Evaluation

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

1.
Our Trailer:

Here is a link which will take you to our final trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTWHvOCS6eg

At the beginning of our trailer we decided to have an institution which is a typical convention. We chose to have Universal because when we researched into it we had seen that they have done many Rom-coms such as 'It's Complicated' . Also comedy films like the latest, 'Paul.' The Universal clip it approx 20 seconds long so in our trailer we cut it down to just the part when the word Universal go around the world. This made it about 10 seconds long which was reasonable for a trailer. Universal also cut it down in their trailers but theres would be much shorter than our 10 second clip. Whilst this clip plays we have the music from our trailer playing in the background which is a guitar. This is a typical convention. Another film that does this is Love Actually.  I think by using this convention it works well for our opening as it is a recognisable institution which would grab an audiences attention. Also if people are familiar with Universal films they would know its going to be along the lines of romance or comedy.

 This is the first shot you see of the woman in the trailer. It starts at her feet and pans up to her head as she is walking forwards. I feel this was a good thing to do as it makes the audience wonder who this woman is. This would make the audience want to continue watching the trailer as it will hook them into wanting to find out more about her. From what you can see in this image she looks smartly dressed. Like a business woman or high powered. We chose to dress the female like this as we wanted her to look older than what she does in the younger clips. By watching our trailer back I got the impression she was an older woman which means we got the right effect from dressing her this way. From the scenery behind her you can see she is in a public place and from this shot what looks to be like a cafe. Is this woman meeting somebody? would be an audiences initial thoughts. This would grab their attention even more as they would want to know who she is going to meet.

Once you have met both main characters when they are older, this caption comes up leading to the next part which is their younger years. This is a typical convention because many Rom-com trailers that you watch will have captions which will grip the audience. (P.s I Love You, The Holiday.) I thought it was a good idea that we included the captions in our trailer as it gave our audience a greater understand of the film. If we did not have captions I don't feel the audience would have known there was a flashback to their younger years. I say this because the characters dont look any younger in the clips, so the captions are used to show it instead. The title uses the colours Pink and Blue. This represents the colours of the boy and girl. Films such as 'The Ugly Truth' also use two different colours in their captions, but they use red and black. I think using the blue and pink works better than red and black for our trailer as it continues on from our ancillery texts. By having the captions it tells something about your film but not enough to give anything away. This teases the audience as they will want to watch the film to see what is going to happen.

Here is a clip from the younger years which is a mid/long shot image so you can see the all the girls and their props. In this clip you can see the 3 girls with the main one in the middle which may show she is the most popular. However looking back at the trailer now I have realised by having the main girl in the middle is a mistake. I dont think she stands out that much as she is lower than the other two girls. I think we should have had her sitting on the table and the other two girls sitting in the chairs to show she has the highest status. The location they are in is a school which you can see from the tables, chairs and board in the background. All the girls are wearing black trousers and white tops which shows they are in a school. The girl in the middle is wearing a tie which gives the final impression they are meant to be in school uniform. Just like many older years in school they are all wearing cardigans either black or grey, this could show their attitudes as they are not supposed to be dressed like that. By having our girls in school uniform it could relate to our targeted audience because some of them would be in their last few years of school. All the girls are in different positions. You have the girl on the left doing her hair, the one in the middle on an ipod and the girl on the right is looking into a mirror. I think the girl on thel eft acts really well in this clip. Her position is good with her exaggerating on brushing her hair. This is mimicking other films such as mean girls. Many other Rom-com have clips of girls being cautious of their beauty.

Here is the last clip you see of the two actors before it says the title of the film. I like the way in which it ends on a close up image of the two main characters. This suggests that the film is based on them and what is going to happen after the interview. By having a close up you can see the expression on his face on how his not interested anymore. But you can also see how the female is interested and wants the guy.This leaves the audience hanging on the thought of if they get together or not. I like the way in which we end our trailer like this as it seems a mystery what will happen next.

                                        

At the end of our scenes it comes up with the title of our film which is another typical convention of a trailer. We have used the fonts which were on our magazine and poster. We thought this is a good idea because it keeps the whole package linked. I like the way we used the heart behind the words and for the dot on the i because it suggests again that it is a Rom-com. Films such as Twilight keep their same fonts on their trailer as they do every other media product they use it on. I really like the fonts we have used. I think it works well that the 'Keeping' and the 'Faith' are both in different fonts. By using these fonts instead of something like Arial bold it makes the title look catchy and different from other.

Poster:

Above is our teaser Poster. As you can see we have two images on this poster which is when the characters are younger and then again as they are older. Separating them is the title of our film which is in a Rom-com style font with the love heart dot on the eye. Many film posters we researched only had one image on them but we did find one which was 'The Holiday' which had the same style as ours. I dont think this is a typical convention of a film poster. I do think that this works wellon our poster as it shows that in the film you will see some flashbacks to the past. At the top of our poster we have our main characters names so they stood out. This is also typical of a Rom-com poster. I think the names suit their postition at the top of the page as the audience will see them easily which could convince them into watching the film if its a big star. On our teaser poster we have a billing block at the bottom. This is a convention we have challenged as many teaser posters don't have them only real posters. I think it works well having the billing block on our poster as it doesn't take up so much space and is in a reasonable place which doesn't take the effect away from the image. The colours scheme on our poster is pink and blue which is typical for a Rom-com we also carry these colours over to our Magazine cover aswell as Trailer.



Magazine:

Here is our magazine cover. In the middle of our magazine you have the two main characters which is typical for a film Magazine. We have both our actors dressed glamorously so they are attractive to the targeted audience. This is good as it grabs an audiences attention and could make them want to buy the magazine. The colour scheme of Pink and Blue is also used in this poster which follows on from the other two pieces of media; however these are a different shade of Pink and Blue. We struggled with getting the right shade for the magazine as some of the colours didnt fit with our image. We tried many shades out and finally found ones which fit well on our cover. At the top of our Magazine we have the title 'Spotlight.' This follows the convention of a Magazine cover as all the other titles go at the top of the page. An audience would automatically look at the top of the page for the title so this works by grabbing their attention by following the convention. Spread all over this front cover is catchy titles which will attract the audience to buy the magazine. We have also added in a Free poster what'll grab attention for young girls who would want a poster of their favourite male actor.

2.

Our task was to create a film trailer, poster and magazine cover to all fit together within a genre of our choice. My group chose to do Romantic comedies. We researched into the themes and ideas of Rom-coms and how film promotion is connected through different marketing methods such as mainstream/niche and viral. We used typical Rom-com conventions such as couples and hearts. We used this throughout the whole project showing consistency of advertising the same film within multiple advertising methods. Rom-coms are a mainstream product of film as they are popular and reached to a large audience. Another way of promoting this product is by placing this product where rom-com fans are able to see it such as, before viewing a rom-com in a cinema. A way to reach a larger audience would be through the internet and viral because it will start of small but be spread by the audience. This in increasing in popularity as technology is increasing.

All three of our products use the same styles to show they are connected. I feel the colour scheme of pink and blue works well. This shows our audience it is a rom-com. For our trailer I think the part that was most successful is the captions and voice over. I like this the most as it gives an understanding to the viewers of our film but doesn't give to much away. We had problems with our voice over as people didn't understand that it was meant to be mockery of other Rom-com trailers which is showing the humour of our trailer.

With the poster I am really impressed with the layout of the page. I like the way in which we have the younger image above and the older one below, being seperated by our title. The font of our title is really effective. I like the way in which both words are in different romantic style fonts.This works really well on our poster. Its simple but very effective. By having the few lovehearts around the poster shows its a Rom-com and fills out some of the empty space. I think we have created a very successful poster which appeals to its audience.

I am also very pleased with our magazine cover. I like the layout of the page with the image of the actors in the middle with catchy titles around the edges. I feel the colours on this page work well especially the blue which fits in with his tie. The title on this page fits well. I like the font that it uses because it looks like lots of little spotlights.

Overall with each of the projects there are things I am really impressed with but also a few things which I feel could be improved.

When making our film we came across some difficulties. The first thing that we struggled with was our first making of the trailer.  We had troubles with this as our film didn't really have a storyline just ideas for a trailer. So we had to re-think our trailer before we got recording. This set us back a little because our previous filming was not being used so we had to do the whole thing again.

The second thing we had trouble with was saving our trailer each time we edited. When we had completed our trailer for the first time we saved it, but when trying to upload it again the program kept saying the file was moved. We had to start our editing from scratch again. This was annoying as it wasted more time which we could have used for improvements. From this point onwards we were saving our work every 5minutes as we were scared to lose it again.

We had a few difficulties getting the artist and song we wanted on our trailer. We wanted the song 'Back to December' by Taylor Swift however after emailing her several times we were not getting a reply. We struggled with finding someone else untril Rachel told us she knew someone who could make us something of his own.

One main problem which we were not able to overcome in our filming was the age difference. We struggled a lot with making both the actor and actress younger. The only thing we could do to show the ages different was their costumes. When they are older they wear interview clothes and younger their in school uniform. Also we show that it goes back in time in our trailer by using the caption 'The years have gone by...' This was something we was unable to overcome but tried our best to deal with throughout. Fortunately none of our audience feedback mention that they did not get any younger or that they were confused with what was going on. This shows that maybe our costume and caption worked in effect of showing their ages. This also caused us a problem with the poster as their was a younger image and below an older one.

 These were the only few difficulties  and weaknesses we came across with our trailer and ancillary texts.

3.

When we had finished our trailer first time we uploaded it to facebook & Youtube so that we could get some audience feedback. By putting it on facebook we could get our targetted audience (our age) to give us their views. Doing this 2 weeks before the deadline means that we could do changes to our trailer to make it suitable for our targetted audience.

Here are some of the feedback we got:

1. Need to show more bits of the girl and boy together, him falling for her.
2. Clips need to be shorter and snappier.
3. Actor looks at the camera in first clip.
4. The voice over seems to dramatic 'As though his going to kill her' was quoted.
5. Use more tracking instead of panning.
6. Simple but good.

After looking at our feedback we knew that these were some of the things to change. First of all we started by cutting down the clips of the boy being clumsy. This would make it shorter and snappier which is typical of trailers as there not meant to make sense. Im glad we got this feedback about the shots as we didn't realise they were so long until being told by our audience. Another comment that concerned me a little was the voice over seemed to be a bit dramatic. This was because our audience didn't understand it was a mock and to be comical. We were unsure how we could make this noticed by the audience but we chose not to change it as that was our initial intention of the voice over. A few of the other comments we got meant that we had to re-film some of our work. We would have went over and done some of this but the actor had his hair cut meaning it would break the continuity. This is something I wished we had thought at whilst filming the first time. I have now learned that its best to try out as many different shots from the beginning than having to little and unable to make changes to camera shots and angles. Other comments we got seemed to be positive which shows that some of our targeted audience was impressed. This is a good thing as it means we have done the right things to get our target teenage audience interested in our trailer.

4.
We had to use a few different media technologies to create our film trailer and ancillary texts. The programmes we used were:

Pinnacle

Facebook

Youtube

Blogger

Photoshop

Each of these work in a different way and helped us with different parts of our work. Pinnacle was the main one we used. This is a programme where we upload our filming to for us then to edit. On this programme it comes with many different settings such as sound effects and transitions. These things helped us develop our trailer after we had cut down our shots to what we wanted. We were not new to this programme this year as we had used it previously with our 2 minute film openings. However when creating our trailer we have developed some of the skills we had used last year with the editting.

Photoshop was another very important programme we used. As I have taken photography for A-level I know how to develop photos in this programme which means I could use my skills to create impressive images. On this we were able to edit our images so that they looked their best on our poster and magazine cover. This helped us make the backgrounds correct for the image and also with the brightness and contrast. Without using Photoshop our images would not looked as good.

To recieve feedback from our targetted audience we had to upload our trailer to Youtube & Facebook. We used these two sites as this gets our trailer to a wider audience who can comment and leave their opinions. This was good as we could then make improvements to our work which we knew our targeted audience would want.

Lastly we used Blogger. This was good to use as we can upload all our research and leave feedback on what we have done each week to create our final products. I like to use this programme as it also shows us how far we have come since the beginning and how we have improved so much during the coursework project.

Overall I am impressed with what me and my group have created. We have tried our hardest to make the best looking trailer, poster and magazine cover for our targetted audience. We have struggled with some things but overcame the problems which improved our work all together. By getting audience feedback means we were able to make improvements to what our audience wanted. Some of our work is very successful and other parts could be improved but overall we have tried to make this work successful.

Poster & Magazine Feedback

Poster
Yesterday before our deadline we decided to show the class our poster so we could make any changes before handing it in. Everyones comments seemed to have been positive which was good as these were our targetted audience meaning we had done a good job.
Here is a list of what people had said:

1. Its simple but very effective.
2. If i walked past it in a cinema I would stop to look.
3. The bottom image with the girl and her leg in the air indicates romance.
4. The colours, fonts and title worked well together.

We wasn't suggested any improvements to our work showing that we had done everything right for our targetted audience.

Magazine
 Next we showed the class our magazine, which was also very successful in our audience's eyes. This followed on well from our poster as we used the same colours and style of image.
However this time we had room for improvements.
The comments we got were:

1. Some pink writting didn't stand out so made things unclear.
2. The word 'Faith' in the title wasn't clear and may need changing to a lighter pink.
3. Maybe change some of the font sizes to make some stand out more than others.

After getting these comments we knew exactly what we had to do to improve it. The improvements was only little changes but by doing it means it was correct for our audience.

Trailer Feedback

Trailer feedback

Above you can see a list of feedback which people have given us. All of the feedback is from our trailer which we uploaded to facebook. The comment from Shahina is from our youtube video. From reading these comments it helps me and my group with how to improve our video for our targetted audience. Our main comment was the about the man who did our voice over. People have said it sounds too deep and not suitable for a Rom-com trailer. However me and my groups idea of having him being so deep in our voice over was to make it comical and an exaggeration of what a typical Rom-com voice over would be. But from reading our feedback this seems to be a concern for our audience as they didn't understand what we wanted to do. This will have to be something that me and my group need to re-think.  

A good comment that we got from our audience was that they found it comical. This is good feedback as we wanted it to be funny seeing as its a Rom-com. When thinking of what we was going to put in our trailer to make it funny we were usure on what would make the audience laugh. We struggled with this a little so getting good feedback on how comical it is shows we were successful.

Overall i am pleased with the comments we have recieved as i know this will help us improve our film trailer.

How have i developed my skills for AS to A2

Looking back to the beginning of year 12 i can clearly see that i did not have a great understanding on how to use technologies such as: pinnacle, photoshop, edirol and a video camera. In year 12 when we were asked to make an opening 2 minutes of a thriller film, we were thrown into the deep end not knowing cleary how to use these products. Throughout the project we started to develop our skills in using these products and it then became a little clearer. We were taught each of the camera shots such as: close ups, Mid length, Long shot, Panning, Tracking & over the shoulder shot. We started to use these in our opening of the film but it wasn't that successful keeping continuity. Another thing we got taught was about institutions and how they help with the financial part of film making. Before doing this is year 12 I did not have any idea about all these different things. 

Now in year 13 I feel that I have developed all of these skills. When editing in pinnacle we knew exactly how to edit, add music, sound effects, captions and transitions easily.  Also with our filming we have became a lot less shakier with the camera and planned out what we wanted to do in detail that it looked good as a final product. Our continuity this year also worked out better which helped the trailer flow. By researching into other Rom-coms this helped us with our ideas and showed us how to keep to the conventions of a Rom-com trailer. Overall I feel that at the end of year 13 I have learned many skills on filming and editing which I did not fully understand 2 years ago.

Finished filming & Editing

For the last few weeks we have been focused on filming and editing. This time it was Me, Rachel & Alex who filmed as Hayley had done it previously. We filmed the parts where the boy was younger and clumsy. (This is where our comedy comes in.) When filming we wanted the parts to be quick and snappy as it would be in a trailer. We got him doing several clumsy things, these were: falling over in front of the girls,walking into a door and walking through a door getting his bag caught.
I filmed the part where he gets his bag hooked onto the handle. I took this shoot several times so when it comes to editing we can use the best one from the best camera angle. In a few I shot i knew my arm was shaking when filming, so by getting several shots we could use to one where my arm shakes least.

Once we had finished all our filming we went to upload it onto pinnacle. Then it was time for editing. As we shot the older years weeks before the younger years we had already edited it so this time we had to fit the clumsy parts inbetween what we already had. This was easy to do but after we had fitted it in the correct places we had to then cut it down so its short and snappy. Some parts we had difficulties doing as we wanted to see the actor looking around but had to cut it short as you catch a glimpse of him looking at the camera. This is something we didn't think of telling him not to do whilst filming.

Captions:
Just like many trailers we previewed they had captions in between shots which were either questions or quotes gripping the audience. This is what we decided to do in our trailer to break up the older and younger parts.
Our first quote is 'The years have gone by' This was positioned after the older part but just before the boys does his clumsy bits.This title works well as it shows the trailer is going into a different time of their age and suggests they havn't met in a long time.
The second quote is 'He loves her, She loves him not' This title works as it shows the romantic part of the film of which character loves who. This was positioned in the middle of our trailer when they are still young.
Lastly we had a caption saying 'What goes around comes around' This shows things have turned between the characters and now its her after him. This also suggests its a rom-com.

We wanted someone to do a voice over and say these caption like you get in most trailers. We found the perfect person to do it which has a voice over perfect voice.

Music:
At first we had trouble with what music we was going to use.We knew that we had to think of this early as it would take time getting permission to use the song. Our initial thought was to use to song 'Back to December' by Taylor Swift. We chose this song because some of the lyrics fit perfectly.

Lines such as:
 'Your guard is up and I know why' - Suggests she hurt him, let him down.

'You gave me roses and I left them there to die' - Shows how she was not interested in him.

'So this is me swallowing my pride' - Means she is sorry for what happened in the past.



We found out who Taylor Swift was signed to and then emailed them instantly so we could get a reply as soon as possible. However they never seemed to email us back which meaned we had to find someone else to do our song.
Rachel luckily knew a guy who does his own songs and we listened to some of him songs and found one we liked. She them asked him for permission to use him music and he thankfully said yes to us. Which means we had a song for our trailer.

After trying out a lot of different designs this is the poster we achieved to make. I think that what we have created works really well and looks realistic.

Below are some reasons of why we did particular things:

• We researched into other romantic film posters and saw that the Actors/Actresses name were half in colour and half black. (The proposal, How to loose a guy in 10 days.) We thought this was a good idea and decided to use this style in our poster.
• We used the 3 hearts as they fit in well with the genre of the film and it takes up space on the page so it doesn't look to plain or bare. I feel by using these it gives an overall view of what the film is about.
• In our poster we stuck to the same colour theme of Blue, Pink and Black. This is because these are typical for a rom-com.
• In our title you can see that Faith is in small letters. We chose to do this as most rom-coms dont have captial letters. (He's just not that into you.) We thought this would work well on our poster aswell.
• By the title being in the middle it helps it stand out from the page but also cuts up the two images to show they are seperate.
• I really think the tag line works well for the older couple. 'She loves him. He loves her not.' This is because its all turned around when they are older and she's after him. The tag line gives an idea of what the film could be about. This will grab an audiences attension.

Overall I am very impressed with what we have craeted. It took many weeks to produce this poster as we had to try out many different colours, fonts and positions. This is the best we have done so far.

younger image final

Below is our younger image. We chose this photo as it fits well with what our film is about. The boy is trying his hardest to get her but she shows no interest in him at all. I really like the prop of a rose as it suggests a rom-com film.

We were going to have a beige background as we didn't want it white because it would look like the people are floating on a white background however when printing the poster of we didn't like the beige and it looked odd so we ended up removing the beige and changing it back to white.