#40 Using Garage Band Evidence

To create my Radio Trailer for my film, I used GarageBand, this is the same program that I used in order to create tester pieces of music for my short film. Due to my prior use of this program, I found it very easy to create my trailer, which helped me as I could perform tasks such as editing my voice and cutting sounds shorter. I used royalty free sound effects from a website called www.freesound.org to help create the trailer. Below is an image of the track for my trailer with all the different instruments, sounds and voices placed together, and a image of me working on my trailer.

My track:

Me working on my trailer:

#39 Radio Trailer Script

After looking at the conventions of other radio trailers, I had a clear idea of what is expected. Most of the trailers use a deep male voice, as this adds to the horror, and are conventionally around 30 seconds long. They also use tension building music, and reveal parts of the story but never the full story. I plan to follow all or most of these conventions in my trailer. To make sure that I knew what to follow, and what to say, I wrote a short script for the radio trailer. I plan to find a male with a deep voice to record my trailer. The script can be seen below.

#38 Radio Trailer Inspiration

The other trailers that I looked at inspired me a lot in terms of the way my trailer sounds. I really liked the idea of using heavy breathing, as it connotes panic and fear very strongly to the audience, instantly suggesting that the main characters are in danger. The use of a deep male voice was also very inspiring to me as it creates a sense of horror, through the way that the voice is not soft and friendly, it is harsh and unwelcoming to the audience. Additionally I was inspired to use tension building music as it would keep my audience engaged to the trailer, and want to go and see the film in the cinema. The calm music also creates an idea of mixed levels of fear throughout, which would engage any fan of the thriller genre.

I feel that due to my research into radio trailers, the conventions that I looked at inspired me to create a radio trailer that I believe to be very successful.

#37 Radio Trailer Research

For my media film I had to create a way to advertise the film that I have created. One way that I could do this is would be through trailers on the radio. For my radio trailer to be successful and achieve what it was meant to it was important that I looked at other radio trailers for similar films and genres. I looked at two radio trailers online, Insidious and Paranormal Activity 3, and found it very hard to find radio trailers on the internet, and the trailers I found were very limited. I then looked at a few TV radio trailers, to get further knowledge to help create my own trailer.

I found that most horror trailer appear to be very similar. The trailers usually last around 30-40 seconds, and feature a very deep male voice as a narrator, usually someone who is not a character in the film, as this creates a fear of the unknown. Key information is also included as this is important to inform the audience of the details about the film, such as; the release date, the age rating, if the film is on DVD or in cinemas. Additionally, like posters, the trailers sometime also include other films made by the same people, 'from the makers of'. Extracts from the actual film are also used, these are cleverly constructed to tell the story but not reveal all to the audience, it creates a desire for the audience to find out more, by seeing the film. All of the trailer is usually constructed with conventional horror music in the background. A slogan is also used to make you remember about the film, for example with Insidious the slogan was 'it's not the house that's haunted'.

Whilst researching radio trailers I created a mind map of my findings:

These are the two trailers that I looked at:

#36 Poster Distribution

In order to test if my poster looked genuine, I used photoshop to create an image of what my poster would look like if displayed on a billboard. The first image shows a billboard outside a shopping centre. The second image shows a billboard likely to be near a busy road or in a busy town. I feel that my poster works very well and I am very pleased with it, and how genuine it looks.

Poster outside shopping centre:

Poster near busy road/town:

#35 The Red Cloak Poster

The feedback from showing the first draft of my film poster was very positive, and I feel pleased with continuing to use this poster. I have added a quote, a website and information about the publisher to the poster to make it more conventional. I also tried a technique on photoshop called Revert which had a nice outcome but I feel I will stick with the original poster.

Poster:

Poster using 'revert' technique: