Media Advanced Portfolio: Evaluation

1. Media Advanced Portfolio:Evaluation KCD Korede & Chanelle

2. What is the criteria for our advanced portfolio? • Our A2 advanced portfolio consisted of 2 ancillary task of which we all completed individually - film poster - film magazine front cover And a group production of a film teaser trailer lasting for 1minute.

3. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? • The genre for our film promotion package was a Gangster/Crime genre. To capture this we ensured to scenes and locations which establish the city at which the gangster activity is happening which is often used in this genre • Furthermore likewise with professional filmmakers we drew up a pitch to allow us a set mind of the storyline and detailed this further in a storyboard that gave us a template as to the clips and scenes to shoot and include in our trailer along with realistic locations and relevant props such as the gun and typical gangster attire • We preferably decided to convert to most of the conventions in terms of our film posters featuring weapons and a twist of romance with a female as well as our magazine front covers • Our trailer feature the main key characters that would easily be recognised as established actor or actresses and also within the film like real media products do. • Fast montage editing was used in order to pickup pace and the tempo of the music overplaying the trailer also assisted in doing this. This was done in order to achieve an exciting and gripping 1 minute teaser trailer that will leave viewers drooling for more.

4. Personal Input: Korede • With my film poster although I could not include an image of a female as to compliment the romance part of our storyline. I instead chose to connotate romance with the red tone of the gun while also connotating danger and havoc. • The angle at which the focal image is taken is from a low angle giving emphasis on the main character making him seem of power and high dominance talk less of him main role in the film. • The critical acclaim give the poster a sense of worth and accreditation. • A similar colour scheme was used in respect to my front cover of my magazine. • Brief eye catching sell lines are listed in bright (not overpowering) colours likewise with existing magazine front covers. • The typical conventions of barcodes, issue (and date), price and website are not ignored in my current edition of ‘Snap Shot’ • The name of my magazine ‘Snap-Shot’ likewise with existing film magazines such as Total Film and Empire makes it appropriate as a film magazine as it suggests something related to film or moving image.

5. Comparison between my work and real media texts. • On the left is a poster from Casino Royale- one of the films from the James Bond Trilogy. Although this film is a member of the action thriller genre poster can easily be taken for a film under the gangster crime genre. • On the right is my Film poster Representing our Film “Armed With Love”. Although I did not intend to replicate this poster after creating my poster I now found this poster and to my contentment I pleased to find that an existing poster had similar qualities to that of my poster. • SIMILARITIES • Adjustment of colour or effect of whole image. • Low angle of main character • Credits are placed between in order to block any important features. • Perspective shot with everything in the background seeming less significant. • The gritty locations are elicit of gangster lifestyles.

6. Comparison between real media texts and my work. • SIMILARITIES • Similar colour scheme – red/grey/white/black • Removed background from focal image. • Both main characters are wearing smart attire- white shirt and black tie with top coats. This gives off the mafia look. • Exclusives at the top and bottom of the page. • Include other film titles • DIFFERENCES • In Empire the focal image is snatched directly from the film, I couldn’t do this as the quality of the image would have been affected. • The other sell lines include images • Most my other sell lines such as ‘Street Kings’ and ‘Ultimate Gangsters’ and are related to the gangster crime genre in order to maintain consistency

7. Personal Input: Chanelle

8. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? • Our main product and ancillary texts work correspondently well together as we ensured that we featured the same characters (cast) throughout as to avoid confusion and maintain consistency. • Along with this our ancillary texts created an expectation of an overwhelming film to be produced of which theme the trailer completes this idea with great filming angles, non-diegetic music as well as diegetic music, settings, lightings.

9. Personal Input: Korede • Keeping consistency is key for the whole production package to be effective of which attributes I believe I have kept to by keeping the same cast, storyline and props. • The gangster crime film genre typically consist of gangsters in tux/suits, leather gloves and having possession of large sums of money all of which characteristics can be found upon the main character on my poster which is also featured in the trailer as Andrew Simon is featured at his own personal pool table which symbolises wealth. • Throughout the trailer (the red writing of the bar) and both my poster and front cover have glimpses of red can be found which conotates romance and at the same time danger and havoc. • The main sell line that brings “Armed With Love” into the lime light is “Time Talks, Money Walks, He Calls The Shots” these snaps of familiar phrases alert the reader that a powerful person is being spoken about from which follows the name of the main character- Andrew Simon. Seeing as Andrew Simon is the key character as he is the main voice on the trailer I purposely made him the only person in the focal image of my poster as well as my magazine.

10. Personal Input: Chanelle

11. What have you learned from your audience feedback? (Pre-Construction) • To obtain information from whom exactly our target audience would be we carried out primary research by questionnaires. • From these questionnaires we were able to establish who exactly preferred Gangster/Crime films by age, gender and if needs be ethnicity. We were also able to understand the typical convention expected by the audience to feature in Gangster Crime films such as money, seductive female(s), fast cars etc. • To our amazement a vast majority of the respondents knew very little of British Film Directors so in my (Korede) magazine I purposely chose to include this my front cover directors such as Danny Boyle and Shane Meadows’ names can be found across the bottom of my front cover.

12. What have you learned from your audience feedback? (Post- Construction) • On Tuesday the 20th of April we invited some students and teachers from our Sixth form to view our work and discuss on the effectiveness of our ancillary and production tasks. • We were all very pleased with the responses with everybody clearly identifying that all our pieces of work were related to the gangster crime genre • Korede’s feedback: -“The red gun on the poster allows the audience to immediately grasp that the storyline is not simply crime and gangster activities.” -“The free giveaway in the magazine is very enticing and as a fan of the gangster crime genre I would definitely purchase this magazine” • Feedback on the trailer was exceptionally positive with people saying it is a worthy gangster crime film. The audience also picked upon the voice over at the beginning of the trailer saying how it is classic and very effective.

13. What Media Technology did we use? • Camera • Camera- Recorder • Internet • Adobe Photoshop/Arcsoft Photo editor (softwares) • Adobe Premiere • Tripod • Microsoft Publisher, Power Point (on the Computer)

14. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? • RESEARCH: the internet allowed us to carry out secondary research into existing films from the genre, the highest grossing film, the most popular, iconography. More importantly with the internet we were able view existing trailers, see film magazines and film posters to comprehend what are the expected conventions. The information we gathered we were able to set them out presentably unto Microsoft PowerPoint, Publisher and Word document formats. • PLANNING: With the aid of Microsoft Publisher were able to easily manipulate the arrangements of our ancillary tasks without ruining our total composition before placing them unto photoshop/photoeditor. Before taking our official photos to be used in our ancillary texts we first of all experimented with the camera by taking pictures of different settings and random objects from alternative angles and lightings by doing this we were able to become familiar with the camera settings and also we were able to trial different styles of photography so we could get an idea of what we wanted to feature in our final production • CONSTRUCTION: well with Photoshop/photoeditor we could edit our images and fonts on our posters and magazines while the camera we were able to take the pictures in the first place. • EVALUATION: for the evaluation Microsoft power point enables us to be able to edit, arrange images and be creative with the presentation of our evaluation in terms of colours and images while the camera recorder we are speaking into and presenting to means we can get an instantaneous feed of us presenting our portfolio.