EvaluationMedia

Rebecca Howard2270

25274 Lutterworth College

For our A2 media assignment this year me and Danny Jenno have created a trailer for our

main task, and for our two ancillary tasks have created a poster advertising the film, and also a magazine cover

featuring the film or trailer is for. The name of our film is

‘Disconnected’. Our trailer is based on the film of a young

girl who is looked after by her sister, although she doesn’t seem quite right some times, somewhat

disconnected from reality.

Question 1:In what ways does your media product

use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Shot One...

This is the first shot that is shown in our trailer; and is used as an establishing shot. We deliberately used this as the first shot because straight away the audience start asking question, for example where is she? Why is she there?When viewing different trailers for inspiration, we seen that in many of them the first shot in many trailers led to questions, and wasn't always a clear establishing shot (like a building or town etc). We developed this convention that is used by not making it obvious where the character in the shot is. We though this shot worked well by how we have chosen no diegetic speech to be used in this shot. Just the diegetic sound of the movements and also the non-diegetic sound of the music the begins to develop. The music is tense and would build atmosphere through out the audience.

ShotTwo...This titled shot we think makes a great impact on the previous and after shots. We challenged the generic conventions of a horror trailer by not only just having the film institution name come up, with music and sound effects to be heard; but we used both diegetic and non-diegetic sounds. We used the originally generic convention of the music, although added the speech on top of the title. Again at this time questions will occur from the audience. We used a professional type script, what would be said if somebody was being questioned in real life. This would also help the audience be more involved in the trailer as they could relate it to real life.

ShotThree...This medium shot is conventionally used for the same reason as it would be in a horror trailer. Especially because of the high angled shot, this makes the character looks small and much like she is weak. Because of the situation she is in (getting questioned) this shot is has been used in a way that a generic convention would normally be used. This shot is quick and precise, also with the use of diegetic and non-diegetic sound; it is effective and works well with the situation she is in.

ShotFour...This shot is used to link the two time differences together of past and present. We used specific speech to helps the flash backs make more sense to the audience. We used ‘‘just tell the truth from the start’’ as this helped the sense of a ‘flash back’ seem more realistic and obvious.We developed the standard two shoulder shot by using the flash back sense. I think that the non-diegetic sound effect used as the white wash screen appears, this helped link the two shots together effectively and professional, but still developing the original generic convention. This is one of my favourite shots, and I think is one of the most prominent and individual shots.

Shot Five...

Again this shot links two different shots together rather than just a standard transition or fade in/fade out etc. It is make to look like the audience are watching outside of the door, watching the character at work whilst there is somebody walking in the middle of both the audience and the character. We got inspiration from this from previous trailer that we had viewed on the internet at the first stages of research. Although we developed the standard convention by on the second shot after this shot we changed the type of shot from a medium shot to a close-up of Sarah’s face. This shown the emotion and disturbance on her face.

ShotSix...This medium shot emphasises and focuses on Jessica (the character in the shot) on how ‘Disconnected’ she is, this is a character that the audience would have never seen before. The deep and sudden heartbeat (non-diegetic) sound, helps this be noticed because it’s as if the heartbeat is coming from Jessica.I think this effectively and is a key shot in the trailer as it shows a disruption of what would be normal night sleep for a ‘normal’ person. This shot shows our use of lighting, and also the restriction that we had with the equipment we had. Because we wanted this shot to be dark but because of the limited equipment we were unable to get the lighting that we would have liked to get. Because of this we had to use the light from the manual source of a torch, to get the lighting effect we needed to create the tension and atmosphere. This is what the white circle is on the back wall. Although this does add to the shot this is an unusual scene. We used normal mise-en-scene to create the sense that she lives a normal life whilst being trapped with her inner soul.

ShotSeven...It think that the three text shots that are used to create the tag line...‘did she know the one she always looked after would be the one’...Each one creates tension in each way, because of the way we have edited each titled transition, from the speed of the fade in and fade out, to the pause of how long the text stays on the screen. Alike existing trailers they have titles between shots, this allow the audience to be able to understand the story without revealing the main story lines, also give questions that can be answered etc.This is what we have done with ours, we used the generic conventions although didn't challenge or develop as if we had did so it would have ruined the tension that is created.

ShotEight...We created this shot by film the character mover her eye for a minute or so and then on the Mac, when edited we used the software to speed the time up. This allowed us to get a better effect and also use a generic convention of what horror trailer would normal use in industry. This shot works well as it allows the audience to get involved with the character because of the extreme close-up that we have used, and the sudden blast of non-diegetic music that we have chosen to use when the shot appears created a sudden shock of tension and with the next black shot, only the diegetic speech it links in well together.

ShotNine...This is the last moving image shot that is in our trailer. We wanted a shot that would stay in the audiences memory, but create atmosphere at the same time. This is why we have chosen a close up of the main ‘disconnected’ character.

The look that she has given is daunting, we have developed the original generic convention by doing this and having the suspect in the shot rather than the suspect which we found was used a lot for the last moving image in a horror trailer.

Magazine fro

ntCover

We created our poster using Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0. this programme was the best to use as it enabled us to layer different images and texts etc. to give the best effect and make our magazine cover look most professional. We found the picture and even though it was a lot more glamorous than we wanted, we liked the point of view and angle from the camera. We used a similar font to what was used on the poster and on the titles in the trailer, as we thought this worked best and helped to link all three products together. We chosen to create a similar styled title to ‘Total Film’, this made our magazine looked most professional. We had taken a lot of different photos with different characters, but we had trouble with the lighting when attempting to take the final photo. Because the camera is so close to the face we found it hard to keep a good focus and quality photo and maintain the correct natural colour that we wanted. We used typical generic conventions of what is normally on the front cover of a magazine as this would make it seem more realistic.

Poster

For our poster we used Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0. we decided to use this programme as we had used it before and where most familiar with it. So we could get the most out of the programme. We found a poster advertising ‘Mirrors’ that we had really liked and had set our idea on a similar product. The first thing that we noticed was the originality yet professional style of the image that was used, and how it is used to make an effect on the audience. There are clear generic conventions that we have used for example, the film rating, release date etc. And also generic conventions from a horror poster that we have used. This is my favourite piece of work that we have don't throughout or whole project and I don't think that there is much that we can do to improve. We decided to stick with only using 2 colours for the text as this is more effective than using more. We chose this particular style of font because we think that this links the three products together more, as well as sticking with the conventions. We tried creating the image using various lights, for example a torch, although we found the when we took the photo the lighting went a tint of red; after repeated experimenting we tried using the light from a television screen in a dark room. This worked the best out of all light sources.

Shown above is our final poster (left) and the main inspiration for our poster (right). As you can see we can really gone forward with trying to get the same effect across.

Question 2: How effective is the

combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

ResearchFor our products we wanted to create them with the genre of horror, and use generic conventions throughout, although develop and challenge these also. We wanted to show this by using camera shots, camera angles, mise en scene , etc. Also fonts, images, text etc. To accomplish the we had to research over a variety of different medias; trailers, posters, and magazine covers.We watched varied different trailers one of our favourites was ‘The Hills Have Eyes’ from this we took inspiration from the transitions we used much like the quick fade in/fade out between each shot. We wanted all three of our products to look related this would help the audience understand each of the products.We researched further into how other films had done this previously. We recognised that similar colours and fonts had been used to make the product more distinctive. Another thing we found that was similar throughout the products was the images that were used for the poster and magazine and they related to a character in the trailer and used similar emotions and facial expressions to portray the similarity between them.

NarrativeWe had a clear narrative from the start of the planning

stages, this made it easier for us to know what we want and needed from our trailer, poster and magazine. Although our narrative did change; from a girl looking after her disabled sister and she goes missing, to a girl looking after to what seems to be her disabled sister although she isn't all there and eventually end ups killing her sister who has looked after her.We decided to change this when we had created our poster and because of the quality and how much we liked it, we decided to get feedback and the majority of people said that the girl on the poster looked more like a ‘killer’ rather than a disabled person. We then decided to change this for the better.

Colour, Texts, Font

Use of&& Images

Through out the making of all three products, we always had certain colours, texts, and fonts set of what we wanted to use, these would be similar throughout all three products to help them link better. We wanted to use a red, black and white colour code throughout for the text, this would help link all three together again. We choose these three colours are they all work together and contrast with each other, this way they can be layered etc.We used a font called Perpetua Titling MT for our poster and magazine, with a similar font being used for our other tasks. We choose this particular style of font because we thought it would work well with our horror genre; it wasn’t too tacky either so it looked unprofessional.The texts that appear in the trailer (our tag line) is the same of what appears on the poster, ‘DID SHE KNOW THE ONE SHE ALWAYS LOOKED AFTER WOULD BE THE ONE’ we decided to have this featured in both of these because we think that it is memorable and would help link.The images that we have used all relate back to the trailer, from different shots. I think that the poster works better than the magazine.

HowWell they all

linkI think that all three products work particularly well together. The poster and the trailer work better together than the magazine.This is mainly because of the picture in my opinion; because of the quality and how light it is compared to the poster. In every other sense I think that they link together very well; the way that we have used the font, texts, colours, etc. We have thought a lot about what we want from the products, and stuck to this throughout whilst taking in audience feedback which is what worked best.Over all I feel that we have achieved what we wanted to, yes there could have been improvements in places but all three products link together to what we feel is the standard that we wanted; matching font, texts etc to make each of them link as well as possible.

Question 3:

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Trailer...

When we had our class view our first draft of our trailer one of the things we found that the majority of people said was that ‘we told the story to much and it looks more like a short film rather than a trailer’ we took this statement into account greatly and from this changed the whole storyline of our trailer. We concentrated more on making the shots shorter, quicker and cut out a lot of what we had filmed so that it didn't drag on as much as it did before. We re-filmed a number of times before we got the final trailer that we where both happy with and proud to hand in as a final piece. This took some time and probably longer than we wanted to spend on it, but we got feedback constantly to make sure that we where doing the right thing and filming suitable shots.I have learnt that feedback from the audience is the best feedback as they will see it from the first look, and have a different opinion that me and Danny where as we have been viewing the trailer a lot more.We wanted to make the most of the audience feedback; to do this we organised screening programmes for both media and non media students. Asking them various question about our trailer about sound, transitions, camera angles and shots etc.

Continued...

We also posted our trailer onto YouTube and asked people to comment on it, so we can get feedback using different methods. This also allowed independent viewers to comment on our trailer as well. The quick fade in and fade outs we have chosen to use in between each shot where normally about 2-3 seconds long, but after allowing the audience to watch and give feedback we have decided to cut these to 1 second. From this I have learnt that using a shorter fade in/fade out it allows us to have more time to add extra shots and titles in to our trailer.Overall this worked better as it made the trailer seemed a faster pace and also seemed to allow the tension and atmosphere to pick up quicker which made the trailer more watchable and that you would want to watch it from the start and not get bored.

To view the trailer in full on YouTube please click on the

picture to transfer straight to the site.

Question 4:How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

ConstructionResearch, Planning

New Technologies throughout the

&&Evaluation Stages

It’s Learning is a programme that you can use on the internet. It allows you to link to your school; allowing you to reach school work and other information that your teachers etc. can leave to help you. We used It’s Learning at the very first stages when we started to research and plan our products. We used this to blog our progress throughout the first few stages until we moved to blogger.

Blogger is another programme that is on the internet, and again we used this programme to blog our progress throughout all stages. We had a blog each to share individual opinions, and then a joint blog to input progress and ideas that we have come up with. We are also allowed to view other class members and comments. This came in handy as we can blog any thing and upload photos of drafts so that we can see the progress that we are making.

We used iTunes to upload music and preview it before copying to iMovie to put it into our trailer.

iMovie was the programme that we used the most and came in most handy throughout the progress. This software was used to edit all of our trailer. We cut shots, added transitions and titles etc. We tried our best to use all of our ability and knowledge of iMovie to get the best possible trailer we could using these skills. If we didn't have this programme then our trailer wouldn't have been as professional as we would have been limited to what we would have been able to do and probably would have had to use a process called ’crash editing’. This is where you just cut on the tape. This would have been a lot harder and wouldn't have been as good technicually either.

We used internet explorer a lot of the time. Mainly for researching stages. This way we could access other programmes such as It’s Learning, Blogger etc. Without this programme it would have taken us a lot longer to gather research and inspiration etc. As we probably would have had to research using magazines and books. This would have took longer and also the information that we got wouldn't have been at such a wide variety. We also used the internet to promote our products etc.

We used digital cameras to take all of our photographs; for our magazine, poster and test shots at the planning stages. Although sometimes we found it difficult because of the lighting to get the correct brightness in the photos for the magazines and photos etc. Without the specific camera we have we the high megapixel the photos would have been at a less quality and this would probably have knocked marks off of our work.

Slide share was used to present our PowerPoint's that we had made, and allowed us to upload them onto our blogs. This made it easier for us to present our work using different methods.

We used a standard video recorder to film all our trailer, also used a tripod to support it although we did have some free hand filming on some points of our trailer. We could have got a better quality trailer although because of the equipment that we have at school we are limited to what we can use for our practical work.

iDVD is the software that we used to actually upload the finished trailer onto DVD. We also was able to add a professional menu style to the DVD.

This programme was used to create our magazine and poster. This was the best programme to use as using this we could show off our skills and knowledge to our best abilities. Without being able to use this programme we probably would have had to use a programme like Microsoft word or publisher. This would have limited us with the effects we can do.

This software was used to extract the sound of some of the copyright free music and sound effect that we were unable to download automatically.

Sound Cloud is a website that has copyright free music on it that you can download. Without this programme we probably wouldn’t have sound some of the music that we have used for our trailer.

We used YouTube to upload our final trailer to get more feedback from the audience. We also used YouTube to view existing trailers etc. For inspiration.

Microsoft PowerPoint was used to create a better presented Pitch and Evaluation. Without this programme my presentation would have been more similar throughout and also would be boring.

Thank

you