In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and

conventions of real media products?POSTERS:

When developing our viral marketing campaign, we decided that we would make our posters as realistic as possible; taking inspiration from the similar strategy used by the District 9 poster campaign.

However, our posters do challenge the conventions of this area of the media, as movie posters of this ‘realistic’ nature are not usually the ‘norm’ when it comes to Movie campaigns.

TEASER TRAILER:

In some senses our teaser trailer uses media conventions as it uses atmospheric music, creepy dialogue, a stereotypical horror scream at the end, and varied camera shots and editing techniques to create tension and excitement amongst the audience.

However, our trailer also challenges conventions by the way our on screen text is positioned, as it is not in the centre of the screen, but instead moves around the screen. This has a more visual impact on the audience, as this is not what you would

usually expect.

WEBSITE:

Our main film website uses the conventional layout of many similar movie websites, with a simplistic layout. As mentioned on our blog, we took inspiration from websites such as Cloverfield and The Fourth Kind.

On our sister website, we took a different more ‘realistic’ approach. Again, following the inspiration of the District 9 campaign; using this idea of realism in our posters and website. We decided to create a missing persons website, and so we researched what other similar sites looked like. We then created a very simplistic ‘missing persons’ website, which displayed an ‘error’ message, then directing users to an ‘alternative site’. This being our main ‘Watcher’ movie website.

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

Our actual trailer and our posters and website are a combination of a realistic campaign and a stereotypical movie campaign.

The posters are the realistic part, they interlink with the plot of the movie. Our movie is about missing people and our posters have been designed to look like missing posters. We thought this would create wide public interest in the movie and prompt them to do their own research.

The only problem with the realistic part of the campaign is that if people do not follow the web address on the poster then they will not know that it’s actually about a movie. Another problem is if the posters are taken too seriously it could cause moral panic.

Our texts link together via the website. From our realistic one you are redirected to the website which has our teaser trailer and is more movie orientated and not realistic.

The realistic missing persons website which we created, links to the theme of the movie. The movie website which you are then redirected to takes the conventions of many other websites similar to it. It has a largely simple layout, with the teaser trailer at the centre, and so drawing in the audience’s attention immediately. The background is also a subtle link to the main missing person & stalking theme which is ongoing throughout our campaign, product and texts.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

• We showed our Teaser trailer to a group of year 12 and 13 students from our college. A general overview of what they said led us to conclude that our trailer keeps to the conventions of existing teaser trailers.

• One reason that the audience liked it was that it is reminiscent of an old black and white horror movie as we have used black and white throughout our teaser. They felt that the black and white also offered consistency being the only colours that are used. One person also thought it was in the style of Blair Witch so felt comfortable with the concept.

• Another good point was that it doesn’t let you know exactly what’s happening but offers a high level of intrigue into the movie. Its fast pace which forms a feeling of excitement for the audience and poses a lot of questions afterwards.

• We put our trailer on Youtube and Facebook to see what response we got from our viewers.

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

stages?• A Clip from our news report was placed on both the social networking site Facebook. Although this exact clip may have

been edited slightly when it was placed in our actual trailer, putting it on both Facebook and YouTube allowed us to reach a wide audience in a very short space of time. Therefore creating as much publicity for our product as possible, as well as producing a method for the audience to give as feedback on how the clip has been styled and edited.

• The full, finished teaser trailer has now been placed on both YouTube and Facebook.

• In producing our teaser trailer, we have used a range of media technologies. Firstly, we have used regular windows programs with paint technology to edit any images. We have then also been programs such as Serif Movie plus 5 to edit our trailer together, whilst Photoshop and Dreamweaver were used to design our website. In our evaluation stages we have also used Microsoft PowerPoint, and incorporated text, images and video.