boggey man’ escapes from where he landed falling from a bedroom window. Moreover theories suggest women are as bad as monsters we see on screen, this is apparent in the film Alien when the monster comes close to the woman terrifying her and the camera shots them in the same angle suggesting they are equal. Freudian Psycho analysis brings forward the theory of pre-oedipal space. The transition from the pre-oedipal space to the ‘symbolic’ is a Freudian concept. It forms the ideas of mulvey’s Male Gaze and Barbara Creed’s monstrous feminine. Creed suggests “the female as castrated male becomes the female as castrator, period. Although psychoanalysis never really gives full justice to the social, political and artistic subtleties of any film, it does seem best served by the horror film.” This theory connects with our trailer as Holly is literally the final girl who has emerged into a monster.

In her essay ‘Visual pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ Laura Mulvey argued that the spectator (and therefore the cinema) is male and drives visual pleasures from a dominant, voyeuristic perspective. She named this, ‘The Male Grace’. She argued that cinema inevitably puts the viewer in a masculine position, with the figure of the woman on a screen as the object of desire. We have taken this theory and applied it to our trailer by the way Holly is dressed. We are not supporting the vulnerability of women in the media but understand that the way anyone is dressed can create a stereotype immediately. As Holly is female monster rather than a sexual deprived male monster, she is dressed in a small and short black dress with torn tights, red lipstick and school uniform to represent her sexual deprivation nature. There is a sense of sexual perversion as her school uniform is tight and revealing drawing in the older generation into the film as some adults find it pleasurable to dress in school uniform and kinky nurse outfits etc at dress up parties.  Not only does she have the power in the film, she also has the power when she draws the audience in by her attire. She is masculine so the male audience can identify with her. She is not wearing heals or dolly shoes as they are feminine footwear. However she is wearing military boots giving her a sense of masculinity.

Ethnicity within the character role was not considered as an issue. We just used whatever character we could find to help us with our trailer. However seeing the final girl’s image was very important, we had to put into consideration that as much as she is a killer, she had to have the body structure of a final girl, being a bit masculine with dark hair. Furthermore, as I have watched a number of horror films, I have noticed that the final girl is of the White race, so as a group with thought it would be appropriate to stick to the codes and conventions in that area. The victim’s race was not an issue. We had a white boy in a hoodie. In addition the conspiracy was brought up that if we had a black boy in a hoodie, stereotypes would rise in what society already think about black boys in hoodies suggesting is into crimes etc compared to a white boy in a hoodie.

Montage editing is the meaning created between the juxtaposition. This is apparent when the face of Holly is seen in one shot and a flash of light coming on bringing us to the next shot of a victim running for their lives. Although the audience does not see Holly chasing the victim, it is obvious her emotionless face is demonstrated towards the victim.

Sound is important in any trailer as it brings the trailer to life. In our trailer we do not have any dialogue, just music and voice over. The voice over would be of a man with a deep voice to create dramatic tension for the audience. The shots will be in pace with the music. At the beginning the shots will come in slowly along with the music, and the pace will increase throughout the whole of the trailer. The music will be inspiring and emphasis of horror to inspire and encourage the audience to watch the whole film. 

Camera work is very important in the trailer; most of the time the camera will be firm on the tripod. However handheld camera will be in motion when the victim is being chased by Holly positioning the spectator in active monster role e.g. when the victim is being chased the camera places the audience in a complicit way.

APPLYING THEORY TO "THE KISS OF DEATH" (GROUP TRAILER)

Applying theory to “The Kiss of Death” (group trailer)

  “The Kiss of Death” is a trailer that has broken a few codes and conventions found in slasher/horror films. The reason being was to be original and not make our trailer so predictable, however the theories that can be applied to horror films can still be found in our trailer.  

Narrative is very significant in story telling as narrative is the form in which events taken place are put together to present to the audience. Narrative is analysed by through technical code such as lighting, editing, sound, design and layout, shot framing and composition and camera angles and movement. In “The Kiss of death” the bullies who harass Holly have low angle camera shot to portray they are looking down on Holly as she seem worthless to them. The lighting is dim and melancholy even in broad day light the clouds are grey giving this film a dark atmosphere. Verbal code allows the audience to understand what the film is about. In the trailer we have decided to have a male voice over with a deep voice containing authority, allowing the audience to be drawn into the trailer and their own conclusion of the trailer. Mise en scene is very important in our trailer as it tells a lot about the characters. This is evident as when Holly wears dark clothing during her murderous scheme; her hair is all disorganized suggesting she is not mentally stabled. Her black skirt is short illustrating there is a sense of sexuality in her. Her appearance is supported by the Male Gaze theory explaining how women are portrayed in the media as vulnerable and weak through their clothing and their seductive appearance. Although Holly may carry some of these connotations, in the way she dresses as she becomes bitter with the men in her life, she however holds the connotation of femme fatale in film Noir. Femme fatale is a French word for “deadly woman”. Femme fatale came out after the Second World War where women were obliged to leave their jobs as the men came back for them. Meanwhile they noticed they too were capable of doing what the men could. Furthermore, film noir presented femme fatale as an attractive woman, seductive, sexual allure but dangerous in order to achieve her hidden agenda where in most cases the men found themselves to be a subject of death, or losing their homes and family. Moreover Holly has some of the characteristics of Femme fatale as she gets revenge by killing men for how she has been treated all her life by girls at school, her drunken mother, her abusive father and now her cheating boyfriend.

Russian theorist by the name of Tvzetan Todorov suggests that all narrative follow a three way structure. Firstly everything is balanced and this is called equilibrium until something comes in the way to disrupt that equilibrium which then becomes disequilibrium (beginning middle and end). However there must be a resolution to this and that’s where new equilibrium comes in. “The Kiss of Death” follows this narrative structure. Holly is a normal child but just unfortunate in how life has turned out for her. Her daily routine is that she goes to school in the morning, but unfortunately she gets bullied at school as she is not sociable and not into boys, make up and parties like the other girls in her year group. When she gets home her mother does not give her the attention she deserves as she’s on drugs, having men around the house and a drunken. Her father runs away with a hooker a couple of years back. The disequilibrium is when she matures, begins to get involve with the wrong type of friends and gets a boyfriend. She becomes obsessive over him and mise en scene is portrayed through the trailer as she’s talking to the boyfriend called Freddie and on the wall she has pictures of him, messages such as “my Freddie forever” and heart shapes and flowers. Eventually she finds out he is cheating and goes out to seek revenge by killing him and everyman that comes close to her as by this time she is a very attractive young lady. To solve this issue, Holly must be stopped and the whole country is looking for her. When she is finally trucked down in the woods about to kill the “final boy”, Holly is caught and shot by the police. At this point she is not dead but in a mental institution. After a while the doctors came back to check on her, but she is nowhere to be found. Holly has escaped and ready to strike again, this time with a new identity. Halloween the film inspired us to decide to let Holly live and escape the mental institution home in order to create enigma code as the boggy man escaped after the final girl battled for her life and survived. Todorov’s approach to this theory came from his studies of folk’s tale.

Furthermore Vladimir Propp being a Russian critic, he examined 100s of folk tale and recognised that in most of these tales he was able to identify 8 character role and 31 narrative functions. These characters are the villain, the hero, the donor (who provides an object with some magic property), the helper who aids the hero, the princess (the sought for person)- reward for the hero and subject of the villain’s schemes, her father- who rewards the hero, the dispatcher (who sends the hero on his way) and finally the false hero. Some of these characters are definitely found in all of narratives such as TV programmes, the newspaper, novels and some are found in my trailer. The villain in this case is Holly even though through equilibrium she is seen as the victim. There are no immediate heroes except for the police coming to rescue the “final boy” even though that’s the case; she escapes showing thing that she cannot be stopped even by the high authority being the police. Moreover in slasher films the final girl is usually nerdy, with brown her, virginal and obedient. The monster represents sex and his weapon portrays his penis. The first girl to get killed is usually a blond girl who is sexually active. The representation of this narrative is to give awareness to teenagers to cherish their virginity and put their heads in their books or they would turn out like the blond girl. Moreover my group and I changed the codes and conventions and have switched the roles. The monster in this case is an angry young girl who is sexually repressed but shocks the audience by using her seductive appearance to drive men to her and later she murders them through anger and disappointment through her own life. She is not sexually repressed because it is something she likes doing, however she uses that element to attract the men to her. There is no obvious benefactor in this film however when Holly was in school her teacher was always there comforting her, advising her to take the right path. Moreover the benefactor would therefore be the helper who aids the hero according to Propp’s theory. The reason why we decided to have a female blond killer was to bring awareness to men who are sexually active as society will look down on a sexual active girl and think of her as a damaged hoe, however a sexual active male would be praised and patted on the shoulder for having some many girls. This show how ill and deprived our society is.

In the 4^th century BC Aristotle decided that ‘all drama is conflict’, moreover in the 20^th century Claude Levi- Strauss looked at narrative structure in terms of binary opposition. Binary opposition is recognised in horror/ slasher films such as “good Vs evil, and virginal Vs sexually repressed still exist. Character types are still constant; the binary opposition good Vs evil still supplies the horror genre with monsters and heroes. Social themes are probably the most constant variation in horror films today. Social themes are based on society’s fears at the time of the movies creation, so the themes are based on the era of production. Horror genre is a consistent genre, viewers know what to expect when seeing a horror movie, yet it is still a genre which draws audiences, as viewers still can’t "resist the Aristotelian compulsion to ‘open the door, and show what is behind it" Cook, Pam. The Cinema Book (1985), New York, Pantheon Books, Page 102. In addition the binary opposite within my trailer is monster (being female) Vs victim (being male), dark Vs light, right Vs wrong and revenge Vs forgiveness.

Furthermore Pam Cook gives a description of American film from “4 defining pictures of American Cinema”; the first one being, ‘A linear narrative of cause and effect within an overall trajectory of enigma resolution’. Through this quote I understand that for my film to be affect there must be a story that goes in a straight line allowing something to happen in a film causing something else to happen. The path that the narrative takes is important as there has to be a puzzle where it is then solved enforcing a happy ending to the film. In this case Holly has been pushed around by everyone in her life to such an extent where it mentally deprives her and she loses control by killing everyman that shows interest in her or anyone that has hurt her before. However this disequilibrium will therefore be mended ‘As there will be a high degree of narrative closure’ this implies that all the loose ends will be tide at the end when Holly is taken at the mental institution home when the doctor’s finds out what caused her to kill and where the anger and bitterness had come from. Moreover cook goes on to suggest “A centrality of the narrative agency of psychologically rounded characters”. Through this quote, Cook goes to explain that even animation films always tend to have a recognisable human character such as “Finding Nemo” as it is consistent with this institutional mode of representation. Finally the fourth picture of American Cinema is when “A fictional world governed by spatial and temporal versimitude”. The film has a made up world but real for that play. This is evident in Star Wars when sound is heard even though scientifically there is no sound in space, also when the characters walk in spaceships. However in reality there is no gravity in space.

Roland Barthes was a professor of the 1950s and 1960s. His job was to unravel text and explain how he did so. Barthes describes a text as "a galaxy of signifiers, not a structure of signified; it has no beginning; it is reversible; we gain access to it by several entrances, none of which can be authoritatively declared to be the main one; the codes it mobilizes extend as far as the eye can read, they are indeterminable...the systems of meaning can take over this absolutely plural text, but their number is never closed, based as it is on the infinity of language..." (S/Z - 1974 translation). This basically suggests that you can unravel a text in infinite number of times and get different meaning each time. This is evidence as Holly’s actions can be seen as pure evil or a young girl that needs to be rescued from her dark past. It therefore becomes up to the individual audience to have sympathy on her or see her as the enemy. Moreover these threads Barthes suggests are called narrative codes which are Action/proiarectic code which refers to the actions taking place, enigma code when questions are being raised by the audiences. Symbols & Signs refers mise en scene, Points of Cultural Reference and Simple description/reproduction.

How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation?

Technology was very useful in the process of our trailer making, the poster and the magazine. Technology such as the computer was used in the process of producing online survey for quantitative data from our target audience. I was able to create questions for them on the PC to answer. When I got the results I used excel to create graphs from every question answered that way I was able to compare and understand my target audience fully. Without Microsoft word and Excel I would have to approach the target audience with a face to face interview which could make them feel uncomfortable with some questions about illegal downloading. They may therefore not give me the necessary and honest answer in case they think a favourable answer might impress me as the interviewer.












The internet was useful in looking at other trailers, magazines and poster and analysing them to understand the codes and conventions of these media content. Through deeper and further research analysing all three content I was able to understand the process of making a trailer, magazine and poster to appeal to my target audience. The Gorzone magazine gave me ideas on how to construct my own horror magazine by having limited chorus which are dark reds and black as they have connotations of death and horror, simple fonts and eye catching centred image. Without the internet it would have been difficult to do research to understand our task more. Everything we have produced a computer was involved. All the writing we did was through Microsoft words, the pictures of front cover magazines and posters which I analysed were from the internet. We could not even film our trailer without the video camera provided by our school. The sound recorded and used we needed a studio for that and that was very useful as it rose up the scale of professional editing for our trailer.  At school we used editing software called serif which allowed us to add special effects in out trailer such as cutting unnecessary scenes, change the colour of a shot, speed up a scene and so forth.

Planning was very useful before starting our trailer. We had to use paper story boards with music to understand the form and shape of the trailer. The story boards helped us to know what needed to be done, what scenes needed to be shot and getting the right equipment and right angle when filming. Through the storyboards we were able to get the right clothing on certain days and the right actors. Call Sheets were also useful in the process of keeping everyone in the group informed on the filming schedule. 

 At the early stages of our filming the weather was against us. it was freezing cold, dump and wet and occasionally it will rain. Our actor's were very sympathetic and determined to do the job well done by not complaining but going ahead with the shooting through freezing weather. In this shot i am filming a victim (Harry) running away from the killer Holly (Rose).

 The actors had to repeatedly redo the same scene over and over again to get the right shot when we began to edit. it was time consuming but worth it in the end. this photo is of Holly looking into the camera to kiss the lens as shown in the trailer. the actor Rose was slightly nervous but she enjoyed every minute of it.

 one of the best things about filming the trailer was the make up we had to use. it was interesting seeing how effective a few fake blood can look so conviencing when recorded. Harry was one of the victims in the trailer and a member of our group. the make up looks realistic and eye catching creating a sense of horror. this is a good affect for our trailer as it shows we considered every detail in our filming and wanted the best result. although we are not professional actors and directors we aimed to look the part.

 This is me in the recording studio recording sound effects to go with out trailer. I recorded a few dialogues and sound of kissing which was interesting. It was a bit nervous but enjoyable at the same time as it felt as if this was a real movie we have been working towards for so long.

This is my media teacher who helped us with the voice over as he certainly does have a nice masculine voice for a voice over to build tension and excitment for the audience whilst watching the trailer.

THESE CALL SHEETS WERE ABLE TO INDICATE TO US THE LOCATION OF THE SHOOTING, PROPS, WHO WILL BE ATTENDING ETC. THIS WAY WE WERE ABLE TO STAY FOCUSED AND TUNE WITH THE WORK MAKING SURE ALL THE SHOOTING FOR THAT DAY AND THAT PARTICULAR SCENE WAS DONE. 

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Before creating the magazine I went about to create three silhouettes of the front cover magazine in different colours. This way I was able to select and choose on the appropriate colour scheme. I also got some helpful criticism from my fellow class members who advised me to select the silhouette with the colours black, red and white. These colours has connotation of danger, horror and blood to reflect the kind of mood I am trying to create for the horror film fans.  

Serif Photoshop was extremely useful in creating the magazine and poster. I was able to crop, enhance and level up colour tone of the centred image, air-brush and changing the back group of the centred image. Serif made creating the magazine much easier and quicker. Moreover I was able to add text to emphasize the codes and conventions of a magazine. I did not include other images of featured stories on the front cover as I wanted the centred image to dominate the magazine.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Before producing the trailer, as a group we needed to brain storm the genre of our film and the budget. Once that was placed in order I used a research method called quantitative data where I interviewed 5 females and 5 male teenagers on the subject of their general interest in film and their budget. I sent out copies of questions with optional answers for them to select their best answers. I made sure not to miss lead them with the questions hence why every question was optional with ‘others’ at the bottom. Some of the questions were ‘what are your parent’s occupations?’ this way I was able to estimate their parents income. Moreover questions such as ‘how do you watch films?’ helped me to learn how my target audience consume movies. I was able to find out I had a niche market for horror films, and most of the teenagers were capable to attend the cinema every fort night from the pocket money they receive from their parents, some received EMA from the government and others had part time paid work. With the information I used, I turned them into graphs to help me understand my results and to work according to it. My aim was to give the audience a new experience from watching this horror film. I wanted it to be what they wanted but also with a twist to blow their mind so we decided to break some of the codes and conventions of horror films example by having a female killer rather than a typical sexual deprived male.

After showing our target market our trailer we had some positive feedback. The majority of the people would be glad to see it which boosted our confidence level. They corresponded well with the narrative and the broken codes and conventions of a horror film. They wanted something different and they got something different. Some people appreciated the make-up on Holly as she looked the part making the trailer realistic and interesting. After showing them the trailer I went about showing them my poster and front cover magazine. The feedback were encouraging as they said it was easy to recognise the trailer, poster and magazine belonged together as the combination was obvious by using Holly as the sale point of the media text. I asked them if they would see it and they said they would. I asked for any criticism the most I got was if we had some form of dialogue amongst the characters. The feedbacks were very useful and supportive as people were positive about the film in general. It’s a huge success to know all the hard work has not gone to waist and there are is an audience out there who are interested in watching our film.

Through this experience I have learned that film making is not as easy as it is when I sit down watching it. There is a lot more going on behind closed doors before paying for the tickets to watch it at the cinemas. Dedicated people, film lovers and the whole crew working on the set put all their time and energy to entertain the audience by film making. This experience has helped me to appreciate films a bit more than I did. It is now upsetting to know that people still illegally download movies off the internet when so many people put so much effort into making them for people to pay and watch. Not only is it time consuming making films, it is also costly; paying all the actors,  crew members and the crew members is not an easy job but it becomes worth it when people take the time to go to the cinema to appreciate it or rent a DVD. Making a 2 minute trailer was definitely difficult I personally cannot imagine even making a whole 2 hour film.

Moreover it would be upsetting if the audience did not appreciate it as the work went into pleasing them. However the audience of the film is limited as the rating of our film is a 15. We did not want to raise it to 18 as we might be losing some target audience paying for the film as they could not watch it in the cinemas and instead watching it online. However by having a 15 rating we were limited to the amount of explicit scenes we could add. We had to keep in mind with the hypodermic syringe model. This is a theory that explains the effect in which people have when they watch certain films which involve violence and sex encouraging them to commit crimes. An experiment by Bandura and Walters (1963) was taken out called the ‘Bobo Doll’ where children were left in a room on their own with a doll after just watching adults on the television screen violating it. The children did the same thing to the doll. Some critics dismissed this experiment and results as they believed the children reacted in such manner as they were trying to impress the experimenters. The assumption of the experiment was that children learn through conditioning. Good behaviour is rewarded, and this is reinforced by seeing positive adult role models. Marie Messenger Davies wrote a book called ‘Television is good for kids’ (1989). In her book she explains how television helps with literary skills, children are able to understand through visual narrative, editing conventions, etc; improved memory of events due to visual aids, which also stimulate imagination; involving social games and acquisition of knowledge. Moreover children’s response to the media varies according to social group membership such as family, race, class and gender.

The media in doubt is a very persuasive driving force in our society. From the very beginning of the First World War, propaganda served a right purpose in getting the audience interacting with politics. In our society now persuasion is through the media used by radio, posters, magazines, cinema, billboards and television. There is a great advantage as these are useful tools for my trailer to be noticed and recognised by the audience. Media should not be seen as an all power-full force working directly to isolate the audience. In 1960s there emerged the views that audience are active in the way they interpret media content. Audience interpret the media differently depending on their background, upbringing and social group. James Halloran’s (1970) “we must get away from the habit of thinking in terms of what the media do to people and substitute for it the idea of what people do with the media”. This suggests there should be more concentration on what meanings and interpretations are produced and in what way are the media received. This issue forms the concept of reception theory Katz and Blumer (1974) had a discussion with a group of people to find out why the audience consume the media. They came up with four main needs: diversion- a form of escape from the real world of pressure and life issues; personal identity- the ability to compare their lives and views with people in media; personal relationships- a way of interacting socially with their friends and a purpose of entertainment; surveillance- wanting to know more about the world and what is going on around us such as the news and documentary shows. This theory of reasons why audience consume media content was therefore developed by Richard Dyers (1977) in relation to cinema and television entertainment.

Encoding and decoding are useful in understanding how the encoder (producers) can send out a message to the decoder (audience) and receive a similar view point or completely out of content. Stuart Hall identifies three types of audience decoding. A dominant hegemonic- position is established when the audience takes the full meaning of the content without any question; an negotiated position where there is a mixture of understanding the encoder and taking up their own meaning and interpretation; moreover an oppositional position is when the audience completely ignores the encoders point and they carry their own values and attitudes.

It is interesting to view audience positioning when they encounter media content. In the cinema some films would have a voice over to guide the audience through the story. At times the audience tend to know more than the characters but not so much as there have to be a limit in order to draw the audience in the film and to create dramatic irony. This is similar with magazine and newspaper front covers as they both create a sense of identity with the potential reader. With women magazines the front cover is usually an image of a white woman, usually young, smooth skin, groomed and smiling and seductive. The most important factor in these women magazines is the model’s gaze on the front cover. The gaze holds ‘you’ the reader and viewer. The gaze is not all about sexual attractions between men and women; the gaze suggests a steady, self-contained and a calm look. “She is the woman who can manage her emotions and her life. The woman suggests that inside the magazine there is a personal life, of emotions and relationship. This is a woman’s territory; Janic Winship (1987). This is true to my magazine as it has an image of a pretty white girl/woman. Although her aim is not to look like the woman other women would aspire to, she is still attractive with the gaze and her red lips stick. Her skin is smooth and her posture demonstrates she is a strong woman in herself. However this is something that woman would like to read about; other strong women just like them.

“The unity of a text lies in its destination not its origin” Eco, 1981. This famous quote suggests the writer’s intention of a message may be received differently by the audience. An active reader is someone that would imagine themselves in the position presented. Morley (1978) investigated how different groups of audience decode information from television and magazine. However Hall’s encoding-decoding failed as there were additional social variables such as gender and ethnicity. Various studies has shown that men like to watch real life shows such as the news, documentaries and sports whilst women are driven by the emotional story lines and narrative films and soaps. With ‘A Kiss of Death’ I have combined action and emotion for both men and women to enjoy the film. Holly has a masculine built on body for men to identify with her although she is capable of being full on feminine. The narrative is emotional through the emotional childhood Holly had to endure; this is to draw the women in the film.

In horror films the first person to die is usually a blond sexually active girl and the monster is usually a man with a mask who is sexually deprived and determined to kill the final girl. The representation of the blond girl dying first suggest young girls should be more interested in their education rather than boys and partying or they will pay the consequences. The final girl usually has brown hair, masculine, shy and virginal and she survives suggesting this is the way young girls should behave and they will survive any evil out there. The monster trying to kill the final girl with the knife is an implication of a penis trying to penetrate in her. However he does not succeed and the final girl survives. However in A kiss of Death Holly is seen as the final girl at the beginning, all shy and virginal with dark hair and masculine breaking the codes and conventions. The unexpected happens and the final girl turns into the monster killing everyone that has done her wrong. She is also sexually deprived in order to get her own way. The ideology of breaking the codes and conventions are to show that it is not only men that can be sexually deprived and dangerous to the opposite sex, men too have to consider their virginity as much as the pressure is on the girls and their purity should also matter as girls can too be dangerous in many ways if not giving them sexual transmitted disease or distract them from their education. The text is definitely challenging and judging the roles of gender and age. Notice that Holly is still a school girl suggesting age does not matter in this case and anyone can lose it in their head through the struggles of the life. This also shows that young kids are sexually active which is dangerous for them as it takes them places they don’t want to go and see things they do not want to see as kids. Although Holly has not got a penis in theory her knife is an emphasis of castration. The film/ trailer is basically promoting the dangers of sexual active teenagers and fighting against bullying and how it can lead the victim into anger and depression some even suicidal.

Moreover we live in a hegemonic society where we settle down for issues of our society which we do not agree with. Such as when we watch teenagers in films getting drunk and having sex on television dramas such as Shameless, we tend to agree and accept as it is part of our society although those are not our general morals. As a producer I cannot be factual on how the audience will interpret my media text as every audience is different according to their social norms, cultural values, individual morals, ethnicity and gender. Some may understand the moral behind the story or purity and others may think it is normal for teenagers to be sexually active as ‘everyone does it anyway’. Some understanding may be different due to the understanding linked to the cultural experiences and the background of the audience.

                                                                                                  

THE TRAILER HAS BEEN PUT UP ON YOUTUBE TO GET FEEDBACK FROM YOUTUBE USERS . ALTHOUGH WE DO NOT HAVE ANY COMMENTS YET, WE ALREADY KNOW THAT OVER HUNDRED PEOPLE HAVE WATCHED THE TRAILER AND HAVE LIKED WHAT THEY HAVE SEEN GIVING US GREAT JOY AND SATISFACTION THAT THE AUDIENCE ARE HAPPY WITH THE HORROR TRAILER WE HAVE CREATED FROM SCRATCH. 

IN ORDER TO GET MORE YOUTHS AND OUR TARGET AUDIENCE INTERESTED IN THE FILM AND TO RECEIVE CRITICAL CRITICISM OF OUR ADVANCED MEDIA PRODUCT, WE ENCOURAGED THE MAJORITY OF THE STUDENTS IN OUR SIXTH FORM TO COME ALONG AND WATCH THE TRAILER ON A WIDE SCREEN TELEVISION IN THE COMMON ROOM VIA YOUTUBE. AS THE PICTURE SHOWS WE HAD A POSITIVE OUTBURST OF PEOPLE COMING INTO THE COMMON TO SUPPORT OUR HARD WORK. WE SAT EVERYONE DONE GIVING THEM A PIECE OF PAPER TO ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS ON FROM THE A4 PAPER. THIS WAY WE WERE ABLE TO COLLECT OUR QUALITATIVE DATA.

THE PERSON THAT FILLED IN THESE QUESTIONS SEEM TO OF LIKED THE TRAILER  AS HE ENJOYED WATCHING THE TRAILER GIVING ME A CLOSE IDEA THAT IF IT WAS A FILM HE WOULD HAVE WANTED TO WATCH IT. HE LIKE THE 'EDITING' AND THE 'MUSIC' AS IT LIKED WELL WITH THE ACTIONS. HOWEVER HE WOULD LIKE US OF HAVE ADDED MORE GRAPHIC SCENE. THIS PERSON SOUNDS LIKE S REAL HORROR FANS AS HE SEEMS TO KNOW WHAT HE IS TALKING. AND FROM THIS PAGE I HAVE LEARNED THAT IF WE WERE TO MAKE ANOTHER HORROR FILM TRAILER, MORE ACTION OF DEATH, BLOOD AND GRAPHIC HORROR SHOULD BE ADDED TO DRAW IN THE AUDIENCE ATTENTION THROUGH OUT THE WHOLE TRAILER.

THE CANDIDATE FEELING IN THIS FORM ALSO SUGGESTED MORE HORRIFIC SCENES SUCH AS BLOOD SHOULD HAVE BEEN PORTRAYED IN THE FILM. AS MORE THEN ONE PERSON SEEMS TO BE SUGGESTING THIS VIEW, IT IS WISE TO PUT IT INTO CONSIDERATION FOR FUTURE REFERENCES. IT IS PLEASING TO KNOW THAT THEY TOO UNDERSTOOD THE PLOT AND STORY LINE OF THE FILM WHICH WOULD GIVE THEM A BETTER UNDERSTANDING IF THEY WERE TO WATCH IT IN THE CINEMAS OR ON DVD.

READING THESE ANSWERS TELLS ME THIS PERSON UNDERSTOOD THE STORY LINE AS HE WAS RIGHT IN SAYING IT IS ABOUT A GIRL WHO IS OUT SEEKING FOR 'REVENGE'. THIS PERSON ALSO STRESSES OUT THAT THE TEMPO OF THE MUSIC WAS TOO FAST FOR THE ACTIONS TAKING PLACE IN THE TRAILER. THIS IS EVIDENT WHEN ASKED WHAT COULD BE IMPROVED IN THE TRAILER AND S/HE SAYS "HIGHER TEMPO COULD HAVE BEEN DELAYED". ALTHOUGH I PERSONALLY DO NOT AGREE, IT IS WISE OF ME AS A PRODUCER TO GIVE THE AUDIENCE WHAT THEY WANT AS THEY ARE THE ONE PAYING FOR THE MERCHANDISE, DVD, AND CINEMA TICKETS.

How effective is the combination of your main task and ancillary tasks?

The combination of our main task and ancillary task works well together through the use of layout, design, language, persuasive techniques and mode of address. Technical appliances were need such as camera angle, lens choice, framing, shutter speed, depth of field, lighting and exposure and juxtaposition. Symbols such as objects, settings, body language, clothing and colour where there to construct a meaning for the audience. As an encoder I had to consider some semiotics for the decoder. Semiotics is the study of signs and their role in the construction and organisation. We believed written words such as headlines, captions, speech bubbles and the style of the magazine and poster would help the viewer to recognise the media text. As a group we wanted our trailer, magazine and poster to create a sense of polysemic which allows more than one interpretation of the story line so the viewers could decode the media text the way they want. The media text we wanted to create an anchorage where words are used to direct the meaning of an image for the reader encouraging them to understand a particular meaning.

Through the process of creating the poster, I decided to have it A4 portrait as most posters do. I have kept all the codes and conventions of a poster so the audience are quick to recognise that it is a film poster selling a new film. The centre of the poster is an image of the final girl who is also the main character. She has blood dripping from her mouth suggesting she is the monster in the film. She is also wearing a white school shirt and a black tie suggesting to the viewer she is still a school girl. This image may encourage the viewers to find out more on the subject matter concerning a school girl with blood on her lips suggesting she is involved with the killing of the victims portrayed around her. The six images screen shot from the trailer are there to advertise a few photos to encourage the viewer to take a rather more interest in the film. By doing so I am aware that I have given off a bit of the film as in some horror films it is not so obvious who the monster is until you are half way the movie. However my aim is to let the audience know Holly and understand her so enigma code can be raised to whether they are willing to sympathise with Holly knowing she is a killer because of her dark past or would the audience still hold something against her for being a killer anyway. At the bottom of the poster the end card is placed with the film company and the scan code for people to scan the code via their phone which will automatically access them to the film website. Not only did I not break the codes and conventions of the poster I also kept the codes and conventions of a horror film magazine. I kept the three colour schemes which were red black and grey to emphasize the horror of the film. The front cover is of Holly with blood dripping from her mouth. The layout of the magazine is sophisticated to suggest the seriousness of the film. The typography is simple with just two different fonts used for the writing. If this was a real film, Holly would be a well-known actress to a few horror films. Her face is therefore the main selling point.

The layout of the magazine is influenced and inspired by Gorezone which also has the main character at the front of the cover with blood dripping from her and a horrendous facial expression. The pictures which I have used for the poster and magazine are the same images which would be seen in the trailer giving the viewer more thrills to watch the trailer and the film in the cinema.
The types faces and fonts I have used are to encourage the viewers to read more if it is a magazine or to watch the trailer if it is a poster. In the trailer the captions are in red blocks with a horror film about it on
a black background.

This typography builds a horrific atmosphere to the film. The title of the magazine is called Gorezone taken from an actual horror magazine. This process of taking a used name is called ‘bricolage’ which is ‘borrowing’ signs and features from different text. The colours of some of the font is red as red has the connotations of anger, danger and horror. The background is grey almost like being in the middle of black and white or light and dark suggesting there is a mixture of the killer in this film; not everything is the way it seems.

The size and quality of the picture fits well with the magazine as a whole including its features. The centre image was edited to get the right light and shading to create a horrific atmosphere through the magazines and posters. Make-up needed to be applied such as black eyeliner and red lipstick illustrating mise en scene of sexuality towards Holly. Her aim was to look attractive and dangerous just like the femme fatale in film noir. The quality is of a high standard as the images were taken off a digital camera. On the poster there are smaller images of scenes from the trailer and the quality there is poor as I sprint screen the images from the trailer. The low quality is not as obvious as they are small and not the main focus of the poster. There are there to encourage the viewers to take a more positive approach to the film. The images have been cropped and edited. It is obvious to recognise on the magazine that editing has been taken place on the image of Holly as she has red eyes, her skin is clear and flawless and the edges around her hair are a bit rough as I removed the background. As I did not have the best quality software to edit the images, the magazine did not look so professional through the centred image and the rough outlines. However placing all the codes and conventions in the right placed made the magazine more recognisable. The cropping of the images on the poster and magazine are not recognisable. The photographs relate to the rest of the stories and front page as they all have an image of Holly in the same clothing and a cold and deadly facial expression. On the poster some of the images are taken from the trailer, this is also apparent as the viewer can see a dead person, someone getting strangled and someone running away from Holly. These particular images have been selected as they are there to encourage people to know more about the film if the images inspire them to.

The size of the headline of the magazine is the largest font size compared with the rest of the page. The reason being the viewer will recognise and learn what the brand name of the magazine promoting the film. ‘A Kiss of Death’ is in the same font and colour in the end card of the trailer and the poster creating a combination between them. The key words in the trailer, magazine and the poster is the title itself ‘A Kiss of Death’. The font of the title is always read. The same text effect used on the title is found in the trailer and the poster to build consistency.  The headline ‘A kiss of Death’ in the magazine has Holly as a background with red lipstick and blood dripping down her lips. This suggests the film will portray a sense of sexuality and murder. There are no words omitted from the page although I did consider placing a gripping caption on the poster. I did not go along with the plan as the poster layout did not permit me time to do so. From the poster, the headline is gripping with a horrific theme to it giving the reader the message that the film itself is horrendous. The captions in the trailer such as “they happened” gives an impression that something happened that should not have happened emphasizing to the reader a disequilibrium has occurred.
The mode of address helps to establish the relation between the media production and audience. When our trailer is released there will be a first person voice over to guide the audience through the story. Some movies the audience may know more than the characters however in this film some of the information will be held back and limited for the audience to create dramatic tension. The impersonal mode of address would sometimes be broken when the character looks into the camera and speaks to the audience and this is found in comedy. However in this horror film there will be no dialogue of Holly addressing to the audience. However the only times she looks into the camera is to give the impression that she is alone in this world and even the audience are part of her enemies.

It is important that the trailer, poster and the front cover magazine works well in conjunction of each other. I have done this through the colours and images combining the main product being the trailer and the ancillary task which is the poster and front cover magazine. After this part of the work is done, as a group we had to think of a distribution plan with the little budget we have. We decided to use synergy to help our film to reach the viewer’s social media as the vast majority of our target audience are most likely to appear on. Millions of people access YouTube on a daily basis and by placing my trailer there it will permit anyone to access it. Comments will be left and the amount of views will be shown which will encourage more people to see the trailer and be in the process of wanting to watch the film if the comments and views encourages them to. Moreover I can use social network such as twitter, Myspace, Bebo, Facebook and Hi5 to my best advantages to post the trailer on people’s pages to watch and leave their reviews. This will also encourage their friends and word of mouth will go round about the trailer. On Facebook I could even create a page on the film where questions about the film will be answered and upcoming premiers and festivals on the film would be posted up and distributed to everyone linked to the page. Moreover I could adapt the poster to place it as an online banner for people on the internet. This will give them the opportunity to access the film website and find out more on the film as well as watching the trailer.
The poster can also be distributed in public and specific areas because of the low budget. A successful place for people to notice the film would be at a horror film festival placing the poster around the area knowing my target audience would be around to see it. Located placed such as Camden where horror and gothic mainstream will attract a lot of horror fans to watch the film. On the poster there will be a bar code which will allow the viewers to scan the code on their phone which will place them to the actual film website where they can find out anything they are looking for concerning the film. Furthermore, at specific cinemas such as ones which are specific with horror films would be able to show our trailer to the audience before the actual film begins.