Final Evaluation

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

There were many things that I learned when researching other film trailers which I wanted to apply to my own. The first thing that I realised was the variety of styles you could use such as taking a whole scenes from the movie but editing it down slightly, using the reactions from an audience watching the whole film or a classic trailer with lots of smaller clips edited together. I chose to do the smaller clips together as I felt that these trailers tended to be more successful in giving the atmosphere of horror as well as it not being as restricting as two long clips.

I then used the structure of this styled trailer to help develop the structure of my own. I found that that with these kinds of trailers, they all had roughly the same pattern. It would start off quite calm, with longer shots, possibly commentary and calmer music and gradually the shots would be cut shorter with the music would become much more intense and upbeat.

I did the same with my own piece. I had two main music tracks of completely different moods. The first being a very calm track although still gave a sense of horror to my genre although subtle. The second track was louder, stronger and had more of an action feel to it. The edits in the second half matched the beat to the music which therefore made the cuts very quick.

Another thing I took from my research is the things you will nearly always see in a trailer. This is the titles and dates. I decided to add them in the same order as most f the trailers I researched in (this being after the first complicated action). I also decided to add an extra title for additional information to the story itself to give it a realistic sense to it (this being the ‘Dorset England 2009’ title). As well as these, I added the image at the very start explaining the certificate of that trailer.

One thing that I avoided doing that I found to be in the majority of the trailers I looked at is including clips that revealed too much of the main horrific parts I would expect to be in my film. I felt that most of the trailers I researched into gave far too much away and I wanted mine to have a bit more mystery to the ghost.

For magazine cover, I made sure that it looked as professional as possible and added everything that my chosen magazine cover had on it. Empire Magazine was the one I chose so I therefore coped the same structure so had a small circle with an article title, faint grey lines to separate some titles and a plus sign. Other things that I added are the usual stuff you would see on a magazine so the price, bar code etc.

I made sure that mine consisted of four main colour like nearly every magazine would do with these colours reflecting the genre of my film as well as blending well with my main image. The only thing that I think I did not do well when comparing to the products I researched into was how dominant the picture was over the texts. Normally you would have the picture overlapping the Empire title however; my picture was not big enough to do this.

For my poster, I had researched into three different types. I looked at one that had been photoshopped and looked very complicated, a simpler poster with only a small image and one with an image that had been taken from the film. I used aspects of each by taking a very simple picture, Photoshopping it slightly to blur the image as well as making the lighting much brighter and taking this image from a clip in my film.

I then added the usual things you would see on a poster such as a release date, title, additional lines and information about directors, editors etc. After adding all these aspects it looked much more professional.

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

When planning all of my pieces, I wanted to make sure that all three had the same dark look to it as well as having the ghost as the main focus. When looking at the complete pieces, I feel like I have fulfilled that aim. Each piece has a dark look to it, whether this is through lighting (for the film), the image being black and white (for the magazine) or the background being black with a very focused light on the main image (for the poster). Although I wanted the main focus being the ghost, none of the images are the same. The lighting, colour and shot size varies in each of my pieces so they still look unique.

However, although getting the images and colour right seemed to be successful, when It came to the fonts, this did mess up this combination slightly. As the title on my trailer varies from the one on the magazine cover and poster, this mixture doesn’t quite blend as well as id hoped.

But although the fonts may have altered from piece to piece, the magazine cover and poster still went well with my trailer. They reflected the same genre of my trailer as well as giving the same dark atmosphere of the setting in Captured. The thing that made these pieces blend so well with the trailers is the fact that they are screen shots of the film itself, although they have been Photoshopped slightly. I think this is the main reason why I feel my pieces, as a group, work well together.

How have you created a brand?

This also helped me create my brand. When researching hand held camera films, one of the most common advertising methods seemed to be screen shots. This seemed to be the same as mine although mine had some small edits using Photoshop to alter the colours or sharpness. Another aspect of my images that helped create a brand was the use of the ghost. As the ghost comes right up to the camera in the trailer, I felt that I could use this in my other pieces therefore using the ghosts face as a brand.

The font, although not the same in the trailer, helped create a brand on the poster and the magazine cover. I tried to make them as similar as possible, although some parts of it appear different such as the width of the edges or the colour. I would have much preferred all three fonts to have been the same on all of my texts as this has interfered with the brand I was trying to get.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

One point that was made on the audience feedback was something that I was continuously worried about during my filming. This was the lighting issues. Because I filmed at night, torches were the only option I had of lighting. In one comment, it mentions that it is sometimes difficult to see what is going on, although it helps create the feeling on unknown. I was hoping that the lack of lighting available would give something similar to this feeling so have learned that this has been successful. However, I am disappointed that the lack of lighting had become a problem for my audience.

Another thing that I set out to do has also been brought up in the comments. As I wanted to second half to be more intense, I added a more upbeat music track which one commenter said gave a ‘sudden adrenaline rush’ so I know that this has worked.

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

There were many media technologies that I used throughout my work. The first and most important was blogger. This site allowed me to upload everything I did towards my pieces such as research, planning or my final pieces which helped me get a sense of what I should be doing next and what I have already done as well as being able to upload regular updates of the progress that I had made. Google documents allowed me to be able to upload files onto this blog by using hyperlinks in my updates so was able to scan drafts of scripts or story plans and upload them onto my blogger.

For my filming, I used a hand held camera with one or two shots with the tripod to keep it steady. This camera was fairly straight forward and needed no adjusting to suit what I was filming as the story in my film needed a shaky, amateur look to it. Having a hand held camera helped me to move around quickly with my actors to get the shots I needed.

When editing, I used Adobe Premiere Pro CS4. Using this editing software rather than windows movie maker allowed me to cut much more precisely using the razor tool as well as being able to cut from a preview bar into the main timeline which was a huge time saver.

One problem I found using this technology rather than the simpler one was the transition effects were much more difficult to add on. Although Premiere Pro allowed this effect to be much more precise in its length, it took some time to adjust to how much fiddling around you had to do. The main thing about Premiere Pro that made all this fiddling worth it was how I had three visual time lines and three audio timelines. This allowed me to mute some areas where I only wanted music or just the shot and also allowed me to include voice overs.

I then uploaded my final piece onto YouTube. Not only was this website good for uploading my film onto but it also allowed me to get the audience feedback through the comments below. I could also then link it into my blog using the embedding tool so that the video can play on blogger.