Questionnaire for Trailer

In order to gain feedback on our trailer, we devised and distributed a questionnaire to see if our trailer was successful in attracting our target audience.

Here is the Questionnaire regarding the completed teaser trailer:

1. Are you?
a. Male
b. Female

2. How old are you?

a. 12-14
b. 15-17
c. 18-20

d. 21+

3. What genre do you feel that the trailer you have viewed portrays?
a. Comedy

b. Horror
c. Sci-fi

d. Rom-com

4. In what ways do you feel that this trailer portrays this genre?

5. Do you feel that this teaser trailer is an appropriate and effective length?
a. Yes

b. No

6. Do you feel that the pace of the trailer was effective?

a. Yes

b. No

7. Would you go and see this film?

a. Yes
b. No

8. Do you feel that our plot reflects a realistic storyline?
a. Yes

b. No

9. Do you feel compassion for the female in the trailer?

a. Yes
b. No

10. Did you enjoy the trailer?
a. Yes
b. No
c. There was room for improvement (if so please state below)

11. Do you feel that the trailer made sense?
a. Yes

b. No

12. Could you suggest any improvements for this trailer?

Here are our results:

These results show us who are feedback was from. From these results you can see that 46% were male and 54% were female. This shows us that we have an evenly mixed gender audience, which means we have appealed to both sexes and will recieve more realistic results as we are not disincluding a certain type from our audience.

These results show me that 46% of our audience were aged between 15-17 and 38% of our audience were aged between 18 - 20. This is our target audience and by gaining their feedback we are able to see if the trailer was effective and attracted out target audience.




These results show us that our trailer was succesful in portraying the genre our film is in as 100% of people asked said they felt hi trailer portrayed a genre horror. This is important in attracting people who are interested in horror films and ensuring that the trailer has a clear theme.

These results help to show us if our trailer had an effective length whilst sticking within the conventions of a teaser trailer. 78% of people asked, thought we had an appropriate and effective length, which helps to attract viewers as it is not too long but gives enough information away.

These results also help to show how effective our trailer was to our audience. This refers to the pace we have created in order to build tension. 86% of people asked thought that the pace was effective, which shows that the pace we created attracted audienced which will encourage them to watch the film.

These results show how effective the trailer was in encouraging people to watch the actual film as a form of promotion. This shows that 90% of people would go and watch the film, which shows our trailer was effective in appealing to our target audience and encouragnig them to watch the actual film.

These results show that 80% of our audience feel that this is a realistic storyline. This is important in engaging the audience as they can relate to the realistic aspects, such as violent relationships.

These results show that 84% of people felt compassion for our female protagonist. This is important as we are using a heorine and in order for this to be successful we need the audience to relate to her and feel that how she acts is the right way.

This is important in seeing how effective the trailer was and if the audience felt engaged by it. 86% of people asked enjoyed our trailer which is important as the trailer is used to advertise the film and in order for people to watch the trailer they need to have enjoyed it. However as it is a distressing trailer some people may not have enjoyed it but would still go to see it, which maybe why 90% of people would go to see it as oppose to 86% of people enjoying it.

These results show that 78% of our audinece felt that our trailer made sense. This is important for our audience to go and see the trailer, as they need an understanding of what the film is. Our trailer uses narrative enigma in order to commuicate our distressing storyline, this is important as in order for people to understand the message they need it to be presented in an equally distressing way, which is evident in Fisher's theory.

Final Editing

After recieving our class feedback myself and Ferne decided to edit our trailer for the final time. We decided to act on our consumers response and extended the trailer title and shorten the phone call to two rings. Another comment was that the screen was black for a while, so we decided to add a flashing image of our main character Sophie on the beat of the two rings. We also extended the green flashes during the exposure of the images, however we only extended them slightly, otherwise the images don't carry the same impact of surprise and confusion. We also then showed our peers the changes to see if it matched their expectations. The feedback we recieved was extremley positive and had the desired impact we intended.

We then exported our trailer and imported it onto youtube so that it is an accessible format for people to watch it.

This is the URL for our trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEsCH7_z8X4

Class Feedback

After our final editing of our trailer we presented our trailer on a large screen in front of our media class, consisting of people aged between 17 and 19. This is effective feedback as these people are in our target audience and we are catering for their needs.

The class presented us with negative and positive comments about the trailer and helped us to see our trailer from another point of view. Here are the positive reflections we recieved from the class:

• Good use of colour and contrast in the flashing images
• Good length for a teaser trailer
• Engaging for the audience
• Presents a plot, but also leaves enough mystery that the audience want to see it
• Emotive as it provoked empathy, fear and sadness
• Instant awareness of the genre
• Good logo
• Music helps to create an emotive atmosphere and fits the genre
• Good and appropriate use of audio including the phone call and one section of filming with audio

Here are the constructive comments we recieved from the class:

• The phone call could have two rings instead of three as the screen is black for a long time
• The green flashes could be extended to show the audience that it is the main character
• The title could be extended slightly

This feedback will help us in our final editing and to meet our target audiences needs. It also helps us to see our trailer from a consumers point of view instead of the creators.

Overall Editing

1st section of editing:
After myself and Ferne had filmed the footage we needed for our trailer we started editing it on the software, Adobe Elements. This allowed us to cut, merge, brighten and use different effects on the filming we had done.

First of all we put our pieces of footage in order to match our storyboard. This allowed us to have a clear vision of what we had and then made it easier to see what we needed to edit in order for it to flow. The filming represented the storyboard, however we felt the love scene let the rest of the trailer down. We decided that Talia, our actress for Sophie, had an acting strength and it may be better if we filmed it from Bowe's perspective. This gave the audience a deeper connection with the characters and also made it seem more professional.

We used the editing tools to see what effects we could use in order to create the most effective trailer. We changed the colours of some images and also used photographs that we had taken of Sophie to help create a more shocking reaction from the audience. Myself and Amy cut a lot of film as we only used the bits that were necessary and effective. This is why when creating our project we used as much film as we can, so that we could edit the best parts.

We feel that we have started the editing process well as we are aware of how to use the software and manipulate it to our advantage, however the trailer needs more editing, as the filming may need to be moved around.

2nd section of editing:

Once myself and Ferne had all our footage together, we began refining and deciding what footage we felt was appropriate and effective for our trailer. When myself and Ferne first designed our storyboard we were very ambitious in our ideas, but due to technical limitations we have altered how we want our trailer to look so that it still looks effective. If we had followed our storyboard precisisly our trailer would have been too long and therefore would not have been a teaser. We feel that for our plot we needed to speed up our trailer to make it more impacting and effective and to capture our target audiences attention quicker. We have therefore decided that the images of Sophie in distress should take up the majority of our trailer, cut up with still photos of her as well, as we felt these are impacting and build tension and will shock our audience. By cutting out the love scene that comes after the phone call to Sophies father, and jumping straight to the horrific images, it disorientates the audience and leaves them in the fear of the unknown. These images and footage also clearly reflect our chosen genre. We have manipulated the images to make them green, this colour connotes an eiry atmosphere, it also reflects possible night vision shots which is closely associated with fear. This colour sharply contrasts with the rest of the trailer, which also works effectively with the quick cut transitions. We have removed the caption, 'How far would you go to save someone you loved?', as we felt that by using three captions we were defeating the impact that the previous two give. As we have previously removed the scene where Sophie's sister comes to save her the caption does not make sense or have relevance. We inserted our production logo, captions and title for the film in the desired locations as well.

Peer assessment:

We then showed our initial trailer to our peers who are the age of our target audience. We asked them to give both positive and negative feedback so that we could improve our trailer to a better standard. Here is what our peers said, and the improvements that Myself and Ferne made where needed.

1. They really liked the flashes of photos of Talia, as they felt that it created tension effectively and made the trailer instantly relate to the genre of horror. They liked the colour contrast between that and the footage as it made them really stand out and also because they where flashed so quickly the audience couldn't see the images in great detail, but the over all impression was given.

2. They said that the trailer was an ideal time, and didn't give away too much of the plot and therefore left them intrigued and built suspense and tension effectively

3. They also said that the caption writing was hard to read straight away, and either we need to leave the whole caption on for longer, so it gives the audience a chance to read it, or change the font. To improve this myself and Ferne decided that we didn't want to compromise the pace of our trailer, because the whole idea of it relies on it being fast enough to build tension and create an atmosphere and therefore by slowing the captions down we loose this effect. We therefore decided to take the caption pages and edit them on Photo Shop to make them easier to read. As the font have a scratch effect put on top of the lettering, we decided to simplify it by removing this by using a paintbrush tool, and therefore leaving just the letters. We also spaced out the words, and lines to that they where easier to read quickly.

4. They said that the caption pages were not on for the correct amount of time, for one it was on for too long and therefore slowed down the pace of the trailer down, and for the other it wasn't on for long enough for them to read. Once Myself and Ferne had changed the caption pages, we then went through the trailer again to reassess the timing. As Ferne timed it I went through and read the captions out loud so that we could ensure that the captions where on for the correct time, and we made changes where necessary.

3rd section of editing:

The next stage in editing was for Myself and Ferne to add music to our trailer. We had intially taken ispiration from 'Last House on The Left' a trailer we analysed through our research. In this trailer they had included the song 'Sweet child of mine' which is a very happy song, this was juxa posed with sinister gory and violent images of people being hurt or brutally murdered. We felt this was effective as it made the audience activlely be involved in the trailer as normally when music starts in a trailer it automatically sets the tone and people often arnet required to question it. By including a happy song contrasted with horrific images, it makes the audience question what they see and therefore makes the trailer more memorable. As myself and Ferne have decided to cut the happy shots at the beginning of the trailer, the music that we where going to use for this- 'Brown Eyed Girl' was no longer appropriate. We had also intended to use a version of 'Little Lies' that we found online, and we found the sound track called 'The End'- by John Murphy which is used in sections of 'Last house on the left'. When we began to experiment with these differnt sound tracks we intially decided that we would use both 'Little Lies' and 'The End', once we began trying to do this we decided that it wasn't effective as it ruined the flow of the trailer. We then tried to use each track seperatley and found that 'The End' was the most effective one as it built tension and didnt distract from the footage itself. We edited it so that in vairous places we increased/ decreased the sound to add tension, or to allow for Sophie to talk. We also edited the sound so that the captions went in time with the music, we also muted all other elements of the footage except the end where Sophie is crying.

We recorded a phone call to go at the beginning of trailer using a voice recorder. We initally got transmission signals from the phone call on the recorder so had to re record what we did. We uploaded it on to the computer and cut sections out to make it shorter and flow properly.

Editing

Once myself and Ferne had all our footage together, we began refining and deciding what footage we felt was appropriate and effective for our trailer. When myself and Ferne first designed our storyboard we were very ambitious in our ideas, but due to technical limitations we have altered how we want our trailer to look so that it still looks effective. If we had followed our storyboard precisisly our trailer would have been too long and therefore would not have been a teaser. We feel that for our plot we needed to speed up our trailer to make it more impacting and effective and to capture our target audiences attention quicker. We have therefore decided that the images of Sophie in distress should take up the majority of our trailer, cut up with still photos of her as well, as we felt these are impacting and build tension and will shock our audience. By cutting out the love scene that comes after the phone call to Sophies father, and jumping straight to the horrific images, it disorentates the audience and leaves them in the fear of the unknown. These images and footage also clearly reflect our choosen genre. We have manipulated the images to make them green, this colour connotes an eiry atmosphere, it also reflects possible night vision shots which is closely associated with fear. This colour sharply contrasts with the rest of the trailer, which also works effectively with the quick cut transitions. We have removed the caption, 'How far would you go to save someone you loved?', as we felt that by using three captions we were defeatinng the impact that the previous two give. As we have previously removed the scene where Sophie's sister comes to save her the caption does not make sense or have relevance.

Third Shooting Hour

On Thursday the 19th of November, both myself and Ferne gathered Joe and Talia together to film the shots that are of Sophie discovering images off Bowe's computer and the shot at the front door at the end with Sophie's sister (Juliet). Initially me and Ferne had planned to do the shot of Sophie sitting watching a TV and finding a DVD and Bowe's T shirt, putting the DVD into the TV and crabbing quickly from an over the shoulder shot of Sophie watching the DVD to the facial expressions of Sophie and Bowe out of focus standing in the doorway behind her. But due to the fact that me and Ferne couldn't find a DVD for the character Sophie to be watching we decided to change it to her looking at his laptop. We then sourced images from various places such as a previous horror film called 'Murder Set Pieces'. We filmed in the same location that the scenes where Sophie s tied up and beaten in, to add continuity and so that the audience can recognise the location. It also appears as a domestic setting, which from our questionnaire we discovered that our audience would find most scary. We sourced these images from the Internet as obviously we wouldn't of been able to create them ourselves, but they are vital in portraying our plot and genre. Due to limitations on the equipment we had available to us, unfortunately our crabbing wasn't very steady as we had to improvise and use what was available to us. We therefore fashioned a dolly out of a tripod and a small desk with wheels. But again we feel this wasn't steady enough and didn't create our desired effect so we decided to cut the crab. As the cameras lenswasn't wide enough we where unable to create our shot that we desired and therefore had to change our pan slightly to make it so that we could go from an over the shoulder shot looking over Sophie's shoulder to a shot looking at Bowe in the doorway. We also decided to remove the shot of Sophie finding a bloodied t shirt as we felt once we started to film it, it didn't look right and didn't actually add anything to our trailer so we decided to cut it. We then began filming our second shot that we where going to film by the front door of my house. This shot is of Sophie's sister (Juliet) getting to the door and Bowe opening the door with a knife behind his back. We had initially planned to do a distant shot where you can see Bowe answering the door and see Juliet on the other side of the door way, but when we tried to do this, you could not see Juliet at all and therefore we decided to improvise and film from a higher angle where you could see better. We felt this looked more effective as it gave Juliet less status and authority implying she is weaker than Bowe.

Creating Our Title

Myself and Ferne decided that we wanted our title of our film to be simple but impacting. We wanted our logo to portray the genre of horror so that our target audience can instantly tell the genre of our film by reading our title.




Here is the 1st Title that myself and Ferne designed. We used a black background to portray a dark element of the film, we used white lettering ontop of this to add contrast and therefore make it stand out more and easier to read. This font is called 'Northwood High'- from dafont.com. We decided to use a font that is broken in areas to give it a weathered look. We felt that this design although it does portray a sinister look wasnt appropriate as the lettering is too neat.

For this title myself and Ferne again used a plain black background to portray a sinister look contrasted by white lettering to make it stand out. We used 'Northwood High' for the 'White Lies' title and 'Scratch' font for 'coming soon' we feel that although both fonts are weathered, the 1st font still appears to neat compared to the second one and isnt as scary as the top one.

This is our final design. We feel that this is the most effective as it reflects our genre well due to the distressed nature of the font. It is very simple and easy to read but also has personality and isnt too boring. The font is impacting as it looks as if its been carved, this gives it character and life. It could also be interpreted as similar to a child's handwriting, which connotes innocence. This is in sharp contrast with our film and therefore creates a twisted and more emotional connection with the trailer.

Editing

After myself and Ferne had filmed the footage we needed for our trailer we started editing it on the software, Adobe Elements. This allowed us to cut, merge, brighten and use different effects on the filming we had done.

First of all we put our pieces of footage in order to match our storyboard. This allowed us to have a clear vision of what we had and then made it easier to see what we needed to edit in order for it to flow. The filming represented the storyboard, however we felt the love scene let the rest of the trailer down. We decided that Talia, our actress for Sophie, had an acting strength and it may be better if we filmed it from Bowe's perspective. This gave the audience a deeper connection with the characters and also made it seem more professional.

We used the editing tools to see what effects we could use in order to create the most effective trailer. We changed the colours of some images and also used photographs that we had taken of Sophie to help create a more shocking reaction from the audience. Myself and Ferne cut a lot of film as we only used the bits that were necessary and effective. This is why when creating our project we used as much film as we can, so that we could edit the best parts.

We feel that we have started the editing process well as we are aware of how to use the software and manipulate it to our advantage, however the trailer needs more editing, as the filming may need to be moved around.