Evaluation Questions 2,3 and 4

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

The combination of the three products works very well together. At the very beginning of the project I chose my colour scheme of red, black and white through inspiration from Alfred Hitchcock, and kept this up throughout all of my products. For additional continuity I used the same fonts for each of them and kept the original logo for ‘Instinct’ that I had made on Photoshop. I repeated the tagline of ‘sometimes a mothers’ intuition just isn’t enough’ as this is memorable and accompanies the title of the film. It makes it memorable for a reader and also gives a little bit of an insight into the film and its storyline. I also made sure that the actress I used for the teaser trailer was the same as the one featured on the front cover of the magazine.

Looking back the only problem with this was that the actress wore different clothes for the tasks, however I believe I rectified this slightly by presenting her as an actress as opposed to just being the character from the film. I also think that the teddy bear from the poster could have been included somewhere in my teaser trailer or film magazine cover as it only appears once and could provide significant symbolism for the film.

Overall I think the main product and ancillary tasks work together well and have produced a package that could successfully promote a film.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Throughout this process I have relied on a lot of audience feedback for all of the tasks via email, Facebook, Slideshare and online surveys. I have learned that in order to produce a product that is well-received by the majority, it is very important to first listen to audience feedback to notify whether or not anything seems unclear or is less effective. The target audience for this project is aged fifteen and over and so I made sure that the majority of my audience feedback came from this age range as well as some from an older generation.

I used the feedback to alter my work however I found that in some cases there were divided opinions and so used either further research from a wider audience or used my own judgement in the hope of producing the best product possible.

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

I used a wide range of resources for my project. My blog was made using Blogger; I used YouTube to research existing film teaser trailers and to upload my own product; I found Slideshare very useful to incorporate my PowerPoint Presentations smoothly and easily into my blog; Prezi and MindManager allowed me organise my ideas and thoughts easily and present them in a professional way; for producing the ancillary tasks Microsoft Publisher  and Photoshop proved the most useful I could edit the images and form the tasks on there; piecing my film trailer together and editing was all done in Sony Vegas Pro; I used my own camera to film the teaser trailer; and I used emails, an online survey website and Facebook to get audience feedback.

Over the course of the project I feel that I have sufficiently used a wide range of media and my skills for all of these have developed significantly. I am now more aware of what software to use for certain tasks and am able to apply my knowledge as much as I can.

Evaluation Question 1

Here is my presentation regarding question one of the evaluation. I have uploaded it onto Slideshare.

Question 1 of Evaluation

View more presentations from 05burluc.

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

Poster

Whilst conducting my research I discovered that there were only a few conventions as they all varied from being very busy and full to being very simplistic. As a minimum requirement there should be a limited amount text, an image relating to the film itself and a title. As I didn’t want to give lots of detail about the film away, I thought that by sticking with this minimalistic approach I could produce a successful and intriguing poster.

As I have shown in my mind map I thought of what images I could include in my poster that related to the theme of the film. I chose a teddy bear as it links in with the theme of babies and provides very little insight into the film itself.

I added small print information as is seen on the vast majority of posters which details the production team for the film. Once I had added the title ‘Instinct’, I felt that my poster was a little too minimalistic and so carried out more research and looked at other pieces of text that might appear on it. I was very conscious about the amount of text as the purpose of a poster is to draw a passer-by in, and lots of unnecessary text can be off-putting. I created a tagline for the film title which I later used in my magazine front cover, and also included a release date along with the names of actors that would appear in the film. I spread the text out, again to avoid the appearance of too much text. I only used two fonts so the final piece looked more professional and was easier on the eye.

At the bottom of the poster I used a film certificate logo which doesn’t always appear on posters however I had noted that it should be included in at least one of my products.

I think that on the whole the development of my poster has followed the majority of the conventions of a good poster however I know that in some cases the lack of information given out may prove misleading for a viewer as opposed to captivating.

Teaser Trailer

When looking at other teaser trailers for the genre of horror, I managed to draw lots of ideas and inspiration from them. Teaser trailers should be between 30 and 90 seconds long and not give too much away about the film itself. My teaser trailer is 77 seconds long, and through the use of quick editing I feel it gives just enough information to an audience. As is seen in many teaser trailers of this genre, the purpose of such little information is to build suspense and allow the audience to become drawn in and want to watch the film. In my trailer I created a tense and mysterious atmosphere by using a shot which got closer and closer to a door with the final shot being the silhouette of an arm reaching for the door handle. This leaves an audience questioning who or what is behind the door, prompting them to watch the film to find out.

I discovered that teaser trailers are usually fast-paced yet my product isn’t. I challenged this convention as the music I had chosen was slow and I felt that it wasn’t befitting for such editing. I still think that my teaser trailer works as the slower music builds the tension and forms and eerie atmosphere.

Stereotypical trailers for horror films are gory and contain lots of running or screaming. I wanted my product to get away from this and not appear to be clichéd. My teaser trailer relies purely on the unknown, and the ‘scare factor’ comes from the main character being an ordinary mother in a homely setting - something an audience can relate to.

Many trailers have small pieces of text embedded between camera footage. I liked this idea and decided to incorporate it into my own trailer. I chose my words carefully to enhance the suspense whilst making sure that it didn’t detract from the scenes.

Overall I feel that my product complies with most of the conventions of a successful teaser trailer and despite me challenging them slightly I still think it is an effective piece.

Magazine Front Cover 

The front cover of a magazine has several features and conventions which I stuck to as I found that there were rarely any exceptions to these rules whilst conducting my research. A left-third of a magazine is perhaps the most important as it is predominantly what is first seen by a viewer when in stores. I made sure that the left third on my magazine front cover was insightful and featured the most important parts of the magazine. These included part of the masthead which would be instantly recognisable to a reader; buzz words such as ‘free’, ‘plus’ and ‘world exclusive’ which entice the reader; coverlines with larger bright headings that look attractive and instantly give snippets of information about the content of the magazine; part of the skyline; and the dateline so it is instantly obvious that they are reading the most up-to-date issue.

I wanted to include as many other features of a magazine front cover as I possibly could and so I used a skyline to further advertise and promote the magazine and its contents; a large main image using a mid-shot with eye contact to involve the reader; a large main coverline to accompany the image; a bright button to give a little more information about the magazine and its highlights; a website for the magazine to invite more interaction and feedback from the readers; a review quote to encourage the reader to investigate further; and a barcode.

In my first draft of the magazine front cover I attempted to challenge a convention by using a black background as I did in the poster. However I found that a white background made the main image stand out much more and could see how much more effective it was. I kept with a set colour scheme and allowed the main image to stand out even more by adding a red shadow behind it.

The main image was airbrushed as it would be for any other magazine front cover, however despite my I.T skills developing substantially since the beginning of the project, I still find that the image could be perfected even more with other software.

Conclusion

To conclude I am happy that each of my tasks successfully meet with many of the forms and conventions I discovered during my research. I believe that where I have challenged or developed them, I have done so effectively and with sufficient justification.

I worry slightly that my poster may be a little vague but I feel that the symbolism of the teddy bear and the logo that accompanies it is effectual and links in well with the theme and plot of the story as well as the other two tasks.

Thanks for watching

Time Plan

I am pleased to upload a copy of my completed timeplan with every task I needed to do completed in the timescale I set myself :)

Teaser Trailer Editing

In order to piece my film clips together I used a software called Sony Vegas Pro. This was new to me as I had previously only used Windows Movie Maker however through practice and trial and error I managed to produce the final product with the appropriate effects and transitions that I had in mind on my storyboard.


The first image was created in Microsoft Publisher and is a conventional feature of film trailers as it tells and audience its age restrictions and content. I found an example of one on the internet and used this as a guide so I knew what colours and type of text to use.


Following this I watched all of my footage and cropped it to choose much smaller snippets of the film which were most important and relevant to the plotline. This took a long time as I had filmed lots of different types of shots and angles, and I had to decide which were the most effective whilst still keeping them varied. I put them in the correct order and muted the videos so I could add sound on.


As it is a horror film trailer with the purpose of frightening an audience and having them on the edge of their seat I edited the lighting of each of the video clips by decreasing the opacity. This gave it a darkened appearance whichI feel is much more befitting for a teaser trailer of this genre.


The sounds I chose came from www.freesound.org, a royalty free website full of sound clips and music for every mood and genre. I had already decided that I wanted an eerie sound of a music box playing in my teaser trailer as this relates to the theme of babies. I also used the sound of a babies cry as this can be seen as a most distressing sound. I then looped the sounds to make them long enough for the duration of the trailer and put them together to sound like one longer track.


As the film clip of appraching the door appears several times within the trailer I decided to slow down the speed of this clip to create more suspense. This looked most effective on the final scene when the audience sees the silouhette of a figure reaching for the door handle. I slowed down the speed oof the very first scene too, as it is a happy image and represents how this characters life was before the horrible and mysterious things begin to happen.


The text I used between shots was created in Photoshop. I chose a font similar to the one I used for my poster and magazine front cover and used a bright red with black background which ties in with my colour scheme throughout. I then saved these individualy and inserted them as images into Sony Vegas Pro. To give a zoomed effect I increased the size of the image and animated this, making it look as if the text is coming towards an audience. I also created a smokey effect by inserting a media genrator called 'Marble'. I changed the background of this effect to transparent and its foreground to red. As the original effect was vertical I flipped it on its side to make it horizontal and appear as if the text was seeping out through the smoke. I changed the progress to 'animate' and edited the speed to slow it down. The final text slide used the logo of 'Instinct' that I had used throughout my tasks and the same effects were applied to this.


Finally I inserted transitions between each of the clips to give it a smoother finish and make it look much more professional. I used the 'fade through black' effect as this is the most conventional for film trailers.

Film Teaser Trailer

This is my final film teaser trailer.

Enjoy!

I have also posted the trailer on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cshe3zshu1Q

Sound

The sounds I wanted to use have to either be mae by myself or taken from royalty free msuci websites. As the software i have access to is limited and i am not quite familiar with its use, I chose to browse through different websites to find the sounds I wanted. I found that http://www.freesound.org/ was the most useful and this is where I got all of my sounds from. The babies cry was very straight forward to find however the main soundtrack to the trailer was more difficult. Using my mindmap I searched different key words such as 'eerie', 'nursery rhymes' and 'horror'.
I eventually came across the sound of a ropey music box which gave me chills and so decided to use this throughout my trailer. It wasn't quite long enough to accompany all of my footage so I looped it on the Sony Vegas Pro software and it finished at the right place. I slowed the song down a little to make it more creepy and feel that its connotation of being quite jolly juxtaposes the chilling atmosphere of the horror film.

Actor Profile

Name: Sarah Barden

D.O.B: 28.10.1993

Age: 18

Profession: working actress

Nationality: British

Place of Birth: Shrewsbury

Education:

- Shifnal Primary School

- Idsall School

- Idsall Sixth Form

Height: 5ft 6

Hair colour: light brown

Eye Colour: blue

I made the actress look more like a mum in the film trailer by dressing her in ordinary attire - jeans and a t shirt. She wore minimal make up and her hair was simply clipped in a no-fuss manner. I believe this is an accurate representation of a modern day mum and is something that an audeince would be able to relate to.