Evaluation Question 1

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

Our A2 media film "The Forgotten Truth" uses conventions of a psychological thriller as the costumes used portray the story line in our chosen genre. As the Doctor wears a lab coat, signaling their medical profession which makes the film look more realistic. In the TV series American Horror Story which is based around this genre, the doctor and psychiatrist wears a lab coat, making his character seem intimidating and important, which is what we tried to portray through our costume.

                    AHS Doctor

Doctors white coat in our film

Although I do believe our film challenged the convention of real media also as our character Damion's costume didn't fit with the typical mental asylum setting, not conforming to expectations. Damion wore a grey t shirt through the film, changing into a coat in some scenes, but we felt because he didn't believe he was in a mental asylum and he didn't understand why he was there in the first place, he was able to wear casual clothes. As mental institutions probably wouldn't let patients wear their own clothes especially if they had done something extremely bad to be there, we based our idea from the film Shutter Island. Due to this film using the idea of the mental institution letting the male protagonist create his own image of what he thinks is going on, allowing him to dress as a police officer and live in a made up world of his own. We had the idea that the mental institution would probably care for Damion's sanity and allow him to dress as he pleases because of the stress and illnesses that he has.

          Damion's casual outfit

Teddy's outfit in Shutter Island


We used a location of a hospital bed room in our college to create a scene that looked like a mental institute. This is usually what would appear in the psychological thriller setting as our story line includes this, similar to the mental hospital room from Gothika. The location does subvert the stereotype slightly due to it being filmed in college hallways, so college signs were evidently there.

Damion's hospital room

Gothika hospital room- similar coloured clothing reflects where the characters are and the confused facial expressions/actions show their illness and the genre.

Our main convention is the plot twist which most psychological thrillers have included in their narrative, to keep the audience enticed and play with their expectations, which would also play with their mind, the two elements that are involved in this genre as they gain to understand the unstable characters and their background story. The plot twist we decided upon was that Damion discovers he in fact murdered his wife, which was inspired by one of my favourite films, Shutter Island, as a similar story ending happens here when the main character discover his wife had murdered his three children and so therefore he murdered her in a traumatic state.

Plot twist of Teddy killing his wife

            Plot twist of Damion killing wife

Another factor would be an unreliable narrator because of Damion's state of mind, being schizophrenic and having irrational reoccurring thoughts meaning his side of the story that is shown may also be deceiving to the audience. The audience probably won't believe that his wife is lost inside the hospital that he's seemingly in, this will play with their perception on the film and make them wonder whether it's reality or created in Damion's mind. The thought of this is shown in other films such as Psycho as it uses elements of loss of identity when the character dresses as his mother to murder guests at his hotel. We created a clip similar to the murder scene when Damion murders his wife, using a silhouette to show his loss of identity when he becomes ill but also so that the audience can't see who it is who's really killing her. This is done in Psycho during the murder scene as when the hotel owner murders his guest in the dress of his mothers, you can't tell who it is, playing with the audiences mind and also showing his change of identity when committing an act so violent such as murder. Murder and death is also one of the main themes in this genre, characters being faced with death like these two will have to face this through the entirety of the film, typical of this type of film.

 Psycho-silhouette figure

The Forgotten truth: Silhouette figure

Continuity editing is used in our film to create a sense of time however our film works slightly differently using the idea from Memento where the film events work backwards. As we decided that we'd show Damion waking up in the mental asylum and searching for his wife, rather than the usual and expected story line of murdering his wife and then waking up in a mental asylum, regretting what he'd done. This was edited together using Final Cut Express in which we used over the shoulder shots to show the audience what Damion was looking at as he wasn't in the right state of mind for him to reveal this, not knowing what he'd done. Richard Dyer's theory of entertainment states the audience watch a film to escape from reality and they'll watch a film if it offers them something they don't have in their own life. Over the shoulder shots put the audience in the characters mind, making them relate to the character and hopefully enjoy the film because of this.

Then we used a title sequence in which we placed an effect/transition over the top to move the letters, as though they were moving in the way Damion's mind was working, it represented this. This is similar to the television series AHS in the format of the title, the letters moving accompanied by intense music. The letters moving could also have some representation of mental institutions in an old era, the forms of torture that took place were things such as high voltage to shock the brain, which would be creepy when represented in a title sequence. The film title it has similarities with is Se7en because of the flickering title and the moving format.

The editing we used was involving a journey montage of Damion searching for Lily through different corridors, the match on actions displayed through each shot shows how the scenes fit together, creating a realistic element of time for the audience as they'll believe Damion is looking for Lily quickly, searching everywhere he can. This is similar to the The Lovely bones as the main character attempts to gain the attention of her father, searching for him.

Our film uses typical conventions such as a male and female relationship in the psychological thriller genre and the male killing the female, as it's usually the males in these sort of films who hold the most power. However this is debatable as a lot of female characters especially in this genre develop mental illnesses and are seen as crazy by male characters like in the film Gothica, the female character is seen as crazy by most men in the film and is put into a mental institution.

In this way, our film subverts the stereotype as you wouldn't usually find a man in a film going mentally ill, except of course in Shutter Island. Therefore I feel because of the unexpected lead character in this film, a more male based audience would watch it as they'd be drawn to the new idea of a mentally ill male. However our overall audience is teen based.

Also our non-diegetic sound is the usual type that appears in this genre as before hand I researched into music found in psychological thrillers and people would expect the music to be intense, creepy music like the kind you hear on the film Sinister. The music is used to affect the audience after they watch the film, creating a suspense during their viewing time but also making it memorable so they remember exactly what happened during the music was played. We a drum beat on top of the scene where Damion discovered his file, creating an intense moment as the drum beat played, the audience's heart would beat faster, making them scared of what's to come. This can be seen in Sinister when the 'Boogie man' appears, the music accompanies him so they audience know what to expect on a particular moment in a scene. We used a voice over through the film to covey an opinion from Damion, so his illness was shown rather than just an aggressive side that the audience may not understand. Voice overs are usually used in these sorts of films as the plots can sometimes be confusing, so the audience need a bit of extra information from the main character. Like this one from Sin city


The film script leans quite towards a romantic tragedy when you read the romance involved as our main character discusses him finding his wife, however in the particular context, it can't be considered a romantic tragedy as it uses too many elements of mental illness and death.




Overall our audience feedback provided with the information that they enjoyed our film, declaring that the scenes fit well and the story line was intriguing, making us happy that we followed the usual psychological thriller expectations of creating a character who the audience want to follow and know about. Damion was an intriguing character as in previous films I've mentioned such as Shutter island, the audience gain satisfaction from discovering new things about characters and finding the plot out before the film ends, involving them in our product. Closeups of Damion's and Lily's relationship proved their love was realistic as the audience saw what they used to be and what they eventually turned into, when arguing. This allows the audience to really gain a wider insight into the plot of the film as they learn a lot about the characters throughout.

Equally this closeup shot from Shuter Island shows insight into Teddy and his friends relationship

Evaluation question 2

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

The purpose of our film was to provide entertainment to the audience in order to intrigue them into the storyline. We used elements from the genre psychological thriller such as black and white scenes like in the film Memento, to please the audience of our film. The black and white sequence signals the past and this is also done through the narrative working backwards, which we attempted in our film. As our film begins with Damion waking up in a mental asylum and then ending with his realisation of what he’s done, playing with the audiences mind and allowing everyone to have their own interpretation and piece the film together.

Our film adapted throughout the planning stages on blogger, to ensure we created a film which was entertaining and kept the audience on the edge of their seat during the film and especially on the plot twist. We did this by creating a treatment to show what the overall film was about after we had collected all of our ideas and using our audience questionnaires to put a final certificate on the film, now with the knowledge of who our audience was.

What we were trying to achieve with our main product

Our film is a psychological thriller. Films of this genre usually involve innocent victims, doctors and mental illnesses which is what we used to try and portray this type of film. The themes in our film are remembrance and death as the whole storyline is trying to remember a death and then dying as an effect of this. The music is very important in a psychological thriller as it impacts the entire film and the way it’s perceived by the audience. An audience would expect suspense and intense music in this genre and would be surprised if this wasn’t included. Our film uses dialogue to give more information about the plot and who certain characters are, as well as a voiceover of Damion explaining who he’s looking for. This makes it simpler to understand and although psychological thrillers are usually background music based as a lot of dialogue makes it less intense, we felt by adding a voiceover, it would give the audience a basic outline of the storyline, allowing them to gain an in depth view on our film.

We used codes and conventions that are typically found in psychological thrillers. This includes the theme of death as most films that are similar play on this idea and have secrets in the plot, which often ends in death or a death that’s happened previously in the film. But also editing such as the black and white scenes to show memories, which have appeared in other films of this genre such as Memento. The only subvert in audience expectations would be the hanging as you would expect the mental institute to be quite strict on security depending on the time. Also we have a female doctor which would be unlikely to appear in these sort of films as they’re usually very male based audiences that watch them.

We also used props such as the photograph to show what Damion was remembering but also clothing like the doctor's coat to symbolise the character being a doctor. This made the film seem more realistic to our audience who would expect this sort of planning for the film of this genre.  Our main aim was to provide the certification 15 audience entertainment and a psychological thrill from the short film and complex storyline.

Poster

After we created our film, I started to research into similar film posters in order to produce a rough draft and final film poster that would represent our product. I looked into similar genres of films and looked at posters which included dark backgrounds, characters and good slogans/titles.

I found these 4 posters which I took inspiration from for our rough draft and final film poster. The film poster Premonition was analysed for our final poster because of the creepy looking background as it shows the characters face in the trees, symbolising the character being involved in the setting, the woods, in the film. The differing in the red text compared with the white underneath stands out against the dark background, making the film appear as a horror/thriller. I analysed Gothika to create a similar poster as the character’s face from the film is pictured on the poster, meaning you know the film will be quite chilling from the reaction on her face. Atticus Institute’s background seems psychological because of the ghostly body coming out from the women, giving the effect of a ghostly storyline, which we could have used in our film poster as our film involves a ghost.

Finally the film Shutter Island was my main inspiration for our film as the storyline was very similar and we took aspects from the film, such as the character in a mental asylum searching for his wife and the mental asylum setting, as well as the character of the doctor. Due to the storyline being so similar, I felt that we were able to create a similar film poster as this film poster reflects the storyline of the film, a character who’s full of hatred, trying to find out the truth. As the light from the fire represents him searching for the truth in a dark setting. The text matching the fire makes the audience want to watch the film as the poster looks interesting.

Although all of the posters are for different films, they were all quite similar as they all included a background image of the character in the film, giving the audience a feel of what these characters are like which would maybe tell them the genre as if the character looks sad they know it’s a tragedy. The text on each also stands out against this image, so the audience know what the film is called and who is involved in it. The fact that there’s only one character pictured in each of these posters show it’s them who become psychologically damaged in the film as they’re the main characters.

Layout of film poster

Beginning with a film poster layout, I portrayed similar aspects onto my rough draft. This includes the film title at the top, the background/photo below and the credits underneath this, which is the classical layout.

Poster

Firstly, I created a rough draft film poster with Photoshop, which showed the genre of our film.

I then analysed this to show why the audience would be attracted to this film.

This is our final film poster, which we used to advertise our film. I analysed this film poster to show what aspects we had used from other similar film posters and certain things included in the poster to show its genre. The film poster included credits which show the audience who made the film as this could be a good selling point, perhaps people recognise the production companies name or who made the film, making them want to watch it. I finally added a release date so the audience know when to expect to see the film, as this knowledge would draw more people into watching it, as they know exactly where they can find it.

Radio trailer

Before making our radio trailer, I searched into existing radio trailers in order to get a feel for the expectations of this genre. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a psychological thriller film on the radio, however I found a Doctor Who trailer which shares similar elements like sound effects, indicating what’s happening for the audience who are only listening rather than watching. I discovered that this radio trailer uses speech and dialogue to tell the audience what’s happening, however doesn’t give the entire story away, leaving them intrigued to watch. Using music from the film reinforces the genre of the film, setting an expectation of a psychological thriller for the audience and a voiceover on the trailer creates understanding, making the film easy for the listeners to understand. My main aim for our radio trailer was to make it so that the audience could easily understand what was happening and the summary of the film just by listening, by doing this I’d have successfully created a product that would represent our film.

I then looked at the film Terminator as I found a trailer for this and listened to the audio to give the same effect as a radio trailer. Although it’s more action based, the features involved would be similar to my radio trailer as the audio reflects what’s happening in the film. This is what all radio trailers attempt to do successfully.

The dialogue also involves reviews from critics and newspaper, giving a rating for the film, which by including this in our film trailer intrigued people to watch it as they would gain a sense of whether the film was good. So I then looked into what we would include in ours:

Radio trailer message

We then made a final decision and created a script for our radio trailer by incorporating parts of example radio trailers that we looked at:

"The Forgotten Truth"

"Starring Hayley Townend & Dale Cook"

"An extreme psychological thriller that'll blow your mind"

"An original HVRD production"

"Remember"

"Available on YouTube on the 25th January "

The voiceover for our film was performed by Hayley’s dad who read this script slowly, so we could include sound effects and music from our film over the top. By using the title of the film, it tells the audience directly what our film is and then by giving information about the genre, it verifies whether the audience will enjoy it. Telling the audience who is starred in the film may encourage them to watch as they could have seen films with these actors in beforehand and so know what to expect in terms of acting skills and maybe even storylines, depending on what type of films these people are usually in. We used a quote from our film ‘Remember’ to give the audience a taste of what the film includes i.e- a male character attempting to remember what had happened in the past with his wife. This slogan is also used on our poster, giving the same message and a hint to the story plot. By giving a release date, we know that we’ll gain a wider audience as a lot of people will just have a look at the film, even if they don’t enjoy this genre.

The audience can identify our film as a psychological thriller due to the voiceover stating its genre and the voice over of Damion declaring his love for Lily, which is then contrasted with the creepy sounding music in the background, signalling something has gone wrong. This music may entice the listener to watch the film as it sounds intense, giving an initial overall feeling of the film. The audience may also be able to tell the location of the film and the setting by the accents of the characters which will then be shown through the setting. By the narrator stating the production company, the audience will know it’s a film.

Conclusion: How effective do you think the two ancillary texts are in selling your production?

The poster-

The poster had to look professional in order for our film to be advertised realistically and gain a wider audience as the film poster was the first thing that reflected our genre and plot. By looking at previous film poster examples and similar genres of film posters, we were able to create a poster that advertised our product in the right way. Using Photoshop, it was simple to make the poster and yet the layout looked professional, saving us time and money, but also the heightened expectations for a good film. If the audience saw a poster that looked poorly made such as my plan for a finished film poster:

They wouldn’t be intrigued to watch the film, so after re creating this poster until we achieved a final draft, we knew we would have audience support.

Also by using a real image from the film, it made the audience enticed to know what would happen with these characters and their relationship. This is why our film poster presents the film well and advertises the final product completely. I wouldn’t adjust our final film poster too much. However from my first poster plan, I feel that by adding a real image of a hand rather than one from Google, I could create more suspense for the audience when they see my poster.

Radio Trailer

The radio trailer successfully engages our listeners, by conveying psychological aspects of the film like death and illness by forgetting such a horrible act that Damion did. Yet also shows the romance that goes wrong, signaling a thrill for the audience as they are able to see the relationships faults and why Damion kills his wife. I think that our trailer would be effective at promoting our film because it uses all of the elements that exist in a radio trailer, as I know from research. Our target market was a teenage audience and due to the genre of the film being well portrayed in the radio trailer, I felt that we had a very good chance of gaining our target audience.

In my opinion our two ancillary texts reflect our media products well because we showed our creativity throughout and gained inspiration from similar films, like Shutter Island, promoting our film genre and storyline.

Results of questionnaire on two ancillary texts- conclusion

Evaluation question 3

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Lo3tfB-30zrng5JcIDtpyST0Id58Cngk03xPekQiGnQ/edit?usp=sharing

Evaluation question 4

Analysis of Questionnaire for Radio Trailer and Film Poster

To get feedback on our ancillary texts, we shared a questionnaire on social media. Here is a link to the questionnaire:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/145B10cVlk8tBrg6RSjq5KJW40SCnjUwkW7wm76famV8/viewform

Here are the questionnaire results:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1b_ZYXffB0IyhNXaiNC3MBCd-yr0m0Z8aY0losUHOHF4/edit#gid=1491805896

Here is a graph to show the age of our participants:

The age of our participants is important because it shows that the majority of the participants who gave us feedback were in the age range of our target audience.









The results of our feedback showed that 100% of our participants liked our radio trailer and that it made them want to go and see our film. This was pleasing because it showed that our radio trailer connected with our audience and was appealing to them.

When asked if they thought that our poster was appealing to them, only one person said no. I think this is another success as the vast majority said that they thought it was appealing.

After looking at the comments the participants left, three of them said that our ancillaries and film linked together well which showed the connection between the products. It is clear that or ancillary texts sold our film well.

Evaluation Question - 1

Evaluation Question - 2

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

a) What were you trying to achieve in your main production? Was this also reflected in the two advertising products?

For our film we were trying to create a sense of thrill and entertainment for the audience. We rated our film at a 15 so that we could add more violence and action within the film but also didn’t want to add too much to raise the age certification which could reduce our audience. We worked around Richard Dyers entertainment theory in the production of our film which suggests that people watch films to go to a place in their mind that is a better world and step out of reality whilst they are watching the film. One of the subsections of this theory is energy, which we have tried to show in our poster. We aimed to put a sense of mystery in to the poster by using the colour black for the background and the slogan ‘Remember’ so that they will be able to take pleasure out of the thrill from the film. Another element of the theory is ‘community’ I think that love is reflected in our poster as the main image is of the two main characters is of them being happy together walking in a park, this may make the audience want the relationship that they had before Damian turned mentally ill. We picked this image rather than one of them perhaps arguing together from one of the black and white memory scenes as it shows that they did love each other at some point in their life.

During researching other film posters, I made a template that we could base our poster on from looking at the typical layout of other film posters. I did this so that we could make our film poster look as effective & professional as possible.

b) How effective do you think the two ancillary texts are in selling your production?

In our radio trailer we wanted to create a sense of mystery and intrigue the audience by unravelling the truth of the film throughout. We used the same slogan as on our film poster as it then connects the 3 products together. We used a one worded slogan ‘Remember’, this represents what it happening throughout the film. The main character in our film keeps remembering pieces about his life as the film goes on and the memories get more violent the more he remembers. We wanted to have the audio from our film in our radio trailer so that the two products would be connected and the audience would be able to tell that the trailer would be for our film. We wanted the voice over on top of the film audio the be a male talking in a deep voice to follow the stereotype that older males sound more intimidating. We thought that this would make our film more mysterious and intense for the audience to listen to. For the background music we also took the music from the background of our film and the music we have put on there has a creepy sinister sound to it, this will hopefully give pleasure to the audience as it will make the feel on edge and hopefully want to watch our film.

I think that our film poster is effective in selling our film as it links well to it and advertises the genre of the film well. We have also included the certification of the film on the poster so that the audience will be able to see if they are old enough to watch it and also, with it being a 15 they will be able to assume that there is strong violence and language included in it which will show that it will be more thrilling that a film that would be a PG or a U for example. I have also included the actors names in the film because if the actor/s names are well know as being good it could attract a wider range of audience as they could want to see the actor perform.

We then made a questionnaire for our radio trailer and film poster so that we could see what the audience thought of our final products. We asked them if our radio trailer made them want to watch our film, and 100% of the results said yes. We were happy with this result as the whole point of it was to promote our film. We also asked what did they like about our film and radio trailer and got a range of responses, such as: They said that they liked how we used the same photo from our film on the poster which then linked them both together. Another thing that was mentioned was the background music for the radio trailer, this is good as we wanted the music to show what genre the film was and show the audience what the atmosphere of the film will be like.

c) Make comparisons with real advertising products.

In conclusion, I think that we did a good job of making our film poster and radio trailer effectively for our film. We linked them well together and it was clear that they were made for our film. Also, from our audience feedback we can see that the audience thought that our products were effective in promoting our film.

Evaluation Question - 3

Evaluation Question - 4

Analysis of the Questionnaire on the film poster and radio trailer.

Analysis of the Questionnaire on the film poster and radio trailer.

Here is the questionnaire that we sent to our potential audience by Facebook and other social media sites. We did this because millions of people use theses sites and this means that more people are likely to see it and we also used social media as it is a free form of promotion.
Questionnaire

 Here are the results to the questionnaire. We did not receive many responses but we received enough to be able to see what the audience thought about our film poster and radio trailer.
Questionnaire Results

 This chart is relevant to this analysis as our target audience was Students aged between 15 and 21. As 50% of the people who answered our questionnaire were students it means that 50% of our results are very accurate.








This graph shows us as the producers that 8 out of 9 people said that our film poster was appealing. This was great for us as a group as some of us had never created a poster or a radio trailer and it was good to know that people enjoyed it and would then consider watching our film.



It is important to look at the age of the respondents. As you can see many of our respondents were aged between 11 and 20.

Questionnaire for film poster and radio trailer-analysis

Our final questionnaire was based on our two ancillary products, which sold our finished product. Our feedback is shown below:

Feedback told us that our film poster and radio trailer linked well together, meaning we had achieved what we hoped in our finished product.

The type of people who took our questionnaire varied, meaning we gained a wider range of answers. As 100% said they liked both our radio trailer and film poster, I felt happy that our effort in creativity and hard work paid off.

This is the structure of our questionnaire created on Google forms, which is easily accessible to our audience.

Questionnaire for the Radio trailer and Film poster - Analysis

When we asked the audience if they like our radio trailer, 100% of them said yes they did. We thought that this was good feedback as this is the first radio trailer that we have put together. Although, we think we could have improved the voice over we had done for it. 

When we asked the audience if the radio trailer made them want to watch our film they all said yes it did. This is good as the purpose of the radio trailer is to promote our film and make people want to watch it. We then asked them is the poster was appealing to them, and again they all answered with yes. This is important the poster must look interesting enough for the audience to like.

We asked what the audience then like about our film poster. One response said that they liked how we used the same photo from the film in the poster. We did this so that the poster would link to our film and people would be able to recognise our film from it. Another response was that it looked professional. This is good as it would look more attractive to the audience rather than if it looked poorly done.