Final Film

Final Radio Trailer

Final Poster

Question 1:

Q1- In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Throughout the production of Indelible there were many codes and conventions we used, developed and challenged. We created a short horror film called ‘Indelible’ aimed at teenagers and young adults. The subgenre was psychological/ supernatural. The movie is based on a young girl named ‘Madeline’ who in the past has been though a traumatic procedure. Madeline then experiences flashbacks which are triggered by a doll which she rediscovers whilst unpacking at her new adopted home. She then slowly gives into the evil and at the end of the film hints to the audience that FGM will be repeated on the new girl, Samantha, that is going to be adopted by leaving her a note. Alongside the short film, my group and I had also created a poster and radio trailer to promote the film.

During the planning of the radio trailer, my group and I ensured that we had researched into the codes and conventions of a typical radio trailer. We had analysed films with the subgenre psychological or supernatural such as Mother (2017) to see what codes and conventions they had challenged and conformed. In our radio trailer we had added sound effects such as screams, which are conventional for horror films. Through the use of sound effects our audience were able to gain a sense of what’s happening. An example of a convention we had adhered to in our radio trailer is our use of screams. Screams are conventional for the horror genre as they invoke a sense of panic and fear in the audience. For example in trailer of Orphan 2009 they used screams to build up the intensity of tension so as an audience we are intrigued into what happens next. In our radio trailer we also had layered sound effects, we had whispers saying ‘purify’, ‘innocence’ and ‘sin’. This hinted to the audience that someone in the film will be hurt and it is with the intention of preserving their purity and innocence.

We had challenged conventions through the use of an anachronic narrative as our film consisted of non-linear flashbacks to hint to the audience of the trauma Madeline has gone through. Our film had started with a disequilibrium and at the end had also finished with a disequilibrium. Indelible had therefore challenged Todorov’s equilibrium theory as normality was not restored at the end of the film. Films such as Conjuring 2013 had followed the order of ‘equilibrium, disequlibrium and equilibrium’ and therefore conforms to Todorov’s equilibrium theory.

First of all, my group and I had adhered to conventions when creating our short film as we had decided to have a young female protagonist. Similar to the film Orphan 2009 as they also had a young, female main character. It is conventional to have young females to play the protagonist as they are vulnerable and weak. However, towards the end of the film we had challenged this convention as we had Madeline the protagonist later turn into the antagonist, creating the impression of a false hero. This created a twist for the audience and also supported Barthes enigma code.

During my research I had analysed numerous film posters with the same subgenre as Indelible. For example I analysed the film poster of Sinister. This film poster uses the conventional horror colours grey, black and red. It is conventional for horror films to use dark and dull colours, so in my film poster I had conformed to conventions and used the colour red to signify blood and white to symbolise purity and the colour black. These colours foreshadow to the audience that something will happen to our main character.

Also our film supports Propps theory of 8 stock characters. This is because in our film we have Madeline who is the hero and she goes through a traumatic event and carries on. We also have the villain who is the man performing the FGM on Madeline. However, at the same time our film challenges Propps theory as in our movie the hero, Madeline, later turns into the villain.

In our film we paid tribute to Quentin Tarantino films as we had several shots of Madelines feet when walking in the corridor and during the surgery scene. Similarly in the film Kill Bill there us a scene of Uma Thurnam walking down the hospital corridor barefoot connoting her vulnerability.

Question 2:

Q2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

During my research I ensured I explored my hybrid subgenre, psychological/ supernatural thoroughly so I could identify the codes and conventions and apply them to my products. The main focus in the film was the doll as it was the cause of the disequilibrium, and also the FGM and abuse. We wanted our products to link so that our audience could establish the relationship between them.

Firstly, we linked all 3 products through the title, Indelible. In both the film and poster we used the same font which we had downloaded from 1001fonts to allow our audience to be able to link products together and familiarise with it. Similarly with the tag line ‘It’s a chain reaction’ we had used the same font and colour in all 3 posters and it is also said in the radio trailer to foreshadow to the audience that in the film the events will reoccur.

The main feature of our poster was the doll, this was placed in the centre of frame. The doll was wearing a white dress with red blood stains signifying FGM or sexual abuse to the audience, the concept of our poster was a puppeteer. This symbolised to the audience that our main character, Madeline, is powerless and controlled by others. The doll symbolises our main actor, Madeline, in the film, as she has the FGM done on her. The face of the person controlling her is hidden and this created an enigma for our audience. Moreover, the audience are able to identify the significance of the doll as not only was it the main feature of our poster, in the film we had used repeated close-ups of the doll to reiterate the importance of the doll being the cause of the disequilibrium, this therefore created a synergy between the poster and film.

The theme of the film links to the poster through the use of the conventional horror colours, red, black and grey. The colour red is prominent in our campaign as it signifies blood, for example our title and the puppeteer strings were red, ✔in this case it connotes to the audience of the FGM.  The background of the poster was black in comparison to the dolls dress. The use of the colour black connotes darkness and evil and this suggests that our main character perhaps cannot escape the darkness and is surrounded by it. The colour white signifies purity and innocence, the contrast of the colours black and white clearly illustrates a binary opposite of evil and good. This is also shown in the film as we have the antagonist wear a white lab coat but with black clothing underneath. This makes him appear as good and trusting, however the black clothing underneath represents his dark and evil true nature. The binary opposites of good and evil is further reinforced when we have the protagonist wear white at the start of the film and at the end of the film she wears black to symbolise her change in character from good and innocent to evil.

The movie Split was released in 2017, the genre was psychological horror. It shares the same target audience as Indelible. Split had released 4 campaign film posters. Each and everyone reiterating the theme of having a split personality and a mental health disorder. This influenced our decision to produce 2 campaign teaser posters as we wanted to promote the film as well as hint the topic of FGM at our audience. ✔  The first teaser poster featured the hand of a girl tied down onto a surgery bed; the second teaser poster was of bloodied surgical equipment. This established an obvious connection between the both posters, hinting to the audience that a surgery will take place in the film. This is reinforced in the radio trailer as we added ambient surgery sounds such as lights buzzing and in addition to this, in the film we also added the same sound effects to relate back to the FGM and surgery.

In the radio trailer and film we used the same soundtrack in order to link the two products. This was because we wanted to create the same mood and atmosphere for audience when listening and viewing our products. We used non- diegetic sound of screaming to indicate to the audience that someone in the film will be hurt. This is reinforced by the use of blood in the posters and the use of the colour red.

Question 3:

Q3: What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback played a vital role in the production of Indelible as it allowed us tailor our film to what our target audience find appealing in a horror film.

We targeted our film to the age group 15+. We aimed our film at teenagers and young adults of the demographic group E and D. We chose to target teenagers and young adults, as they’ll be aware and educated about current social issues. In terms of psychographics we targeted reformers, strugglers and explorers. Reformers are socially aware and they’ll therefore be aware of the issue of FGM. We targeted strugglers as they seek to escape and this could be through engrossing themselves into our horror film. Lastly we targeted explorers as they seek discovery and experience, this can be through viewing our film, also as they value difference our film will appeal to them as the issue of FGM has not been addressed in past horror films.

The first audience feedback we had received was on our pitch. At first my group and I had chosen to have a narrative where the protagonist goes through a spiritual sacrifice by a supernatural demon. However, our target audience had stated that this narrative was very typical and that they had seen it over and over again. They suggested that we make the issue in our film more current and modern, which is why we chose FGM. We chose to put across this idea in our film for our audience to interpret it instead of us directly showing it. This applies to Barthes Semic code.

My group and I had conducted research using Survey Monkey. Each member of my group had their own questionnaire which we had asked people of our target audience to answer, each survey had a different topic. For example we had a survey on what our audience prefer in horror films, another on films poster, another on film narrative and the last on radio trailer. Through splitting up the ancillary tasks and conducting a survey on each aspect we were able to gain qualitative and quantitative feedback. In the first survey we had asked the audience what sub- genre of horror they preferred, a vast majority had said that they liked supernatural and psychological, this helped us decide the subgenre for our films and influenced us to create a hybrid subgenre of both supernatural and psychological. In our film poster survey we had asked our audience what was their current favourite horror film poster and why. Responses showed that Sinister and Annabelle were the most the popular, both posters use quite dark colours and some stated that they like the doll in the Annabelle poster as it is quite ominous. From this we decided to incorporate dark colours and feature a doll as the primary image in the poster as majority also answered that they would prefer if the doll was the primary image on the poster. We furthered research on posters as we took to Instagram to ask our target audience which horror film poster they like and why. Again majority answered Annabelle. We chose to use Instagram as it is a popular form of social media used by people of our target audience. This was also a means of accessing our audience.

In our narrative survey we asked the audience if they prefer when normality is restored at the end of a horror film or its left unresolved. 60% answered saying that they would prefer the film being left unresolved. This influenced our decision to end the film on disequilibrium. Our film therefore challenges Todorov’s equilibrium theory as at the end of our film Madeline hints to the audience that FGM will be repeated on the new girl Samantha. We also asked our audience whether they like when a horror narrative is based on a conflict in society, 80% had answered yes, further reinforcing our decision to base Indelible on FGM. Horror films in the past and currently always paid homage to either political or social issues, for example the film Purge 2013 addresses and raises awareness of the overcrowded prisons and corrupt government.

 In the survey we carried out for the radio trailer we asked our audience whether or not they like sound effects in a horror film and if so what sound effects. 88% had said that they like sound effects in a horror film and screams and laughs were the most popular as it ‘makes the film scarier’. In the trailer we also added diegetic surgery room sound effects to create an enigma for the audience as they will contemplate what type of surgery is taking place. In both the film and radio we added whispers of the words ‘purify’, ‘innocence’ and ‘sin’. We did this as we wanted to hint to our audience the intention behind the FGM and abuse was to purify Madeline of sins and to preserve her innocence.

We also used Survey Monkey to ask our target audience which tagline they liked best for our film. We asked them which tagline they thought would go best with our film, Indelible. From this we learnt that ‘ It’s a chain of events’ was the most popular, however, my group and I had decided to alter this slightly to ‘It’s a chain reaction’. Through the use of social media platforms such as Snapchat we were able to gain audience feedback on our production logo. Using snapchat we had posted a number of possible logos that my group and I liked best, we then asked our audience to screenshot which logo they liked best for Grimm Productions. From feedback we had learnt that the most popular logo had 7 out of 11 screenshots, we then made this our logo.

As part of research my group and I had conducted an ethnographic study, this allowed us to gain an insight into what our target audience find interesting in a horror film. We chose the film Split as it is a psychological horror film that was recently released in 2017 and similarly it has a young teenage girl as the protagonist. The film raises awareness of mental health problems and social issues in society which made the film realistic for our target audience and therefore they found it more frightening. Our target audience are also able to sympathise with both the antagonist and protagonist due to their age and the fact that the antagonist is a victim of a mental health disorder. Likewise in our film we decided to have a young girl as they protagonist, however, we decided to change this and make her later become the antagonist due to the abuse she has undergone. This is an example of preferred reading as the audience will respond to the product the way we as producers want them to.

We also got feedback regarding our film script and poster from our target audience. We gave out post it notes and got our audience to write what they think about our poster, we then made improvements. The feedback from our script was useful as it stated what they thought was good about the script and what they thought could be improved.

Question 4:

Q4: How did you use media (digital) technologies in the construction (pre/post production), research, planning and evaluating stage?

During the research, planning, pre and post production of my short horror film, poster and radio trailer I used several forms of digital technology to aid me to create a successful final product.

During the research stage of my product digital technologies played a big role as through web 2.0 I was able to conduct analysis of other products. I was able to conduct research into other production companies which produces had successful horror films; I had researched Dark Castle Entertainment as they had produced the film Orphan (2009) which shares similar characteristics to Indelible such as having a young female lead actress. Through web 2.0 I also conducted research on short horror films, radio trailers and film posters, I had identified the codes and conventions they had conformed to and challenged, to gain inspiration for my product. I had also used presentation tools such as Prezi which allowed me to present my research in a slideshow format.

 In addition to this I had used SurveyMonkey and Instagram to ask my target audience questions in order to gain an insight of what my target audience are into. My group and I had split up the surveys so we had gained feedback on narrative, poster, what they like in a horror film and radio trailer. From this we had gained qualitative and quantitative data.

 I had sent the survey to family and friends of our target audience via various different social media platforms such as Whatsapp and Snapchat, which are also other examples of digital technologies. My group and I had chosen to use Instagram as it is a popular form of social media amongst our target audience, it was also a means for us to access our audience.

 I had also used WhatsApp to create a group chat with my group in order to communicate effectively and share useful information regarding our products. Through WhatsApp we had conducted group meetings to discuss about our products.

Moreover, during research my group and I had created a preliminary task. We had selected a scene from the film The Conjuring (2013), we had decided to film using the Canon 100d camera, however whilst filming the battery had died, so we resulted in using our phones to record. We had then edited this using Final Cut and uploaded it up onto our blogs using YouTube. This was useful as we edited our final product using Final Cut, we were able to familiarise with the tools and effects, I was then confident when editing my designated scenes of Indelible.

During the planning stage of my product my group and I had created an animated storyboard which was extremely useful for us as it gave us an idea of how our film would be and also we were able to make changes. We then edited the storyboard using iMovie and also uploaded it onto YouTube to share on our blogs. We had also used social media and email to do an audition callout in order to find actors for our film.

During the post- production of our horror film, we used various examples of digital technology. Firstly, we used Final Cut to edit the film, we used tools such as blade and cut and select and place scenes where we wanted. After we had our offline edit we then started playing around with filters and transitions, for example in the last scene we had slowed down the pace of the doll falling, this therefore slowed down the narrative for our audience. In addition to this we had used filters on our flashbacks to show the audience the difference in time, this allowed them to identify the anachronic narrative we had followed. We had used ADR (automated dialog replacement) to re- record dialogue as during filming the mic didn’t not pick up the dialogue efficiently or was it of high quality. After we had recorded the new dialogue, we them imported it on to final cut.

In order to edit our poster we had used Photoshop CS6. We had used a range of tools to edit the image. For example, we enhanced the colour of the red ropes attached to doll to make it more apparent to the audience. In addition to this we had also used Photoshop to add the title, tagline and credits to the poster. In order to do this we had downloaded the font from 1001 fonts.com and dafont.com. We then used Photoshop to edit the teaser posters, for the first teaser poster we had increased the sharpness of the image and also the brightness in order to enhance the detail. For the second teaser poster we had used a filter to make the image look disturbing and edgy.

Lastly, digital technology played a vital role in packaging my evaluations. Through digital technology I was able to access and use a range of softwares, such as Powtoon and Prezi, in order to package my evaluations. I used web 2.0 to get pictures of logos when referring to them in my question. I then used my phone to record my voiceover for the questions, I then emailed these to myself and uploaded onto my software ready for me to package.