Finish Products

In this last post I have included my Final Poster and Magzine and my Teaser Trailer:


Magzine Front Cover:

Poster:

Teaser Trailer:

Evaluation Question 1 : Poster

 The question I am looking at here is- In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge terms and conventions of real media products?

I did specific research and planning into the basic conventions of posters, magazine covers and teaser trailers.
Alongside analysis of  teaser trailers, I looked at a number of posters from different genres and made a list of the design and layout features that were typical of the conventions regardless of genre. For example the posters for  "Were The Millers" (Comedy), "One Direction This Is Us" (auto-biography) and "The Family" (gangster). They all included images or backgrounds that reflected that particular genre, production company logos, credits, tag lines, release dates and the title of the film which was always the most dominant and obvious text on the whole poster. I included each of these features in my poster to make it as realistic as possible.I have looked at a range of different posters from different genres to see if the basic conventions between them were similar. The posters I analysed were The Family,One direction This Is Us, Percy Jackson Sea Of Monsters, Were The Millers and Insidious 2.

All the posters I looked at had a dominant central image and were shown in different ways depending on the genre. For example the poster 'The family' portrays the characters in a completely different way to the poster 'Were the Millers'. This is because they are both for completely different genres so although they are both dominant central images the way the poster portrays the image is completely different depending on genre.

Almost all of the posters I analysed had a release date. The releases were often written in different ways . For example the poster 'The Family' release date said this fall. This shows us it is an american born film as the release date makes reference to american language.

Every single poster I looked at had a big bold title on it. All of the posters had the titles in different positions on the poster, different colours or even different fonts and sizes but the title was still the main feature on each poster. The different ways in which the titles were written was definitely  because of the different genres in each poster. For example the 'Were the Millers' poster had the title in fun, funky yellow font which showed it was of a comedy genre because the title looked fun and funky whereas the  'Insidious 2' poster had the title in big bold white and red font down the side of the  page which showed the audience that the genre was a horror/thriller.

Despite being small, despite being at the bottom and despite not being easy to see, almost every poster has the website stated. This allows audiences to gather even more information about the film, and the website itself usually gives us a better indication of genre.

All posters have have the companies that were involved in the making of the film viable on the poster. This is important as audiences have certain expectations from certain companies as well as this some companies specialise in particular genes.

All of the posters I looked at had many mutual conventions regardless of the genre they were from. This shows us that it doesn't matter about genre because two posters from completely different genres have the same conventions.

This is an example of one of the posters I analysed:

Once I had decided on my genre (Romantic Drama) I looked at posters from the same genre "The Vow" and "The Lucky One"

I then made a note of how genre was represented  in these posters, through iconography and props and other design features such as colour scheme, images and font. I found that the posters for the  "Romantic Drama" genre always had a image of the two main charterers in love on the on it. I found that they also always had the normal conventions I spoke about earlier. Production company logos, credits, taglines and title of the film but the main difference between the genres was the dominant image.

Evaluation Question 2 (Ancillary Texts)

How effective is the combination of your main product and the ancillary text?
I feel that I have used the following things to make sure that my poster, magazine and teaser trailer link together and feel part of one and other.
Colour Schemes

Fonts

Taglines
Similar Images
Production Company logos
Credits/Billing

Whilst doing my research and planning into each of these media texts I found that when they are all from the same film that they have a definite link and feel part of each other so I wanted to make sure that my three texts all felt like this too.
When choosing the colours that were going to be used on the background of the magazine and on the fonts of each of my media texts I made very sure that none of the colours I chose would clash with any pictures on another media text I was doing. For example I used a lot of pink,purple and blue on my magazine so I made sure that these colours wouldn't clash of look wrong with the image I had chosen for my poster. I feel like if I wouldn't have used the same colour scheme throughout you may not have felt such a link between each of my media texts.

I used the same taglines on my poster that I used in my teaser trailer so that when someone watched my teaser trailer or saw my poster and then either saw my poster or watched my teaser trailer they would be able to make a link between the two and remember seeing it advertised in many different ways.

The Images throughout all three of media texts all have the same people in. This is really important and effective because then again people that are looking at either of these three texts make a link between them as they recognize the actors. It would be pointless using a random actor/actress on my magazine front cover because then people may not make a link between them and they just wouldn't recognize that that magazine or poster is for that specific movie.

Of course throughout all three of my media texts the Credits/Billing and Production company logos always stay the same and would never change because that just wouldn't make sense as the same Companies are always producing this particular film for me.

Evaluation Question 1 : Teaser Trailer

When I was choosing my genre for my teaser trailer I made sure I did enough planning and research to make the right and appropriate choices. As mentioned in a later post I used YouTube to research into the different types of teaser trailers.

Before I even thought about genre I looked at a number of teaser trailers from different genres to get an idea of the conventions you would find in them regardless of genre. The main conventions that I found whilst watching a number of different teaser trailers were:
Voice Overs
Music
Sound Effects
Images/Shots from the Film
Title Of Film
Taglines
Billing/Credits

I then looked at five different teaser trailers from the genre I picked which was Romantic Drama. The five different teaser trailers I looked at were:

The Notebook
The Vow
Titanic
The Lucky One
Dear John

Whilst researching into these five different Romantic Drama trailers I found that the actual conventions of them and the trailers I had looked at from different genres were very similar. The thing that obviously changes  every time depending on the genre you are looking at is the type of voice you would hear, the type of music you would hear, the different sound effects, different images each time, a different title, very different taglines and of course different billing/credits. So I basically found that depending on genre just depended  on the tone of each of these conventions. This therefore meant that when looking at the teaser trailers of my genre I had to pick up on the tone of each of these things so that I didn't put scary horror music in my trailer or pick wrong sound effects or taglines etc!!

Evaluation Question 4 (Media Technologies)

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


In this question my aim is to explain how I used and made the most of different media technologies in the construction of my media product and also in the research, planning and evaluation process. I will do this by defining the term media technologies and I will explain how I used them during the different stages.
The word 'media' simply defines as a means of communication, and the term 'technologies' generally refers to a physical object that has been engineered for a specific role. In reference to this, the technologies will include cameras, editing software and internet software.
In the Research and Planning stages I used the Internet to:
Research numerous trailers, magazine covers and posters in my genre and other different genres. I got alot of  my help  from YouTube and Google. YouTube was great because I could open up different teaser trailers and watch them and then pause one and then open another tab and watch another one. It was also really useful that I could find lots and lots of different teaser trailers in the same place!
Google was also very useful because I could search for images of different magazine front covers and different posters to look at the different conventions that you find on them.
The internet also allowed me to use Blogger, one of the most important parts of my media project. Blogger alowed me to record my research and planning stages. It allows you to embed pictures and videos easily and quickly. I used blogger like a diary, constantly updating it with ideas and progress.
I used a Panasonic HDC TM900 camera to film my shots.

I used three types of software in my research, planning and editing stage of the project.

Adobe Photoshop:
Is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems. I found Photoshop a really important part of my research, planning and editing stages of my project. Photoshop allowed be to edit,crop and write things where ever I wanted using the text box. I also really liked Photoshop because you could drag things and drop them exactly where you wanted them to go and also you could open another file and crop that onto your work. For instance if you wanted to put your billing and credits onto your poster you could open the file and drag your billing and credits onto your poster rather then having to type it all out again. Another useful thing that I found in Photoshop was the colour picker tool. This meant that if I used a certain colour and wanted to use it again so that something matched up correctly I could pick the colour off the original text and then pick the colour to type the new text. In general I found Photoshop really useful and easy to use and access.

Avid Media Composer:
Media Composer frequently referred to as the AVID is a type of computer software application known as a non-linear editing system. It is a flagship product of Avid Technology. Avid allowed me to edit my shots and put them all together to produce my finished teaser trailer. Being able to edit my shots easily and efficiently helped me greatly as I could use parts of lots of different shots to make up my teaser trailer in the exact way I wanted it. Avid also allowed me to add extra sound effects of music to my trailer to make it more effective and it gave it the finishing touches on it that I wanted it to have.

Adobe Audition:
Is a digital audio workstation from Adobe Systems featuring both a multitrack, non destructive mix/edit environment and a destructive approach wave form editing view. Adobe allowed me to edit sound and songs to have the bits that I needed. For example if I wanted to use only the first 15 seconds of a song Adobe allowed me to crop that 15 seconds and use it, rather then having to use the whole song. Adobe was effective in this way because it meant that I could have different bits of different songs for different parts in my teaser trailer.

Evaluation Question 1 : Magazine

During my research into film magazines, I noticed that regardless of the type of magazine whether it was mainstream or more niche, there were certain design and layout features that were similar across all of them. These included cover lines, masthead. date, issue number, price, banners and bar codes.

One significant difference between a mainstream magazine and a independent magazine is that mainstream magazines tended to have a dominant central image of an A list actor or a recognizable character. Independent magazines tended to have a image of a director, a lesser known actor or some artwork.  

Each of the magazines I looked at promoted current film releases and it is clear that the covers of the film magazines pray a crucial role in the promotion of upcoming new movies. Research suggested that film production companies have little control over the design and layout of film magazines who have their own house style in terms of font and design. As a result the fonts and colour schemes of my magazine are slightly different to those used in my teaser trailer and poster. I used a picture of the main actor in my teaser trailer on the front of my magazine as it is a upcoming movie at the time that my magazine would be published.  This is effective because people then know straight away when looking at my magazine that, that specific actress is going to be filming in a new movie soon even if they don't know what film she is going to be in. I also included taglines relating to  other movies that were coming out . I found this a common thing that was done when researching into magazine front covers. I also found that the mentions of different movies that were coming out around the same time was a popular thing to include on the front of film magazines so I included the name of four movies that were also coming out in Summer like my movie. 

Evaluation Question 3 (Audience Feedback)

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

I have learnt alot from the feedback that my audience have given me and it helped me decide on alot of things. The main help I got from my audience feedback was for my magazine and I distributed this questionnaire:

I distributed a questionnaire to people living in London over the age of 15, asking them what they would expect to find in a film magazine and the ways in which layout, design and content would persuade them to buy the magazine, here are the results:

1) What do you expect to find on the cover of a film magazine?

• Bar code
• Price
• Issue number
• Title
• Masthead
• Banners

2) What is it about the layout and design that encourages you to buy the magazine? 

• Colour scheme that stands out
• Dominant central image
• No clutter to confuse you
• Clear and easy to read cover lines

3) What content do you expect to find in a film magazine? 

• Reviews
• Features
• Interviews 
• Posters

I was struggling to find out what different things that you would find on a magazine front cover and I found that  the feedback that I got back from my audience really helped. I made sure I gave enough different choices of answers so that they didn't have to think to much and all they had to do was circle the sorts of things they would expect to see on the front of a film magazine cover. I found that was more efficient then just asking them to write down what they would expect to see as they might miss things out but if the different types of things you could see were written down people would circle the things they see!! 

Rather then filling out a questionnaire for choosing the name of my film I just decided to ask people what they think sounded more suitable as I found that doing it this way would then make it possible for me to have a proper chat with that specific person and find out there reasons why they didn't like it and what sort of thing they would prefer and think would be more effective for my genre and type of movie. I really like the name that I came up with which was Its just not the same.

For the name of my magazine I wrote down these different name shown below and again just asked people to have a quick peek over them and then they could tell me what they found the most catching as I wanted to make my magazine name most catchy and the most popular name was : RHYTHM. 

1) Picture This - I liked this name because I felt like it was catchy and would catch peoples attention and although not being too in your face you would remember a name like that.

2) Star- A mainstream magazine that focuses largely on Hollywood movies, and stars in particular and the articles and reviews will focus mainly on actors rather than any other crew.

3) The movie- I feel like this name will also catch attention as the use of the word movie rather then the use of the word film implies the coverage of mainstream cinema movies rather then British intendant movies.

4) Rhythm- Although my movie is not actually a musical I really like this name because its very unique and it can just mean that your magazine has something different and a 'beat' to it. I feel like its not a bland name and its extremely catching and fun.

5) Catch up- Another name which is different an unique which implies that in my magazine you will get all the latest from the film world and find out about everything you want to know.

6) Gossip- I feel that this name is really girly and fun but as I am doing a film where a wide range of my audience is going to be girls and woman I feel like this sort of name would suit my magazine and the type of information that is going to be in it as the Hollywood world is very gossipy and fun.

I found that audience feedback and asking around is really important and definitely re assured me that the names and conventions I was choosing were correct and sounded good to different people.