When it comes to how the product is advertised continuity is one of the most important factors if not the most important one. This is one of the easiest ways for the target audience to recognise our film, poster and magazine and it also gives the work that we’ve done a more professional feel. The continuity in our product is very noticeable and I believe that as a group we’ve done a good job keeping some things consistent throughout the three main products. The most noticeable use of continuity is the model/actor that is seen in all the main products. This shows the audience that the actor plays an important role in the film as he is constantly seen and he can be associated with the group due to his constant presence. There is some continuity between the poster and the magazine which is shown through the use of the font nowharehouse.
The image is also placed on the left while the plague is written on the right side in both products and we make use of a black background. The reason there are these similarities between these two products is because we wanted to make sure that the poster and the magazine were as closely linked as possible which explains why the composition of the two products are practically the same.
Continuity is important when it comes to advertising a product as it allows to the audience to familiarise themselves with the product and everything related to it and a good example of this would be the text used in the Harry potter series which is why Harry Potter fans can spot anything related to the series easily thanks to the distinct text which is what we tried to achieve.
Inconclusion my group’s final product does manage to incorporate and challenge some conventions of real life media products. This is shown quite clearly in the three products that we produced e.g. in the magazine the masthead is put in front of the actors face rather than behind it. We managed to use and develop conventions meaning that we mixed things up which gave our products more variety. When it comes to challenging conventions the most notable thing is that we didn’t follow the convention of making a horror teaser have low-key lighting and it wasn’t scary but was seen as funny. On a whole I would say that the group did well to make use of the conventions.
There were lots of ways to get feedback from the audience for our teaser trailer. I was tasked with getting the feedback from a popular social networking website ‘facebook’. This was to be the first time that anybody got to see the trailer since there wasn’t a lot of promotion done through facebook.
Even though there was no promotion done on facebook for the trailer facebook is an excellent place to reach out to the intended age group because most of the people that use facebook are teenagers (mid to late teens).
On my profile I posted the link to trailer which received comments that I didn’t expect to see. These comments weren’t very relevant to the trailer and showed that the trailer had more of a comedic side to it than a scary side which I saw as a surprise because the trailer was meant to have as many elements of horror as possible. I also managed to put the poster and the magazine on facebook to receive feedback from the audience and they received better feedback than the trailer and the magazine managed to get some constructive criticism about the title saying “The title could do with a little change to match the coverlines”. This showed me that the magazine was effective but the appeal was cut short by the title.
Ways in which my media production Challenges forms and conventions of real media products
For our A2 media coursework, we were told to create a teaser trailer, magazine front cover and poster as our ancillary task all in which we recorded through our blog.
As a group we decided that from group discussions and watching different teaser trailers, we decided that would create a trailer that related to some of the conventions used in horror teaser trailers.
Most of the ideas we received for our teaser trailer was all down to the planning and research stage.We watched different trailers and saw them from different perspective's which gave us more motivation and confidence to create a good final product.
We decided that our main theme would be based around a scientist lab, which can be normally seen in our chosen sub genre of a zombie teaser trailer.
We decided to use simple sans serif font for the heading on our poster. we did stick to one of the colours mainly used in horror white is white, as it connotes peace and purity.
The texts we used for our poster a seedy motel type font which we recieved from da font.com
for the main image of our final product, we had taken a close up of our actor. as you can see the coulour actors face is very dim and eere. We decided to do this as it added to the effect of our trailer. Aslo we used one of the scientific symbols which we placed at the back the actors head, which stands out very clearly.
On of the coventions we used was the masthead at the top of te main image. This masthead also indicate what type of genre the magazine is, as it it a film magzine.
We used coverlines for our final product, these were placed at the right hand side of the magazine. The cover lines also include artist which were spesific to the genre of our final product
Main cover line was used and placed at bottom right hand side of the magaizine
We did include a BB scan bar where our audiance could purchace it from their BB (Blackberry) Also we included the bar code and a reasonable price for the magzine, with other cover lines placed at the bottom of the page.
Chanlleneging conventions we did use was the fact that the masthead was placed in front of the actors face instead of putting it behing as seen in other magazines.
Also the colour of the image is not as bright as others, but we did this simply because we wanted to create a dark side to the magzine, which hopefully worked out for the best.
The conventions of my media depended generally on its genre. Within the horror genre the actors are usually to appeal to the audience. There is also usually a simple narrative or story which also cutsbetween this narrative and the acotor in the trailer.
Audience feedback was a key part of our final product, it allowed for our media product to sign off as excellent or satisfactory of our chosen sub-genre. It is incredibly important for the audience of our media product to relate to the genre, as they are consumers of the product, this is why they are key to the production of our task.
At the beginning of our planning and research, we decided to obtain a better understanding of our target audience, to do this we wrote up questionnaires, which contained multiple choice answers of the genre of horror films. Within the questionnaire, target audience were allowed to give their own ideas and perceptions of horror films and what they'd like to see in a horror.
From the audience feedback I learnt that it is important to have constant feedback throughout the different stages of our product.
Feedback was gained through various methods, including Facebook, twitter, BBM (black berry messenger) and YouTube.
As you can see from the screen shot taken from our you tube website, comments have been made by our viewers. As you can see, we had some positive feedback from our audience. Two of the comments that were made, expressed how they would like to see movie and continuously keep watching the trailer. This feedback was vital for us as a group, which proved to me that from what our viewers have commented on, our trailer was at a good standard.
Above are the statistics for our final trailer. Overall, so far we have had 470 views from our audience, which has proven to be a good thing for our production team, clearly showing that our trailer has made steady progress. It also shows the percentage of people who have liked our trailer and disliked our trailer. So far we have 5% as likes and the other 3% are dislikes, this may be because they did not feel that our trailer suited their taste in film, even so honest feedback is considered as a positive for our production team.
For our poster, we wanted to see what effects we would be able to use. One of the effect we practiced what the shutter speed effect. By using the shutter speed we were showed what the effect can create..
As seen in this photo you can see that by slowing the shutter speed down will show the movement of an object/person from one position to another. This will then give a ghostly effect.
When we were given the opportunity to take a few photographs, we started off simple by having our model standing in one position and only moving her head. Seeing as we didn’t not use a tripod, our cameraman had to keep his hands as steady as possible. For our first attempt, the photo taken had come out quite good. This is because you can see where the model’s head had moved to and from, and you saw little movement in the body.
Our next attempt came out better than expected. This is because there is hardly any body movement shown and the face looks like a complete blur. This means that the model had stood completely still, and the cameraman kept their hand steady
For our second attempt of using the shutters speed, we decided for the model to not only move her head but to walk into three positions which is in a shape of a triangle.
As you can see from the image on the left, this did not work out as we thought it would originally. However, it was our first attempt .
In the next attempt, we made considerable progress. This meant that the models figurewas shown in each position they stood in. by doing that the model had to stand in each position for a certain amount of time ( time ranging between 5 and 10 seconds).
Finally, our last attempt was a huge success in using a moving figure. This was because you can see the two solid figures of the model with a vaporous effect in between each one, which showed the movement of the model.
As part of our coursework, we were asked to produce a teaser trailer, as well as two ancillary tasks. The two ancillary tasks were created to advertise and promote the teaser trailer. When all three are combined, it will demonstrate a marketing campaign for the film.
It is very important for films to have efficient and effective advertising, and I feel that as a group we have done this successfully.
The combination of both our main product and the ancillary tasks is vital in keeping a house style image, by mixing it up it may confuse the audience (consumer), and will not maintain the genre of horror. I feel that we did in some way challenged the conventions as the three product did not follow the same scheme. that being of colour and texts.
The poster was created to garb the audiences attention and perhaps persuade them to find out more about the film. Information such as the date release and the age certificate are provided to attract the audiences attention.
How did you use media technologies in the construction, research , p,anning and evaluation stages?
Movie Teaser Trailer (Productin/Filming)
As I was the person recording the teaser trailer production I practised using a Canon EOS 7D which was some valuable experience as I could familiarise myself with the camera and practice recording. I done this in the early stages of the A2 course but have no pictures illustrate this but i do pictures when recording the trailer.
I did save time by familarising myself with the equipment such as the Canon EOS 7D and 400D and the vintem Pro 5 which is the tripod stand which was very important for me to learn how to use as it was very hard to set up.
After I had learnt how to set up the equipment I found it kind of easy without any did from teachers to assemble the equipment.
I learnt quite alot about cameras from the get go as i didnt have knowledge about cameras so one of the first things I learnt was taking pictures the camera has to be in focus and when pressing the camera shot button a red light will appear to flash on screen showing the point of focus and if it does not appear then the photo will not be taken.
How effective is the combination of your main product & ancillary text?
Brand Identity/Continuity
After designing, my movie, trailer, movie poster and my movie magazine front cover from looking at the final outcome of all three of these as a promotional package I believe it works very well.
The first main points I will point out will be the brand identity/continuity which is used through my three products which my audience can easily tell my target audience my media product is all from the same package and oozes elements of continuity. The form of typography used is called " 28 Days Later" which is used through out all threre of my media products.
As you can see from the segements I have taken from my horror magazine and horror movie poster you can see a brand identity and continuity within the ancillary text which could easily tell my taret audience
As you can see from the segements I have taken from my horror magazine and horror movie poster you can see a brand identity and continuity within the ancillary text which could easily tell my target audience that all three of my media products belong to the same package, and understand that the three products belong together and are all promoting the same product which is my movie.
Also from the picture above of two pictures which are the same with an effect used on the picture on the right this is also brand identity as my target audience will know this is the main and only character used in my trailer so by seeing these two photos whcih are used in my horror magazine and horror poster. This is an example synergy.
Cross Media Promotion
The cross media promtion I used in my three media products where to put the video onto youttube for all people to watch my trailer and give their feedback this could be accessed by a mobile phone that has internet or any technolgy that had internet and wi-fi my horror poster and magazine cover was put on twitter and facebook and was also put on survey monkey.
This was a good way to promote three of our media products and to give us plenty on constructive and positive feedback as it exposed our three meida products to the world but mainly the people who knoew about our project which is a lot of media students.
The name of my groups teaser trailer is called The Plague which is a horror movie which belongs to the sub genre Zombie. Our teaser trailer does follow some conventions of zombie, the first convention our trailer follows which can be seen in the teaser trailer is how the zombie acts because zombies are basically human beings portrayed as a reanimated corpse or a mindless human being, which the main character in our trailer is a mindless human being, whose movement and reactions are very slow.
A second convention my teaser trailer follows is lighting which is a very common convention i wouldn't say we followes this convention but we did develop in our teaser trailer is that there is no high key lighting but their isnt rerally any low key lighting because in 90% of horro movies the setting is always dark but with our trailer it was only vividly dark.
In the video below you can see similiarities in the trailer Zombieland.
Costume were in my opinion our teaser trailer challenged conventions of zombie teaser tralie because in the zombie teaser trailers because in the zombie movies their costumes are normally ripped thei is always dirt or stains on their costumes and most of the time the costune the have on never really fits them. So our trailer challenged this convention because the costume our character wears seems fresh with hardly any stains and evident because the lab coat he wears is white.
You could say for our props our trailer followed conventions but not 100% alll the way as the plot of our trailer is a scientist whose potion or experiment goes wrong and turns into a zombie so props wise he has all the props used in a lab the only fault is that he is not actually in a lab, which will be elaborated more in the setting and storyline.
The setting of our trailer was in the bungalow with a table with no props woth the room as what our character was doing in the room doesnt gel as he is making a potion so the setting should have been in a science labartory but couldn't be done so I would say our trailer challenged a convention as we didn't use the necessary setting.
Music and sound effects when watching other trailers with the same sub genre which is zombie as ours their was alot of dialogue screaming and hardly any, music that creates tension or suspense but in ours for sound we used a heartbeat speeding and down depending on what sence was on screen.
When doing my A2 media we were assigned to groups each group had four pupils each having different strenghts and weaknesses, so each pupil had something different that they could contribute in their own right to different projects we where doing during A2 Media.
The skills I have developed in working team:
Taking other people opinions into consideration
Having better communication with my group members
Getting tasks done before the deadline not only for myself but for my team members
Generally being committed to the cause by working during lunchtime
However working in a team has also taught me
That other members may have a different work rate than me and that I have to be patient.
That I must also step up to the plate If other members are not their to do there own task.
And I have to make most of the choices when recording the teaser trailer as my team mates may not have good amount of knowledge when it comes to using to cameras.
So in part two of my skills development I will go more in depth in how my skills developed and how I used my experience and creativity to the best of my ability when making the teaser trailer, film poster, magazine cover and editing in all those departments.
During the development of the magazine and poster we already decided on the programmes that we were going to use to achieve the final product that we really wanted to see. As a group we had been deciding on the type of photos we wanted to see from the start of the year so when it came down to the time to take those photos there would be any hassle. Taking the photos for the final product wasn’t a long process but the build up was because we would look on Google for the type of effect we wanted in our photo and during lesson we would take time out from the lesson to discuss amongst ourselves how we would take the photos and then take them and to begin with the results were less than desirable. Our aim was always to have the lighting at a low key setting but we really wanted to experiment with the camera so we tried to get an effect which had half of the models face shrouded in darkness and the other half covered by light by using the lights and putting it on the left side of the models face which was unsuccessful. We also tried another effect which had the models eyes shrouded in darkness however it was also unsuccessful.
When creating the poster and magazine we used Adobe Photoshop CS3.
This program help to make the image on the front cover more low-key as it wasn’t taken in a low-key setting; the programme was also used to remove part of the image that was used for the front cover. One good thing about the image used was that the coverlines and masthead suited it. Other than using Photoshop we used DaFont to download a particular font for our poster and it made the poster look like a more authentic horror poster but when looking for the font we came across a lot of fonts.
While we were on set we had to consider the following health and safety hazards: The actor had no cuts when make up was being applied. All bottles and other equipment were cleared when photos were being taken. No loose items around so that people didn't trip
When on the planning stage of our final product, we used used technologies such as the Apple Mac Pro and the computer when planning our storyboards.
We also used photo shop and final cut pro to make ourselves more familiar with the software, before constructing our final product.
I found that using blogger was extremely useful for updating plans for our final product. We also used blogger to help us with our skills development, uploading things that we thought were relevant to the blog and what we've learnt of the course of this project.
The use of a digital camera came in handy whilst planning for our final product. We tried to film from different types of angles, so that this way we could get an idea of what we were aiming for.
However, we could could often have problems with the batteries having to change them continuously, making it inconvenient.
We use Microsoft Word to create a detailed shot list for our final product.
Google was essential for finding examples of successful film trailers, magazines and posters. This really did benefit us as a group as we were very determined to produce a constructive final product.
Using apples browsing software 'safari', we were able to view a variety of resources such as images and videos, that lesser browsers would be able to provide because of unable high quality videos.
RESEARCH
YouTube played a big part in our planning and research as it helped us with ideas of what a good teaser trailer should look like, as we compared them to one another.
Throughout my A2 media course I have learnt and developed skills that will benefit me in various ways.
One of the main skills that has been developed is my team working skills, this is because in order for me to complete this years coursework I had to work with three other people. Working in a group has:
·Taught me to value other people opinions
·Things may not always go my way
·Learning to trust others decisions even though they may not sound successful
·To rely on others more
However working in a group has also taught me:
·I will always be let down one way or a another (for example, certain blog posts may not be uploaded in time)
·I will have to make the main decisions even if it is the wrong ones.
·I will be doing the majority of the practical work as other group members may not know how to operate the instruments/software needed.
In order for our group to get the correct low-key shots for our poster and magazine, we had to take some practice shots.
The first practice shot we had taken was by shining the LCD light from below our models face.Shining upwards from below creates a sense of fear because you can only see parts of the models face. It could also create a sense of fear because when telling a scary story to children, the story teller usually shines a torch upwards from below their chin.
We felt the shot taken went well, however it had come out darker than expected. Brightening the LCD light did not benefit our next attempt of taking the shot because it then started to show the parts of the models face we wanted hidden(for example from the forehead and upwards).
For our second practice shot we wanted to give a silhouette effect. By doing this we had to use a LCD light and place it behind our model where it is not seen but still have the light shine around him.At first we had our model facing the camera and the light placed behind him midway between his shoulders. The outcome of this was not great because once the picture was taken; all that was seen was 2 faint likes that outline the top of his shoulders.
Our next attempt was to have our model standing sideways so we can see his profile. Once positioned, we had then placed the LCD light facing the camera but behind his cheek.This slightly benefited us because it gave us a clear bright outline of his nose going down to his throat. However it still was not the outcome we had hoped for.
For our third practice shot, we attempted to show only one half of our models face. By doing this we used the LCD lighting to shine on only one side of his face, at first we had the light on dim but unfortunately nothing could been seen in the shot. We then turned the light up to its brightest and it showed exactly what we wanted.
Magazine practice shot complete!
To create the shot for our poster we wanted to have amber light shining upwards from below and showing only one half of our models face. By doing this we had placed a amber filter on top of the LCD light to soften the light and change the colour. The very first shot taken was a success! This is because it only showed half of our models face and showed the parts of the face we wanted. The only disadvantage about this show is that it’s a little bit dark.
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