Evaluation

How effective is the combination of your main products as well as your ancillary texts?

All three of our products have both similar and different aspects. We purposely focused on the aspects we could incorporate in all three so that we could show synergy between them.

The first product, the film trailer, focused heavily on the opening titles and the types of fonts used. As this was the first of the three we produced we were able to be free with what we think would work best. The main focus in the trailer is the deaths of the girls and the build up to them being found. We represented them by the colour of the titles being red and white, the red symbolising the danger. Initially we wanted to show a link with the four girls in the film and our poster by showing all of the characters however, when we tried to put this into practise it wasn't as successful as we first thought. As a result of this we decided to use the second most important aspect of our trailer and the main focus of the title 'Talbur Manor' for our poster.

Therefore, as shown in the final version of our poster, we focused on the house and used this as our main image and emphasised the horror and gore of the setting.

As we did not use any of the characters for our poster we decided it would be a good idea to have the character the central focus for the film magazine cover. The reason being that film magazines usually have the central character on the cover and the main focus for that particular issue. As our influence was the January issue, Iron Man 2 was the focus with the Iron Man character on the over in the obvious costume.

The titles used throughout all three are certainly one of the main points for the synergy. For the poster and magazine cover, we used exactly the same font and colour for both titles. As both products are so visual, we thought the title would be the best way for the products to be remembered by, as well as people connecting them. For the trailer, the title was just slightly different, instead of using both red and white; we just kept the title in red. We took this decision as we thought with the suspense that had been built up at the end of the trailer, the use of red would be more shocking and would appear more dominant than white. As the titles is not that long in terms of clip length, we felt that red stood out the most and overall seemed more of a powerful colour to use. However, we did use the exact same font as we did for the cover and poster showing this to be a definite link between all three of our products and perhaps one of the parts that is most eye catching. We didn't just use the font Optima for our titles throughout our products, but also for all the rest of the information on both the magazine cover and poster such as the credits, the 'Empire' title, as well as the articles etc that were advertised. By keeping the same font, it kept all three products connected and as it was quite a simple style, everything was easy to read, especially the words at the beginning of the trailer, as these go so fast, the readability of the words were a major factor when creating it.


We also felt that we created synergy particularly through our magazine cover and our poster, by the use of simplicity. Even though we did not use the use of an image on our poster, the layout was very simply, simply just showing the house with the titles below, and the actors above. As a clear, simple image was used, it meant that we thought the poster seemed more eye catching and certainly gave out the horror feel to it due to the use of the blurring around the house which proved it to be more dominant. We did use a image of Chloe on the magazine cover but this was a simple, head on shot with very limited use of editing to it. The simplicity again in this meant that the reader was drawn instantly to Chloe and the overall image proved to be more dominant, and just by looking at it, such as the use of facial expression and the camera angle etc, instantly gave off a horror feel and was quite obvious that Chloe could perhaps play an evil character in the film.

The use of our tag line over both the magazine cover and poster keeps the link going between the products and 'Things aren't always what they seem' keeps the feeling of suspense going and make the viewer/ reader want to find out exactly what happens and exactly what Chloe does. Even thought our tag line is no in our trailer, the way the clips have been edited and titles formatted, it gives off the same idea of wanting to find out exactly why each person dies or who in fact kills them.

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


For almost every single aspect of all of these stages, we use a computer/ electronic equipment. It is weird to think how just twenty years ago, most aspects would not be possible and it is only due to the production of new technology, that our production took place. Even the parts we did on paper, such as the initial ideas for everything, we still scanned them in onto the computer so that we were able to put It onto our electronic coursework- via the use of a 'blog'. Twenty years ago, everything would have had to be hand written and you would correct mistakes by using a pen, not simply hitting a few keys on a keyboard which is the process nowadays.

We used a number of different media technologies. Whether it was filming the trailer using a camera, scanning in shot, voice recording straight onto the computer or using different programmes to get a variety of different sound effects, the use of technology was hugely influential.

If we were to think of expanding our production process, advertising would be the next major step. The Internet would be the main source to advertise on. On there you can advertise films, have electronic rating, and have comments etc, something that would be hugely important in the process. The use of the Internet for advertising means that the film production company can reach out to a global audience- people all over the world- another aspect that is hugely important as the more people they entice, the higher number of ticket sales. As the Internet is now so complex, trailers can fit the aspects of different countries such as changing the language of the trailer as well as perhaps even adapting the trailer slightly.

The types of computers around these days have advanced incredibly even since just ten years ago. We used up to date iMac computers which far more technologically advanced than just the standard computers. They have programmes such as iMovie and Photoshop. Imovie is designed to edit and product films, just as we needed to do. The recording from the camera is transferred to the computer almost instantly by just attaching a simple cable between each and the recordings are up fairly quickly and ready to edit straight away. Photoshop allowed us to create the whole poster and magazine cover on and just how you can edit pictures fro example these days is incredibly, you may upload the picture in standard colours, but by just one click on a button, you can change the whole images to red, black and white etc, a tool we found very helpful particularly when creating our poster.

The amount of resources we were custom to on just the programme iMovie was incredible. Numerous sounds, clip transitions and the vast availability of titles mean that we were able to be far more creative in our production process and each resource helped us to stimulate new ideas that would increase the quality of our trailer. Twenty years ago, we would have been lucky to just have a couple of sound effects, which would simply just be standard and such variation would not be available.

For part of our evaluation, we used voice recordings. Just a few years ago, you had to link yourself up each to a hand held microphone and had to speak directly into it before attempting the tricky task of getting it onto the computer, in good quality and finding that it is quite a time consuming task. For our evaluation we had our script, hit one button on iMovie and spoke directly into the computer, the sound was then straight away available to edit in what seemed like almost perfect quality. Just a few years on, it shows how such technological developments allow a task that once took a long time, to now just a simple task.

New media technology also means that we could produce our films with a number of different endings, following the lines of 'Paranormal Activity' which has three different endings. Ten, twenty years ago, one type of film was made, and sent out to the cinemas. By having different endings, it could entice people to come to watch the film more than once, thus showing that they see the film as a big hit, as well as an increase in ticket sales.

As we rely so much on technology for everyday things such as checking emails, watching films or connecting with people, with this rapid technological development, there of course come problems. It's scary how much we rely on computers these days and when we encountered problems such as the computer freezing, or our filming wouldn't upload onto the computer from the camera, it seemed a nightmare, something that would be such an issue ten years ago as such reliability was not major.

The use of the blog in particular powered by the Internet, meant that as a group we could transfer and share information easily. An example of this is when one of us scanned image onto our blog, the other three of us could instantly just copy and paste the pictures and upload them to their blog instantly. Another example is that throughout the production process, some people wrote up information such as one influence for example, whilst another wrote about something else, and all four of us were able to share the information really quickly and copy it onto our own blog. The use of blogger was incredibly helpful because as blogs our a relatively new way of sharing information, years ago we would of each had to write everything up by hand and it would be far more time consuming to use each others ideas but through blogger, this was an easy task.

I really enjoyed using all the different types of media technology that was available to use and gave me an understanding of the different aspects. Even thought we encountered problems with most along the way, it gave us a much wider use of the technology and helped us to use numerous typed in particular our evaluation, so we were able to experiment with what technology worked for what part of the evaluation.

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

For all of our products influences were needed in order for us to research into the features of trailers, magazine covers and film posters. By having influences we were able to notice the differences and similarities between different products of the same genre. For example, our influences for our film poster were Last House on the Left and The Eye. We identified that The Eye poster was very limited and basic but had much emphasis on the eye, which hints to the audience the central meaning to the film.



As shown in the draft drawing, we tried to design our film poster similarly to The Eye's. Within the eye we planned to have blurred out still images of our trailer around the centre pupil with an outline of the little girl in the pupil to show the action from the trailer and the central character. However, after many discussions about this idea we decided that the use of the eye had nothing to do with our film and would seem rather unnecessary.







When we looked at The Last House on the Left poster we liked the idea of how isolated the house was and the lighting that was used to emphasis horror and terror. Although the house was small on our influence poster and the title rather large, we wanted to try the opposite and make the house larger and more powerful on the poster to highlight how important it is in our film.

For our trailer we looked at three current trailers: Bruno, The Strangers and Sorority Row. We felt this was a good range of ones to look at as each had certain aspects we thought would be beneficial for our trailer and had ideas they we could develop/ build on.
The influences for our trailer have been explained in more detail on an earlier post on the blog.


My thoughts about how the whole production process went

This year i have thoroughly enjoyed working on this project and creating all three of the products. What i really liked was how different the conventions of each product are and how we could learn and adapt all of the features for our own.
Since the project we completed last year, i feel i have personally come a long way in my technique, creativity and my computer design skills on the apple mac computers. Especially as a group, we have all developed together and can work well together and have created a stronger educational friendship.

At the start of the project i feel that we were not that serious with the work we were doing and although we put alot of effort into all our work, we did not do much more outside of lesson time. However, as time went on, individually we stepped up a level and worked a lot harder to complete the set tasks. The first few weeks were spent coming to grips with the software and our own techniques and what we had to offer to the group.

The end results of our ancillary products were very good and i feel they look very professional considering we were amateurs at the process. One factor that i would mention if we were to improve on anything in our group would be the difficulty we had in group member absences. Also i feel that some members of the group participated more than others towards the deadlines and therefore, the work should be shared much more equally at the end of the project.

Overall, I'm very happy with the group and the final products we produced. I feel i have grown a lot this year in terms of media, technologies and my use of the camera and computer skills. The one thing i really enjoyed was the editing of the trailer and the photoshop process creating the magazine cover and film poster. I feel i am very knowledgeable now and i can use this for future references.