Voices Magazine Cover

Evaluation Question 2

The role of the film distributor is a company or individual responsible for releasing films for the general public either theatrically (Theatre or Cinema) or for home viewing (DVD, Download, Television etc). A distributor may do this directly (if the distributor owns the theatres or distributing networks) or through theatrical exhibitors. The distributor has a very difficult job which includes many stages in the film process, one of which is the exhibition and film promotion. The distributor must ensure that enough film prints are struck to all contracted exhibitors on the opening day, ensure their actual physical delivery to the theatre by the opening day, monitor exhibitions to make sure that the films being shown in a particular cinema with minimum number of seats and show times and finally ensure the that the prints return to the distributors office or storage on a contract based return date.

In practical terms this includes the physical production of film prints and the shipping around the world. This process is slowly being replaced by a more advanced version called digital distribution.

The distributor is also responsible for the creation of film posters, newspapers and magazine advertisements, television commercials, trailers and other types of ads. Furthermore, the distributor is responsible for ensuring a full line of film advertising material is available on each film which will help attract the largest possible audience.

We decided that the certificate classification would be a 15. We chose this because we didn't want our film to appeal to hardcore horror audiences, this film is a psychological horror and should appeal to curious teenagers aged 15-18. In order to display our classification we needed a trailer and poster, and both had to share a unique relationship. Darkness was key to our success for a horror film, and both trailer and poster are gloomy and depressing, sharing that same insanity feeling that our main character from Voices feels. In a way it's almost a first person perspective of the character, showing us what he can see. Text was kept simple as a horror poster should possess nothing more then a creepy title to keep the audience intrigued. The only value of getting on the cover of our magazine and poster to me, was that I was helping to create a gloomy, scary monster type image that would attract audience who looked at it. The promotion of our trailer has been really successful and I've felt proud of myself as I am an avid horror fan adn fit into the target audience group.

The magazine cover shows me in a costume that relates to our trailer and poster. The main character of our film is haunted by an alternative personality who takes the form of doctor with a blood stained mask.

To construct my poster I had to take part in a photo shoot, which involved me putting on the costume of the killer from our teaser. After several successful shots I picked out the one that had a dramatic impact, and using Photo shop I assembled the photo in a poster. After using effects such as brightness and shading, as well as distorting the font to appear in psychedelic effect, my poster was ready.

However for my film magazine was slightly different. For once, it was me that was doing the photo shoot and Sam (one of our actors) to be the subject matter. After a few photographs were taken I chose the one that provided a emotional response instead of a dramatic impact. I assembled my magazine cover in the same way as I did with the poster, in photo shop. I used graphic shading effects to hide part of Sam's face in a way that would make it seem more dark and mysterious. For inspiration, I used an Empire magazine that used a similar method of black to hide Batman's face and cowl, all the while it makes it look threatening or interesting.

Evaluation Question 3

The importance of audience feedback from producing an ad campaign for the film is extremely important, as it allows the marketing department (who produce nearly all promotional material for a film including posters, trailers and even a page in a film magazine), in order to access the audience reaction and to make changes to try and improve it.

During the set-up screenings in our media classes, we gathered audience feedback by passing round sheets, these sheets had 4 main areas that dealt with our film including any constructive criticism. We also had sheets from other groups who wanted feedback on their film trailers as well. Each group's film was presented from start to finish and then we were given 5-10 minutes filling the feedback as well as our own feedback and most importantly what we thought of it, our own creation. I have to stress that the film we showed was only a draft and therefore was not up to it's highest standard, which is why we had so much negative feedback to begin with. Not soon after that we started on creating a new film entirely, because of the feedback we had received. We gave a quick preview of our film trailer, and we had much more positive feedback this time.

Most of the feedback we received was constructive criticism that related to our first drafted film horror trailer we had made. It wasn't practically positive, because it was directed mostly at the lack of narrative, poor sound use, sudden cut of music, confused by the some of the characters and direction of story and location changes. This feedback was hurtful to our group, however there was some positive feedback as well. Some of the audience actually liked some of our shots, including a shot of gull flying over and the foggy background. They also appreciated the scary angles and Sam, one of our actors in the group and his dark character.

With all our feedback received, we set about correcting all of our mistakes in our film trailer. It then became obvious that we had to re-do all our trailer. Not a problem though, because we wrapped all the trailer in a matter of three days. We responded to the constructive feedback by re-addressing some of the themes we had in our original film, and introduced a new one: madness and insanity. Improving our work we just set the whole trailer down in one of the college basements (we used two actually) and used flicking lighting and vignette style to darken the whole thing as well as brightness control. The result was a great improvement, as well as a voice-over from one our team, Brad Mercer, who provided the voice of the killer inside of our main characters head.

Evaluation Question 4

The advantages of using new technologies and Web 2.0 sites to low budget or no budget independent film makers are great. Thanks to cheap and even free software, affordable equipment and interactive sites such as Blogger and YouTube, film makers can now research, make, distribute and promote their own media texts. Without the technology of today, creating a film and marketing it would be significantly difficult.

When we were producing our horror trailer, the technologies of Web 2.0 were invaluable. For example, YouTube allowed us to put up our first draft of our trailer and that gave us the audience feedback necessary to learn from the mistakes we made and create our new film. People tend to give very honest feedback on YouTube and whilst this can be disappointing, at least we learnt what people really thought. When we uploaded our final trailer it reached a lot of viewers very quickly and we had some really positive feedback.

Blogger was also very important as it gave us multiple layouts and colour schemes to create our own blog about the trailer. It was easy to pick up and manipulate and therefore made the process of organising research and planning and sharing information as a group really easy. Uploading and writing descriptions on these sites (especially Blogger) is fast and smooth however organizing your images in the small composition text box is slightly difficult and limited. I learned how to better master this Web 2.0 technology with time and effort as well as spending time uploading and learning from mistakes.

The Sony camcorders we used . The camera and tripod is tricky to get use to, but thanks to one of our members, who was an expert, we learned how to use the camera and tripod, including several features, such as night vision mode and collapsibility of the legs respectively. We also learned how tapes are used and how to upload them onto advanced Macintosh computers whose software was compatible with a capture cable. The Macs are increasinly becoming more popular along side the PC. For one, the hard drive and CPU is located within the Mac, while the PC has it stored in a unit next to it. There are no specific advantages nor disadvantages while using Macs and PC desktops.

To conclude, these advanced Web 2.0 technologies and important equipment have made it possible to develop our creativity, skills and knowledge of this new art form. Without them then we could not have made our trailer or even uploaded it. It has helped to boost my skills by working with sites such as Blogger and YouTube, using Macs has had an impact on how I edit and use film technology and finally knowledge of the fact that I now know that there are billions of people around the world who use this same interactive media.

Voices Poster

Final Trailer

Analysis of 5 Film Magazine Covers