Final Cut - North Chamber Trailer

Ancillary Task: North Chamber Website

This is the link to the website we created for the promotion of North Chamber - http://redherringproducti.wix.com/northchamber

Ancillary Task: North Chamber Film Poster

Evaluation Task 4 - Who are your audience and what have you learned from them?

Presentation made by Hannah Boardman

Evaluation Task 3 - How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

Our aim was to create a promotional package made up of a trailer, poster and website for our new film ‘North Chamber’. With this package, we intended to target a young audience of 16- 21 year olds and entice them into wanting to watch the full film in the cinema.

Before we started to think about our main product and ancillary tasks, we researched audience so that we could make sure we were effective in appealing to a target audience. As we had decided to do a horror film, we researched other similar horror film audiences. This included primary research such as questionnaires and a focus group and secondary research for example looking up IMDb statistics and BFI case studies.

We then researched horror film conventions used within similar texts. I analysed the Woman in Black trailer, picking out conventions that we could use in our trailer to make it more effective in scaring the audience. I went on to analyse the film poster conventions used on the Annabelle poster and I then looked at the Cabin in the Woods website to get an idea of what should be on a popular film promotion site.

We wanted to make sure our ancillary tasks matched our trailer so that they were recognisably shown to be promoting the same film. To do this we made sure the colour scheme and title fonts were the same on the ancillary tasks as the trailer.

In our trailer, some scenes are set in the past and we wanted to make the transitions from past to present easily noticeable so we decided to make the past shots black and white. However, Cassandra’s red ribbon plays a big part in the story as she is bullied about wearing it, it makes the main character easily recognisable and it is used to connote danger. By using black and white, the colour of the ribbon was lost. To compromise, we used an 80% monochrome filter on the scenes set in the past so that the colour of the ribbon could be seen slightly.

We also used this technique of emphasising the red ribbon, on our film poster. We decreased the saturation of our main image to -100 which made it black and white and then we painted the red ribbon back on. By continuing this theme over both platforms, the audience will hopefully notice the connection between the poster and trailer which will help them remember the film.

We used a black, white and red colour scheme throughout our promotional package so that everything looked professional and worked together to promote the film. We also used the same title across the numerous promotional platforms.

We also included social media throughout our promotional package, including the hash tag ‘#NorthChamber’ on our trailer and poster and putting links to our social media on our website.

The making of North Chamber was extremely challenging as half of the film was set in the past which meant we had to choose locations, props and costume very carefully to make sure our trailer would be believable. It was difficult to keep modern day things, such as plug sockets out of shot and we had to make sure the tables the 1940’s students were sat at looked true to that time period. Cassandra’s diary was made up of ink drawings and scribbles using old-fashioned fountain pens rather than the pens we would use today.

Trailers can be seen in adverts at the cinema, online (YouTube) and on TV and target people that are either already viewing something else or looking to watch the trailer. Posters, however, can be seen anywhere; from billboards to bus stops. They promote the film to a wider audience that may not be looking for a film to watch; they can catch someone’s eye and spark an interest. The viewer then may want to find out more, so they search online where they can find the film trailer and website. All of these platforms support each other and help gain a wider audience when promoting a film.

In my opinion, I think our promotional package works well together as we have used similar themes that make the audience aware of the genre and features of the film. I think that if North Chamber was a real film, we would be successful as we have used common conventions used in popular real films which have been proven to work. Our lack of experience, professional equipment and software have meant that our trailer doesn’t look as professional as I would have liked, but I believe we have included everything we needed to make a successful promotional package for North Chamber.

Evaluation Task 2 - How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Written by Hannah Boardman

I am going to be evaluating the use of technology throughout the production of our trailer.

I have used Blogger to document my research, planning, and evaluations throughout the production of our trailer. I chose to post blogs about our production on this site because it is available for me to use from both within sixth form and at home for free. Blogger makes it easy to edit and upload blog posts and also add pictures and links.

I used this software to create my blog last year, so I knew how to navigate the site.

We used Celtx to write our script on; it allowed us to create a professional looking script which we could give to our actors to make them feel as though they were in a professionally film rather than a student production. It was important to give them a script because I think they took their role more seriously and worked in a professional manner.

During filming North Chamber we used a Nikon J1 camera because it allowed us to film high quality videos in 1080p HD which produced clear footage to get a cinematic effect. This camera is easy to operate, ensuring that the filming process went smoothly as every member of the group knew how to operate the camera. Another advantage of the Nikon J1 was that it allowed us to manually adjust the aperture setting to produce a darker looking image which helped create an ominous atmosphere. However, in one shot we planned to have a focus pull and we could not film it with the Nikon J1 because we needed to be able to manually focus during the filming of a shot. Therefore, we swapped to a Panasonic G6 camera to film the focus pull because it allowed us to do this. We used the Panasonic G6 to take behind the scenes pictures of filming and of the film poster shoot.

Panasonic G6

Nikon J1

We used a SanDisk Extreme 32GB memory card to record all of our footage on because it had enough memory space for the amount we planned to film.

We used a tripod when possible so that the shots were steady and looked professional. However in some scenes this was not possible as there was little space so we had to hold the camera securely with our hands.

To edit our trailer we used Pinnacle Studio 10. This editing software allowed us to cut clips and edit them together in the order we wanted. To get the glitch effect when Cassandra is walking down the corridor at the end of the trailer, I split the clip a few times and deleted small sections from it, I then replaced the deleted sections by copying and pasting sections from earlier on in the clip.

As you could only insert two sounds at a time on Pinnacle Studio, we used Audacity to merge sound effects together so we were able to build on the sound we already had. This played an important role in building tension towards the end of our trailer.

We uploaded our trailer, location recce and behind the scenes videos to Vimeo. Vimeo is a site that allows people to upload videos and share them with others for free. We could access Vimeo from inside sixth form which was convenient and wouldn’t be possible if we had only used YouTube. We then embedded the links of the videos onto our blogs.

As not many people use Vimeo, we decided to upload the final cut of the trailer to YouTube as it has over one billion users worldwide. YouTube allowed us to show our film to a wider audience and get more feedback.

Social networking sites are used by film makers to promote films and to get audiences talking about them. We made a Twitter account for our production company in order to get audiences involved and excited about the trailer. The account also allowed us to get feedback from people that have viewed the trailer. Twitter has a ‘trending topics’ feature that includes the most popular topics on users of Twitter are discussing each day; hashtags are used on social  media sites to identify messages about a certain topic. We used the hashtag ‘#NorthChamber’ to help promote our trailer and so that we could search it and see conversations being had about the trailer.

I used Microsoft Word to write up all of my blog posts and then I copied and pasted them into a blog post. I did this so that I had a saved copy of my work in case Blogger lost any of it. I also used it to make my film poster template as making and moving text boxes on Microsoft word is easy to do.

I uploaded this Microsoft Word document onto Scribd as I couldn’t copy and paste what was in it without the layout of the text boxes changing. By using Scribd, the template looked neat my blog whilst still being easily accessible.

I used Microsoft PowerPoint to display my ‘The Woman in Black’ trailer analysis on. I used PowerPoint because the analysis was very long it would have looked untidy if I had written it in a normal blog post. PowerPoint allowed me to break up the post into different slides for different areas of analysis (mise-en-scene, characters, titles etc.). It also allowed me to add pictures and screenshots to illustrate what I was writing.

I uploaded my PowerPoint to Slideshare so that I could embed the link into a post on Blogger. Slideshare is a site that allows you to upload PowerPoint presentations so that others can access them. It allowed me to copy and paste the embed code for my presentation onto my blog so that it is easily accessible and also added another technology to my blog.

We used dropbox to share shot lists, scripts and images etc. with everyone in the group. As everyone played different roles in the production we needed a way to share what we had done individually with other members of the group. Dropbox was perfect for this as you can upload files in seconds and we could log on and find whatever we needed for our blog posts. 

I used Microsoft Excel to record the results of our film demographic questionnaire because you can create graphs and charts easily out of the data you have collected. This allowed us to see clearly what audience we should target the film at and what our target audience liked about the horror genre.

To create our website we used Wix which is a site allowing people to make and publish websites through the use of drag and drop tools. We were able to add content; pictures, a link to our trailer and text very easily. This then gave us more time to focus on the overall look of the website so that it would be appealing to the audience. 

Photoshop was used to create our poster. The software allowed us to be creative and fully manipulate images.

Evaluation Task 1 - In what ways does your media product, use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

I have recorded a directors commentary to answer this question.


Directors Commentary - North Chamber from Hannah Boardman on Vimeo.

This is the transcript:

We chose to create a horror/period hybrid genre trailer during the ideas process due to finding out that the audience favoured ghost stories/ paranormal narratives. We then had an idea to set the trailer in the past featuring the ghost’s previous life. After lots of thought we decided to title the film, ‘North Chamber’ as it was the name of the section of the school being haunted in our story.

My pre-production research included analysing ‘The Woman in Black’ trailer. I chose to look at this trailer because it is a horror/period hybrid similar to ours. I picked out effective conventions used that we might want to use in our trailer. In the Woman in Black trailer, the character’s costume indicated what time period the film was going to be set in (early 1900’s). As our film is set around the time of WW2, We dressed our actors in school uniform similar to what was worn in that time period so that the audience would understand when our film was set. We decided to include an evil theme, as every horror film does, and we highlighted this with the use of blood and a red ribbon which both connote death.

Trailers also have their own set of conventions. We used titles and sound, including a voice over to indicate to the audience what genre the film is going to be. We included social media links so that the audience can interact with each other and the producers and talk about the trailer which we used to act as promotion. We created faux social media sites to add to the promotion of the fake film. Another trailer convention that we have used which is a prominent feature of horror trailers is the ‘sting’. It is seen at the end of the trailer to shock the audience and make them want to see the film. They can be seen in popular horror film trailers such as The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death. We conformed to theatrical film trailer conventions so that the audience understands what genre the film is going to be and so they know whether they might like it.

Individuality of a film is important in gaining an audience; Steve Neale said that difference is absolutely essential to the economy of genre. A unique selling point of our trailer is the fact that it is a genre hybrid which makes it different to many other trailers that are just horror. I think the period aspect of the trailer gives the story more depth, making the audience want to know more.  Another unique selling point is that we have an unexpected twist in the story; the fact that the bullied girl turns into the bully is unusual and may intrigue the audience. The audience is important in genre films as Ryall says is part of the genre triangle crucial in the economy of genre films. The triangle shows how promotion of a film targets audiences that enjoy particular genre so that they pay to watch the film and give money back to the film genre industry. More genre films are then created and the cycle begins again.

At the start of the trailer Cassandra acted as the conventional Proppian character type ‘damsel in distress’, however later on, she ends up becoming the villain, with another girl taking the role of the damsel in distress. The strangle scene is an example of a Barthes enigma as it leaves the audience wondering whether the girl gets killed or not. This is a convention of trailers as the producers do not want to give away answers.

The actors didn’t fulfil their intended roles as we held auditions and found that the actors we had originally thought of would be best in different roles. As they were only young and amateur actors, they didn’t perform as well as I’d hoped. As they had never met most of the crew before I think it took a while for them to be comfortable around us to be able to perform to their best ability. I think, if we had had more time, we could have auditioned more children from different drama schools to ensure we had the best actors we could possibly get.

I think we were successful at making our film trailer conventional as we asked the audience what genre they thought it was in a questionnaire and the results showed that they understood that it was a horror film and some recognised aspects of the period genre. Every person who watched our trailer said they would pay to see the full film. Therefore, money can be put back into the industry so that more horror films can be made and carry on the cycle.

Focus Group Feedback

North Chamber Focus Group from Rebecca Ainsworth on Vimeo.

We brought in a focus group of sixth form students and teachers to watch our trailer so that we could get some feedback. After they had watched the trailer we asked them questions about the film to see if they fully understood what was going on. We were very pleased with this feedback as they all seemed to really enjoy the film trailer.

We have created a mind map of quotes from this focus group which display a good understanding of our film.

BBFC Age Certificate

The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) would rate our film a 15 because it includes 'strong violence and horror' that may upset younger viewers. This is the age certificate of Woman in Black 2 which has similar content to North Chamber.

Music: Creating the air raid siren

When thinking about what kind of music we wanted to have along side the shot of Cassandra on the corridor, we decided we wanted to include a sound linked to the second World War as Cassandra was an evacuee when she was alive. We chose to include an air raid siren because they were used to warn people when danger was coming during the war. I think this could connote how the ghost of Cassandra brings danger and that conflict is likely to happen in the full film.

Rebecca then edited the sound we had chosen on Audacity and these are screenshots displaying how she did it.

First of all we found some tense music on soundbible.com that sounded like an air siren that would go off in the wartime. We then cut this track down to the length of the clip that we wanted to add the music to and pasted this onto a separate track layer. 

We then used the dropdown tool to add another track onto audacity. This track added a deep bass note to the air siren and gave the sound some more volume and therefore would hopefully cause more of an effect within the audience.  

Finally, to blend the two sounds together we added a small fade in for the siren noise and we also decided to fade in the beginning of the track because of how loud this noise was and we didn’t want it to sound too manic because this would add an element of unprofessionalism which we didn’t want.

Music

Music is the most important aspect when building tension and creating fear in horror film trailers.

We found a piece of music called ‘Mary’ by Taylor Heywood which was a slow piano track; we thought that this would create a sad atmosphere as the trailer reveals more about Cassandra’s depression and make the audience sympathise with her.

We emailed Taylor Heywood for permission to use his music in our trailer; assuring him that we would credit him in the finished trailer.

We then needed to find some sounds that would build up tension as the trailer progresses. We found some tracks on Incompetech including 'Unlight', 'Red letter' and 'Awkward meeting' which we thought might be effective in our trailer. We then found a sound effect called 'Spooky Drone' which we thought would be effective when the ghost of Cassandra appears as it could symbolise that she is the villain. 

Ancillary Task: Film Poster Design Process

We explained how we created the poster in a Powerpoint presentation.

Production Logos

 We chose this real production logo to put at the start of our trailer because the company is known for making popular horror films such as The Grudge. When the audience sees this logo before our trailer they may associate it with horror and will automatically know what genre our film is going to be. As Ghost House Pictures have had many successful films, the audience may want to see North Chamber more because of the companies reputation.

Our production company is Red Herring. We chose this name as we wanted to include the word 'red' as it connotes danger and blood which fits what our film trailer is about. The colour red is also a main theme in our trailer, poster and website as it is used with black and white to emphasise the danger in the film.

We then created the logo by using two pictures of red herring fish and putting them together on Photoshop. We rotated one of the fish and made it white to add more interest to the logo. We then added a text box with the company name 'Red Herring Productions'.

Film Poster Draft

This is the North Chamber draft film poster. Something that we want to include and that we are going to do further research on is to find an image to suit the narrative to place above the 'keep out' tag line.

North Chamber Twitter Page

We set up a twitter page for our production company so that we could get people interested in watching our new trailer. We filled in our biography, to inform anyone that may go on our profile, about our A level production and we also put our production logo as a header.

We tweeted off of this account in the lead up to the trailer being posted. We tweeted pictures of 'behind the scenes' and also of the group who gave us feedback to the trailer. We did this to get the audience excited and talking about the new trailer.

Twitter also allowed us to get feedback after people had seen the trailer, We received very positive comments from other twitter users, showing that they understood and enjoyed the storyline.

Ancillary Task - Website Planning

We have made a mind map of website design ideas.

Firstly, we decided on the pages we would include on our website then went into more depth, discussing what should be on each page.

We researched  popular horror film websites, such as The Conjuring to see what pages they have.

We have decided to put the trailer on the home page of our 

website so that the audience are instantly gripped. Many popular film websites do this.

Many sites made to promote film trailers use social networking links so that people can share the trailer with their friends. We plan to make a twitter account and put the link on our website.

We are going to use a colour scheme of  black, white and red, as we have in our trailer and plan to do on the poster.

Ancillary Task - Film Poster Planning

                                 When thinking about our film poster we created a mind map of ideas. 

First of all we discussed what the main image on our poster would be and came up with two initial ideas. The first, was a close up image of the ghost, Cassandra. We decided that if we were to use a close up picture of a character on the poster, we should use Cassandra because she is the main character and the film revolves around her. We think that it would be effective if we used a black and white image as it could suggest our film is set in the past with the ribbon in red to connote danger. We have planned to have half of Cassandra's face in shadow to create mystery and represent her dark side. We also want  it to look similar to the trailer so that it would be recognisable so we are going to use the same colour scheme on the poster, website and trailer. 

Another idea we have is an image of a noose hanging from a tree, drawing inspiration from The Conjuring poster. This would be relevant to our trailer as it has a theme of suicide and death which is what the noose would represent.

We want to use a black background as it resembles darkness which is associated with evil. We are planning to use either a white font which will connote the innocence of children or a red font which will connote danger. We will use a serif font because our film includes adult themes and is for a more intellectual audience. We have taken inspiration from the 'Annabelle' poster when thinking about our titles.

We brainstormed tagline ideas that would be appropriate for our film; our ideas were mainly based around revenge and Cassandra's diary full of secrets. 

We have also planned what needs to be included in the billing block such as production company name, title, actor's names, producer and director.