Evaluation

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

I believe that our horror movie trailer is very conventional. The trailer follows Freytag's triangle theory, beginning with the exposition, followed by, rising action, the climax and falling action. The rising action occupies a larger proportion of the trailer, as this theory states it should. We have used longer shots that portray normality at the beginning whilst the trailer remains in a state of equilibrium. The trailer gradually builds in intensity as the mysteries unfold. The pace increases not only through the use of shorter shots but also through the use of sound. We arranged the soundtrack so that it would effectively accompany the editing. The way our trailer 'builds up' is conventional to that of a typical horror trailer. We also used intriguing captions throughout to help 'tell the story', which is another convention of movie trailers. When analysing the trailers for 'Pans labyrinth' and 'Eden Lake' I found that the use of captions completed the trailer. They were particulary key in the Pans labyrinth trailer as there was no dialogue or commentry. As our trailer would have little or no dialogue we decided to use captions to 'explain' the storyline. Each caption is in the same font style and colour helping the trailer to flow, something that is also commonly seen. We conventionally chose to end our trailer with the film title, names of cast/crew and a website address, as it is known that this way the audience are more likely to remember the name of the film - something that is extremely important. This was the case for all of the film trailers that I watched and analysed. We chose to film the majority of our horror trailer in an eerie woods as this sort of location fits the horror genre well. We wanted to find a location similar to the one in the film 'Eden Lake' (image on right). The mise-en-scene is also typical of a horror trailer. We darkened down many of the shots, altering brightness and contrast, to aid in portraying a tense, eerie atmosphere, as is seen in media of the horror genre. As well as this, the protagonist in our trailer is female, whilst the antagonist is male. This is often the case in horror movies. Much of the content of our trailer is typical of the horror genre, for example, our shots include, running, screaming, blood, a fearful victim and a threatening antogonist.

We also used conventions in our film magazine cover. We arranged the page so that the masthead was at the top (to the left), and the majority of coverlines occupied the left-hand third. This arrangement is often seen in conventional magazines, as the left-hand third is the area of the page that is visible when the magazine is stacked on a shop shelf. For this reason it is important that this section of the page contains information that will attract the target audience at point of sale. When researching and analysing film magazine covers I found that the masthead often stretched across the width of the page. Our masthead only stretches across half of the width of the page, so in some ways it could be said that we challenged this convention. However, I have seen covers of other types of magazines, such as 'NME' and 'Q', that also have mastheads that do not stretch across the page. Other conventional features that out magazine cover possesses include, a pug, barcode, date and price. The image on its own is very powerful and is clearly the focus of the page. This was also the case for the two magazine covers I analysed previous to production. The 'EMPIRE' cover on the right features an image of Megan Fox. This coverlines are arranged around and in line with the image. We also based the arrangement of our cover on the composition of the image.

Our film poster also uses many conventions. The release date, production company and website address are all conventional features that we have included on the poster. Conventially a film poster should closely resemble the film it is advertising. The film poster and trailer for 'PANIC ROOM' closely link - the image on the poster is clearly representative of the trailer and the film name is in the same font style and colour for both. We took this into account by making sure that the audience will clearly be able to associate our poster with our film/trailer. We used an image featuring all of the the characters in the same location as the trailer was filmed in. The image also resembles one of the shots in the film. As well as this, we have used the same style of font for the title on both the trailer and poster. We have however challenged conventions with our poster by positioning our film title at the top of the page. Usually the title of the film will be placed at the bottom of the page, however this set up did not work well with our poster image. I think that challenging this convention has paid off as the arrangement of the poster works really well and helps it to stand out amoungst others. (the analysis of each of our finished products also describes the conventions we have used and challenged).

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Our ancillary texts - film poster and magazine cover - clearly support our horror movie trailer. The images that we have used for our poster and magzine cover have been taken in the same location as the movie trailer was filmed in, and feature the characters as they appeared in the trailer. The images actually resemble 2 of the shots that feature in the trailer (left). We altered the brightness and saturaion of the images, something that we also did with many of the shots in our trailer. We have used the same font style and colour for the film title on both the film poster and trailer, which is conventionally seen. This allows the viewer to immediately link the two. The magazine cover still features the film title however, not in the same recognisable font style. We decided to do this as usually a film title will appear in the same font as other text on the cover - it is rare for the film title to be shown as it is in the trailer and poster. This however is not a real issue as the image on the cover alone will be enough for the audience to easily associate the cover with the trailer and poster. As well as this we followed a main colour scheme of red, white and black throughout all three of our products. We incorporated captions in our trailer, these were shown in white text against a black background. This white text on black theme ran throughout the trailer, the film title was also presented in this way. The poster also follows this trend with the majority of the text in white, again positioned on top of a black background. The magazine cover is slightly different. Most of the text on the page is in red or white/grey font and there is no solid black background. Although this differs from the other two products the same red/white/black theme is still relatively present. It is common for the magazine cover advertisement of a film to differ fairly significantly from the film's trailer and poster.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Throughout the process the group have gathered views and opinions of target audience members in aid of making our products as relevant and appealing as possible. Firstly, I posted a series of around 8 poll questions on my blog. I then sent the link to a random selection of people, asking them to visit my blog and fill out the questions. The sample size was small, only 18 people participated, however I believed that the results I gathered were still more than relevant as the vast majority of people that completed the question were of the age group we were targetting. The results that I gathered mostly helped to re-confirm decisions that we were looking to make. We made no real changes following the results, as peoples answers appeared to coincide with our original plans. This showed us that we were capable of making choices that would appeal to our target audience. The reason for this is likely to be that our group - me, Grace and Katie - also all belong to the target audience our products are aimed towards.

Following the completion of our 3 products we gathered feedback from a small group of target audience members. The feedback that we received was for most part very positive and complementary. The audience members seemed to particularly like the film trailer and film poster, giving little or no criticism on these 2 products. For this reason we decided that no alterations to these products were needed. The magazine cover however did seem to raise a few issues. The feedback brought to our attention a few areas where alterations should be made. One thing that more than one audience member had mentioned was the font styles that were originally used on the film magazine cover. We took this into consideration and made changes accordingly.

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

Throughout this coursework unit I have used a variety of media technologies. To start with I had to research and analyse actual media products, and chose to do this by using the internet. I started off looking at music videos as well as film trailers, as to begin with our group was unsure as to which we would produce. I used http://www.youtube.com/ to view a variety of trailers and videos. This site was extremely useful and seemed to contain every trailer or video I could think of. I would then used the embed code to post relevant videos to my blog. My blog was set up using Blogger, which is a free weblog publishing tool from Google. I used this blog to document all of my A2 coursework. As I also documented my AS coursework using Blogger, the technology was very familiar to me and so I had little or no issues with it. When it came to constructing our products we used a variety of different technologies. To begin with we had to learn how to use the HD cameras so that we could capture the footage that we needed for our film trailer. This was relatively simple, the camera, tripod and light that we were given were all easy to transport and simple to use. It took no time at all to figure out how everything worked. On location we also used a digital camera to photograph the images we needed for our promo package - this again was very quick and simple. Then came the tricky bit, actually constructing our products! I had to learn how to use Adobe Premiere Pro, a software that I had never come into contact with before. We used this software to edit together out film trailer. The initial process of dragging and cutting individual clips was relatively simple to begin with but soon became much more complicated once the music and effects were added. It took a while to get the hang of where all the tools were and how to use them, however once everything became more familiar the editing process was actually quite enjoyable. To construct our film magazine cover and film poster we used Adobe photoshop. We also used this software at AS level and so it wasn't completely alien, however it did take a while for me to reacquaint myself with how it all worked.