Evaluation Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop and challenge real media conventions?

Evaluation Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Evaluation Question 3: What have you learned from audience feedback?

Evaluation Question 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Final Film Trailer

This is our final film trailer.

In Hindsight... Personal Evaluation

Costume

Voice-over

Looking at the Trainspotting trailer we took the voice over at the beginning as inspiration for our film trailer.  We thought that it was a good way to introduce the characters and give the audience a bit of information about the trailer. 

The breaking of the third wall keeps the audience interested in the trailer and makes them want to watch more. 

Taking the idea from transporting we reenacting this in our own trailer we placed a voiceover at the beginning of the trailer to establish characters and a brief background of the group of boys. 

However we found that recording a voice over was not as easy as we thought

We had many problems:

Hard to put emotion into a voice over

We struggled to put emotion into the voiceovers, this meant that we had to keep retaking as we didn't think that it fitted the piece. 

We didn't take into account the background noise at the beginning, this muffled the voice actor and made the piece seem amateur. 

Mistakes, try try and try again!

We solved this problem by borrowing a voice recorder from the music department, recording the audio in a soundproof room where the actor acted while he spoke. The result was the voice over in the final product. 

Nine Key Frames for Final Trailer

Poster Drafts

Final Poster

This is our final film poster.

Poster Analysis

Website: Why we chose to use Shorthand?

When creating our website we chose to use Shorthand rather than the website builder
Wix. Our main reasoning for this was that we wanted our website to have an elegant feel and although we had no experience using Shorthand and initially found it incredibly difficult we feel that we ultimately achieved a professional looking website that provides that audience with all the relevant detailing.

This is what our final website looks like click here to view it.

We decided that we wanted our website to have the option to scroll through all the pages after getting inspiration from the Nerve website.

Nerve

Website

Click this link to go to our website

We used Shorthand to create our website as we wanted it to flow down the page making it contemporary. A large part of what we wanted our website to be based around was the photos we took during filming the trailer, we found that shorthand allowed us to create a clean cut website whilst ensuring that these photos did not lose any quality. We feel that this will help attract the audience to watch our film and gain a better understanding of the genre, characters and themes throughout.

Storyboard Evaluation

This is our original storyboard. Our storyboard is not a direct translation for our final film trailer as during production we made several decisions that resulted in a change from our original storyline. We also moved a lot of the shots around to create better dramatic effect. I feel that during the editing stage of production we become more experienced in our understanding of how trailers create tension whilst not giving away too much of the storyline.

Furthermore, we changed the ending which within our storyboard the idea was to have Charlie kills himself accidentally whilst carrying out a dare from the others, however we felt that a clearer way to leave the ending more ambiguous would be to have Charlie standing by a lake and telling the character Jack that he can't continue- making it unclear as to whether Charlie has killed himself or not.

Overall, our original storyboard was incredibly helpful at helping us to shoot specific shots as we were clear on ideas however we did adapt the storyline and in hindsight if we had had a clear idea on the storyline from the beginning and then storyboarded this final idea, it may have been easier to shoot all of the shots we needed for the final piece.

Poster Ideas

Behind the scenes

Here is a behind the scenes edit from the making of the Carpe Noctem trailer.

Second draft

This is our second draft of our trailer. Since receiving feedback from the first draft we have made a series of changes:

• Extending the length of the film festival logos that are shown on top of the establishing shot of the school. - done to allow the audience more time to appreciate the 'films' accomplishments.
• We swapped around the faces in the fire at the end of the trailer, as it was pointed out to us that although for quite a while we envisioned the character Charlie to be the protagonist, the character who is presented in the trailer as having the most crucial role is actually Jack. 
• The biggest change we made was Jack's speech which is made whilst the boys are in a pool room. Although we did not alter the narrative, we did experiment with various recording techniques and post production editing to ensure it sounded as if the character of Jack was in a medium sized room and not a small recording booth. This change made a huge difference as previously the quality of this speech and the authenticity of it was very poor.
• Finally, there were several smaller changes we made such as ensuring the edits were crisp, altering volume of speech vs music and adding a school crest to the writing to make it look smarter. 

First draft

This is the first draft of our trailer for 'Carpe Noctem'. Since creating this draft we have received feedback and are working towards improving and sharpening the quality of our trailer.

Foley Sound

Test Shots

These are some of the test shots that we needed to carry out before reenacting them with the boys to see if they were successful and achieved out audience intentions.

Website Ideas

This is the website for Nerve. This was our main inspiration for our own website because we liked the fact that you could scroll down through the pages and we decided that we would try and emulate this.

Click this link to go to the Nerve website

Additionally, because the storyline is set on the upper middle class we decided to look at some private school websites as we felt they could help us to create a believable layout for our own website and help us to choose fonts etc.

Finally we also looked at the website for Fast 8 (the most recent film in the fast and furious series). Once we had done so we decided that we liked the option to find tickets and also the different layout and pages that are found. Thus when we create our website we will be trying to include these features.

Click this link to go to the Fast 8 website

Make-up

During filming we had to apply makeup to the boys to ensure their features were clear and also to conform to professional standards. For every shot,we applied boys with foundation, foundation powder,contour, mascara, eyebrow gel and lip stain.

 On our first day filming we did not apply make up to any of the boys- when looking back at the footage we decided we would re film these sections as they did not seem professional enough.

There were a few of the violent shots that required more extreme make up to make the violence more believable. Here are some examples of us practising the make up effects:

 Here are some screenshots of when we used these makeup techniques within our final film.

Title Screen Inspiration

Nine Key Frames for Storyboard

These are the key shots that I think will help to portray the story to the audience and what they can expect. It suggests violence and rebellious attitudes to the audience but also brings up the idea of regret and strong emotion because of the prefect badge by the fire etc. 

Sound Idea

I created this sound idea on Garage Band by using a copyright free sample from Soundcloud and editing it to fit the flow of our trailer. I kept the beginning of the track much smoother and slow paced so that it fit with the first part of the trailer which is linear.

Through drawing ideas that we discussed as a group, I took songs such as Lose Yourself by Eminem and Human by The Rag 'n' Bone Man as inspiration for this piece:

Title Changes and Choices

Research into Teenage Suicide

Suicide rates differ between boys and girls. Girls think about and attempt suicide about twice as often as boys, and tend to attempt suicide by overdosing on drugs or cutting themselves. Yet boys die by suicide about four times as often girls, perhaps because they tend to use more lethal methods, such as firearms, hanging, or jumping from heights.
Most teens interviewed after making a suicide attempt say that they did it because they were trying to escape from a situation that seemed impossible to deal with or to get relief from really bad thoughts or feelings. Like Ethan, they didn't want to die as much as they wanted to escape from what was going on. And at that particular moment dying seemed like the only way out.

Charlies Story Line:  
Charlie is the shy one in the group, he has been friends with Jack (the Leader) for years and this is why he has been accepted into the group. He is a respectable guy with amazing future prospects with him working hard at school and taking on responsibility such as being a prefect. Charlie doesn't like whats happening to his group and cant handle the pressures of it getting out of hand.

Links:
http://kidshealth.org/en/parents/suicide.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_suicide
http://youth.gov/youth-topics/youth-suicide-prevention/preventing-youth-suicide