Evaluation - Question 4

Evaluation - Question 3

Evaluation - Question 2

Evaluation - Question 1

Slaughter Party Trailer

Final Magazine Draft

Final Poster Draft

Second Magazine Draft

This second draft is significantly different from my original block plan. The biggest difference is the type of image I decided to use whilst creating this draft of the magazine. My research of existing magazine covers showed me how the convention is to have a singular person on the cover in a powerful stance, which I decided to use using the antagonist of the trailer. I also decided to challenge convention by positioning this image on the right side of the frame so as to allow significant space on the left of the frame for the subheadings. Another change I made was to add a special promotional line at the top reading 'Horror Edition' as I felt that this would attract an audience that enjoys horror films and wishes to read about past and upcoming products. I decided to use alternating white and red for the article subheadings as red connotes blood and the white stands out against the two darker colours, especially the black background. I kept the title of the trailer at the bottom of the page as I felt this was the most practical place to position it, I have also seen this done on the covers of many issues of Empire.

Image for Magazine Cover

This was the image I was initially going to use for my magazine cover however, as I began to edit the image in Photoshop I realised that this image was unsuitable for the magazine for a number of reasons. Firstly, the top of the model's head has been cut off which was due to my positioning of the camera, this meant that I would have to cover this with a large piece of text on the magazine, however there was a risk of the top of the head still showing, which I did not want to take. Another issue with this image was the wardrobe of the model. I plan to keep a sense of continuity throughout the trailer and ancillary tasks which is why I cannot use this image as the model is not wearing the same outfit as she does in the trailer. This may confuse the viewers of both the magazine and trailer as they may not make a connection between the two pieces, A final reason why I did not use this image is because it is missing a key piece of iconography. I had planned to have the model holding a knife, which is why her hands are positioned the way they are, however due to health and safety I could not bring a knife to the place where the image was being taken, so I had planned to add a knife in to the correct position in the editing process. However, I found the final image (right) to lack a sense of realism and to me, the image seemed obviously and poorly edited.



I decided that the best option was to do a re-shoot for my magazine front cover image. I feel that this image is much more successful and definitely usable compared to the other image. There are to key improvments to this image which now make it appropirate to use on on my magazine. The first is the wardrobe of the model which now matches what her character wears in the trailer and therefore achieves the sense of continuty I wanted to achieve. The other key improvement is the fact that the knife, the key iconography, is now featured in the image and not added in post-production. The fact that the image was taken featuring the knife means that it achieves both realism and will now conform to the conventions of other magazine cover images,

Block plan of Magazine

This first plan of my magazine cover shows how I plan to compose my image/s and the font and style of the title of the film. I plan to have an image of the antagonist in the centre of the frame with smaller images of the four protagonists surrounding the bigger image as if the protagonists are shadowing the antagonist. I have kept the red Empire masthead as the majority of Empire issues feature this red logo as its boldness and colour stand out from the rest of the cover, this shows that I have an understanding of the conventions used in popular media magazines. I have placed the title of the film Slaughter Party at the bottom of the cover as this allows some overlapping of the text and image so that the image would not be obscured but so the text was still visible to the audience.

Film Magazine Research and Analysis

From analysing these three different film magazine covers I can safely say that I have identified the most common tropes to be seen within them, The most common trope is the half body or three quarter body shot of the actress on the cover. This type of shot allows the viewer to clearly identify the actress and subsequently the film that she is promoting by featuring on the cover. The majority of the covers I have analysed have a head on angle to the actress apart from the one featuring Margot Robbie in which she poses at a slightly side on angle which defies the conventions of the common film magazine. Another convention I have noticed is that the covers all follow a colour scheme that is set by what the actress is wearing, This continued colour scheme throughout the cover helps to give it a continuous flow. A final convention that I have noticed throughout these magazines is the fact that their actor's head covers some area of the magazine's masthead. This is a concious decision by the editors as they are aware of the popularity of their magazine and therefore they do not need to compromise the size of their main image as it is assumed that their magazine is popular and well known enough that not all of the title needs to be legible.

Credit Block for Poster

This is the credit block that will feature on the poster for my trailer Slaughter Party. I downloaded the template from this website which allowed me to change the details so they were relevant to the information and details for my trailer and the whole film. I am going to place the credit block at the bottom of my poster as this will not distract the viewer from the main focus of the poster,

Poster Image

This is the image I am going to use for my poster ancillary task. From my research of existing horror posters I have divided to base mine on the poster for The Purge (2013) as I feel that this type of minimalistic poster is the most effective in drawing the audience to the film and also in creating word of moth due to the simplicity and ambiguity of the poster. I have attempted to replicate the image featured in The Purge poster by positioning my model to the right of the frame so as to leave room for the title of the film. Although I now feel that the model could have been positioned on the very edge of the frame this is very easily edited as I can crop this side of the image in Photoshop which will then create the same effect of the image in the poster above.

First Poster Draft

This is a very simple first attempt at my trailer poster. I really like the concept of this poster and especially how the title of the film is placed within the blood as this gives the poster and overall trailer a more graphic element as there is no human presence in the trailer. However this poster is missing some key elements that are commonly seen on all types of film posters such as a credit block and tag line for promotional purposes. I would place the tag line at the top of the frame as this would not ditract the viewer from the main feature in the centre of the frame and I would place the credit block at the bottom of the poster for the same reason and also because credit blocks are very small and usually unreadable which requires very little space. I would create these elements in a white colour as this would differentiate this information from the rid film title.

Horror Movie Poster Research and Analysis

From analysis existing horror movie poster I have observed what is seen as conventions in the movie posters themselves. One of the most prominent conventions I have noticed is the composition of the poster and how the main feature of the poster is placed in the centre of the frame. This is to ensure that this element of the poster is what draws the audience to view it. Subsequently I have also noticed that horror movie colours use a very monochromatic colour scheme as using bright, vibrant colours would contrast with the genre of horror and maybe confuse the audience about the intentions of the film itself. Another convention of horror movie posters is that text is seen in a white font as to stand out against the darker background and to create a lasting image in the viewers head. One last convention I have seen when researching already existing horror movie posters is that they show the face or a version of the identity of either the protagonist or antagonist and this is to tease to the audience as to what to expect from the film, however in the majority of horror posters the identity of the featured face is in some way warped or disfigured as to allude to the events and atmosphere of the film in question.

Final Tone Cards

 Our group decided that these would be the final versions of our tone cards in terms of colour, font and size. We made the decision to split the colouring of the tone cards as we though that having the 'One Group' tone card in white would symbolise the innocence and equilibrium at that point in the trailer. However we then decided to make the more sinister tone cards such as 'One Problem' and 'It Will Not Be Ignored' in red as red connoted danger and violence and also symbolises the blood that is seen in the state of disequilibrium. Our inspiration for this was watching the Scream 4 trailer as this also features different coloured text for tone cards. The final font for both the tone and title cards is 'True Lies' and was found at DaFont.com and we chose this as the trailers's signature font as we felt that the elongated lettering resembled smears of blood which relates and resembles certain parts of the trailer.

Final Music Choice For Trailer

We decided to change the music in our trailer as we felt that the previous song used, Marilyn Manson's 'Sweet Dreams', was only suitable for one part of the trailer and that we needed both atmospheric and suspenseful music throughout the trailer. At first we found it difficult to find music that would fit the narrative and tone of the equilibrium part of the trailer however we eventually found an audio track that matched the mysterious equilibrium part of our trailer, this audio can be found above. We then decided that we would use a different piece of audio for the state of disequilibrium in our trailer as we required a much faster paced and more intense piece of music to accompany this stage in the trailer. As I am very familiar with the Scream franchise and their trailers, I quickly realised that the music used in the Scream 4 trailer (above) matched the later half of our trailer as the music is very fast and dramatic and matches the visual build of tension seen in the trailer.

Dimension Films Ident

                                                                          The blue Dimension Films image that can be seen on the right is the original company production/distribution company ident and the red image below it is the version created by us for our trailer. Our group made a decision to change the colour of the ident to red as there is a lot of red featured in our trailer such as in the iconography and tone cards used. We also decided to change the colour as it would separate our trailer from the other horror trailers that use this production/distribution company such as Scream and The Amityville Horror. We also felt that the red text against the black background would create a much more sinister atmosphere from the very start of the trailer. We edited the Dimension Films ident using the colour palette on the editing software Final Cut Pro X.

Final Production Company Ident

This is the final product of our company ident and we have made a lot of changes in improving this version from our section draft. The biggest change and upgrade we made was to make the ident more graphic so that in turn it would look more professional. We created our smoke effect company ident by following this tutorial on YouTube, using this tutorial made the creating process much easier as After Effects is a very complex programme and with this video we were able to make the most out of it. Another change we made to our ident was to change the font to Baskerville as this matches the now Gothic atmosphere of our ident and is much more high level compared to the previous font we used.

Colour Grading in Final Cut Pro X

Whilst editing certain scenes of the trailer I realised that the colouring of the clips needed to be changed for them to fit more appropriately to the plot of the film. To do this I first had to watch this tutorial as I did not know how to achieve the colour grading idea at first. As the premise for our horror film is a sleepover it would follow convention to have the killer strike the protagonists at night. However, due to our limited time and full shooting schedule we had to film the night scenes in the day. The top images are the original clips whilst the bottom images are the same clips after the colour grading. Although they are not perfect and do not exactly replicate the clip in a night time setting I feel that the edition of the colour grading helps to establish and enhance the idea that the majority of the event taking place in the trailer occur at night. I also agree that the clips shown on the left look less effective than those on the right but this is due to the slight over exposure of the shots background as this excessive brightness has made the night time effect harder to achieve, unlike the clips on the right which originally had very low and subtle lighting.

First Draft of Slaughter Party

This is the first draft of our slasher horror Slaughter Party and already we can see that many improvements need to be made if we want our product to be successful. I think one of the biggest elements that needs improvement is the lack if music as the music is what creates atmosphere and intensity in a trailer and our trailer with it just resembles random clips out together, adding audio also adds a sense of narrative to the product. Another element that needs improvement is the transitions between each shot as a lack of them creates no flow in the overall product and makes it also appear very fragmented and frank instead of faded and mysterious with a softer feeling. Tone cards also need to be added to this trailer to also add to the narrative and to show our use of multiple software whilst creating the trailer. As well as this a prosuction company ident need to be created and added to give identity to the trailer and so the audience know who is behind the creation of the product. Finally, our trailer need ti be at least a minute longer to achieve narrative and to give the audience a chance to see the plot of our trailer and for it to be as professional and real as possible.