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

Making sure that I could produce the most professional media products possible, I took as much advantage of the media technology possible.
When researching my media production I used the internet, google search engine to find out information about horror, my chosen genre.  I also used websites such as Apple Trailers, Youtube, the film education website and wikipedia.

Using the Film Education website helped me with my initial research in to teaser trailers, and understand the conventions of the genre Horror that I was using to complete my coursework.

Using Apple Trailers, was very useful when researching teaser trailers, this was because it has a whole section dedicated just to horror film trailers, this helped to pick out the conventions easily.

For the front cover we were basing it on Total Film.  Using the Total Film magazine website helped to gather ideas and identify the conventions that should be used in my own product. 

YouTube was a helpful recourse to look in to well known older film trailers that were not shown on the apple trailer website.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Gathering feedback from our target audience is really important, having this information helps us to improve our tasks, which will make sure that the end product is to the highest standard it could possibly be at, that will appeal specifically to our target audience.  There are three specific areas that the target audience feedback helps up to improve.  These are, to improve the ancillary tasks, ensure the product is the best and most professional standard it can be at, this also helps to find the elements of our products that need to improved upon, to fit with the specific target audience and what they would expect to see.

Whilst constructing  our media products we were constantly referring back to our target audience to make sure we were going in the right direction with our pieces.
Our first piece of target audience feedback with gathered was actually making a decision upon the film name, and which of the names that we came up with would be most appropriate and authentic for a horror film. 
When creating our ancillary tasks we also made different changes due to the opinions of our target audience.


Please tick the one that you think is most appropriate, and if you have any ideas of your own please write them where indicated below:

1     Dare Devil

2.    Truth or dare 

3.    Dead or Alive

4.    Game Over

5.    Assessment

6.    Dead Silent

7.    Time out

8.    Disconnected

These where the results from our survey

Title	Tally
Dare Devil	N/A
Truth or dare	3
Dead or Alive	1
Game Over	6
Dead Silent	2
Time Out	1
Disconnection	1
Assessment	N/A

From these results we found that most people preferred the title "Game Over".  Therefore "Game Over" is the title of our film.

From the questionnaires carried out we found that the front cover image used for the magazine, was inappropriate.  Comments made by the audience were such things as "it doesn't look like its advertising a horror film", this is basically stating that the image is not authentic enough for the genre of film that we are trying to promote.

Our target audience told us the specific things that bothered them, that we needed to make changes to our products.  The main few elements were the amount of fonts used on both of the ancillary tasks no more than 3 fonts should be used throughout both of those, and also the main cover images, used.  The development between the first draft of our magazine front cover and the final product are obvious and then final product looks alot more professional and is more like a conventional existing product.

Original

Final Piece

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

The main task was to create a film trailer, and the two ancillary tasks were to create a film poster and magazine front cover, these are all used to promote and market a new film coming to the cinemas.

All three tasks would somehow have to interlink, using an image was an obvious root to take for this linking of each task. In our trailer we had an obvious main character, being a young girl with blonde hair; she is featured in the trailer quite distinctively part the way through looking around a tree in the woodland area, and also being trapped later on in the trailer. This is the link we made, we had the character featured on the foreground of the poster and of the magazine, the images taken for the two ancillary tasks were taken in black and white effects, this helped to keep with the conventional elements of a horror genre, being dark.
Researching existing posters and film trailers helped us to see were other vital connections could be made, for example lines from the trailer that are featured, also made featured parts of the poster. The name of the film presented in the same way on each individual piece, or lines used to represent the name of the film.

Featured in the Trailer

Featured on the Poster

Also featured on the poster

Featured on the Magazine front cover

All of these are recognisable, and would be accosiated with the same product

Similar Links with the existing film "30 days of night"

the dvd cover box

The film poster

Featured in the film trailer

The three products would have to be brought out at effective times, around the final release of the film. I decided that the the trailer would be release first, this is due to looking at our research most teaser trailers are released at least a year before the actual film is released, which would entice the audience to keep the date in there mind to see the film. Secondly the poster would be released, to promote the film and keep the audience updated with further information about the films release and other promotional information, closer to the final release.  The full length trailer would finally be released, a few weeks before the final release of the film, a magazine would be printed with the design that i put together, would be released so that it wold draw more excitement about the release to the audience and therefore there will be a larger interest from viewers and more people will go and see the film.

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

To show you how I my trailer is linked to professional trailers I ave created two, 3 by 3 story boarded tables. From these you can see the clips from existing trailers, and in the other you can see clips from my trailer. Looking at both of these storyboards you can see the similarities between a real existing trailer to my own creation.

Existing Trailer Clips

Looking and selecting a variety of existing trailer shots was a useful task for me, this was because it helped me to decide on shots that I could use in my own trailer to keep an authentic and professional look, and helped me to be more creative with my original ideas.

My Trailer Shots

In my opinion if my trailer was presented in the public eye it would be very successful, with its quick cuts and variety of shots used throughout.

a few final changes and music finaly added

Looking back at the second draft that me and my partner completed, we realised that the colouring of each clip was not consistent. Therefore we needed to find a was of changing our trailer to ensure that the contract of the clips were of the same qualities. A member of staff who had studied using final cut express, helps us to coorect the colours, and contrasts, to help resolve this problem. We did this by using the colour correction tool and adapt the colour of some of the clips.
We have finished the final editing of our trailer, and we had made the colour corrections needed. Also we have added some music, finally we want to adapt the sequencing of the music to create a more eerie effect when the killer is on screen, we contructed the music together by using sound track pro and garage band.
This was our film trailer once the corrections had been made

Once Changes had been made

After looking a the comments that we received from our target audience, we made the changes that were necessary to make the poster appear more authentic, and appeal more to the target audience.

We also realised when looking at the poster that it looked like we had two strap-line's in our poster, and so we only used the more effective strap line that went well with the trailer.

Film Poster Attempt One

This is the first attempt of our Film Poster. My partner and I took a printed copy of our poster and received comments from our target audience, on how we could improve our poster to make it more appealing and get the target audience to want to see the film.

The most common set of comments that we received were: -

• The title of the film needs to be larger maybe coming across the whole width of the page, just to make it more obvious that this is the title of the film.
• There are too many fonts used across the poster and should be limited to 3 fonts and no more.
• The names of the actors should not be scattered around the page it makes it look very unprofessional and should be lined up across the side of the page the opposite side of the face so that they don't cover up the facial features.
• Also the actor names look very basic and non professional, and should have an effect added to them, to help them stand out from the background of the poster.



My partner and I will look more closely at our poster and make the changes that have been addressed to us to make the poster more effective and professional.

Another idea that we tried out

We took close up shots, of half the actresses face to create suspense.  The close up helped us to use effects of horror with the actresses eye, which was effective to the genre.  Going through the process and arranging the poster we realised that the image was too close and the background of the shot was incorrect for the genre of our film trailer. 

Steps through the Magazine front cover production

When producing our front cover we experienced problems with authenticity of the images we had originally taken.  

The features of the front cover works well but the image does not and we have decided to take more images in a different location and props to help make the front cover more authentic.

Once we made these changes we showed the audience the to different front covers to find out which was most popular and would become our final front cover magazine piece.

After showing our audience these two products only 3 or the 12 people preferred the original product and therefore we went ahead with our second choice. There views were that the thought the new cover stood out, and highlighted the genre of the film more effectively, and looked particularly more authentic to the first ideas.

Magazine Front Cover issues

 When thinking about our magazine front cover we had a few ideas for images for the main article that would be appropriate and fit in with the trailer and its genre. These are some of the shots that we tried out. 

 

There was a lack of props that we needed to create the images that we had originally had ideas for, and these are the images that we came away with.  After looking over our ideas and existing front covers we thought that the third image was the most effective one to use.

Filming

On the 26th January my partner and I continued with our filming, in our second location, and also a few more shots taken at our first location choice.  Are shots were very successful and the use of a tripod improved the quality of shots a huge amount.  

We used a variety of different shots and angles. 

Putting the shots together we have realised that the trailer is not long enough, and so we are going back to our locations to shot some more shots in different angles and parts of the location.

Film Posters

We have gathered together some examples of existing film posters that we have found from the internet.  These different examples have many different essential conventions, it is important that we use the conventions from these existing posters to make our own poster look authentic as we can.

Each of the posters feature the films name to inform the audience of what the film is called so they know what to look out for when the film is finally released in the cinemas.  Other conventions that appear are the release dates, this helps to create a sense of anticipation, well known actors, directors and films they have previously been featured in may also been shown.  The company that produced the film, for recognition. 

I find this poster particularly effective, this is because there is a clear view of the genre that is being used,  showing a stereotypical family of four, two children and i would connote that the two figures stood calmly behind them are there parents.  The two children that are sat down, have blood stained into there clothes and trickling down there legs, this is a devastating sight and shows a horror genre coming from it.

The image creates a very effective poster, to the far right of the poster a women stands with both her hands leaning on the side of what appears to be a sink, this is taken in a medium long over the shoulder picture.  The women is shown wearing limited amount of clothes, and her long harsh dark hair flowing behind her back showing her femininity.  You can see the left hand side of her face in the mirror, and then on the other side of the mirror a reflection of a male character in the background of the room, the male has dark under his eyes and has a un-nerving expression on his face.  The room seems a very cold grey, with a slight mist.  Also towards the top of the poster it looks like ice upon a smooth surface, creating a edgy mood to the poster.

Filming Our Trailer

Nadia and myself carried out some tester filming at our choosen location.


We tested out our different shots, we had limited equipment including a tripod. Once we had finished our shots we watched through them and realised the effect of not having a tripod would leave us with a poor quality trailer.

We also tried out zooming in and out on the camera, but we found this uneffective for our film and so decided not to use this in the future in the final shots for our trailer.

After capturing more shots together and editing them together this is our first attempt at editing our piece together before gathering audience feed back.






Finding that we needed more variation in shots and decided not to use certain effects have decided that our final film date will be the 26th January. Nadia and I will be filming at our chosen location and spending plenty of time making sure that all shots are accurate and authentic. 

This is our second draft to filming and editing of our film trailer

Test Shots

Nadia and I took some tester shots at our chosen location on the 18th December.  We were not able to get hold of a tripod at the time in which we filmed, and looking back at the shots they were very shaky, this was because of the lack of a tripod.  When we come to capture our shots, for our final trailer production is it important we have the correct equipment, to ensure our shots are accurate.  We also practiced zooming in and out of shots to emphasise important parts of the trailer but this effect was not an effective tool to use, because it was jolty and lagged, therefore we will not be using this tool when taking our final shots.