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

For this project I have used a wide range of media technologies, throughout my research, planning construction and evaluation stages- the presence of technology in every stage was crucial as it played a massive part in the finalisation of the project.

We had to create a new questionnaire on QuestionPro, as one of the first things in the research stage. This was done in order to obtain a wider knowledge of the target audience and gain information  such as the age and gender of the target audience, as well as their expectations of a slasher film e.g. their favourite murderer or the weapon they found most suitable. By doing we were able to achieve and insight into the expectations of the audience.  QuestionPro was a useful website as we were able to achieve a large sample in a short amount of time, through essentially ‘promoting’ our survey by sharing on social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook.   QuestionPro saved us a lot of time by calculating the figures for us, and from this data I turned them intographs and charts using Microsoft Execel.  The date I have obtained was then turned into a Microsoft PowerPoint, which was useful, as I was able to analyse the data and understand it more clearly. Furthermore, as well as obtaining primary research, some secondary research was also necessary regarding cinema and the horror genre. I have done this through looking up websites such as the BBFC website, or newspaper reviews online. The data I gathered was again presented onto a PowerPoint slide.  Microsoft PowerPoint was also useful when I had to put together a presentations about the codes and conventions of slasher films, such as typical characters and the locations. It then included the slides about the roots of the slasher genre from German Expressionism, to Film Noir. By using Google I was able to develop a deeper understanding of these cinematic techniques, as Google offered me a wide range of sources to learn from.

As part of my research I also had to analyse existing media texts such as trailers, magazines and posters. This had to be done in order for me to gain a further understanding of the codes and

conventions of those texts. I viewed that trailer on YouTube, as I could watch them for as many times as I needed, to make sure I have understood and analysed the important aspect of the trailer, codes and conventions wise.  The easiest way to obtain magazines covers and posters was of course Google, which offered me a large variety to choose from. Without the benefit of the internet, this process would have been very difficult, as I would have had to buy copies for the magazines, and tapes for the trailer, and this would have been time consuming. Greater efficiency has been achieved due to the internet, because I had an huge range of choice to use for my research in a relatively short amount of time.

During the planning stages, using our finished story boards we constructed a filmed edit, by scanning out original paper copy in a computer, which we then turned into a video by using Serif.  This helped us form an idea about the pace of our trailer and about how it would build up through the way in which the shots worked or did not work together.  This helped us think of ways to improve our final trailer and it served as a template. To construct templates for my magazine and poster, I used Photoshop, as I thought that working with it would help me develop my skills for when I will have to construct my final pieces of work.

By researching I have managed to find out the specific size of Little White Lies, which then I managed to apply to the magazine. Firstly I had to use the magic wand in order to remove the plain background and replace it with a picture of a dark alley I have found on Google images. As the front covers of Little White Lies tend to look like a cartoon, I had to used the filter gallery to achieve this. I was able to chose from a range of filters for my own picture as well as the picture of the alleyway I have found. Even with the filters, the pictures did not convey the genre or looked scary in the slightest, so therefore I decided to experiment with the colour balance and the hue of the picture until I managed to turn them into a red colour. Based on the fact that my audience seemed to liked the arched typography I used the ‘shell lower’ wrap text to turn the name of the film into a knife reminiscing style. 

When taking the picture I was going to use for the poster I failed to notice the object which flawed the picture as it was cutting it in half, and there was also a comb in the picture. At first I tired to crop the picture enough to get rid of the barrel and comb but then the size of the image did not seem to allow me to include the other elements of the poster such as the title or the cast and crew. But then by using the clone stamp tool I had managed to mask the barrel and the comb, but not enough to make

them not visible, so then by using the smudge tool I masked the whole bottom area of the picture. Because the background was too white, I decided to use the gradient tool to darken different parts of the area. Through using this tool I made the darkened area look like knife cuts, and the setting of this specific tool allowed me to also make some parts of the poster fuzzy, reminiscing of TV screens complying with the narrative.   Then I had to got onto ‘My Fonts’ and find the ‘Orbital’ font and add it to the poster, by through ‘copy paste.’

We chose the website MyFonts, in order to choose a typography suited for our film title. The reason why we chose a website, was because we believed that Publisher did not have any typography which would look professional, in term of the way it fits in with out film. We looked typed in key words such ‘cyber’ ‘horror’ ‘action’ ‘sharp’ ‘blood,’ and we looked through hundreds of them until we found the one we thought it was the most suitable, due to the fact the it had sharp edges which could covey the knife and the murders, and the ‘O’ written in such a way that it looked like a focusing point. After this was done I has to include the cast and crew, and go onto Google images and find specific logos of the productions companies such as Film4. And I also had to add the age restriction. Photoshop also helped with the construction of our company logo and the logo of ‘Slasher inc.’

During the construction of the main task, battery operated lights were used to create an effective shot when the location we were filming in was too dark.  We used to different cameras for filming. One was a Canon 500D, which was used for the filming of the trailer overall (set in sports mode) and the other was a Nikon D3200 for the shots which were filmed by the killers, because we had to emphasize that these are different shots and we had to keep them on separate to avoid mixing them up. This provided us with a decent image quality, in order to make our trailer look as professional as possible. The footage we filmed had to then be downloaded onto a hard drive.  After that we used a non-linear digital video editing, in the form of Serif Movie Plus.  This program allowed us to watch the clips multiple times, and cut them where we thought it was necessary.  Next, we had to put all the clips together to form our trailer, and the software helped us manipulate the shots.  After we used all the footage we filmed, we were able to highlight some mistakes, and noted them down so we could film them,  or introduce some more shots as the trailer conveyed little of a slasher film. After we added some more footage we decided to change the contrast and put some effect of the shot- such as making some shots looked poorly filmed on purpose by adding the words ‘REC’ and ‘NIGHT VISION’ into the shot by using the text tool. This was done in order to make the trailer fit in with our narrative.  We were able to slow down clips, cut them, or speed them up where we though was necessary such as the part where the paces increases. We were also able to manipulate the contrast, by making it lower. For example when Charlie walked past the church the sunlight was too bright and so we had to darken it lightly. However, although a good standard would have been hard to achieve without using digital editing software, we encountered a problem as the editing process was very slow due to the fact that the program continuously buffered, which made our work very time consuming.

After our trailer was finished in terms of putting the edited shots together, we then had to create a soundtrack with the help of a sound engineer.  We school’s sound software to edit the soundtrack. We  had to record non diegetic sounds and the music and diegetic sounds, such as the dialogue which was used as a sound bridge or background noise. We had to record the voice over used at the start of the trailer and at the end. We also had to use this software to merge the voiceover of the teacher with that of th killer. as well as non- diegetic sounds, such as music.  We had to include diegetic sounds which such as hard breathing, doors cracking, video recording noises, sound of children playing at school, sounds of steps and other sounds which we could not obtain just through filming.

Nevertheless, social networks such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter was crucial for during the evaluation stage to gain feedback on the finished trailer. I used those platforms to share the trailer with the audience and gain their feedback.

Finally all my coursework had to the be uploaded and presented on a blog. Overall, this project would have been impossible without the use of technology.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We used Question Pro in order to conduct the  first piece of research. We used this to create srveys and send them out online through social networks to participants. This allowed us to see the potential age of our audience, their gender, preferred horror sub genres, what horror movies they like and they way to watch films. All of this information then helped us form our own film based on the preferences of the audience. Another short attempt at feedback on the audience was when I have constructed my preliminary designs for the poster and the magazine. The quantitative date helped me decide on the format of the poster and the magazine  which would appeal to the audience more, so thus I constructed the magazine and the poster based on their preferences.

Finally, the last feedback piece was when put together a screening of the trailer to nine people which were given a survey of 10 questions each, to which they had to answer based on what they saw in the trailer.

What do you like about the trailer?

There were a range of answers to this specific questions, as the opinions varied. Some people liked the camera effect which complied with the idea of being filmed (night vision and fuzzy TV screen), others enjoyed the action such as the dragging scene, and others enjoyed the plot and the sounds. I believe those response were very pleasing as they pointed out things that my group and I put a lot of effort into making enjoyable for the audience.

What do you dislike about the trailer?

Many respondents felt that there was an issue with he quality of the sound. For example, some believe that the non-diegetic music was too loud and it covered the dialogue and the voice over. I think this is a result of our  equipment wise limitation. This does come across as worrying because the audience would not make sense fo the narrative without understanding the dialogue. Personally I believe that there was a problem with the volume of the specific device we used, because if we watched the trailer on smaller devices , there would be no issues with the quality of the sound.

What could be improved?

Understandably, some people referred to the non-diegetic music. One person believed that the editing was too fast, but considering the fact that the convention of a trailer states that the trailer

has to speed its face, so this can be just the fact that the editing didn't appeal to the particular preference of one person. Other people believed that the trailer needed to involve more blood, as we only show blood when Michael wipes his knife, and that the trailer should be more scary.

What aspects of the trailer make it a Slasher film?

These answers were gratifying from the most people, because they all appeared to understand what film genre they were viewing. We managed to evoke this through blood, knife and the music, as well as the simple title of the film. They all developed a well good understanding of who the killer was and this helped them understand the narrative.

Do you think the sound compliments the shots? Why?

Most of the responses to this questions were positive, thus the sound was working well with the shots. For example in the last shot where the villain seems to be stabbing a victim and the sharp bass sounds depicts his movements.

What would you rate our editing out of the following options?

‘Good’ was the answer that was mostly picked . One person selected ‘okay’ and the other ‘excellent.’ The results were fair because even though we managed to have some aspects of our trailer looking professional, we need to keep in mind that it was still an amateur piece of work which still needed improvement.

Could you understand the narrative and story line?

Many people said they did understand the narrative and the story line, to some extent, but not fully, because they could not hear the dialogue properly. However the way in which the shots worked and the acting gave out the main plot to some extent.

Would you go and see this film? Why?

This questions had different answered. Due to the fact that the slasher genre did not appeal to some people, some people say they would not go see the film. Not many people gave a reason to justify their answer and the those who did stated that the plot and the use of the camera effects (night vision, red recording button) is what would make the watch it.

Did this look to be at a professional level?

‘No’ was chosen by two people and the rest said yes or almost.  This was an appropriate response because we were limited on the editing software and we did not have the highest quality cameras, despite this we used the equipment we had at its best abilities and we made the trailer look as professional as we could afford.

What would you rate the trailer out of 10?

Seven came out to be the average score and it felt like it was a fair number considering the time and effort we put into the construction of the trailer.

Overall, I’d say that most of the responses were fairly pleasant and we understood what aspects of the trailer needed improvement.

The final piece of feedback came from social networks. We uploaded our trailer onto YouTube and then shared it onto Facebook.  We received 151 views and 7 likes, which I consider to be decent as this was an amateur project. We received feed back such as the fact that the trailer was ‘really good’. This final piece of feedback was  overall positive as we didn't receive any dislikes.

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

Each product aims to advertise the film. However, the ancillary tasks, which are the poster and the magazine, are designed in order to help the trailer of the film gain recognition and therefore, based on the dominoes effect if the trailer gain recognition the movie will inevitably gain a larger audience. A brand identity has to be established so that the audience would be able to recognise the same product promoted in all three tasks. This was created through:

The typography of the title is the same in the poster and the trailer. It’s sharp edges reinforce idea of a knife, thus emphasizing the slasher genre. In order to convey a little narrative through the typography we also managed to make the ‘o’ in ‘action’ look like a focus point.  Furthermore, the reason why the typography is different on the front cover of the magazine, is to evoke the idea that the production company has no control over the company that owns the magazine, thus they are free to use whatever typography they kind suitable.  However, the way in which the title is positioned within the cover of the magazine, is reminiscing of an arched knife, or even a machete.

The colour scheme of the poster

(black and red) is reoccurring  in the magazine, in order to make the magazine associate with the poster and therefore the film.  Nevertheless, the magazine, also promotes the trailer due to the fact that the location of the background which appears to be a litter dark alley,  is found within the trailer when Sophie is being chased by Michael.  Therefore by using this location in the trailer and the magazine I managed to give my audience a sense of the narrative.

Although those three products have a significant amount of importance I cannot only rely on  them for the promotion of ‘Knife. Camera. Action.’  A low budget independent film, can never be as heavily promoted as a blockbuster. This is why it should also rely on viral marketing and word of mouth to create a buzz about the film. This does not mean that the film will automatically become more popular, it only means that it might get more recognition. Viral marketing through social networks is cheap and very effective if it used correctly.  Due to audience fragmentation I would have to advertise the trailer through all kinds of media platforms, to reach as much audience as I can.  ‘The Blair Witch’ project gain much awareness due to their website in which they made the story look like it was in fact a real story. Similarly I could create a website page for my film, making it seem like a real story.  Furthermore, a twitter account and a Facebook page would need to be set up to continuously promote the film .

Films promoting British social realism, such as ‘Knife Camera Action’ tend to focus on the current issues of our society which are then represented through a range of ideologies.  Unlike, for example a Spielberg film, British social realism films tend not to have a pre-existing audience, due to the usage of unknown actors and producers. This is why these films need more than one company to be interested and willing to fund it, since the producing company cannot obtain a big enough budget on its own. Thus, as we lack access to vertical and horizontal integration it will be difficult to distribute the the film, hence another is independent distributor is needed as a link. When the ticket sales being to drop the film must be onto a DVD without hesitation so that it will remain in people’s mind, helping me achieve a greater revenue with the  help of the DVD sales.

Overall, I believe that this film has a chance of being a success if I strategically combine my three ancillary products which show clear brand identity, with viral marketing and an independent distributor.

All in all, I think that if I were to combine my three ancillary products -with evident brand identity seen across- viral marketing and the use of an independent distributor I may be able to turn this film into a success by covering all angles.

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

The codes and conventions of every film are usually used to help the audience identify the genre that the film the belongs to. Throughout time periods, the codes and conventions have been blended over and over again,  to ‘breed’ different sub genre, one of which is the slasher category. Its roots are found within the slasher genre, but it managed to stand out through its explicit gore, which is the quality that turned it into a sub-category of the horror genre. In order for the audience to recognise the gender, however, many codes and conventions have remained the same.

There are a range of conventions which help identify the slasher genre:

•             the group of teenagers whom are murdered one by one

•             a psychopathic (usually) male killer

• a virgin who defeats the killer 

Such conventions are displayed in classic slasher films such as Halloween, Friday th 13th and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Within our trailer we complied with the convention of the final girl as being virginal, and without a voluptuous lifestyle. We also gave her a unisex name, which is another feature of the final girl, as it helps when the audience be it male or female will identify with her. What we altered however, is the colour of her hair, which we decided should be blonde. This was done not only to challenge the conventions of the final girl, as she usually has brown hair, but to further emphasize her virginal state and innocence as this specific hair colour is reminiscent of Raphael’s infants, thus giving her a holy childlike aspect which automatically makes her stand out as pure, thus following the typical convention of a final girl.   All these features of the final girl have been emphasized by Carol Clover in her book Men, Women, and Chain Saws. Most theorists would refer to horror films as a male- driven genre. However, Clover states that mostly in slasher films, the audience, be it male or female, it is strategically forced to identify with the final girl.

However, the final girl can be seen by the male audience as evil, as subconsciously she conveys castration. This theory was put forward in  Barbara Creed’s ‘The Monstrous Feminine,’ and it was developed based on Mulvey’s male gaze and then further built on Freud’s psychological theory. Based on those two theories, Creed was able to argue that women are often portrayed as monstrous within society and horror films due to the fact that their lack of male genitals represent castration. T

In the classical Freudian psychoanalytical theory the Pre- Oedipal is a stage of the Oedipus complex, and it is the first stage in the development of a child where he sees his mother and himself as one and the same, as the child is not yet aware of sexual drives and makes no distinction between the masculine and the feminine gender. However, the child then goes through a transition and begins to realise their mother is lacking something- a penis. And so, the boy will give up his subconscious incestuous desire for his mother due to the fear of being castrated by his father, when he figures that the female might somehow have been castrated and this is the transition to Post- Oedipal Stage.   Flipping Mulvey’s classic male-driven identification process of sadistic voyeur, found in cinema, to a masochistic-voyeur, by shifting the identification process to the Final girl, Clover swapped the Post- Oedipal, male sadistic voyeuristic impulse to a Pre- Oedipal masochistic impulse. Sadism is post-Oedipal as it takes shape when identification moves from the mother to the father, whereas masochism is pre-oedipal as it takes place when the mother is the powerful source of the identification of the child, and so the child takes pleasure in the submission to the mother. And so, in a traditional slasher film, the viewer takes a submissive position when they identify with the final girl, as it subconsciously reminds the viewer of their mother, emphasizing the incestuous sexual desire. When the final girl manages to defeat the monster (aka the symbol of empowerment and masculinity), the audience can no longer identify with the final girl, because now the victim became the castrated. This bring me to Barbara’s Creed theory ‘The Monstrous Feminine. On a basic level the final girl is seen as the hero who defeats the monster in  the end. However, the final girl can be seen by the male audience as evil, as subconsciously she conveys castration. This theory was put forward in  Barbara Creed’s ‘The Monstrous Feminine,’ and it was developed based on Mulvey’s male gaze and then further built on Freud’s psychological theory. Based on those two theories, Creed was able to argue that women are often portrayed as monstrous within society and horror films due to the fact that their lack of male genitals represent castration.

We decided to reject this theory by having the final girl not killing the murderer to reject this idea by having the final girl not defeating the killer in the end. The last scene ends with he camera falling down and still recording Michael chasing Charlie. Whereas in Creed’s theory the final girl becomes a monster when she eliminates the killer, we believe that by having the killer standing alive  and still trying to murder Charlie could portray the oppression of women and the struggle to escape the patriarchal society, when men still own such invincible power.

The first girl is another convention which we decided to follow. Due to her promiscuous nature, the first girl (Sophie) always ends up dead first, reflecting the views of society sexual activeness. As Charlie has blonde hair, we decided to make Sophie a girl with dark hair, not only to show the binary opposites between her and Charlie, but also to convey mystery and seductiveness, things which were also implied by her exotic complexion.  After the first girl dies, the next person to lose their live is usually of a different background other than white. For example, in ‘Scream’ the black guy always dies first. This could be interpreted as the cinema industry being racist and therefore falling in line with the Marxist view that that the people beholding the power are mainly white catholic men of middle class. Despite the changing of times and the almost nonexistent racism, ideologies as such have been kept within horror in order to keep the classic conventions. We also followed this convention by having Michael being killed after Sophie. We made Henry look like the typical jock, as the jock is sometimes existent within trailer films and ends up getting killed because of his fake bravery.We conveyed his typical jock nature through having him using slang words such as ‘dodgy.’

The killer in our film has an obsession with slasher films, especially Peeping Tom. We made a direct inter-textual reference to that film, by using quote from it in the beginning of the trailer. “Do you know what the most frightening thing in the world is? It’s fear.” We used to to imply the terrors Michael’s victims will have to experience and also to evoke that he films his murders, just as Mark in Peeping Tom did.

We managed to emphasize Michael’s obsession with slasher films in the trailer by having him as a non-diegeic voiceover showing off his knowledge of the slahser genre and his obsession with making up his own movie. Michael behavior due to slasher films can be interpreted as society’s big fear that media has a ‘tendency to deprave and corrupt,'  making Michael look like the embodiment of media deprivation. So although Michael does not have a mask, it is clear to see why he would appear scary to the audience- he is just a normal teenager, whom has a mental issue which made him copy slasher films and apply them in real life. This will make the audience (mostly teenagers) scared of the possibility of this happening to them or to their friends.

Production logos is another convention which we followed as we displayed them in the beginning of the trailer.  For our trailer we included two companies: film4 and 666Productions which was the name of our main company. More than one company had to be included as it is well known that low budget independent films tend to need investment from other companies.

In his narrative theory, Todorov stated that all stories must contain an equilibrium, which must then be disrupted, followed by a recognition of that specific disruption and then an attempt to fix it which would eventually lead to a new equilibrium. These stages can usually be located in most slasher films, but we chose to reject this theory in order to wipe out any sort of predictions (Barthe’s enigma theory) that the audience may have made about the ending of the film. In the film we decided  to have the first four stages, however the trailer seem to be rejecting the idea of the equilibrium, in order to convey that the movie may not be what the audiences expects. This is shown through Peeping Tom’s line which runs over Michael watching Peeping Tom and then finishes just before we have an over the shoulder shot of Sophie running away from Michael in a recording frame. Those two shots, are an example of montage editing, as when they are juxtaposed together they convey to  the audience that Michael has been inspired to film himself killing people as he watches slasher films. Sophie is wearing black in this shot to emphazise that she is going to die, as black has connotations of death.

The a non-diegetic sound form a bridge for the next shot in which we see Charlie walking in front of a church.  The sound is used as a form of realisation so that the audience can automatically recognise that Charlie is too being watched and followed by Michael. The fact that Charlie is walking in front of a church conveys Charlie’s purity and innocence. In a voiceover we hear Michael talk about Todorov’s narrative theory ‘every equlibrium has to be disturbed.’ Thus, we can understand that he is planning to disturb Charlie’s life. He then goes on to say that ‘how it’s disturbed it’s up to me.’  This line juxtaposed with Charlie walking past a church conveys the simple paradox that while a catholic society may believe that your life is in the hands of God, there is a greater evil out there from which God cannot protect you. The fact that Michael is the greater evil is conveyed in his next line: ‘I’m the director, and death is on my script.’ This line shows the darkness of his disturbed psyche as he is easily prepared to kill people just to make a film.  Usually, slasher films would not have media theories explained within the film, but as we were inspired by Scream 4, we decided to give out these theories to emphasize the fact that the audience have became so used to slasher films that normal teenagers know the basic rules of a horror film, which may make them murder other people based in those rules, again, making the audience think of whether this may actually have an effect on people who view violent films.

When Henry says ‘death is on my script’ we have a shot of Sophie opening a fridge door. This creates meaning as while he says that Sophie is the shot, reinforcing again that Sophie is his next victim. Matched action is created when Sophie opens the fridge door and in the next scene Charlie turns her head to look behind. This creates meaning as it shows that Charlie is being very precautions whereas Sophie is being almost oblivious to the fact that she is being watched.

Sophie’s mellow and almost careless nature is conveyed through the way in which she spills the milk while she’s talking on the phone. Her kitchen counter is red conveying that she is in danger. Then we have the next scene which is put into a recording frame. Where we see Charlie carrying some stuff to the garage. These two scenes are an example of montage editing, as they convey to the audience that the girls are being stalked within the comfort of their own houses, automatically making the audience scared, seeing as a murder can easily get access to your house.

We then the teacher is introduced. The teacher is the benefactor, or as Propp says in his character theory, the donor which will help the characters by giving them advice about the killer. The next shot is again put into a recording frame of Sophie cleaning the milk she previously spilled, and we hear the diegetic sound of Michael’s intense breathing to emphasize his dark desire to kill her.

Henry is introduced in the next scene, where he appears to be kept into detention along with Charlie. This is conveyed through the noises outside of children talking, while they seem to be doing work. The fact that they are in detention conveys the fact they are normal school children, with normal problems, conveying that there might however be an equilibrium. However, Henry then tells Charlie that he has seen her walking with ‘Michael... that creep who is always holding the camera.’ The fact that Charlie has no idea what he is talking about evokes the fact that Henry has spotted Michael stalking Charlie, and therefore he has recognised the disruption of the equilibrium. While he talks about his, we see another recording frame of Charlie, to further emphasize the fact that she is being stalked.

Henry describes Michael as ‘dodgy,’ and in order to prove his point we have Mr Sharp, their English teacher reading Michael’s rather disturbing essay. Mr Sharp’s voice fades into Michael’s voice saying how  his ‘fingers ache to hurt her, ruin her.’

This bridges into the next scene where we can see Charlie typing something on her phone. The previous reference to fingers, and the shot of Charlie’s fingers typing shows that while Charlie is living the life of a normal teenagers, preoccupied with social networks and such, Michael is not a conventional teenager, and therefore is different and more disturbing than the rest.  While the voice over keeps on going, the audience realises how deeply disturbed he is. We see the white garage door opening with a dark shadow of a knife on it, conveying how prepared Michael is to destroy the innocent. As the g
arage door is opening the pace starts to increase and the high pitched noise conveys that this is where the violence starts, as we see a confrontation between the final girl and the killer.  The paces increasing as we see a series of shots where Charlie and Sophie are being chased and/or attacked by Michael. Most of these fast pace shots are set within a night vision recording frame or a simple recording frame, to show that they all are part of Michael’s slasher film. We then see a night vision recording frame as Michael chokes Sophie.

As the pace keeps on speeding up, Michael begins to state the rules of  the slasher genre. Talking about the people he will kill, by his own rules. The beating sound and the high pitched music are non digetic sounds used to create tension as we being to see Michael in action.

Usually the tittle of the film is all shown in one caption. However, as we made a pun upon the line ‘Lights, camera, action’ we decided to have the title split in three captions with shots representing each word. ‘Knife’ is followed by a shot of Michael wiping his bloody knife over the body of a victim. ‘Camera’ is followed by a shot of Michael taking a picture and ‘Action is then followed by a shot of Michael violently stabbing someone. The non-diegetic noise and the buzzing create a sense of tension of terror inflicted upon the viewer. The trailer then ends conventionally with the end card on which we can see the name of the film and the cast and crew.

Poster

The poster for the trailer, I believe is rather conventional. It complies with the genre and it depicts the narrative of the film. I have used a black and red colour scheme in order to convey the genre of the film, as both red and black have connotations of death and danger.  Instead of having a picture of the a certain character wihtin the film I have decided to chose a image of a camera, a knife and a bloody hand. This was done in order to omply with the title: Knife- the knife covered in blood; Camera- the camera which seems to be recording the knife and the hand; Action- the bloody hand which suggests that the person may have just been killed. Some parts of the poster are much darker than others, I have made the darker parts distinguish from the lighter in order to portray knife movements.

Another convention which i have followed can be  seen at the bottom of the poster where I have included the institutional companies’ logos, which helped into the funding of the film. Along with this I have included the age restriction which is obligatory to restrict younger people from seeing it as they may be affected by the violence within the film.

Furthermore, I also had to include the principal cast and crew along with a review by Little White Lies, to promote the magazine as well as the trailer, this again quite conventional.

Magazine

As I have chosen Little White Lies as the magazine to feature my film, I made the magazine cover comply with the format of this specific magazine. Little White Lies is known for breaking the codes and conventions of typical magazine, as for starters the shape is rather a square as opposed to a normal A4 format which other magazine will adapt. The bar code, the masthead , the issue number, date and price are all put together in a circle found at the middle top of the page. I had to comply with this format as I could not break it since the magazine is not owned by my company,

For the main image I have used photoshop to make it look cartoon-like. Which is a typical format for the pictures featuring film in Little White lies. I have decided to use a picture of Michael holding the camera up to his face almost like a mask which conveys that he is the killer. I also made Michael wear a hoodie which is a typical stereotype for teenage boys.  The background appears to be a dark alleyway, conveying to only the location of the film, but also the state of Michael’s mind- dark, scary. I have used primarily a red colour to enforce the slasher genre, as red connotes blood.

Final Magazine Cover

Final Poster

Knife Camera Action - Trailer