Final Magazine cover

Prop list

Insanitarium shot list

Health and Safety precautions

As a group we looked at the problems and dangers we could be faced with while filming our trailer. We have listed how we will overcome each problem if it occurs.

 

Targetting Audiences and Focus Group

We started of targetting an audience when we came up with a first horror film idea to see what kind of horror our audience liked. 9 out of 13 people in the class said they would watch Death Harvester and this helped us pick out what we should put in our trailer. Our final trailer Insanitarium is certificate 18 and the narrative of the trailer is about a psychiatric doctor who murders children so the trailer includes violent scenes and a cut being sewed up. Our trailer is mainly aimed at a male audience. We thought it would be a suitable audience as Dawn of the Dead (1979) has lots of gore and is aimed at a male audience. The Death Harvester poster was a successful way to research my target audience, and we knew a low budget film with lots of gore would be successful. 

We also watched 10 horror trailers as a class and discussed what people liked and didn't like. Three reviews are on my blog, and they also helped make us decide a gory horror could be successful if it was included in a trailer that had suspense at the beginning then plenty of speedy shots at the end. Our final piece of audience research was the focus group screening where we marked each others rough cuts of the trailers to see what needed improving. After the group we cut out a lot of shots that weren't working, and included a few more point of view shots which improved our trailer a great deal.

Focus group feedback

Avg score 6/10

What did you like about the trailer?

Good effects, good location, good use of locaton, body horror was effective, good body horror effects, music was good fit, shadows, music was good, very good gore, swing,the music really worked .

What do you think could be improved in the trailer?

Some of the sounds could be improved, music at end over titles, editing in places could be sped up, text at start too quick to read.

Insanitarium: Final cut

Evaluation Question 4

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

During the process of this project I have used HD cameras and also used programmes on Apple iMac such as Final Cut Pro and Adobe Photoshop CS5. Websites were also important to research, create and store my work and these included Blogger, Wikipedia, Soundbible, flickr, YouTube, IMDB, and Freeplaymusic.

When researching the horror genre for our topic the best website for more infomation on horror features and conventions was Wikipedia. For trailer research I used YouTube and IMDB as both websites gave me information on the type of horror, certificates etc. that would suit our initial ideas for 'Insanitarium.' I found IMDB particularly reliable as it is supported directly by film producers, whereas anyone can upload (sometimes fakes) trailers to YouTube and write false infomation with it.

During trailer research, there where three main trailers that influenced my horror trailer.

The first trailer that influenced my horror trailer was 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre' (1974) with the psycho killer 'Leatherface' heavily influencing our idea of a sadistic murderer that cuts people up. The second trailer that influenced my horror trailer was 'The Cabin in the Woods' (2012). The creepy location gave me the idea to film in a location with a scary, desolate building and we carefully scouted one that would fit that. Finally, after watching and reviewing the film and trailer of 'Nightmare on Elm Street' (2010) I had the idea for my own gory death in 'Insanitarium.'

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All my work I produced was uploaded into Blogger. The photographs, ancillary products, planning and research. The blog provided easy access pages to all my work and I was able to separate it under different labels. When analysing my horror poster and magazine cover I used flickr. I was able to label different generic conventions on both the horror poster and magazine cover and highlight specific connotations too. This really helped me evaluate my work.

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For sound effects and music tracks for my horror trailer I used Freeplaymusic and SoundBible to find various tracks to edit to the music. I found these websites useful as I could easily access the tracks and then carefully mix and edit them on Final Cut Pro. After taking a while to get used to editing on the iMacs, Final Cut Pro proved to be very successful editing software as each shot could be edited, and filtered added.

When producing our trailer we noticed in the shots where we had used blood, it looked too light on the screen so by using the contrast/brightness video filter we where able to make it darker.

To produce my film poster and magazine cover I used Adobe Photoshop CS5. I used different textures to make my film poster look battered and scary.

I left the photo for my magazine cover natural as this creates a more professional and mainstream look, which reflects the target audience of Empire. I made it look brighter and more eyecatching by using the Contrast and Brightness tool on Photoshop. I also added a Neon Glow effect the heading 'Empire' to make it stand out and have an eerie feel. When making my horror poster on Photoshop I used the Rubber tool and the Magnetic Lasso tool to remove the background of the images and focus on the face. I used a scratch texture to make the image look unsettling but interesting. I filled the background black using the paint bucket tool to connote mystery and death, and enhanced this by setting the blend mode to Hard light which brightened the blood-red and pulled some of the background through. I upped the saturation using the Hue and Saturation tool to make the image stand out and look powerful. All the fonts I used were imported from dafont.com, as the range of fonts on the college computers was too limited and not broken-down enough for a horror film.

During filming and using technology we where faced with many problems. The first shoot we filmed we accidentally shot the footage using the wrong HD setting. To overcome the problem we had to convert it but we lost valuable editing time. The others programs were very easy to use. Final Cut Pro was particularly successful. We were able to edit one shot at a time to ensure that every shot was correct. The sound websites where also very helpful and the tracks could easily be downloaded. The only problem I overcame with flickr is that their new photo uploader meant the files were too large and they where difficult to upload. As soon as the older upload interface was found I was able to overcome the problem.