Evaluation

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

Below are 7 screen shots from my trailer;

1) This shot is one of the opening shots to the trailer, it instantly raises questions as to who or what is staring back at us because of the mask we question whether the person is human or something else. Plus with the anonymous voice, speaking over "Daniel, you must escape" this implies that something is instantly wrong.  The shot starts with the actor looking up at the camera.The shot is a still mid shot of the actor quite a conventional shot used in most movies when introducing a character or during a piece of dialogue. 

2) This shot is one of three identical shots used for our titles on screen. The titles read "They will hunt you", "They will capture you" and "They will kill you". All the titles are done in exactly the same way, keeping up with continuity throughout the piece. The use of the word "They" creates enigma and ambiguity because the audience is left questioning who "they" are.      

3) This shot is mid way through the trailer. This shot shows our main character running through a forest. This makes the audience wonder who or what is chasing them. which shows our characters torment and anxiety. The ghosting effect placed on the shot makes the scene look blurred and 'ghost like' this conveys the unreal feeling that our main character faces during the trailer. The sepia effect on the shot makes you wonder whether the scene is a in a dream sequence or if this is actually happened.
  

This shot shows the main character being corrupted by the symbols he's drawing. We see the main character surrounded by symbols placed all over the walls, this shows that during the course of the film we start to question the mental state of the main character. Also with the voice over "These symbols will capture your mind" the audience instantly know that something is wrong with the character and he is struggling to contain it. It also gives the audience a deeper understanding of the plot line.

The following shots above. Are from a montage of shots at the end of the trailer. These two shots show mid shots of all three characters. This is following the conventions of film trailers because this type of shot is used normally when introducing characters. These two shots flash quickly between one another and show the to different interpretations of the plot. Are they real... or are they all in Daniel's head? This is conveyed through the use of the masks (as seen in the picture on the right). Also by hiding and then showing the "evil characters" faces this makes it harder for the audience to see them clearly creating a sense of ambiguity.

The shot above is of the first real look you get of the two "evil characters". This shot is a point of view shot because, it's done as if the audience is Daniel and he's looking around the corner at the two men. This is a conventional shot used in most films and film trailers, examples of this are; looking at a clock or watch, looking at  newspaper as if reading it and jumpy shots running through forests. 

Above is a short analysis of my poster, i explain why the title is "Fallen", the reasoning behind the strange cover images and the back story behind the poster.

2. How effective is the combination of your Trailer, Poster and Magazine?

Media Q2 A2 on Prezi

  
Above is a prezi about how i kept the brand identity in all three of my promotional package and how successful i was in creating the overall image for my movie.

3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

By putting my posters on facebook i was able to gather information about how my poster could be improved and what i needed to do to make it better. On the Left is my final poster and on the Right is my draft trailer. 


For my draft poster i placed the image on Facebook and asked people to comment on improvements for the poster. There were multiple comments made such as; "I'm not sure the image is right", "the credit block is too large", "you need to include production company logo's". all of this feedback was helpful because it allowed me to identify what it was that was letting my poster down. After adding the improvements mentioned by my third party i was able to create my final draft. I change the main image from a long shot to a mid shot. I also used symbolism to identify the main areas portrayed in the movie. By making the credit block smaller and narrower, i made the overall appearance of the poster more professional and realistic.

Again by using the social networking site, Facebook. I was able to contain information about improving it.


By having experience last year, of creating music magazines for my AS Level coursework. I was able to apply that knowledge to help create a realistic magazine cover. I didn't quite get my magazine cover finished for the deadline, so major improvements were needed to make sure i got the overall magazine feel i was looking for. My feedback suggested that i changed the title of the magazine from "Out take" because this made it seem as if it was spoof magazine and was all about the behind the scenes mess ups in the movies. Not a professional magazine. So by changing the name to "Thats'a

This is my draft trailer. As you can tell there are a lot of shots that needed to be changed and edited. The end shot of the mirror at the end of the trailer was unfinished because we were unsure of how to get the desired effect. In our focus group we had feedback of many of our peers saying that it didn't show the supernatural element and fantasy element we wanted to portray. this was when we decided to change our genre to thriller instead of fantasy thriller. We kept some of the main shots with the symbols and changed the main theme to revolve around the symbols instead of a creature they'd released. Thus giving us a now psychological Thriller. 

This is our final trailer, after changing our genre, we found it a lot easier to capture the feel of suspense we wanted. It was hard to try and capture a Fantasy Thriller trailer with no CGI effects and a minimal budget. By changing our villain to an unknown masked figure this created more suspense and ambiguity in the film. After listening to feedback and listening to our target market we understood that major improvements needed to be made to ensure we captured the feel we wanted. And after showing our trailer on youtube (as seen below) our improvements were liked and we got some good responses from our peers.

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


RESEARCH

One of the main technologies used throughout the entire coursework process, was the Internet. I used the Internet for a number of different things during my research such as looking up movie trailers, magazines and posters. Linking to the Internet we used Google and Google images to search symbols and patterns we could incorporate into our piece.We also used our own common sense to look at different locations to decide weather not only the place would be safe to use, but whether we had permission to film there.  

PLANNING
During the planning stages of our piece we used stills cameras using the camera's Sony 2000 and a Cannon S3 for the location shots and snap shots during filming. this was to give us an idea of how the shots would look and for also poster and magazine images.We also used emails to share our documents between each other to make sure we kept everything together. We also used this software to transfer information from school computers to home computers this was when we had forgotten  pen drives. It was the easiest way to get documents from one place to another. We also Blogger, we used blogger throughout the entire course to help blog our achievements and complications. We used blogger as also part of our exam, by having them all on the computer, it is less paper work that can get lost by an examiner which is helpful. We also used Excel, this was to create spreadsheets and evaluate our feedback. it was the easiest place to put lots of data and to create small pie charts and bar charts of our results.

CONSTRUCTION
During the making of our course Premiere Pro was an essential part of the construction, without this software it would have been impossible to have created a trailer. This software allowed us to create an effective trailer and helped us edit and organised the trailer to look realistic and effective. After effects was another software we used to create our trailer, in this software we were able to edit our shots easier and simply. We could create effects that we couldn't have made on Premier Pro. Photoshop was again another piece of software we used to help us edit and create our poster and magazine and with having some experience in Photoshop before i was able to apply the knowledge i had into my work and throughout the course in both AS and A2.The studio and other on site facilities at Fallibroome were also incredibly helpful, the studio is a new working space that was built recently for media students and other student use. The studio involves a green screen, black curtains and a black floor and also a white canvas. We used the studio for dark shots and dialogue shots. But more importantly we used the studio for any night vision shots we needed. Because it was so dark, we could get the best result in the studio.

EVALUATION

In the evaluation stages of the course i used Google Documents, this helped me collect data and keep them in the same place. This meant that not only myself but other people could access my work and findings. I also used Google Documents to create online questionnaires which i placed on facebook and on my blog. Facebook was a big tool used during all stages of our course. Not only did it allow us to keep in contact with other members of the group. But it also allowed us to set up The Media Studies Camera Share Group. This helped us keep track of the cameras and where they were. And how to get hold of them and pick them up. Because the school couldn't afford a camera for each group. You tube also came in very useful in the evaluation stage because through this it meant we could put our videos around the world and had feedback from an increasingly large target audience. We could also gather the information quickly and use the feedback in our blog through screen shots and embedding the videos.