Monday, 7 January 2013

Evaluation Question 1

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

Trailer -
 

After the frequent research into existing trailers we discovered that they feature a preview screen (image 1). This makes them appear official and gives them a sense of proffesionalism. By including this in ours we're also acheiving the proffesional image and i'm linking it to my classification research by rating it R.


Above I have screenshotted the two opening shots to our trailer. As the first is an establishing shot of the house it is setting the scene for our trailer. Also with an establishing shot it is similar to many trailers within the film industry. With the stalker shot (image 2) it's again focusing on the main setting for our film and also it creates a feel of suspence for the audience.

 

On our opening shots we decided to add the film grain. This is very similar to the style of the Rec. shot with a hand held camera like what is used in films such as paranormal activity (1st image).



In many trailers they tend to have a short credit sequences, this is why in my trailer I decided to keep it short and simple on two shots, like in many trailers. Also with my trailers I decided to keep the horror conventions running through by including the distorted text. This is very similar to how the dark night carries the bold text through onto their credits (above). It is important to do that so as to carry out the theme throughout our main products and ancillary texts.
 

 
In our trailer we included the pop up text which gives away snippets of information about the film. These are included in the majority of trailers not just horror films. These can also cause tension as they give breaks in between the shots and leave time for suspence to build.
 
 
Magazine
 
When creating my magazine I felt that it was extremely important to focus on real media texts in order to gain ideas. I focused mainly on empire magazine.

 
 
 
I decided that on our magazine a main image is important as it will allow there to be a focal point for the audience to look at. With it being an image of the little girl that we used in our film it's also advertising our film more than any of the other films in the text on our piece. This is very similar to the conventions used on empire magazine.
 


By including a banner on our magazine it allows us to add more content on the information which is included in our magazine. Also magazines include these in order to represent other films.




 

Altough in many magazines the main image is sometimes place over the title I decided that I would avoid doing this as I didn't want to block the name of our magazine. This is why I decided that I would place the image in the middle of the page. Another thing which I included in my title is the magazine selling line - 'Britains best film magazine'. Similar to 'The worlds best movie magazine' used on empire. In the top left corner I also included the name of what 'FGN' stands for. Although many film magazines do not use an abbreviation for their title I felt that it worked on ours as it's similar to ones such as MTV.
 
The barcode was added to our magazine in order to make it look proffessional, as a magazine can only be sold by a professional using the barcode system. This is a typical convention of a magazine. In some magazines they do opt to place the price with the barcode however I didn't do this as I felt that we had enough space to place it elsewhere.
 
 
In order to add to the aesthetics of our piece I decided that the blood red and white colour themes worked. The reason I chose red is because many times it represents danger therefore it fits with the horror conventions. By listing information in the style of total film it works as it is a typical convention of using font styles and 'lists' to give information on the content of the magazine.
 
POSTER-
 
 
 
In my poster I decided that I was also going to run through with the same colour schemes which I used in my magazine. Like in many real media texts blacks, greys and reds work well for the horror convention for example in the 'Last house on the left' poster above.
 
Another thing where I have stuck to the conventions is where I have used a simple image and stuck to a black and white theme.
 
 
 
To achieve the aesthetics of a professional poster I created a set of credits for my poster. This includes the informations about the cast and crew on the film. Also on my credits I included the logos for dolby digital etc. this is so that the sound and production companys acheive the advertisement expected from sponsering and producing this film.
 

 
The tagline on a poster is a typical convention in marketing of a film, ours being 'Do you Dare to enter?' I felt that this was a witty line to use as it is a pun on whether to enter 'Silent House'. In many film posters they tend to use a simple font however I felt that because in the rest of my  poster the image is simple and the colours are black and white hence why I used the blood red colour in order to make it stand out and also the colour red again representing danger.
 
 

 
To create our title I decided that I would use a similar colour scheme and font to our trailer. This distorted text is used frequently within horror films and posters as it's quite eerie and gives the illusion as though it's white noise. Very similar to the 'One missed Call font'
 
In conclusion, we have used a number of typical conventions for each the trailer, poster and magazine. Our trailer takes a similar form to other low-budget horror films like REC, and Paranormal Activity, the simple plot lines creates a sense of realism, with the element of fear created through the audience feeling disorientated and unaware of what is happening. We have used techniques from trailers we researched to add to the mise en scene. Our magazine and poster use the typical conventions of magazines and film posters to enable them to appear professional. However, breaking out of the typical conventions of a film magazine, ours takes the form of a "Special edition Horror issue" so that the dark colours and use of the colour red suggests the impending danger, and elements of horror, similar to those in the trailer.
 

Sunday, 6 January 2013

Evaluation Question 2

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

Within the media Film makers use many different techniques for advertising their product. Typically they would create a trailer, poster and a magazine article, however there are many other ways such as radio ads or billboard. Therefore for our product we decided that it could only reach the high standard if we took the time and effort to focus on not only the trailer but our ancillary products too. We created the 3 main aspects needed for sucssessfull advertisement - a film trailer, a magazine front cover and a film poster. In order to create a successful synergy we needed to make sure that all 3 of these media texts complimented it other and linked well throughout carrying the eerie/horror theme.


Saturday, 5 January 2013

Evaluation Question 3


3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

During pre-production, production and post-production audience feedback played a very important role.
Firstly at the pre-production stage things such as surveys where highly important as they allowed us to gather peoples views as quickly and efficiently as possible.


Pre-production Audience Feedback

Target Audience

In order to discover which type of film would be most sucsessful in society today we decided that we would do a questionarre.

Research -

In order to analyse who we would be aiming our film at we devised a questionarre to organise the the features which we would include in our piece.

1) Which genre do you like the most?

a- Rom/Com
b- Horror
c- Comedy
d- Action
e- Sci-Fi
f- Musical

2) What do you prefer the main character in a piece to be?

a- Male
b- Female

3)  How long do you prefer a trailer to be?

a- 30 seconds
b- 45 seconds
c- 1 minute
d- > 1 minute

4) How old are you?

a) <10
b) 10-15
c) 16-24
d) >24

After this research and after consulting a wide range of people here are the results which influenced us to decide on a theme for our film.


















By gaining information on what our audience would like to see we could then easily establish what we were to include in our shots.

During production Audience feedback

During our production, Particularly with production of our poster we recieved some rather negative audience feedback.
This was our poster at the time;




One of our fellow students named sam looked at the poster whilst we were in progress of making it and this was the feedback we recieved;
He talked about the Image, contents, colouring and text.

Image Problems

He told us that although the image was striking and interesting, the image did not work as a poster because there was no room for the amount of text we would have to put on content such as the title, magazine review stars, tag line, and even the directors/producers of the film. He said that we  did not have enough space to fit all of that content on, and if we attempted to fit it all on the poster would look crowded and cramped taking away focus of the image.

Content

Sam also said that due to our image taking up most of the space, this has dissalowed us to put in content, so therefore we have a high lack of content on our poster which is a major problem

Colouring

Additionaly sam commented on the colouring of the image, he said that because of the effect from the candles, the lighting is soft creating a relaxed mood. However this is not the mood or atmosphere we are going for and trying to achieve, we wanted our poster to look almost horriying and really scary, not the soft relaxed feel we got from our audience feedback.

Text

Finaly, sam spoke to us about the text. Here is a close up of the film title on our poster.

Sam commented on this and said that first of all the size of it is way too small whilst being situated in the bottom left hand corner makes the title barely viable going un noticed.This is important because a title is supposed to be big,bold and striking so that it is eyecatching and therefore stands out to the audience so the film is advertised and gets noticed. Secondly sam talked about the font, he said the font "is very girly it looks like it should belong in a womans magazie or something" This was also very negative feedback as we wanted our text to appear scary to conform to the genre. Sam also pointed out that the texts width combined with the colour is a very bad combimation because it makes it very hard to read or even see. Also, the text with the tag-line "Do you dare to enter?" is coloured blood red which is good however when combined with the dark background it completely dissapears and appears almost invisable this should be changed colour and its a shame because the blood red conforms to the genre.



Result of the Feedback

This audience feedback gave us a wake-up call into what was truely needed to make up a professional looking poster. We took into account everything that was said and we changed each aspect.
by recieving this negative feedback it allowed us to analyse our work so that we could edit our work so that it would be successfull within the media industry.


Image



We thought that this was a much more appropriate image because it gives off a  dark,cold and gloomy atmosphere which conforms to the "horror" genre much more obviously than our previous image.
If we did not have that audience feed back, our poster wouldnt have had the final push in the right direction to become just what we wanted.


Content




Due to the fact we changed our background image, the new image we chose was perfect because it allowed plenty of room around the image to fit in the content such as who made the film, who starred in the film, the title and tag line and also newspaper reviews in the form of stars.

Colouring

The new image worked very well as the colour is no longer "soft and relaxing" but with a dark,cold and gloomy atmosphere which conforms to the "horror" genre perfectly and was exactly what mood we were going for.








Text

We took up Sam's advice and changed  the font,size and location of the title so that it stands out much more. The text font is now edgy and distorted and also sweeps to one side. We felt like this was a much more appropriate font than our original one as it appears creepy looking as if its almost fading away like a whisper which also ties in the name "silent" house, this is another reason we liked the almost fading type font. Its also right at the top of the poster this time which is eye catching contrasting to the original placing of bottom left had corner. We decided to keep the tag-line as Blood-red as we liked this because it fit into the genre, however this time we placed it ontop of a light backdrop which allowed for a stark contrast to be made to enable the text to stand out and become eye-catching.

Without getting audience feedback, these corrections would have never been made and our work wouldn't have been edited as efficiently down to a small detail as small as the shade of colour of a small piece of text. 


Post Production Feedback

At post production we tried to make sure that our products were viewed by as many people as possible. we made sure that by using multiple digital venues  our products were viewed by a wide range of people.

Digital feedback
We text some of our friends asking what they thought of the video 
























By uploading our trailer onto YouTube we managed to receive great feedback such as likes and comments and also managed to achieve 135 views. 




As well as YouTube we decided that it would be a good idea to upload it to the social networking sites such as 'Facebook' and 'Twitter'
 By doing this it allowed us to achieve our goal into getting a wide range of people to view our product whilst also getting everyone's opinion on it.
 
Here is certain feedback that we gained from social networking sights.
 Facebook allowed people to "like" the video and say different points that they enjoyed about it.
Below is some of the comments we recieved online.


 
 






 

 
Video Feedback
We also recieved video feedback from some of our peers.



Mike Especially loved our sound he commented on how it tied in perfectly with the jump cuts on our production. He gave us some excellent feedback and even told us it had the aspects of a professional hollywood production! He especiialy liked how the trailer gave just enough of the storyline away to keep the audience interested yet not too much to give away the fullnarrative.
Mike really liked the font of our print work and also was interested by our main photo of the dead girl he thought it matched well with the trailer. He also loved the fact our poster conformed to the elements of the horror genre and that all three pieces linked well expressing the basics of whats going to happen in the film yet keeping the suspence and tension building throughout.


 
Our Friend Hannah Really liked the trailer specifically, Her feedback was that her favourite aspects were the music ans the shots when put together because it made the trailer really scary and that also the costumes and makeup looked really professional.
Hannah said that she really liked the red text on the poster because it made it stand out and also matched the horor theme because it looked like blood, she said that the text stood out and that the main image looked really professional. Hannah also said that our poster looked really scary and it stood out being very eyecatching which was the look we were going for. She said that the whole lot looked really professional and that she would deffinitely have wanted to go and watch the film if it was real.


 

 



Friday, 4 January 2013

Evaluation Question 4


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

When creating our media work we used a variety of new technologies which proved to very important during production. Without these new technologies it would be highly difficult for us to adapt our work up to the standard what it is today.


Adobe Photoshop - 

Adobe Photoshop is a  advanced graphics editing program that is frequently used within the media. By using Photoshop it allowed us to crop, edit and enhance certain features of our magazine and poster. Using this software allowed us to do things such as use certain features like the RGB image editor to enhance the colours of our images in order to create a more eerie atmosphere. Also with Photoshop certain tools such as the fade to black tool helped us to create the 'professional look' with our poster as we noticed this pattern throughout various other real media texts and then carried it through onto our product. Without Photoshop I feel that our products could not have been edited to the high standard what it is. The atmosphere of our print work was also created using features of Photoshop - for example with our faded text on 'silent house'. By doing this it added to the theme of our horror magazine/poster and linked well with our trailer.




Eraser tool - cut out

 
Editing background image, inserting another and merging together

Searching for different fonts
 



Adding text to image
 
 
Magic wand tool 
 
 

Adobe Premiere.


When creating our film work (the trailer) we used the software Adobe Premiere. It is a timeline based editing software which is used within the media to produce various film/video work. This is the main program we used when producing our trailer. By having the timeline feature it allowed us to position and arrange out our footage so that we could include many different shots and choose which fitted best within that section. The section on the left contains all of our footage which we shot and by having it here it allows us to add/ re-add footage quickly and allows us to be time-efficient as it saves us from searching through folders of shots in order to find it. Also in Adobe premiere I used certain features such as adding transitions to our clips. By doing this it helped create more of a flow between still images such as our titles where we added a cross fade. Another effect which I used was a zoom on our text as the slide was transitioning and also I decided that if I turned the opacity down on the section where our text was it allowed our text to stand out more and the transition to blend in. 



List of all our shots at easy accessibility













 


Adding a new title

 
 

Section where we inserted sound clips and could overlap them. Yellow line represents the volume which we have our clip at.









Layout of our time line including the after effects on our clip. (2nd row to the right)





Audacity
Audacity is a sound recording software that helped me to record many of the sounds just in our video work. For example we recorded our scream on this software through microphones and then It was straight onto the computer system. By using this it was useful and more time efficient as it saved us from the time consuming process of gathering sounds.

Filming

Stills Camera - 

During the filming process we decided that it would be a good idea to also take out a Nikon stills camera. Because it is a 12 mp camera it allowed us to take clear and focused images.This technology was greatly useful in many aspects both for our actual products and also for analysing as it allowed us to take images of our props for our blog. 





Video Camera -

One of the main proponents when producing our video trailer would have to be the video camera. Without this handy device it would mean that we would have been unable to create any of it as we would not have any shots to edit, or anything to work with other than photographs. The video camera allowed us to both shoot inside and outside as it is a handheld portable camera. By having the ability to use the 'hand-held' feature it allowed us to create a shaky image on some of our shots which represented the fear within our character.

Websites 


Blogger -

Throughout producing our media product we used blogger as a way to keep track of our progress and also analyse our work thoroughly. Without blogger we would have no way of analyse what works and doesn't work within our product. We made use of the image hosting tools as well as the ability to create a post with a range of multimedia technology.





Survey Monkey -

Survey monkey is a private American company that allows users like us to create their own web based surveys. We found this website very useful during the production of our work as with this site we always had the ability to ask our chosen audience what they would prefer our product to be like and also ask whether our product appeals to them.