Evaluation

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

Trailer- Our trailer uses some of the conventions of real media products because it leaves the audience asking questions. We also used a mixture of tranquil and fast shots and editing to show a contrast between the scenes of 'normality' and scenes where things start to go wrong. It also uses conventions because like the trailers I analysed to start with, it introduces the character in the film but also leaves you in suspense about one or more characters- we created this by never really showing you the face of the person who has taken the child. Also with no names mentioned in the speech, you never find out who any of the characters are for definate and are never told exactly the relationship details between the characters. As well as this we also used the idea of allowing the code of clothing to distinguish between the good and evil characters. To create this we had the mother and the child chaaracters wearing 'normal' generally colourful clothes and the character that takes the child wearing dark clothing- a hoodie as this is generally in films associated with bad characters- having their hood up makes it seem mysterious and like they have something to hide/ do not want to be seen. We also used stereotypes in our video, by having the character that got kidnapped being a young, innocent looking female, and also by having the female character who is searching for the child in the video as crying, panicking and in a complete state. (Typically, this is how women are portrayed to act in situations like this. For example in "Taken" which is a film I looked at in preparation for this coursework, the male character is the one who stays calm, collected and eventually restores the equilibrium by bringing the child home. Whilst the female character cries, worries and doesn't really do anything to help the situation.) For our video we looked at Tzvetan Todorov's theory of how a media text starts with equilibrium which is then disrupted by some action. Then during the text, this action is then resolved to create a restoration of the equilibrium at the end. We decided to use this in our video by showing the equilibrium at the outset and then showing how this gets disrupted. However, although a sense of equilibrium is restored in the films themselves, the trailers that I analysed left it uncertain whether or not the equilibrium is reinstated, in order to leave the trailer at a cliffhanger- this was even more evident in teaser trailers. Therefore our trailer follows conventions by having a cliffhanger ending and not having the final stage of Todorov's theory. However we subtly went against conventions in our trailer as well through small details. A traditional stereotype (before the time of rise in feminism) was that the hero was male- in this case the person who should look for the child and eventually bring them home (as seen in "Taken"), should be a male character. To challenge this convention we have used our female character as the 'hero/heroine'.

Film Poster- Our poster conforms to many of the conventions of real media products. The title is the biggest bit of writing on it. We have included names of the actors on the poster, as well as details like the director and producer and the release date. We put the logos on there as we saw that many film posters do this. Also we included some reviews at the top as you usually see comments from magazines and newspapers at the top of existing film posters. The image on the poster is simple and easily remembered, it is also very closely linked to our trailer.

Picture A is the film poster for "Twilight" and Picture B is our film poster. As you can see the style of the writing for the names of the actors is very similar. It is less eye catching than the rest of the text on the poster and harder to read. We thought that this was a good convention to carry across as the idea is to advertise the film and the characters rather than the actors who play the characters and for this reason we kept that convention. However with all of the posters that I analysed (and I realise that this is not the rule for all posters, simply the ones I chose to look at) they simply had the release date or "coming soon" to indicate to the audience when the film would be in cinemas. We decided to challenge this convention by making this line more catchy and in the end we chose "The search begins..." to do this. Although this challenges conventions I believe that it has worked well and is effective at what we wanted it for.

Magazine Front Cover- For our magazine we used the convention of the little details that magazines always have. For example the barcode, price and the line underneath the magazine name which essentially tries to convince you to buy the magazine (where we have put "The UK's number one for film!"). These small touches are what adds authenticity to the magazine cover and therefore make it look better.
However we have also challenged conventions. In a few of the film magazines I looked at (examples shown below- Images C and D) the background of the magazine is a location related to the film. We chose to challenge this convention by simply having the background as a plain colour with a slight texture to it.

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary text?

The combination of our media product and ancillary text is very strong. We have used the same font for the copy in our film trailer as we have on the poster and magazine front cover. Also the picture we used for the poster is very closely linked to the trailer and therefore as soon as you have seen both, you know that they are about the same thing and part of the same campaign rather than completely separate items.

However I do believe that it could be more effective. As the image we have used for the magazine, although it relates to the film trailer, doesn't really fit in with the film poster and also doesn't really reflect the storyline of the film. The fact that the image doesn't include the little girl that goes "missing" means that the image doesn't really relate to the actual story and this could then become complicated for the audience to understand.

Above are three images, Image A is a shot taken from our film trailer, Image B is a section of our film poster and Image C is a section taken from our magazine front cover. As you can clearly see the font we have used for the word "Missing" in all three of our media texts is the same, meaning it is easy for our audience to identify that all three are part of the same advertising campaign and immediately associate this font and style of writing with our film.

Above are another two images, Image D is taken from our film trailer and shows the child and villain walking away and Image E is from our film poster and again shows the child and the villain walking away. As you can see there is a clear link between the image taken from the trailer and the image from the poster and therefore our audience can immediately tell that the two are linked. Although most film posters look like an image from the film and people therefore believe them to be a shot from the film, they are always taken separately as still images. For very basic reasons, for example the lighting that is appropriate for a scene in the trailer, may not be acceptable for a poster. As you can clearly see from images D and E above, there is no way that we could have used that screen shot from our trailer as the image for our poster as the lighting (or rather the lack of lighting) makes it extremely bad quality for a poster.

Above, Image F is taken from our magazine front cover and Image G is a screen shot from our film trailer. Although Image F (our magazine) doesn't really tie in with our poster, there is a link between this image and the screen shot (Image G) from our film trailer. Making it possible for our audience to make a link between the two and realise that it is part of the same campaign, even if it is not as simple to link the magazine and poster together- the link to each one and the trailer is very strong.

3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Film Trailer- From my audience feedback I found out that generally our trailer was successful and would make our target audience what to see the film. However there are some things people would have done differently- this seems to be mainly down to individual preference. One thing that seemed to be resonant was the quality of the acting in our trailer, in particular the speech. People commented that the speech didn't sound desperate as you would be if your child was missing, they said that it didn't sound realistic enough and for this reason it detracted slightly from the seriousness of the trailer.

Our most successful aspect that the majority of people commented on was our use of music, they liked the way it fitted well with the trailer and the way it changed the mood of the trailer. They thought that the music created and built up tension and let it drop again in the right places, very effective.

Also something that came up a lot was the cutting of the footage and the transitions between clips. Albeit that different people commented on different bits, scenes that wre mentioned included: the scene with the child in the corner and the fade out we used in order to make the child 'disappear', the transitions between the clips of the mother and the child later on (the ones where the two of them are spinning around, searching around them but in different locations) and also the way that the contrast between the slow pace of the action and cuts in the first section, contrasts with the fast action and quick cuts after the child goes missing to create tension.

Film Poster- In general the audience feedback I gathered was very positive. The majority of people I asked said that the poster would make them want to see the film, with the only reason the people who said it didn't make them want to watch it being that it wasn't their preferred genre. Some of the reasons that people said they liked the poster were due to the conventions of existing media products that we chose to use. For example, using the young, innocent looking girl to be the character to go missing, our audience were very sympathetic towards her and wanted to know what happens to her.

Also the conventions that we chose to challenge worked in our favour. For example, choosing to put "The search begins..." rather than just putting a release date or "coming soon". People commented that this was catchy and memorable, meaning that because it was easy to remember that, you would be more likely to remember the date that came after it.

One big criticism was the quality of the image, the fact that towards the top it is rather dark and therefore you can't really see the head of the villain as the dark clothing (the hood) merges with the foliage. Although they liked the idea of the image with the characters holding hands and walking off into the darkness.

Magazine Front Cover- Overall the feedback I got about our magazine front cover, was very positive. People liked the layout, colour scheme and the range of articles advertised on the cover. Our audience liked the balance we found between having only one thing advertised on the front and having a few but keeping it un-cluttered and not crowded. Something that was also commented on was the way that the actress on the cover fitted in with the colour scheme but still stood out from the background.

The things that people criticised were only very minor details, for example, one of the people I asked who studies media, said that the pug we have used on the cover doesn't look as realistic as it could. Also people didn't like the actress' eyes, saying they looked too edited. However we didn't edit the image at all, other than the colour levels, which would not have affected the eyes in this way. Therefore there was nothing we could do about this.
Again our choice of conventions which we chose to use in our product, for example the barcode, price and the line "The UK's number one for film!", worked really well. As people commented that little details like this really helped to make our magazine front cover look real/authentic.

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

As this is now A2 media, the range of technologies that we used was broader and we had to use many different ones to complete the whole task. These technologies were more complex in order to show our ability to use these technologies and show our skills.

I used Google Images to research existing film posters and to look at what sort of thing film magazines include on their front covers. I then used Blogger to record all relevant information that I gathered.

I used YouTube to research existing trailers based on my target audience and the genre that we were planning to use for our trailer. I then recorded this information on Blogger. We also used it in order to upload our finished trailer so that we could get it onto our blogs.

We used Blogspot (Blogger) to record all of the information and research we found. We also used it to plan our pieces based on what we found out and then to record our evaluation.

Adobe PhotoShop was the program we used to create the film poster and the magazine front cover.

To shoot the footage which we would then edit we had to use video cameras. We had to look into whether we wanted steady or shaky shots and in the end we used a tripod alongside the camera for most of our shots.

Adobe PremierPro was the program we used to create our actual trailer. We loaded all of our footage onto this program and used it to edit the footage, put the sequence together and put the soundtrack alongside the trailer.

Once we had decided on the two tracks we wanted for the soundtrack of our trailer, we then had to edit them together. For this we used GarageBand, which allowed us to cut the bits of music up and leave us with just the bits we wanted, and then adjust the sound levels in order to fade one out and the other in. We also discovered how to add highlights to the music to increase and decrease tension when and where we wanted.

The main technology that we used though was Adobe PremierPro, as none of us had any experience in using this technology and it is also the most complex piece of software. We had to get used to editing on a timeline and even the most simple of effects and transitions were very complex to use, with many settings as to the levels of the effect and how long you wanted the transition to last. We used Adobe PremierPro rather than a program like iMovie as it allowed us to include better transitions and overall a better and cleaner finish to the finished product.

Adding the music onto the footage was surprisingly simple and because we were working on the timeline it was easy to adjust it to start in the right place and also finish in the right place.