The document summarizes an A2 media evaluation for a short teaser trailer created by the author. The teaser trailer featured an all-male cast, challenging the typical damsel-in-distress trope in horror films. Storyboards and viral marketing on Facebook were used to plan shots and gather audience feedback. Based on feedback, additional shots were added to make the teaser more tense. Editing software and camera equipment allowed the trailer to be professionally edited in HD quality.

1. A2 Media Evaluation Kieran Mackender

2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? In our A2 media production, we where asked to design a short teaser trailer clip. In this clip, we decided we would be a little bit original and go away from the damsel in distress, female characters, to an all male cast. We chose to do this to try and give another light on horror movies instead of female characters always the ones in trouble, we show that male characters also are just as vulnerable. Most trailers and horror films these days will always consist of the male killer, and the female characters. A great example of this “Scream”. This film would be a great comparison to our media teaser trailer as we have an all male cast as well as a male killer. The trailer itself uses a lot of advanced editing techniques and is put together just like a professional teaser trailer.

3. Storyboards Our storyboards helped us plan the way we were going to shoot our trailer. Although we changed bits of its, the storyboard is already in a lot of detail so that we knew exactly what we were doing, which camera angle and where we were doing it.

4. Storyboards

5. The Viral Marketing Campaign Once we had designed the first stages for our page we invited our friends on “Facebook” to watch, and give feedback on our video. I also designed a questionnaire to construct feedback for advice on what we needed to do and how we could improve our teaser trailer. We took in all of this feedback and edited our clip and added quality sound at appropriate times. (Above) early stages of the Viral Marketing campaign with the first design of the “Dismissed” page.

6. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? Our poster and website design are based around the teaser trailer. Both of these have stuck to a consistent colour scheme of red and black, this symbolises danger and destruction, but most of all, blood. In out film trailer, we have used a scene where a bloody hand rubs down a window, we have used a shot of this in our film poster. We have decided to do this so that you can clearly see that our film poster and film trailer are related. As one of our main marketing campaigns, we decided to make a group on a social networking site (Facebook). As a result of this, we got a lot of people to join this group and look at our trailer and give back some constructive feedback. Unfortunately we didn’t really use much viral marketing other than our Facebook group. This did do the job of letting an audience view, comment, and most of all give us feedback.

7. What have you learned from your audience feedback? Our first round of audience feedback was very constructive and helpful. After we heard from them we decided to go out and improve our teaser trailer by introducing more shots but also interesting. We introduced a POV (point of view) shot showing the victim somewhat running away from the killer then falling, showing the killer just behind him. We done this because it made out clip a little bit more tense. To the left is a photo of the questionnaire that I used for the research. From the results, we used the feedback to make our trailer and to build our trailer.

8. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? As we finished our film trailers we needed to do a lot of editing using several programs. We used Sony Vegas Pro 9 which is a video editing kit that we could crop, edit and use to make our trailer look very professional. We used a HD camera for good quality picture and sound, but also to show each detail in HD. We had several goes with the editing software and made three or four rough cuts. At the end, we chose to go with the Sony Vegas and make our editing very much advanced. Other equipment that came in useful for us was the use of the tripod. The tripod came in to place at vital stages throughout our teaser trailer production to help us keep the camera still. On the right is the final product of our Teaser trailer which is edited and completed.