A2 Level Media Coursework
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our trailer; The Cultivator II conforms to the conventions associated with the horror genre. When looking at film trailers, there are numerous features that appear in EVERY production, including our own - they include...
A green screen film rating
The production company logo
Narrative screens
When looking at the horror genre specifically,
there are numerous conventions which can be
followed to make your production appear auth-
entic and representative of the genre.
One specific technique that we adopted, was using quick
cuts. This is apparent in our trailer at the minutes: 1:12 - 1:15
- at this point specifically, tension is built as the protagonist is
being chased by the antagonist and he attempts to escape in
his car - the quick cuts are used to develop a sense of pace which
is synonymous in action scenes in films of a horror genre.
When evaluating our piece, we must look towards the narrative
theory. In our production, we made candid efforts to include
Todorov's theory of equilibrium. The theory suggests that all
films follow a classic sequence - starting with calm (the equilibrium)
a disruption, a resolution and then restored calm. This theory is
applied to feature films, and as with the nature of trailers, they only
provide part of the narrative, so ultimately only some of the equilibrium
theory can be applied. With this in mind, we attempted to portray the theory within our trailer. The first notion of equilibrium in our film is at the 0:41 minute mark when camera appears to be in the dashboard of the car driving around the village. This is interrupted at 0:48 when the boot opens to reveal a corpse. This quick cut into a new shot instantly interrupts the 'calm'
Another technique often used
in professional media productions
is that of a 'cliff hanger' - a cliff
hanger is a method used to entice
the audience to raise questions
and ultimately purchase/go to see
the relevant film on the basis of
wishing to know what happened in
a specific scene
How does our film challenge media conventions?
Earlier in my evaluation, I made reference to
the short sharp cuts technique in order to create suspense and fear. However, the start of our film is a continuous news report. This technique, I believe was used well - as it allowed us to use a technique not often seen in trailers of a horror genre, while also allowing us to explain the narrative of the whole film in a short 30 second segment. While also helping build up tension via the narrative, this technique allowed us to portray further elements of the equilibrium
How Effective Is The Combination Of Your Main Product And Ancillary Texts?
In addition to our trailer, we were tasked with creating
a magazine front cover and a promotional poster...
It is clear from the two aforementioned pieces, as well as my trailer
that the film is portraying the horror/thriller genre. This is done through
the continual use of darker images, I was able to achieve this effect through manipulating images on photoshop, and the levels of white/black in each image. Every image used, darkening effects were placed on the image. Furthermore, it is apparent throughout the three pieces that the antagonist is the focus. The antagonist's face is not shown, in any piece - this was used in order to increase the air of mystery that surrounds the character, and ultimately makes the film more effective in portraying a 'scary' character. Not only did this have the mentions I have just described, it was also consistent across every piece, and ultimately allowed me to achieve my aims.
A technique we used throughout the productions, was that of a strong focus on red. Red is a colour that has the connotations of danger and anger. This fits in well with the genre of the film.
Another technique used by myself, was to keep the same logo across the promotional pieces. Not only does this give the product a professional appeal, it can become a symbol that will always be associated with my product.
Furthermore, with my logo, I used the "anarchy" sign as the 'a' in the
film title; "The Cultivator II." This anarchy sign has connotations of helplessness and chaos. This makes the logo more effective, as people will be more attracted to the film, as it clearly conforms to the horror/thriller genre.
How did you use new media
technologies in the construction
and research, planning and evaluation stage?
Throughout this stage of the production, I used a number of 'new technologies.' The one's shown above were Youtube, Facebook, Prezi and Blogger. Each provided me with a number of features that I deemed beneficial.
Youtube - a website that allows users to upload videos, and gain feedback from a massive database of members. This website was perhaps the most vital cog of my evaluation stage as not only did it allow me to show my trailer to viewers around the world, it allowed me to embed the video onto other sites such as Facebook, Blogger and Prezi - as well as gaining neutral feedback from users.
Blogger - allowed us to keep track of the production of our media piece, was a vital part of the planning and research stages as it allowed us to gain feedback from our peers.
Facebook - a social networking sites that allows me to attain feedback from friends, family and colleagues - a vital part of my evaluation stage was to gain this feedback, but I had to note that the feedback may not be as impartial as it is on Youtube etc. in which comments would be placed by users that weren't friends/family/colleagues.
Prezi - a website that allows users to display images, video and text in a way that allows an evaluation to be more effective, as specific areas of video/freezeframes can be pinpointed, without being in a generic "word processed" format.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
The feedback we recieved from Facebook wasn't beneficial,
unfortunately it was mostly from our friends and peers who
chose rather to make light of the parts that they enjoyed due which of the people in the shot were their friends, rather than the effectiveness of the camera angles, music or mise en scene.
Our Youtube feedback, however...
Was very beneficial, as the users noticed the techniques we had used...
"I liked... the quick shots of the dead!" - We mentioned earlier how we used
quick cuts to increase the pace of the film and the user has noticed this and suggested it is an effective technique.
"Baddy was scary too" - it is again clear that the techniques
we used, such as not showing the antagonists face, has had
a profound effect on the audience.
We also recieved feedback from a Year 10 GCSE
class, they suggested that the first cut of the trailer
appeared to be 'narrative' less - this resulted in the
addition of the news report and more title screens.
We were impressed that these changes were
recieved well, as shown by the comment from
"Cranlee" on Youtube, who suggested that the trailer
was "a good strong, narrative trailer."
THANK YOU FOR VIEWING MY PREZI! :]
cliff hanger - "what happens to the protagonist?"
Equilibrium = Interrupted Calm