Evaluation Question 4

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

Throughout the production of my media texts I’ve used technology to create and demonstrate them. Technology is the most important thing in my project, without it, it would be almost impossible to finish my media texts, gain audience feedback and research. Me and my group we used our own camera to film, as we were more familiar in how to work it, we used a Nikon D5000 Digital SLR camera to film the trailer, it had a 720p high definition video option, it made the trailer look more professional and impressive. The camera’s lenses allowed us to film extreme long shots, wide establishing shots and zoom shots like extreme close up shots. We also used a camera holder, to keep the camera steady when filming; it was a success because it allowed us to film looking down at the screen rather than looking straight into the camera. We used a tripod to hold the camera still and to create panning shots.

Before I started to produce my media texts, I had to research trailers and their codes and conventions and get an idea of what they look like, what they use to create them and how they come about in presenting it. I used ‘Google’ and ‘Youtube’ to research movie trailers and analyse them. ‘Youtube’ was very helpful as it gave me the advantage to search any movie trailer and to search low budget trailers and link them more to ours. We used the trailer of ‘The Blair Witch Project’ to link to our trailer. The comments people leave underneath every video on ‘Youtube’ kind of helped me, as they were talking about the codes and conventions the trailer was using. 

I watched many horror trailers and I picked up many codes and conventions and get an idea of what my trailer would look like. The trailers tend to start slow, to build up the tension and half way through the music starts to get louder and quicker, the transition between every scene starts getting faster, makes the audience to get more into it and more eye catching. When we finished filming our trailer we uploaded it on ‘Youtube’ to get some audience feedback and for people to see what we’ve done and what we have achieved. 

When we started editing our trailer we used this programme called Adobe Premier Pro. This software is a professional editing programme, it allowed us to do many things, the programme was very helpful and it wasn’t that complicated to use. The programme contained free music, like dark and horror sounds. This was very helpful as we used some sounds for the background music and background noise. 

To display the final trailer to the class we used an interactive whiteboard to show it on a big on a big screen. The high definition really stood out and the music was quite loud, making it more interesting to watch. We used the whiteboard to show our presentation to the class as well, so everyone could see what we wanted to achieve by the end of the project.

 To create my poster and magazine cover, we had to research some examples first on the internet, I used ‘Google’ to research images of film posters and magazine covers, I researched their codes and conventions as well, to know more about them and have an idea of how my media texts will look like.

The programme I used to create my film poster and magazine cover was ‘CorelDraw X3’, its really easy to use and you get a lot of options of how you want your writing to look, and you can put them anywhere you want.

I used Photoshop to edit the pictures I used for my film poster and magazine cover, I wanted to picture to look darker and more horror looking, I did this by adding some contrast and changing the levels of shadows and reducing the amount brightness present in the picture.

I used this free web programme called ‘Blogger’ to show and illustrate all my work I’ve done throughout the year, it’s really easy to use and you can choose what background you want, what font you want, anything. You can separate your work by labelling them; this is a useful way to find what piece of work you want to see from my blog.

Evaluation Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback is a very important focus for my project, it helped me improve the trailer, my front cover magazine and film poster. I held some audience feedback, at the beginning and at the end of my time of doing my A2 coursework. This helped me make improvements throughout the year, and gave me a chance to make some last minute improvement as well. Film producers do similar things; they do small screenings to a small audience and they take the audience’s comments into account at the end to improve the film trailer and film. To begin with we showed a first screening to our media class, we only showed some scenes we made at the beginning, and we showed how every scene would change to another scene, we added the background music at this point and some sub headings in some scenes. The audience gave us some feedback, in what they liked and what we could’ve improved on.

We made a presentation about our film trailer and showed it to the whole class; we created story boards to have an idea what we wanted to do and to make the story line more original and interesting. After we showed the presentation we asked a couple of people of what they thought about our story line and what they liked and didn’t like about the whole idea of the plot. We took a video of the presentation we did in class, and a video of some people talking about our film trailer. PRESENTATION AND AUDIENCE FEEDBACK VIDEO.

Maria Gonzalez said, ‘I thought your story was very inventive and something that could attract those with horror passions. I think your storyline could be just a bit more unique. You also have to think that there are other films out there which could have a similar storyline’.

Mr Morris said ‘“I think your idea is reasonably good. However, you didn’t offer a lot of detail about the characters. But I like the idea of being out in the woods, getting lost and the idea of people going missing one by one building the tension. A couple of issues; one which Miguel had already guessed and that is one of location. I’m a bit nervous about you actually finding an abandoned house to film in. You are also going to be out in the woods, so be very careful not to just run around with a camera screaming. We have had a lot of cases of people doing just that and it does not look very original. We are a few weeks away from all the leaves falling off the trees, so that might be a problem with continuity. You will either need to film before or after the leaves fall of the trees”.

Maria’s comment made us change the plot slightly different from what we originally planned to do so it becomes more unique and doesn’t look similar to other horror films out there. The feedback we received from our teacher Mr Morris made us think about how much time we had to film and how could’ve we kept the same weather and conditions for the film trailer as the leaves were starting to fall. He made is think about the location as well, luckily we all knew this abandoned place in Pembury and it wasn’t too far away from where we lived so it wasn’t that difficult to get an appropriate location for our trailer. We tried to film the whole trailer in two days to get the same type of weather and conditions, which was cloudy and gloomy which helped us build the horror genre within the trailer.

Before we finished our trailer we did a second screening to the class and people gave us more feedback to make some last minute improvements. This made us think in what we could’ve improved like adding some voice overs and make the last scene of the hands slower for the tension. SECOND SCREENING AND FEEDBACK FROM CLASSMATES.

For my magazine front cover and film poster I asked some of my friends to give me some honest feedback in how I could improve and what do they like about it. I posted my film magazine and poster on my Facebook for a few days and asked if they could comment on it telling me what they think about it and if they think I could improve on it at all. The comments helped me a lot as it gave me new ideas in how I could’ve laid out my texts and what font sizes I could use, etc.

Audience feedback helped me improve my film trailer and my media products, is what the decoder wants to see so you must get some ideas from them and take them into account.

Evaluation Question 2

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

Part of our A2 coursework was to complete a film poster and a magazine front cover for the film trailer we have created. When creating the three media products I had to frequently consider my target audience. The magazine front cover and film poster had to link to the film trailer, with the genre and with the target audience. I used the same person for the film poster and front cover, so the audience gets an idea of whom the main character of the film is and who is the one they have to keep their eyes on.

When creating my magazine I had to think what the audience want to see, they've seen the trailer already, so I will have to use the same codes and conventions as I did with the trailer. For both magazine and film poster I've used the same character, the font and colour I’ve used creates a more horror outcome, the font is very big and the colours I've used were black and white; I did this because I wanted to keep the horror genre and appeal to the teenager audience. The film is targeted to young adults ages 15 – 25, both genders; I tried to make it pleasing for both genders and make it look interesting and eye catching for the young people.

The ancillary texts are supposed to support the trailer, giving film promotion and advertising. The magazine cover is targeted to a young audience just as the film poster and the film trailer, the business will make more money if they target films to a younger audience, and they have a tendency to spend more money on films and magazines than the older generation.

My magazine and film poster look very dark and gloomy, the fonts are only black and white, making it look more dark and scary looking. I didn’t add a lot of texts or pictures because they will only need a few sentences and one main picture, it makes it more unpredictable, making the people buy the magazine and read what’s it got to say about the film and then this makes them watch the film at the cinema.

I edited the pictures to make them look darker and gloomier, I added shadows and more contrast, and I reduced the brightness; I made the character stand out from the picture, it kind of hits you in the face with all the darkness and then the character looking at you.

The film posters would be placed on big billboards, bus stops, shops, newspapers and magazines. The magazine would be sold in big shops like WHSmith and newsagents around the country.

I can honestly say that my ancillary text link very well with the trailer, I have used the same codes and conventions throughout the making of my media products. I used similar themes with the trailer and the ancillary texts. I could’ve improved by planning everything first and then make my media products, get more of a clearer idea at the beginning.

If you want to watch the trailer of 'Evil Awaits', Click Here!