A2 Portfolio
The film poster I created included many of the typically used conventions, such conventions included; a main image, name of the film, date of release, billing block, critics ratings, matching colour scheme.
I think the film poster does a good job in promoting the film; it uses typically used forms and conventions to provide an aesthetically pleasing image that captures the eye and presents all of the necessary information to convert a potential customer into an actual customer.
As well as presenting all of the relevant information, the viewer is left with little doubt to which genre the advertised film falls into. The extremely low contrast/dark colour scheme of the main image is typical of other film posters within the horror genre.
The Film Magazine Front Cover also does a good job in promoting the film; it manages to use and challenge exsisting conventions by combining typical features with the not so typically used forms and conventions.
I achieved this by making the front cover a 'special horror edition'. The cover has a prodominatly black and white colour scheme, typical with olden, more traditional horror related images, and has a bronze stamp informing the readers of the fact it is a 'special horror edition'.
Combine this with the relativly large section stating the featured films name, and the large central image, then I would say that this cover does a good some of appealing to fans of the horror genre and therefore does a good job of identifing the "Cultivator II" target audiance and promoting the film to them.
This gold stamp and side tabs down the right hand side contrasts with the colour scheme and makes the cover stand out more to potensial customers.
My trailer uses forms and conventions of real media products. It has a strong sense of narrative, shown in the central character (the killer), early on with help from The Hermeneutic Code and the montage of dead people, he is quickly established as a figure of evil.
The opening sequence contains a detailed introduction to the discourse of the film via the news report; this is followed by titles giving away further important details of the film (without giving to much away). This leaves the viewer intrigued, as to what will happen, therefore more likely to go and watch the film, which is ultimately the main objective for a movie trailer.
Fast cuts are used in times of action, fade to white transitions signal either flash backs or time ellipses, low angle shots empower the killer while high angle shots highlight the helplessness of the victim.
All of which are typically used forms and conventions of real media products, especially within the horror genre.
2) How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Another way in which the combination of my main product and ancillary texts show an effective marketing ploy is the synergy between them. Each of the products displays the important information i.e. the name of the film and the date of its release. My products link together well to transmit this information to any potential viewers.
I have also tried to keep a similar colour scheme of black, grey and red throughout the three products. This is again an attempt to increase the synergy and help the audience identify between the products that they are all advertising the same thing.
3) What have you learned from your audience feedback?
The process of audience feedback has been extremely helpful to me.
The methods I used to gain this feedback varied from printing a copy of the ancillary products, and showing them to a sample audiance, to posting the finished trailer on youtube.com and reading comments made by viewers.
The biggest difference audience feedback made to my work was the improvements suggested by the sample audience on the film poster/cover first draft.
As a result of the feedback I recieved I made a number of changes to the film poster, probably the most noticable change was the main image. A lot of the sample audience I showed the draft to commented on how the character looks as if he is urinating on the side of the skip, the image looks plain and the edges of the image are to clean cut.
I learnt a great deal form my audience feedback when it came down to improving my film magazine front cover, again probably the most noticeable change is the central image. The feedback I received on the central image was "The black and white gradient effect is good but i think it would look better if you could see a little bit more of the killer. The image should be smaller as well, so that the name or description of the film can be included underneath it."
As a result of this I chose a different image that allows the reader to see more of the killer as well as making space for a title, promoting the film underneath the central image.
Seeing how I had now included the Tab Side Bar onto my finished product I thought it would be a great idea to emulate some of the best features from this Total Film cover and make my product a 'Special Horror Edition'. This would provide my product with a USP (Unique Selling Point) and to a certain degree, challenge some of the typically used conventions.
To inform my target audience that this cover was in fact a special edition i decided to add a bronze stamp to the cover, acting as a puff with the text "Special Horror Edition". As well as this I also added a warped effect to the black text to symbolise the stereotypical ideology that horror films are sometimes thought of as a warped sense of reality.
This, and removing the two white bars either side of the Masthead were both indirect effects of the comment "The cover is to plain" I received from one of my audience feedbacks. It is therefore my opinion that the process of gathering and analysing audience feedback was very useful, something that i would certainly do again if i were to complete this task a second time.
The final piece of audience feedback I received was a lot more positive, and was on the subject of the film trailer.
Something I have learnt from this feedback however is that in the future if I was to do a project like this again, I would try to improve the standard of acting because during the filming process, I think our group were a little bit laid back which resulted in a less professional level of acting.
Sam Sharp
A2 Media Evaluation
Previous funding arrangement
PbR Objectives
- Block Contracts -
- Increase patient choice
- Prompt, convenient, high quality service
- Funding to follow the patient
- Hospitals paid by activity
Above is a screenshot of the comments that were left on the trailer when it was uploaded to www.YouTube.com. As you can see they were on the whole very positive, which lead me to believe that this product did not need to be changed.
The Film Magazine Front Cover also contains many of the typically used forms and conventions. For example; A main image, Name of the film, Date of release, Relvent puffs, Mastehead, Barcode, Price and Coordinated colour scheme.
Similarly to the other two products I created during this project the film trailer also uses many of the typically used forms and conventions; Equilibrium, Fast cuts, Slow cuts, High angle, Low angle, Close up, Medium shot, Medium close up, Long shot, Establishing shot, Fade in, Fade out, Diegetic sound, None diegetic sound and a strong narrative.
1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Finished Product
Draft
Finished Product
Another major change I added to the finished front cover was the tabs running down the right side of the page, this change was made due to comments of the draft being "To Plain".
I chose a side bar of tabs to rectify this problem because it was featured on a 'Special Edition' Total Film front cover that I had analysed during my research stage.
Another Piece of audience feedback that made me alter the film poster draft into what it is now, is how it was pointed out that the draft did not included any critic ratings.
I soon changed this because as I found in my secondary research, this convention is typically used because of its effectiveness, the primary research I conducted also showed a need to included critic ratings on my film cover.
To improve this aspect of the poster I took my feedback into consideration and decided to use a long shot of the killer looking down a long allyway. I also editing the picture by lowing the constrast to make it look dark / "less plain", this effect had the added bonus of smoothing out the edges of the picture, therefore making the images "less clean cut"
Cover
Poster
Trailer
Below is evidence of this synergy
Blogger.com
Google Documents
www.Blogger.com was an extremely good new media technology (website) that allowed me to present my portfolio online, via the internet.
One of the main advantages of using this piece of media technology to host my portfolio was the interactivity that could be achieved inside and outside of the classroom with sample audiences, teachers and other students, via the 'comments' feature that allowed people to leave comments on the work you have posted.
Google Documents (Docs.Google.com) was extremely useful technology as part of my research stage, when creating a questionnaire. It allowed me to create an online questionnaire instead of having to print out and distribute paper copies.
Once I had finished creating the questionnaire using the very easy to use "edit" pop out I simply e-mailed the link to my sample audience and watched the results come in on the live online spread sheet.
Below is a screenshot of what my results spreadsheet looked like after all of my sample audience had replied to the questionnaire.
Another advantage to this technology was it was very easy to organise my work because of the clear layout of the web page and usability.
Below is a screenshot showing how easy it was to organise my portfolio and manage the any comments.
Prezi.com
4) How did you use new media technologies in the contruction, research and evaluation stages?
Prezi.com is an interactive, online presentation site and during this project i have used it to create my Evaluation. At first I found the controls of this unique media technology hard to learn, however with a small amount of practise i quickly learnt how to use it effectively.
I would say prezi.com was a very useful site and something that kept me motivated during the evaluation stage due to me finding the software more entertaining to use then the usual word processing/presentation software.
Below is a screenshot of the control panel I used when creating my evaluation in Prezi.
My two pieces of ancillary text combine well with the main product. The main images on both the poster and cover have had there contrast/gradient lowered to make them look darker and more distorted, this effect plays in with one of the key parts of the trailer, the fact that the killers identity is hidden and a mystery to the audience. The central figure on each of the images is also looking away from the camera, again in an attempt to hide his identity and rise levels of intrigue.
Google.com
The online search engine played a big part in my research stage, when it came down to collecting secondary research.
This technology searched through the billions of websites and images to find examples of existing film posters and magazine front covers, for me to analysis and learn the forms and conventions used.
Youtube.com
Below is a screenshot of the simplistic, yet effective search engine
Youtube.com was another piece of new media technology that was important to me in the research stage; however I also used this technology for gathering audience feedback as well.
YouTube allows users all around the world to upload and comment on video's for free, this made it the perfect website for my to gather research on existing movie trailers, as well as posting my finished movie trailer and accumulating audience feedback on it.
Below is a screen shot of 'The Cultivator II' YouTube page.