MEDIA EVALUATION

JACK STREET

My media products include a film trailer, poster and magazine. These both challenge and comply with the conventions in each industry. By challenging and conforming to conventions I was able to create my products to be as appealing as possible, whilst also making them interesting to look and think about.Magazine: My magazine uses conventions such as a large main image to attract attention towards the main film that is advertised and also bring attention to the magazine itself. I also included a bold masthead that was large but was behind the main image so whilst complying to conventions it also challenge the main conventions as it is hidden behind the image. I did not include a puff in my magazine because I thought this would ruin the formal approach to my magazine cover. This challenges the typical conventions of a magazine cover as the majority of covers I have studied include a puff. The strengths to my magazine cover are that its simplistic design go well with my film and theme throughout. However I could have done more to make my magazine cover stand out like include more eye catching colours and a puff to stand out. My poster both challenges and follows conventions which creates a nice mix for a film magazine and helps me follow my simplistic 1950s theme. The white text is not eye catching but creates a classy feel to the magazine along with the smoke background this creates an intriguing simple design. On the other hand this takes away from the professional nature of the magazine cover and could be seen as being too simplistic. I tried to ensure that the magazine cover followed the class of my film trailer and would entice the audience into learning about my film.

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

In what ways do your media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?Film poster: My film poster followed the simple theme that I wanted to use across my media products. I also tried to present the initial ideas of good and evil to the audience by using glow effects on both of the characters. I used a red glow for the antagonist and a blue for the protagonist. As well as allowing me to further my skills on photo shop this gave my poster a more vibrant feel and meant that it would stand out more to my audience. This gave a slight sci-fi look to my poster however the stance of my characters along with the name of the film shows the gangster and 50s genre. I decided not to include a slogan on my film poster which goes against conventions as I believe that this makes the film poster slightly cheesy and took away from the seriousness of the poster and subsequently my film. The simple colour scheme of my poster brings a simplicity to my poster whilst also hinting at the characters roles before the film has been released. This excites the audience and along with the silhouetted males on the front creates mystery to the audience as the want to find out more about these characters.

In what ways do your media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?Film Trailer: My film trailer both used and challenged typical conventions of a film trailer. Some examples of this are the use of both coloured and black and white picture. The colour of the picture switches half way through the film which highly challenges the ordinary conventions of a film trailer, This helps to show the switch in emotion in the trailer. I followed conventions by keeping my clips in chronological order, this helps the viewer understand the narrative of the film whilst also keeping the interest of the viewer throughout the trailer. We also made clear the character types throughout the trailer so the viewer would find it easy to understand who was who. This enabled us to create a clear storyline throughout the trailer whilst also leaving room for the characters personality types to be broadened and made more complex in the film. We decided to challenge conventions with our music by using two different tracks in our trailer. This helped us to create a mood change half way through the trailer and coupled with the change to black and white gave a nice feel to the trailer. This helped the viewer follow the narrative whilst also keeping them interested throughout our trailer. If I had more time I would have made the soundtrack more complex and detailed to enable the music to have an even greater impact on the audience.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? Why do they work as a campaign?My ancillary texts and main product couple together well to create a strong campaign. I used the same style throughout all three of my tasks as this created the theme of class and simplicity which went with my 1950s gangster genre. Using a simplistic theme like this made sure the main focus was on the films contents and not on the fancy nature of the campaign, this style also fit well with the film itself as we used the same theme throughout our editing, sound and mese en scene. All three of my products create mystery and suspense which makes the audience more persuaded to see the full version of my film as they want to find out more. The magazine, poster and trailer all work together to introduce the main characters and the theme of my film. This is done so the audience get a feel for what the film is about whilst also being introduced to the main characters and themes of the film.

What did you learn from your audience feedback? For our audience feedback we asked three of our target audience three different questions, this gave us useful answers for any improvements we could make.

Questions one: What were the strengths of our film trailer?

Question two: What areas could we improve on?

Question Three: Does our film campaign make you want to see our film?

What did you learn from your audience feedback? From my audience feedback I learned that the clarity of my trailer could have been clearer as well as making the characters intentions clearer for the viewers. However this is where we feel our film campaign worked well as the film poster and magazine cover worked well together. If we could do this again we would ensure that all of the characters intentions were clear across the board. We also learned that we could have implemented more subtitles or a narration in our trailer to clarify our characters intentions, thoughts and feelings throughout the trailer. We learned that our sound, music and edit worked well to convey our genre and narrative. This is due to the fact that we kept the simple theme throughout our trailer and ensure that the edit and music gave two clear impacts and emotions. The main thing that we discovered in our audience feedback was that we could have made our narrative stronger and clearer by adding narration which we would have done if given more time. We also learn that we did not have to use dialogue to still show some of the characters intentions.

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

We used media technologies in a number of ways during our film campaign. Initially we used word to create questionnaires for our target audience. This helped us get an idea as to what the members of our target audience looked for in a gangster film. We then moved onto computer software such as photo shop, Imovie and garage band. Photo shop was used throughout our campaign to create our poster and magazine covers. I used an Imac initially whilst also installing photo shop on my HP laptop so I could work from home. After my poster and magazine cover was finished me and my partner moved onto Imovie to edit the footage we took. This footage was taken on a smart phone which enabled us to film at 4K picture quality which is higher than any camera we had at our disposal, This enabled us to make a higher quality film. This footage was then edited on Imovie which we found easy to use thus enabling our film to be edited more sharply. Our sound track and effects were put together using garage band which helped us have all our sound in one place. This sound was then transferred over to Imovie where we uploaded our film onto youtube.