Software Research:

When making our products during A2 as well as AS, we wanted to use the most professional and experienced software which would help make our final product exciting and masterly. During editing the type of software is essential for gaining a high grande and achieving successful things. It's likely for A2 we will use Adobe Premier Elements 10 like AS as we understand how to use it and managed to create a high graded opening two minutes last year. As a group we know how to cut, paste, transform, include soundtrack and do other interesting and skilful edits. 

Adobe Premier Elements 10

This is the software that we used during AS level. It was extremely useful last year, as our teachers were able to explain effectively how to use it to the best of our ability. It only seems ideal to use again as we all have familiar recognitions with the software. It presents a simple layout, which has obvious names files and sections, including timeline, get media, transitions and render. This software would benefit our trailer as we are able to do many professional things including, edit a green screen. Unlike other softwares, like movie maker, we won't be able to get the advanced settings. Transitions such as fading to black are useful when making a horror film, as it leaves a tense and suspicious atmosphere. 

Movie Maker

We used Movie Maker when making our animatic storyboard. It's a fairly simply and easy software which allowed us to place one piece of un-copyrighted music to the soundtrack and put all the images together as a slideshow. The software is very simple and not good enough of A level. We wouldn't be able to use transitions to help create tense atmospheres as well as changing the type of music to fit the scene. The only benefit from Movie Maker, is that it's quick. Unlike Adobe it is fast at processing and uploading. This is only due to Adobe being more advanced and professional taking longer to upload quality footage. It a good software to use for storyboard and shot clips like merging character interviews, however, I wouldn't feel it would be successful for creating out final product. 

iMOVIE

iMovie is a software on apple devices including Macs, iPads and  the iPhone. It is a very good software for creating trailers as it makes it's own titles and fonts to fit your genre type. This isn't great as we want to make out own titles, which will fit perfectly to our type of trailer. We also need to write about the editing techniques in our exam which means there won't be much to write about with iMovie. There is another section to iMovie which is more useful when making a film. As we are making a trailer we need it to be short and effective with the appropriate titles etc.  

Filming-Ashtead Park

We filmed at Ashtead Park on the 29th November. We arrived at the park at 18:00 and walked up to where we wanted to film. We had a few problems at first. This included changing the camera settings to night mode, loosing the batteries for the little ring light for lighting and having trouble with the tripod. After about 15mins we managed to get everything working effectively and began filming for our horror trailer!

As you can see in the picture, we used our own ring light which was ordered of Amazon as well as phone flash lights to generate light. We found these very helpful as they capture the best angles as well as reducing the darkness! The ring light had three different settings of brightness, we found the second setting to be the best as the others were either slightly too dark or slightly too bright. There is also a clip on the light, which means we were able to position it on, and around the camera in order to make the clown/main subject appear clearer in shot. We also have a tripod, this enables us to capture a clear and crisp shot without it looking blurry or unbalanced. The tripod comes in extremely handy due to it having a handle to change direction and angles. For example as our trailer is horror we felt a canted angle would be successful to use. By having the tripod we were able to accomplish this. When making our magazine cover and poster the tripod and Nikon D3000 will allow us to take professional looking photographs and videos.

At the park, the main parts we wanted to capture were of the clown. This includes Katy to be dressed in all black with a clown mask on. We will be using this mask throughout the trailer as we feel its successful when creating fright and tension.  As a trailer shows different events and days we want our characters apart from the clown to have different outfits. However, we still want them to be wearing mainly dark colours and simplistic clothing as it conforms to the horror genre and ideas. Our coats, trainers and jeans imply that we are young fashionable teenagers who are vulnerable and innocent. The Park is ideal as it links to children which also reflects clowns. As they are usually made for entertaining children, although have a negative stigma which makes them appear scary and sister. Without spoiling our trailer, we took many shots, which hopefully conform more to supernatural events than gore. This includes a scene where the swing is swinging all by itself. We don't want to include gore as we feel it may not look as successful as we want it to.

Questionnaire Results Findings And Analysis:

For our questionnaire, we wanted to find out what individuals aged from 17+ thought about horror genres and stereotypes. From completing this questionnaire we have gained many different ideas and objectives in which to make our overall product as successful as possible.

The first question asked to our respondents was "Who would you prefer to see as the antagonist?". It was a fairly close result however with 53%, females got more votes than males with 47%. This demonstrates that our sample prefers to see the antagonist as a female character. My group found this very surprising as we assumed males would get more votes as they are portrayed to be stronger and more powerful. I feel females received more votes as they are able to create a sinister and eerie presence. For example young girls are used in many horror films including 'The Orphan' and 'Paranormal Activity'. We found this question helpful as our antagonist is played by a female and hopefully will get as many positive responses as possible.
Our second question was, "How many films do you watch weekly?". From our results we found that a wide majority of people watch around 1-2 films a week. Our graph shows that 63% watch 1-2 and 37% either don't watch any or more. We found our results fairly surprising due to our target audience of 15-25 year olds. We expected them to watch many more films due to being young and having more time on their hands. When we thought about it we realised that education and work may get in the way of watching more that 2 films a week. We just hope that our trailer will be as successful as possible and become one of the 1-2 films that are watched per week!
Our third question was, "What location do you find most daunting?". We found that a park got the most votes gaining 41%. This is due to it involving children and different age groups at night. This creates an extremely creepy and frightening effect to the trailer helping it conform to the horror genre.
Our fourth question was, "What's your favourite horror film out of the following?". From our list of films 'Paranormal Activity' received the most with 33%, the 'Saw Franchise' followed second with 29%. I feel 'Paranormal Activity' won as it's a supernatural horror film which includes ghosts, spirits and jumpy scenes. It included video diaries which help create tension and suspense. I agree with the respondents that supernatural horror films are the most alarming.
Our fifth question is "What genre do you prefer?". Horror got the best result with 47%. This is pleasing as we have created a horror trailer which we hope to get many views on. As our targeted audience 15-25 year olds chose horror, we feel we are in a successful position with gaining views and having a victorious product.
Our sixth question was, "What film title appeals to you the most?". The title 'Jokes on you' was the most engaging receiving 47% of votes. We feel this is because it gives slight hints about the type of film, however, doesn't give away too much. People who enjoy the suspense of horror films and like being frightened may feel that clowns are a good character to use as an antagonist.
Our seventh question was "What do you find scary?". Luckily clowns got the most votes with 55%. We are very happy with this statistic as we hope that out horror films is frightening to the audience and that they enjoy the tense and suspicious creations. Although we hope they don't find it too scary!!
Our eighth question was "Who do you think will portray the protagonist the most effectively?". A young girl got the most votes with 77%. We believe this is because she can appear extremely frightened and scared through costume, camera angles and acting scenarios.
Our ninth and final question was, "Do you think its important to see the antagonist in the trailer?". 87% of respondents said yes. This is due to them wanting to know what to expect and what the film will be based around. The small 13% that said no probably feel that it would spoil the film and give away to many hints.  We will be showing the antagonist in the trailer as we want audiences to understand what our film is about and hopefully feel gripped and enticed to see the final product.