Evaluation 11

11. How did you construct the representation of the main characters in your trailer?

We used a lot of the trailer trying to establish Harry as a quiet boy who didn’t have many friends. We did this through scenes of him being physically and mentally bullied by his peers. We thought this would throw the audience off track of him being the murderer. Harry was clearly presented as a main character as he was in most of the scenes. The use of video diary also gave the impression that the film was about him. The mother, though only featuring in a few shots, was represented in lots through the use of the ring. Though you only saw her face a handful of times, our focus group identified her as a main character.

Evaluation 10

10. Is the audience able to identify key character roles and functions within your trailer?

Our entire audience confidently identified the main characters in the trailer as Harry and his mother. We then asked them to identify who they thought was the murder. They all said it was the mother, and though it was Harry, we were very pleased as we purposely tried to mislead the audience to create a twist. They all gave reasons why such as the presence of the ring being at the murder scenes. We considered this a great result as we worked mainly on trying to frame the mother.

Evaluation 9

9. Does the audience understand the basic plot of the film you are promoting from watching the trailer?

After asking the focus group to explain what they thought was the plot, they all pretty much got it spot on. They said the trailer revealed enough to explain the outline, but not so much as to give away essential information. This left the code of enigma which they said would make them want to consume the final film.

Evaluation 8

8. Is an audience able to recognize the genre of the film?

After showing our trailer to our focus group, we asked them to identify what they thought was the genre. Most of the group said it was a thriller or a psychological thriller which is what we wanted, with the rest of the group identifying it as a horror, which we thought was good as it did contain elements of horror within it.

Evaluation 6

6. How did you identify the target audience of your trailer?

As a group, we looked at the age ranges of other similar films and decided that our film was aimed at 15-25 year olds. We decided this because the main character is shown as around 16/17 years old, which would relate to the younger end of our age band. The older age range we thought would relate to the character of the mother, and also recognize the trailer as similar to older films they may have seen previously. We thought making the trailer an 18 would not be appropriate, as minimal death scenes and blood is shown. We thought our trailer appealed to both boys and girls, as we have a boy protagonist and a girl protagonist.

Evaluation 5

5. How have you used generic codes and conventions in your trailer?

After researching psychological thrillers and watching similar trailers, we realized that our plot had already included some conventions. These included a mental illness, misleading clues and a murder weapon. We decided to include iconic images such as a recognizable bat and a ring, in order to explain more of the story and let the audience come to their own conclusions about situations in the trailer. We included typical thriller elements such as blood, darkness and screaming to allow the audience to identify the genre of the trailer.

         

Evaluation 4

4. How successful is the film trailer that you have produced?

I feel our trailer has been quite successful, as we have made improvements right the way through production which have benefited the trailer’s final state. We have been able to recognise when something didn’t look good enough and either re-shoot it or think of a better way to portray it. Our focus group showed us that people enjoy watching it and that they would choose to see the full film if it were to be released in the cinema. The plot has been changed as we went along and I feel it is now much stronger than we thought it would be when we started production.