Poster Analysis

• The title 'The Hangings' suggested the theme of death within the film, with a numerous number of people dieing from being hung, nut does not suggest who has died.
• The main image is of someone's eye, but does reveal who if it is male or female although the direct wide open gaze gives the horror element with the iconic image of the rope inside
• This could either represent the villian planning the death of someone in that rope, someone on planning on suicide, or someone looking into the past of someone dieing from being hung.
• The tagline however of 'She only wants to play' suggests a vulnerable element to a female which leaves questions to the reader if the eye belongs to a girl, or does the want to play games with the rope?
• The release date is effective because of the reptition of '3' and being released in the time of the easter holidays of the target audience 15-25.
• It also follows the conventions of  afilm website and billing block

• The masthead of the film 'iFIILM' suggests a modern magazine which has references to 'iPhone' and 'iPod' which are all new popular modern technolgies.
• I wanted to have the same effect with my magazine making it seem modern and regularly upsated with the reference of 'i' also resembling a personal ownership of the magazine from it's reader.
• This also links with the tagline of the magazine 'Your best guide to moves'. This also suggests a personal belonging to the reader with nothing else being better than this magazine with information on the latest modern movies.
• I also wanted it to appear as a well known popular magazine, which can be identifable with the effect I used of placing the main image over the masthead covering it slightly. This gives the effect of a well established magazine that everyone is familiar with and already knows the titlle. The bold and redness also is an attractful remember able image taht stands out and that you won't forget.
• The well established effect I wanted for this magazine can also be seen through the main sell line above the masthead ' The Ultimate Horror Issue' this indiactes that iy is a regular magazine with different issues of genre to reach a range of target audiences for the magazine to generate more profit.
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Our focus group questionnaire
We chose 5 questions to give to the 8 people of the target audience, which we thought were the most important without overloading our too many questions but getting enough information to acknowledge the success of our trailer

Circle your answer(s)

1.       What genre (type of film) do you think the trailer is?

Romantic

Romantic comedy

Sci-fi

Horror

Comedy

Western

Thriller

Psychological Thriller

Action

Action/ adventure

Fantasy

Drama

2.       Who do you think the trailer is aimed at?

10-15 years-old

15-25 years-old

25-40 years-old

40-50+ years-old

3.       What were your emotions during the trailer?

Beginning:

Middle:

End:

4.       What would you rate our film trailer out of 10 (10 being excellent)?

5.       Would you personally go to see this film after watching the trailer? And Why?

Other Questions

When then decided to then ask some open questions in our focus group to find out what the people thought of it verbally by expressing more of their opinions in detail

Trailer Questions

1.       Can you give a basic outline of what would happen in the film?

2.       Do you think the setting works well with the narrative?

3.       How did the sound affect your viewing? / Can you name three sounds which stood out?

4.       Do you think our trailer shows similarities to other film trailers? Can you name similar trailers?

Poster Questions

1.       Which poster relates best to the narrative?

2.       What do you think of the layout?

3.       What do you think of the main image?

Magazine Questions

1.       What do you think of the mast head?

2.       What do you think of the main image?

3.       What do you think of the layout?

Results

1. Everyone in question of our trailer were all able to identify the genre of the film with all 8 people chose horror and physiological thriller as a genre showing we were able to present this successfully in our trailer.


2. Not one member of our focus group got the target audience wrong, with all 8 people in question choosing 15-25 showing we also did this successfully.


3. Emotions
Beginning- curious, interested excited
Middle- frightened, enthralled, excited, intense, intrigued, fear suspense panicky
End- frightened, on edge, scared, excited, shocked, want to know more, what happens next?  Overall these were the reactions we wanted to receive from the audience, with the emotion of being curious and wanting to know more indicating them wanting to go and view the film whilst still being scared by it being a great positive sign.


4. All 8 people rated our trailer either 8 or above which shows the overall success.


5. Written Comments
Intriguing 
I liked the documentary style
      It made me jump
      Interesting story
Mad me want to know what happens
Very spooky
I want to know more about Mary
      I would go and see that in cinema
      

Our overall results from our focus group show great success of our trailer as it followed real conventions of trailers as many of the 8 people said they related it to the 'Blair Witch Project' which is where we got our original idea from.

By using a realistic location, narrative and representation of themes and characters we were able to make a professional trailer.

Promotion

The Trailer acts a great promotional device for the film as it is the only promotional device with animation movement where it shows actually scenes of the what is to come in the cinema. 

The trailer can be found on everyday uses of peoples lives, such as watching the television where it may appear on an advert between programmes, or it may be on the internet when waiting to watch a video on 'YouTube'. By doing this it gives the audience ' no choice' but to watch what is infront of them, engaging the audience with it's narrative and code of enigma's and if successful enough to actually go and witness the film and make money for the film company. Trailer can also be seen in the cinema when waiting to watch a film, which can be an efficient way of distributing the trailer to the right target audience. E.g if a group of friends were watching a horror trailer in the cinema, a trailer of the same or similar genre will be shown as it is clear they are interested in them.

The Poster is the most successful device visually to promote the film. Usually containing a main iconic image of the film or a main character, it is the thing which catches the audiences attention in going to watch the film .E.g an axe with blood indicates a genre of horror which will invite them to watch it, or simply a main image of a famous well known actor, selling it as USP for the film.

Once again, posters are cleverly found in places of every day use, such as bus shelters, on buses, bill boards, telephone box's, pages in a magazine, or in cinema's. If done successfully, the poster will catch the audiences eye without giving too much away of the plot but enough to interest them and persuade them to watch it.

The Magazine Front Cover is a promotional device that can be made directly to the target audience who are interested in films or the specific genre. For regular readers of the film magazine they will be invited by mainly 'who' appears on the front cover to make them by the magazine. With a successful image, which is conventionally a main character or actor in the trailer will make them buy the magazine, and then later be persuaded to watch the film with the content provided in the article.

Overall it is what 'invites' the audience in with these 3 use of promotional texts, which commonly is an 'image'. This image can be the one on the front of the poster and the magazine, as it is the first thing they look at to whether to decide to look closer or not. For a trailer, if there are at least 2-3 images that they remember and stand out to them to interest them it can easily make them want to see the film. It is also how they engage the reader, as these 3 texts commonly use the pronoun of 'You' to include the audience in the promotion, for example 'Coming near cinema's near you' 'You should have listened'. By doing this the audience are immediately involved with the story and have no choice but to find answers by watching the film.

The Form of The Film

I think the way in which we constructed the trailer as a group was successful with a strong plot synopsis to start which was developed and improved fully into a realistic story.
Our trailer was also conventional with the Start - being calm explaining and getting to know the characters etc. Middle - Where the drama begins End - The drama gets worse leaving codes of enigma to the audience making them want to go and see the film (Todorov's threory)
Overall our organisation  was in good form with setting out dates each week to suit everyone in their own schedule.
However, this was one of the weaknesses of the from of the trailer, as it was sometimes difficult to get everyone at the scene of filming at all times. As some people found it difficult to get transport to the location and alot of it depended on the weather due to it being outside.

The Content
I think the content of our trailer was on of our strongest points of our whole group. By using the idea of the flashback with the voiceover it gave a great narrative to the story in such a short period of time, this allows reasoning for the teenagers to go into the forest instead of a random dis functional storyline.
In the content of our trailer we also thought it was important to distribute the appearance of the characters shown evenly for the audience to know each of their personalities in the trailer. We did this by having an equal number of close up shots of the characters with their own face expression to show the audience who was the more vulnerable and confident.
The rest of the content we felt was important to leave up to the audience's imagination to what happens leaving code's of enigma's to decide to make them want to see the film. We did this by using the fast paced edited shots from different points in the film of a muddled order, not giving away who dies first or who survives leaving them eager to know.

The only weakness we had with the content of our trailer was trying to get across to the audience the importance of Mrs Kynch and trying to relate her to the younger life of Mary. The prop in which we did this was the 'ring' with a close up of the young Mrs Kynch and then a close up on the Old Mrs Kynch.
However the audience in the focus group found it difficult to distinguish who Mrs Kynch was in the trailer, as someone said they thought she was 'Mary's mum' who may want revenge on the teenagers, with someone else saying her being one of the actual bullies, not the person who didn't help her.
However as a group we did not take this as a negative look upon our trailer, as we figured out that it is a question that could be answered once watched the film, making more people want to watch it.

What did the audience think?

On Monday 30th April we had a focus group on our trailer. We decided to have an audience of 8 people with a range of sex's and age ranged between 15-25. Overall our feedback from our audience was very positive with their reactions feelign really moved and scared by having the emotions of the 'shivers'.
There was only one negative bit of feedback from the audience which was to make the some of the shots all at night time, the shot that the thought of here was 'the medium shot'looking out of the tent in daylight, however as a group we did not see this as negative. Although the shot would've seemed scarier in the dark, the light time shows that the teenagers are constantly in danger at all times of the day, with no escape in daylight also, reinforcing the theme of isolation.
Overall they thought that the trailer was successful as it followed a more documentary style and saw resemblances to 'The Blair Witch Project', and thought it was very realsitic with all of them rating the film 8 out of 10 and above. 87.5% would actually go and watch the trailer although the one person that said no was because they did not liek the genre of the film not personally because of the trailer.

Theories

Todorov's - he suggested that conventional narratives are structured in 5 stages

1. A state of equilibrium at the outset
2. A disruption of the equilbrium by some action
3. A recognition that there has been some disruption
4. An attempt to repair the disruption
5. A reinstatement of the equilibrium

This is a theory that our trailer that can be related to as our trailer shows these stages of narrative, with the normal state of equilibrium being the four friends discovering the diary in the libaray used by close ups of their faces to show they are in a safe environment.

However we then show a muddle with the disruption in our trailer with fast paces editing shots, and the 5th listing of Todorv does not exist in our trailer as we leave code of egnima's to our audience to watch the film, until they find this last reinstatement of the equilibrium.

Feminist Mulvey Theory - Known as the gaze.

The concept of gaze is one that deals with how an audience views the people presented. She believed that in film audiences have to 'view' characters from the perspective of a heterosexual male.

There is only 2 occasions in our trailer where our trailer conventional follows this. This can be seen through the presentation of the characters 'Tom' and 'Sophie'. This is shown through the heroic role of 'Tom' when he shouts in diegetic dialogue to find 'sophie'.

The vulnerable female character howver also follows this theory through the character of 'Sophie' who is shown to constantly looked scared throughout the trailer with the close up shots of her frightened face.

Although, our trailer overall goes against this theory with a female being the main protagonist 'Mary'. As she is the character that makes the audience and the characters in the trailer feel uneasy and scared of being in the forest.

Our trailer also breaks it conventionally with the main character of Emma who takes on a 'boss' male like role. This can be seen throughout the trailer as she is the one to discover the diary of Mary  and confront the villian with questions, which can be seen through the diegetic scream of 'what do you want?!'.

Atkinsons Theory - is another theory our trailer follows as he suggested that death by hanging is typically suicide. However our trailer deliberately leaves this as a code of enigma in our trailer, to make the audience decide whether the teenagers have killed themselves because of Mary, has Mary killed them for revenge, or has Mrs Kynch been invloved with the killings?

Technologies

The Internet

The internet was the most frequently used technology aswell as the first one we used in our portfolio. At first it was use to research conventional film posters to understand the genre's more, then we used to it to research into trailers on 'YouTube'. Although we continued to do this throughout the year to find elements that we could successfully add to our trailer.

Youtube was our most helpful use of technology as we were able to view new horror/physcological trailers that were recently coming out in cinema's and see how we could conventionally improve.

Digital Camera

After the making of our plot synopsis, we then had to story board shots for our trailer in order to make our animatic. To do this we chose specific shots e.g Long shot of Mary in forest and then went out with the digital camera in the location. By using the digital camera we were able to practise the technique in taking shots so we knew what to expect when we went and filmed it and what we could improve on.

Adobe InDesign/Premier

The editing programmes that we used in our production was Adobe InDesign for the creation of my film magazine front cover and film poster. From already using this programme in AS I was already familiar on how to use it and therefore was able to do it in quicker time.

Although, as a group we were knew to the editing programme Adobe Premier, which was used for the editing of our trailer. Jordan was the most experienced in this programme as he has been using a similair editing programme at home, therefore we were able to give him instructions on our opinions and he would make the changes. This programme allowed to use a vary number of effects on our trailer to make it seem realistic with real film conventions.

Paintshop Pro

I mainly used paintshop pro in the making of my film poster and magazine front cover. When taking photographs to use on these texts, in order to make it look effective I had to remove the background to get rid of any mise en scene and make it white. An example of this is below.

Video Camera/ Tripod

The video camera was the one new technology that we had to be introduced too. After a minority times of using we than began to get used to filming by making small short viedos to help us get used to the camera and the fixture of the tripod.