Evaluation 4 - Who are your audience and what have you learned from your audience feedback?

Evaluation 3 - How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

In addition to creating a film trailer, we were set two ancillary tasks to also create, all of which combined to make a promotional package for our film. The ancillary tasks we decided to create were a poster, and a magazine cover. Posters are easily made, and effective in giving the information they're intended to give. For example they're made to be eye catching and luring, intriguing passers by to pursue more information regarding the film being advertised. Secondly, magazine covers are a more descriptive promotional item. This is because a follow up of some sort is found within the magazine; Whether this be an interview of a cast member, or a review of some kind, more information is given about the film.

Our initial research into the conventions of magazine covers and posters involved analysing different magazine covers and posters that we found online, mainly on google images. An idealistic magazine which greatly inspired us was 'Empire' magazine; we found an Empire magazine cover which we liked, and then based our designs around it, using it as a rough template. 

The initial plan we drew out for our magazine is shown below. We used this as a guide, however slightly changed certain things as we were creating it.

The conventions of a magazine cover soon became clear and we ensured we included; a mast head, strap lines, a main image, a barcode, and cover lines on our own magazine cover. In order to link all three tasks, the same font was used for the title of the film for each. This is shown below.

Magazine cover title

Trailer title

Poster title

The main image on the magazine cover is of Rosie, the main character, expressing horror on her face, which is clearly fitting for the genre of the film being advertised. We darkened the image and added a reddish tone, creating more of a dull, horror-like mood, whilst also matching the bold red masthead. Black is a dominant colour on the magazine as it is the background, the purpose of this being to create a feeling in which the viewers are apprehensive as they do not know what is behind Rosie. Additionally, because of the dulled image of Rosie, it may appear as though Rosie is being consumed by the darkness. The colours we have used allow the film to be recognised as a horror, therefore attracting the correct audience. Below is an image of our completed magazine cover.

After the research was done and it was clear which conventions needed to be used, the initial plans for the poster were drawn up on paper in the same way. The plans we drew up were alike with the final product, we didn't deviate too far from them as we were happy with them, and they were accurate. The conventions of a poster which we used were things such as; a masthead, billing block, tagline, reviews, and a main image. Again, as shown above, we used the stylistic font of our film on each of the tasks, in order to link them together. Below is the completed poster.

Above you can see the billing block on the poster. The billing block is a block of writing conventionally in a thin, narrow font, displaying the names of the production companies involved, the director, and the musicians. Below the billing block are the involved production company logos. The tagline is positioned just below the main title, in a smaller font, reading 'A childhood nightmare brought to life'. This tagline will be what people who view the poster remember, making them wonder what the childhood nightmare is? Below is an image of the main title, with the tagline below it.

The dark, dulled theme of our poster conforms to the conventional colours of the horror genre . Black is a dominant colour which connotes evil and the unknown. This black colour combined with the scratch effect, and the faded image of the antagonist dulled into the background, creates an uncertain mood, suggesting Evylin is lurking in the darkness. The scratch effects also covering the main image suggests that this darkness and evil surrounding Evylin is also consuming Rosie. The scratch effect is also consistent with the background of the inter-titles in the trailer. This again demonstrates a link between the tasks, and establishes a unique style for our film. 

Inter titles

The scratch effect on the main image

As shown above, our main image is of Rosie expressing a horrified look on her face, as though she is in fear of something. We played around with different effect and manipulated the brightness and tones of the original image in order to create this more ghostly, authentic image. Additionally, there is an image of Evylin standing, and looking directly into the camera. This is positioned on the left of the poster, and partially explains to the viewer why Rosie may have that expression. The positioning and sizing of the two images suggests to the viewer that Evylin may be following Rosie, or may always be around her. This is a chilling thought, and raises questions as to why Evylin is following her, and how can she be stopped. Rosie is seen displaying a distressed look on the majority of her clips in the trailer, this is another link between the image and the trailer. 

To conclude, I believe the combination of our main product and both ancillary tasks was effective in creating a complete promotional package for our film. Through the use of all three of the tasks I believe we would have distributed a vast majority of our target audience, thus ensuring our film sold was successfully. Each product is specific its genre and appeals to only a certain type of audience. With the help of the tag lines, inter-titles, and overall sequence of the trailer, it is able to narrate to the audience, intriguing them, and drawing them in.

Evaluation 2 - Technologies

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





Multiple technologies were used throughout each stage of our production, allowing us to successfully complete all of the tasks set. In this evaluation, I will be evaluating the use of different technologies at each stage in our production.


Pre-Production and Research:

In the planning and research stages we used softwares, and websites to become familiar with conventions and various other things that we needed to be aware of. Most of our research was conducted on websites such as; Vimeo, IMDb, and Youtube. These websites allowed us to watch trailers for films of the same genre, with similar conventions to ours. After watching the trailers on this websites we were then able to analyse them to single out specific conventions in order to adhere to them in our production. These technologies were successful in helping us gain this knowledge, and complete effective research. The technologies mentioned above were also used throughout our AS production.

Last year we used word to type up a script, this was amateur and basic, displaying a lack of creativity and professionalism. This year we used a software named 'Celtx' to create our script, which is a pre-production scrip-writing software, that enabled us to create a professional script, easily followed by the cast and crew. Below is an image of a standard exemplary script created on Celtx. 

We used a software called 'Scribd' to upload and embed word documents to our blog, this was especially useful when uploading our script to blogger. 'Scribd' allows our script, and numerous other word documents to keep their format. Similarly we used 'Slideshare' to upload power points onto our blogs in their original format.

Microsoft Word was used consistently throughout. Word adds to the professionalism, structure, and formalism of the tasks we used it for. For example word was used to create permission letters which were distributed to the cast members, these were a formal document which required a professional look.  

IMDb (Internet Movie Database) is a dominant source of information regarding movies, TV, celebrities, biographies etc. It is a trusted, popular website with a huge amount of data, including information for over 2 million films. This made it a perfect website to conduct my research on. My secondary research into target audience was carried out using this website. IMDb has user ratings for each film, which gave me an accurate insight into the main target audiences for each individual film. 

We used 'DaFont' to search for a suitable font for our production. We specifically searched for horror fonts as this is the genre of our production. This website gave us a massive variation of different fonts to choose from.

Throughout the majority of the stages I used Prezi and SlideShare. Prezi is a fun, creative online software used to create presentations, and SlideShare is a software which enables you to upload word documents to blogger in a presentable, professional way. The aim of using these softwares was to make posts on my blog more interactive and interesting, adding to my blogs creative aspect. As there are countless Prezis and SlideShare presentations already created, covering a vast amount of topics, they also became important in the research stage.

Construction:

A software named Audacity was used to alter the sound of Evylin saying 'get the girl'. Originally this line sounded too high pitched, and more gentle and feminine like. However after playing around with the pitch and tones we managed to create a more sinister, threatening voice, which is consequently more genre appropriate. 

I have created an online portfolio using blogger in order to express my ideas, and present my media coursework in a creative and professional manor. Blogger is online, which is convenient as it can be accessed easily through any source of internet, or mobile device. However, this also means that if the website was to go down, our work would be lost. Additionally further complications would occur if someone weren't to have internet at home, this would seriously reduce it's accessibility. 

Pinnacle Studios is a professional video editing software which we used for editing our production. This was because it was already installed on the computers, and it is the software we are familiar with as it was used to edit our AS production last year. Due to our raw footage being recorded and uploaded in HD, the software slowed down significantly and became a problem. Numerous problems occurred with this software, for example it wouldn’t allow us to slow a clip down. This wasted a large proportion of our time, and caused difficulties. We did look in to another software to use called ‘Adobe Premiere Pro’, however after discussing it we concluded that it would take too much time to buy, install, and then become familiar with the software in order to utilise it.

For our auxiliary tasks, we created a poster and a magazine cover. We mainly used Google images to find model magazine covers and posters to analyse, we also used previously made SlideShares and Prezis to gain a wider understanding of the different conventions, and how they're used.

We used Adobe Photoshop to create both auxiliary tasks. Adobe Photoshop is a multi-layered professional image-editing software, with features such as; color editing, text styles, and effects. It allows the combination of different texts and images, to become one. We became familiarised with this software in very little time, and found it easy to use. It was very effective in creating both a poster, and a magazine cover, in such a professional manor.

Evaluation and Distribution:

Twitter proved to be successful in gaining audience feedback, and promoting our trailer. As such a vast majority of the population have access to twitter, which is free, it makes it a suitable place to promote our trailer. Below is evidence of feedback our trailer received from a person on twitter.



Both YouTube and Vimeo were useful in helping us distribute our trailer as they allowed us to upload it onto their websites where it could be watched publically for free. YouTube has a massive fan base and is used by billions of people all around the world.

As part of evaluating our trailer we constructed a focus group, who we showed the trailer to. We then recorded them watching the trailer so we could video their responses, in order to help us with our audience feedback. We did this using a Sony Handy Cam, the same camera which was used to record out production.  

Conclusion:

Above I have explained and evaluated many different technologies that were used throughout the stages of my A2 coursework. It is quite clear that without these technologies our production would cease to exist, thereby making the different technologies used extremely important in the whole process.

Evaluation 1 - Directors Commentary

dvd commentary from Alexia Docker on Vimeo.

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

Initially, during the ideas process, our production was going to be a thriller. However in the event of a student leaving our group we combined with another group, and began to create new ideas involving aspects of both previous ideas. After pooling ideas the final storyline we concocted was for a horror genre; theatrical trailer entitled ‘Somnium’.

I did initial research into similar products to get a clear idea of which conventions we should be using. Daniel Chandler says that genres tend to have set conventions shared by all from that genre. I researched the trailers for ‘Black Swan’ which is a thriller, and the trailer for ‘insidious’ which is a horror. I found various conventions that may appeal to our target audience.

For secondary research we searched for films of the same genre and a similar storyline as ours on IMDB. Here we found the main target audience for each film; this gave us an idea of the target audience we should have been expecting.

For our primary research we created and then handed out questionnaires specific to our genre preference and target audiences. The intention of this was to find out which audience our film would attract, we concluded it would attract 15-25 year old males and females. Genre is important to audience and industry, especially with horror films; this is because of the relationship between the institution, the audience, and the text. Ryall points out that the institution chooses a genre, and then the audience watch films based on their preferred genre, the money from these films is then put back into the industry to fund more genre films. This is called the genre cycle.

It is quite clear throughout our trailer that we have conformed to generic conventions of a horror, for example we used conventions such as; alley ways, secluded locations, paranormal characters, vulnerable characters, fast pace editing, and tension building music, which are all expected conventions of a horror. It is important to conform to certain generic conventions when making a film of a particular genre so that the film is recognised by the audience as belonging to that genre.

Trailers have their own set of conventions that producers use, and audiences understand. Conventions such as sound and title order were approached during the research and ideas stage. However, editing conventions such as the order of the scenes and the sting were approached during postproduction. This is because it was easier to put the scenes into a conventional order once we could visualise it. We moved them around numerous times. The sting was also a convention we discovered and applied in postproduction. This is a final video sequence placed after the title in horror trailers in order to give them a final scare.

Our trailer conformed to theatrical film trailers. This is so that the audience understand it’s a trailer for an up and coming film. It did this through its use of conventions such as fast paced editing, tension built by sound, titles that happen in a conventional order, and the sting.

We didn’t audition for actors, instead we asked who we thought was suitable for the roles available, to play them. From the start we already knew who we wanted to play the part of Rosie, and when we asked her she agreed instantly. She was perfect for the role and has had previous experience in acting which made her more appealing. Finding the actor to play the part of Evelin proved to be harder, however when we found someone, we were surprised by how well she fit the part. Next time I would definitely consider using auditions as I think we may not be so lucky, and it also gives us a taster on how those actors ac, giving us a choice.

The conventions used within the trailer ensured it was distinctly recognised as a horror film by the audience. We found this from our audience feedback after we showed the trailer to a group of people. They all recognised the film as a horror, and the majority of them said they would go to see it. Therefore I believe that overall we were successful at making a conventional trailer.