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A2 Coursework Evaluation. Naranjanpal Hare. Calder High School. 37357. 8014. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?.
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A2 Coursework Evaluation Naranjanpal Hare Calder High School 37357 8014
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? My media product (horror/thriller film trailer) uses and develops real media products in many ways. At the research at the start of my A2 production, we analyzed three existing texts, and from this I tried to incorporate some of the forms and conventions of the horror/thriller film trailers. I used the forms and conventions from the research of existing texts as I wanted to create a successful product, and also suitable for our target audience. The conventions from my research that I used were the use of suspense, and the build of something dramatic or explosive, which is seen in the majority of the horror/thriller genre of film trailers which do actually create the suspense and tension. Also sound effects are used a lot in this genre of film for its trailers, as I noticed this from the trailers that I researched. From my research, I noticed that camera work is another convention of the selected genre. Quick cuts and sequenced quick cuts are a major form and convention, as these cuts are working with the tense sound effects, the cuts that are in the forms and conventions of a horror/thriller are mostly close ups and extreme close ups, which are used to create a dramatic and scary mood. Most of our inspiration to our production was from the forms and conventions of the film trailer ‘Saw’, this was because of our location in the opening scene, which was very similar to the one in ‘Saw’, and the whole creepiness and mysteriousness is the convention that we followed from it. Editing was another convention from my analysis that I followed, when I came to edit, we used a flickering effect to the lights in the opening sequence, this effect was used to give the feel of slight confusion and anxiety. Although we used codes and conventions, we also attempted to challenge some of them too. This was when we tried not to produce a clichéd trailer, which is the typical trailer that people have seen before. I found this quite difficult as it was easy to just copy and follow the clichéd type trailers with the exaggerated conventions, and because of this, when discussing the initial brief with my partner we suggested to maybe come up with a spoof of a horror film with inspiration off the hit parody film series ‘scary movie’, I think that this was suggested as we were probably both worried that if we tried to make a horror/thriller film trailer, it wouldn’t work as well as just creating a spoof, but as I researched into the horror/thriller film trailers, my partner and I came more confident with what forms and conventions make a film trailer, so we decided that in the end, we could pull it off, if we followed the forms and conventions up to certain extent. I think that me and my partner feel as if our product isn’t clichéd as I said we only followed the conventions up to a certain extent and the fact that we haven’t given away too much of the story.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? I think that our combination of our main product and ancillary texts are extremely effective. This is because, what we used on screen in our film trailer really had an effect on the audience, as they saw the actress in our trailer tied to chair and trapped, and I felt that this is what gave a strong image and expression to the viewers, and that it would combine really well, if we used the image of our actress tied up on our film poster and magazine cover. I think that by doing this the synergy is shown between the three different media products that we produced. On the magazine cover, we stated that the magazine was part of a ‘Summer Special’, which cleverly states that our film trailer is part of the summer special, so that our film will be released in the summer, and the image used on the magazine cover was an edited version of the screen shot of our actress tied up in the chair. Our film poster had a similar image on it to the magazine cover, although we spent more time editing in Adobe Photoshop to get more of a film poster look by experimenting with editing techniques to get a dark look, this was done by adding clouds, chains and experimenting with ropes, and blending these separate images to get the effect that we did on our film poster. We also went through adjusting the brightness and contrast tool, and the levels RGB tool to get more of a grungy look to our film poster. Another effective idea that we used was to use the same text on our poster to the text from the main title in our film trailer ‘Stolen’, this was to keep the consistency and to make sure that the combination of the trailer and poster was a success, also to make it appealing to our audience and lastly but most importantly that it actually looked as real as media product could look like. What also makes our main product and ancillary texts works well together are the colours, we used the same colour tone from the main product to the ancillary texts. Also I feel myself that the film poster and the magazine cover does relate to our main product, and they are all recognizable to be in one package.
What have you learned from your audience feedback? There was so much that I had learnt from our audience feed back. To actually go out and carry out something to get audience feedback, we set up a viewing of all our productions made by the rest of the students in our class. Teachers, students and friends came to the viewing to give us feedback and to see what had been achieved. I think that it was really nice to have this viewing as we could see how far we had come from nothing to this. When it came to organizing our feedback questionnaire/sheets, we came up with something totally different to that. We used Edward de Bono’s PMI method of gaining feedback, and PMI (Plus/Minus/Interesting) is a lateral and creative thinking strategy used to make the audience make informed decisions, and to see both the positive and negative aspects of each production. So we gave everyone that turned up a handout with the PMI table, I felt that the layout of this table was very clear, and it was able to show the audience that they couldn’t just put if it was good or not, but to state what positive, negative and interesting parts of the trailer, so I felt that we were able to get a high quality of feedback from our audience. As I said before, I have learnt so much from our audience feedback, and I felt happy with my audience feedback. We had positive and interesting feedback, which really made me feel good about what I had achieved. We also the minus points, but if I were to be honest, I wouldn’t call it minus/negative, as I really felt that it was constructive criticism, but this doesn’t mean that I am disagreeing with the PMI method, as this is the method that gave us the constructive criticism and the positive points to our trailer. On the next slide are some of the comments that we got back from our feedback: “was so good it gave me goose bumps” “Outstanding sound effects’”
“Created suspense, very dramatic echo - good effect” Positive Feedback; “Makes us want to see what’s next” “Thrilling” “Well structured” “It was so good it gave me goose bumps!’” “Good mise-en-scène’” “Good length for film trailer” “Great location” “Fits conventions of this film genre” “Shocking, effective shots” “Outstanding sound effects” “Good sound effects - builds suspense up really well through music and shots” “Really good use of mise-en-scène” “Good fonts” “Really good thriller conventions” “Breathing sound effect has a really good impact” From this positive feedback, I have learnt that areas that my partner and I focused on were the sound effects, the great location and the variety of shots used, so these were the points that the audience recognized as the positive points of our production. On the next slide are the minus points that we got back from our audience.
Minus Feedback; “Maybe more dialogue needed” “Exaggerated, seemed liked a parody” “Text not so clear” From these minus points, I have learnt what I could have done to make our production better, this is when ‘the texts needs to be clearer’ was said, which I do understand why this was said, now looking back at it, as I wouldn’t have seen a problem with it before, this is same with the ‘font’ comment, maybe our font could have been clearer, but again me and my partner didn’t notice this at all. Another thing that I felt was constructive criticism was the lighting and more dialogue, the lighting comment was interesting to read, as the idea of making the lighting darker, which would have created an effect, which to us could have created a better effect never occurred to us, also the dialogue comment, I feel the same with, as I feel that the trailer would have been better more speech/dialogue to make the trailer more interesting, but I do feel however that the trailer does work with little dialogue, in building suspense and tension, and making it more dramatic. Now, I feel as if I have to justify myself with some of the points that I am not happy with, and I am happy to defend myself, when I read the comment ‘Exaggerated, seemed liked a parody’ I was not amused, because all we did was follow the codes and conventions of a horror/thriller. Another minus point that I wasn’t happy with either was the fact that someone said that our trailer was too ‘short’, because the length of our trailer was the length of a conventional teaser trailer. Also someone said that it was ‘kind of copying’, it wasn’t copying, it was called inspiration, and finding a good location to film. These are the only points that I think I can defend myself as the other points are definite ideas that we could have done to make our trailer better. “Font” “Texts needs to be clearer” “A bit short” “Kind of copying” “Maybe lighting could have been darker to create effect”
Interesting feedback; “Suspense” “Made me want to see the film” “Titles between were effective” “Car scene” “Setting, cuts, close ups” “Good use of codes and conventions” “Flickering lights effects” “Good location” “Suspense, very good location” “Great location” “Breathing sounds” “Use of music and mise-en-scène – really good” Some of the interesting comments were very similar or the same as the positive comments that we received, and what I have learned from them, is that the audience liked shocking scenes, for example the car scene, the suspense building and some people had different opinions on our titles, some people thought the titles were clear and effective, while others didn’t, and what I was really happy about, was that people appreciated the good location.
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? In the production of our film production and ancillary texts, we had used a number of different media technologies to construct the different areas of our portfolio. From the beginning we used the ‘Youtube’ (www.youtube.com) to take a look at different horror/thriller film trailer to analyze existing texts for inspiration, and because Youtube was easy to use and navigate, analyzing the existing text was a quick process, after the analysis we were then lead onto our planning, which involved us creating a project log on Microsoft Excel to record when we set out to film and plan which kept us on schedule and up to time with our deadlines. After creating our logs, and filling them every time we organized a shoot we then went onto creating a survey, as part of our market/audience research, we used www.surveymonkey.com for this, I found that survey monkey was good to use as it was easy to get started and create our survey. Our survey was created to confirm and see what our target audience wanted, and we felt that it was very important to get an insight from what our target audience expected. After our survey had been sent out, and our results had been collected, our next step was to then create our storyboard and script. Our storyboard was easy enough to have drawn on a storyboard layout, but what really struck me was scripting, although I knew how to work Microsoft Word perfectly, I found using all the keyboard shortcuts very difficult to get my head around, at first, but after a lot of practice, it got easier to work and understand. After all planning had been done, me and my partner were ready to film, so after adding each of our filming slots into our project logs, we then set out to film, using the camera and tripod was slightly new to us and was quite exiting as we were increasing our skills with using such equipment, although we did have previous experience with it before, with our mini tasks, I felt as if I was still learning how to use the filming equipment. Using the camera and all the functions on the camera, such as the lighting was pretty easy to get used to after filming and filming. Continues on the next slide
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? - Continued Throughout our whole course of studying A2 media, we used the blog website edublogs.org to keep up with our progress throughout our work online and electronically, although I had used this last year it was good that I knew how to navigate around the site, although this year, I used edublogs to a higher extent, adding in more media and making it look much more professional than last year. Through the editing process of our film production, we used Adobe Premiere Pro, and I did find this hard to work at the beginning, but we had previous lessons when we completed mini tasks that involved us starting up and learning the basics of Premiere Pro which increased my understanding and skills with Premiere Pro, so it wasn’t so brand new to me when I started editing our film on it. Through the weeks of editing, I did seem to get more and more comfortable with the software, which I felt really good about. After we edited our film production, we were then to move onto our ancillary texts. We created and produced these texts in Adobe Photoshop, and as I was quite familiar with this software, I didn’t find it too difficult to edit, I found myself to have advanced my skills in Photoshop as I found myself going online to look for Photoshop Tutorial which really helped me increase my knowledge with Photoshop. The website that I used for these Photoshop tutorials was: http://photoshoptutorials.ws/ . I think that the last piece of new media technology that I used was probably when I had to set up my film on a projector onto a big screen, this was when we had set up a film screening in order to get our audience feedback on our film productions, and this was successful as it worked perfectly fine. I feel as if I used the new media technologies very well within our production, and that I have advanced my knowledge and skills in many new technologies, which has really taught me to challenge myself and how I work.
