Evaluation - Question One

Evaluation - Question One

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After analysing my feedback from my target audience about my rough cut trailer. I decided that I would try and include more horror film conventions in my final trailer. By doing this it would be more clear to my audience as to what type of effect I am trying to create with this trailer.
The first big convention I wanted to include, was the use of low key lighting, low key lighting is where the scene is usually very dark and the only light you see is that of the character that the camera is focused on. Seeing as I would have more than one character on the screen at one time, this became a bit of a problem. Then I came up with he idea of a night vision effect. It would give the impression to the audience that the trailer is all in pitch black, but still allows them to see everything that goes on.
I chose black transition screens as black is the colour that we relate to death. Any texts in the trailer has been wrote in red, as we relate the colour red with blood. Both death and blood are common conventions of any horror film or trailer.

I also included a mysterious character in my trailer, one that the audience wont find out who it is by purely watching the trailer. By doing this it makes the audience want to watch the film. Its a cliffhanger, I used it to draw in my audience even more!
To follow conventions, I also used a very weary soundtrack alongside my trailer. The song I used is quite progressive and becomes a lot angrier as the trailers progresses. When tensions begins to build in the scenes, the song reflects this with a deeper sound.
At the end of my trailer, I added the famous release title, but instead of giving a certain date I simply used "Coming Soon" I did this as I believed that this adds to the audiences urge to find out more about the film!

The Awoken Promotional Poster

Storyboard animation

The Awoken Trailer

Homework

Analyse a similar product to your main task production in relation to audience theory.

This is the trailer for the horror film 'Demons Never Die' we can relate this trailer to theorists of the audience theory. 

The first theorist Adorno came up with the theory called the 'Hypodermic Needle Model' this theory suggest thats the piece of media we see has a direct effect on the audience. In relation to the trailer for 'Demons Never Die' we can say that the film is imposing that if one of your friends commits suicide that you should all do the same, and follow in their footsteps. As extreme as it may sound this is what Adorno believed to be true. That what we are directly influenced by what we see on our screens. The message being portrayed in this trailer; making a pact with your friends to all kill yourselves because your friend did is far fetched. Even so it is still believed that it is the message that a piece of media portrays that is injected into the audiences mind.

Another theorist that we can relate to this trailer is Hall, Hall's theory of Encoding and Decoding suggests that the people who created a piece of media, so in this sense the directors of the film. They encode the piece of media to have a preferred reading. This encoded preferred reading is then decoded by the audience as they watch the piece of media. Relating it to the trailer, we can see that the preferred reading is of a group of friends making a pact to kill themselves after one of their friends did, but instead of killing themselves they are all being stalked and killed by a masked being. We can decode this preferred reading my several things that we see unconsciously in the trailer. For example the weary music as the trailer get further and further on. Also  the use of weapons, we see a gun at the very beginning of the trailer, then knives. This tells the audience that the preferred reading isn't going to be about a group of nice teenagers graduating from college. We can also relate the fast paced editing to the preferred reading. the longer the trailer goes on for, the faster each clip gets. This adds suspense, and makes the audience question what will happen. It is the basic conventions of a horror film that allows us to decode the preferred reading.   

Draft Promotional Poster

Rough Cut Trailer