Role Of the Distributor.

In this Industry, a film needs to be distributed properly and distinctly targeting its audience. There are all kinds of distribution company's which go for different genres of films. Momentum Pictures is a successful distribution company that has a turn over of around 30 million a year. Their ideas have changed from buying greater costly films which could offer a greater chance of being successful and cost efficient in the UK volatile market, to going for the bigger risk and expanding the business by buying films that are broader in genre and could be a big risk to income, but at the same time could bring great success to the larger company's by being more versatile.

Obviously there will be lots of different niches of audiences interested in certain films, so it is the responsibility of the distributor to hit the nail on the head by targeting the core and largest niche of audiences, while still keeping the others interested and not excluding them from the overall experience. Also, while trying to keep your core target audience interested in the film by distributing it to your best ability, you also want to be able to attract audiences that might not have necessarily been interested in the film to begin with, or who do not always go for that genre. The larger audience you can attract, then the more profit and turn over generated for the company.

The three most important concepts for a distribution company are publicity, advertising and promotion. In this forever changing market and volatile industry it is so competitive. That's why when distributing films you want to make sure you launch it to the best of the company's ability, to make sure you see the benefits of investing in the film to generate the highest profit and see the largest return from it. Film is a big influence of people's lives as it involves you as a character in the film, and is a really good take on real life situations, while putting their own twist on the film itself. If a distribution company can showcase a film to the best of its ability, then it can adopt and change many aspects of other key materials in our lives and not only film.

Film Magazine Cover.

Audience Research.

Audience research results

View more presentations from charholly_x.

Story Boards.

Horror Poster.

Mirrors Poster

Mirrors Poster, a photo by charl_eastwood on Flickr.

One Missed Call Poster

One Missed Call Poster, a photo by charl_eastwood on Flickr.

Total Film Front Cover

Total Film Front Cover, a photo by charl_eastwood on Flickr.

http://imgur.com/a/VL9lA

Groups Initial Story.

A women who is traveling on the train home from visiting her family, is sat with an unusual man. She tries to make conversation with the man but he has no response. She has several awkward moments with the man on the plane, which makes her uncomfortable. When she gets off the plane she collects her luggage and heads home. When she gets home she unpacks her suitcase and finds it is not her belongings and that something of real value is inside the suitcase. She then takes the time to decide whether to hand the suitcase in or keep it. After a long think she keeps the suitcase, and thinks that she has had some real good luck. She was sadly mistaken when she was the victim of horrid torture for making the mistake of keeping the suitcase, which belonged to the mysterious man on the plane. The torture began with just a few noises and odd episodes of events in her home. She then realised that she had made a big mistake in keeping the suitcase, and was going to be severally punished. She is chased by the man in her house, and is caught, where she can’t escape.

Differences between teaser trailers and main theatrical trailers.

A Teaser Trailer is designed to be a smaller version of the Theatrical Trailer. It is therefore created to build up excitement about an upcoming movie, and get people excited about what is to come. A Teaser Trailer tends to be made well in advance of the film being exhibited, and rarely contains a lot of scenes from the scenes as its more likely to be made before the film has even been finished.

A Theatrical Trailer are a way to advertise the film for where it can be exhibited at the cinemas or where it will be screened and so forth. They show clips of upcoming events with in the film. The Theatrical Trailer is normally released when the film is finished, to advertise its upcoming release. It plays normally a few months or so before the film is released and normally continues to run while the film is being exhibited.

Finished Trailer.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

A trailer can not stand alone when trying to attract target audiences to come and watch a film. It is about promoting the film by cross plat-forming, which for our ancillary tasks we did a horror poster and a film magazine cover. When creating a real trailer, you do obviously feel that the trailer is the best way to promote the film, but obviously their are restrictions on who can see these. If people don't see the trailer, then it's hard for them to find out information about the film. With a film magazine, the front cover is the most visible page you see of the magazine as it is the image that is displayed on the shelf, in adverts on the telly and so forth. It cost for some one to have a TV but it doesn't cost for some on to walk into a shop and see the magazine and the cover on the self. It also allows you to go at a different angle to the trailer, in my case my horror trailer was trying to spook the audience where as the film cover was showing a more positive connotation about the main actress who is seen to be happy and smiling, with ambient lighting which doesn't technically connote horror. Also with the horror poster, I wanted to follow the conventions of horror, which one is a lot of close up and identifying with the antagonist. My poster I fell does this as it shows half of the antagonist face and its is extreme close up so you get a real idea of what the antagonist looks like and the character portrayed through the eyes of the camera. The magazine cover doesn't necessarily have to cover the story of the film, in my case I'm talking more about the character and her success, which is indirectly advertising the film, because if you are talking about her success, then she is obviously a high rated actress if we were talking in real terms, so therefore is valued in the film, making the film more appealing.

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

New Media technologies were vitally important in the contruction and research, and planning and evaluation stages of our final Media Products.

Social Network Sites. Social Network sites have grown massivly over the past few years. In particular facebook which from February 2012 has more than 845 million active users, and Twitter which 300 million users as of 2011. For its growing popularity we decided to use Social Network sites such as Facebook and Twitter to promote and advertise our Final Products. Through having thousands of friends and followers in our group consisting of 4 members, we were able to capture people mostly of our age, to complete our audience research which we did on Survey Monkey. This was a good technique as it showcased our survey to many friends on the Social Network sites, so conduct thorough target

audience research. As all of oru group are familiar with the Social Network sites, we found this one of the most rewarding technologies that we used, and had no difficulties using these sites to help us in the stages to completing our final Media Products.

Adobe Photoshop. Working with Adobe Photoshop is not something that is unfamilar to me or any of my group members. We have come into contact with the programme many times in AS Media Studies when making our first ever College Magazine Cover and our Music Magazine Cover, Contents Page and Double Page. In A2 Media Studies we used Adobe Photoshop to complete out Ancillary Tasks which were our Film Magazine Cover and Horror Poster. I feel my ability to complete a task to a good standard on Adobe Photoshop are still at a similar level, but AS was the year that I was still familiarsing my self witht he programme, so was more time consuming when making my Final Products for AS. This year, in A2 I would not say that my Ancillary Tasks are at a majorly higher standard than my AS Final Products. The major difference is the time in which it took to complete the Final Products for both years. In my AS year it took me around a month or so to complete all the products, if not longer. Where as this year, in my A2 class it took me only a week to create my Ancillary Products. This is not to say that I did not put as much effort in, I was just more familar with the programme and did not need to test certain applications out, as I knew what worked for me with regards to my taste in how I like my Final Pieces to look, and what didnt.

Flickr. When analysing still images Flickr has been a helpful product to neatly organise my analysis of Magazine Front Covers, Horror Posters and all the Music Covers, Posters and so forth. Flickr allows you to change you the style in which you complete tasks, so instead of just writing a large chunk of analysis, it allows you to select certain aspects of an image, then write detailed descriptions and details about the image, which make it a more overall experience. Also Flickr allows you to link the images to your blog, so that when the examiner comes to mark your work, he can see that you have not only used a small amount of technologies to complete your work, you have thought, considers and put into practice other technologies to make your work more vaired and interesting. Also, Flickr made it very easy for me to create my other Final Products that I made on Photoshop. It did this by allowing me to analyse professional work critically and then take all that quantified and qualified analysis then put it into practice on my work. for example I analysed Film Magazine Covers on Flickr and Horror Posters on Flickr. This was very vitally important for me as it allowed me to look into the conventions and styles used when making Media Products like these. This has essentially then helped me when making my own Anciallary Tasks, which will benefit me in my final grade.

Blogger. In the past 2 years of studying Media Studies Blogger has been our Bible. All of our course work has been projected and put onto out Blog. After using the site for 2 years I have now become quite familiar in how the site works and feel that it is not only beneficial for the work side but is also a good way to follow other peoples life styles and shared interest outside of the work enviroment. Blogger created a space where I could display all of my AS and A2 work. As Media Studies is a very creative subject, it requires a lot of detailed work (writing) but also a creative flare such as pictures, videos and colour. For this reason th expanstion of Web 2.0 has allowed me to make my Blog into a creative piece of work, where is cross platforms with other sites and allows you to use more creativly challenging material, to make my course work more interesting.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

From my audience feedback, we got positive to take away from the experience and possible improvements if we were to say do the trailer again.

One audience member said that the trailer had a good pace. This is important as if a horror trailer is too slow then it can take away eerie feel. Good ways in which I would say we achieved good pace is quick cuts, close up and upbeat sounds. They also stated how we used interesting camera angles in our trailer. This is a good achievement for a horror trailer as it creates a supernatural feel. If your coming from strange angles it makes the viewer feel the disorientation of the scene. I believe we done this by doing over the shoulder shots, low angles and so on. For points we could improve on, this audience member said about us having our inter titles on for longer, especially the first one. This could be as inter titles are important to read, and with the smoke effect that we added to the inter titles, in order for it to be effective, you need it to last long enough to create a suspense with out it being over complicated and boring.

Another audience member to leave feedback commented on specific shots that appealed to them and came across as effective. The first of these shots was the shot with out main protagonist or victim in the bath room, where she moves the mirror to reveal the antagonist in the back ground. This shot I believe is effective as it introduces the antagonist into the trailer in a more shocking way of him just appearing in a shot by walking through the door. It is also quite a stereotypical but successful horror convention. How mirrors are used to convey an aspect of horror. Similar examples are ones in Candy Man and Unborn. The other shot that the audience member found successful was one of the shots at the beginning of the trailer, where we shot the train pulling into the stating but filmed it through the fence. It does make the shot generally more interesting but it makes you feel like your identifying with the antagonist, as if it is a point of view shot. This is also quite a typical and successful horror convention. I can prove this as it is used in other horror films as a conventional technique, such as Halloween 2 which we studied earlier in the year. An improvement this member said was how we could increase the pace through out the trailer as time goes on. We did try to achieve this, but obviously it could have been improved. Picking up pace in the trailer is very important as it creates a tension and makes the audience feel on edge, which is what you want to ideally do, to make them want to come and watch the film.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The purpose to creating a trailer is to give an incite to a film to incise your target audience, which in horror is mainly young males, to come and see the film. Which evidently will resort in more profit for the company. Trailers persuade target audiences to view films by making it clear what the genre is and giving some information into the plot in which you would expect their to be a type of problem which needs solving, but is left unanswered in the trailer.

Here are screen shots of some conventional horror trailers, which are similar to ones our group choose to use in our horror trailer. I will be relating to the two screen grabs, to see how real frames from existing horror trailers compare in their similarities and differences in terms of key horror trailer conventions.

In our horror trailer we decided that we would want to use mirrors in out trailer as they are a typical convention in horror. There are a lot of negative connotations that are attached to mirrors and a lot of superstitions. This idea that mirrors can bring bad luck makes them a good prop to use in horror trailers as the iconography attached to them makes it very spooky. Such superstitions are breaking mirrors brings seven years bad luck, babies should not look in mirrors for the first year of their life, so on and so forth. You can find out more about these superstitions here http://www.csicop.org/superstition/library/mirrors/
The screen grab I have used to compare my mirror scene to is Mirrors a 2008 horror film directed by Alexandre Aja. Our horror trailer uses the mirror to introduce the antagonist to the audience by showing him indirectly. While the film Mirrors uses the mirror to represent how when you look into a mirror you can see your own sole. This is another superstition attached to mirrors which you can find out about in the link above. You can see from the screen grab how both of these represent the conventions of horror, as you get the shot of two characters, where one is the victim and one is seen to be the devil or antagonist.

We also wanted to include the use of fire and smoke with in our trailer, as fire and smoke makes you feel a sense of danger and uncertainty. Also as fire is red/orange and danger is normally represented by the colour red, it makes you feel that some thing related to horror could be present, leaving the audience feeling on edge. Also, as with mirrors comes superstitions associated with fire and smoke such as to dream fire means hasty news and to dream smoke means trouble. This is why we decided to use these in our horror trailer. We used fire in our trailer to create a montage of clips, which are speedy and quick cuts. Less cuts which are slower are more common in films such as romance where as speedy quick cuts, where you use more footage creates a more eerie atmosphere which is much more suitable for the horror genre. We decided to end our horror montage with the fire clip as it took away the pace of the montage and just made you focus on the candle, which can play on the binary oppositions as candles can be considered to be romantic in the right scene, where as they can be seen as dark and evil when used in horror.

We wanted to make the inter titles of our film represent one of the main pieces of footage in our trailer which we considered to be our montage and with in that especially the flicker of the lit candle. The smoke is to make sure that it is reiterated in how this is to give you an impression into the film and how the genre of the film is horror. The clip that I have selected which is similar to mine in the way it uses fire scenes to show the conventions of horror is Sorority Row a 2009 slasher film directed by Steward Hendler. This film uses horror it bring back a horror story of the past, like the return of the repressed. How the prank that got took too far resulted in an accidental murder which gave them the choice of either to admit to or shy away from and hide the secret, this resulted in the return of some thing from the past eg the return of the repressed which makes for the slasher film to be so successful. They use the fire to show capture and how you cant escape, which with in the conventions of horror represents how you cant escape the past and how the fire has trapped you and your are going to be haunted and tortured for what they have done.

Mood Board

Essay.

D

‘Carol Clover, in ‘Men, Women and Chainsaws’, argues that many horror films are interesting in their representation of gender because they provide a female point of identification for a male core target audience. To what extent do you think horror represents gender progressively?’

Horror as a genre typically has a core audience of men between the age of fifteen to twenty four. This is unusual for a mainstream genre, as a common horror convention is that a man is made to identify with a female protagonist. Carol Clover in ‘Men, Women and Chainsaws,’ has many theories based around horror. One of much importance to us is that she says that the main core male audience is made to identify with a female, who is normally made to be a final girl. The reason I feel that the audience of horror is mainly male, is that stereotypically people would say that males are thought to be the stronger of the genders, which is definitely not progressive. Even though I do not typically agree with this opinion, I feel that it could be the reason for it. From Carol Clovers theory we could conclude that we think horror is progressive, as we see the stereotypical role of women being ignored. Where their domestic role is not shown, and they are seen to be the dominant, strong and independent, in order to survive. People might just stop there are say that women are represented progressively, because let’s face it, it has never normally been the man who has been discriminated against, or used as a weak or inferior victim, but this is not the case. Women might be seen in horror as the final girl or the main protagonist, like Carol Clover says, but I feel women’s sexuality is obviously apparent in horror films, and they can sometimes be objectified women to further attract the core male audience. I think this, as you tend to find that women are seen in horror films to be quite sexual in general, and are shot wearing short clothing or not a lot of clothing. This then contradicts the progressive final girl statement, as it shows them as a sex object, which falls into the 3 stereotypically categories of women, which are domestic, sex object, and shopper.

In the 1978 horror film ‘Halloween,’ I feel the film matches the description Carol Clover tries to express, where we see Laurie a well behaved and conventional ‘good girl’ is shown to be the main protagonist, who grows in the narrative and survives to be the final girl. Laurie is not the only girl in the film, we also see other female characters such as Linda, Annie, Judith and other characters who play small and less important roles. Out of the four main women we see, who are named above, three are objectified, and are seen basically naked in the film. Laurie, who is shown to have more respect for herself, gives the impression she is rewarded for her more reserved behaviour, as she is the final girl. The other three girls are shown in a conservative way, as just sex objects, which I feel is a main reason for their death. In the film there are a total of five deaths, in which sixty per cent are women and forty per cent are men. This shows that this is a conservative representation, which makes the viewer insinuate that men are stronger than women, resulting in their lower death rate in the film. This sides with both sides of the argument, it shows a progressive side where Laurie survives as a final girl over everyone else, but then it shows that women have to be domestic to survive and shows women who die as objects with no clothes on. In the twentieth century women’s rights had become a big issue, and the film oddly doesn’t go along with the zeitgeist, and differs from the change in women’s roles. This makes me feel that the film is very much conservative, as despite the change in women’s roles, the film still wants to show women as domestic and objects. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_women%27s_rights_(other_than_voting)

If we look at a more recent film, ‘The Shinning,’ a 1982 horror, we get to see a totally different side to the representation of the sexes. Instead of seeing the film almost form a positive discrimination, which almost makes women feel they are only being represented progressively because they have to be, we get to see three main characters. Wendy is who we picture as the main protagonist and final girl along with her son, Danny and his imaginary friend Tony. Danny is seen as the sort for person in the film from Propp’s theory and Jack, who is the third main character, is seen as the villain or the antagonist. The ratio of male to female characters is 2:1 which could be considered as slightly sexist, but Danny at the end of the day is just a young boy. In some ways I feel that the narrative is slightly sexist, as in the plot it involves three children, the two twin girls and Danny. Out of these three younger characters, you see the twin girls subdued to mass amounts of violence resulting in death, and Danny surviving. We also see that Wendy is inferior, as she is almost certain to be killed by Jack when she locks herself in the bathroom, but Halloran comes along and distracts Jack, which saves Wendy’s life. In the whole story, we need to take into consideration the amount of characters from the genders, there are nine male characters and five female characters, this comes across as very conservative, as the amount of screen time each character gets, then it is quite a significant different, fair enough Wendy gets a lot of screen time, but out of all the female characters, she is basically the only one.

Horror Scene Ideas

· Fade from black

· Washing hands in toilet

· Opens door to weird man standing there

· Shot of woman sitting talking on phone (talking about being almost home)

· Shot of woman sitting looking out of window (phone conversation continues over top)

· POV looking out of window (phone conversation continues)

· Train comes to a stop and she gets off

· Unlocking door

· Starts unpacking suitcase

· Looks in suitcase (odd item)

· Close up of face, door in background opens out of focus (no one there)

· Cut to her turning off tv, sees reflection of man, looks round, no one there

· In bed, hears tap on window, no one there

· Hears front door unlock, hides under bed

· Shot of her, then POV of his feet walking around bed

· Camera pans to the right, man is there

· Quick flash shot of man behind her (heartbeat)

· Quick flash shot of man in mirror/water (heartbeat)

· Quick flash shot of close up of face (heartbeat)

· 3 Quick flash shots of a flame

· Flashing shot of flickering lights, man getting closer with each flash

· Dolly zoom grab of face

· Bang to black

· Goes down stairs, fades to black, sound of steps then flash of her being grabbed

· Flash credits

· End.

Horror Story

A women who is travelling on the plane home from visiting her family, is sat with an unusual man. She tries to make conversation with the man but he has no response. She has several awkward moments with the man on the plane, which makes her uncomfortable. When she gets off the plane she collects her luggage and heads home. When she gets home she unpacks her suitcase and finds it is not her belongings and that something of real value is inside the suitcase. She then takes the time to decide whether to hand the suitcase in or keep it. After a long think she keeps the suitcase, and thinks that she has had some real good luck. She was sadly mistaken when she was the victim of horrid torture for making the mistake of keeping the suitcase, which belonged to the mysterious man on the plane. The torture began with just a few noises and odd episodes of events in her home. She then realised that she had made a big mistake in keeping the suitcase, and was going to be severally punished. She is chased by the man in her house, and is caught, where she can’t escape..

Ideas from exiting Horror Trailers

I like in this trailer how they use non digetic sound, of the heart beat to create a creepy effect, and how they use the flickering lights, makes you think that some thing is coming closer or its going to appear.

Ideas from exiting Horror Trailers

From thi trailer, I like how a weapon used in a crime, comes back to haunt them, where they know they will die from the same weapon. I also like how it is a joke took too far, an they all try to keep secret, but then they get punished for not doing the right thing.

Ideas from exiting Horror Trailers

From this trailer, I like how you inflict the injuries upon yourself, by what your reflection makes you do. i think this will be some thing quite easy to create, and very affective for making it a good horror scene.

Narrative Threorists.

In our Media Studies Lesson we have been looking at four Narative Theorists, Tzvetan Todorov, Vladimir Propp, Claude Levi-Strauss and Bordewell and Thompson. We have explored these theories, and seen what evidence from their theories we can find in 'The Shining.' A Classic 1980's Horror Film.

The first Theorist i will be exploring is Vladamir Propp. His theory basically was that a character has a function and is not a person. He said that a character falls into one of these genres of characters. The villian, the donor, the helper, the princess, the dispatcher, the hero or victim, or the false hero. When analysing the Shinning baised upon what Propp said, i found that his theory was least helpful, as many characters fall into the same categories, with in different parts of the story. Through the story you could find that the character changed roles, like the princess could be Danny or Wendy, or the helper could be Hallaren or Wendy, or some other characters. Propp also said there were 31 functions organised into broader narrative groups showing their place in the development of the plot. Some of these functions where useful, mostly the ones from the genre Preperation, Complication and Transference. The other three, Struggle, Return and Recognition had hardly any or no appearence in the story. For these reasons i feel that Propp's theory has some intersting idea's to compare to the Shinning, but as a broad topic, it was not very helpful.

Claude Levi-Strauss looked at the idea of Binary Oppositions, where we only understand some thing, from understanding its opposite. For example, good and bad, happy and sad, love and hate. In the film the Shinning, there are examples of this theory, such as the two young twins girls, where you would recognise them to be sweet and inocent, because of the denotation of their gingham dresses, and their pig tale hair styles, but then Danny gets flashes of them being brutaly murdered, and seeing them surrounded by blood. This is a good example of a binary oposition, where its the idea of innocence and evil. I feel that Claude Levi-Strauss's idea is quite relative to the plot of the Shinning as the young girls become a big part of the story, and show how twisted the story can become, it also makes the film be the unexpected, as you see incocence and evil.

Bordwell and Thompson's theory is a very complicated theory about cause and effect, where 'a chain of events in a cause-effect relationships, occuring in time and space.' This involves technical techniques like replays of action, slow motion, speeding up, jumping between places and times. This is shown in the Shinning by the mixed up dates, where they jump from months to weeks to just days apart, which makes time dismantled and confusing, to show how the story gets mixed up. They also show a few replays or action, where the blood flies through the elivator doors and when the twin girls are seen around the hotel, holding hands, whereing the same outfits. Through the film we get jumping between scenes, when the Shinning is happening with Danny and Hallaren, we get to see their reactions, even though they are many miles apart.

A trailer I found interesting

This is the remake of the 1976 film 'The Omen' which has been slightly twisted to be 'The Omen' 666 trailer. The reason for this is that they released it on the 6th of June in 2006.

Typical horror conventions are presented in 'The Omen' trailer, through the classic iconic inocence of a young boy called Damien. Damien was adopted by Robbert and Katherine, after their first newborn child died not long after birth. Robert makes a wild decision to adopt Damien, and tell his wife that he was their biological child and was determined to raise him as their own, in secret.

In this trailer Damien represents typical conventions of horror. To beggin with, in the trailer the setting is very isolated and cold, he is in a busted down park, with only a dog to keep him company. The setting looks to be in a more surburban locations, where the sense of isolation is more apparent. The scene in the park, is to make the viewer feel that even through his iconic inocence, that something deep lies beneath. This is a classic way in which horror conventions work, and it is called the binary opositions, where a childs inocence is soon twisted to be evil and possed by the devil. Which, when this film was first released in 1976, was a huge hit for horror (Satan.)

Many types of technical codes are represented in the trailer. Through the camera work we get a narror depth of field to beggin with to show that the only company Damien has is a dog. When the camera beggins to become almost handheld, we get an arching movement around damien, which refers back to the binary opostion theory, where Damien is sat on a swing, to show that it should be inocent, but as the music and the dark misterious setting is also apparent, it flips the thought you get of a young boy, and makes it a typical technical code for horror. This flip of identity's for little boys, is further twisted as Damien at the end of the trailer smiles at you. A little boy smiling at you should be inocent, but due to the anxiety that the trailer produces, it makes you feel uncomftorable and on edge. When adding sound to the trailer, they mostly use ambient sound. They dont offer a lot of variety of it, but i think that is what makes the trailer more frightening, you get a mixture of the dog panting, the wind, and the swing squeeking all the way through. The only non-digetic sound we get is when Damien looks towards camera, where we get some notes from an instrument to make the moment feel more intense.