Evaluation

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

For my coursework all three separate areas of my coursework task, my trailer, my website and my poster developed, challenged and used all of the conventions of real media products.

My teaser trailer did this in a number of different ways, the timing of my teaser trailer challenges the normal conventions, as a teaser trailer typically lasts around 60 to 90 seconds; mine however is shorter and lasts 32 seconds. The reason for my decision to challenge the 'normal' timings is because I believe that our trailer is substantial enough to full fill what we originally wanted to achieve, which is a trailer that will attract an audience, generate hype and make people want to see the film. I believe that by creating a 32 second trailer will not bore an audience when they see it and it will in fact entice them to see the film. Our teaser trailer does in fact "tease" an audience and shows everything that we wanted it to show without revealing the whole storyline. However, it does establish the storyline of the film, just enough so that people can understand what is happening and are not confused.
My teaser trailer used the normal conventions of informing an audience with information relating to the film. It shows an audience that the film is "coming soon" and tells them the production institution "CBMA Productions". We chose to place the institution at the beginning of the trailer and the added information at the end, developing the conventions and adding a different twist on to what normally happens with most trailers, as this is what normally occurs in a full length trailer and not in a teaser trailer.
My trailer uses the convention of establishing characters and showing a brief insight into character profiles. This is important as an audience relate to characters and so if they do not see them then they will not be interested in seeing the film and watching their story continue. In our trailer an audience can sympathise with Helen the mother, as she has lost her child and is grieving because of this loss. Sorrow and despair often attract people to see films, as an audience feels sorry for a character and want to see what happens to them. In our trailer we have tried to briefly introduce the characters without revealing too much about them, this allows a brief opportunity for an audience to identify with them.
In our trailer we tried to stick to the stereotypical conventions of a horror genre trailer, as this is what people identify horror to be like, we did this through the types of colour we used. We used darkness in our scenes and shadows to try and imitate the normal "scary" feel of a horror film. We also used dark, mysterious music with a heavy baseline in order to incorporate a horror aspect into our music, I think that our music works extremely well with our trailer and adds to the "scary" feel of the trailer. We also used text on the screen which is normally used in some trailers and acts as a guide to the story and explains what is occurring.
We tried to use a conventional horror film setting, which in our case is a big old house; this created the scary ambiance we wished to create. We also shot the driving scene at night and on an abandoned road again adding to the whole ambiance we wished to create.
The main props we used in the trailer was a knife as the murder weapon, this has been used in horror films gone before ours e.g. scream; however in our case we challenged the norm by using a young girl as our villain, as stereotypically young girls are sweet and innocent.

My poster also challenges, develops and uses the conventions found on "real" media products.
On my poster I have included a main image, which is the most dominate thing on the poster and will attract the most attention. I have challenged the norm of using a picture as I have manipulated my image and have not used a still from the actual film like many posters do. I believe that my image is extremely effective and creates enigma codes as to how it relates to the film, however it is a very scary image and this ties it to the horror genre. Just like a real film poster I have used bold, attractive writing revealing the title; this will attract people and also advertises the film clearly which is the main job of the poster. Challenging the normal conventions I chose not to include the actors names boldly on the poster, I did this as I thought that the names of my actors were irrelevant as they are not known and normally the reason promoters put the actors names on the poster is to attract their individual fan base to go and watch the film.

My website uses a lot of the forms and conventions of "real" media products and so I have challenged, developed and used a lot of them. Firstly there is the inclusion of the film trailer on the website, this has been put on the homepage and it is the first thing people will see when they go to our website, a lot of websites do this and it is a very effective way of marketing a film and reaching a bigger audience, as the Internet is the most used source of information in the world. By using this convention I too am attracting a bigger audience and broadening the amount of people being reached. On my website I decided to develop the use of different pages and create a range so that there is something for everyone. This includes, a gallery of pictures, film synopsis and character profiles, and a merchandise page. For my website I have also continued the stereotypical horror colour scheme of red and black domination, however we changed it slightly on our website to give it more of a dated feel, as this adds to the mystery of the film.

I think that all of my products successfully develop, challenge and use the traditional conventions of "real" media products.

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

Both the two ancillary texts and my main product combine extremely effectively in order to make a successful over all product. All of the tasks compliment each other nicely, the ways in which they do this is, both the poster and website include elements of the trailer, the website having the full trailer displayed on its home page and the poster having an image from the trailer used as its dominant image. Also to link the tasks I have used the same colour scheme, especially for the poster and website, the dominate colours of black and red come through, on the text and the backgrounds of the text. The colour scheme also extends to the trailer, through the red text, the black flashes and the darkness created through filming, all adding to the "scary" elements of our horror genre.
The pictures used over all of the products also link them together, the picture used for the poster is a manipulated version of a picture used on the website, and the website picture is used as one of the flashes of the doll during the trailer.
An obvious link making the combination of the tasks effective is the title. This is used quite clearly across all of the products, and only varies slightly with text style on the poster and website. However the colour is the same on all of the products. As well as the title the production logo also appears on all of the products except the poster, as I did not feel that the actual logo itself was suited to my poster.
The main prop; being the China doll, is used in and on all of the products, it is used as the main image on the ancillary texts, however in the main task it was not used as much as would have been liked. However if we were to re-do our tasks this would be changed and the China doll would play a much bigger role in the same, making a clear inter textual link.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Throughout this task I have established that the audience play a key role in everything that I would produce, as I am in fact producing it for them, and so if they do not like it, then the products are not valid and should be changed until the audience do like them.
While completing these tasks I have had to correspond with my audience often in order to gain regular audience feedback, I used primary and secondary methods of gaining information. I also used the triangle of dependency, where the audience, institution and text all influence each other. In my case the audience definitely influenced the type of product and genre of product I created. I asked friends what they would prefer and by doing this I generated the idea, that a horror based teaser trailer would in fact generate the largest audience. The institution will influence the audience due to society and changes in society, and the text will influence influence the audience, as some of the scenes may not be to everyone's taste and so they may choose not to watch it, as they may find the fact that we portray a young child as a killer disturbing, on the other hand they may sympathise with the scenes.
I undertook 2 main types of primary research to find out audience feedback, questionnaires and a focus group. By using primary research I directly found out information from my audience and was able to manipulate my products to what they particularly wanted. Another type of primary research i undertook was focus group, this allowed my target audience to provide me with feedback on the plot of my film and suggested alternatives in order to make it more attractive to an audience.
I also undertook secondary research by looking at the codes and conventions included in horror films and trailers. I tried to follow the majority of the codes and conventions as this is what people expect to see. I followed most through all of my project; however some had to be changed due to personal taste and practicability. The spiral effect is very effective when using feedback, as it is continuous feedback which leads to the continuous corrections of the product. Applying the spiral effect is a good way of communicating with an audience and to make them feel involved; it will also ensure that the text will meet the requirements and expectations of the target audience, therefore creating a successful media text.

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

IT in today's society is massive and plays an extremely important role in everyday life. That it why is has played such a massive role in the construction, research and planning of my products.
In all of the stages I have used a blog to document what I have done, inform and evaluate my products. The easy use of the blog has meant it has been easy to organise my work, making it easily accessible for anyone wanting to view my work. By using blogspot.com i have been able to do this successfully, on the site I was able to edit certain things like the colour scheme to add personal touches.
In the construction of my work (the teaser trailer), I used a JVC video camera to film all of the footage i needed. I then uploaded it onto an apple mac and using the Imovie software i was able to edit extremely successfully my scenes and create a finished piece of work. When creating my logo, I used an image and then edited it using "paint" and then inserted it onto the trailer. I was also able to add songs and sound effects using the Imovie software. The software I used was extremely easy to use and I believe that our film was finished to a higher standard due to the technological advancement of the software.
I used a free website program called wix.com to create my website. It allowed me to create things from scratch, and put my personal touch on the website e.g. allowing me to upload pictures in order to create a gallery. It also allowed me to use a feature known as e-commerce, which allowed me to create a merchandise page.
To create and edit my poster I used Adobe photo shop, which is a very complicated editing suite, it took my a while to come to terms with how to use it, but i think that the quality of my picture shows that I did in fact manage to conquer that element of it. However i did struggle to import text and this aspect of it did not turn out how I would normally have things.