Media A2 Evaluation

1. Media A2 Evaluation By Lewis Jones.

2. In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop Or Challenge Forms & Conventions Of Real Media Products? • My media products revolved around the genre that is Social realism, in particular Football Hooliganism. With my product I believe that using some of the conventions of a real media product in films with the same genre can aid my 3 products as I can get ideas to change and challenge to make my product a real contender in the same market. Such things I looked at are the stereotypical hooligans, with the way they dress and there natural attributes physically and mentally. Also were they would hang out, researching all these things help me to go forward in making my products. Using the right misc en scene was vital to all 3 of my products, in the poster as it gives much away about to what the film is about and also the magazine to help advertise the genre of the film. Using youtube to look through teaser trailers of famous football hooligan films, there were common factors amongst both, the idea of drugs, violence and alcohol were at the forefront throughout. To challenge these ideas, I thought I would include these factors but use the most common drug usage as it gives the clearest indication to what is going on. The film trailer I created included the conventions a trailer should contain for example the big establishing shot (1), and another convention is used was having texts between the shots to make my trailer long and give more information to the viewer. I challenged the way the shots were used, as my shots were longer than seen in real media products. • With my magazine, I researched different types of magazine and a lot of the conventions were the same, simplistic was seen the be the best sellers with a big main title and and a big picture. These are conventions I used, also the colour scheme was an important convention to the simplicity of the product. A convention I challenged was the writing on the magazine cover itself, as the normal convention was to have the name of the person in the picture and a little side story the way mine is is to have a big main story without a name(2) . • When it came to my poster, I followed a few conventions like having the main characters at the forefront of the poster and also the credits at the bottom another convention I used was the comment made from an outside prospective like a magazine or a newspaper., but apart from that the other conventions were not seen, for example the location of the were the picture was taken, usually in a run down area to show the lifestyle the are following. 3 2 1

3. How Effective is The Combination Of Your Main Product and Ancillary Tasks. • The effectiveness of my 3 products are not as high as it could have been, as I did not have the right links between them, like using the same characters and same locations. But the links between the magazine, poster and the trailer were in some ways effective, for example the pictures had the same sort of message, and the same sort of thuggish look the football hooligans portray. Doing the planning aided in me in many ways as I saw the conventions needed between all 3 of the products, and having the resources to do that was a big help. The way real products linked together are the locations and the same characters, as we see the location in the magazine, the poster and the trailers. But the idea of the story fitting together from these 3 products, worked well from my products as I had the goal post in the trailer, and the poster, giving the information straight away that it is to do with football and also the way the actors are dressed throughout gives of the information that they are hooligans, again using the convention of a real media product. The magazine was a way of advertising as it is getting exposure to the public, I believe that using the main character on the magazine cover with the line, “pop in for a quiet word” helps give the idea of a football hooliganism, as the famous quote is seen throughout many films worldwide. So overall I believe with a bit more time and planning I could have used the correct characters and the correct locations to make my products more effective with each other and to the public.

4. What Have You Learned From Your Audience Feedback? • When asking for audience feedback, I asked numerous people, some with liked the idea of football and some who didn’t like the football hooliganism genre. In doing this I received many comments with positive and negative feedback. The positive feedback I received was for my poster and magazine, were I stuck to the conventions as it was seen to be good usage of the conventions for example the simplistic approach to my magazine was a good success as it had been seen throughout popular magazine seen by my audience. For my poster the feedback was even better, as they liked the way I included the goal post, the 2 main characters but what had the most comments was the way the darkness on the poster gave of the impression that it was a dark side and a bad place to be in. On the other hand the negative feedback came out on top, with the idea that the trailer had little conventions involved within the trailer. The way the characters were dressed throughout was not your stereotypical hooligan, as I had a guy in shorts, were as in most films it is jeans and a jacket seen to be a football hooligans choice of clothing(1). Another convention I missed out on was the voice over which is seen in most social realism trailers, this would have been good over the top of my sound. My main feedback was to the planning as if the planning was there from the start I would have known that the voice over would of worked, the right clothing should have been wore and with more time to work on my filming, so I could go back and change aspects of the trailer. 1

5. How Did You Use New Media Technologies In The Construction And Research Planning And Evaluation Stages? • The products I used throughout the media project, were all fairly new to me. Even with this it was a big help to use these technologies, from my resource list you can see that I used such things as Final Cut Express, Photoshop, Youtube these were all available to me on the apple mac we have used throughout the project. Some of these products were only available on the apple macs, so were hard to get to all of the time. With the planning, I used such things as google and youtube to get the right conventions for my products. I used youtube to research the ideas of a football hooliganism trailer and what was involved in them, I then used word to produce my textual analysis for the trailers, and to make the ideas clear. Google was a big part in my media project as I used it many times to make certain of my ideas and to see what I stereotypes I should use. The main time I used google was to look for posters and magazines so I can analysis it. The research stage was made easy with the internet as I could check google anytime. The construction of my products was also made easy as Final Cut Express and Photoshop was at my finger tips. Whilst I had these at my finger tips, I found it hard to use the camera as I was not very confident in directing the actual trailer, but enjoyed taking the pictures as I used the planning to produce the best style of picture. Final cut Express was very easy to use once I was shown a tutorial and once the film was in final cut express.Editing using final cut was simple as the tools were easy to follow, the way you can edit the sound and have different levels of sound at different times aided the help of my product, it was then very easy to edit and make into the full teaser trailer. Photoshop was another again easy to use, as I have used it over the few years I have been studying media, as I have used Photoshop for a couple of years I have found out what sort of edits work best, as I have used it to produce magazines in the past. Within the evaluation stage, I have used PowerPoint as my main program to give the evaluation back. To gain my evaluation I had to look back through my work, and other peoples work. The main place to find that was on word press as work is kept on there. Word press is a good way of getting all the work together as it is all in one place and shows when it is used.