How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Video camera; The first piece of technology we used during the construction of our trailer was a video camera. This was arguably the most important piece of technology we used during the whole process of creating our trailer, this was due to the fact it allowed us to film the footage included in our trailer including the variety of camera shots and movements we used. We already owned the camera ourselves which proved to be extremely useful when filming. This was because it meant that we were already familiar with how to use all the functions on it. It also meant that we were able to film wherever and whenever we liked without the time restriction of borrowing a camera from school. Due to the hectic time schedules of everyone involved in the construction of our trailer this was the most useful feature of using our own camera. The high definition feature was also significant to our trailer as it allowed us to film clear pieces of footage which would create realism for our audience as well as allowing us to create a realistic trailer. We opted for a variety of steady and hand held footage as this was what is most commonly seen in thriller trailers. Hand held footage was used to mostly create POV shots. For example during the second half of our trailer we included a POV shot of the antagonist peering round a bush as our protagonist was entering her house. We felt that this piece of footage was extremely effective at creating panic as it put the audience in the antagonist's shoes, which allowed them to see the panic on the protagonists face as she turned around first hand. This sense of panic is a conventional feature of a psychological thriller, which is why we felt the inclusion of these types of shots vital to our trailer. Furthermore we also used a tripod to create steady shots and camera movements. This was most commonly used during the first half of our trailer as the steadiness  of the footage connotes tranquility and stillness in the environment which we felt emphasised the verisimilitude. It also allowed us to create a range of shots used as a high angle on the protagonists crying in her bathroom covered in bruises which is very stereotypical of a thriller as it creates a sense of vulnerability and weakness.

Digital camera; In order to create crisp images for my film magazine and poster I used a HD digital camera. I already owned a professional camera used for photography, which again provided useful in knowing how to use it and get the best results. This was important for these tasks as it meant I could make these look as realistic and professional as possible.

Voice recorder; A voice recorder was also used during the construction of our trailer as well as the planning stages. During planning we decided that in order to talk about our target audience in the most effective way we would film us drawing a mind map on our phones, speed this up and include a detailed voiceover explaining and developing these points. We felt that this was an effective way of presenting this information as it provided an alternative and arguably more interesting way of informing everyone of our intentions. Furthermore, the voiceover was used one again in the production of our trailer. We got our protagonist, Lewis to record himself saying 'strike one', 'strike two' and 'strike three'. We played this at various parts throughout the duration of our trailer. We made sure to play it over particular actions that our protagonist did such as phoning the police in order to make it seem as if he was threatening her. The strikes also act as a count down, inferring that his patience is running out with her and also builds up the tension to our last shot which is of an unknown hand pulling out a knife from the draw. We also made sure that Lewis' voice was very intimidating and also monotone in order to instil a sense of fear in our audience.

iPhone; Another piece of hardware that proved to be essential was my iPhone, as I used this in all stages of creating my trailer. During research and planning I was able to access various applications such as the internet, Youtube and Facebook messenger which allowed me to watch and analyse real thriller trailers which provided me with inspiration and also contact Charlotte, Lewis and Selma who were also involved in this process. I also used my phone to film and take pictures of various things that would aid me during the planning such as the filming of target audience clip and also during research by taking pictures of notes I had made.

Premier pro; We decided to use premier pro to edit our trailer as we had previous experience with using this software from As opening sequence. This software allowed us to manipulate our footage in a variety of ways such as cutting the clips down, adding transitions (fade to black and cross dissolve), increasing the sound and also adjust the speed of the clips to create a slow motion effect. A key example of this would be at the start of our trailer when we slowed down a clip of our protagonist flipping her hair back behind her shoulders. We felt that this was very effective as it romanticized the female, which is a common aspect of female characters in thriller films. We were also able to add inter titles into our trailer which is a key feature of trailers in general and the easy nature of the program allowed us to play with what we wanted these to say and where to place them. Allow we had used this software before giving us a large amount of experience, there were several things we didn't know how to do, meaning we had to search this up on the internet. The editing of our trailer was also fairly limited as it was saved onto a memory stick, which the school's computers being the only ones accessible to us with the software on. This meant we had to use lesson time effectively and find times to meet up during study periods to edit.


Photoshop; Photoshop was crucial in enabling to me create the most effective and professional poster and magazine possible. Although I had little experience with this program, I often used the internet to develop my basic skills when creating the secondary tasks as well as our production company logo. When creating my film poster I started off by using the 'quick selection tool' to cut around the outside of my close up shots in order to eliminate the unneeded background. After this I began adding in 3 rectangles that would fill the whole width of my page in order to use the 'create clipping mask' tool. This allowed me to make sure my images were evenly spread across the page due and perfectly fit the rectangles I had set out before hand. This provided me with a perfect base for my poster. From here I began adding gradients to make sure the pictures faded perfectly into the black background as well as turning down the opacity on the brush tool to disguise this fade more precisely. After this, all that was left to do was add in the essential pieces of text that appear on film posters. This included the title, slogan, billing block, ratings, actors names, release dates and also social media pages. In order to make the title and slogan stand out from the rest of the text, I added a bevel and emboss as well as a drop shadow on the title. I felt like this gave a better effect to the text and made the poster seem more interesting and professional overall.

Youtube; I used youtube in multiple ways both as a viewer and a creator. Youtube allows you to watch, share and upload videos onto one social media page and receive comments and feedback from other people using the website. This was the place I used to research different thriller films, before planning my own initial ideas. Many production company's upload their final trailers to this website meaning it was easy for me to find a variety of trailers as well as being a good place for me to upload my own drafts and final copies. We also used youtube to find music for our trailer as we found there was limited music on other websites such as 'bensound' and 'freemusic' that did not fit our trailer.

Powerpoint; I used Microsoft powerpoint in various parts of my planning to create presentations, such as my pitch and to also note down my ideas in general. I am extremely familiar with this programme which enabled me to complete tasks quickly and easily. I also found that powerpoint enabled me to crop images and save them as a whole new image which was not possible on other applications such as word. This was useful during planning and research as it allowed me to include specific parts of images to back up the research I was finding or the ideas I had.

Prezi; I used prezi multiple times to create powerpoint for my research. This website is a good place to view and publish presentations on a wide variety of topics. I found that this was the best way for me to put all of my ideas in one place on existing magazine covers and posters.

Social Media; Social media is a very important part of our everyday lives and the development of it in recent years has been extremely rapid. I used different websites such as Facebook and Facebook messenger to communicate with the actors in my trailer as well as the other person working with me in my group. Using group chats meant that we could discuss all of our different ideas and opinions and also find times to meet up and complete tasks.

Freesound; I used 'freesound' to search for different sound effects and music. Although we were unsuccessful in using this website for finding music, we did find different sound effects that we felt perfectly fit our trailer. This was a very useful website as it meant that we could easily and freely download a large variety of music/sound and experiment with different ones.

Timeline of trailer

0:02 - age classification
0:04 - production company logo
0:08 - extreme long shot of location
0:13 - long shot of male and female talking and laughing on a bench
0:20 - mid shot of male and female on a date in a restaurant
0:24 - long shot male and female walking, holding hands
0:26 - inter title ("Best British film of the year"- the sun)
0:30 - mid shot female and her best friend talking about much she is in love with the male
0:32 - inter title ("Gripping from beginning to end" - Empire magazine)
0:34 - long shot female walking along the path alone when a car starts pulling up behind her
0:36 - mid shot of female noticing the car next to her
0:37 - mid shot of male asking female for a lift home
0:38 - mid shot of female accepting the lift home
0:42 - slow motion long-mid shot of female getting in the car
0:45 - inter title (When love turns sour)
0:53 - long shot with night vision effect of a camera looking into females window
0:56 - similar long shot to above
0:59 - POV long shot of female entering her house
1:01 - mid-close up of female looking over her shoulder before entering house
1:02 - mid shot of male putting up a picture of the female on his wall
1:04 - mid shot of male in his car using a camera to take photos
1:05 - over the shoulder close up of female looking out the window
1:06 - extreme long shot of male shining a torch up at the females window
1:09 - mid shot of male looking through the females social media on a computer
1:10 - extreme close up of his eyes flicking through a phone
1:11 - mid shot of female putting on lipstick in the mirror
1:12 - close up of Lewis ringing female's phone
1:13 - mid shot of door opening to reveal female sitting in her room at her desk with her back to the camera
1:16 - mid shot of male completing his picture collage on his wall of the female
1:21 - panning close up of all of the pictures
1:22 - low angle of male rolling up sleeves
1:23 - low angle of male rolling up sleeves
1:24 - low angle of male rolling up sleeves
1:25 - male stepping back looking at his collage
1:31 - panning close up of collage
1:33 - close up of male's sinister smirk
1:34 - high angle long shot of female turning in bed
1:36 - mid shot of male pulling female back down onto the bed as she tries to get up and leave
1:37 - close up of bruise
1:38 - high angle of female sitting on the bathroom floor crying, holding her bruises
1:40 - mid shot of female washing face when she spots the male behind her in the reflection of the mirror
1:41 - mid shot of male knocking on her door
1:43 - close up of male trying to open the locked door
1:46 - close up of females terrified face
1:48 - close up of female dialling 999
1:49 - mid shot of male sitting in car listening to the call
1:50 - close up of males phone
1:53 - high angle of female sitting on her bathroom floor
1:54 - mid-close up of knife being pulled out of a draw
1:59 - inter title - Title (Fixation) appearing letter by letter
2:04 - POV close up of male and female fighting
2:07 - inter title - institutional information
2:10 - inter title - October 29 (release date)

Magazine cover draft

Theories applied to my trailer

Stuart Hall's reception theory
Stuart Hall stated that an audience can have three different readings of a text depending on their views and social positioning. These include a preferred, negotiated and oppositional reading. The preferred reading means that the audience receives the same reading from the text that the director intended, negotiated means that there are some similar aspects to the directors intended reading, however there may be some differences, whereas an oppositional reading means they completely reject the initial reading.
The preferred reading of my text would be that the audience finds some similarities between the protagonist and themselves, which allows them to to experience the most effective 'thrill' from the film.
A negotiated reading would be that the audience is heavily interested in thriller films and respects the conventional aspects we have included, however they believe that the focus on romance at the start is not effective among the thriller genre.
An oppositional reading of my trailer would be that the audience doesn't understand the complex storyline and twisted nature of the antagonist, so therefore is very ineffective as a psychological thriller and having an impact on the audience.

Tzvetan Todorov
Todorov's theory states that most plot lines follow the same 5 step pattern, shifting from a state of equilibrium to a section of disequilibrium, to finally a return to the equilibrium. This relates to my trailer as it begins with a state of equilibrium where the protagonist and antagonist are seen to be in love and completing a variety of romantic activities together, which reflects a calm atmosphere. This is then disrupted when the antagonist is seen to become increasingly controlling over our female protagonist. This increase in dominance and power is displayed as our trailer plays through, building in tension and adrenaline. Although the audience never see the restoration of the equilibrium in the trailer, due to the common feature of a cliffhanger, the film would show that the female protagonist has escaped his control, allowing the characters to return to a state of equilibrium.

Levi-Strauss 
Levi-Strauss argued that there are binary opposition created in many plot lines. This can be applied to my trailer as it clearly states the common binary opposition of good vs evil. The female protagonist is presented on many occasions to be 'good', through the use of high angles, close ups and mise-en-scene which portray her as the victim, gaining her sympathy from the audience. The male antagonist on the other hand is heavily portrayed as 'evil' due to his increasing domineering actions and violent nature towards the female.

Roland Barthes
Barthes agued that there are 5 codes integrated into any narrative. My trailer uses both the enigmatic and action code in order to be true to a thriller film as well as making my text more applying to the target audience. The enigma code relates to the mystery in the text, leaving the audience with question. Our thriller uses this when a mid shot of an unknown hand pulling a knife out of a draw is shown at the end of our trailer. This leaves the audience wondering whose hand it is and whether the female protagonist actually makes it out of the situation alive, which therefore increases interest in our film. On the other hand the action code refers to sequential elements of action in a text. This is shown in our trailer when the male antagonist is violent towards the female, this can be inferred through the use of close ups of bruises and mid shots of him pulling her back towards him violently when she tries to walk away.

Annotation of my magazine front cover

Second draft of our trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W9TQnJvgKE

Merchandise

Whilst we were in the production stages of our trailer, I decided to look into merchandising. This is a common way for brands and films to promote themselves and their products. Merchandise is commonly in the form of t-shirts as this is a casual item of clothing that could go with any outfit and can be worn on a day to day basis. T-shirts would also be popular with our young adult target audience, as they would want to keep up with the latest trends and use alternative ways to express themselves and their interests through their clothing. Audiences purchase merchandise in order to show their support for the brand or product, so by creating our own merchandise I believed this was a good way of judging the successfulness of our film, as well as gaining us extra revenue and promoting our film. From research I found that many successful films produce merchandise regardless of the genre. An example can be seen below of 22 jump street compared to our own merchandise we created.