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

Evaluation 4

When it comes to my media production there was a variety of different types of new technologies that was used during the construction, research, planning and the evaluation stage of the production of my film trailer. The first thing that me and my group did was we researched and planned out what our media production was going to be and we used the new technology of searching up different types of psychological thriller films on google where we came to the website www.imdb.com which gave some of the best psychological thriller including the likes of Split and Black Swan, which help us decide on the idea of our film trailer being about a man with multiple personalities. The next part of our production was the actual construction of our film trailer which involved filming scenes in all different areas. To film the scenes we use the fairly new technology of using a Sony camcorder which allowed us to capture the various shots that we needed for our trailer in very good picture. Going back to the research that was involved in our media production, the website that we used to put all of our finished research on was this website called www.Blogger.co.uk and all of the research that was put on the website is there if we need any of the information later on in our media production. We also use www.Blogger.co.uk when we was evaluating our own media trailer production, but before we added any information to the the blogger we also used the website called Microsoft word which is where we firstly wrote any information about our media production and then we would copy paste all of the information onto the blogger where it can be read at anytime. 

The next part of the construction of our media production after we had finished shooting our film trailer was the actual editing part of our media production of our film trailer. To edit our film trailer we decided to use an editing software called Premier pro, which was both simple to understand but also very effective as it had everything we needed to edit the scenes that we wanted to use to help create our film trailer, for instance,for some scenes that we shot the lighting and positioning was how exactly we wanted it to be but because of premier pro, we were able to change this so that it look better when we had finally finished editing our trailer. As well as editing the scenes that we shot using premier pro, we also needed to search for non-copyrighted music that would fit well with the genre our film trailer and when we found the music we would need put onto premier pro. We again used the new technology which was google to search for different websites that held non-copyrighted music, which is when we found a website called www.freemusicarchive.org and after searching on the website we found some music called Zoroaster meets the happy avenger by Bessemerr which fit perfectly with our film trailer as it was slow and eerie which helped create fear and tension in our trailer.

Again when it came to the construction of our media production, after we had finished editing our actual film trailer when then focused on the advertisement of our film posters which involved creating a film poster and a magazine cover. Overall to help create the poster and magazine cover, there were a few different types of technology such as set ups and website. The set up that we mainly used to create an edit the poster and cover was this website called Adobe Photoshop which helped me decide what the colouring needs to be, what different fonts that would suit my film trailer and it also helped me place different pictures onto my poster or cover that helped represent my own film trailer and also other film trailers. As we needed different pictures of the actors who was involved in our film trailer production so that we could place them onto the Photoshop and then put them onto the poster and magazine cover, we again used new technology to get these pictures. We thought of different ways to get the best and most clear picture and we decided to use an iPhone 6 camera, which allowed us to take good clear pictures. We then needed to get the pictures onto the computer that we was using, so we could place them onto our covers and posters and to do this we used Facebook messenger where we were able to use the Facebook website or social media to then save the pictures to the computer, which then enables us to put the pictures onto our poster or magazine cover. This was also the same with any other pictures that was placed onto the magazine cover or the poster. 

evaluation 3- What Have You Learned From Your Audience Feedback?

Evaluation 3

Psychosis trailer

During the whole production of our campaign, for our thriller film psychosis, when creating and developing different parts of our campaign, whether that was the actual trailer, the film poster or the magazine cover, I was given feedback from many different people, such as my teacher or other students in my group, but due to there feed back, they helped me develop three different media texts that I felt was very effective in terms of my whole campaign. When asking my teachers and other students in my group what they felt I could change to improve my film trailer, the main change that my teacher encouraged me to change or in this case include in my trailer, to get more effect, is the use of transitions. For instance, at first when there was a change of scene in my trailer, the scene basically just quickly cut to the next scene, so after my group received the feedback of adding some transitions, we decided to edit our trailer, so when there was a change in scenes,instead of just cutting quickly to the next scene, we included a fade to black transition which helped create more tension into the trailer. Receiving the feedback from our teacher, was a success for my campaign as it made our trailer look more professional like it is an actual trailer. Furthermore, we also received even more feedback for our trailer, from other students,which again helped create a much more effected trailer. For instance,when we asked some other students what you think we should include or change in our trailer to help improve it, we received some feedback, saying that we should change the production company name and logo as, they felt that both the name and logo, suit our thriller film and they also said how it looked a bit unprofessional. The name of our production company was called 'Prophit productions, and the logo was the very mystical looking women. From the feedback that we was given from other students, they made us realise that the name and logo wasn't suitable for a thriller genre film, so we changed in to 'Eclipse Studio's' and again from feedback from other students, they felt that the change in name was a lot better. Due to the name being eclipse we felt that the logo should obviously link to the name, so we used an image of an eclipse, which again was a much more suitable name to use. Listening to this feedback again was a big success as the new name and logo for our production company suited our trailer much more than the first original one.

Film poster

Again, like our film trailer I also decided to ask our teachers and other student in our group, for some feedback again, for what they reckon I could include or change in my film poster, that they think could improve it. After talking to my teacher, the first thing they said I could change, to help improve the poster is to change the position of the 'Psychosis' because they felt that placing it at the bottom of the poster, positioned in the centre didn't exactly make the poster look professional and it also blocked the two main images. After spending some time, changing the psychosis title about, I realised that the best positions where I felt the title should be placed is either at the top of the poster in the centre of the poster or to keep it where it originally was but move it too the right. I showed my teachers what two positions I felt was the best and they gave me some more feedback, explaining that they felt that if I moved the title up it made my poster look more professional and clearer, as the title didn't block either of the two main images. In addition to this, I then asked some of the students again what change or inclusion, they felt would improve my poster. I was given, some feedback from one of the students, who said I should edit the light bulb image that was apart of my poster, so that it actually shined. I felt that this feedback was a very good idea, so when I included the shine onto the light bulb image it made parts of my poster look much more realistic and it also gave my poster much more effect. After receiving feedback from both my teacher and other students, I felt as though the feedback they gave me help me create a much better film poster overall.

Magazine cover

When asking my teachers and other students again for some feedback on what they think I should change or include in my magazine cover, I was given some very helpful feedback. For instance, when asking my teachers, they gave me some feedback, which was to include some other images of other films on the cover, as it would make the magazine cover look a lot more realistic and as well as that, originally my magazine did look quite empty, so adding the images would take up more room on the cover, which is what real front covers look like. So after getting some images from, other groups, I included the images which I felt did thoroughly improve my magazine cover, so overall this feedback was another success. Furthermore, after asking a few of the students in my class, what they feel I need to include or change to help improve my magazine cover, one of the student said that they felt that the images was to clear, which decreased the amount of tension being created in the image, so he said that I should edit the images to give them a much more distorted face, to create much more tension and eeriness in the magazine cover. Doing this would improve my magazine cover as the film itself is a thriller and those film do have a lot of tension in them, so my magazine would be much more suitable to the film that it is advertising. So if I was to decide whether the feedback back the student gave me, was good, I would say that it was very successful feedback and again has really helped improve my magazine cover.  

evaluation 2- How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Which common elements are in your 3 texts?

The most common elements in my three texts is the use of dark or low lighting as we felt as though it create much more tension in our trailer, film poster and magazine covers. We also used the colours white and black together very often in all three texts as it helped represent the fact that the innocent people are going to feel fear and also the sense of the unknown and also both white and black colour contrast with each other, so this helps draws or grabs the attention of the audience as it helps the three different texts stand out.

Which characters did you choose to feature on your print texts? Why? What poses/ clothes/ mise en scene suggests about their personalities?

When it came to the two print texts that I created, which was a film poster and a magazine cover, for both the main images that we used was the two main character which was the main antagonist, who is suffering with multiple personality disorder and the mans other evil personality, which was done to give the audiences an idea of who are the characters in the film that is causing all the drama and excitement towards the film in general. In the film poster but character are stood next to each looking down with and evil pose, which connotes the fact that the characters are evil and that they are looking down upon there victims. The character suffering with the psychological problem is just wearing his normal clothes to show that even though he is evil, he still is just a normal human being, whereas the other character is wearing all black clothing to represent the fear that he gives to others.

Are there any relationships suggested?

In both my magazine cover and my film poster, the two main images of the two characters do hold an important relationship with each other, which again is very important to our thriller film storyline. For instance, in the magazine cover, the main antagonist who can also be viewed as the victim, has been placed in the centre of the page where he is looking down to the floor to connote to the audience his fear, anger and suffering and just behind him is another man, who is looking very evil and sinister, but the picture has been edited so that the mans face isn't very clear. This shows the audience that the man behind the main image is another evil version of the man and the point of making that other mans face unclear, signifies that he is in the mains characters head, which is how there relationship is suggested in the magazine cover. Furthermore, in the film poster that I made, i have used very similar images that I used in the magazine cover, but instead both pictures have been place next to each other at each side of the poster, to show that the two characters link together and have some sort of relationship in the film. When it came to the actual trailer, the relationships between the two main antagonists is clearly shows as we used quick editing, to connote to the audience, how the man suffering with the split personalities keeps getting glimpses of the the other evil personality, whether its when he looks in the mirror or simply keeps picturing in his thoughts.

Which narratives did you include in your print texts?

In my two print texts that i created, there isn't a huge amount of narratives that has been included as the film poster and magazine cover is there to simply grab the audiences attention so they will want to watch the film. The only narrative that I included in my print texts in the fact that our films main plot/Storyline is about a man suffering with multiple personality disorder, which is signified by the way the two main images have been formatted in both the film poster and magazine. For instance, in the magazine cover, the man at the front, is suppose to be just a normal man, but in the background, there is another much darker character, which is there to signify the mans in demon, which is the evil personality. On the other hand,in the film poster but the man and his evil personality are standing side by side with the exact same pose and facial expression which is to signify that they are the same person but just different version, which is how the split personality is conveyed.

How did these attract the audience?

The fact that i included the narrative of the split personality story line did attract a much larger audience really for two different reasons. Firstly, the fact that the film goes into detail about a man suffering with multiple personality disorder made more people interested in watching the film as it is something that people may know about as they suffer or know someone who suffers with the same problems, so it made people more curious to want to watch the film to see if the film has aspects to it, that is realistic to what having multiple personality disorder is actually like. In my opinion, what i feel is the main reason for why the print text narrative attracted a wider range of audience members is simply because of the fact that again the split personality narrative is a very interesting topic, which attracted many people to want to see how or what the film is actually like.

Which film genre conventions did you emphasise in your print text?

When it came to my two print texts there were really only two conventions that was really emphasised, which was the use of dark urban settings and also low key lighting. The reason for why we emphasised these two conventions, is because we felt as though they suited our film Psychosis the most, for instance, when it comes to the dark urban setting, we felt as though this convention suit the thriller genre as dark urban setting are normally associated with some sort of criminal activity which is included a lot in our film and also we felt that this convention gave off the right emotions towards the audience that we wanted, which was to bring a sense of fear, anxiety and discomfort. Furthermore, the other convention that we emphasised a lot in our print text was the use of low key lighting,which again we felt suited the thriller genre films the most. For instance, in most thriller film, including our very own Psychosis, when there is low key lighting being used, it is normally used to create a tense atmosphere and it also signifies to the audience that something bad will occur.

Which effects did you use? How did these link to your film?

We used several different effects when creating psychosis. For example, we used a quick editing jump cuts effect on both the main antagonist which was the evil evil personality when he is in he is taking one of his victims to show that he is evil and to also signify that he isn't actually a real person but a fragment of an innocent man who has been possessed by his evil personality. This links in nicely to the effect used on my magazine cover, where the man who is the antagonist and victim, is clearly shown but behind him is his evil personality where we have made his face very distorted. This connotes the fact that it's like the mans personality is in control. 

How does any institutional information link?

In both my two print texts and my ancillary text, i have included all different types of institutional information such as production company names, logos, etc. There isn't really a big links when it comes to the institutional information because firstly, the institutional information has really only been included in the trailer and partly in the film poster. In both the trailer and poster, the production company name has been included in both texts in a black and white font, but in the trailer the logo of the production company has also been included.

Evaluate the effectiveness of your campaign as a conclusion. 

Overall, i believe that the effectiveness of my campaign is very effective. I believe i have created realistic ancillary texts which follow the common conventions of both posters and magazine front covers. I considered greatly the common conventions of the thriller genre when creating all three of my media products, such as the colours, lighting and fonts being used, therefore i feel that my campaign overall was a success because when comparing it with other campaigns, i felt that my own was just as good and effective as other professional campaigns. 

evaluation 1- In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms of conventions from real media products?

1.                                  2.                               3.                              4.                          5.




 

The first frame of my nine frame analysis is my film poster of our media film trailer production, 'Psychosis'. The main image on the poster is the main character on the right of the poster, which is the antagonist who is suffering with the split personality and the other image is the other main antagonist of the film, which is the evil personality that is what is making the actual man evil. When comparing my own poster to other thriller genre posters, my own poster did indeed use very similar convention that have also been used in other posters, which includes the format of the images, the fonts, colouring etc. There were a variety of different posters of thriller films that inspired certain ideas for my own poster, such as films posters like 'Shutter island' and 'Hannibal' but the two film poster that I gained most of my ideas from was from the 'Se7en' film poster and another thriller film poster called 'One missed call'. For instance, the first convention that you'll notice is very similar between my own film poster and the other two posters, is the background colouring that was used. The black background colouring was used as a why of symbolising an evil and mysterious type of tension, because the colour black is associated with fear and the unknown which is what create evil and mysterious tension in my the other two posters which is why I used this convention in my film poster. Another convention that I used in my own film poster that is also used in many other thriller film posters is the use and format of the images, but again it was the 'Se7en' poster that gave me a better idea of how I wanted my main image to be. For instance, in 'Se7en' the main image is the two main characters next to each other where there faces look like they've been lighted up, which allows the audience to see there serious facial expression, so I decided to put the two main images in my poster with a light, also lighting up there faces, which shows the anger in the face of the image on the left and the fear in the face of the image on the right. The last convention that I was inspired to use, that is also been used in other thriller films is the colour and font of both the title and the billing block. For instance, in the film poster for 'One missed call' the colour of the title and the billing block is white which symbolises innocence and in 'one missed call' there are innocent people being put into harm. This made me decide to use a white coloured font, because in my own film there are innocent people being put into harm.


The second frame in my nine frame analysis is my magazine front cover and again like my poster there were many other film posters that inspired many ideas that I used in my own. There wasn't a main film magazine cover that I got my most of my ideas from, but one of the magazine cover that I used to get some of my ideas from was the magazine cover for 'I AM LEGEND'. For instance, when creating my magazine cover I was unsure where about to place my main title, 'Reel Talk' but after looking at other magazine covers, when i came to the 'I AM LEGEND' one it help me decide to place the title near the top and behind the main image as firstly when comparing it with other magazine poster I felt as though it looked more professional and also when the title was in front of the main image I felt as though it made it harder to notice the main image. Furthermore another title in the magazine cover is the name of my thriller film and again similar to the 'I AM LEGEND' poster, I also placed the title of the film in front of the main image. A specific difference, that i noticed in my magazine cover when comparing it with others, is as well as my cover advertises my own film, it also advertises two other films, which is done in other magazine covers but it is done a lot more frequently, like in the 'I AM LEGEND' poster there is around 5 different images advertising a different movie for each picture. Another idea that i got from other film posters is all the extra detail, that is placed around the front cover. For example in my own and the 'I AM LEGEND' front cover, we both have extra detail with the caption saying "Plus...." with a small explanation of what it is.

For the third frame of my 9 frame analysis, I will be talking about my production company logo that is shown at the start of our film trailer. When comparing my own production company logo to others, you can see that our logo does in some ways challenge other film production logos, because our logo was produced more so that it was specific to our film, such as in the logo there is dark colours and a small amount of lighting which is how our trailer is set out. On the other hand, when it comes to other production company logos like 'Metro Goldwyn Mayer' there logo is use to attract audience members because there logo is very iconic and the fact that it is iconic, makes people think that because 'MGM' is the production company, the film should be decent. In addition to this, we also produced our production company in a way that is very similar to what big production companies like 'MGM' does, which is to also attract audiences member, which is why in some cases our production company does also comply with other production companies. For instance, my production company logo is an eclipse which is obviously something that everyone wants to see, so we felt as though this would represent that fact that our film is also something that everyone will want to see and when the audience, see the logo, they should be interested in watching the whole trailer and then watching the film when it is out.

In the fourth frame of my nine frame analysis, there is an establishing shot of the house of the main character of the film. There isn't a whole lot to say about this frame, but when comparing this with other thriller film trailers, there are aspects that do and do not conform with the general conventions that are used in the majority of other film thriller trailers. For instance, in most thriller trailer an establishing shot is used to give the audience some background information of where a character lives or where something important to the story line is going to occur, such as in 'The girl on the train' an establishing shot of a building or apartment, which gives background info of where someone lives, which is also the same in my own trailer. The establishing shot of the home is to show where the main character lives and it also shows the audience, where some action is going to take place. On the other hand, the reason why the establishing shot doesn't conform with conventions used in a thriller is because like the establishing shot used in 'The girl on the train' there normally a lot of low lighting to connote the tension given off from the trailer and the fear of the characters in the trailer, but in the establishing shot that we used in my own trailer the lighting is very bright.

For the fifth frame of my nine frame analysis, I will be talking about how the title of my of my film trailer conform or does not conform with other thriller film trailers. Whilst researching other thriller film trailer, we found a variety of different examples, that helped my group come up with the name and the format of our thriller film trailer title and one of the best examples that helped us decide was the film 'Se7en' title which had many aspects that was similar to my own title, which shows that my own title does conform with other thriller film titles. For instance, most film title have to have some relevance to the film itself and like 'Se7en' which helps represent the film and how its about the seven deadly sins. This is also how we came up with our title because our film is about a man who is basically a psycho murderer, which is what is meant by psychosis. This shows that the name or title of our film does conform with other thriller film trailer conventions. Thriller films also normally involve innocent people being placed into harms way and also not knowing how to get out of the bad situation. Again our thriller film trailer title conforms with this because of the use of the white and black colouring, for instance, the white represents the innocence,whereas the black represents fear and the unknown, which again is how the film title for 'Se7en' is set out with a black and white colouring. This again, shows that our film title does conform with other thriller film titles.

In the sixth frame of my nine frame analysis, I will be now talking about scene shown in my trailer of the character which will be considered the main character, who suffers with the multiple personality disorder. Again when researching all different thriller films, we found that there are many different thrillers involved an antagonist with psychological problems, such as multiple personalities etc, which helped us come up with the idea of our own thriller film trailer. This shows that the whole idea and plot of my own trailer conforms with other thriller films. In this frame it shows the main character of my thriller film going through some emotional pain, which conforms with other thriller films as there are many films that show a characters emotional pain, such as in 'The Girl on the train' where the main character in that also shows her sad emotion during the trailer, which represents the fact that there are all different types of characters fighting there own personal battles.

In the seventh frame of my nine frame analysis, the frame shows another part of my film trailer which it is a scene set in black and white, to connote to the audience that the scene is a flashback of the main antagonists early stages of his life which is to show the audience, what caused the character to gain his split personality. When coming up with the storyline of our thriller film, we decided that we needed to think about more background story of how the main antagonist in our thriller film gained his psychological problems as we felt that it would give a more tense and exciting storyline in our film because when researching other thriller films, we found that they did tend to add a lot of background story to give certain character more of a personality, for instance, in the film 'Split' which is another film about a man with multiple personalities, they explain the antagonists background story on how he was abused when he was young, which is what lead to his split personalities, so we decided to also use something similar to this in a film trailer. The scene in our trailer is the main antagonist when he was younger just in his room, where he is then interrupted by someone who at this point is unknown but look like some sort of fatherly figure, who starts to act very violently towards the antagonist. Doing this, we felt as though it conformed with other thriller films, because it helped create the tension and the excitement into the trailer and like I already said, it gave more of a personality to our main character, which is what films like 'Split' also did. When editing this scene, we wanted our audience to know that it is a flashback, so to do this we edited it in black and white, so that it connoted that it was a while ago in the past. Also the black and white colouring of the scene gave a much more serious tone to this part of our trailer as it is about someone being abused at a younger age.

In the eighth frame of our nine frame analysis, the next frame shows another part of my psychosis thriller film trailer, which shows the main antagonist being haunted by his other evil personality, as when he looks into the mirror, he can see himself and his evil personality. This scene is very effective in terms of conventions that are normally used, because when researching other thriller film trailers we realised that all types of trailer tend to give the audience some sort of idea about the plot or story line, but obviously not too much that the trailer gives the whole story line or plot away. Our trailer did conform in terms of the fact that it does give the audience a little idea of the story line but it doesn't give too much away, for instance, you can see that when the main character looks into the mirror as well as he sees his own reflection, he also see his evil personalities reflection, which indicates to the audience that, the film is about a man with multiple personality disorder, this also helps the audience understand more context for the rest of the trailer. Again, whilst researching other thriller film, when we were looking at the film 'split' we found that to create more tension in the film,they made the main antagonist of the film so that he isn't actually in control of his other personalities, so we decided to use this idea in our own film trailer, which we conveyed in the scene where the main antagonist is looking in the mirror to see his evil personality and the way we set it out, basically conveys to the audience who is in control, which in this case is the evil personality.

In the ninth frame of my nine frame analysis, there is another image of a scene that takes place in the trailer for my film psychosis. The scene shows what looks like an innocent person being tied up to a chair and is being tortured by at this point the evil personality. The reason we decided to add this seen is because we wanted to create the emotion that we felt should be given off in a thriller film which is fear, the unknown and being alone in a bad situation, and the best way to get these emotions across to the audience, we felt like adding a torture seen of some sort would help create those emotion. When researching the best ways to create the emotion we found that for thriller a good thing to use in a trailer is some sort of technique that shows that bad guy is in control and whilst looking at other thriller films, we looked at a film called 'Taken' which also had a torture scene, which we felt helped convey the emotions to the audience that we wanted in our own trailer. Another convention that we used in this seen is low lighting which we felt also helped convey the fear that the man who is tied up is showing and that fear, we hoped would also be given off by the audience watching the trailer as it shows what the evil antagonist is actually capable of doing.