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

My media product develops conventions of real media text because I used the layout of Empire when designing my media product. I particularly liked the way in which the magazine combined the genre of the film with the font on the front cover of the magazine so I decided to imitate this. The film which is made the headline of my magazine is of a thriller convention so again in order to really develop the genre I decided to use a range of texts which would best compliment the genre. I wanted my magazine to be exactly like that of Empire’s, so I looked at the way in which the magazine used its cover lines and the ways in which they chose to display their information on the page. I decided to imitate the same font in which this magazine used, I liked the way in which the font complimented the magazine and wasn’t over the top in design, so as a way of creating this font, I researched the font used, using dafont..com. Red is a very bold colour and I felt by using this colour it will best draw in the attention of my readers. However I didn’t like the skyline in which this magazine used as I felt it over powered the page with too much text. Through research of my target audience I found out that they preferred visual information rather than texts on the page. I imitated the use of a strap line as I found real media texts uses this convention, this acts as a way of creating a name for magazine which will make the audience believe it is the best at what it does. I decided to use white text for the strap line because I felt it best complimented the magazine front cover and allowed me to use a range of different font sizes.

Magazine Cover Film Poster

The Empire magazine uses three columns and has the information on the two outer columns with the image in the centre, I felt this was the neatest way in which to display information. I felt that I liked the fact that the magazine had the magazine cover lines around the main image of Will Smith, this magazine and has him centralised in order to create a relationship with the audience, however I didn’t want to do this, I didn’t want to give too much of the characters away, so I blurred the image of the Red Riding Hood to somewhat create a mystery, which will challenge my audience. I felt this was effective in challenging the typical conventions of real media texts. I felt it will place my magazine front cover on a different platform and will make my magazine more interesting.

Barcodes, I have to use in order for my magazine to qualify to be sold in many different countries.

I conformed to the ways in which real media texts are created by having a masthead, in order of my audience to establish the company who have made this product. I used the colour red because I learnt that this colour automatically brought the attention of the audience. By using this colour the audience will be able to establish the genre. I downloaded the text with dafont.com again to improve the quality of my ancillary tasks as it also increases audience familiarity. I developed this convention by directly looking at Empire magazine, however in order to create my own style I decided to elaborate the “world exclusives” by making mine 50 world exclusives. I imitated the same idea as the caption in the red box because I felt the audience will feel more involved in will be more likely to buy the magazine.

In this I looked carefully at the way this magazine chose to display its cover lines, I felt that by using words such as “exclusive”, the audience will feel as though the audience will feel directly included in the magazine, which again will open the possibility of popularity for my magazine.

This I felt that the audience will feel more included, the fact they’ll be delivered exclusive information will again create a relationship between the audience and the magazine. I did this because I felt that my audience will appreciate the gossip and behind the scenes of how our main product was created, I felt that this was the right step into introducing my audience to the main product and also to merge my main product with my ancillary tasks.

I imitated the way in which the magazine advertised other films on the front cover, I felt it gave an equal balance between the use of texts and images. I challenged the way in which the magazine placed their images on the bottom of the front cover, I slanted my images because I felt this way more interesting in displaying the images as I didn’t want to just have a boring strip of images running down the magazine. I kept with the colour scheme I used which is red and white, I felt that in order to keep the continuity in my magazine I should use the same text as the one I used for my heading.

I used the magnetic lasso tool and the gradient tool to imitate the poster cover. I liked the way in which the magazine has changed the general layout of most film poster. I like the way the poster has combined images to create a composition by the use of image modes and also by image blending. I originally placed all the images into different layers, I did this so that I could merge them all together. I removed the colour from the images by converting the images to grayscale.

In this image, I looked at the way the film poster has displayed their text on the bottom of the poster. In most film poster it is a typical convention to place the text under the image. So I decided to imitate this, I downloaded a text called triple condensed RR light to make my work more professional. However in my film poster I didn’t use a portrait layout, I did this to create my own style and also to be able to be more creative with the other images and also I felt it didn’t work for my film poster so I changed it.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?The combination of my main product and my ancillary texts are effective because I had kept the genre apparent in all of my ancillary texts, as my main product is of the thriller genre I helped this when looking for texts for my ancillary texts, I used dafont.com in order to help me find the texts which best suited the genre I wanted to create. I the same text within my ancillary texts in order to again develop the genre. I took images directly from the main product and used them within my ancillary texts as a way of combining the ancillary texts and the main product. I used fonts such as FaceYourFears which I then used on my film poster to combine them together.

I had taken images from my main product in order to combine both text together, this helped to advertise the film successfully without giving the whole idea away. I did this because I felt it was an easy way of combining both texts together, I felt it was more interesting than using normal images of the actor as it would give the audience a feel of what the film will be like. I used these images in particular because in the main image I didn’t give away the identity of Red Riding Hood so I thought this will again help develop the thriller genre and also create the idea of the mystery. I used an extreme close up of the Huntsman because I was going to use this same image in my flyer as a way of combining both texts.

I again used another image from the main product , to create the idea of a mystery, I blurred the image of Red Riding Hood, I felt by doing this it will interest the audience and make them more interested in actually watching the film, I felt this was a good way of combining the main product with the ancillary texts and also the thriller genre, I did this because I wasn’t going to be using a celebrity and by having this blurred image I felt I could captivate the audience more and it will still have the same effect on the audience.

I used this type of font in particular because I felt it would combine the genre within the main product into the ancillary texts, I used this text throughout all my ancillary texts as a way of combining these products together. I have used this font in my film poster as well to combine my ideas.

In my film poster I aimed to combine my ancillary products and my main products by taking images directly from the film, I did this because it is what most film posters use. I felt that in doing this I could combine all my products together. I used these images to create the same narrative that is in my film. I connote the narrative of my main product by using Red Riding Hood the protagonist and featuring her in my film poster and main product as a way of overlapping the characters within all my media products.

Another way in which I combined my ancillary product with my main product by featuring all the cast crew in my credit quote to create audience familiarity. In all film posters the actors and cast members are featured here, I took information directly from my main product as a way of combining the images together.

Fonts overlap from my magazine cover to my poster and partly used in my video to again combine the many different media platforms.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

• I have learnt through my audience feedback that our main product was effective in the sense it included the audience and it was carefully made in order to cater for our set target audience, however they felt that the use of voice overs was distracting in the sense that they weren’t able to focus on the actual trailer. A way to improve this is to minimise the amount of voice overs we will use in our future main product. • Another criticism we received from our audience was the fact that they didn’t specific text we used as

they felt they were too amateur, a way in which we could change this to make our future products better is by carefully choosing texts which would make our work look more professional.• Our audience were impressed with the music that we used in our main product as they felt it helped

create the genre and so this was a positive and we aim to use this in any future products. • A criticism which we received which we learnt from was that the audience felt that we could have paid

more attention to costume as they felt that some of the characters were placed in contemporary costuming and others weren’t. When I come to another project, I will aim to pay more attention to costuming and how that will effect the final product. • In addition to this our audience particularly liked the way in which we combined digetic and non-digetic

sounds, they felt it made our trailer successful as it followed the conventions of real media texts. The audience also felt that we paid particular attention to the sounds we used and felt that it catered to the genre we were portraying.

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

PhotoshopPhotoshop was very important to me as I used it to develop many of my pictures, I imported all my pictures into Photoshop and then edited them, whether it being through changing the colours of the images, distorting, blurring and merging images together. In this image, I placed every single into a layer and then used the eraser tool to neaten the

pictures up. As I placed the images in, I cropped the images using the magnetic lasso tool, I then feathered the image by a 2.5 pixel, with the image of the grandma, who is placed in the middle I used a tool which converted the image into a grey scale I also did this with the picture of the male. I used the gradient tool which helped me to distort the image into the desired place that I wanted it to be in. I did this in order to imitate the snow white film poster, I liked the way that the poster incorporated many images to create one image, which I felt will be a benefit for my magazine.

I used Photoshop to create the idea of birds in my film poster, I imitated the way in which snow white film poster had created their birds. I took the bird tool which was already on the Photoshop software and I placed many birds into three layers, I then placed the birds in different size orders and facing different directions to again imitate the look of the snow white magazine, then I copied the layers into addition layers to save time and to also multiply the birds, I made some really big and some very small. I used another media platform called www.youtube.com which helped me to position my birds at different angles.

With my main image, I took the image of Red Riding Hood. I proceeded to go around the main image using my magnetic lasso tool and made a copy of the image I had selected into a different, I feathered the image using 2.5 pixel to soften the edges of the image. I pasted the image back onto the layer, I removed the images colour using a gradient tool. I blurred the image because I felt it created a mystery type feel to magazine, I didn’t want to conform to the norms of most magazines as I wouldn’t be using an image of a celebrity.

InDesignI used InDesign to create the text I will use in my magazine and my film poster. I placed all my text, using the text pallet and tool. I then imported the images into the page and then sent them to the back to come up with my final product. I did this because I could use Photoshop more to edit my images and it was simpler to do it in that fashion. InDesign was the main software I used to finalize my magazine and my film poster.

For this piece of information, I used the text box, selected my chosen font and placed it separately on the left side of the page, I also used the grid lines already on this software to make sue the text on my magazine wasn’t spilling of the page to give it a more professional look. I think decided to change the colour of the movie title to red as a way of creating a colour scheme. By aligning some text on the left and others on the right, my magazine to create columns on my magazine.

I placed these images in a different text box and then placed them on top of the other text. I did this because I felt I could control the text more and also it made my text look neater.

I placed all these texts into a different text box, I did this so I could use a wider range of font sizes and different fonts such as Triple Condensed RR light and FaceYourFears.

Firstly I created a textbox for my images, I then selected another box and changed the colour to red, I sent the box to the back and placed my text on the top. I did this because I wanted it to look like the Empire magazine and also because I felt this was a more interesting way of displaying text.

By using InDesign I was able to create a text book and a black box. The text box I used to input my text, which I did by using Triple Condensed RR light text, I then changed the colour of my text to white which created a colour scheme similar to my magazine cover. I sent the black box to the back so my text could be visible.

Within InDesign I was able to make some text bigger than others which made my final product more professional.

All these texts I placed in different texts boxes, I used a font called FaceYourFears, I changed the colour, this allowed me to create a colour scheme.

Media technologies such as slideshare and blogger particularly helped me during my research, planning and evaluation stages because I was able to use these places as a way of documenting my step-by-step progress. Within blogger this is where I would make posts throughout the stages as it will neatly display information, I used it to help me know the what exactly I had done in the different stages. However I had to first of all import my work onto slideshare and late export it into blogger, this way all my work could be documented into both media technologies, within blogger I was able to explain what each post did which ordered my information. I used other media technologies such as Google, this helped my research the different fonts I wanted to use it also helped me understand how to use different software's such as Photoshop and InDesign. Through Google I came to another media technology called YouTube, within YouTube there were video’s which explained how I could desaturate images within Photoshop and also how to combine images together. Google was important, during my researching stage, it helped me to gather substantial information, I used it to get film poster in which I analysed, it helped me to download the different fonts I will use for my film poster and also informed me about the different conventions used in a magazine front cover and also a film poster. Conclusively I used a range of media technologies throughout my construction and research, planning and evaluation stages, I did as a way of becoming familiar with the texts and how I could develop my work through different media platforms. These media technologies helped me to make my work more professional and also it developed my own knowledge of these media platforms.

Viola…….