Evaluation.

1.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
For my media trailer I have used conventions of real life media products. Researching existing horror trailers in depth, analyzing film magazine front covers and also horror film posters helped me to familiarize myself with the conventions that are used in the horror genre. For example the opening of my film trailer includes a production company in which I created myself in Photoshop, I created the logo to be dark and look sinister in order to fit in with the rest of my horror trailer.

The production company logo appearing on the screen at the beginning of the film is very conventional in any film, as it promotes the production company and makes the audience aware of who created the film and also what to expect as certain production companies are very well known for creating a certain genre of film. I wanted to use typical horror conventions throughout my trailer so it would be clearly recognisable to the audience what genre they were viewing. Although I stuck to using a lot of the conventions of horror, I feel my media products do challenge and develop many of the horror conventions.

However another convention I have followed which they use in almost every movie/ trailer whether it be a comedy, horror or romance film is Freytag's pyramid theory as it describes films of having an equilibrium, a climax then a fall of action.
This is portrayed in my trailer as at the beginning everything is ordinary of how it would be on a day to day bases, we see the girls set of on an adventure, it is there where the trailer meets its climax as the clips become shorter and more frequent and the music increases slightly in order to build tension for the audience. Although we followed Freytag’s convention we added our own twist as just when the audience believes the action has fallen, we had a dragging clip of one of the girls being dragged in to darkness to suggest the action hasn’t fallen and to frighten and unsettle our audience. The final image is often very memorable as it is the last thing you see on the trailer therefore it tends to remain in your head and makes the audience want to watch the film. Although this is not particularly conventional in Freytag’s triangle it is conventional of horror trailers.

We also used captions as these are conventional of horror trailers as they build suspense and tension and help to explain the narrative. I have placed the captions to fit with the softer more eerie music rather than the fast pace music as this builds suspense and fills out the music nicely. To begin with we had too many captions therefore we removed some of them and shortened then as we didn’t want to lose the interest off the audience. In order to sustain the audience attention we made the captions appealing as to begin with they were just red writing on a black background. However now they are on a black background with red blood splats on, to add more colour and also make a diverse link with our horror trailer as the blood makes it clear that the horror contains violence and brutal murders. The writing is in the same font as the title on the film poster and also the title of our film on the film magazine so the audience can make a clear link between the three. The writing appears in red in small and gradually gets bigger to fit the screen; this gives the audience more time to read it without it looking boring and uninteresting.
We also stuck to conventions and inserted a caption that looked slightly different with the title of our film on it, we choose to do it slightly differently so it would stand out and the viewers would remember it. We also added a coming soon caption at the end with our films website on it as these are conventional features of all trailers.
Sound is essential to any trailer and you need to make sure you use it in an effective way. We used mainly non-diegetic sound due to the soundtrack in our trailer. The soundtrack we used is called ‘Chainsaw horror’. We decided to use just one soundtrack as it fitted our trailer very well and when we tried to use two the cut between the both made it sound very unprofessional and messy.Towards the end of the trailer we faded the music which is conventional of trailers as it makes them sound more professional.We also emphasised certain diegetic sounds such as the screams, wailing, heavy breathing and also the impact of the paper ball in the bullying scene. However when we watched the trailer back we felt that not all the screams and heavy breathing was necessary, as it distracted the audience from what they was meant to be looking at and become very repetitive. Therefore we muted all the sound from all the clips and only had a very loud scream on the final dragging clip to catch the audience’s attention for the last time. We felt this sounded and looked a lot better, however we still wanted to emphasise the paper ball hitting the murderer in the eye as this is a key part to our storyline. Therefore we edited it so that the shot repeats three times and every time the ball hits her eye the shot zooms in. This really emphasises to the audience what they are meant to be looking at and although increasing the sound of the clip you could hear the impact, it didn’t have as much of an effect on the audience.

In order to make our music fit with our trailer; we needed to edit our footage. We edited our footage in a conventional way as horror films build tension and get the audience anxious. To have this conventional effect on the audience we needed to not only capture frightening footage but to assemble and edit it in an effective way. Therefore we edited the footage at the beginning making it black and white to symbolise that it’s in the past, the shots are long and linger for a few seconds before changing. However when the girls are deserted in the forest the shots become very fast pace and more frequent to build tension and anxiety as to what will happen next for the audience. We felt if we didn’t capture these feelings when our audience was watching our trailer, then our horror trailer wouldn’t have been very successful as those that choose to watch a horror are watching it to have them emotions and feel frightened.

Furthermore we followed the conventions of the mis-en-scene of the horror genre as horrors are conventionally shot in isolated locations during the night time. Therefore we shot many of our shots in an isolated forest in the evening as the majority of people associate horror films with darkness because it is psychologically scarier when you are unaware or unable to see your surroundings. Including these shots we shot in the dark made our horror trailer more conventional and realistic but some of the shots were not great quality due to us shooting them in the dark with limited lighting, therefore we had to edit the footage on Preiner Pro to lighten the shots and make them clearer. Below is one of the clips we lightened, I decided to use the lighting to our advantage as I used the lighting to highlight what I wanted our audience to look at.

Although the shots we shot in the forest related to a convention from the film genre ‘film noir’ Chiaroscuro, as it can affect the mood of a person by the way the light is separated and shines on the character, a method used in the 1940’s. We created this style by shining car headlights on the victims to portray their emotions and facial expressions.

Although we followed most of the convention, we decided to make our characters unconventional as we used an all female cast as many horrors tend to use both male and female character, even though its unconventional I still believe it will appeal to our target audience as it will target all females and some males that enjoy horrors or that just want to see five females fighting for their lives. However our most unconventional character has to be the female antagonist (the murderer) as most horror movies are normally about some sort of monster, un-human looking creature or a male antagonist. By unconventionally not including males, we are changing the convention of what a villain is or looks like in horror movies and how males are often looked at as the stronger, possessive gender.

For my film poster I also stuck to conventions of real life media products as when we was researching other film posters we came across the poster for the film ‘The Eye’.
We based our own film poster on it as it had the same plain layout and look our group wanted to achieve as we felt it was unusual and eye-catching.
We decided we wanted to keep the poster plain but effective as it will stand out more. We followed conventions by linking the main image (an eye) to the title of our film ‘An eye for an eye’. We decided to use the image of an eye as we felt it created a sense of fear to the viewer as the eye is almost staring at them which interlinks with the tag line at the top “somebody’s watching…” Having a tag line is conventional as majority of trailers have a quote or sentence to outline the story, giving the audience an insight of what the film is about without seeing the trailer.
The eye contains a small picture in the iris of the five victims from the film to convey further they are being watched by something or someone, or perhaps they are watching someone. This arouses questions in the viewer’s minds and causes curiosity. It also links our ancillary work as the image inside the eye is also the main image on our film magazine and makes it clear who the main characters are. We also made sure the viewers could tell the eye is a females eye as our antagonist is a female therefore we wanted this to be very clear.

Furthermore we followed typical conventions by having the film title as the largest text on the poster as it is the first bit of text we see, this is a typical convention of a film poster as the film title needs to be promoted and the most visible. The title is in the font Bison just like the captions in the film as it makes a connection for the audience.

Our film poster also conventionally contains additional information on the film at the bottom of the page in small text e.g. an approximate release date, along with the film company, cast, directors and the website, all this information is conventional and vital to the film. The font we choose is simple and matches many other fonts used on these types of poster therefore it gives my poster a more professional and realistic look.My magazine uses conventions of the media such as pugs, masthead, storylines, taglines, banners, skylines, images, barcodes, price and the website. However after researching several film magazines we noticed that the main image tended to be of one or two main characters; however we choose to challenge this convention as we used a photograph of all five victims as we felt this worked better than using the murderer or one victim.Although we followed many other conventions, one of them being the colour scheme as in our trailer the captions are black and red and on our film poster we use black, red and white, therefore we decided to stick to that colour scheme and do the film magazine in black, red and white as well, as these colours stand out well together and are conventional of the horror genre.
We placed the title ‘The Flicks’ at the top of the page which is conventional of most magazines. I did the writing in black and duplicated the layer and filled the duplicate layer red to place over the top to make the title of our magazine stand out more.Also on the film magazine, I used a pug which is conventional of magazines as it attracts readers to buy them for the free giveaways also I made sure it was bold and stood out as that’s what a pug is conventionally meant to do. Below is an image of my pug:
Furthermore we followed conventions with the skyline being at the top of the page, the magazine containing and issue number, website, date and many contrasting film titles as every magazine conventionally has these things.

Finally I used the convention of a barcode as this convention is necessary because in order to purchase a magazine at any retail place they must scan the barcode. I also followed the convention of placing it in the bottom right hand corner of the page as this is where it is normally found. Along with a barcode I researched prices of other film magazines and added my own price next to the barcode.

2.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Before any form of media is distributed, in this case a film, there are many forms of advertising in order to build up excitement for the release of the movie. This includes the main product being the film trailer, along with poster and the magazine cover to create a synergistic campaign. The two secondary ancillary texts help support the film trailer and promote the film in two new perspectives. By linking the synergistic campaign together incorporates a unique identity that the audience will recognize whilst associating it with my film “An Eye for An Eye”. In order for the audience to make a connection between all our advertising products there needs to be clear links between the three of them.

Firstly, the exclusive font we have used for the title of our film is the same on our film poster, film magazine and also film trailer captions.

We did this so that the audience will immediately recognise the connection between them all and having the same font gives a cohesive theme that is shown continuously throughout, to link the film to other media products e.g. magazine or film poster. Therefore the audience are aware of the film as it is associated with a distributional package.

Also the colour scheme is the same throughout our ancillary products therefore this is an advantage that will also help our target audience define that they are both advertising the same film and also help them to identify the genre of our film as the colours we have used are conventional of horror as black symbolises darkness/death and red symbolise danger/blood.

Finally we used the main image of the film magazine on film poster subtly by placing it in the eye, although it doesn’t stand out too much it is still noticeable and easily identified.

3.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Audience feedback is vital to any media product as they will be the consumers of your product. Therefore during the planning of our film trailer we conducted a poll on each of our blogs to get audience feedback on the trailer we wished to make. Without audience feedback, we wouldn’t have known what would have made our film trailer more appealing, as what appealed to us may not have appealed to our target audience. My poll determined whether my audience were happy with the genre of film, the setting, the mise-en-scene we should use, the captions and the soundtrack. My audience feedback also determined what sex our protagonist should be and what colour scheme we should follow throughout our media products.

Feedback on our trailer was mixed as some of the feedback was positive and other remarks were negative. One of the positive feedbacks we received was about how clear we conveyed our genre as we used the conventions of horror well by using conventional mis-en-scene and location shots.

However we received negative feedback about how unclear our storyline was, this was due to the fact that one clip lead to another and often missed out or didn’t highlight enough key parts of the storyline. Therefore we added more shots of the murder being bullied to convey it had been happening for a long period of time and also a shot of her eye after it was damaged so it was easier for the audience to understand she had been being bullied for a period of time and the last straw was when they hit her in the eye and damaged it.

Nevertheless after adding all the shots we were advised by our audience to remove any unnecessary shots as length of the trailer was too long to be teaser trailer and removed the tension we had planned to build throughout as it became boring and hard to keep concentration. Also many people commented on the acting skills as most of the characters we choose had very limited acting skills because we chose our cast on how reliable the people were rather than their experience in acting.

Audience feedback also determined whether we should re-shot certain shots like the car scenes as to begin with the shots were hand held therefore they were a little shaky so we re-shot and decided to film them on a tri-pod instead to satisfy our audience. After all our re-shots we gathered further audience feedback to find out whether we had successful meet our target audiences preferences, we did this by showing various different age grouped classes our work and listening to their responses. Luckily after my efforts of re-filming we were successful.

However we were given several suggestion how to make a few final improvements to our trailer, these were to make our captions more appealing and to finish with something that grabs your attention and stays in your mind in order to make the audience remember the film and want to watch it. Therefore we followed our audience’s advice and did one final re-shot to capture a clip of one of our victims being dragged off in to darkness screaming to leave our trailer on a cliff hanger and leave our audience wanting more.

During the editing process, we changed the captions to appear small and gradually get larger; we also changed the font to Bison as this was the font we used for our title throughout the ancillary work and put all the captions on a blood stained background in order to fit our genre and make them stand out and look more effective and interesting to our audience. Although many of the audience feedback was given from those who do not take media and do not know conventions of certain genres, trailers are commonly viewed often by everybody, therefore they are aware of what makes a good trailer and what doesn’t by the influence of other real media trailers around. This is why I valued the audience feedback so much.

For my distribution section which contained a film poster and film magazine we did not receive any negative feedback, the feedback was generally positive as I met conventions of real media life products. This was because at AS level I had done a similar task to this, therefore I was aware of conventions and how to target my audience. Therefore I only carried out very little audience feedback and asked a selected few people for their views on my final products.

4.
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Throughout my A2 media project, I used a wide range of different technologies to help conduct my market research along with producing the final pieces. Some of the technologies were very complex, although as I completed my AS course last year my ability to use modern technology was competent. However I had never used programmes such as premier pro therefore I was less capable at using this programme and it took a lot of getting used to.
To construct my three pieces I used a Mac computer that the school supplied.
Therefore we learnt a valuable lesson to always save our work in a neat and tidy folder and to each and every one of our USB memory sticks so we wouldn’t lose our work.
The Mac computers contained the software we used to create our trailer and ancillary products. I used Adobe Premier pro in order to edit and puzzle together our footage to create a film trailer. The software was very professional and had many advantages on it. These advantages include creating captions, editing sound, changing the lighting and contrast of all the different clips and also the speed and duration of the clips, these were just a few key effects that I gradually learnt and got used to using.
Another software programme I used was Adobe Photoshop as this is what I used to create the movie poster and film magazine front cover. As I had used this programme last year for my AS course I felt confident on this programme and was familiar with all the different tools e.g. the dodge tool, the text tool and how to change the opacity. By using these specific tools I produced a successful distributional package according to my audience feedback.
To film material for our film trailer we used an ordinary video camcorder. The quality of the film would have been a lot better if it was a HD camcorder, but we had to deal with what we were given and produce a good film trailer.
Along with the camcorder we used tripods to hold the camcorder still, rather than having an unprofessional shaky clip.Whilst taking these camcorders home we also had to ensure the battery packs were fully charged in order for the camcorder to work.
Along with the camcorder I also used my HD Sony cyber shot 14.1mp camera to photograph images for our ancillary work and also pictures to of location and other key features of out film to put on our blogs.
I also used many web based sites, one of them being Blogger which all my work was uploaded to. Having my work in an electronic form proves easier than it being on paper as I can insert images and videos from YouTube and analyse them and the person reading my analyses can refer to the clip or image I am referring to. All the information I gathered during research was uploaded to blogger and it also proved to be a more efficient way of arranging my coursework. Furthermore it proved to be more efficient as I could access it from home and it saved me wasting paper printing things out and having to make a hand written folder. The blog also contained features where you could produce polls in order to receive audience feedback, this proved to be very useful for me.
Search engines also helped me to research certain information on existing media and conventions of existing trailers on YouTube as I could analyse different horror trailers that were on YouTube and put the videos and my analyse on my blog. YouTube also came in use as we could convert our trailer to quick time, post it to YouTube and send the URL to all our friends to look at as well as posting it on our blogs..
The other website I used frequently throughout my coursework was Google as it enabled to search specific information I needed, gain pictures for my mood board and blog and also gain knowledge on the conventions of movie poster and film magazine front covers in order to make mine look realistic and as close to a real life media product as possible.
Finally the last website I used during the process of my coursework was Scribe D as I uploaded my word files to them in order to put them on my blog. It is also particularly useful for the teachers or people that visit my blog as you can zoom in to the text and get a full size screen of a certain piece of work.
Along with using all this modern technology a lot of our initial planning stages were sketched on paper, as we found it helped us to be more organised when we came to shooting the trailer and photographing the right images we needed for the two paper products. We then used a scanner in order to put images of these pieces of paper on our blog.

Final film trailer.

This is our final trailer. Overall we believe it is sucessful as it can easily be identified as a horror trailer and the views we are gaining on youtube are telling us that people are enjoying viewing it.

Final film poster.

This is my final film poster, after recieveing audience feedback I believe I have followed real life media conventions very well to create a product that fits in to the horror genre.

Final film magazine.

This is my final film magazine, after comparing this to other real life media magazines it is clear that we have followed the conventions of a real life media magazine and created something that fits in with our other products amongst our promotional distrubution package.

The editing process of the film poster

In order to edit our film poster we used a software called Photoshop. To begin with we started by using an ordinary photograph of Jodies eye.

We then begun to edit the photograph to create a shattered glass effect as we wanted the eye to seem scary in order to fit our genre. Firstly we changed the photograph black and white using the contrast and brightness tools.

We did this as we felt black and white would suit our genre better. Then we used the cutter tool to cut out sections and move them slightly to create a shattered glass effect.

However when we stretched the edited picture of the eye on an A4 piece of paper it looked very distorted and unproffesional. We felt it had to fit an A4 size piece of paper as this is a major convention of a film poster. Although we knew the image didn't work we still added on the texts including the tagline, headline and realease date to see what the finished product would look like.

After showing this to people as a first draft we wasn't pleased with the feedback, therefore we decided to start the film poster again. We took another picture of an eye on a higher megapixel camera. After importing the eye to Adobe photoshop we changed the whole image in to black and white again using the same brightness and contrast tools and cropped the majority of the eyebrow out using the crop tool.




After we created our background, we used the circle cut out tool to cut out a section of our photgraph in a circular shape to place in the centre of the eye. We then put the layer with the photograph of the girls over the top of the layer with the eye, we then changed the opacity of the photograph so you could still see the iris of the eye through it. We did this to symbolise the girls were being watched and to create curiosity. After making sure both the image were in the right place we used the eraser and dodge tool to smoothe out the edges.

When the background and the main image was done, we added on some text where we thought it should be placed to get a rough idea of how our final product would look.

Finally we added on the font we wanted to use, which was Bison and changed it to red using the paint bucket tool to fill the text.
We changed it to red so that it would match all our othe media products as they are a promotion pack therefore we stuck to our colour scheme to convey this. We also added credits at the bottom using the text tool.

The credits included all of the casts real names, the directors and the people who were encharge of the mis-en scene. We tryed to make it as believable as possible and as close as professional as we could.

Initial film poster ideas.

In order to create a film poster, we needed to decide on which layout we wanted to use. Here are a few I designed:

Analysis of film poster.

This film poster can been seen as unconventional as it has two main images The colours used in this film poster are a dark eerie colour which help to create a sinister feeling within the viewer and also shows the genre of horror clearly.

The main image is off the characters faces; the expression on their faces along with the image of someone being operated on and their faces partly covered by blackness suggests that something sinister is going on within this movie causing the viewer to want to see it.

This poster shows big images of two of the main characters but shows the names of the three main characters at the top. This backs up the fact that something very wrong is happening to one of the characters.

The name of the movie is shown glowing in a blue alien type way which also shows that something sinister is happening and stand outs to the viewers amongst the dark background.

The poster is conventional in the sense that it has the names of other actors and directors at the bottom as well as coming soon and the movie website. However, this poster breaks conventions as it contains a longer and smaller than usual slogan. It’s so long that it could be called a vague synopsis more than a slogan. Film posters are made to be seen at one glance; however, you would need a couple of seconds to read it. If read, it will help to draw the viewer into the plot causing them to want to see what happens.