R43 - Horror, Genre & Age Ratings + The Woman in Black

On Thursday 11th of February, we went to Picture House in Stratford where we had a small half an hour presentation by the BBFC's Heidi Renton, on the horror genre and age ratings of a film. She spoke about the history of ratings for horror films and how it previously used to be rated as 'x' as opposed to 18, and how over time, certificates have changes due to what is acceptable to society. 

For example, in Dracula, it was originally rated an X in 1958, however it was re-released on video in 1997, which a different certificate than before. It then was re released again by the BFI, however as a 12A as opposed to an x rated film.




She then went on to talking about The Woman in Black, and how they wanted to release it as a 12A. But in order to do so, the producers had to make six seconds of cuts in order for the BBFC to change the rating. The problems were that they had jump scares, blood and specific scenes not suitable for a 12A, therefore they cut out action parts of visibly seeing gruesome parts.

R42 - BFI: Film Trailers & Film Posters

 Trip to the BFI

On the 5th of February, we had a trip to the BFI where we learnt about film trailers and posters. Although the whole event was aimed at GCE Media students, as A Level students there were parts that we could take that would help us in creating our own trailers and posters. 

On one of the slides, he spoke about mise-en-scene in different posters of the films. On this slide, there was setting, costume, props, lighting, body language, facial expressions etc which audience members had to guess and give their answers via microphone which was handed down by the ushers. Despite this being things we already knew, it was helpful as now it is imprinted on my brain through the repetition. 

He then went on to talking about the technical sides of trailers, and provided the audience with a slide which was also in the handout. This has things like the type of shot, digital technology, editing, sound, camera movement and camera angles. He went through each and how it could be incorporated into trailers. 

Rob then shows us a trailer of Frank (2014) which is an independant film, and how it would appeal to a young audience. He asked as to also take notes on the media conventions used to feedback to him. The shots I managed to pick up on were: close ups, fast paced editing, non diegetic music, and extreme close ups which was what was on the slide he presented soon after. 

He then went onto the importance of trailers for a film, however this would have been particularly useful for our AS exam on films (Les Miserable and Trailers) as we could have spoken about it for a film's marketing campaign. Likewise, he enlisted the conventions of a trailer, highlighting that nearly every trailer starts off with a narrative enigma. This is particularly useful for us now in A2 as we will be creating a trailer and it is important to grasp the audience's attention right from the very start. He also spoke about the textual credits, names of the distributors, key action points that are fast paced towards the end of the trailers, and the length of the trailers.

Between the various different activites, for example, extracting connotations of posters i.e. The Queen (2006) and Submarine (2010), he also showed how you would draw a poster in an exam. This wasn't exactly beneficial for us, but did bring out what audiences would expect to see. He then told us to be imaginative and told everybody in the audience to create their own film poster including the title, tag line etc. Some students took it light heartedly and created films posters of disney characters who had turned evil, with tag lines such as "when the good turn bad" whereas others were very interesting and actually sound appealing. Not everybody turned to the horror genre as most were action and comedy, however as we were doing horror for our genre, we stuck to our film ideas and creating a miniature version of want we want the outcome of our film poster to look like. We also had to identify three ways that our film links to convergent media and why as well as think about 10 ways or poster uses genre marketing. We suppose this is more aimed at the GCSE students, rather than us so we didn't take too much notice to it. 

To end the day, we had a Q&A with Hannah Rothman, who is a business director and creates advertising in London. Examples of her work was presented at the beginning, just before she came up on stage and shows us, the audience, just how many well known projects she has worked on. As an audience, we don't ever tend to think about the people behind the scenes, however this just showed us the importance of people such as Hannah. She said she "extracts bits of clips from here and there to put it into a trailer for clients" (the film companies). Her emphasis on the love she has for her job diminishes the fact that she got the job per chance, however it is evident that she genuinly has a passion for film trailers and posters which is refreshing to see.  

We then had a chance to ask her questions - the first being, where can we find radio trailers to analyse as it is very hard to find, and the second, something along the lines of what tips we can have to create a horror trailer. She talks about the typical convetions of a horror genred film trailer, and then says she prefers it stripped backed, as opposed to fast paced action. She thinks both are effected, but prefers to "mess it about" and to not give people what they expect which is extremely helpful as rhis has given us new ideas as to what we want to include in our horror film trailer. Like others, we were ready to conform to the horror conventions, however now we have different ideas to keep it simple yet effective. 

Overall, the day could've been more beneficial if we were GCE Media students, however we still did find things- or in fact I, did find things that would help me in creating my film poster and trailer. 

 

P38 - Location & Actor Agreement

P37 - Official Radio Trailer Feedback

Contrasting to the teaser trailer feedback, the actual radio trailer feedback was much more useful and better in terms of the improvement of the radio trailer. As the teaser trailer was very basic, it was hard for our audience to understand the bigger picture, therefore our radio trailer has been effective in showing our audience the full trailer. 

I first showed 4 members of my target audience my teaser trailer and then compared it to the actual trailer. These are the comments and improvements they commented upon.

U.Z: "When you played the trailer, I was like 'oh was that it?', because there weren't really much on there and I was expecting a lot more. But then when I realised that it was only the teaser trailer and there was a proper trailer, I felt a bit dumb - but anyway, for a teaser trailer it was good because it didn't give too much away. But comapred to the official trailer, i liked that one better 'cos there was so much to it. Like all the sounds and everything, it really had a fast pace so it was like those trailers you hear in cinemas or something. I can't really tell you what to improve cos I liked all of it. The only thing i would've said was to add more to the teaser trailer, but thats just a teaser trailer and it does have the same things in the proper trailer so yeah, it was really good."

 T.S: "I really liked the teaser trailer, it was really simple and didn't give much away so it left me wanting to find out about your film. But I really loved the actual trailer! It was everything you'd expect from one, like you had the dramatic build up, your title, the - what's that thing called when it's 12A? - oh yeah, that rating. Like if I was making a trailer I wouldn't even think to add it in. So I can't tell you what to add because I really liked it. Well done!"

S.K: "Oh wow, I wasn't expecting that.. Did you actually make that? Dude, that was pretty good for you - I'm joking. The only thing I can really comment on that I would suggest to improve is when they guy was saying something - I can't remember exactly what, but it was when the music was getting really loud so you kinda lost what he was saying, so all I'd suggest is just make the sound a little louder and that's pretty much it. You should be proud of yourself, that was good! Can I watch the film now?"

N.B: "Aw, that was so good! But, not gonna lie, the teaser trailer had nothing on that. You should've had the 'jack's out to play' in the teaser one as well though so it matches a bit. But for your main one, I think it's a whole lot better; like, you're representing everything in horror in about a minute. I loved that you had that creepy lullaby thing, it added to the creepy atmosphere and so did the gradual increased music. I think all your elements in the trailer work really well together and for an audience member it really does appeal to me. What I liked most was that you had that like, traditional old school deep voice, so for me you really stuck to the genre. An improvement?... hmm. I don't know, I can't think of one and I'm not just saying that. Seriously, do I have to say one, because I can't think of one. I just really liked it."

From this feedback, it was clear that our audience took well to our radio trailer. It seemed as though they were more interested in improving the teaser trailer as opposed to the actualy trailer which is completely fine. The main thing that we realised we should improve from the feedback was to increase the sound of the deep voice when the music becomes very tense and loud. Other than that, I think our trailer went down very well.

P36 - Official Film Feedback

 For our film feedback, I asked two members of our target audience - both male and female, to say what they liked and what they wanted to improve in our short horror film. These are some of their responses:

1. Female





From this feedback, we can see how Hall's theory of Encoding and Decoding applies. The scene where Sam is coming into the room in the foreground shows a shadown figure in the background however this was unintentional. This oppositional reading seems to be for the better as the target audience deem it more effective in their viewing experience. Therefore although we found this an unfixable issue beforehand, now it seems as if it was added for effect. 

The improvement however is due to the lack of film footage as we had very limited time to film. As we used a child actor, it was getting late and was past his bed time therefore we rushed the ending of our film. It was clear within his acting that his tiredness was effecting him for example when he is sitting holding the box saying "Jack's out to play".  Because of this, we didn't want to push him into doing anything he didn't want to do so we left it at that. So when it came to editing, I had very limited footage to edit in, and therefore that part of the scene seems more abrupt than the others.

2. Male

 
From this feedback, there wasn't really many improvements to make. Instead, this member of the target audience told us what he enjoyed about the film, which could also help us with improvements. The things that he doesn't mention could be improved to make him remember all the film and stand those parts out. For example, he said he enjoyed "how the background space was used", meaning that we used our use of proxemics in the camera well. He also said that how we used "sound" was very effective. He said "each sound effect fitted the individual scene perfectly" therefore highlighting that in our editing stage, we used sound that fitted it effectively.

However, he did not mention things such as the titles, perhaps suggesting that we need to improve it for it to stand out to our target audience as much as those other positives. For example the credits. The text font is very basic and doesnt match the same atmopshere of the film. Therefore to improve, I could make this more effective by adding an appropriate font to match the tone of the film.

P35 - Official Poster Feedback

Ø  Name of interviewee: Tania Firdaws

What do you think about the film poster?

I think that it portrays what the film will be about and acts as a little teaser. And I like how the people that took part in it are included at the bottom giving them some sort of credit. The fact that the poster focuses on a mundane toy that is played with every children and the way it is presented portrays it in a twisted, gory and gruesome way.

What improvements could be made?

The title could stand out a bit more catching the attention and letting the people know what the film is called.

Ø  Name of Interviewee: Fahima Uddin     

What do you think about the film poster?

I think the posters emphasis scariness, shows us that danger is ahead of us I can tell this by the colours red that is splatted mostly around the poster.  The fact that jacks out to play emphasis a childish game this meaning that kids games last forever therefore there might not be no stopping.

What improvements could be made?

Make the credit readable, there are some people who actually like to know who’s in charge of what or who the actors are. Make the title a bit more lighter so its more eye catching

Ø  Name of Interviewee: Nusrat Iqbal

What do you think about the film poster?

I like the poster because it looks like it fits a horror story which is what your film is about. The dark colours and text all fit with the colour scheme and looks appealing to the eye. I like that there is a balance between all three of the components of the poster equal out to each other. Every part has a change to stick out to the audience.

What improvements could be made?

The tag line and the jack in the box both look realistic but the title doesn’t look at real. It fades into the background and the texture of the title isn’t as clear so it doesn’t match up with the rest of the poster.

P34 - Teaser Trailer & Feedback

 From research and our own personal experiences, we have seen various different trailers, however we have also heard teaser trailers which have a much more shorter duration than official trailers. Therefore from this, we know that if we were in the industry, to promote our film and even for marketing campaigns, creating a teaser trailer would help gain more publicity within our target audience. This is why we have created a draft teaser trailer to show that if we were in the industry, this is what we would do. 

 However we also needed feedback to see what it was that we could improve for our official trailer. We asked three people amongst or target audience what they think of the teaser trailer by asking them 4 questions. These were:
1. What did you like about it?
2. Would you actually go watch this in the cinemas?
3. Do you have any improvements?
4. Does it build up the suspense? How does it do this?
  
We found out that we needed to improve the ending of the trailer to make it more clear to the audience and more louder to end the trailer with effect. However overall, our target audience found it very appealing for them.