Audience Feedback

 

Throughout  creating our Trailer, Poster and Website we constantly had our target market looking at our work and commenting on it. Our target market being male and females aged 17-21.

 

Through audience feedback we learned that in the first cut of our trailer we had not made the romance element in our plot clear enough. We later shot more scenes with the characters of Samantha, Sebastian and Jason to fit into our trailer.

 

After completing our final cut of our trailer we had a showing where our target market could fill out the questionnaire afterwards. This included the questions

• What ages do you think our film trailer is intended for?
• What gender do you believe this film is intended for?
• What genre is our film?
• Is the storyline clear?
• How are the zombies created? A nuclear explosion, virus, science experiment, animal bite, aliens or divine intervention?
• What is your favourite bit?
• What is your least favourite bit?
• What effect do you think the music has on this trailer?

 

From the audience feedback of 15 questionnaires we concluded that everybody understood the trailer was for 76-21 year olds and also for both a male and female audience. Everybody also understood that the genre was horror/zombie; they all agreed that the storyline was clear and understood that the zombies were created through a science experiment. The effect that people felt the music had on the trailer was; it built tension, builds suspense, was scary, increased pace, was dramatic.

 

The majorities of peoples favourite part was the shock ending of the zombie coming at the screen. Other popular moments were the love story, the zombies in the field and the zombie make-up. 

 

We were very happy with the feedback from the questionnaires as the results supported our intentions for the trailer.  

 

Final Story Boards

This is our final story board.

(it has to be read from right to left because I scanned it in the wrong way round because I'm silly)

Even though our final trailer has some shots we added during filming, it is very close to the exact thing.

Below are some shots from our trailer shown with the image from the story board.

Story Board Development

The creative process we've been through is shown quite well by the many story boards we have accumulated  through developing our ideas and pushing our trailer to the best it can be.

Our first story board was a simple list of the shots, no pictures at this point but it conveys our ideas at the time, mostly.

We then took that on and created a rough visual story board and added a couple of shots to it.

After creating the rough visual story board, we realised there were some shots that were not possible to do or that wouldn't look as effective as we originally thought so we refined the story board many times as shown below until we came up with our final story board.

Website

After deconstructing other promotional film websites and seeing what the conventions are of each genre, we took inspiration from them which influenced the decisions we made for our own website.

We created our website using www.wix.com which is a free website builder

We originally wanted to imitate the "Life of Pi" website by having a moving background of zombies wondering around.  Sadly this didn't really work so we changed the idea and decided to have an automatic slide show of some stills from the trailer. This is our home page:

The title is large and obvious over the slide show images, we have stuck to convention by having a black background and blood-like writing. We made the page elements fit onto one screen so there is no need to scroll down or up and everything is in view.

The website can be navigated by the bar at the top that gives different pages that you are able to view

At the bottom of every page there is a link to all of our new media social networking sites, it allows you to like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, view this blog, subscribe to us on YouTube and view our Pintrest page.

The trailer has its own page and is placed centrally and large to allow the best view of it,  this makes it obvious and stand out.

Making the Poster

We have previously researched posters here which gave us the inspiration for designing our own poster.

While filming we took a few stills, we particularly liked this one so decided to try it out as the poster.  We got the lone character/zombie idea for the poster from the poster for "The Walking Dead" and "The Crazies".  Even though the zombie girl is good, we decided the background didn't look right.  We decided to try to Photoshop it onto a different background.  

This didn't quite work as well as we had hoped...

Sadly putting the 2 images together didn't look like we thought it was, so we scrapped this idea and decided to try a whole new angle. 

This time we wanted a poster more like "Day of the Dead" or "Dead Snow"  these 2 posters are bloody and grotesque with a close up of a single zombie.  In our shooting we took a screen shot of the zombie looking ominous and chilling and cropped it down so it was the size of an A3  poster.

Once the image was cropped we enhanced the contrast, brightness, saturation and gamma exposure to create a more sinister feel. We decided to try a red filter over the poster to enhance the blood. Once this was done, we added the Title 'X Y DEAD' and the main actors' names, along with 'COMING SOON' in big red letters and the information required on posters such as the small credits and film rating.

While we liked all other aspects of the poster, the red filter washed out the colour and made the title and actors' names blend together, it also was very different from the colour scheme we used in the trailer, which is not what we wanted.  We took of the filter and sharpened the image to make it more intense, we also used the drip of blood coming down the girls chest as the 'i' of coming soon.

This is our final poster

By using the same girl from several shots as well as the white eyes with defined black pupils that are in the trailer, and using the same blood splatter font, our poster has continuity with our trailer.

Hope you like it :)

Feedback

After handing in our first draft we were told that:

• There wasn't enough of a relationship built between audience and main characters
• We need an explanation of the virus outbreak

 -> One of many shots showing the developing relationships












-> Showing how the outbreak of the virus started

Fashion 2012

The current fashion will help us to ensure our characters are dressed appropriately for their social clique.

NERD:

This photo inspired the clothes for our nerd character, Sebastian. He would be dressed in geek chic style as it shows his unpopularity at school, but also demonstrates his potential to be the love interest in the trailer. Our character, must wear:

Braces, shirt and glases.

POPULAR:

This character from glee inspired our main jock like character, Jason. Jason would wear a letterman jacket as it demonstrates his popularity and sporty personality that enables him to survive during the apocalypse. He must wear:

Letterman jacket, jeans, trainers.

LOVE INTEREST:

Our love interest, Sam, must be dressed particularly feminine. This is because it relates to Laura Mulvey's theory, The Male Gaze. It also shows that she is weak and must be protected by the other two men. She must wear:

Short frilly skirt, blouse and leather boots.

Character's Outfit

After sticking to our post on Fashion 2012, we created our characters outfit:

Sebastian's outfit, (far left) sticks to our wardrobe requirements, as he is wearing braces, shirt and glasses. The grey colour scheme of his outfit demonstrates how his character tries to blend in with the background to avoid being bullied. His choice of wepon, a short metal pole, shows his resourcefulness and contrasts with Jason's weapon of choice, a rounders bat.

Sam's clothes, (middle) also stick to our initial costume ideas. She has her hair down to show she is particularly feminine and she is in a fashionable checkered top, and a short skirt. This sexualisation of our main character, through the nonpractical frilly skirt, relates to Laura Mulvey's theory that states that women in the media are shown through a male perspective.

Jason's wardrobe, (far right) shows his character. He is in jeans and a plain white t shirt, which has here been flecked in blood showing his attacking and violent nature in the zombie apocolypse. His jumper is a Letterman Jacket that meets our initial criteria, as it shows his sporty nature.

Film companies

These are a selection of Zombie films with their film production companies.




I Am Legend was produced by;

• Village Roadshow pictures 
• Weed Road Pictures
• Overbrook Entertainment
• Heyday Films
• Original Film

The film was distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures

Shaun of the Dead was produced by; 

• StudioCanal
• Working Title Films
• Big Talk Productions
• Film4 Productions

The film was distributed by Universal Pictures

World War Z was produced by;

• Skydance Productions
• Hemisphere Media Capital
• GK Films
• Plan B Entertainment

The film was distributed by Paramount Pictures

28 Days Later was produced by;

• DNA Films
• British Film Council

The film was distributed by 20th Century Fox

Sound and music

Using sound is vital to the creation of tension and a spooky atmosphere during our trailer.

We used low pitched, sustained notes on the orchestral strings setting on garage bant to create a feeling of apprehension on the part of the viewer.

We also used a royalty free track downloaded through facebook, that kicks in after all the shots of zombies start apearing.

Then we started to work on peripheral, diegetic sound. we applied a quetened sound of the other people in the common room shots. This made the trailer appear as if those shots were filmed during a buy school day.










After researching various trailers we were inspired to have something similar to 'The Nolan Effect'. This is the low sound that plays for a second over the fade to blacks in his "The Dark Knight Rises" trailer.

Nerd

The Nerd is a character who is socially awkward and/or extremely clever.

These characters are usually;

1. Did not have many friends prior to the apocalypse
2. Becomes the hero at the end (usually after The Leader/Stoic tough guy has sacraficed himself)
3. They usually die
4. Find a new sense of purpose and self importance because of the apocalypse
5. Nomally always male

Columbous - Zombieland


















Michael - Dawn of the Dead

Ed - Shawn of the Dead

The Betrayer

The Betrayer is a characetr who seems trustworthy but then betrays the group.

The Betrayer is usually;

1. Male
2. Held a position of authority prior to the apocalypse and so seems trustworthy
3. Betrays the group to save themsleves/give themselves a better chance of survival
4. Are not always bad people but are not mentally strong enough to face the apocalypse
5. They always die