Sight and Sound analysis (Magazine)

I decided to do a content analysis of the feature article - "Gangsters Special", in order to decide whether "Sight and Sound" would be an appropriate magazine to advertise our film "The Illusion".

The article initially opens with a list of some of the typical conventions of crime we have expected to see in our gangster films since the 1930s e.g. "The tommy guns and roadsters are shiny as grand pianos...". Then explains how Michael Mann has adapted these features and how successful he believes his creation of "Public Enemies" has been. The article is very specific to showing the uniquness of director Michael Mann and the enthusiasm for digital camera work the cinematographer Danta Spinotti has. This demonstrates that this particular article is aimed at those who have an interest in the art side to the creations of films.

Throughout the article there are several references towards different gangster films across the ages, such as "Miller's Crossing", Bonnie and Clyde", "Miami Vice" and "Manhunter". Comparsions are consistenly made towards these films and the techniques that have been previously used e.g. "Nor indeed any return to the chessy folkloric melancholy of the Coen Brothers' Miller's Crossing (1990)." Yet for me these have no effective towards my perception of the film as i haven't even heard of most of the films mentioned. Again this emphasises the devtion expected towards the genre portraying the type of reader of the articles, as they are very specfic. This shows a more sophiscated type of reader who is not only interested in the big budget proudcts but also those produced independtly, and enjoy seeing the contrasts between and how the genre has devloped.

Therefore we feel "Sight and Sound" is targeted at more of a niche market due to the amount of teachnical lanague used and due to us producing a blockbuster we feel that "The Film" reaches a much larger audience. "Sight and Sound" articles go into a lot of depth about the making of the films, with text taking up a larger proportion of the page in comparsion to images. Showing a more of an experinced audience needed, however this is not the type of audience we wish to appeal to as it makes it too narrow and very specfific. This is one of the reasons we have decided not to use "Sight and Sound" for our magazine cover for ur promotional package.

Marketing Process

Our task was to create a promotional package for a film, and this consists of a film poster, teaser trailer and a magazine cover. We have to carefully consider when we are going to release each of the different elements and the reason behind our decision.

As a viewer of cinema I have generally noticed that the films poster has been released first - almost reflecting a teaser poster. So straight away interest in the film can occur, sometimes before filming has even commenced. For example if we look at films such as Harry Potter and James Bond, the films promotional posters were released around a year before we even seen a teaser trailer. As this creates hype about the film before we even know the contents of it. However we would not use this kind of strategy as films such as Harry Potter already have an established audience, so you could literally have a poster just containing one of the main characters and everyone already knows what's coming due to them already being so established. This is evident in the "Dark Night" (Batman)promotional posters, as seen in the image below this particular poster doesn't even contain any footage from the film. Yet was still very effective.

Batman was able to change their marketing campaign which was initially focused on Batman to being focused on The Joker, due to the film being a Blockbuster and distributed by Warner Bros they had the budget to allow this. In compassion to this our film "The illusion" will only have one promotional poster, two maximum. Our promotional poster will be the first of the three elements to be released, as a poster can attract a wider range audience. Due to them being situated in various different places e.g. bus shelters and billboards. Our promotional film poster is going to be released around 6 months before our magazine cover, this will help to establish the  unique look of the film and portray the genre. Posters are considered to be the most effective and cheapest way of advertising a film, hence why we are going to release this first. Posters will also be up for a longer period of time, and most people have a daily routine where they go up the same escalator wait at the same bus stop and pass the same billboard in the car everyday. Therefore by seeing the same poster everyday over a long duration of time will help to convey our film better. Posters can also convert to websites and to magazines, making them very versatile more likely be seen.

Next we are going to release our teaser trailer in order to reinforce interest for our target audience, as this way we will be gradually releasing more and more information. Helping to raise questions. Also the use of the twins again will be running throughout our campigane, with more glimpses of them appering across the teaser trailer. This will hopefully help to sustain those already established viewers from our teaser poster.

Finally in order to create maxium impact from our magzine cover, it will be realised around 4 months after the intial teaser trailer and actually in the month of when the film itself is going to be released in order to generate and sustain enough interest. As by this point our trailers will also have been realised and the posters would of been on advertisment over a long period of time, so our intial target audience should be "hooked" and antispating the realease with the magzine cover emphasising this exciting further and possibly drawing in even more viewers.

Second Evaluation of First attempt of filming

When discussing further the different shots we could include in our teaser trailer in order to make it scarier these are some of the ideas that we have come up with: 

1. Take out the shot of when the twins have dialogue, this is due to both Louise and I believing that the impact of the "dead" twins will have more of an effect if we don't hear them speaking. Therefore making them seem more paranormal and less of apart of the living world. (insert clip) 

2. In order to include more horrific shots we have drawn on the inspiration of the teaser trailer of "Paranormal activity", and want to incorporate a shot of the twins almost running straight at the camera. However we will have the shot very zoomed in, not allowing the audience to focus too much on their features still leaving room for questions. This particular shot is literally only going to last a fraction of a second and we are going to include it after the title "The Illusion". The reason we are going to position it here is because, once you have reached the title of the film the audience are left feeling at ease, so by including another horrific shot which is also unexpected hopefully will lead the viewers wanting more.

3. Another shot we would like to include will be of a window slamming shut, as the character Katie is attempting to open it. This is due to the success we believe the slamming of the door had. Yet this time when Katie will be banging on the window, unlike the scene with the door we will be able to see the horror on her face as the window is transparent. 

4. The final shot we would like to create is much like that seen in the teaser trailer of "Amytivile Horror". From the outside of the house we will have a low angle shot, with the lights flickering on and off with the digetic sound of a women screaming. The impact we expect this shot to have is to show the audience that it is the house that is causing all these unfortunate events and you just can't escape it's wrath. 

 Once again when going into shooting these shots we will be very organised and expect filming to run smoothly. (Fingers Crossed)

Analysis of "Hide and Seek" promotional poster

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This promotional film poster for hide and seek conveys many of the typical conventions of horror we expect to see through aspects of mise en scene. The reason i decided to focus on this poster is due to their synopsis again being very similar to ours.  As it contains a focus on a small girl and the event of moving into an unusal cheap house, which has its knock on effects.

My eyes are immedatly drawn to the illumanted window, which contains a silohutted figure. The harshness of the shadows on her face and body keep her presence mysterious, creating susispion amoungst the viewers of whos figure it is. They have also used a long shot when capturing this image, in order to show te interactiopn between the figure and the window. Windows and doors are a convention we expect to see in horros, as they can symbolise so many different actions. This particular image creates various emotions within the viewer, making them slightly unesay as we are not aware of what particular convention of windows is being used. As personally it culd show that the distorted figure is watching us through their transpraent window, which intially gives her control and domance over us. The text emphasises this point further "you can run, but you cant hide" and with the blackness surrounding the image really makes us feel trapped with no means of escape. AS for example if this poster was situated at a bus stop, then even when were not looking at the poster the figure will still be "looking" at us. Espically if this was of a night time, this could make the viewer feel very uncomfortable. Yet in contrast to this the image could portray the silehutted figure to be trapped, with the window being their means of escape. This in turn could invoke a response of sympathy for the figure. Finally the window could illistrat a means of protection for the figure, from what is outside which is where the viewer would be situated. Even though this image only takes up a small proportion of the poster, it is very effective!! As it leaves the viewer feeling puzzled ad confussed as to weather the figure is the villian or the hero. It also allows the viewer to decide for themselves what is actually occuring in the house, and when the producer allows this is happen can make a poster even scarier as we would tend to assume our own greatest fears. The orange and yellow coloyrs used to illumante the room, are the only source of light used on the poster. They help to represent hellish colours, showing an evil presence within the room. Almost as if the house could be in fire. As our teaser trailer is also based on the effect a paranormal house can have on a family, when crating our poster we are defonatly going to take into consideration the use of windows and doors.

The films slogan "you can run, but you can't hide" warps the innocence of a child like game, turning their purity into something sinister. THEIR FUN HAS TURNT INTO OUR FEAR! This particular slogan has been written in a childs hand writting, portraying their power over ours which is not expected in everyday society. As they are informing us of what we can do - run - and what we can't dot -hide. The colour of the writting is red, demonstarting blood which in turn can signify death and terrar. Once again the fact that it has been written by a child is reinforced as it seems to be done with a crayon. As this slogan is situated at the top of the poster taking up nearly a half of the poster, shows its importance. Again this is another thing we will have to taken into account when making our open poster.

Evaluation of first attempt of filming

On set while filming (Monday 6th December) we always felt that there was something missing, our understanding of a teaser trailer was to use quick edits from various parts of the film. However when attempting to do this too much of the plot of the film was illustrated and not enough scary bits were portrayed. Although we were very organised, as we manged to source a set of twins as well as finding an adequate location while gathering suitable props e.g boxes and candles. When filming we already had an established shot list which allowed the flow of filming to fun smoothly.  

 Once uploaded onto the computer we realised that some of our shots were held for too long and certain titles e.g "she only last 28 days" and "but how long will she last" were misleading. Therefore we decided to change the titles to make it more clear to the audience the message we were trying to get across, without giving too much of the plot away. Such films as "The Amityvile Horror" influenced our decision to use a wide range of titles in order to let speak for the film. The title of the film "The Illusion" when added into the film came across too 'bouncy' as it shot in and out of the screen, so in order  emphasis our genre  and create a more macabre effect we used a soft edge title.
Overall filming was successful , however we have made plans to re shoot certain scenes where the acting was poor as well as adding in additional more horrific scenes. 

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