Research

This is the research we did before producing our texts, we carried out audience research to help us build an audience profile and understand help us to produce our texts in a way that represents our audience's tastes.

We also carried out research of existing media products, this helped us to get a further understanding of the horror genre and how the texts we produced can conform to the typical convention of this genre.

Website Research Conclusion

Overall through my research of existing horror movie websites, I have discovered that there are several different trends appear in almost all of them, I feel I can use these with the production of our horror movie promotional website.

For example I feel that having the trailer as the centre-piece for the website is a very powerful way of connecting with the target audience because it allows the film to speak for itself, this in itself is very powerful, by watching the trailer combined with the content of the website it will leave the audience wanting more, this in theory will lead to them going to see the entire film.

Also I feel that having a home page and around 4 other pages will be suitable as this is a common number for most of the websites I have seen, I also feel this gives us a chance to leave the audience with a very good impression of the film but keeps them wanting more as it doesn't give away too much about the plot of the film.

Colour scheme will be an important factor in the creation of the website because there are a set few colours that we have seen consistently come up in the research for the website, with our website I feel the most appropriate colour scheme would be of black and dark green, this would symbolise the location as a dark and mysterious forest, or black and dark red, the black is used once again to symbolise dark and mysterious and the dark red will symbolise blood, this will give the audience the impression that the film contains some kind of murder/killing conspiracy plot.

Website Research: 1408

This is the promotional website for the film 1408, this once again is a horror genre movie.

Here as the main attraction to the movie they have used the strength of the actors names to attract the audience to the film, these actors already have a strong reputation and fan base and are to an extent a guarantee to the audience that this will be a film they will enjoy.

In terms of the website design its fairly simple, there's a menu with around 5 pages, this is the standard for almost all film promotional websites not just ones of the horror genre and the title of the movie is centre-piece of the website, this clearly shows the audience the title of the film and almost gives the film a brand name.

Also the central image here is of the location of the film, this is a powerful statement to the audience that shows them where the story of this film takes place and gives an indication toward the genre, combined with the actors names this will catch the eye of the target audience.

Website Research: 'Wolfman' and 'Drag Me To Hell'

http://www.thewolfmanmovie.com/

This website contains many stereotypical aspects of the horror genre, it has a dark black colour scheme with the moon in the background, we can use these conventions in our production for the website of the trailer.

As well as this the centre peice for this homepage is the trailer, this is definately something we should think about encoporating into our final production for our website.


http://www.dragmetohell.co.uk/

This website has an excellent design with a central image of the central protagonist who is involved in the main horror plot of the film, it also has a review of the movie and very clear navigation buttons for different pages of the website, these are all things we could encorporate into our website.

Here we can see a convention that has recently emerged with film websites, it has links at the bottom of the page to facebook and twitter pages for the film, we could include this in our production of the website.

Website Research: Blair Witch Project

Here is the website for the blair witch project, as you can see it's a fairly minimalistic website, but this adds to the effect of the film being 'independent' the black colour and strange symbols are iconography of the horror genre.

This webpage has round 5 pages in total, this is a typical number of pages for any film promotion website, however I feel with our website i will include the trailer for our movie in the centre of the page, this will allow the trailer to speak for itself.

The simplistic design doesn't give too much away to the audience here which encourages them to go further into the site and discover more.

Here is the promotional website for the film "The Strangers".

The layout of this website is becoming more and more common with film promotional websites at the moment.

It is a simple homepage design with a trailer and minimal information about the film, this allows the trailer to speak for itself and I believe is a highly powerful and effective way of advertising and marketing a film, especially of this genre.

The company "ROGUE" has their logo on the bottom corner of the page, this is a common convention of most film