Throughout my entire coursework piece I been continuously using media technologies to further develop my work to that next level. The construction of my coursework would be nothing without media technologies as all my work has been obviously uploaded to this blog. Blogging is the key programme I have used to present all my found knowledge and experiences to you and is key because it has the ability to intertwine so many different forms of media into it, blogs give us the option of embedding sound and movie clips into our actual posts rather than just being reliant of a link working for example and give us that much more freedom when it comes to being creative with what we present. It also helps to keep all our research and media organised into different posts and sub headings if we so choose, before our coursework used to be in coursework booklets where we used to have to have our final products put separately onto a PowerPoint or disk to be able to show them and have our work in a booklet to show physically, this makes things so much better as by using blogs we can keep all our work in 1 much better more effective place making things so much easier.
During the research stage of my coursework I used media technologies to gain a good understanding of just how teaser trailers work by looking at a number of different genre styles to see how they differ from each other. I also looked deeper into how different genres of film differ from each other and why certain audiences like certain genres of film. To do this I mostly used YouTube to watch examples of existing teaser trailers where I can easily interlink there videos in with my blogger account and therefore the posts I make giving me so much more freedom when it comes to doing research into my thriller genre and presenting it back on my blog as it means that I can physically show you what I am talking about rather than simply describing what happens in the video and writing about it. I also used search engines like google as google is one of the most advanced search engines and most popular to help me get a wide variety of research into different genres before i decided on my own.
During the planning stages of my coursework I used media technology to look at many different magazine front covers and film posters, I did this by looking at film magazine websites like EMPIRE magazine where you can see thousands of their magazine front covers aimed at different genres of film to see how they present their picture and titles together to give a certain effect and so that I could break them down to see how exactly they make their magazine front covers look like magazine front covers. I did the same when it came to looking into existing film posters but this time used google again to see how magazine front covers and posters interlinked with each other when they were made for the same film. I did this as I wanted to see how they made this work as I had to do the exact same thing with my task.
During the production stages of my coursework I used an apple MAC and the editing software Final cut pro to edit my work, this software makes editing very simple and straightforward and allows you to upload your footage straight to YouTube from this programme rather than having to render it and save it on you computer then go to YouTube and upload that file, it cuts out the middle man so to speak saving time. This programme comes with a variety of different sounds and edits that I do not have available to me using a more basic form of editing software such as iMovie. Final cut pro also allows for not destructive editing, so it does not permanently destroy footage once you edit it like iMovie does. This means that if you make a mistake it can easily be corrected.
For the evaluation stages of my coursework I uploaded my final product onto YouTube and posted the link on my facebook profile where I was able to get a variety of different opinions on my work as feedback on what my target audience thought went well, what did not go so well and how effective it was on them, I designed my own questionnaire in the description of my facebook post and let the comments be my feedback. This method of gaining feedback proved to be very effective as I was able to post my actual final video into my facebook post so my target audience were free to See my end product and comment on it whilst they were watching it. This idea of again websites being able to intertwine in with each other makes doing tasks like this so much easier to pull off.
In conclusion without media technology I would not of been able to create such an effective final piece, the freedom I had research wise to look into what made other simular porducts effective and what did not gave me a far clearer understanding of that I wanted my end products to look like and had a direct impact on them. I used a wide variety of different media technology throughout the whole of my media project such as search engines, youtube, facebook, final cut pro, editing software, photoshopping programmes for my titles and my ancillerys and my blog itself and I have used all of these to create a high quality effective final piece that I am very proud to call my own.
Monday 9 May 2011
Combination of main product and ancillary texts
I think that the combination of my main product and ancillary texts work very well, what I have are a very effective final teaser trailer that does a very good job of enticing the audience into wanting to find out more about the final film its self which is fantastic. My teaser also adheres to many of the different codes and typical conventions of teaser trailers and the thriller genre to give me a real life, quality looking final teaser trailer that I am proud of, the many different ways in which I have achieved this have been explained in my evaluation. These are intertwined with my ancillary poster and magazine front covers that both look again very life like and look like actual film posters and magazine front covers.
It is very important that each of my products are designed to either compliment or look very similar to each other so that when it comes to distributing them that the target audience makes the link between each of them and notices that they are part of the same product. Each of my products are effectively marketing tools that are there simply to make media companies money, therefore this reliance on recognition that my teaser trailer, magazine front cover and film poster are all intertwined as one is crucial to the successful sale of my end product.
To do this I decided to focus on the recurrence of the same styled trailer title featuring in all 3 of my products, clearly showing the audience that they are part of the same product. I have also made my main character feature in each of the texts to again reinforce that they are part of the same final product.
Magazine front cover: With my magazine front cover I decided to keep the mis-en-scene the same as my teaser trailer, the dark lighting eerie looking alleyway in the background just to add to this repetition on theme to make you associate the 2 products. I made space for the title of the magazine as well as many other subheadings that scatter the page. It have been designed very carefully to make it look like any other film magazine front cover and in my opinion looks like a real magazine front cover. Craig is posed in a much more casual/less hostile position with his iconic leather jacket removed, as if he is willing to talk to the magazine, reinforcing the exclusiveness of it whilst still making it look like he is in the movie rather than just an actor posing.
Poster: With my magazine front cover I decided to go for an action shot of my character as most film posters do, action shots are designed to make the audience that see them want to watch the actual film so having the main character posing looking bad ass with a gun with the subheading 'they made this personal', along with the low to high angle shot of him making him look dominant all adds to this end effect I want to create when presenting my poster to the public. In conjunction with my teaser trailer this poster does what my teaser does not, it reveals the main characters face which if you have already seen the teaser trailer and are wondering who he is this is great to fill in the missing gaps of information. Its as if my ancillaries act like pieces to the puzzle of my main text.
Here I have shown The combination of my main product with both the ancillaries:
It is very important that each of my products are designed to either compliment or look very similar to each other so that when it comes to distributing them that the target audience makes the link between each of them and notices that they are part of the same product. Each of my products are effectively marketing tools that are there simply to make media companies money, therefore this reliance on recognition that my teaser trailer, magazine front cover and film poster are all intertwined as one is crucial to the successful sale of my end product.
To do this I decided to focus on the recurrence of the same styled trailer title featuring in all 3 of my products, clearly showing the audience that they are part of the same product. I have also made my main character feature in each of the texts to again reinforce that they are part of the same final product.
Magazine front cover: With my magazine front cover I decided to keep the mis-en-scene the same as my teaser trailer, the dark lighting eerie looking alleyway in the background just to add to this repetition on theme to make you associate the 2 products. I made space for the title of the magazine as well as many other subheadings that scatter the page. It have been designed very carefully to make it look like any other film magazine front cover and in my opinion looks like a real magazine front cover. Craig is posed in a much more casual/less hostile position with his iconic leather jacket removed, as if he is willing to talk to the magazine, reinforcing the exclusiveness of it whilst still making it look like he is in the movie rather than just an actor posing.
Poster: With my magazine front cover I decided to go for an action shot of my character as most film posters do, action shots are designed to make the audience that see them want to watch the actual film so having the main character posing looking bad ass with a gun with the subheading 'they made this personal', along with the low to high angle shot of him making him look dominant all adds to this end effect I want to create when presenting my poster to the public. In conjunction with my teaser trailer this poster does what my teaser does not, it reveals the main characters face which if you have already seen the teaser trailer and are wondering who he is this is great to fill in the missing gaps of information. Its as if my ancillaries act like pieces to the puzzle of my main text.
Here I have shown The combination of my main product with both the ancillaries:
Sunday 8 May 2011
Evaluation of my teaser trailer
I believe that my teaser trailer uses a range of different teaser trailer conventions to make it effective and look real, I made sure to keep the same font of the title screen 'Vengance' so that it effectively linked in with my ancillary texts. The MPAA title I used are used in most teaser trailers, as films generally come out in the US first I thought it would be appropriate to use an approval screen from the MPAA rather than the BBFC as it helps to make my teaser look realistic.
I made the man that got attacked look like a thug in the way he dressed and walked to hint at the audience that he is not just an innocent man being attacked for no reason, if he just looked like an innocent bystander then it may of made me audience develop a negative prejudgement about him which I don't want. I wanted the audience to think about what was going on in this clip, to make them wonder who both men are and why Craig is attacking the thug.
I used the crucial typical convention of character conflict to make my teaser work effectively, the attack scene was part of the conflict, but only a sneak peak of it as the audience can tell that he was effectively provoked into this attack for reasons that they don't know, using an enigma code like this is very effective as it makes the audience ask questions like why is he attacking him. The titles I used effectively act as a catalyst to propel this question in the audiences mind, by saying 'how far would you go' and 'when you are their only hope' it tells the audience that he is not just some nut job that likes going round kidnapping people, that there is reason behind his attacks. It also helps to make the audience empathise with him by proposing those questions, it makes the character look like he is just an every day person like anyone from my audience that has just had something terrible happened to them to which the question proposes to my audience that maybe they would do the same thing given his situation. This effectively establishes the characters in my film to my target audience. This effectively introduced both the protagonist and one of the antagonists without even showing the protagonists face which is exactly what I wanted to do. Not knowing who the main character is a very effective method to use as it makes the target audience want to find out, I do give subtle clues as to who he is by showing the back of his head (not a very good clue i know) and by letting the audience hear his voice with the use of a voice over over the title screen. This makes my target audience more active as after watching my teaser they are likely to want to find out more about the film to find out who they mystery actor is, creating some sort of hysteria about the film.
A thriller film would not be such without thrills, so I had to make sure that my audience got thrills out of watching my teaser trailer, otherwise it makes my entire product redundant. I made my teaser thrilling to watch by making the most out of all of my target audiences senses, making the pace of editing flow with the change in flow of the beat of the music, I believe this made my audience pay more attention to my final piece as it made it more aesthetically pleasing to watch. I used flash effects during the attack scene where white flashes came up to represent flashes of adrenaline that the attacker was having, I thought that this worked very well at adding emotion to my piece that my audience could then relate too and feed off his emotional pain, it shows the audience that he is emotional about this attack almost as if it needs to happen for him to overcome an obstacle.
I made sure not to reveal too much about the storyline of this film through my teaser trailer, I gave subtle clues to it with the use of the 2 titles 'how far would you go' and 'when you are their only hope' to explain the attack scenes, that there is someone that needs to be saved and interrogating this thug is key to getting necessary information to find them. Although I do not directly tell my audience about what is going to happen in the story looking back at my consumer feedback I can see that it pointed my target audience in the right direction. The majority of people could see that someones life needed saving and that this man had one of the pieces of that puzzle. Making my audience on some level forgive him for committing a necessary evil so to speak, even though he commits at least 3 crimes here of assault with a deadly weapon, kidnapping and grand theft auto the audience still see him as the good guy through the use of these title sequences, I was slightly sceptical as to weather this technique would work at first but it made sense in my head so I decided to go with it and am glad that I did as it payed off.
Sound is used effectively throughout my teaser trailer to set the mis-en-scene, the sound starts out slow and has bursts of bass, I made sure to use this soundtrack to my advantage by making the pace of editing change with this music, for example when Craig draws the tire iron the beat of my music comes in to emphasise this, adding tension to the attack scene. The teaser starts out silent which is typical for a teaser trailer when the MPAA approval title comes in, the sound then starts as the paramount ident comes in and we hear the first beat of the bass in my soundtrack, this combination of sound and editing makes my teaser more aesthetically pleasing and makes my target audience focus more on my trailer, it also helps the teaser flow much smoother and adds to the professional quality looking finish I have been hoping for. I continued this editing technique, making the bassy beats match up with key action codes such as when Craig draws his tire iron making my audience again focus on this and again when he hits the thug.
The date of release I chose for my teaser trailer would be typical for a thriller film, since October is usually associated with Halloween, the time of year when most people are seeking thrills this would be the perfect time to release a film such as my one as it would cater to not only action thriller film fans but also horror fans to an extent as they are far more active at the cinema during October. Teaser trailers are released around a year before the production comes out so if it were to have been released at the start of my A2 year then this would be perfect timing as it would run for a year. I used another typical editing technique in revealing my release date where the title of the film comes up first then the date comes up afterwards, making the audience first read the title of the film then read the date after.
I made the man that got attacked look like a thug in the way he dressed and walked to hint at the audience that he is not just an innocent man being attacked for no reason, if he just looked like an innocent bystander then it may of made me audience develop a negative prejudgement about him which I don't want. I wanted the audience to think about what was going on in this clip, to make them wonder who both men are and why Craig is attacking the thug.
I used the crucial typical convention of character conflict to make my teaser work effectively, the attack scene was part of the conflict, but only a sneak peak of it as the audience can tell that he was effectively provoked into this attack for reasons that they don't know, using an enigma code like this is very effective as it makes the audience ask questions like why is he attacking him. The titles I used effectively act as a catalyst to propel this question in the audiences mind, by saying 'how far would you go' and 'when you are their only hope' it tells the audience that he is not just some nut job that likes going round kidnapping people, that there is reason behind his attacks. It also helps to make the audience empathise with him by proposing those questions, it makes the character look like he is just an every day person like anyone from my audience that has just had something terrible happened to them to which the question proposes to my audience that maybe they would do the same thing given his situation. This effectively establishes the characters in my film to my target audience. This effectively introduced both the protagonist and one of the antagonists without even showing the protagonists face which is exactly what I wanted to do. Not knowing who the main character is a very effective method to use as it makes the target audience want to find out, I do give subtle clues as to who he is by showing the back of his head (not a very good clue i know) and by letting the audience hear his voice with the use of a voice over over the title screen. This makes my target audience more active as after watching my teaser they are likely to want to find out more about the film to find out who they mystery actor is, creating some sort of hysteria about the film.
A thriller film would not be such without thrills, so I had to make sure that my audience got thrills out of watching my teaser trailer, otherwise it makes my entire product redundant. I made my teaser thrilling to watch by making the most out of all of my target audiences senses, making the pace of editing flow with the change in flow of the beat of the music, I believe this made my audience pay more attention to my final piece as it made it more aesthetically pleasing to watch. I used flash effects during the attack scene where white flashes came up to represent flashes of adrenaline that the attacker was having, I thought that this worked very well at adding emotion to my piece that my audience could then relate too and feed off his emotional pain, it shows the audience that he is emotional about this attack almost as if it needs to happen for him to overcome an obstacle.
I made sure not to reveal too much about the storyline of this film through my teaser trailer, I gave subtle clues to it with the use of the 2 titles 'how far would you go' and 'when you are their only hope' to explain the attack scenes, that there is someone that needs to be saved and interrogating this thug is key to getting necessary information to find them. Although I do not directly tell my audience about what is going to happen in the story looking back at my consumer feedback I can see that it pointed my target audience in the right direction. The majority of people could see that someones life needed saving and that this man had one of the pieces of that puzzle. Making my audience on some level forgive him for committing a necessary evil so to speak, even though he commits at least 3 crimes here of assault with a deadly weapon, kidnapping and grand theft auto the audience still see him as the good guy through the use of these title sequences, I was slightly sceptical as to weather this technique would work at first but it made sense in my head so I decided to go with it and am glad that I did as it payed off.
Sound is used effectively throughout my teaser trailer to set the mis-en-scene, the sound starts out slow and has bursts of bass, I made sure to use this soundtrack to my advantage by making the pace of editing change with this music, for example when Craig draws the tire iron the beat of my music comes in to emphasise this, adding tension to the attack scene. The teaser starts out silent which is typical for a teaser trailer when the MPAA approval title comes in, the sound then starts as the paramount ident comes in and we hear the first beat of the bass in my soundtrack, this combination of sound and editing makes my teaser more aesthetically pleasing and makes my target audience focus more on my trailer, it also helps the teaser flow much smoother and adds to the professional quality looking finish I have been hoping for. I continued this editing technique, making the bassy beats match up with key action codes such as when Craig draws his tire iron making my audience again focus on this and again when he hits the thug.
The date of release I chose for my teaser trailer would be typical for a thriller film, since October is usually associated with Halloween, the time of year when most people are seeking thrills this would be the perfect time to release a film such as my one as it would cater to not only action thriller film fans but also horror fans to an extent as they are far more active at the cinema during October. Teaser trailers are released around a year before the production comes out so if it were to have been released at the start of my A2 year then this would be perfect timing as it would run for a year. I used another typical editing technique in revealing my release date where the title of the film comes up first then the date comes up afterwards, making the audience first read the title of the film then read the date after.
Overall I believe I have made a very effective end teaser trailer that uses a variety of real media conventions to give it a quality looking finish and I am happy with the end result.
Audience Feedback
To see what some of my potential consumers had to say I posted it onto my youtube account and onto my facebook profile along with a small questionnaire to see what they had to say, here are my restults:
My results show that from the small amount of people that did watch it that the vast majority of people that did watch it, liked it. Even with the one comment saying that thriller movies aren't really her thing but if they were she would definitely want to watch it, which is good to know. Everyone that commented said that the trailer made them want to watch the film which is fantastic! this means that my teaser trailer has done exactly what I wanted it to do in intriguing my target audience and making them want to watch the rest of the film. There were a few comments on the use of sound which is good as they picked up on my use of it meaning that it made them pay attention to my teaser, editing the footage so that it matched the rate of the music made my target audience pick up on this easier as the change is music is also shown visually. When I asked them what they thought the story was about from watching the teaser trailer most of them were pretty close with their guesses, considering I did not give away any significant story lines and only gave small clues I am glad that it set them in the right direction and gave them an accurate rough idea of what to expect in the film its self. Finally looking at the overall ratings I got for the final product on average I got 8-10/9-10 which is an awesome score, I am very happy with the results and can see that I have made a good quality teaser trailer from them. I have received many positive comments from my target audience which tells me that I have done a good job at catering to their tastes and making them interested in my product.
This test obviously isn't 100% reliable as it was posted on my facebook page where only my friends can see it however I received a range of valid opinions on my product which is exactly what I wanted. Overall I think that this questionnaire tells me that I have catered very well for my target audiences wants and needs as this teaser trailer makes them want to watch my film.
Final Ancillery Piece - Magazine Front Cover
I think that I have made a very effective quality magazine front cover, it looks very lifelike and uses traits of other magazine front covers to do this. I have the magazine its own made up title of 'Movie Weekly' aswell as its own logo, price and tagline to make it look as real as possible. Because this would be a movie magazine I added other subtitles of film articles that would interest movie fans aswell as 'exclusives' on many new thriller films that are coming out soon. I kept the same movie title font and colour 'vengeance' as well as its own movie subsitle 'is finally here' many magazine front covers have this so I wanted to include as much of this as possible with more reviews and exclusive movie content relating to the movie below it. My main character has been posed to look like he is in a interviewing stance but still keeping is movie poise. I edited this photo using http://www.picnik.com/
Final Ancillery Piece - Poster
I think that I have made a very effective poster, it looks very lifelike and uses traits from other posters to achieve this, I have also linked in my AS film 'Infection' to this poster to show it was made by the same director. I used http://www.picnik.com/ to edit this poster and designed the title of the movie using one of the preset fonts aswell as the names of the actors and the tagline 'they made this personal' giving the audience another clue about the movie. I used a low to high angle shot to make him look very dominant as well as making him face the camera straight on, I make him very central and symetrical on the poster to make it again look like a quality shot poster. I took the shot down a rough looking alleyway and took it so that there was nice looking green foliage to the right with light coming through on his right to show his inner goodness and the darkness is shown on the left where it looks darker and dirtier, the shadowed half of his face also reinforces this as well as him holding his gun on the darker side.
Ancillery Research & Planning
To make my own Ancillery texts to go along with my teaser trailer I have looked at existing posters and magazine front covers for existing films and annotated them, here is what i found:
Posters:
Posters:
From looking at these posters I can see that the main hero/anti-hero is very central to the poster, that they are seen as being more dominant then everything else with the use of high to low angle shots, that the Title of the film is nearer the bottom of the poster and that the actors that feature in the film usually have their names somewhere on the poster. When it comes to making my own poster I will have to keep these points in mind. I will take a picture of my main character in a low to high angle shot of him to make him look more dominant and add the title and other featured actors names using a great editing website called http://www.picnik.com/
Magazine front covers:
From looking at these magazine front covers I can see that the main characters are very central to the magazine, only one character is shown and that they seem to be in a more interview friendly pose. The title of the magazine front cover is usually at the top and the title of the movie is usually underneath the main character of the film with a tagline underneath the title. Many other sub stories that tie in with the film are spread over the page to give their target audience more to read. When it comes to making my own poster I must keep these points in mind. I will have my a picture of craig in a more relaxed but still action shot by an alleyway and add the titles and other effects using a brilliant editing website I have found called http://www.picnik.com/
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