Evaluation Pt.2

Evaluation Pt.2

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

When creating my movie poster, I took inspiration from film posters I had already seen and noted what made a movie poster successful. I wasn’t a fan of overly complicated and busy posters, I think that too many pictures and text ion a poster can make it look messy and detract away from what it is trying to convey. I chose to keep my poster simple, with minimal text so people could take in all the information about the film that they needed with just a quick glance. I chose low key lighting and when photographing the image for the movie poster, I made sure that there was a deep shadow on one side of the subject to make the poster look menacing, dark and sinister. I dressed the subject in the same grubby and dirty shirt that we had used to film our trailer so the character of Keith would be recognisable. He looks particularly grubby which is what we were going for, we wanted a gritty and grubby character that would really shock people in the film and I feel we have achieved this. The fonts were carefully chosen for the poster as well, I chose the main title font because of its background that contained numbers and letters and symbols, which almost look like a police report. This connects with Keith’s previous job as a police officer, and gives the viewer clues to his background and the narrative. The tagline gives the viewer clues to how far Keith will go to get his revenge, and like the title font, it gives the viewer clues to Keith's police force past. A poster that this could be compared to is Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer (1986), both poster feature the title and a picture of the main character and not much else, this also fits well because Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer was a main inspiration for the making of Keith, the content of both posters help to categorise both of the films in the same sub-genre of horror.

 












With my magazine cover, I decided to feature Keith on the cover of Empire magazine. I kept the Empire font the same, as well as the barcode position and taglines so it kept within the house style of Empire, and this would enable the magazine to be instantly recognisable at a glance to the target audience. I chose to write about the influences of Keith so horror fans would instantly be able to place the film, and would know whether they would be interested in watching the film or not, and I also included an article that would really connect with the older generation of horror fans who had seen their favourite horror films be remade on multiple occasions. I wanted to create an article that horror fans would really be interested in that would draw them to the magazine. I used the same image from my movie poster on the magazine cover so people who had already seen the poster would instantly recognise the magazine cover, and this would make them want to read more about Keith and what the narrative included etc. A magazine cover that is similar to mine is the Empire: The Greatest Horror Movies Ever special edition cover. This includes the standard font title and tagline, but only has the article title and pictures to do with the article, making it look simple and straight to the point, which is what I wanted to achieve with my magazine cover.

 

My poster and magazine tie in with the style and look of my trailer very well. My trailer is very gritty and very real, I wanted to achieve this with the movie poster and the magazine cover, and I achieved this by the dress of the main subject, his clothes and his whole look and the way the photo has been taken (taking the showy areas and the low key lighting into account) portrays a gritty look, and gives clues to what the film is about and how it is shot. I chose to use a different font on the front cover of the magazine to the one I used on the poster as I wanted to keep in with Empire’s house style, and I felt that the font I used on the movie poster did not fit into this criteria. I chose Empire magazine because I wanted to target the film at a more mainstream audience, and hopefully show them a grittier and more down to earth horror film than they were used to.

Film Poster: Keith (with Flickr Analysis)

Media: Keith Poster, a photo by JoshParrott on Flickr.

Magazine Cover: First Draft (with Flickr Analysis)

Media Magazine Cover, a photo by JoshParrott on Flickr.

Evaluation Pt.1

Evaluation Pt. 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real life media products?

Genre theory is a very important part of categorising films, and the main critic behind this was Thomas Schatz, the writer behind the iconic study ‘Hollywood Genres’. He saw genre as ‘the most powerful force’ in films because it helped sell movies to an audience of fans, and enabled them to have clear expectations of what to expect in the film, and it also helped them to understand the film itself. Filmmakers also would know what was going to appeal to their target audience of ‘genre fans’. Taking this into account our group’s horror trailer fits the horror genre very well, it contains a lot of the most familiar of the horror generic conventions that are to be expected from a horror film. Our trailer featured a Psycho/Serial killer which helps to place it within the horror genre. We also included slow editing to create tension, and in the highlights we used quick montage to build excitement. The mise-en-scene of our horror trailer includes blood and gore (body horror), restricted narration and low key lighting. This all helps to keep the trailer within the horror generic conventions, and because all of the conventions that I have mentioned are included within the trailer, horror fans that prefer gritty serial killer style horrors will be able to deter that this film will be one that they would enjoy, because the trailer shows all of the conventions that they prefer to watch.

                Our horror trailer fitted well within horror trailer conventions but also it had some distinctive features to keep it interesting and different. Our trailer is a scene trailer, but we also showed highlights in the form of flashbacks, so it is a hybrid of both as we felt this would be the best way for the audience to understand the narrative and get the general idea of what the film is about. So at the start we included a slow build to increase the tension, and this helps to better understand our main character Keith, and what he looks like and how he acts. The scene section of the trailer is slow throughout, it aims to keep the character of Keith mysterious and sinister, and ends with a shot of Keith’s face emerging from the darkness. In contrast our highlights show examples of quick montage and the trailer finished with one of these quick, fast highlights. In comparison to real life trailers, our is like a mix between Cloverfield (2008) (as this is a scene trailer and like Keith, it gives the audience a really good introduction to the film and the characters) and Dawn Of The Dead (2004) (as the use of highlights show important scene of the film so the audience get a better idea of the content and also clues to the story). 

                As a group we all preferred the same type of horror film, we all liked horror films with an interesting and distinctive main character, we liked gritty horror films, and one particular film the influenced the making and content of our trailer was Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) directed by John McNaughton. This film follows along similar lines to Keith, and at certain points of the film, Henry is a fairly likeable character, as was the ambition with Keith. However the characters kill for very different reasons which sets Keith apart from Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. We tried to make our trailer distinctive, and not ‘just another horror trailer’ the use of a hybrid scene/highlights convention is one that I think has helped us achieve this, most horror trailers are one or the other, but our trailer gives a much better view of the narrative than other horror trailers. Also the use of a high quality camera with a wide aperture value set on the lens makes our trailer more aesthetically pleasing, and gives it a more detailed and realistic effect than other trailers. We also shot our highlights in black and white so the audience would know that they were flashbacks of Keith’s past, we added grain to these to make them seem grittier and highlight that these are ‘bad memories’ and are the cause of Keith's psychotic actions. As far as taking influence from auteurs, we looked at George Romero’s work and took inspiration from his use of gore and body horror in his films and included this in the trailer. We also looked at modern horror for action and context, as domestic violence is a common issue in modern times, so we used this as a key idea in our trailer and narrative and used this to try to not only shock people, but also connect with people.                                                                                                                

Trailer Review: Dawn Of The Dead (2004)

Name Of Film: Dawn Of The Dead

Genre Of Trailer: Action Horror  

Year Released: 2004

Your Mark After Viewing: 6/10

This is a scene trailer, and features some key scenes of the full movie. The first scene we see is pretty much the full scene from the movie, it shows the beginning of the zombie apocalypse, and features some great camera angles (fixed on board camera on Anna’s car) and it really sets the scene of what the film is about, it gives the audience vital clues to the narrative. There is quite a few jumpy bits in the trailer too, particularly when the music at the start changes from a pleasant calm soft piece of music to an eerie and loud jumpy piece, with a sharp transition between the two. Restricted narration is present because this is a green band trailer, so excessive gore and body horror can’t be shown, but here it works extremely well and this is a very well put together movie trailer! I found it hard to find criticisms for the trailer, but on I have is the choice of font. It looks a little ‘cheesy’ and I don’t feel like it fits the trailer, it really lets the whole thing down, but apart from this it is a very good horror trailer.