Evaluation of A2 Production

1. Evaluation of A2 Production Taytum Cotton

2. 1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products The Teaser Trailer The trailer does not follow the conventional narrative of a trailer. Because it starts with the conclusion of the film, and works backwards, intriguing the viewer, about the series of events which led the main character to be in a prison. Challenged conventions by using direct address to the audience, which is unconventional for a trailer. The could intrigue the audience, especially since it is also based on a true story, we wanted to create something to stick into the audiences head, and spook them a little into seeing the film. We have used the conventional narrative of a trailer, it contains an introduction, build up, problem, it also has a resolution, which is he ends up in prison (identified by the typical orange boiler suit), although it does not signify how this came around and why.

3. Ancillary Texts Film Magazine Front Cover The Magazine front cover, follows all the traditional conventions found on a magazine. It contains main colours, red white and black, although does contain an element of yellow, which would catch the potential readers eyes into the competition, and read on. The Model on the front of the magazine is holding his hand in front of his eyes, which des not follow the traditional conventions of the magazine, as they usually have eye contact in order to engage with the reader. Although the fact he has his hand over his eye means that he has an element of mystery added to the text.

4. Ancillary Texts This poster follows the traditional conventions of a poster because, it contains the main character, he is also the antagonist, which is common for thriller films to contain a picture of the ‘villain’ The poster contains iconography, which is also present on the magazine front cover and in the trailer, which is the pentagram on the hands, this is displayed often to increase the curiosity of the potential audience. The title and font is also the same for both the magazine and poster, to increase the continuity and make it obvious that they are linked together. The red, orange and black are also common colours, for the film. Film Poster

5. 2)How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? We made each of the texts simultaneously in order to contain some continuity throughout, such as having the main character wearing the same thing in each, in order to help establish his character. The titles for each of the ancillary texts match in order to establish continuity and to make sure they are easily recognisable to the film. I think that the combination of the products is very successful, the colour scheme is established, and they relate to the genre of the film and match with the overall tone created. Each of the products contain the main character, constantly reminding the audience of who he is, the magazine front cover makes this more ominous and eerie as the villains face cannot be seen. Although the ‘hero’ is only briefly seen in the trailer and not on the poster or the magazine cover, which is unusual, it is more often than not the opposite of this.

6. 3)What have you learned from your audience feedback? The interviews constructed to gain feedback on the trailer and ancillary texts proved that the products could be successful in attracting an audience to see the film. The feedback from the one-on-one interview I conducted was mostly positive, despite the interviewee not being interested in thriller films, she said that she might be interested in it, although never having seen a thriller film she might be apprehensive about it. From the feedback I think that next time we should make it more obvious about what the film is about and the genre, as although it is obvious it’s a thriller, the rest of the film is a mystery, which some would enjoy, although others may be turned away by this. The audience feedback found that all participants were able to identify the target audienceeasily and the genre of film, although many found it hard to hear what the killer was saying through the heavy accent and therefore next time we could perhaps use a less heavy accent, or use the actual clippings that we got the quotes from.

7. 4)How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? Research – To research our film we used YouTube a large amount, as this contains a database of almost every film trailer ever created, which in turn created a large amount of inspiration for us to create a trailer, unlike any other one we had seen, by using a direct monologue. I also used Survey Monkey, an online survey site to distribute audience surveys and feedback . Construction – A large amount of technologies were used in the construction of the trailer for obvious reasons, including: video cameras, digital cameras, and editing equipment. To edit the trailer we used final cut, which allowed us to cut pieces of film, order them, add transitions, change audio levels and add effects. We also used soundtrack pro, to create the backing track and additional sound effects such as a scream, which we then incorporated into final cut pro. Other uses of technology included weebly.com to blog our project, the internet for general research and ideas, including Google and Wikipedia. We also used Facebook to advertise for actors and we used to hold group conversations and arrange for the group to meet up, or discuss ideas between ourselves.