Senseless - Final Film

Senseless Final Radio Trailer

Final Poster for 'Senselesss'

Question 1

Question 2

Question 3

To listen to the audio, please turn the volume up.

Question 4

Question 4 written form

Question 4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Throughout the production of my coursework, I have used a variety of media technologies.

For my research, web 2.0 was used a lot as I used the search engine ‘Google’ to conduct research. One of the first online tools I used was SurveyMonkey in order to get feedback on my surveys regarding my film and ancillary products. This was useful to use as I could enter the questions into the boxes and SurveyMonkey would generate the questions for me automatically; these ranged from rank questions to open and closed questions. This was very good as I saved a lot of time, especially as SurveyMonkey automatically creates results, tables and charts depending on the responses you get from your survey. This allowed me to save time and analyse my findings rather than creating charts and doing it on our own. I was able to put this on my blog using embed codes which I didn’t know how to use before.

I used Snapchat and Whatsapp throughout the process too; two very popular social media apps especially among our target audience. I could use Snapchat in order to create a focus group, as I knew that my target audience would always be using this app no matter what. This helped me gain audience feedback and answers to my focus group, which helped to construct our products based on feedback. Furthermore, Whatsapp and Snapchat both have sharing facilities where people can share links, photos and more. This was useful when handing out my surveys on SurveyMokey as people who knew other people of the same or similar age and would participate in the survey too. This way, it is also creating word of mouth advertising as people know that soon a new horror film would be coming out. I also used Whatsapp in order to create a group chat between myself and my group members. This made it easier to communicate as we didn’t have to meet up all the time for small things we needed to confirm on, and also was efficient in reminding everyone to bring in the right equipment and props when we were filming. This supports the uses and gratifications theory as we use the apps when we need to.

Digital technology and Web.20 also helped me when conducting my research, doing textual analysis and planning for my product. I used YouTube and Vevo to do textual analysis of short horror films similar to my subgenre. For example, when I analysed the short film P.S and the opening sequence for ‘Orphan’. This provide me with a high quality resolution, and having strong WiFi, the videos didn’t always buffer, which helped my work to be of a high standard and helped me analyse every aspect within the frame. I was also able to use embed codes to upload these to my blog which was fast and easy. I also used YouTube myself when uploaded videos such as my focus groups or my preliminary task, which was useful as it was easy to access via embed codes and URL links.

Using Microsoft office throughout the coursework was very beneficial as using Word Document allowed me to plan my research and planning before I uploaded it onto blogger.  I also used PowerPoint to enable me to create interesting looking PowerPoints to make my presenting skills better. However, I used SlideShare, an online word document and PowerPoint sharing website to upload my documents and then used the embed codes to put it on my blogger website, as blogger did not allow me to upload the documents by itself. . Also the fact that I had used a Windows based laptop most of the time was fortunate because any lost work got automatically saved. The fact that photos and files were easy to access made the production of my coursework less time-consuming. Also, as it was easy to access, I could easily transfer my notes onto the various software that I used.

I also used other presenting software such as PowToon, Filmora Pro, Kizoa, Slideshare. in order present my evaluation because they were simple to use and less time consuming. They allowed me to present my work in fun ways. I also used PowToon in order to represent some of my research and findings so that I don’t always use the same packaging and presentation software and so that I can learn of other different techniques as I go along the course.

To present documentation, for example in my research or planning of the actors, location and equipment contracts, I used the app called ‘Tiny Scanner’ on my phone. This allowed me to upload images as PDF files which was useful as I did not have to retype or reformat my original work and ideas in a different way.

I used iMovie to edit focus groups and the first preliminary task where we recreated a scene from the horror movie ‘Identity’. This was useful as it allowed us to cut and use filters that we could find easily and helped us be familiar with some editing tools, so that when we use Final Cut Pro for our final short film, we would know how to trim, cut, use transitions and more. We also did the same with a sample of our animatic storyboard as we were able to cut pictures, insert sounds and use different FX such as fade ins and fade outs. Although of course using Final Cut Pro was harder as it was a professional edition software, but I eventually got used to it as I explored all the tools such as distorting sound and blade tools in order to cut out unnecessary scenes. For example, in the scene where we filmed a wide shot of both Milas’ talking to each other, I layered both the split footage on top of each other on the timeline and then used the effect called 'draw mask' which enabled me to draw a line through the middle of the screen of the top footage which allowed me to delete the other side of the screen, thus allowing both Mila’s on the screen to be visible. Furthermore, I added the 'prism' filter and 'earthquake' filter on top of the footage when Mila feels like she is malfunctioning to make it look like the footage is shaking and distorted. This is to show how Mila feels before she takes her anti-depressants, as they calm her down after she takes them. In order to show how she calms down, I used the 'cross dissolve' transition and elongated it to the whole footage so it looks like the prism and earthquake effect calm down as she swallows the water with her pills.

I also used the titles 'Fade' and 'Glow' when Mila received texts from people. This was influenced from the television show 'Hollyoaks' as when the characters receive texts, a white text shows up on the screen when they check their phones. This was a good contingency plan as our original idea was to show the actual screen of the phone, but when we started recording, there were coloured lines and fuzzing on the phone screen. This is also a better way for our target audience to read the texts and understand the narrative.

When editing the news reporter's scenes, I added the news filters on top of the footage and entered scrolling text which went to the left to create verisimilitude as the news in real life has this, such as BBC and Sky News. I also added a logo of the news company on the top right of the screen and the pictures of the victims as they would be shown in the news in real life. I had to use my phone in order to take realistic pictures of the two bullies and then used a USB cable to plug it into the computer and then add it in to final cut pro.

In the editing process of our film, we uploaded the footage from our SD cards from the camera to the iMac computers and then imported the footage into Final Cut Pro, which is an editing software that is used usually by major companies to edit blockbuster films. To make efficient use of time, my group and I decided to split the editing into three parts as there was three of us – Mariam would edit the beginning, I the middle and Noshin the end. We would then join all our scenes together in order to create the final product. Therefore, Final Cut Pro was the perfect software tool to use for editing as it allowed us to spend time on equal parts editing.

We used Photoshop CS6 in order to edit our final poster. Although it was very hard at first, we got used to using the main tools we needed for the poster, such as the lasso tool, magic wand tool to cut out bits from the green screen and the selection tool in order to move about our images. I used a variety of news tools as I learned along the way. I also added overlays to the picture on order to create shadows, and decreased the contrast from the artificial lighting on the left side of one of my character’s face to show that she is evil. This allowed me to also change the opacity of the character to make it seem like she is not a real human and is in fact a spirit in Mila’s head. Furthermore, I used the pipet tools to stick to the colour scheme in my poster as the title, hoodie and blood were all the same colour. I also used the magic wand tool to delete all the green screen areas from the images. These tools allowed us to conform to the horror genre. I was then able to save my Photoshop file as a final ‘.png’ image.

We used Logic Pro X to edit our radio trailer. We used tools such as cutting and selecting to distort sound in order to conform to the horror genre. For example when we added Bully 1’s scream, we were able to choose between the one we already had or to re-record one as there was a unidirectional microphone attached to the sound system, which is a microphone which records in one direction rather than all directions. Furthermore, I could use the editing tools to distort the news reporter’s voice and make then copy and paste it to make it sound like a reverb. This allowed us to get a clear and crisp sound of the voice of the characters, the narrator and the ambient sounds in our film. I also had to dub my voice in at the beginning and middle of the film as the original footage was not loud enough. 

We used the Canon E1200 to film our preliminary tasks to give us the practice and allowed us to play with the camera in order to choose the right lens for the right scene. This helped us when making our actual product because we knew how to use the camera properly and were familiar with the different lenses to use. This also helped our planning as we knew exactly which type of camera shots to take; for example we took a mid-shot of Mila walking out of the door and then back in.

Finally, to package my evaluations I have used (wideo.co, explee, PowerPoint, ‘Movie Edit Touch’ and prezi) which allowed to me easily use online tools to put together images, text and voiceovers together, allowing me to create videos and other formats to present my work. This was useful as they were free, online, easy to access and easy to use once you get the hang of it. Wideo.co enabled me to use different images and effects in order to make my presentation interesting and engaging. As Iused a windows laptop for most of my evaluations, I used powerpoint to create slides and exported it as a video. I then edited the video and added my voiceover using Movie Edit Touch, This allowed me to create an audio visual easily. ‘Movie Edit Touch’ is similar to final cut and iMovie which meant that it was a perfect duplicate to use when I was not in school editing my evaluations.

Question 3 written form

Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback? (MUST REFER TO FILM, POSTER AND RADIO TRAILER)

Our target audience fall into the demographic category of D and E, psychographic categories of explorers, rebels and mainstreamers, are the ages of 15+ and are an active audience as they have to guess who the killer is, and we follow a non-linear narrative.

For our main product, participants in the focus groups and survey said that they mainly preferred psychological horror genres, which influenced why we chose our narrative to be a psychological one, as we wanted to give our target audience what they wanted. They also said that they usually associated psychological horrors to be set in the house, and we decided to challenge this convention as our main location was in fact the house, but the murders happen in the woods and not in the house. We did this to make out film stand out from other psychological horror films that do not always use the same conventions. We decided to present our narrative to a group from our target audience and they said they would watch our film.

We presented our pitch of our first ideas of a partially blind protagonist with the rest of the narrative similar to the one we have now. The feedback we received was to analyse different psychological films to enable us to have an idea of how to portray manic depression and a pseudo identity. This helped us a lot as we didn’t have a clue on how to portray this on our character, and analysing movies such as ‘Split’ allowed me to learn that editing techniques such as jump cuts, high angles and glitches could show that a person is not mentally stable. Another suggestion was to have quick flashes of newspaper clippings being stuck on the wall if we wanted to show that there were multiple murders happening in the area.

After our pitch and further feedback, we realised that our target audience is the age of 15+ and that people of this age and the demographics of D and E do not really use newspapers, and so we decided to have footage of a news story from a TV and mobile phone messages instead to represent verisimilitude and realism. This would appeal to our audience as they relate to the film as in this era we now use digital technology and web 2.0 to deliver messages around. We then had the idea of getting WhatsApp messages to replace newspaper clippings, allowing our target audience to relate to receiving texts. This may also make them want to watch our film as they can relate to it.

We had several draft scripts to whom we showed professionals and target audience, and they told us to improve it by adding in more camera shots, and at least a little dialogue so we know what’s going on in the movie and so that it is not completely silent. When editing our final product, I found that there was a point where there was no continuity. This was the scene where there was continuity editing of our main character entering the kitchen to grab the bowl of pasta, however when she is going out her hair is in a ponytail whereas before it was in a bun. To fix this, we added an additional scene where there is a close up of her taking out her hair from a bun, which then helped us fix our continuity. However, her daily morning routine extended our film by 2 extra minutes, and I cut them down but having jump cuts of her routine. For example, I cut from Mila being in the bathroom, then to the kitchen to eat her toast, and then to the corridor where she gets out for work.

Further feedback was that the target audience did not understand the narrative of the story – they didn’t understand that Mila had two identities. To clarify this, we included a wide shot scene of bad Mila interrogating good Mila to kill her bullies as 'revenge' whilst the psychologist asks her questions, but the audience do not know what the revenge is until the end of the film. This creates an enigma code as the audience will question what the revenge is and why she does it but then they will find out during the process of the film.

From audience feedback of watching the bullying scenes that I edited, they said to make it black and white instead of a sepia colour because then it would represent a flashback and show the past well. Also, when they watched the text messages appear on the screen when Mila woke up, our target audience did not recognise that she was receiving texts but instead thought she was sending one. This was useful as this scene engaged with the audience and proved to us that we do have an active audience as we planned instead of a passive one.
When I received feedback from our first draft edit of the film, our target audience did not understand what was happening at the beginning as they could not hear Mila speaking and the music was too loud. In order to fix this, I dubbed my vice in during the scenes and also during when Mila kills the second bullies as they didn't understand why two of the bullies were found at the park and one was in a room chained up. Thus, this lead me to say 'Just do it, kill her, she deserves it' in a whisper and a normal voice overlayed together which creates a scary type of voice in the head. 

We conducted both survey and focus groups to construct our products of a radio trailer, poster and horror film. The survey feedback we got for the radio trailer showed that most people wanted the trailer to be about 1 minute which we conformed to, otherwise they would get bored. Our trailer was a little less than a minute but we gave a little of the plot away and not too much as this is what the audience wanted. For example, we mentioned that there had been two murders but did not mention who the killer is, which creates an enigma code among the audience as they will have to figure out who it is themselves, to which the reception theory can apply too. This is the preferred reading to our product as it’s how we intended it. *Many people thought that there should be spooky and eerie sounds / music throughout the trailer which connotes that it is of a horror genre. To do this, we made our own sounds using a keyboard and changed the settings to ‘5’ which allowed the keys on the keyboard to play distorted sounds. We then recorded and edited this with fast pace editing and the slamming of doors to build up tension in the trailer. The use of these dialogues showed that these are the important parts to our film, for example, the trailer started off with ‘breaking news…’* Many people who took part in the survey also said that they would rather hear the trailer in places such as shops, the radio or on television. However, as we are students and are on a low-budget production, we cannot afford this. What the most votes was on was YouTube. Knowing this, I know that if I wanted to create a campaign for my product, I would release a trailer on YouTube as our target audience is more likely to see it on YouTube because they are young, and it is one of the most used platforms on web 2.0. This is also mainly how mainstream companies release their trailers and teasers compared to independent films.

With further feedback from our scripts, our audience told us that to keep them hooked we should have some sort of distorted voice after the news reporter says “breaking news” in the trailer and suggested that we include a reverb of this. So, to make our product stronger, unique and keep the audience hooked, we included a reverb of the beginning of the newscast and also where the police have found the bullies bodies to connote that this is a significant location in the film, as this is where the dead bodies are found and they do not know how they got there.

Our target audience that took part in the surveys and focus groups told us not to put too much of a plain picture in the poster that we create, which led us to create the poster of two girls facing back to back in the middle of the woods with the title across the top. This however was one of the first drafts of our poster, as so we got feedback to improve it. We planned a few days until we managed to recreate it on Photoshop, which from the audience feedback (from undergraduates) said it looked like we ‘chucked typography all over it’. So, we decided to reduce the typography and move it from ‘all over the place’ on to bottom, as we had to remember that an audience who usually looks at the poster reads it from the top left and makes their way down for more information. Also, we were advised to work with a grid to make everything in line so that it fits within the border and margins. One member of the audience said that perhaps we could include a picture of the main character malfunctioning, not showing if she is the antagonist or the protagonist, and on both sides of her, having the ‘spirits’ as to say, of her personalities, and to change one of the character’s faces to show a clear difference between personalities. Through the three faces in the poster, we created an enigma code as the target audience don’t know if it is three people who are in the poster or if they are just different personalities. The two personalities standing beside the main character also connotes good vs bad binary opposites as they would do in a traditional belief that many people have – a good and a bad angel on either side of you, telling you what to do. In the survey, the participants also said that they would prefer there to be dark colours so that it associates with the horror genre. So through mise-en-scene, we added the colour black for the hoodies that the character wears (in both the poster and the film), and added a dark overlay to make it look like the trees were taken during the night time. We then changed our tagline to ‘Everybody has a good and a bad side’ instead of ‘everybody has a good and a bad side, unfortunately, Mila’s bullies discover both’. This helped to save space on the poster and also made it less mouthy for us to use in our radio trailer. The title and the tagline was a clear link between the two ancillary products, and the images in the poster and the dialogue in the radio trailer link to what happens in the movie, allowing our target audience to make connections and then go and watch the movie as a whole, to complete the questions they may have from the enigma codes that our products send out. And so, the feedback from the post production stages has enabled us to create a stronger product to fit the interests of our target audience.

From the practitioner interview in my research it allowed me to know what the best way to produce a low budget production is and which equipment is the best to produce crisp quality products.

From the analysis of our radio survey responses, I found that many of the participants would listen to the trailer in a variety of places, such as the shops or the radio or on television. What the most votes was on was YouTube. Knowing this, I know that if I wanted to create a campaign for my product, I would release a trailer on YouTube as our target audience is more likely to see it on YouTube because they are young and it is easy and free to access. This was useful in seeing where our target audience are most likely to listen to things.

The feedback obtained from the questionnaires on our poster shows that the audience associate dark colours, mainly black with horror films and posters and that it would be good if we did this. For our audience satisfaction, we included dark colours such as the colours of the hoodies and the trees but kept the font and typography visible and bright by using the colours reds and white.

Furthermore, audience feedback obtained after the dry cut edit of our film was that our target audience didn’t understand what was going on in the film and did not know that Mila has a pseudo identity. In order to fix this problem, we added an additional scene at the beginning of our film where both good and bad Mila are talking to each other on the screen, and where bad Mila wants good Mila to have ‘revenge’ over her bullies. Our narrative here then becomes circular as at the end of the film we are back in the same office where both Milas’ spoke to each other; this time there is a mid-shot of bad Mila looking angry with someone else asking who she is talking to, thus connoting that Mila was imaging her other identity and was speaking to someone else. This made our product stronger as when we did the second audience feedback and reactions, they understood what the narrative was, but our opening titles and credits had been too fast. We then fixed this so they were longer to see at the beginning and the end.

My short horror film goes against Todorov’s equilibrium theory as my narrative starts off with a disequilibrium in the first place and ends in one too. The disequilibrium that starts off the narrative is Mila stabbing the bully to death, and the ending of the short film is of a wide shot and aerial shot of Mila running away and then giving the audience a little smirk. This creates an enigma code as it leaves my audience wondering what happened next and therefore goes against Todorov’s theory because there is no equilibrium in my narrative. This also goes against and Noel Carroll’s quote where he says that a narrative consists of an ‘onset phase, discovery phase and disruption phase’ as the disruption in my narrative has already happened before the onset or discovery phase. This is because the flashback of Mila stabbing the bully is the disruption phase. The discovery phase comes near to the end of my narrative when Mila finds out that she killed her bullies somehow.

The representation of my characters are not in the form of conventional stereotypes. For example, my main character is a girl and is represented as both the antagonist and protagonist. The way she is presented as the protagonist is when she kills off her bullies on order to save herself from being tortured, and when she is being bullied, the bullies are the antagonists. But then eventually at the end of the fil the audience will realised that the positions of these characters have stopped as killing someone is out of the norm and is a very big crime to take someone’s life. Usually women in the films and music video s dress more with their skin showing or have tightly fitted clothes, which would support Laura Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze. However, in my film this contradicts this as the main character Mila, is always wearing something that is a size bigger than hers and nothing that is revealing or provocative. She’s also represented as a normal teen because she wears jeans to school and work. The bullies are represented in two ways – one as over the top and as a conventional bully with her hair tied up, wearing a bomber jacket and being a little hulky. She is the main bully that starts to bully Mila. This portrayed our one very well. Doing research, I found that on films, the convention of bullies is to have one main one and one that is always the little minded one that supports the big-minded one, and this is where bully 2 comes in, dressed in a ‘normal ‘costume. However, we managed to follow a stereotypical convention of a news reporter, which is that they speak formally and dress like it too. This created verisimilitude as this it was presented like how an actual news report is presented.

During my research, some people on my survey had said they like blood and gore in a horror film. Although we included this in our product, we were unsure if it was suitable for our certification of the film which is 15 as there was a shot of the knife inserting the body. I then decided to look at the BBFC criteria’s in more detail and also emailed them about my personal issue. From the response, I realised that our film certification did not need to go up to an 18 as there was not any sadistic violence and gory scenes that carried on for too long, thus making my film suitable for a 15.I also did further research on other products such as ‘Black Mirror’ and found that there are scenes that are more violent and gory than ours that is still rated a 15 and therefore found it suitable to keep to a 15.

Finally, as we are independent film makers, if we were to seek distribution from conglomerate companies such as ones in the Big 6, we would do this through direct communication in film festivals such as the Cannes. This is because they are well known and can help to raise awareness of a new film coming out soon.

Question 2 written form

Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? (MUST REFER TO FILM, POSTER AND RADIO TRAILER)

I used above the line marketing to promote our ancillary products as we used mass media to create a campaign. For example, I used Instagram, a social media app that I knew our target audience use every day of their lives. Using Instagram to promote our product was useful in getting our target audience to realise that there was a potential film coming out. For example, I posted segments of our poster bit by bit to introduce the movie. I would post for example the bottom corner of the poster or the middle, and tag other horror film accounts with a mass audience, and used hashtags which would mean that people who were fans of for example ‘American Horror Story’, their explore page would also have our content in it. This gained the interest of our target audience. In addition, I also created a teaser poster to display and share through apps such as WhatsApp and Snapchat which allowed the news of our new film to travel by word of mouth as people would then start talking about it and helped me build a campaign.

The teaser poster links to the radio as it shows that Mila is not in a right state, just by looking at her angry facial expression. At first, the teaser poster has red eyes on it but then the audience said that they couldn’t notice much of the red eyes. Now, the teaser poster links to the final movie, as what I did was change Mila’s eyes to a rainbow type of gradient and reduced its opacity. This is to link with the film as I used the prism filter on Final Cut Pro every time Mila had a malfunction of depression. This allows my audience to know that there is something wrong with her, and they also preferred it like this as they could recognise that there was something wrong with her. We wanted to keep the teaser poster simple which was influenced by many campaigns with similar techniques such as ‘Avatar’ and ‘Friday the 13^th’. Their campaigns were successful as they tempted their target audience to watch it and gave them a hint of the narrative without revealing the whole plot.

Regarding focus groups and surveys for the poster in our primary research, people mainly preferred the Orphan film poster because it was 'simple'. We tried to make our poster as simple as we can too, for example showing the two personalities of our character on each side of the main character ‘malfunctioning’ with two different facial expressions. Also they thought that the font for the movie name of Orphan was unique and different. Thus, we named our movie ‘Senseless’ as the audience will wonder why this is called senseless even after the release of the film. The audience feedback during research and planning was different to our production as people mainly saw trailers on YouTube or on TV, films in huge cinemas and posters on big billboards. However, as we are a low budget production group, we cannot afford this and so campaigned through social media apps and posters as much as we could.

I used the ‘Z’ formation when producing the poster as the audience who see the poster normally read a poster from the top left to bottom right. This would allow my audience to construct a narrative from my poster, as the top left is light and the bottom right is dark, connoting that these conventional colours could mean a dark horror story. The facial expressions that they see first may also give them this hint. Lastly seeing the title and website of the film will intrigue them to find out more about the movie and keep the name in their minds so that they remember it and watch the movie. Furthermore, the font that we used for our poster was the same fonts that we used in our film. For example, the title of the film on the poster was in the font ‘Cabanyal Z’ and the same was used in the film after the opening titles. This re-assures the audience that they are watching the film that has been advertised to them and they will recognise it straight away. This makes them an active audience as they would remember the poster. This would be our preferred reading of the poster.

With the radio trailer, if people believe they can relate to it then they may watch it using the uses and gratification theory, for example if they aspire to have a job in crime and see what psychological impacts can lead a person to commit murder, therefore a person may watch the film for work. Alternatively they can watch it for escapism or any other reason.

Many people also said they would hear trailer in a variety of places, such as the shops or the radio or on television. What the most votes was on was YouTube. Knowing this, I know that if I wanted to further develop the campaign for my product, I would release a trailer on YouTube as our target audience is more likely to see it on YouTube because they are young and it is easy and free to access. This was useful in seeing where our target audience are most likely to listen to things.

What influenced me to do this was the campaigning that I researched on ‘The Blair Witch Project’. They handed out fake ‘missing people’ posters to real people created fake rumours to make it seem like students were missing in the forest. Through this, their target audience really search to help to find these students through sharing the posters and information about these fictional characters. However once they found out it was a film, they all went to watch it as they thought their campaigning was amazing. This influenced me to make my radio trailer start off like it is a real news story at first, as in my film, Mila finds out she is the killer of her bullies through this. The headlines that start off the radio trailer would connote realism, which assists the placement of the marketing campaign on a commercial radio as it could trick the audience into listening and thinking it is a special news bulletin. This would make my target audience active and engaging instead of being passive. However, the headlines in my radio trailer then become a reverb as the repeated lines of the news reporter repeat with distortion. This is not just to make my product unique, but it also links with the film as the news reporter’s voice is repeated after Mila hears her bullies names and realises that she kills them. Also, within the poster there are 3 faces of the same person, again connoting that there is something wrong with her and that the repetition of the faces mean there is a distortion in her personality. To further connote that there is something wrong with Mila, I tried to match the prism FX to the radio trailer by having static sound and 4 glitches when Mila says ‘everybody has a good and a bad side’ in the trailer. This makes it seem like she is not real and that the her true identity will come out soon in the film as her voice is glitching.

The key element that linked through all three of my products is the tagline which says ‘everybody has a good and bad side’. This is shown in the poster, and in the radio trailer through directly speaking to the audience as our narrator says ‘everyone has a good and bad side… which one are you?’ Again this allows our audience to actively engage in our products. The way this element fits into the film is through showing that Mila has both a good and bad side and that the bad side is the one who kills her bullies. The tagline is therefore made memorable and can help to stick to the audiences’ heads as it is simple and catchy.

Our ancillary products tease our audience in what is interesting in our film and to encourage them to watch it. If the target audience find it interesting and talk about it to people, it would create a word of mouth advertising which would be beneficial to us as it is both free and reaching a mass audience. We would distribute it to well-known cinemas such as ‘Picture House’, ‘Odeon’ and ‘Vue’, and also after it is released we would release it on DVDs so that people can buy the film, thus increasing our gross income.

Question 1 written form

Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (MUST REFER TO FILM, POSTER AND RADIO TRAILER)

I created a short horror film called ‘Senseless’ which falls into the sub-genre of psychological and crime horror. With this, I also created a radio trailer and poster as ancillary products. To summarise the film, it is about a girl who was bullied when she was in school, which leads to depression and a pseudo identity, in which her other identity kills her bullies in revenge. Our certification of this film is 15+ and our target audience fall into the demographic category of D and E, and psychographic categories of explorers, rebels and mainstreamers. We have used, developed and challenged various forms and conventions of real media products in both our film and ancillary products.

Firstly, in horror films, it is conventional to have the binary opposition between the antagonist and protagonist. Usually, the antagonist kills the protagonist, for example, in the horror movie ‘Case 39’ we see the protagonist ‘Emily’ killing the child antagonist. Similarly in my narrative, there is a killing, but we challenged this convention as our protagonist turns out to be the antagonist which kills the other antagonists.

A convention of psychological horror movies is that the weather and lighting is usually dim and gloomy. For example, in the movie ‘The Woman in Black’. The lighting is also usually very low and sometimes uses natural lighting in the winter seasons to make it look dark and help it connote the horror genre. This was done in the film ‘The Abominable Snowman’. The way in which we used this was by filming in the winter where there were short, dark and gloomy days. To reinforce this effect we used Final Cut Pro X and added the FX of ‘cool tones’ to make it look more like it was set in the dark which conforms to the horror genre convention.

Another way we followed conventions is through binary oppositions. Levi Strauss’s theory applies throughout my products. My narrative follows Allan Cameron’s idea of an Anachronic narrative, whereby it consists of continuous non-linear flashbacks throughout the film in order to construct the narrative. An example of a real media text containing an anachronic narrative would be the recent horror movie ‘IT’. Throughout my film, the pseudo identity of Mila and a variety of binary opposites are represented, such as the costumes and mise-en-scene. Examples of binary opposites would be black vs white, ugly vs pretty and of course the common good vs evil. In my horror film, when Mila is killing her bullies she is wearing a black hoodie, but when she is doing her normal routine such as going to work, she is wearing a white hoodie. The normal routine connotes verisimilitude and also to show the differences between the two personalities. These two hoodies are symbolic throughout the film in representing the two different identities that she has. In my poster, the binary opposites are represented through facial expressions. There are two Mila’s on either side of the poster, with the left Mila looking tough and fearless and the right Mila looking scared. These connote different identities and personalities. Stuart Hall’s reception theory can apply here as our audience may or may not correctly decode the meaning we are trying to portray. This links with the horror genre and it’s conventions as it shows us that the modern monster is ‘unspeakable and unknowable’ (Alfred Hitchcock, Psycho, Norman Bates), which is shown through the facial expressions. This also supports John Corner who says that familiarity with the genre can lead the audience to predict events in the genre. In my film, they can predict that the protagonist is the killer.

Also in my poster, the Mila on the right side is under shadows with hardly any light on her. This connotes that she is an evil character as the Mila on the left has artificial lighting put in the corner to make her face seem brighter. Artificial lighting is another convention of horror movie posters, which can been seen in various posters such as ‘Case 39’and ‘Orphan’. For example, in ‘Case 39’ there is lighting coming from the left and in ‘Orphan’ it is used on the middle part of her face which creates shadows on the rest of her face. I used this on purpose to show that the Mila on the right used to be a good character but now she has turned into an antagonist; a convention of posters is that the right side should connote good things coming, but in horror movies it seems to be the opposite. The lighting in my poster was influenced by the Silence of the Lambs poster, where there were more shadows on the right side of the poster as opposed to the left. This creates binary opposition like in my poster. It also supports Paul Auster who says that ‘we construct narratives for ourselves”. For my target audience, they would use the uses and gratifications theory to construct the way in which they think the narrative goes. For example, through facial expressions they might figure out that one character is in a confused state, or has multiple identities.

Steve Neal says that sounds represent how the genre and film are portrayed. This supports our radio trailer as we used different sounds to make it fit into the horror genre. From my studies on real media texts I can see that the conventions of horror movie trailers and radio trailers is that there should be screaming involved, heavy breathing and eerie music. This can be seen in the trailers of ‘The Butterfly Room’ and ‘Mother’ as the trailers conventionally end with screams. My trailer started off with ‘Breaking news, two young girls were found brutally murdered…” and this is how it gave the effect of realism.* What influenced me to do this was the campaigning that I researched on ‘The Blair Witch Project’. They handed out fake ‘missing people’ posters to real people created fake rumours to make it seem like students were missing in the forest. This influenced me to make one of my ancillary products like it is a little real. This would make my target audience active and engaging instead of being passive, which would be a preferred reading for the poster (Stuart Hall). The other convention that I used in my poster was that horror movie posters usually have red and white fonts on it to counter-balance and portray the narrative. The red will usually connote blood and gore and white is purity. I got this from the poster of ‘Emile’ I analysed. I used this on my poster as the title was red and the tagline was white. In addition to the research on conventions of horror, I analysed different short horror films and psychological horror posters; this enabled me to decide what my poster should look like. This links with the Reception theory and uses and gratifications theory as my audience can decode the messages we’re trying to send and use the trailer and poster to determine if they want to watch the movie or not.

Another way in which we conformed to horror movie conventions is through the sound in both our radio trailer and film. Horror movies usually have a long high pitched violin type of sound which builds up tension as it gets louder. We included this in our horror film when the news reporter mentions the bullies name and Mila starts to panic until the CCTV footage is shown on screen. This builds up a climax, allowing the audience to fear violence.

In terms of camera shots and angles, long shots, high angles and close ups are mainly used in my film. This is to connote the vulnerability of the character, but then again show the amount of power and strength they have. For example, there is a close up face when she wakes up, which connotes that she knows more than she looks like. Since she is being bullied and cannot retaliate the bully, she decides to get her own way back – by killing them so the bullying ends. The close ups are also to capture her emotions and connote manic depression when her facial expressions change. This forms to conventions of the psychological horror genre as normally the antagonists show signs that there’s something wrong with them. In the film ‘Split’, the main character suffers from multiple identities and we recognise this when he keeps changing his costumes and attitudes. In my film, the character kind of has a pseudo identity and this is portrayed in the way that the camera captures her slight twitching of the eye or subtle smiling lips. To further re-inforce that there is something wrong with Mila, we filmed a scene where she acts as both good and bad Mila on each side of the screen. The way I edited this was by layering both the footage on top of each other on the timeline on Final Cut, and then used the effect called 'draw mask' which enabled me to draw a line through the middle of the screen of the top footage, allowing me to delete the other side of the screen, thus allowing both Milas on the screen to be visible talking to each other. As she’s talking to herself and then one of her disappears, it’s create the sense of Mila talking to her other personality like the personality is actually in front of her. The audience would feel that there is definitely something wrong with her from the start. This creates our preferred reading. This links with another convention of horror films which is having opening titles in the colours red or white (such as in ‘Orphan’). We conformed to this using the red coloured font in our opening titles.

The typical conventions of a horror movie include blood, gore and killings. I used this in my product when our antagonist stabs her bully to death. This was influenced by my analysis on the short horror film called ABE which was of a robot killing humans because it couldn’t understand their love. It was also influenced by the short horror film ‘P.S’ where the beginning of the film was of a man struggling to walk with blood all over his white shirt and face. In my film, I used this as both bullies have blood all over their clothes and face. I did this using a mixture of fake blood and raspberries to make the consistency thicker and blood-like. Furthermore the mix of both the knife and blood conform to the conventions of the horror genre, and my audience would be able to recognise the iconography associated to the horror genre.

Usually horror films follow Todorov’s equilibrium unless they are a sequel. We have challenged Todorov as our narrative both starts and ends in a disequilibrium ad there is no equilibrium throughout. Another way we have challenged the psychological horror genre is by making the killings take place in a park. Usually for psychological horrors, it is based on an abandoned or haunted house, however in my film the house is to represent normality and the character’s insaneness is represented outside of the house. We shot the house scenes with canted angles which horror films usually do to connote disorientation and confusion, thus this gave the audience a sense that the person who lives in this house is not as normal as she is portrayed at first.

Another way in which I challenged a convention of horror was through my radio trailers as they normally have a high pitched and stereotypical female scream at the end of the trailer. However, in my radio trailer there were the bully’s screams in the middle of the narrative of the trailer but not in the end, as we ended the trailer with “Senseless… in cinemas October 27^th”. Thus, I have challenged and developed this convention by putting the scream in the middle of the trailer after the narrator says “2 friends, 2 murders, 1 knife” instead of at the end. Another reason I did this was to connote that the main weapon used to kill the bullies was through the knife. Although this has allowed me to follow a convention of psychological horror films as the weapons usually include knives and sharp objects like axes.

When I edited the film, I added the 'prism' and 'earthquake' filter on top of the footage to make it look like the footage is shaking and distorted. This is to show how Mila feels before she takes her anti-depressants, as they calm her down after she takes them. In order to show how she calms down, I used the 'cross dissolve' transition and elongated it to the whole footage so it looks like the prism and earthquake effect calm down as she swallows the water with her pills. This connotes that the medicines are create a big impact in keeping her sane, which countertypes what a stereotypical representation is normally – shy, girly and independent. Mental health issues are also mainly associated with elder people, however we have countertyped this and shown that young people as young at 18 can also have severe mental health issues.

More movies are being released where social media is the root for many deaths. For example, in the film ‘Unfriended’, many people die through someone stalking/possessing them through Facebook. The way we developed this in our horror film is through having multiple messages from Mila’s friends on her phone telling her that her bullies have died. Using WhatsApp is a cultural norm among teenager and among our audience, which allows them to relate to getting messages in the film. However instead of receiving scary text messages, Mila gets ‘news’ about her bullies deaths, even though she is the one that killed them. This makes the narrative confusing as the audience wouldn’t know why in one scene she is seen next to the dying bullies and then the next she is seen waking up, until they find out that the nightmares she has was in fact flashbacks from her evil identity taking over her mind. This is our preferred reading as the audience have a restricted narrative of who the killer of the bullies actually is and if the nightmares were real.

Teaser poster

Production log for radio trailer

Production log radio trailer from NoshinJahan

Production Schedule and Log for Film

Production schedule and log for film from m_xch

Production log for poster

Production log for poster from m_xch

Audience reaction to our film

The reason why we chose year 11 students to watch our film was because they are of the age group 15-16 which is the youngest age group among our target audience and age certification for our film. We wanted to see what they thought of our product and if they had any improvements for us. When my group member and I asked them questions, they told us that they really liked the film but the main improvement that they could give was that the sound of both Mila's at the beginning was really low and they could not hear it over the music. In order to make our product stronger, I would re-record her voice to make it sound stronger than the video footage so that you can hear it over the music.
(Press play).

Audience reaction to Senseless & feedback

I decided to get audience reactions and feedback on our film from 3 girls (one who did not want her face to be shown on camera). From the reactions, I could tell that they did jump a few times as they found the film scary.
From one of their reactions, when it is the next day when Mila wakes up and goes to work, she asks if it's the same thing from which I interpreted that she might have thought it was the scene repeating or maybe that she's going out for work again, which is our preferred reading. However the other girl had got the narrative and knew that it was different and Mila was going outside for work again. What I could do to improve this is t add time codes when Mila wake up and goes to work so that they are not confused.
From the questions I asked, the audience really liked the film and also the music and sounds that were used. They said that they found it hard to understand the narrative at first but then got the narrative at the end of the film, which is our preferred reading as our narrative is restricted and the audience aren't mean to know that Mila is the killer at the end of the film.
They also got the fact that we tried to implement the flashbacks of the bullies as nightmares but then it became clearer that in fact they were not dreams but were real.
They also really liked the editing and could see that we did not conform to traditional stereotypical representations of our characters.

The production of our products

Senseless Draft

Producing the radio trailer

I used Logic Pro X to edit our radio trailer

Final radio trailer script

Radio trailer final script from m_xch

We decided not to include a tune similar to 'The Devil is in the Details' as there is too much sound going on in the trailer already, and our audience would not be able to concentrate on every aspect of it.

Introducing a teaser poster & audience feedback

We decided to introduce a teaser poster in order to develop our campaign. We used the shot of Mila at the end of the film to make it look tense and scary and her facial expression shows anger and evil.

I used the quote that we used at the top of our original final poster and put this at the bottom of Mila's face on the teaser poster. As this was too plain to be a teaser poster, I then added '#SENSELESS' and 'COMING SOON' at the top right corner of the picture. This is to connote that this poster is no ordinary poster and it is also being used to promote the actual film so that people can watch it.

After playing about with different filters, I decided to crop out Mila's eyes and play around with the different hues and saturations of it to make her seem inhumane and abnormal to the rest of the human race. I then had two ideas: 1) If I changed the eyes to red then it would conform to the convention of the horror genre as the devils usually have red eyes or are associated with red eyes and so this would be perfect to use as a horror movie teaser poster. However, with audience feedback, people had said that red eyes would be too conventional and boring. I also realised that this would give away the plot of the film, as we wanted our narrative to be restricted to an extent where the audience do not find out that Mila is the killer of her bullies until the end of the film.

This lead to my decision of having a gradient on her eyes. I used the rainbow coloured gradient as an overlay and used the slide bar to change the opacity of it in her eyes. This made it look like there is something weird with colours happening in her eyes. The reason why I chose this is because it links to the film when I edited in the prism FX when Mila's brain starts to malfunction because of her manic depression and pseudo identity, and then she takes the anti-depressant pills to calm her down. This not only connotes that there is something wrong with her but would also attract a further audience as people would wonder why her eyes are like that (my preferred reading, Stuart Hall's reception theory) and then would want to come and watch the film.

Update: Response from BBFC

A few days ago I had emailed the BBFC about our narrative and product as I was unsure if we should rate it an 18 or 15. Sarah from the BBFC education team replied to my email (shown below) and it was confirmed that our short film would be a 15 as it did not include too much gore and sadistic violence. If I were to do this again in the future, I would send my product to the BBFC to actually watch it and decide on it. This would also raise awareness about my product and I could seek help in distribution as they would be familiar with my product.

RESEARCH: 'AVATAR' & 'FRIDAY THE 13TH' teaser poster

After looking at some teaser poster example in real media texts, I have decided to create a teaser poster for my product in order to develop my campaign. I looked at the 'Avatar' and 'Friday the 13th' teaser posters as they were really simple and hardly had any writing on them. After seeing the Avatar teaser poster, it gave me an idea to create one with Mila's eyes shot wide open near the end of the film and to have the title of the movie along the bottom middle of the poster. However, after also seeing how plain and simple the teaser poster was from 'Friday the 13th', I decided to have a shot of Mila's angry face and include the hashtag '#SENSELESS' on the poster instead and 'COMING SOON' to make sure that my target audience understand that it is a film. The poster of Friday the 13th is scary and conforms to the conventions of the horror genre as there is a black background and it is scary as there is just a pain blood mask but we do not know if it is just a mask or if there is someone wearing it in the dark. In my teaser poster, I would have Mila's facial expression as angry on an innocent face which would make it look like she is in a confused state like her confused character.

Campaigning our product

I decided to distribute and campaign our final poster to make it more realistic as this is how the industry would do it. I made an Instagram account to show little teasers of the poster by posting a little section of the poster day by day. This helped to create anticipation among my audience and enigma codes as they would want to watch our film.
The reason why I chose Instagram is because it is a popular social media app and people of our target audience are more than likely to use it and come across our page and wait to watch our final horror film.
The way I tried to get a mass audience was by tagging other bigger horror film accounts, such as 'Insidious' and 'American Horror Story'. By tagging them in my posts and using hashtags it increases a wider mass audience because they will be shown on their 'explore page' on Instagram, making them click to enlarge the image and see what our production is about.

In the future, if we were to campaign our products I would also post little snippets of the radio trailer or like a 3 second clip from the film to grab our target audience's attention more.

Editing the psychiatrist scene

We decided to film this scene where you can only hear the psychiatrists voice but not see her, and the audience can only see the two identities of Mila on screen - the evil and the good.
Bad Mila interrogates good Mila to kill her bullies as 'revenge' whilst the psychologists asks her questions, but the audience do not know what the revenge is until the end of the film. This creates an enigma code.
Mila is frustrated by all the voices and snaps her pencil.

The way we recorded this was through placing the camera on a still position whilst recording on a tripod, and the camera kept rolling as our character swapped over the roles of her identity. In post production whilst editing, I layered both the split footage on top of each other on the timeline and then used the effect called 'draw mask' which enabled me to draw a line through the middle of the screen of the top footage which allowed me to delete the other side of the screen, thus allowing both Milas on the screen to be visible.

Although there were colour changes in the lighting because of the natural lighting coming through the window, I was able to fix this by changing the contrast, hues and saturation on the side bar panel.

To make it look like Mila's evil identity is not real, I cut out small seconds of her clip to make it look like she is glitching like she glitching she gets before she takes her antidepressant pills.

Update: Age rating of our film

Our product was intended to be aimed at the age group of 15+ because our narrative was aimed at the age group who could understand and handle how bullying can lead to serious damage in a person. We also did not want to encourage any of the dangerous actions in our film, therefore our film idea was initially suitable as a 15 rated film. However, with some research on the BBFC website to clarify our thoughts on which age rating it should be, we found that because we have a small scene of the knife inserting the bully, it should be changed to an 18 rated film as people under this age would not be able to tolerate the violence of this scene. If it was to be released to a younger audience, they would potentially be hypodermically injected with thoughts of violence and may carry out the same procedure. This is shown in a real life example of the case of the two boys who killed the 2 year old Jamie Bulger after watching the horror movie 'Child's play 3'. They committed a copycat crime of copying the exact actions that took place in the movie, such as throwing the brick and taking the toddler to a train track. Whilst watching this movie, it lead to the feeling of desensitisation in the boys as they were desensitised to violence and so did not feel any remorse whilst killing the toddler.
We feel that our film is rated 18 instead of 15 because younger audiences may not understand the meaning behind Mila's revenge.

After an email sent to the BBFC by myself, they had confirmed that if our film was to be published then it would be an 18 rated film because of the stabbing scene.
 (click on the image for a larger view)

After Jacob's email, I decided to check the links he had provided me and found this (the following image) in relation to our product:

This made me have a better feeling about our product being an 18 rated film rather than a 15 rated film as our film have scenes of violence in it. Although I was slightly in a confused state and waited for the education team from the BBFC to respond to me.





As I waited, I researched other 15 rates horror films and shows and found that the show 'Black Mirror' Season 3, episode 5 had a similar scene to ours; there as a short clip of the soldier stabbing a person and it showed the process of the knife going in and out of the body like in our horror film.

Therefore we decided to keep the age rating as '15' as we believe that our content is not as violent as for example the content in the horror film 'SAW'. Furthermore, in our narrative, Mila continuously takes anti-depressant pills . If we showed her to be obsessed with these and continuously take them then it may have been an 18 rated film.

Update: Final Script after the introduction of new scene & psychiatrist

Final script from m_xch

Audience feedback for dry-cut edit of our horror film

Update on our thought process: We are going to add a scene where there is psychiatrist (not shown) talking to Mila, asking her questions and then having Mila argue with herself. This is to clarify that there are two identities in one character as our audience at first did not understand that the main character, Mila, had a pseudo identity, and one that was bad and one that was good. To clarify this, and also her reason to kill her bullies, there will be a psychiatrist asking her about how her bullying is going and if she is feeling okay. During this, both the identities will be talking to each other and then the bad one will disappear off to make it seem like she is in her head.

This is similar to my textual analysis on the short psychological horror film 'P.S.' as there is a doctor / psychologist asking the main character personal questions, which allows us as the audience to gain an insight into what's happening in the character's life.

post production / production of poster

open new blank page
upload both final images to photoshop cs6
upload backgeround image of the trees
usemove tool to make it bigger and spread it out on the page

Mariam cropped out the green  screen using the magic wand tool for both images and drag them to the centre.
I then used the magic wand tool and zoomed into the pictures until all I saw was big pixels and removed the remaining green colour which gave the current pictures the fresh 'on its own' look.
Mariam used the 'Move tool' to resize the image and made it slightly bigger.
I copied the layers of the images 2 times and change the opacity and colour overlay by right clicking on the layer, pressing blending options and adjusting what is needed. I chose the colours from the colour scales, so one copied layer was red and one was green for both images. I piled them on top of each other with about half a cm apart from the beginning of the colours. I brought the layers to the back by dragging the layers to the bottom on the right hand panel. the main normal image was in the front. This created my hallucination look.
download fonts 'cabanyalZ' and 'who told satan' from dafont.com.
CabanyalZ used for title and 'coming soon', November 16th'.
'who told satan' font for actors real names, tagline and 'a dark arts production film'
used the move tool all to postiiton them
used the magic wand tool to take out the white bits in my logo design when I placed it on the page. Then I used the 'styles' page on the right to change the colour to a greyish green.
I then uploaded the 15 rated film logo and place on top left using move tool.

Changes from the feedback of the poster:
I used another picture of Bushrah and placed her in the middle of her two identities.
I changed the hue of the background using the blur and saturation tools to make it a dark red / brown background and used the blur tool to blur the trees in order to make the characters stand out.
The tagline font was changed to Time New Roman to make it more understandable and less comical. I also added a gradient effect to the font as grey and white but then was changed by Mariam and Noshin to a deep red and white due to further audience feedback.
I added the drips of blood on the second 'S' of the title using the stamp tool to make it look like there is blood dripping from that one letter 'S'.
I duplicated the layers of both the characters on the left and right twice to change the colour of the hoodies to deep green and red whilst keeping their faces cropped on top.
Mariam finished off the poster with adding a quote on the top of the poster: 'All monsters are human'.
I downloaded the font 'Universal Credits' from Dafont.com and used this for the credits in our movie at the bottom of the poster.
I used the pipet too to match the blood colour to the font and to match it with the same colour as the gradient red on the tagline and red hoodie.

Finally, to make sure that everything would be printed out correctly like the industry would do it, we moved around the imaged after enabling the grid lines and we made sure there were at east 2 bars of spaces between the texts and images.