Evaluation

I'd like to think my media products subvert from the normal conventions of a horror movie, and as a big fan of the genre, I wanted to warp it a little bit and see what could come from juxtaposing conventional horror with a twist of my own. I intended my products to not only fill a gap in the market, but tear into a new one, and though difficult to create in such a short, amateur trailer, my audience response proved promising. I have, however, retained the generic conventions of a horror film and used them in the following ways...

SOUND: There is no sound in my trailer except for the music, which was really important to me. Obviously, being a teaser trailer it's meant to tease, and I felt having any form of dialogue would somehow revert away from the shock of the imagery. Tied together with the creepy carnival music I found, the silence of those involved in my trailer is paramount to the tension and the sense of unknown. The soundtrack very much builds the tension effectively, simply because it leads up and up with this weird clown setting, with cat-calls and jeering stall-vendors, and so when it really kicks in it has an awesome effect on the credits. I've turned it on it's head using this music, purely because the only huge sound is cut off at the very end, so it's quite quiet and sombre.

MISE EN SCENE: Much of my trailer is in the dark, or at night, which since the dawn of time has been an ominous time of day, therefore goes perfectly with a horror film. I purposefully altered the lighting on the bits I shot during the day, to give it a grittier, more angst-inspiring feel, and this is maybe the one thing I kept conventional from the genre. Most of the hell and the bad stuff happens at night, or in a dark room, because this gives the feeling of blindness and loneliness and fear. The storyline throughout is very dark, and the mise-en-scene follows this pattern with the fast, jittery shots and the slow, creepy music.

EDITING: The editing is very much influenced by my experience watching horror films. This section of my coursework is probably the one where I stuck to the generic conventions like glue; you just can't escape the fact that fast, ghosting, jittery shots and darkness make a horror film what it is. Transitions are rapid and so fast you barely know what's happening, and in my editing I took more from films themselves than trailers - I definitley looked more at how films look as a whole than to how trailers look, because I wanted my trailer to sort of be like a little film on its own. There is now flow to my trailer, which I really like: if you saw it come on TV, or in a cinema, you'd be sitting there going "what the hell?", and try and work out what exactly you're watching.

CINEMATOGRAPHY: I used barely any hand-held shots, opting for the steadiness of a tripod instead because though my trailer is meant to be jittery and weird, I found it easier to get the shots I needed and edit them to look that way, instead of trying to achieve it through just raw footage. However, there are a few hand-held shots thrown in, and they break up the steadiness nicely; I especially like the shot of the car driving towards the camera at night, and the way the headlights sort of explode through the screen, and that was one of the few hand-held shots I insisted on. There is no panic aimed at the audience, only wonder and questions, and so I didn't feel the need to create tension and fear through fast, 'Cloverfield'-esque shots.

NARRATIVE: The narrative structure of my trailer alone goes against Todorov's theory. There is no equilibrium in it, since with Lexus being there there is already a disequilibirum, and I didn't plan on following Todorov's narrative structure anyway. It seems a bit too cookie-cutter, like he's only plucked the structure from a few certain well-chosen movies. There are many, many films that go against the grain, and I fully intended mine to be one of them.

However, my characters do fit Propp's theory. We have Lexus not only as the villain, but almost as the protagonist as well. She's the one with her name on the credits, it's named after her, but she's in no way the main character. I took the idea of this from the recent horror film Jennifer's Body, where it's named after Jennifer, the hype was about Megan Fox, who played her, but Jennifer is by no means the narrator or the main protagonist, yet she holds the film as her own, much like how I wanted Lexus to feel like.

My poster, I think, does sort of fit the normal conventions of a horror movie poster, despite the fact it's in landscape. I've explained why I decided to go with landscape, because when I was taking raw photos I always envisioned the poster in a cinema, not in like, a doorway or whatever. But the way it's edited and the image itself definitley scream "this is a horror movie!". Trying to juxtapose teen drama and horror together in one image actually proved rather easy; the shot is of what one would assume would be Lexus, a female, piercings, smoking, and it's quite sexual... All hints at teenage debauchery, and then with the editing it is transformed into a horror poster. Dark, matted colouring, with the skin on the face mottled and pale.

My magazine of course follows conventions because I used an existing magazine. Though Electric Sheep is a 'self-confessed deviant view of cinema', it is still a cinema magazine nonetheless, and so by virtue must follow at least one convention. I kept the mast-head and the panels exactly as they are, and simply placed my image behind them. The editing on that image is very simple, but effective. It was a few years ago, when I still had red hair, and so I purposefully chose the image because I could use the red to hint at the bloodshed and chaos of a horror film; I purposefully edited it to make my skin and the wall behind me seem pale in comparison to the red.

AUDIENCE RESEARCH AND RESPONSE

When doing my audience research and response, I kept alot of the conventions in mind, and wondered whether my target audience (in short, my classmates), would understand where my media products were coming from. I knew they'd view the poster and magazine as typical "me", but I hoped the trailer would shock them even further.

I asked ten people in my college to fill out a questionarre I'd written and answer truthfully, only after seeing the three media together. The questions were as follows;

1.

2.

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8.

9.

FILMED RESPONSE

I took three of my classmates, all with different tastes and styles, and sat them down to watch my trailer, in conjunction with my poster and magazine, and answer my questions (the ones in my questionarre) about their response. The three people are Jack Hoskins, Becca Boswell, and Jana Van Rensburg, all very different, and so all with different ideologies and responses towards my media products.

FIRST VIDEO - viewing 'Lexus' film trailer.

VIDEO COMING.

SECOND VIDEO - question and answer.

VIDEO COMING.

Through this research I have discovered how people view my trailer. Most interpret it as a weird, typically 'me' kind of trailer, what with the scary music and dark imagery, but they insisted this was exactly what they wanted to see. Everyone who watched my trailer agreed that they would happily pay money to see the film it promotes, and I feel I have made my trailer a success since that's precisely the purpose of a film trailer - to draw viewers in and make an audience for when the film is released. None had any idea whatsoever of the storyline, which I feel is another success; I never intended people to realise what they were watching - I briefly explained it to everyone so they'd understand, but not before I heard the amount of questions they had as soon as the traile finished. My Media teacher actually asked me questions, which I was happy with - the whole point is to ask questions.

Final trailer

This is my finished trailer for my film 'Lexus'. It's extremely short, only forty seconds long in all, and I always intended it to be a teaser trailer. There's no story line, or plot give away, it's always left up to the viewer to decide what's going on. My media teacher actually asked questions like "who's that girl?" and "what's that part for?" and that's exactly how I meant it to be. I wanted to keep people guessing. I also really like how well the music fits the whole feel of it. It's just the intro to one of my favourite songs, and the creepy carnival music helped to come up with the taglines "life is a circus" etc. The song is 'Dark Carnival Of The Immaculate' by I Am Ghost, and I heartily thank them all the way to California for letting me use their music! It makes my trailer what it is.

Music Permission.

I went through alot of bands on Myspace before I came up with a song I liked. Obviously, some of them were completely out of reach, too big or famous to contact, but I eventually found an American band called 'I Am Ghost' who basically told me I could use any song of theirs I wanted, so long as I sent the finished product to them so they could check it out. I print-screened their permission from Myspace.

The song is 'Dark Carnival Of The Immaculate'. I'm only using the intro, as it's not actually part of a song, per se, it's more like creepy, circus, carnival themed music, with haunting violins and stall vendors sneering and things. It fits really well with my trailer, and I'm so so glad the band let me use their song...!

Retrospective(!) magazine and poster research

Poster Research...

The first thing I considered doing was to look at films I'd seen and loved. By doing that, I can draw more answers from the poster if I already have a set opinion on what the film is, and does, and how much I liked or disliked it.

The first poster I chose to look at is 'Trainspotting', and I took alot of influence from it for my poster. It was one of my favourite landscape posters which then made me love the concept for my own even more. I also liked the idea of the orange block running down the bottom with all the important stuff in it, which didn't take away from the original pictures. With a poster, I think it should be the image that catches your eye, and that's exactly the effect the Trainspotting poster had, which is why I borrowed the idea for myself. I don't think posters should be about the director or even focus on the actors as much, it should be a snapshot of what the movie is about. The Trainspotting posters do exactly that, give you an idea of what the film entails, and that's the effect I wanted for myself. I liked the stark orange in comparison to the black and white, and in my poster I tried to get the face really pale and pasty, in comparison do the deep maroon colour of the block in mine. It's obviously not as sharp as the Trainspotting one, but I think it has a similar effect.

POSTER AND MAGAZINE

This is the poster for my film 'Lexus'. Before even researching posters I started to take pilot pictures and sort of mess around with a few ideas I had. I eventually opted for the close up of lips and smoke, since it mimicks my trailer and what would be my film perfectly, especially since the opening shot of my trailer is a girl smoking. I took a few pictures of myself smoking, a few with the cigarette actually in my mouth and a few with just the smoke. I liked the one I ended up using, because of the lip piercing and the thick, white smoke; it gets the idea across quite clearly. It clearly shows the audience that this is a teen film, darker than the rest, with predominant, soul-destroying problems heavily hinted at by the smoke.

Before I started editing, I began to look at other posters. I didn't realise at the time, but the raw photograph I'd taken was landscape, and so I automatically tried to twist it to portrait, but it didn't really fit the image I was going for. I started to research landscape posters, and found that most large posters used in cinema foyers were landscape, and classic films like Trainspotting used landscape over portrait. It always looked better in landscape anyway, at least to my eye!

I then started editing my picture. I made the skin look half-dead, very pale and almost blotchy; like the person's been on a heavy night out. I made the lip-ring alot more present, by highlighting the shine on it, and then made the lips darker in contrast to the metal. Then I started to edit the smoke, using Photoshop's burn tool, which made it look alot more sinister and opaque. I burnt the edges alot more, too, so they blended in with the black background.

I then wondered where to put all the wordy detail. I looked back at the Trainspotting posters and found they had used a rather simple idea of putting a block at the bottom with all the film details in, which I really liked. I started with a maroon-y colour rectangle, and then attacked it all with the burn tool, again. I decided to have the title, 'Lexus' very big and bold, so it's the first thing you see apart from the smoke, and opted to put it in a light pastel pink, in contrast with all the doom and gloom of the picture. I used the burn tool again to blotch it up a bit, and then added the tagline; "it starts in whispers". So, then all I had to do was put in the names at the left. I looked at other posters, just off the bat, of films I've seen and liked, like 'Jennifer's Body', and took things like 'director of photography' and 'costume designer', and used names of my friends and family.

Et voilá...

This is my magazine cover for 'Lexus'. I knew from the start I'd opt for 'Electric Sheep', simply because it's a self-confessed 'deviant' view of cinema, which is the idea I applied to my trailer before I even found what magazine I wanted; it seemed it was perfectly tailored to my film, which is always a plus. I kept the mast head exactly as it is, changing the date to Spring '10, for this year, and then put my picture in replacement of another I'd got from the internet. I decided to use this photograph of me, even though it's very old and not really what I look like now, but it definitely fits because of the stance and the dress-code and particularly the faraway look of worry, or concern, on my face. I edited the picture a little, upping the contrast and making the red hair stand out from the black t-shirt to represent the bloodiness of the storyline, the hate and the betrayal.

I then worked out what I was going to put in the info box on the left. On some of the original posts it has a mini-title and then a small blurb of sorts describing the feel of the film. My favourite 'Electric Sheep' cover I'd found on the internet had "tainted love" as the title, and I decided to keep it as mine, since any love in my film is most definitley tainted at some point or another, (and, it's an awesome song...). I then listed out some of the attributes of my trailer and film, like "fake friends" - basically telling us exactly what and who 'Lexus' is, without really giving any plot away. I then changed the features at the bottom to things I'd made up, like "Cannes super shocker" and "star of British heist flick talks" etc. Then it was just a case of taking the bottom level of the magazine and applying it to mine.

Story Line - LEXUS

The storyline for my trailer is very simple, because for one, I don't have alot of time since I've been working on my own to come up with very elaborate trailer plots like Mean Girls, but this is a blessing in disguise since I didn't want that clinical 'big production' feel to my trailer anyway.

Lexus

My actual film focuses on a girl - the main character, Nancy - and how she lives her life. It shows her living, at first carelessly and only for a good time, but then she meets a girl whilst out one night, and things start to change. She starts to harbour an unhealthy obsession with this new girl, called Lexus, and with this infatuation comes her demise; she is sucked into the darker side of adolescence and starts to dabble in things that will eventually bring her down, like drink and drugs, sex and many other trials it seems most teenagers now go through. Lexus knows how much Nancy looks up to her, and tests the waters with her new sidekick by treating her in a way most girls wouldn't stand for (she takes her boyfriend from her, bullies her into taking drugs and getting loaded etc), but Nancy only sees this as a test of friendship, something unavoidable, and so dives in headfirst. Lexus is manipulative and cruel, but in such a way that we start to find her lovable and fun, just as Nancy. It's only until Nancy starts to drive ahead of her in the 'cool' stakes, where Nancy takes Lexus' crown as the girl everyone wants, that things start to get serious. The girls are thrown into a duel against eachother, but it isn't like the petty fighting in Angus... and Mean Girls. This is where real friendship is put to the test, where the material things are weapons, and where the boy isn't the main goal - though certainly important.

What Nancy doesn't realise is that all of these things she's doing to herself are bringing her down notch by notch, and when she overdoses at a party, it's up to Lexus, who finds her slumped in a toilet, to decided whether Nancy's life is worth being queen bee.

My trailer isn't going to be passive, and it isn't going to give the entire plot line away, like in most teen movies. It will force the viewers into thinking, putting themselves in the position of the protagonists and deciding what path they would take. It will be provocative and cold, and it's this that I want to use to set it aside from other teen drama based films. Whilst most are 'cookie-cutter' and clean and perfect, Lexus will be a film that breaks rules and shows the darker side of life in all its painful glory.


Trailer story line

My trailer will still be as provocative and packed with social realism, like my movie would as a whole, but as storylines go, it doesn't have a set one. I see my trailer more as a sneak preview, not a mini of the film, and so my idea is to show clips of what would, or might, be in the actual movie, but not in any coherent order. Just showing integral parts to Lexus and Nancy's tumultuous relationship, and this will give the trailer an icy demeanour that mimicks that of the film. We get a window into their lives through the trailer, but by no means a story.

I will have it starting with a close-up on Nancy's lips, with smudged lipstick, quietly and slowly smoking a cigarette in the dark, the only light coming from the embers. She will then say the tagline "you can't always blame it on bad luck" through the smoke, and it will then cut to show a party scene, where Nancy first meets Lexus. From then on the editing will be cut fast and quick, with scenes like Nancy taking her first drug, downing a bottle of alcohol with Lexus egging her on, and walking in on Lexus and Nancy's boyfriend. I want these partying scenes to be really quick, so you can't really tell what's going on, much like you would feel at a party. After the party, it will then cut to show Nancy sobbing on her own, slumped in a corner with a cigarette, screaming at nothing in particular. Through this scene I will have words coming up on the screen showing statistics of teenagers who die through peer pressure, drug taking and depression. It will then cut to the final scene, with Lexus and Nancy squaring silently up to eachother, Lexus seeming completely at ease whereas Nancy looks as if she's been on a hard night out, with smudged make up and wild hair, tear streaks on her cheeks etc. As they dive for eachother, like a duel, it cuts to a plain black screen, with smoke swirling the background (if I can work out how to do that!) with the film's title, Lexus, in grey, maybe silver, lettering.

Trailer analysis

Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging

The trailer for Angus, Thongs And Perfect Snogging, from a storyline point of view, is very 'child-trying-to-be-adult', it has a sense of desperation to grow up and be a woman, which mirrors exactly how Georgia herself feels. The actual layout of the trailer, what with one problem after the other, is maybe a bit too 'un-real', it doesn't follow how life actually goes. There's never a break to Georgia's problems, and it does seem as if her life was purposefully made to make a movie and to incorporate specific scenes before even focusing upon the character herself. Regarding this, I don't think I'll be taking alot from the trailer as it seems a bit too 'cookie-cutter' perfect, following Todorov's narrative theory to the point where it's spelling it out for you and not allowing you to think. It seems a very passive film, and I want my movie to make people think and show the darker side of being a teenager, whereas in Angus... the biggest problem is 'the girlfriend', when there's so many more problems in life.

On the other hand, there are aspects to it that I like as a viewer, for instance, the notebook and polaroid pictures shooting up between each scene, and the constant voice over telling us exactly what's happening, and though this technique seems a bit too passive for my liking, I can see why other viewers will enjoy it, especially since the audience seems to be aimed at the younger generation of teenagers rather than the older ones, who introduce alot more problems into their life rather than those do at Georgia's age.

Aesthetically, the trailer as a whole is very pleasing to the eye. It's bright and colourful and constantly some form of happy, and though this is what draws in the young teens, it's not active in the slightest, it is merely there to interest people, and because it gives a hell of a lot away in the scenes and the voice over to boot, there's nothing there for the viewer to question. It is immediately clear that Georgia is the typical teenage schoolgirl, has her group of best friends, falls for the forbidden boy, Robbie, who, of course, already has the bitchy girlfriend, and sets out to obtain him through any means at her disposal, generally backfiring with hilarious consequences. Nice, simple narrative; girl meets boy, girl falls for boy, girl just has to have him.

The trailer for Angus... is much like the film, and it is shown as a mini movie in itself, with a coherent story line and nothing left to the imagination of exactly what this film contains. It is quite long, and almost exactly two minutes in length which agains adds to the sense it is a mini movie. It begins with a panoramic shot of the street in which Georgia lives, and then cuts to scenes with her laughing with her friends - mimicking Todorov's 'equilibrium' narrative; this is the beginning, everything's rosey, there is an equilibrium in her life - despite the angst she has towards her parents. This is simply part of life for her, though. She expects to have her parents in her way, being embarrassing and 'old', however, and so it still belongs to Todorov's equilibrium. There are short scenes with Georgia and the mishaps she gets herself into, with notepad flashes coming up with sentences like "how to flaunt it", and then showing her how she really doesn't know how to 'flaunt it', and this adds to the mise en scene of the ideal 'teenage girl's life'. It's very typical. Then, of course, 'the boy' comes into play. She spots a gorgeous new pair of brothers, and this is where the disequilibrium comes from. This part of the trailer features short clips of Georgia basically stalking this guy, Robbie, and therefore worrying even more so about her appearence, and how she looks for him, with a brilliant shot of her inspecting her nose in the back a spoon, which automatically makes your nose look huge anyway. During a scene with a good friend, Dave The Laugh, Georgia enquires what exactly a boy looks for in a girls. When Dave says, with barely a heartbeat for him to think about it, their 'nunga nungas', it snaps to shots of Lindsey, Robbie's girlfriend, with her perfect boobs and the dribbling boys that follow her around with saucer sized eyes. This is exactly where the disequilibrium comes into play, and Lindsey and Georgia battle it out, without Robbie's knowledge. Lindsey knocks Georgia to the ground in a hockey match, enforcing the fact she's Robbie's girlfriend and Georgia will never have because she's more powerful, in the sense she's older, prettier, and has bigger boobs. Another disequilibrium rears its head when Georgia spots Robbie at the local swimming pool; her legs are bright orange from the mishap of applying fake tan. Robbie laughs it off, and it then cuts to the scene of him and his band playing a local gig, with the two sharing a lingering look. The viewer automatically realises, of course girl will get the boy, but Georgia, ever determined to impress Robbie, demands to her parents her birthday party has to be at a hip and happening club, to mimick the one The Stiff Dylans - Robbie's band - played at, and also to out-do Lindsey's birthday. While she's demanding this, her Dad announces he's been offered a job in New Zealand, and Georgia screams "what!?", the scene then morphing into a tumoultuous flicker of snappy, fast clips of the film, mirroring her troubles; how's her Dad going to pay for her awesome birthday now!? The disequilibrium is then completely reinforced by a handful of clips showing Georgia in a darker, more depressing light instead of the technicolour brightness of before; it shows her mumbling to her friends, curled up on her bed in the dark and crying etc. The editing in this proves the disequilibrium of the trailer, as well as the film. And then, all of a sudden, the disequilibrium is fixed, and a new, shinier, better, equilibrium is created, with clips of her amazing party, Robbie leaning in for a kiss, Robbie and Georgia messing around and having a laugh, with beautiful men, wonderful friends etc. The longest clip in this is Robbie admitting to Georgia that he likes her, despite her madness, and thus creating a film, and trailer, that fits Todorov's narrative theory perfectly. The end clip is of Robbie and Georgia shouting from a boat on the beach "thank you, and good night!", again hinting to the viewer that this film is exactly what it says on the tin.

Mean Girls

The trailer for Mean Girls is like a film in its own right. It shows sections of the actual picture, conjoined into a set storyline for the trailer, and this technique definitley works very well on the passive viewers, since, like Angus... it tells audiences exactly what to expect. Unlike Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging though, it doesn't give too much away in the trailer, and it is alot more grown up, obviously because the characters are older, but the way in which it is filmed; the angst and the typical teenage bitchiness is very sneaky and clever. It isn't up front, it's behind the scenes and alot more cold and scientific. Though it still has hilarious results, there are alot of connotations within finding yourself as a person, and not only that, but yourself as a good person.

Regarding influences from this trailer, I think I'll be using Mean Girls' trailer technique in which it focuses slightly on the more adult problems in life, like sex, friendship and surviving "Girl World". Like Angus... Mean Girls is still very catty and high school, whereas my trailer will focus more on personal problems rather than those regarding a social life, as such. Mean Girls is still very passive in the sense that, though it looks at it in a scientific light, the storyline is still girl meets boy. Despite these two films being nothing like what I want my trailer to look like, I still think they're interesting to look at as it shows the life of teenagers perfectly, particularly within school.