A2 MEDIA EVALUATION

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Evaluation Kelly Christmas

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

In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products. : 

In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products. My media product is a teaser trailer for a romantic drama. I used the conventions of a romantic drama which is: Boy meets girl generally opposites that wouldn’t normally attract get together. As a trailer would not use all stages of narrative, I just used equilibrium then disruption. The audience is “hooked” into watching to find out the new equilibrium. I ensured that I used the general conventions of a teaser trailer these were: Effective captions to explain the storyline; music editing; fast flowing action; key shots from the film; “coming soon”; a website and to be no longer than 90 seconds. When looking at the fast pace of some teaser trailers I realised that a lot of romantic drama teaser trailers had a slower pace about them with snaps of a fast pace. I used this convention in my teaser trailer by slowing the trailer down with using pieces of speech and then using several fast cuts to produce the effect of a teaser trailer. When I looked into other romantic drama genres I found that some went over this limit that was set such as The Break Up which runs at 110 seconds. I followed the convention of a teaser trailer being 90 seconds long by ensuring my film fitted into this at (95 seconds). Hyperlink

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For my magazine cover I had to have the title “Empire” and a strap line along with the website and other stories a barcode and the date with the price of the magazine. Date and price Strapline Film title Barcode Barcode Website address Special edition strapline Feature interviews and posters Title Title Exclusive interviews Limited edition information This magazine front cover is very bland in comparison to other magazine by Empire so therefore when looking at other magazines I used them as an example.

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I also discovered that many of the Romantic drama teaser trailers have either a voice over telling the narrative or titles to push the story in the right direction. However for mine I used mostly titles however, after reviewing the film I added in a voiceover of one of the actors as I felt that I needed to repeat the phrase he was saying. When incorporating my ancillary products I used black red and white as the colour scheme. I used music throughout my trailer to indicate mood and tension. I used music throughout my trailer to indicate mood and tension. The heartbeat sound effect made tension in the air as the audience would be waiting for something to happen. Also when using audio I produced a voice over using the Macs which I could use throughout my trailer for the tension and the repetition to keep the audience intrigued. In my teaser trailer I only used a few moments of speech as I wanted to slow down the pace of the trailer. In most teaser trailers the pace is very fast however, when looking at teaser trailers in the Romantic Drama genre I noticed that a lot of the teaser trailers used pieces of text to slow the theme down as a Romantic Drama teaser trailer should not be really fast paced. By using Blulmer and Katz audience uses and gratifications my teaser trailer is aimed for people to divert and escape from every day problems and routine as well as interacting with personal relationships and problems. Another teaser trailer that I believe uses this well is P.S I love you. Hyperlink

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When choosing my storyline I really looked into other romantic drama films and found that The Break Up teaser trailer portrayed the same storyline as mine. This was because there was an argument throughout the scene with a few flashes of the past when things were okay. By using Todorov’s theory of equilibrium- the beginning going to meet him in her car and the disequilibrium- the arguing in the middle of the trailer. In my teaser trailer I found that in most romantic drama teaser trailers they hinted at the renewed equilibrium whilst not actually showing it. So in my teaser trailer I did not show completely the renewed equilibrium just hinting at it with the final shot. When researching trailers I found they used Propp’s theory of characters. This was mainly visible in action films such as Spiderman where there is calm in the city disequilibrium of a new villain appearing and the renewed equilibrium of Spiderman saving the day. It is not so visible in romantic drama genres but you can see that there is normally a boy meets girl equilibrium a break up or sequence of events which stops this and then the renewed equilibrium of them getting back together. This is noted in The Holiday. Hyperlink

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When creating my teaser trailer I ensured I used this theory by including a villain (Becky); a princess (Fran) and a hero (Lewis). When looking at shot types that I should use during my teaser trailer I found that I should use mostly over the shoulder shots, two shots and long shots for my locations. These shots were in several of the romantic drama teaser trailers that I researched. Two shots help to create a sense of passion between two characters as well as an other the shoulder shot helps to see peoples reactions. Location shots help reveal to the viewer the location and setting of where the film is going to take place. From looking at these common forms and conventions I challenged a few of these by not having all of Propp’s character ideas and not using them in the usual way this meant that the hero and the princess were not conventional heroes and princesses. I developed my own music using garageband to link together a few pieces of music and connecting them in the right place. Using garageband meant that I could create un-copyrighted music. This developed my teaser trailer and the sound effects also developed the stereotypical teaser trailer.

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

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

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts I created my ancillary tasks to ensure that they were cohesive with my movie and the other ancillary tasks. I used the same colour scheme throughout my magazine cover; poster; dvd cover and movie titles. This colour scheme was black, white and red. The same font which was Arial Unicode was used throughout the magazine cover; poster; website and DVD cover. However this font was not available on the imovie software. As you can see from the pictures above P.S I love you DVD cover uses the white and red colour scheme which seems the prominent colour scheme in Romantic Drama films

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Synopsis Credits Running time language Age classification Movie Title Strap line Actors names review Actors name Title Running time language Credits Synopsis Below is a comparison of my DVD cover and the DVD cover for P.S I Love You

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When researching my film posters I focused mainly on my genre as well as looking at other genres to ensure that I was not missing out key conventions. When researching these I found that there was a recurring theme of the use of the colours white and red. When researching these I noticed that “The Boat That Rocked” brought out different posters with each character on the front of them. These themes meant that each character was linked to the colour of the back drop behind them on the poster and with each poster was a tagline for each character. This worked very well as there were several main characters in the film. However, for my film I stuck to the one poster to represent my teaser trailer. However, when the theatrical trailer would be released I would release another poster with a different picture from the theatrical trailer. This way it would keep the audience hooked on knowing what is going on with the film. Throughout my teaser trailer I used desaturated colour to create flashes of the past as well as using framing of the sun in the kissing scene to capture the romance. This reflected when making my posters as the colour used was desaturated around the photo of the couple kissing.

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I also looked at films such as Cloverfield which produced a huge viral marketing campaign consisting of a teaser trailer without a name leaving a sense of enigma attached to this. This viral marketing made me think about what I could do for mine therefore I made a facebook page which included the two posters which I made for my film a link to the youtube link for my rough cut film and also the magazine premier front cover. This made my film available to a wider audience. Below is the link for my facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Changing-Fate/119123804781781?ref=ts Here is the Cloverfield facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/cloverfieldmovie   When creating my film poster and magazine cover I used the same image throughout. I did this to create cohesion throughout my ancillary products as well as this I thought it would be better to use a key shot that is used in my teaser trailer. This meant that people would instantly link the magazine cover and the poster to my teaser trailer. As the image was that prominent and was at the end of the teaser trailer so would stick in their mind. Once I had created the ancillary products I got audience feedback on them. In order to do this I used my facebook page for feedback. I uploaded the poster and the magazine to the movie page to get feedback. I found that many people thought the poster really reflected the plotline and the photo used for both were very well framed. This facebook page helped me to also get feedback on how effective my teaser trailer was.

What you learnt from your audience feedback? : 

What you learnt from your audience feedback? From my audience feedback I gained a lot of information about my target audience for my teaser trailer. I first used a questionnaire to gain feedback for my teaser trailer to find out what conventions people thought should be included in a Romantic drama teaser trailer. I asked what plot line they would expect and what characters they would expect to see. After finding this out it made it a lot simpler to compare it to some romantic drama genres and to come up with my storyline. I also asked many people what they thought of my teaser trailer I used members of my media class as well as friends and different age groups. From this audience feedback I found out that many people thought I should add a voice over to create a sense of tension and repetition throughout the trailer so that it was a lot more flowing. As well as this they said that I should make it choppier so I cut in a lot more shorted shots and added a few more titles to cut up the longer shots. Needs a coming soon page! Include the website page Music needs to be changed as it doesn’t fit with the genres Titles don’t fit in with the film Need to use more fade to blacks transitions are to clunky

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I also found out what they thought fitted in well with the genre. These things were the heartbeat at the beginning which they thought added tension to the story and made the audience read on. As well as this they liked how the music stopped at started at key points during the film so they were able to concentrate on the film a lot more. The audience feedback really helped me to find out what worked within my trailer and also what didn’t work I also used the same method of feedback for my poster and magazine front cover as well. During this feedback I noticed that I had not used some of the key conventions in the poster so this helped me to go back over what conventions I had missed out. Before feedback-missing out the key credits and actor names. After feedback- I used the final screen from my movie and transferred it to the poster

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Title Actors name Coming Soon tag credits Website Title Actors names Date of release credits strapline strapline Comparison between my Poster and P.S I love you film poster

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

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

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages Media technology was a huge part of the planning construction and evaluation during this project. The internet was a huge help in the planning stages through finding websites such as trailer addict to look up teaser trailers to research film websites and posters as well as finding the key conventions for my DVD cover. It also helped when trying to find logos for DVD player and the classifications. I used google search engines wikipedia trailer addict, IMDB, youtube and ask. I had to scan my drawn storyboard into the computer as there was no other way of getting them onto the computer. This was a very lengthy process but was really worth it to see them come up on the computer screen. I also used a digital camera to take still shots of what I wanted the framing to be like and create a photographed storyboard. I used a social networking site “Facebook” to promote my film and get feedback on what people thought of the rough cut of my film. This helped me to get feedback on not only my rough cut but also my posters. Here are some comments from people. All pictures on this page are Hyperlinked

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I also used youtube to gather feedback on my rough cut of my film by uploading it and then asking people for feedback from different age groups: I found this to be really helpful when getting effective feedback on the rough cut which helped me make changes to the rough cut to hopefully improve my production and make it more appealing to my target audience. I had to scan my drawn storyboard into the computer as there was no other way of getting them onto the computer. This was a very lengthy process but was really worth it to see them come up on the computer screen. I also used a digital camera to take still shots to work out framing for my film. This helped a lot as it meant when I went round and filmed the scene most of the framing was already done. By using programmes such as photoshop and paint it meant that I could easily edit photos for use in my film or for my ancillary tasks. After working shortly with paintshop pro as well I did find that paintshop pro was a lot less time consuming than photoshop Hyperlink

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When evaluating my media product I wanted to make my evaluation interactive so therefore when uploading it to the blog I used authorstream which is a file sharing website. It enables you to share powerpoint presentations over the internet. This way my evaluation looked original. Another website that I could of used to do this is slideshare, however some of the font’s on slideshare are very difficult to read and it doesn’t always recognise the font you have used. When I first started out with editing my film I had to use Adobe Premiere Pro which was a good program but involved looking through youtube for a lot of tutorials to learn how to do certain effects. So when we were introduced to the Apple Macs (imovie) it was really effective and a lot less time consuming than using Adobe Premiere Pro. When finished it gave the project a much more professional look. As well as just using it for my film it was also very helpful to make the website by using Iweb this software enabled us to make the website and set it up using different buttons and was very simple to use as well as this it was very simple to get the trailer onto this software. Also, I used a programme called IDVD to create a professional DVD menu for my film so instead of it just playing when you inserted the disk it had an effective menu. Hyperlink Hyperlink