evaluation

Evaluation

Pop goes the Weasel

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenges forms and conventions

of real media products?For this media project I decided to make a film trailer. My trailer follows many

of the conventions you would find in real media products, such as using an age rating card and producer logo at the start of the trailer. Another convention used is to locate the title of the film towards the end, so the entire trailer is in effect building up to it. The use of these conventions allowed me to make my trailer look like it was 'mainstream', which would help attract my target audience of 13-18 year old teenagers. My trailer doesn't really develop or challenge any conventions, as I figured these changes would be too drastic and complex to pull off and for it to work.

For another part of this project, I had to compile a ‘digipack’ that would run along side my trailer, comprising of a Poster, Magazine cover and DVD cover. All three of these items were based on actual counterparts, as I researched DVD covers and posters for them. This means that they follow the basic conventions of real media products, but there are still a few things that separate them. For one, on my poster, I opted to keep it all one solid colour with only one image, making sure that the viewer would only look at key points of the poster, rather then being distracted by an array of special effects.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenges forms and conventions

of real media products?My DVD cover however does not develop or challenge any real

media conventions, as I found it difficult to find ways to advance them. I used the basic conventions such as placements of logos and titles, age ratings, fine print etc, but I found it difficult to find anyway to change this to portray it sensibly and still achieve the same effect.

My final product, the magazine cover, follows the basic layout of a magazine with having the masthead at the top, a picture in the middle, and other text items around the outside. I challenged basic media conventions by opting to use one picture at an angle, that does not obstruct the entire cover. I chose to do this as it draws peoples attention to it more, and reveals less about my other products (as the smaller picture size reveals less background). I chose not to develop the media conventions on this as people would’ve found it confusing compared to other magazines, so I stuck with using a simple layout.

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

The combination of my trailer and my ancillary texts (Poster, magazine cover and DVD cover) work in a perfect harmony to try and promote my trailer sensibly, but also provocatively so people would be interested.

Linking your main product to your ancillary texts is a key part to the success of anything. This is because some viewers of your target audience may see one product and not the others, therefore it relies solely on that one product to entice the viewer to watch the film. A good method of doing this is to keep all the products similar, using the same colour scheme and font etc, that way each has a similar effect on the viewer.

A key link between my products is the colour scheme. Throughout all three I have predominantly used black, red and white. The contrast between black and white makes my font stand out, and the red is used to highlight key areas for the viewers attention to be drawn to.


Below are pictures of my Magazine cover and my Film Poster

Just briefly glancing at these two products allows you to notice the matching colour schemes, of using a white font and highlighting key areas using the colour red. I opted to use a different picture between the two of them, as I wish for them both to scare the viewer in different ways. What also has to be taken into account is that the magazine would be published by someone outside the production company, ergo, it is expected to look different. I created both of these products using 'Macromedia Fireworks', so it allowed me to easily copy the same font across as well as using the same colours.


This is my DVD cover, and as you can see, it matches the colour scheme of my other two products because this links them together. I opted to use the same picture as the magazine cover, but with a twist. I hid the picture from the movie poster in the corner, as this once again creates another link with the other products. This is all in an attempt for my target audience to be enticed by the products and the way they look the same, so that they feel like they need to watch the film.

All in all, I would say that my trailer in combination with these three products produce a marketing scheme effective enough to reach my target audience.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

After the creation of a draft product, I would ask my peers for feedback on what they thought about each product, what they liked, what they disliked and what they thought I could do to improve it. This led to me receiving overwhelming amounts of feedback, and allowing me to improve my drafts to my finals 110%.

My trailer received the least amount of feedback, with most of my peers simply commenting on a couple of editing glitches here or there, and remarks on how the trailer was too short. This was easy to fix, and after it was done, all my peers agreed that the trailer had reached its full potential in its final format, so no more edits had to be made to it.

The movie poster I created was subject to a little criticism, with most noticing the amount of blank space. At first, this was an issue, but then I turned my peers attention to other classic movie posters that use large amounts of blank space (Such as the one in the bottom right of this slide). Other criticisms included that the font was very simplistic, but once again I quashed these concerns as I explained to them as my film has a ‘childish’ horror theme.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

The DVD cover received the most feedback and criticisms, with all of my peers complaining that it looks incredibly simple, lacks any serious amount of detail and has large amounts of blank space.

The magazine cover received mostly positive feedback, with most saying it was creative and original, yet simple and following conventional methods. My idea with the cover was to make something conventional but abnormal, and my feedback has shown me that I have achieve this objective.

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

evaluation stages?Different technologies have allowed me to research, plan,

construct and evaluate my main product and my three additional products.

During the construction and research stages, I used three key products. For my construction, I used Adobe Premiere Pro CS3, a video editing program that allowed me to compile all of my content and produce my trailer. In combination with this I used Adobe Fireworks CS5, a graphics editing program that allowed me to make pictures and simple title cards. Both of these products allowed me to produce my trailer to its full extent.

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

evaluation stages?

During my planning stages, two key pieces of common software were used, Microsoft Word and PowerPoint. Word allowed me to write lists and paragraphs easily and grammatically correct, whilst formatting them in an easy manner. Both of these programs worked hand in hand to allow me to produce content that I could easily upload to Blogger, a website which has helped me catalogue and display all of my work throughout the entire production of my products.