Final storyboard of Cause Unknown

Our trailer's final music

Our final teaser trailer music included a mix of static sounds and a 'creepy music box' sound, Garageband allowed us to layer them upon each other.  It had the gradual tension build we wanted to include and the deep piano keys which created an eery effect, this carried on throughout.  

The non-diegetic sound was slow and steady to keep the concept of not revealing a lot about the girl who's an enigma.

 

Un-used Footage

Question 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Conventional Teaser Trailer

• One minute long

• Establishing the concept and the genre of the film

• Released months before the film or the theatrical trailer 

Teaser trailers are very different from conventional theatrical trailers 

• Two – three minutes long

• More detailed, showing clips from the actual film 

• Precise details of the film - actors, actresses, director, release date 

We looked at the teaser trailer of Batman- The Dark Knight on YouTube, which we believed was a very successful teaser trailer, only being 55 seconds, with a voice over revealing very little about the plot. The only image shown throughout the trailer is the iconic symbol of Batman and no footage from the film.

For us it was important to make sure we stuck to the conventions of a typical teaser trailer, throughout our trailer we do not reveal the storyline, only the genre of psychological thriller.  The scenes included may not even be incorporated into our actual movie, this would add a surprise element to the audience. The Train Spotting teaser trailer is another trailer we found on YouTube that we felt was very effective. 

The clip is not shown throughout the trailer, and we wanted to use and develop this idea so that we could really grasp the brief of creating a conventional teaser trailer, this is similar to our trailer because you would not actually see the girl writing on the wall, like shown in Cause Unknown and if it is shown it would only be very briefly. The reason that we decided to show this in our teaser trailer is because we wanted to reveal the concept of mental illness, for the audience to question what she is doing and why she is doing that. This may generate sympathy for the young girl or in fact the complete opposite it may cause the audience to fear her because her actions are not a social norm.


Representation of the girl 

• Blond hair 

• Blue eyes 

• Young

• White/Pale pink dress 

The way in which we presented the girl was very important because we needed the audience to feel sympathy towards her, she is young, with blond hair and blue eyes and this stereotypically suggests innocence, vulnerability and purity, this was then emphasized with the dress. However, we also wanted the audience to feel uneasy, and potentially fear towards her because although she stereotypically looks this way, she is suffering from a mental illness. We therefore felt it important to make the wall she was writing on dirty and scruffy, making something once clean and pure, dirty, used and discarded.




 

Our trailer challenges media conventions because the majority of the trailer is a time lapse, fragmented by short clips of moving image and then moving image at the end of the trailer. We do not introduce the audience to the character until the end of the trailer, and even then it is very briefly, on top of this we do not have any speech or set up a storyline, only a concept. 

 

Website

This is the latest website for Cause Unknown where changes have been made
Have a look here http://www.wix.com/shrimapatel21/causeuknown

4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation?

Construction We incorporated various technologies such as SLR cameras, Mac computers and other software to help us create our teaser trailer, Poster and Website.  The image to the left is the 5D Canon camera we used it to take pictures and a 500D to film (right) our teaser trailer.  This ensured high quality viewing for our audience and captured the detail of the writing on the wall.  It was easy to connect the cameras to the Mac and transfer the images to edit with ‘lightroom’ adjusting the contrast for all the pictures.   To create the time lapse we used a device which took pictures every 2 seconds.  We also looked at YouTube clips in how time lapse's work and what they are.   

 

Wix was very easy to use to make our Cause Unknown website.  Click here to see more on how we constructed the website with different features.

To gain audience feedback  we used YouTube, Facebook (using our own profiles and making a 'like' page) and SurveyMonkey this helped us on our research in improving our teaser trailer.  We also created a Twitter account due to the ever growing popularity of the social networking site.  People are able to see what we are doing with our film and can interact with us on a more personal level.  Audience feedback is most effective online because of how easy it is for people to access the internet through smart phones, Ipads and computers where ever you are.  Nearly all technology has the internet so it is quick to respond to surveys and watch videos.     

A YouTube converter allowed us get non- diagetic sounds but make it sound diagetic.  This was particularly used on our website with the sound of a girl whispering.

Garageband on the Mac computers was useful as it has been in our AS level work last year.  We can layer different sounds to make it more realistic within our teaser.

To create the typography on the website and blog we searched on the internet for 'handwriting' fonts to get the child like writing we were looking for.  Urbanfonts has thousands to choose from making our font look unique.  

For our teaser trailer we used iMovie '11 this uses up to date features and we are able to set the frame per second (fps) to our accordance which was 2fps.  We trimmed clips to bring focus on the wall and the writing itself.  

  

Draft and Final Trailer

 Draft Trailer

                                                


Final Trailer

Our draft trailer was uploaded on the 29th of February. With our final trailer uploaded on the 27th of March. Both the 1st and final drafts of our trailer were posted on to YouTube and shared on the social networking sites Facebook and Twitter.

 Our draft trailer undertook a lot of feedback which we addressed. The most obvious change to the final trailer we made was changing the ending to make the girl have more of an identity to engage the audience. The music was also changed to make categorizing the genre more easily and also making the audience a bit more uncomfortable when watching.
 We decided to use a time lapse to show the fragmentation of the scene, and can give insight into the mindset of the character who suffers from a mental illness. The effect of the time lapse can emphasise the fact that the character has schizophrenia, and may lead the audience to empathise with the character.  It can also bring confusion to the audience due to the disjointedness of the clips.
This is also shown by the quick zoom in on the writing on the wall, the camera work is hand held.  The time lapse also indicates that it is over a long period of time, showing everything that is written on the wall.  A few seconds focusing on a matchstick being lit illustrates the danger element within the film and a close- up concentrating on the flame is eye catching to the audience, it stands out and would make them question what is going to happen. Shortly after a 1 second flash on a close- up of the girl's eye is shown; looking up then down to give a dark element to the film.  A mid- shot of the girl standing looking directly at the camera is edited to be a black and white shot and very dark lighting to give mystery and make the audience think about what they cannot see and raise questions on the location.