Evaluation Question Four

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

 When thinking about the different ways in which I could present my work, I considered many different blog sites that I could perhaps use. As a class we were advised to use Edublogs, but having used Blogger the previous year for my AS project, I was already familiar with how it worked in terms of customisation and embedding codes, etc. I decided to use Blogger once again for these reasons. Through the use of Blogger I was able to give my blog a certain aspect of personality and make it aesthetically pleasing to look at through the development of my project. Blogger additionally allowed for me to organise tags so I could link posts with the different stages of my development and place them into tabs for research, planning, production, etc. This makes my posts much easier to navigate through and much more structured. Throughout my entire project I used multiple ways to present and display my work and I was always looking for new presentation sites to use and different ways for creatively showcase my work.

During the research and planning stage of my project, I focused on visuals and creative ways to display paragraphs of writing and make it less heavy to read. I used various different websites, including emaze, Google Slides, animoto, Prezi, slideshare, livebooklet, PowToon, visme, bubbl.us and Scribd. I also created different iconography boards and together all of these sites enabled me to show and display my work creatively and in a variety of different ways. When presenting presentations, I also used Microsoft PowerPoint but as I was creating so many presentations, I didn’t want to be restricted to just PowerPoint so I therefore used sites such as Google Slides, Prezi, visme and emaze which allowed me to create more personalised and interactive presentations. Sites such as animoto and PowToon enabled me to create short videos that I could add music, photos and text to so I could give visuals across my blog in what my film will look like, etc. Bubbl.us was a site that allowed me to create mind maps and spider diagrams easily and I presented my various ideas for a plot on this site. Overall, I feel as though because of the use of multiple sites on my blog made my research and planning stage effective and presented creatively.

The production progress of my project I created my two ancillary products, discussed and considered props, actors and costumes, additionally this is where I began the filming process of my trailer. When discussing what actors, props and costumes I would use, I displayed in similar ways to how I did my research and planning (using sites such as Google Slides and emaze). When creating both of my ancillary products, I created them on Adobe Photoshop CS4 which is a professional software that many advertisers use to create posters, magazines, etc. I also used this software in my AS project to create a magazine front cover and I believed it to be successful and professional looking. I felt that if I wished to create a professional looking poster and magazine front cover, I had to use this software to do so. In regards to filming my trailer, I used an iPhone 6 to film on; at first I was cautious of using this device as I thought that the quality wouldn’t be high but I found quite the opposite and made the iPhone 6 my main device to film on. I also decided to use a ‘selfie stick’ in order to film scenes clearly and not hand held.

Once my film trailer was finally finished, it was time to edit it. I firstly researched into the different video editing software I could use: Windows Movie Maker, iMovie, Adobe After Effects and Sony Vegas. These are all video editing softwares that were accessible to me and will all allow for me to create a professional looking trailers with colouring effects and transitions. I decided to download the 30 day trail for Sony Vegas Pro 10 and used that for editing my trailer. I found this editing software easy to use in the sense of cutting scenes, adding overlays and creating transitions.

Overall, in regards to media technologies I made sure I was not limited to only a few presentation sites and I constantly kept up to date with new websites I found. I used media technologies to my advantage and made sure that I used multiple different presentation sites to present my work, also using software that is up to date with competition film companies since I decided on using professional software. Through media technologies, I have been able to give a creative and personalised spin on my project and been able to display it in multiple interactive ways.

(795 words)

Evaluation Question Three

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

What have you learnt from your audience feedback from alltimejas

Having a clear idea of your own target audience is a pivotal component to securing an audience for the final product. When creating any media product, it’s important to know the audience and the profiles of who will be viewing and consuming the product. So before I really began a firm idea of what type of film I wanted to create, I disturbed out a questionnaire on Google forms. I sent this questionnaire out on my various social media sites in order to reach as many people as possible. I received over 50 responses.

Audience feedback is crucial as it’s a way to find out what the audience likes, what they dislikes, what they would like to see, etc. This creates a certain type of interactivity between the creator and the consumer and refers to the use of an audience response system. This interactivity is an excellent way of increasing the attentiveness of audiences during the media product’s release and will be a good way of gathering data from the media product.

These questions includes those that would allow for me to create my demographic profile so to create a target audience. Because I disturbed my questionnaire on social media websites, it may be slightly biased as mostly young people use these platforms and therefore may be the only audience that could have gave responses. With this in mind, after a week or so I collected my questionnaire results and from these results I was able to create an image from my desired target audience. I decided that my target audience would be from the ages of sixteen to twenty five, male and female and within the C2 category.

Also from my questionnaire I was able to see which title from audience liked the best. The choices were: ‘D3AD FIV3’, ‘Detention’, ‘In The Dark’, ‘The Shadow Room’ and finally ‘When In Darkness’. The overall vote for When In Darkness was 34% (17 votes). In this case, audience feedback was crucial to my overall product, since it would decide the name of my film and also allowing such a big decision to be in the audiences hands, gives much more audience identity to the film. From using a questionnaire, I have learnt of the important of audience feedback and how firstly knowing your audience is important. Knowing what scares them or what keeps them on the edge of their seats also has its advantages, as it will provoke an audience reactions and is what keeps films successful.

Overall, I believe that my audience feedback has really shaped my media product into what it is. From my audience feedback, I was able to choose a title that my audiences could identify with, my characters were all of similar ages to my audience and additionally I kept a balance on the gender in regards to numbers, three males and three females, which corresponds to my target audience who were also 50/50. My audience feedback was crucial to my overall product and I learnt the importance of knowing what your audience likes and dislikes and incorporating these aspects into my media product.

(518 words)

Evaluation Question Two

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

EVALUATION 3

With the combination of my main project task (the film trailer) and my ancillary texts, I believe it makes my overall product was much more reachable to wider audiences. In order for the overall product to become successful, I needed to link them all together and keep a constant theme running throughout all three of the products. Creating this so called ‘link’ is so my target audience will know in a spilt second that they all are in association with ‘When In Darkness’ and keep them interested and informed of my film.

My chosen genre for my film was thriller, so I was determined to keep a running theme of thriller through the main and ancillary texts. To do as, I needed learn and understand the conventions of thriller and found that identity is an important aspect of thriller. I researched into the thriller genre and first discovered the different sub genres within thriller, these included psychological, supernatural, spy, crime, conspiracy, political and horror thrillers. Thriller is described to be a very flexible genre; it’s daring and tended to be made my independent companies, films are aimed at much more niche audiences and therefore gives filmmakers a lot more creative control over the final product.

In my poster, I wanted to communicate thriller conventions. I did this by editing the image to create a distorted, holga effect. The image gives the impression of a distorted, perhaps even confused identity. I did this because identity is a key aspect to my film, about teenagers who all have a different identity and social background. The use of a holga effect ran through onto my magazine front cover, where I also used the effect alongside a distorted texture. I believe that this is most effective because audiences and consumers will be able to identify my film from others.

It was important for me to tie in my film trailer along with my two ancillary products so to use promotional opportunities to my advantage. I did this by placing a focus on my characters in my trailer, both main images on my ancillary products are primarily of the characters and my trailer encompasses individual shots of all of the characters. I believe that this was effective in regards to attracting my target audience. Since my demographic was both males and females of the ages 16-25, my audience would be able to identify with the characters as they were of a similar age. Additionally, showing my characters in the setting of school, which is where my audience will also identify with in terms of day to day life.

(433 words)

Evaluation Question One

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

livebooklet.com

At the very beginning of my film trailer project, I explored the various existing media products and from this I collected an idea of the different forms and conventions of existing film trailers. I focused on three film trailers, all from different genres, in order to get a solid idea of what audiences expect to find (in terms of conventions) when clicking on a video for a film trailer. I selected The Regression, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and The Maze Runner and I analysed these three trailers and picked out key similarities. Although the three films were all from different genres, overall they all communicated a gripping and tense plots with action scenes playing alongside equally dramatic music that build up throughout the trailers. In both the Maze Runner and Harry Potter, there was definitely a much more firm focus upon visuals in the film (perhaps due to both films having been heavily filled with special effects) as opposed to any diegetic dialogue from the film themselves, this leaves audience unaware and questioning what possibly could happen in the film and what could play out. I found this personally powerful and gripping and from early on in the project, I was really determined to use this in my final product.

I decided to go with a thriller genre, since they are above the most gripping films and have overall the best story lines. A thriller’s general conventions follows that of Todorov’s Narrative Theory of Equilibrium, where the beginning the hero is shown at an equilibrium, where they are content and happy with their life. This then leads to a disruption in the equilibrium and disrupts the happiness and content of the hero. I applied this theory also to my film and is evident in my trailer, where there is a clear divide in the equilibrium and the disruption of the narrative. This was one convention that I followed in my media product, because I believe it to be effective and much more relatable to audiences. In my story, it’s based in a school location which also reflects my target audience demographic profile of all being at school/higher education age and above, meaning that my characters having an equilibrium, content life at school reflects my audience in this way. Thriller also tends to include plot twists and loneliness and isolation is a challenge that characters tend to face. This again reflects my story, the plot twist being (unbeknownst to audiences) that the head teacher, Coren Vincent, is the murder and villain to my story. But this plot twist was not evident in my trailer and will leave audiences wondering whom the identity of the killer may be.

Through the planning and research stage of the project, I dived further into the various forms and conventions of real media products, for instance the types of characters that are used in films. Vladimir Propp’s character theory for instance, with suggested that in every narrative there are eight types of characters. Although this theory does apply to many existing films, doesn’t altogether apply with them all and many real media products choose to disregard or challenge Propp’s theory. It is often argued that a lot of the most successful films are those that choose to challenge certain conventions.

One aspect I was certain on challenging was in terms of the portrayal of female characters. According to Propp’s theory, a female character may fall into the character of the Princess (needing to be saved by the male hero, a prize for the hero, etc) and I definitely wanted to challenge this theory and make the main character female and turn the stereotypical passive female character into the strong and assertive female. Thus, the character of Veronica Calder was born. One example of a successful strong female lead is the 2001 film adaptation of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. She was character that went against all the stereotypical female characteristics and a female who took part in physical conflict and being the independent character who fights better than groups of men. I wanted to mirror this unconventional, strong women in my trailer in order to create a strong representation of gender in my trailer.

In terms of development, I focused mostly on representation. One of the representations that I felt needed to be developed was bisexuality in films. This is a completely under-represented/misrepresented sexuality in film and in the media in general and there have been very little positive bisexual representations in film. One example of a positive representation includes Lisbeth Salander from The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo who critics raved about and labelled her a bisexual, feminist hero that appealed to a large range of audiences and helped to make the film the success it was. Because of this, I created the character Billie White, a bisexual who is outspoken and tends to express very realistic views about the world and society itself. I believe her to be the mastermind to the group in the film and is a brilliant character in terms of representation in regards to the development of sexuality.

Overall, I have used, developed and challenged forms and conventions successfully, and to my advantage. I have followed conventions in terms of narrative, because it’ll allow for audiences to identify with the equilibrium within my media product and perhaps allow for them to put themselves in the characters situation through the media product. I developed the conventions of representation by putting on a positive spin to the bisexual character, as films have a tendency to paint bisexuals in a not so positive light and Billie is a character who is definitely not shown in a negative light. Through the trailer she is shown to fight, a character determined not to give up and not afraid to speak her mind. Finally, I challenged many stereotypical representations of women in film and Propp’s theory by creating diverse, assertive females who were in no means passive and submissive. I feel like this is important, since there has been an recent increase in people who are interested the equality and representation in regards to feminism in the 21^st Century and people are growing terrified of having a screaming female in films and want to see them fight. I feel like challenging conventions is important, because when following conventions, it’s very possible to predict what is going to happen. But when challenging conventions, it leaves question and a mystery of what may happen next.

(1708 words)

When In Darkness - Official Trailer

Here is the completed trailer for my film, When In Darkness.

Tester Video For Trailer

Here is a tester video for my trailer, in order to test the quality and running of the video after rendering it. I decided to use the programme Sony Vegas as it has allowed me to be a lot more creative in my trailer, in terms of overlays and the video effects that you can simply drag and drop into the project. Overall, I feel as though I selected a very professional and effective software to edit my trailer.