Paper Draft of Magazine Front Cover Idea

Paper Draft of Film Poster Idea

The differences between a teaser trailer and the main theatrical trailer

Here is my own explanation of what I believe are the main distinctions between a teaser trailer and the main theatrical trailer along with an example of each to further explain:

A teaser trailer is normally around 1 minute to 1 minute 30 seconds long and tends to be released a little while before the main theatrical trailer. The purpose of releasing a teaser trailer is to tease its audience by revealing to its target audience a little bit of the footage taken from the film so that it can get the audience interested in the film and encourage them to want to watch more. They will not reveal any significant details of the narrative of the film so that the audience are left in suspense wanting to know more. Teaser trailers are normally released online so they originally are only seen by an audience who are interested in films or happen to browse through film teaser trailers.

Here is an example of a film teaser trailer:


As you can see from this teaser trailer the editing is made to show a montage of different clips from the film all of which tease the audience so they are left wanting to know much more about the film.


The main theatrical trailer is released after the teaser trailer and tends to be much longer (normally around 2-3 minutes long) and is designed to reveal more scenes taken from the film so that its target audience is persuaded to go and watch the film at the cinema. The main theatrical trailer will reveal much more of the narrative than the teaser trailer will and is also played across a wider range of media such as TV and cinema advert screenings so more people tend to see this trailer than the teaser trailer.

Here is an example of a main theatrical trailer:


A you can see from this main theatrical trailer, the editing is much slower than the teaser trailer and scenes from the actual film are shown in greater detail and last a lot longer than seen in the teaser trailer. The length of the trailer itself is also a lot longer so more of the narrative can be given away, although both a teaser trailer and a main theatrical trailer will remain persuasive so that its audience will go and watch the film in full at the cinema.

Original photos for both products

These are the orignal images taken for our magazine front cover. The image is at the top in the centre was tazken without the studio lighting whilst the other images were taken with it used. The images that I chose to use within my magazine front cover is the top left image to be used as the main image on the front cover and also the close up image at the bottom right as I felt this would be a good image to use as a smaller one below my main image.

Storyboards for Own Horror Trailer

Storyboards for our trailer

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Off Campus Trailer

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

Throughout the coursework unit we have had to use a variety of different media technologies in order to construct together all of our blog posts including the research, planning and evaluation stages as well as learn how to film and create our own horror trailer.

In order to complete the research and planning section of my blog I had to use new media technologies that I hadn't used before. In order to exploit the full potential of my blog I needed to use programmes such as these:

Blogger

The main programme that we have needed to use throughout the unit is Blogger as this is the programme where all of our work has been uploaded to. Because this is the same programme that we used in our AS coursework, I have now become used to using Blogger and find it rather easy to use in terms of uploading my work and presenting it in a way that makes a piece of text more enjoyable to look at and read. What I particularly like about Blogger is how accessible it is for me to use as it is all done online so therefore I can access my blog from both at college and at home. It is also very useful for my teacher as it enables them to mark my work online and leave comments on each post telling me how I have done and things that I could improve to make it better. One thing I would say that I don't like about the programme is I sometimes find it difficult to create blog posts when I want to add images and links to my posts as the images are only available in particular sizes and positions so therefore it can sometimes be difficult to see the blog post up in the way that I want it to. This therefore doesn't allow me to be as creative with the way I present my blog posts as much as I would like to. There can also sometimes be some technical difficulties with the programme such as when uploading blog posts for instance which you wouldn't get with written work. Overall, I have learnt a lot from using an online blog in order to complete my coursework as it has given me the opportunity to work with a new type of media technology that I hadn't worked with before A levels, however I'm not sure if I would say that this is better than submitting a piece of written coursework.

Flickr

A programme that I had to use a lot, particularly for analysing different magazine covers and film posters was Flickr. This programme allowed me to upload images of things I needed to analyse such as film magazine covers so that I could then add 'Tags' to my image. Tags can be drawn round any part of an image such as the Masthead for example so that I could then write a note on that particular aspect of the image. I would do this on every part of the image I needed to talk about so that when its done, you can view the image in full and then scroll over any part of the image I had analysed and read the notes I had put about it. This I found was a very effective way of analysing images as well as being a much more interesting way to write about a particular image.

Slideshare

Slideshare is a programme that allows you to present a PowerPoint of your work which can then be viewed through slideshare so that you can view each slide of your work. I found that this was a really good way of presenting some of my work as it is much more visibly appealing to look at and display my work as opposed to a standard blog post.

Surveymonkey

Surveymonkey.com is the website that I used in order to gather our audience research on horror films. By using Surveymonkey to collect our results as opposed to an ordinary questionnaire, it enabled us to receive results from a wider audience as opposed to people around college. By conducting audience research it helped us to establish our idea of what we wanted our horror trailer to be about as well as what our target audience liked to see within a horror trailer. The website enabled us to choose what kind of questions we wanted (yes/no, open answered) so that we could receive a wide range of results as well as see our audiences detailed opinions on what they liked through open answered questions.

In order to actually make our horror trailer I again needed to use a range of media technologies, most of which I either hadn't used before or had very little experience in using. These were: 

Digital HD Video Camera

Before this coursework unit, I hadn't really had any experience in using a digital video camera so this unit was good practise for me to learn how to use one. Once I had learnt all of the different video camera settings that I needed to know, I found it very easy to use and I believe that as a group we captured some very effective shots for our trailer. We also needed to use a tripod to make sure that our shots were steady to make our trailer look more professional however we also experimented with hand-held shots which worked well as a horror convention as it connotes disorientation.

Final Cut Pro

Once we had filmed the shots for our horror trailer we then had to edit the clips and create a teaser trailer using the programme Final Cut Pro. I had only ever used this programme once before at the beginning of the A2 course so it therefore took me a little while to adjust to using a new programme. Once I had practised a few times on it, I found the programme quite simple to use. We cut down our clips to the right length that we wanted and then dragged them onto the timeline which is where we would order our footage and control where we wanted transitions and intertitles in order to make our horror trailer appear like a real film trailer. Here are examples of how I used Final Cut Pro to edit our clips of footage:

This Flickr analysis explains the top half of the screen shot:

This Flickr analysis explains the bottom half of the screen shot:

Garageband

Garageband is a programme that we used on the macs in order to create individual pieces of music or sound effects to go with our horror trailer footage. I found this to be a very simple programme to use which allowed me to experiment with different notes until I had decided on one that I felt was effective as a horror sound effect to go with our footage. This included pre-recorded effects we used within our trailer such as the 'booms' and high key piano notes.

I also had to complete two ancillary tasks in which I was required to make a film poster for our horror trailer and also a magazine cover. This is the programme we used to make them:

Photoshop

In order to complete my ancillary tasks of a film magazine cover and also a film poster to go with our finished horror trailer, I needed to create them on Photoshop. I have used Photoshop many times both in my media lessons and photography lessons so therefore I knew exactly how to use the programme. My experience in using Photoshop has grown over both the AS and A2 coursework and my skills in using it have developed as in AS we were given a few weeks in order to complete our magazine cover whereas in A2, we were given only a week to complete our magazine cover which shows how my skills in Photoshop have developed from AS to A2. I find that Photoshop CS5 is the easiest programme to use when creating media products such as magazine covers and film posters as it allows you to design the products in a way that I want as well as experiment with different blending modes and other features that help to create successful magazine covers/film posters.