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casehilla2media · 7 years ago

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Evaluation 4 - How have we used technology in the research, planning, construction and evaluation phase?

CONSTRUCTION

During the construction stage, I had a lot more work that I had to do in year 13 than I did in year 12. I used a variety of technology in order to complete this.

Firstly, we used a NIKON camera to take clear pictures for our ancillary tasks, which included a film poster and a film magazine. We also used this same camera to practice our filming, to ensure that it was of the right quality that we wanted and worked to the standard that we wanted. Once realising that this was all okay, we used this camera to film for our trailer. The reason that we chose this camera is because it gives a l clear image when filming, another reason is because it was easy to access. By having high quality images, this will make our trailer look much more professional and engage a bigger audience.

In addition to this, another form of technology that I used was Youtube. On this, i uploaded my test filming and also uploaded some exampled of filming in order to put this on our blog when we needed to. We had to convert the filming from final cut to quick time movie, and from there was able to upload it onto Youtube. Once our filming was on Youtube, we copied it over onto Tumbrl, in order to allow our peers and examiner to be able to access it. Using the same sites (Final cut, Youtube, Tumbrl) made it simple for us because we had knowledge on all of this.

Furthermore, I used the computer to upload all of documents, videos and sounds onto our hard drive. This ensured that everything was in one folder and there wasn’t a risk of it being lost or deleted. On the computer I used a software called Final Cut express. There was multiple things that we used this software for, such as putting our film together, editing our film, adding music and sound effects and putting transitions on, such as cross dissolve. We also used final cut for the creation of our animatic storyboard and for the production of our company logos which we made in year 12, however used them in year 13. The reason that I used final cut express was because I used it in year 12, therefore had knowledge around it and would make it easier when creating my media product as we knew how to use the program. We used the same transitions that we used in year 12 because we was familiar to it and we thought that they fit well with our genre, which was horror. The transition that we used was called cross dissolve, and we also used this in our animatic so that we could get an idea as to what it would look like on our trailer.

Another use of technology that we used in the construction stage, was photoshop. Firstly, we used this to create our two ancillary tasks, which was a film magazine and film poster. We found this software easy to use and it did not take a long time to add the image and the text to it.I thought that our film magazine and film poster looked professional. Another reason that we used photoshop is because it was easy to use and easy to stay organised. We used tools such as blur to ensure that the main image blends in well with the main image so that it looked more realistic. We found that photoshop was really nice to create our projects on because it was easy to make changes where needed when coming to the end of the final design. In order to reach our final product we played around with the software and tried out different ideas to get the best possible result.

Lastly, we used copyright free websites such as Bensound to download background music and horror sound effects onto our horror trailer. This proved more difficult to find, however in the end we managed to find the music that best fit in with our trailer and met the requirements of the genre horror.

Overall, technology is very important in the construction stage as it made it quicker and easier for us to complete. By using different tools it allowed us to complete it professionally and ensure that all three of our tasks have horror conventions in it.

EVALUATION

During the evaluation stage we had to answer four questions. These questions were ‘In what way does your media product us, develop or challenge forms and and conventions of real media products?’ ‘How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?’ ‘What have you learnt from audience feedback?’ and ‘How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?’ Writing all these evolution questions on tumblr allowed them to be more accessible as they was all in the same place and was easy to look back at. Tumblr has been a final piece of technology that I used and has been our main platform throughout my portfolio and has allowed me to post photos, videos, sound on this social platform, allowing me to express my creativity skills. Writing these evaluation questions up allowed me to reflect on our work to see what went well and what we could have done better. One of our evaluation questions, which was the audience feedback question, we decided to record ourselves saying this and place pictures the background relating to what we say to make it more creative for the viewers and to make it more enjoyable to look at, rather than just reading blog posts like a lot of my other posts.

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casehilla2media · 7 years ago

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Evaluation 4 - How have we used technology in the research, planning, construction and evaluation phase?

PLANNING

had to plan to ensure that my horror trailer meet the requirements that were needed and i used technology in different ways when planning for my media product. I used similar planning techniques to my AS work. Different ways that I planned was through doing a shot list, storyboard and script on Microsoft word. I placed this on Tumblr so that it was easy to access. I also made use of final cut when planning for my trailer by creating an animatic on final cut. The reason that i did this was to look at how the use of sound and images worked together and to get an idea of what our trailer will look like once we have fitted them together. This also enabled me to play around with final cut and get a better understanding of how it works, therefore will make it easier for me when I have to put my final media product together. It is much ore effective than a normal storyboard as it allowed me to use images and non diegetic/diegetic sound together. I also used final cut to edit both my AS coursework and A2 coursework.

I had to plan for my main task, which was my horror trailer, but at the same time I had to plan for my ancillary tasks. For my ancillary tasks I had to create a film poser and a film magazine. To plan for my 2 ancillary tasks I had to create two mock ups for each. This enabled me to look at different lay outs and designs and help me to decide on what I thought looked best. To do this, I used Photoshop to plan my mock ups and I also used Photo shop for my final main ancillary task. I did not use Photoshop in my AS coursework, therefore this was all very new to me and I had very little knowledge on this, therefore this allowed me to expand my knowledge and learn how to use the programme.

Another time in my planning that I used technology was when i created my pitch. To create this I used Microsoft PowerPoint as it allowed me to focus each slide on something different, therefore everything was laid out clearly and was easier to help me plan. Throughout creating my main product and ancillary tasks I used a focus group, this helped significantly because it allowed me to get opinions and views from my target audience, this allowed me to see what I needed to improve on and also helped me to see what other people saw, which greatly helped when making decisions. An example of when I used my focus group was when I asked them what mock up of my film poster. We went with what idea they preferred as we wanted to produce things that we knew people would like.

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casehilla2media · 7 years ago

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Evaluation 4 - How have we used technology in the research, planning, construction and evaluation phase?

RESEARCH

When researching in AS we only had one product to research, which was an opening sequence to a film. In A2 had to research 3 products, which was a trailer to a horror film and two ancillary tasks. This shows already that in year 13 we are researching in greater detail and depth. The way that we have researched this year is by doing seven textual analysis on one product and 10 textual analysis on the other two tasks, whereas in AS we only had to do 15 textual analysis on the main task, therefore A2 seems to have more research involved. This year, we managed the textual analysis is a more organised way because we structured them better, for example we focused on a specific concept for each trailer. For example, when I researched the trailer IT I focused on sound because I think sound is an important concept in a horror film therefore I felt like i could write a lot on this, on the other hand I focused on mine en scene when writing a textual analysis for the film jigsaw because I felt like the props and clothing represented the horror genre really well. In comparison to last year we didn’t have much organisation therefore was not focusing on a specific concept. In year 12, the only way that we researched was through watching opening sequences to films through youtube, whereas in year 13 our knowledge on research improved and we again used youtube to look at different trailers to help gather knowledge on trailers.

We also, looked at a painter called Carravagio, he helped inspire some of our ideas through the way he portrays his paintings, as they show off an element of horror due to the contrast between light and dark, therefore we was influenced to use this idea. We used the internet to research him and find out information on him so that we could get inspiration from it and use it in our own trailer. Once I finished my filming and put it together, I had to look on the internet at different horror sound effects and music and pick which ones i think would best suit with my trailer. To do this, we mainly used Youtube as this had a large variety of sound effects and music that we could choose from. We made sure that all of the music that we chose was copyright so that we could not get in trouble for copying.

In AS we used google and youtube to research basic theorists such as Todorov and Propp. Todorov’s theory states that all films or plot lines follow the same sort of structure. Whereas Propp’s theory states that every narrative has eight different character types. These are the main two types of theorists that that we focused on in AS and in A2 we are focusing on these two theorists and some more. Tp research these theorists we used the internet to do this and found out all of the information that we needed. An example of a theorist that we researched in A2 is the theorist Barthe. Bathe describes his text as ‘a galaxy of signifiers, not a structure of signifies’ and he means that the test is tangled in balls of threads and the thread needs to be unravelled and once it is unravel then we encounter an absolute wide rate of potential meanings.’ We used this theorist because we researched him and his theories link with our main task well. This allowed us to widen our knowledge and research in more detail in year 13.

A final way that we used technology to research is by using Facebook messenger to create a focus group. Once we created this, we added our classmates to this and sent them things that we wanted them to help us make decisions on. Such as deciding what images to use, what narrative to use etc… This helped us with our research because it gave us a second opinion as we could get an idea of what our target audience would like. We did not use the creation of a focus group in year 12, therefore this was an improvement in year 13 as it allowed us to get more peoples opinions which helped us make our trailer better as it had a better effect on the audience.

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casehilla2media · 7 years ago

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Evaluation 3 - What did I learn from audience feedback? /voice over

To ensure that we are creative and using technology, we are going to present this evaluation question in the form of a voice recording. Here is the link to our voice recording:

youtube

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casehilla2media · 7 years ago

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Evaluation 3 - What did I learn from my audience feedback?

Throughout my work I have been given feedback. This is where somebody reacts to something that they have been given, and shares their opinion on it. Usually, they would say what went well and what could possibly be improved. Having feedback throughout a project is useful and helpful because a second eye means that there is less chance of overseeing a mistake. Also, someone might also give you feedback which can lead to more ideas, which could become useful.

When receiving my feedback, I was given summative feedback and formative feedback. Summative feedback is given once you have finished your product, and formative feedback is given whilst you are working on your project. An example of summative feedback that I was given was when my teacher looked at my finished film poster and said that the title and the text is conventional for my genre (horror), which looked good. An example of formative feedback is when I asked my focus group which main image looked better on my magazine front cover, and they chose which one they preferred, so I could include it on my final piece. Opinions from our focus group, teachers and peers influenced our decisions on our research, planning and construction as it helped us see things from other peoples point of views.

I also received formal and informal feedback. Formal feedback is where the feedback is detailed and informal feedback is general advice that I would ask someone. For example, Mr Coleman would regularly sit down with me and discuss things that I could improve and what he thinks I had done well. This was all written on my assessment sheet so I could look back at it. For informal feedback, I would ask one of my peers if they think that a size font looks right.

From audience feedback I learnt that by listening and taking on board what other people thought of my work, gave me lots of different ideas and made my work more professional, as they all had different opinions to give. However, although some feedback you may agree on, but some might cease to be objective so I did not agree with all of it as it is based on opinion. When getting feedback from our audience, there was things that went well and what needed to be improved on. Things that went well was that people gave us their opinions on our film poster and said that we should choose a certain image because it will compliment our narrative well.

When getting audience feedback on what final photo we should use on our film poster. We decided that we preferred the image of our two actors when they are facing away from each other, but because we was hesitant we decided to ask our focus group what they preferred to finalise our decision. They chose the opposite photo to what we wanted because they thought that it was more conventional to the narrative and that made us realise that they was right and it looked much more professional. Therefore, this is evidence that asking for audience feedback is effective.

Overall, I think that audience feedback is effective and helps people make decisions based on opinions. I think that getting a second eye really helped us, although I didn’t listen to all of our feedback as we thought some of our ideas were better and fit better to our narrative.

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casehilla2media · 7 years ago

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Evaluation 2 - How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

My main products and ancillary tasks are combined together and are very effective. My main task was to create a trailer of our chosen genre and we chose to do our trailer on horror. i also had to create two ancillary tasks and they was a film poster and a film magazine and these are used to promote my main product. By the use of my main product and ancillary tasks combined together, it shows how i have used synergy.

What is synergy?

Synergy is where the interaction of two or more forces working together creates a greater effect than they would independently. Singer is the interaction of two or more elements and factors. Synergy needs to have commonality between all three products. An example of synergy would be to use the same colours, text and background throughout all of the media products, this is because this way the audience will recognise the similarities and remember it. I think that synergy is important because it helps something to be recognisable and noticeable, therefore will attract a wider audience. Synergy will also help the brand to become more memorable and will help to promote the media product/brand. An example of synergy being used is within the film Twilight. The film is dark and mysterious and have dark backgrounds which helps to portray the genre as a horror/thriller. Synergy has also been used because the main characters of the film have been put on the film poster and the film magazine, which automatically tells the audience who is starring in the film. The colour, being a dull golden/yellow is used throughout the film poster and film magazine, which helps to portray a particular style. Below are examples of Twilights film poster and film magazine.

My product:

In my product I have used synergy in different ways to ensure that the audience can recognise my media product. i used synergy to combine my main product, being my trailer alongside my ancillary tasks, which was the film poster and film magazine. The common factors and elements that i used throughout my ancillary tasks and the main product that are on my film poster and film magazine. I put the antagonist (devil) on the film magazine and the two protagonists on the film poster. This is an example of synergy because the audience will recognise the characters and link it back to the trailer. I have also used syngery by using the same colour font. which is red as we think that this best shows the horror genre. Also, the use of a grey background as this is showing continuity and helps to show the combination between the different media products.

Once we finished our main task ( the horror trailer ) and our 2 ancillary asks ( the film magazine and film poster ). We went this into our focus group to get their opinion and to ensure that we have made use of synergy and made sure that the combination was recognisable. By asking a focus group we can get an opinion of the public eye to help us make our decisions. This is what our focus group said about our use of synergy:

Our focus groups opinions helped us see that we made use of synergy and the combination of all three of our products were effective because we clearly showed continuity between representation, font style and the colour scheme.

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casehilla2media · 7 years ago

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Evaluation 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our main task is to create a trailer for a film and we also had to create a film poster and film magazine front cover to go alongside the film trailer that we are creating.

When talking about genre and media products, there are two theorists, Steve Neal and Daniel Chandler, who have particular views on the topic.

Steve Neal states that ‘genres are instances of repetition and difference’ and ‘genres are not systems, they are processes of systemisation’. He believed that there was a system of expectations and that by using own knowledge and applying conventions of the genre the audience should be able to infer the narrative and story line of the film.

Daniel Chandler states that ‘conventional definitions of genres tend to be based on the notion that they constitute particular conventions of content, for example, themes and settings that are shared by the text which are regarded as belonging to them’.

The reason that we have chose to look into these two media theorists is because we think that they are relatable to our horror trailer. This is because by using conventions of a horror trailer the audience will be able to interpret the genre and narrative of the story and this is what Steve Neal thinks. Also, Daniel Chandler says that themes and settings belong to certain genres, therefore this is why we have used the idea of a possessed girl haunting a house, which is obvious to a horror trailer.

We use codes and conventions to portray an image to the audience. They are used as this is something that the audience will expect in a certain genre. For our media piece, we have decided to make a trailer, we are doing it on horror. Therefore, there are different codes and conventions that have to be followed in order to meet the horror criteria. A horror trailer has dark lighting, it also shows the well known actors in the tiler, there is dialogue used to show the characters are scared, facial expressions are used to signify it is a horror film also, there is also music shown to indicate that the person is frightened. We was set a task to look at 7 different horror trailers in order to know what conventions we should use when making our own, in order that the audience would recognise our genre. This helped us because we understood the different codes and conventions that we should use to make a good horror film. This is a reason that we dis not subvert the conventions, so that people did not mistake our genre for another.

Subverting codes and conventions ensures that your media product is unique, and your work will be more creative as it will be different to other peoples. Subverting codes and conventions promotes the concept of active spectatorship. Although, there are concerns that if you subvert the codes and conventions then you run the risk of creating a less successful piece of work because the audience may not understand what you are trying to do. There is evidence that there are many media products that are successful due to following the conventions. An example of this is in the Woman in Black. This is shown as an obvious horror film due to the dark lighting, scary noise, a haunted house in the middle of nowhere and a scary mysterious character living in the house. This will make the audience feel scared and it satisfies audiences expectations. This is why we chose to follow the conventions of a horror trailer as we wanted to satisfy audiences ourself and meet the requirements of a horror trailer.

We also had to create two ancillary tasks, they are to create a film magazine and a film poster. We had to research 5 different film posters and 5 different film magazines in order to to know the conventions and what to involve in our own one. This helped as we managed to get an understanding of the kind of images is put on them and text that is placed around them, making it much easier for us to create our own.Again, we did not subvert the codes and conventions as we wanted the genre to be recognisable. In a film poster it is conventional to use a tagline, as this makes the audience more intrigued. Our tag line that we decided to do was ‘think you’ve escaped, think again’. This is conventional because it is unnerving and will keep the audience interested. We only put this on one of our film posters, and the other one we didn’t. We tried to use a range of ideas of different conventions to help us decide on our film poster. Once we knew the codes and conventions of a film magazine and film poster, we created two mock ups of each, both different so that we could choose between them what we think will attract the audience attention more. To help us decide on our decision, we asked our focus group on their opinion as we think that getting other peoples feedback is most useful, as this helps us to see what other people see. Here is the feedback that we got back from our mock ups. We chose to take the feedback that we got given as this will help to make our media products better, as it gives us an insight as to what other people see.

We have used different codes and conventions to ensure that we have met the requirements for a horror trailer. Here are some examples of what we used and compared them to real media trailers.

We have used dark lighting in our horror trailer to create mystery and suspense. This is shown in our horror trailer, we have used this in order to show the genre clearly to the audience.

Here is an example of dark lighting being used in the film Insidious:

Here is an example of dark lighting being used in our horror trailer:

Another way that we used conventions of a horror film is by having the villain wear a white gown with a pale face. This is conventional because we got inspiration from the popular horror film called the Grudge ,because it is a scary film and catches the audience attention because clearly shows that it is a hour film. This is a picture of the demon that we got an idea from:

This is a picture of the villain that we are using in my trailer:

Thirdly, another convention of a horror trailer is the way that the antagonist appears on screen, resulting in the audience jumping and feeling scared. An example of this would be the demon popping up quickly when we didn’t expect it to happen. This is often used with music that has a scary effect to it which makes it more appealing to the audience. An example of this happening in a real media trailer is the film Annabelle: creation. Here is the link to watch this so you can have more of a visual look - ( Between 0.55 - 1.00 )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KisPhy7T__Q

Here is an example of the antagonist popping up to make the audience scared in our trailer:

https://youtu.be/Jmlr-q1exnA

For my ancillary tasks, I had to create a film poster and film magazine. I ensured that i used specific codes and conventions of these film posters and magazines to meet the requirements that are needed. Therefore, we did not subvert the conventions of our film poster and film magazine because we wanted to make our genre obvious to the audience.

A convention of a horror film magazine is to have the main antagonist in the film as the main image on the front screen. This will bring attention to the film magazine and will give people an insight as to who is going to be in the film and what they are going to look like. It will also give a scary affect to the audience which will clearly show that the genre is horror.

Here is an example of the antagonist as the main image on a film magazine:

Here is the film magazine that we created with the antagonist as the main image:

A second convention that is often used in film magazines is a masthead. This draws attention to the film magazine because it is in big bold letters at the top of the page. It is conventional because we looked at a variety of different horror film magazines so that we could follow the conventions, and a masthead was on every film magazine.

Here is an example of a film magazine that has a masthead:

Here is our film magazine which includes our masthead:

We also did not subvert the conventions of a film poster as we wanted to the genre obvious to the audience. An example of a convention that we used when creating our film poster is that the main characters of the film are to be the main image of the film poster. We decided to follow this convention to make our poster as effective as we could.

Here is an example of a film poster that includes the main characters:

Here is an example of our film poster that includes our main characters:

Another convention that we have used in our film poster is to use red bold writing because this is a convention of a horror film as it portrays blood and danger. it is bold so that it stands out from the rest of the poster and attracts the audience. By using this convention, it clearly shows that it is a horror film.

Here is an example of a film poster that includes red bold writing:

Here is an example of our film poster that includes red bold writing:

We also researched a painter known as Caravaggio. His art is made from darkness and light, therefore we thought this would be a good person to get inspiration off of because we are doing a horror trailer, therefore we will use contrast of light and darkness. His pictures present split moments of extreme and often agonised human experience. Caravaggio subverts conventions in his paintings, painted pictures that look realistic and paints exactly what he sees. His paintings portray a horror element which is why we chose to get ideas from him because we thought we could steal ideas to use in our own piece of work.

Here is an example of Caravaggios work:

Here is an example of our work that we used light and dark contrast that we got inspired by Caravaggio:

A passive audience is an audience that is directly included by a media text. The audience accepts the story line and the narrative of the film and doesn't question what is happening, this may be that the audience accepts and understands what is happening as it is obvious to the audience, this may be because of fast films. An example of this is Fast and furious. After watching a majority of the films, when the newest one comes out, the audience will understand what the narrative is about, builds personas of the characters e.g protagonist, antagonist. A theory about passive audiences is the Hypodermic syringe mode. This model says that ‘audiences act in the same way, they are manipulated. The audience thoughts and behaviours are affected by the media. It shows that the audience will copy whatever they see on the TV’. Another theory used is the uses and gratifications mode. This says that ‘media audience make active use of the media in order to fulfil their need, and escapism is a form of escape from everyday’.

Genre is reflected clearly in our horror trailer and this is because of the music that is used.By using scary and mysterious music it will make the audience feel on edge and will clearly show that the genre is a horror. Examples may be of tense music building up and then antagonist in the trial pop up on the screen. Below I will show an example of this being shown in my trailer. Genre is also reflected because of dialogue in my trailer, this is because it may be in the tone they say it, as it may make the audience feel on edge. There may be dialogue such as ‘why do we have to be cursed’ this will make the audience wonder what the curse is and it instantly shows that the genre is horror. I will show an example of dialogue being used in our trailer which clearly shows that the genre is a horror.

This is an example of dialogue being used in our trailer that shows that it is a horror film. The dialogue clearly shows the genre through the use of genre through what she says and the facial expressions she is doing.

https://youtu.be/n3RiCPojt9U

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