Saturday 14 May 2011
Evaluation
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
As part of my research, I looked at current film website that I thought were successful and relevant to my genre such as sex and the city 2 and Defiantly, Maybe. I also evaluated Resident Evil. From these websites I evaluated the typical conventions of a film website; this helped me when producing my own because I could compare it to real life examples. I noticed that most websites had a enter page before the home page. On the enter page the trailer was normally shown and the title of the film is established. I have decided to challenge this convention by not having my trailer on the enter page. I have done this because I want to attract my audience to my website before viewing the trailer that is shown on the website. I have stuck to a colour scheme that I feel will help portray the genre of romance. I decided this colour scheme by reviewing and evaluating current romance websites and picking out key colours that represent the genre most and connotation the theme of love. For example, I used red as part of my colour scheme, this is used in the production logo and I have used it in my poster too. Red connotes love and romance and symbolises the genre of our teaser trailer. I have also used black in my colour scheme, this relates to the dark side that is shown in the teaser trailer. It connotes all the bad things that happen to Chloe and as it’s a dark colour, this makes it easier to establish. I used my colour scheme as a background colour on my website, making a clear link to all my other tasks. The colour scheme of the website typically links to the target audience of females. It is less likely to link to males because of the colours used and the conventions of a romance genre. To create my website I used the http://www.wix.com/ this is a site that enabled me to create a website that was quick, easy and simple to use. I could have used a programme called Dreamweaver; however this would have been more complicated as I would have had to learn how to use it, limiting me on what I would be able to do. Although this is more professional software which might be creates a slightly more professional look, I decided to use wix. I felt that the website it produced was as professional as I wanted and with it being less complicated I thought it would be the best option. Through the tasks I used the same font and colours for the title. This again creates links for the audience and shows how they connect. I noticed that this was done on the current websites and film posters that I looked at. The website I have created uses the conventions of a typical website. I have used some pages which I thought were most successful when I evaluated romance websites, such as the cast and characters and the picture gallery. From looking t these websites it helped me to plan out my website and decided on things that I thought were most successful. I have also linked social networking in to my website. This creates a link so that my audience can discuss what they have seen and I can receive feedback from it. I have put links to a few social network sites at the bottom of the website and also a link to my blog. This would typically be done when professionals create websites because it helps them to receive feedback as they know a lot of people, especially there target audience, use social networking sites.
The poster I have created follows conventions of a typical romance poster. I have included the main protagonists on the poster, so the audience identify the main characters. I found that this was typically done in the posters I looked at. In my poster I placed the masthead at the bottom of the page. Most of the posters I looked at typically conveyed this as a convention of romance. At the top of my poster I have placed the names of the stars in the film. This is also a typical convention of romance posters as well as another large amount of genres too. I felt this was most effective because the actors will be what draw the audience in so by having the names at the top of the page will enable the audience to view them easily. I have included a comment from a magazine that usually reviews films. I have used ‘Empire’ because it is a well trusted magazine company and so by having a review from this company will make the audience trust that the magazine has evaluated the film well and the response is representative of the romance genre. The effectiveness of the stars gives the audience a trust. A review from a top magazine is something for the audience to go by. So a good review will make it more successful amongst the audience. As a background for the poster have used the main image of the cast. I have made the image brighter as I feel it draws the audience in to the photo more and makes it more successful. It helps to brighten up the background and brings out the writing more.
We evaluated many teaser trailers before creating ours as a group. We outlined typical conventions of a teaser trailer such as they typically last between 30 – 90 seconds long. We carried this out when we put our trailer to editing and made sure that is was in-between these times. When we evaluated current teaser trailers we typically focused on the romance genre. This was because we found it more interesting as a group and we thought it would have been easier to produce and develop our skills in, as this was a genre where we had more knowledge. We had to think about the mise en scene of the trailer in order to let it portray the genre of romance. An important part of this was the location of where we filmed. We chose to do most of the filming at Hayley’s house. We used her bedroom as Chloe’s bedroom as we thought it looked like a girly place for Chloe’s room. This was evident in the décor of the room we used and it linked well to our genre of romance as there was pink and connotations of love and romance shown in the room. We also went on to use Hayley’s bathroom as a main location for filming. This is because we didn’t want to use another house and make it obvious that it wasn’t the bathroom that linked to the bedroom we had already chosen. The bathroom was also simple with colours used that weren’t to bright to distract the viewer from the main character. It also had the right storage that we were looking for to hold the drugs, in a place that could be easily accessed by Chloe. Another location we used was the pocket park at greens Norton. This was a natural place for walkers and so it wouldn’t look out of place to see our couple walking along there. We let our characters wear there own clothes as costume. We did this because we wanted the actors to look natural and feel relaxed. We felt that by doing this it would create a real life situation and the audience would be able to relate to them on a level, whereas if we had dressed them up, they might have looked out of place and would not have had as much of a connection with the target audience. We mainly used natural lighting within our filming. This worked well as it didn’t make the scenes to light when we were filming but they were light enough to see. However, when it came to editing we did add in scene of white to create a flash between some scenes, especially the flashbacks. There were also many camera angles we used when we filmed our trailer, from a dolly in to a canted angle. This elaborated on our skills and also we found this to be a typical convention of romance teaser trailers. We had a background track to the trailer as we found that this was most common when we evaluated current ones. We selected a few songs that we thought would fit in well with the genre and then asked our target audience to pick the best one. We selected Ellie Golding – Sweet Disposition as our track and as we had a copy available to us, we went on to email the company who owned the song to see if we could have consent to use it as our track. When we had completed filming we started to edit our trailer. We planned to use the software on the Apple Mac but because of technical difficulties we could not do this. Our only other option was to edit on windows movie maker. This is a very basic programme so we were reluctant to use it. It only allowed us to use simple edits without it looking too tacky. As this was our only option, we were forced to use it to edit. We also cut down the soundtrack to make the edits we had put in fit with the beat of the song, making it more successful.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
I felt that there was a successful link between the main task and the subsidiary ones. There was a consistent theme throughout that showed the link between the tasks and helped to link the whole project together. I created a strong theme between the subsidiary tasks and the main task because the subsidiary tasks are used as advertising products. One thing I made sure was an obvious theme throughout was the colour scheme. I chose to keep everything I created black, red or white. This helps my target audience to recognise a link between the products, even when they are been shown separately. I used this colour scheme for the title of the teaser, and this runs through all my tasks. I have also continued to use these colours on my website, to create a direct link in the audiences mind. I have also used the same font for the title and shown the same production logo so they all connect and create obvious links. The tasks also complement each other well as there is an obvious shot of the main protagonists on all of the tasks. Again this creates links between the project and also helps the audience remember that they are linked, meaning that they will know what the teaser is when they see it advertised as they will be able to link all three.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Audience feedback has been very helpful and has helped to create successful work for our trailer. We have gained audience feedback in many ways, such as a focus group, questionnaire results and feedback from peers in our class. We have taken criticisms on board and have worked to improve on ways that our target audience feel will make it better for them. Because of the feedback we were taking on it made the editing process much longer. We were suggested to change things such as the end few scenes where Chloe is using her phone along with Dan and James. Our audience thought this was confusing and didn’t understand what was happening. We therefore changed this scene and took on a bit of extra filming to ensure that the audience understood what happened. The feedback from our trailer enabled us to see what our audience thought worked well and what didn’t. The audience liked the way that we had incorporated black and white in to the trailer to help establish different moments of past and present in the trailer. They also liked that way that the soundtrack went with what we had filmed.
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Throughout the process of creating my media coursework, lots of different media technology was used to ensure that I created my work to a high standard. The main equipment I used was a JVC video camera, a computer, and a digital camera; this helped me to produce the basics for my teaser trailer, poster and website.
For my construction, research, planning and evaluation I stored all my work on blogger. To access this I needed Internet access so I was able to do this at home and school. This made it easy for me to write about my work when I needed too.
As part of my research, I looked at current film website that I thought were successful and relevant to my genre such as sex and the city 2 and Defiantly, Maybe. I also evaluated Resident Evil. From these websites I evaluated the typical conventions of a film website; this helped me when producing my own because I could compare it to real life examples. I noticed that most websites had a enter page before the home page. On the enter page the trailer was normally shown and the title of the film is established. I have decided to challenge this convention by not having my trailer on the enter page. I have done this because I want to attract my audience to my website before viewing the trailer that is shown on the website. I have stuck to a colour scheme that I feel will help portray the genre of romance. I decided this colour scheme by reviewing and evaluating current romance websites and picking out key colours that represent the genre most and connotation the theme of love. For example, I used red as part of my colour scheme, this is used in the production logo and I have used it in my poster too. Red connotes love and romance and symbolises the genre of our teaser trailer. I have also used black in my colour scheme, this relates to the dark side that is shown in the teaser trailer. It connotes all the bad things that happen to Chloe and as it’s a dark colour, this makes it easier to establish. I used my colour scheme as a background colour on my website, making a clear link to all my other tasks. The colour scheme of the website typically links to the target audience of females. It is less likely to link to males because of the colours used and the conventions of a romance genre. To create my website I used the http://www.wix.com/ this is a site that enabled me to create a website that was quick, easy and simple to use. I could have used a programme called Dreamweaver; however this would have been more complicated as I would have had to learn how to use it, limiting me on what I would be able to do. Although this is more professional software which might be creates a slightly more professional look, I decided to use wix. I felt that the website it produced was as professional as I wanted and with it being less complicated I thought it would be the best option. Through the tasks I used the same font and colours for the title. This again creates links for the audience and shows how they connect. I noticed that this was done on the current websites and film posters that I looked at. The website I have created uses the conventions of a typical website. I have used some pages which I thought were most successful when I evaluated romance websites, such as the cast and characters and the picture gallery. From looking t these websites it helped me to plan out my website and decided on things that I thought were most successful. I have also linked social networking in to my website. This creates a link so that my audience can discuss what they have seen and I can receive feedback from it. I have put links to a few social network sites at the bottom of the website and also a link to my blog. This would typically be done when professionals create websites because it helps them to receive feedback as they know a lot of people, especially there target audience, use social networking sites.
The poster I have created follows conventions of a typical romance poster. I have included the main protagonists on the poster, so the audience identify the main characters. I found that this was typically done in the posters I looked at. In my poster I placed the masthead at the bottom of the page. Most of the posters I looked at typically conveyed this as a convention of romance. At the top of my poster I have placed the names of the stars in the film. This is also a typical convention of romance posters as well as another large amount of genres too. I felt this was most effective because the actors will be what draw the audience in so by having the names at the top of the page will enable the audience to view them easily. I have included a comment from a magazine that usually reviews films. I have used ‘Empire’ because it is a well trusted magazine company and so by having a review from this company will make the audience trust that the magazine has evaluated the film well and the response is representative of the romance genre. The effectiveness of the stars gives the audience a trust. A review from a top magazine is something for the audience to go by. So a good review will make it more successful amongst the audience. As a background for the poster have used the main image of the cast. I have made the image brighter as I feel it draws the audience in to the photo more and makes it more successful. It helps to brighten up the background and brings out the writing more.
We evaluated many teaser trailers before creating ours as a group. We outlined typical conventions of a teaser trailer such as they typically last between 30 – 90 seconds long. We carried this out when we put our trailer to editing and made sure that is was in-between these times. When we evaluated current teaser trailers we typically focused on the romance genre. This was because we found it more interesting as a group and we thought it would have been easier to produce and develop our skills in, as this was a genre where we had more knowledge. We had to think about the mise en scene of the trailer in order to let it portray the genre of romance. An important part of this was the location of where we filmed. We chose to do most of the filming at Hayley’s house. We used her bedroom as Chloe’s bedroom as we thought it looked like a girly place for Chloe’s room. This was evident in the décor of the room we used and it linked well to our genre of romance as there was pink and connotations of love and romance shown in the room. We also went on to use Hayley’s bathroom as a main location for filming. This is because we didn’t want to use another house and make it obvious that it wasn’t the bathroom that linked to the bedroom we had already chosen. The bathroom was also simple with colours used that weren’t to bright to distract the viewer from the main character. It also had the right storage that we were looking for to hold the drugs, in a place that could be easily accessed by Chloe. Another location we used was the pocket park at greens Norton. This was a natural place for walkers and so it wouldn’t look out of place to see our couple walking along there. We let our characters wear there own clothes as costume. We did this because we wanted the actors to look natural and feel relaxed. We felt that by doing this it would create a real life situation and the audience would be able to relate to them on a level, whereas if we had dressed them up, they might have looked out of place and would not have had as much of a connection with the target audience. We mainly used natural lighting within our filming. This worked well as it didn’t make the scenes to light when we were filming but they were light enough to see. However, when it came to editing we did add in scene of white to create a flash between some scenes, especially the flashbacks. There were also many camera angles we used when we filmed our trailer, from a dolly in to a canted angle. This elaborated on our skills and also we found this to be a typical convention of romance teaser trailers. We had a background track to the trailer as we found that this was most common when we evaluated current ones. We selected a few songs that we thought would fit in well with the genre and then asked our target audience to pick the best one. We selected Ellie Golding – Sweet Disposition as our track and as we had a copy available to us, we went on to email the company who owned the song to see if we could have consent to use it as our track. When we had completed filming we started to edit our trailer. We planned to use the software on the Apple Mac but because of technical difficulties we could not do this. Our only other option was to edit on windows movie maker. This is a very basic programme so we were reluctant to use it. It only allowed us to use simple edits without it looking too tacky. As this was our only option, we were forced to use it to edit. We also cut down the soundtrack to make the edits we had put in fit with the beat of the song, making it more successful.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
I felt that there was a successful link between the main task and the subsidiary ones. There was a consistent theme throughout that showed the link between the tasks and helped to link the whole project together. I created a strong theme between the subsidiary tasks and the main task because the subsidiary tasks are used as advertising products. One thing I made sure was an obvious theme throughout was the colour scheme. I chose to keep everything I created black, red or white. This helps my target audience to recognise a link between the products, even when they are been shown separately. I used this colour scheme for the title of the teaser, and this runs through all my tasks. I have also continued to use these colours on my website, to create a direct link in the audiences mind. I have also used the same font for the title and shown the same production logo so they all connect and create obvious links. The tasks also complement each other well as there is an obvious shot of the main protagonists on all of the tasks. Again this creates links between the project and also helps the audience remember that they are linked, meaning that they will know what the teaser is when they see it advertised as they will be able to link all three.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Audience feedback has been very helpful and has helped to create successful work for our trailer. We have gained audience feedback in many ways, such as a focus group, questionnaire results and feedback from peers in our class. We have taken criticisms on board and have worked to improve on ways that our target audience feel will make it better for them. Because of the feedback we were taking on it made the editing process much longer. We were suggested to change things such as the end few scenes where Chloe is using her phone along with Dan and James. Our audience thought this was confusing and didn’t understand what was happening. We therefore changed this scene and took on a bit of extra filming to ensure that the audience understood what happened. The feedback from our trailer enabled us to see what our audience thought worked well and what didn’t. The audience liked the way that we had incorporated black and white in to the trailer to help establish different moments of past and present in the trailer. They also liked that way that the soundtrack went with what we had filmed.
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Throughout the process of creating my media coursework, lots of different media technology was used to ensure that I created my work to a high standard. The main equipment I used was a JVC video camera, a computer, and a digital camera; this helped me to produce the basics for my teaser trailer, poster and website.
The main production of the teaser trailer consisted of me using a JVC video recorded camera. This allowed me to get footage for my trailer that was at a high standard. I also used a tripod for many shots so the camera was steady and didn’t leave our footage with shaky filming. For the editing process I used ‘Windows Movie Maker’. I found this software easy to use and simple to understand. To start with I put my clips in to order and then I cut them down to the right lengths before adding editing effects and transitions between the scenes. Although the editing programme was suitable to use for my teaser trailer, I thought it didn’t give enough variety of transitions and editing effects as I would have liked. This limited the choice for my teaser trailer.
To create my poster and images for my website, I used a Sony Cyber shot Compact camera and a ‘Nikon D3100’. With this I captured my characters in successful images that I would be able to use. I used ‘Windows photo editor’ to edit my images. They didn’t need much work doing to them but this software allowed me to change the brightness and contrast to make my images better.
To create my website I used an online site called http://www.wix.com/. This was very easy to use but still created a professional affect that I needed. I uploaded images on to my website from my computer. The only problem I found with his is that it placed your image inside a white box that you couldn’t get rid of. Because of this I had to delete a few images of the cast that I had on the main page because they didn’t look professional with a white box around them. I also uploaded my teaser trailer through YouTube and Music off my computer. This gave me a successful website.
To create my website I used an online site called http://www.wix.com/. This was very easy to use but still created a professional affect that I needed. I uploaded images on to my website from my computer. The only problem I found with his is that it placed your image inside a white box that you couldn’t get rid of. Because of this I had to delete a few images of the cast that I had on the main page because they didn’t look professional with a white box around them. I also uploaded my teaser trailer through YouTube and Music off my computer. This gave me a successful website.
For the planning and research I used a search engine called ‘Google’. This helped me to find information about current teaser trailers that were from the romance genre. I also used ‘Google images’ for research on current movie posters. YouTube also helped with my planning and research because I was able to view current teaser trailers and analyse them, giving me and idea of what I would need to include and exclude in my own. Once I had carried out this research I uploaded it all on to my online blog. As part of the planning I created a story board. I drew it out and once complete I used a scanner to put the image on my computer and from there my blog. This allowed me to know what needed to be filmed. To help with this I also created a shooting schedule on Microsoft Word. I added dates that I was available for filming as well as my actors and decided what would be filmed on what day. This also made the process a lot easier because I knew what was happening. I also used a camera to capture images of my location that I would need for filming.
For my construction, research, planning and evaluation I stored all my work on blogger. To access this I needed Internet access so I was able to do this at home and school. This made it easy for me to write about my work when I needed too.
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