Evaluation Questions

1. In what ways does your media project use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media texts?

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

3. What have you learned from your audience and feedback?

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

Practical: Creating a production company

To create my own production company I decided to use candles which I would then blow out. To set this up I wanted it to be all black so that only the candles could be seen in the shot. Therefore, I covered a tissue box in a black cloth and placed this behind the candles which I had put on some black paper.

In order to get the right angle for the shot I placed a book down which I would then put my camera on top of. I wanted the candles to be at the bottom of the frame so that I could place our production company, Kab Media Productions, at the top of the frame. I wasn't sure if I wanted to add the candles being lit up and blown out so I filmed it altogether and decided that I only wanted to show them being blown out.

To edit the video I used Windows Movie Maker. As my hand was in some of the shots in order for me to light the candles I had to cut them out. Also the shot of the candles lasted too long so I had to shorten it down.

In addition to this I made the lighting darker as I wanted the background to be as dark as possible. At the end of the video one of the candles relights itself so I also had to edit this to make it look like all the candles went out the first time I blew them out. I didn't add any sound as our production company would be placed a few seconds into our trailer instead of the very beginning so we wanted the music from the trailer to be layered over the top of the production company therefore no sound was needed.

I put the production company name at the top of the shot where there was some black space. The text is in white so that it can be seen against the black background and I also added effects so that it would fade in and fade out as the candles went out.

The final video looked like this:

Evaluation

• The production company can be seen clearly
• It doesn't last too long
• More effects could be added to the title for example one letter could appear at a time

Poster- Creating the Title

Our poster required the title of the film we were making a teaser trailer for. To create the title I used paint. As our trailer and website show the YouTube logo distorting within the title I wanted to follow this theme with the poster. After looking at horror posters they normally use sans serif so I decided to use this as well. The YouTube logo was then placed instead of the 'E' and I left the colour of the logo red as red is a common feature on horror posters.

I selected the middle of the logo and moved it slightly to the right to give it a distorted effect.

I then used the white pencil tool to add a few white patches to make it seem more distorted. 

The final title looked like this:

                                                                         

The black text will need to be white in order to make it visible on the background of the poster so the colour will be inverted.

This is what the title looked like on the final poster:

Draft Movie Poster

For our slasher trailer we had to create a poster. In order to get inspiration I looked at previous film posters that have been created for slasher horror films.

Poster Draft

Poster Image

One of the most common features I found was that the main weapon involved in the film was put onto the poster. This means that the genre of the film is clear and can be determined straight away showing that the target audience is fans of slasher horror. It also shows the audience that the film involves gore which many fans of slasher horror films like to see.

       

As our main weapon is a knife I thought that this would be an important feature to add to our poster to ensure that we attract the correct target audience. Some of the weapons have blood dripping from them whilst others are clean. In order to add an emphasis on gore I thought that it would be better to add some blood onto the poster so therefore the blood can be seen dripping off the knife onto the title.

Many of the posters also have the killer on them but they are normally wearing masks. We do not want the identity of our killer to be revealed and as he does not wear a mask in our trailer I thought it would be better to put an image of the victim on the front. The image is of the victim being gagged and held at knife point to again convey the genre of slasher horror. It also engages the audience as they wonder what has happened to this person and why they are there.

Layout

I decided to place the image of the victim towards the middle top of the poster. The poster also fits the rule of thirds as the eyes and knife are in line with where the audience are drawn to look.

The billings block along with the title will be placed at the bottom of the poster which is seen on most film posters. Just beneath the poster the tagline will be written.  The names of the main actors will be placed at the top of the poster on either side of the victim's head. Placing the writing at either ends of the poster means that the writing is not clumped together and gives the main focus on the image in the middle of the poster.



Evaluation

I think that this poster conveys the genre well and clearly conveys that our target audience is fans of slasher horror and gore. It also conforms to many aspects of other slasher horror posters such as having an image of the main weapon. The aspect of having the victim on the front subverts the fact that most posters have an image of the killer on the front which would cause a wider interest as this is unusual.

Practical- Changes to website

Our website design had a problem with the framing as when you scrolled down some aspects such as the video and title also moved therefore merging things together. Another problem we encountered was when the website was viewed on a computer some of the features could not be seen due to the banner at the bottom of the page and our sizing was according to our website being displayed on a mac.

As our website already had the correct layout we just needed to sort out this problem by scaling down our whole website. So instead of creating a background that included the all of the YouTube features such as the search bar at the top and different boxes for each of the features we would have to create all the images separately and place them onto the website seperately some examples are shown below.

I  changed the background so that it was white. From there I added in the images that we originally had on the background as shown above. All the other images and buttons were already on the website and just needed to be made smaller. After receiving feedback we also placed our production company on the search bar at the top of the page and moved the social media links above the advertisement. 

I then added in the comments below the title as another image. I changed the website to fit the screen of my computer so the images weren't as large they were on a mac this also meant that you wouldn't need to scroll down so the images wouldn't merge together. 

Next I rearranged all of the spacing to ensure that the video could fit in and didn't look to wide or long when I placed it onto the website. I se the video to play automatically when the website was opened.

As the YouTube website has a grey background and there are a few white boxes that are behind the features on the YouTube website. I also tried to recreate this. Firstly, I set the background to one we had made.

However, as the features on the website were smaller they didn't fit in the boxes so I used them as a guideline and put my own boxes in to create the layout.

I had to find the correct colour to make sure the boxes blended in with the background.

I then had to create the white boxes to fit around the comments, title, buttons and number of views.

With a few last tweaks such as making the YouTube search bar stretch all the way across the screen by making more white boxes and also making sure the whole background was grey the website was complete. Here is what it looks like:

Creating an Advertisement- Website

In order to create an advertisement I needed to choose my background image. As we had already decided that we wanted to advertise a horror experience I found an image of some woods and a clown which I would then merge together on photoshop.

I used the woods as the main background the layered the image of the clown on top. Then I changed the opacity of the clown so that the woods could be seen behind and the clown looked as if though it was lurking in them.

As found in my inspiration I then needed to put what the advertisement was for so I wrote 'Halloween Horror Nights'. Similar to all of the other advertisements for horror experiences I decided to base my ad on a series/film so we decided on the name "Smiler" as the clown can be seen with a sinister smile.

Using paint I downloaded a font that I thought would be suitable for the poster I then changed the colour to red which is commonly found on horror posters.

Lastly, I put a few logos, the name of our production company and 'Terms and Conditions apply. Subject to Availability" at the bottom to make sure it was clear that this is an adverisement.

 The final advertisement looked like this:

It was placed at the top right corner of the website to make it look as similar as possible to the YouTube website.

Advertisement Inspiration- Website

Our website has a design based on YouTube so I am creating an advertisement that can normally be seen in the top right corner of the YouTube website as shown below.

The advertisement should follow the genre of our trailer which is slasher horror. So we decided that it should be for a horror experience. To look for inspiration I found some horror experiences at Universal and looked at the posters, The posters all involve people as on the experiences people are often dressed up to scare the visitors. The images themselves show gore or masked killers which make the genre and target audience clear. Another common feature of the posters was that the themes were based around horror films/series such as The Purge and Walking Dead and the text was placed at the bottom and the top of the poster so that the image can be seen clearly.

                  

The colours involved are dark and gloomy and the text is in Serif whereas the film/series names are in Sans Serif. In order to see the text against the dark backgrounds the colour white or red is often used. 

At the bottom of the poster small text is used with the name of the company and stating that it is all rights reserved along with this there are a few logos such as the production company of the film/series and the Universal logo.

YouTube ads are often selling a product and entice the audience to click on them to view the website. Therefore, on my ad I will add 'tickets are available now' to make it similar to normal advertisements where viewers have to click the ad in order to buy the tickets and see other specific details such as the exact dates of the event and where it is taking place. This then means that the ad does not need to be overloaded with information and a few key points can be shown.

Evaluation

I think that the main image needs to link to the slasher horror genre in order to convey the genre clearly and show that this is for a specific audience (fans of horror). The poster should be the same genre as our trailer which is slasher horror.

Minimal writing should be used therefore only the key points such as what the horror experience is based on (film/series) and what the actual event is, 'horror nights'. The month of the experience along with 'tickets are available now' would also be good to add to make it clear that this is an advertisement and not just a scary image. Finally, the bottom of the advertisement should have a few logos and some small writing such as 'terms and conditions apply' to add to the fact that this is an advertisement.

Captured Glitch Effect

For our website we decided that we wanted our YouTube sign to glitch within the title. For inspiration I looked at the Cabin in The Woods website. The full website glitches and the home button also has it's own separate glitch. 

Firstly, I went onto Photoshop where I created the Captured title. We decided to replace the ‘E’ with the YouTube sign, which would eventually glitch. The font I used is Serif and the text is in black to conform to the common conventions of horror titles.

The next step as to put the title into After Effects in order to create a gif.



The glitch would need to have a distorted effect. The YouTube video told me how to distort the whole image so I had to find a way of only distorting the YouTube logo. I did this by making the adjustment layer smaller just to fit over the logo as seen below.



The glitch wouldn’t be happening the whole time. On the Cabin in The Woods the glitch happens around every few seconds but there is an irregular pattern. So I cut the length of the glitch down and duplicated it. Then I was able to stagger the glitch out so it happened irregularly the timeline below shows this.

The Cabin in The Woods website didn’t just show distortion. There was also noise layered on top of the distortion. Therefore, I tried to recreate this.



However, due to the logo being curved around the edges it was hard to make this effect. So I tried to make it so only part of the logo had noise over it when it glitches but the shape still didn’t fit the logo.

I tried adding different types of noise to see if it looked any better. But the shape was difficult to work with and the noise didn’t fit correctly.



I decided that the distorted effect looked the best so I rendered the clip. Lastly I would need to change it into a gif. To do this I had to save this idea as several photos and transfer these to Photoshop where I made it into a gif.

    

The final step was to place the gif onto our website design. I put the gif on loop so that it would keep replaying.

                           

 This was the final gif: