In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
- I think that my media product uses quite a lot of the conventions used in real media products and through my research into all the aspects, I think this helped considerably to do this. For example, as my magazine front cover was based on a real magazine, I had to use the same type of conventions they would.
- Also, with my film poster, I think I developed conventions in the sense that the background image was of a location and not of a character. I think this is rather affective as it will stand out amongst your average mainstream film posters.
- I think that the media product also has aspects which aren’t conventional. For example, not having music or even a voice over in the trailer. However, I think this was rather affective towards the audience and helps the trailer stand out from others as all you hear is background noises of footsteps and shouting.
- In the film trailer, I think I used some conventional and some unconventional methods. For example, the layout of my trailer is very conventional with the film title being displayed at the end, and with the opening sequence being this picture:
- The trailer could have also been seen to be unconventional due to aspects such as, the black screen shots. This isn’t used much in horror but more in action films. Although, there is now more of a crossover between these types of movies – so I think it works well.
- I tried to keep to the conventions mentioned earlier in my blog, such as keeping the trailer between 30 seconds and a minute and not giving much away about the plotline – just like the ‘The Hills Have Eyes II’ trailer. There were a few I couldn’t keep to like the using CGI footage, as I had a limited budget and limited equipment.
- Similarly, I don't actually know any major stars that could have appeared in my trailer, so in a way I broke that convention. Although in the films I researched there weren’t many characters that you would recognise from other films, so I think I was safe with that.
- However, few big blockbusters now have a completely unknown cast or director, because Western audiences have become familiar to seeing a film based around who is in it or who directed it. So therefore, I think my film would be more of a silver screen production.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
- I think that my main product and ancillary texts combine quite well as there appears to be consistency throughout.
- For example, I used the same font, from dafont.com in the two ancillary projects:
Film magazine front cover:
Film Poster:
- I did not use this font in the actual trailer, due to lack of knowledge on how to use the editing software and the limited time I had to complete the editing. If I were to do the trailer again or if I had more time, I would put this font in the trailer to help with the consistency.
- I think both the poster and the magazine front are moderately conventional and would attract attention if they were displayed amongst your average mainstream film posters and magazine covers due to the fonts and pictures used.
- I think that as my poster and magazine front cover are clearly linked, in the conventional way, this will help to make the advertising campaign a success as this hasn’t failed many films before.
- Also, I used the same characters throughout the project and they appear in most or the pieces, I didn’t use them in the film poster as I thought that I would go down the unconventional route of having a location shot instead. Which I feel is quite affective. Using the same characters also helps with consistency and makes the audience more likely to recognise that there's a connection between the pieces. However, I guess it's not clearly shown that it's the same characters, but I do think that the use of the same typeface should help with the connection between the projects.
What have you learned for your audience feedback?
- The great thing about using sites such as BlogSpot and YouTube was that people could leave you comments, but due to me not putting my research, planning and final products until quite late, I did not get much feedback for it. i had people tell me in person good and bad things about my trailer, but not in written form, which is a shame.
- My friend Becky thought it was a great idea to involve my three year old niece in the production because no one would suspect an innocent little girl to be a killer! I had this remark from quite a few people and so it helped convince me that what I was doing was a well thought idea.
- Also, I received feedback from the actors I filmed, if they didn’t like a shot, then I didn’t put it in the trailer, or if they didn’t like a photo, then I didn’t use that photo. You have to keep your actors happy!
- Although I got quite a lot of positive feedback, I also got some negative. A friend of mine (Dan) didn’t like the way I positioned the content on film poster, so I changed it. luckily the second layout was agreed to be much better than the first, by Dan and other people too!
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
I have used many media technologies in the construction of my coursework:
- The main obvious new technology is this blog. At the beginning of the project I was against working electronically as I have always worked having a physical copy of everything. However, I feel, now that I have gotten used to working with one, that it’s not as hard as I first thought! Yes some things didn’t work properly – like I cannot copy and paste into the blog and the links don’t seem to work correctly, but once I got used to that I actually enjoyed it.
- The best thing about working on blogs is also the community feeling you get, although I haven’t actually received many comments, but the fact that you can be commented on your work is such a good feature. Likewise, it's good to be able to look around at other students work from your school and other schools.
- This is also good when using sites such as YouTube. Despite all the copyright regulations as some students have found difficult to get around, the sit is good to browse other people’s media work.
- Another great thing about using the blog is that you are helping the environment and being more ‘green’ (as no paper is needed). This is always a good thing!
- Other new technologies I used were; the digital video camera and my own digital camera, plus my scanner which I used to scan the storyboards for my ideas. These were all perfectly sufficient, but of course it would have been nice to have equipment that was better quality and could allow me to use more features when filming. For example, the camera I used to film didn’t work properly, although I did know this before I used it, but still I think if I used a camera which actually worked, then I could have filmed better shots.
- I think the hardest thing to capture well would have been sound. Initially, I had wanted to do a voice over but not having a decent microphone made me think otherwise.
- Similarly, not having a studio or anywhere to take photos on a plain background was annoying and took some inventiveness, but I think I coped well!
- Another technology I used was software. As I said in an earlier post, I used Premiere Pro to edit my film footage. For my print based editing I used a lot of Microsoft Publisher and Photoshop. I also used Paint because it's much easier to use than Photoshop.
- Premiere Pro I found to be quite easy to use. At first it was a bit daunting, with all the flash editing you can do, but once I got the hang of it, it was easy. It was perfectly sufficient for what I wanted, which was being able to make short sharp cuts in the footage and be able to move it around easily. I found the different timelines really useful for moving the film and sound around. Similarly the automatic save function was brilliant as it gave me confidence that my work wasn’t going to get lost if the computer failed.
- I used Photoshop, Publisher and Paint a lot for image manipulation. I find whilst Photoshop is obviously more professional and provides a much more polished end project, it is quite difficult to use. On the other hand, Publisher and Paint is much better for dong easy and quick cropping, and simple copy and pasting.
- Whilst the blog was a huge factor in everything I did, I also had to use the Internet in other ways. For example, I used YouTube for finding the original teaser trailers I looked at in the beginning. To host the videos on this blog I had to take the embed code and paste it in the links option.
- I also used www.Wikipedia.org and Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com) to read up on films, find out their directors and producers and studios they were distributed by. I was also able to find out information on ‘air-softing’ and what words meant, for example, before I didn’t know what the word ‘Recon’ actually meant.
- Additionally, I could also find information about different genres and editing which helped me considerably whilst completing my research and planning.
