Evaluation 4 - How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

To present what media technologies we used I have created a Prezi Presentation, to view please press the play button and the bottom. I have also divided it into sections to show each aspect and what technology we used. Each technology was vital in each of our sections of our project. 

Evaluation 4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stage on Prezi

Evaluation 3 - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Evaluation 3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?


From carrying out our audience questionnaires I gained some knowledge about the views of our demographic audience, which ultimately are the most important thing when promoting a film. By knowing what the audience thinks we can construct our product to meet some of their expectations, from our first audience feedback questionnaire we found what they would want from the film promotions and we took this into account when constructing our poster, trailer and magazine cover. The second audience feedback found their opinions on our actual product and therefore we can analyse them and find whether we have done this project successfully.


In both questionnaires we gave them to an equal amount of males and females in order to gain representative results of both genders. In relation to reception theory, peoples identities e.g. their gender, affect how they interpret texts, therefore by asking both genders equally we can gain an idea of their views of our project, and also compare how differently both genders answered. 
From the first questionnaire we learnt that half of our respondents wanted a fast pace trailer which is exactly what we did. We took this into consideration and made of trailer a fast pace because it is conventional of thrillers and the audience would expect this. 


We also found that the theory of the two step flow may apply as in our first audience feedback we found that nearly a quarter of respondents find out about new films through the friends. If they watch the trailer, they may not take in the information directly but it may be reinforced through opinion leaders. In relation to this, in terms of our product, audience theory - the hypodermic needle model may not be applicable. From our questionnaire we found that the audience did not directly take in the information that was given. If they had then every question would have had the appropriate answer that we wanted. An example of this is the genre, a quarter said they thought it was a horror, if they had been subject to the hypodermic needle model then they wouldn't have questioned this genre. 


In the Audience Feedback questionnaire on opinions about our products, we found that they can be easily confused with horror films because of how closely linked they are. A quarter of our respondents did in fact think that our film trailer, poster and magazine cover represented a horror film. This is understandable as they are very similar in terms of themes and lighting. However from this, I've learnt that next time, if ever we were to amend or change our work, we could ensure that the thriller genre really comes across clearly possibly by adding less of the very dark aspects 
which convey horror also, then hopefully 100% of respondents would know it was a thriller film.


From our open ended question, we found that for a theatrical trailer, it may be to short however the general consensus from our respondents is that it is perfect for television trailers; they can never be to long as there is a specific time schedule along with many people not wanting to sit through a 2.30 minute trailer in the adverts. 


In terms of reception theory, our audience have answered the questions in the questionnaire in a way that relates to their identity. Reception theory is a development of an active audience, it is claimed that an audience interpret and receive a text in different ways dependent on the circumstances for example, their age, gender, social class, ethnicity etc. Our film is a 15 so in terms of age, films that may be a 12 or PG may be accepted passively, however as we can see from our audience feedback, all our respondents are 15 or over and therefore challenge our product, which also challenged the hypodermic needle model. 

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

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


The main product of a trailer and ancillary texts we felt needed to come as a package and link together. All three of these features ultimately help to promote a film and influence people to go and see it. They are often all able to be linked together either through images, fonts, colour schemes and the display of characters. The combination of our main product and our ancillary texts (poster and magazine cover) all integrate together to allow people to recognize them all and link them which is often the case in real media product as this links to marketing and distribution.


There are themes that run throughout our three products:
Colour schemes and fonts
In our three products, a recurring colour scheme is white, red and black three colour which we think link together well. White represents purity and innocence which is such a sad part of the plot as the baby had already lost its father and now has died which is tragic, therefore the 'dip to whites' in the trailer and the white fonts throughout all of our products just amplifies the sad nature of this film. Red represents the anger and despair of loosing her baby but also danger, as she is becoming a danger to herself and the public and already endangered her child. Red also represents blood as there is a lot of blood shed in this film in again a tragic way. Red we have used for the smoke effect in the trailer behind all the titles, the main title 'D.I.D YOU?' on the poster and on the magazine cover. In terms of black, black is a colour that is typical of thriller films and therefore did use it a lot. The background of the title frames on the trailer are black, the base of the poster background is black and the theme and main title of the magazine on the magazine cover is black. Black obviously represents death and emptiness which both conveys the death of her child but also the emptiness she feels because of this.


Actors (costumes and make up)
In all three of our products, our main character is seen in character, she looks very hurt and as if she has been through a struggle. She has bruises on her face and blood on her which may represent this idea of its her baby's blood on her hands because she is the one who killed him. This became and iconic image in the marketing of our product, because the image is on all three it will be what the audience remembers the most about this film.


Text
Another aspect that is included in all three is the text of who stars in it, which is Sophie Young and also in the magazine cover and the poster the tagline is in both 'did she realise...' in terms of marketing, people will see this and question what this means and therefore may be inclined to go and find out.


Logo
Also included is our logo, S.E.R Productions. We made our own production company to increase the realistic nature of our product. The S.E.R stands for Sarah.Emma.Rebecca which is a combination of all of our names. This  is featured in every single product, in the right hand corner of the poster, the left hand corner of the magazine cover and at the very end of the trailer.


Our products would be distributed widely through television where by the trailer could be shown along with the internet on sites like YouTube or Internet Movie Database. The posters can be displayed both in cinemas and locally distributed in shopping centres and other public places. In terms of the magazine cover, televisions often advertise magazines for example like OK! magazine, therefore this would reach a larger audience along with being distributed in large supermarkets, again reaching a large audience. 

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

Evaluation 1

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Representation Theory

Representation theory

Representation theory refers to a medium (commonly the mass media) constructing a version of reality. How identities are represented through media affect the realism. 

Dominant ideologies or 'morals' are things that society deems acceptable, they are not static as over time they change. An example of this is smoking, it used to be classed as acceptable it public places however now it is deemed deviant and goes against societies ideology. 

Dominant ideologies in the UK are that:

- people should put their families first

- people should work for their money and not show off about how they did

- women should behave modestly

- women should take care of their appearance

and there are many more. If someone goes against these ideologies they are stereotyped negatively. 

Stereotyping are highly linked to representation theory. Conventional stereotypes are not just associated with race, gender, age, social class, sexuality and disability are also areas where they are represented in certain ways. In our film trailer, gender is a key feature of representation. For example,in our trailer, in the hospital scene, we have represented the nurse as a women as according to statistics from the Nursing and Midwifery Council: only 10.21% are male, therefore a more realistic representation of nurse would be a women. 

Another example, is that fact that her husband who was in the armed forces died. Again in comparison to nursing, men dominate the armed forces therefore we felt this would be a representation that many women could relate to. 

In terms of our mental illness story, our main character is diagnosed with 'dissociative identity disorder.' We did not have in mind that we were representing a women as this, we just knew that we wanted to include a mental illness in order to use the alter ego story line. However, in terms of representations, statistics do show that women are more likely to suffer from mental illness than men. They are also considered the weaker or inferior sex and therefore we felt this did provide a realistic representation. 

In terms of statistics women are more likely to be treated for mental health problems than men, 29% of women compared to 17% of men. Depression is also a mental health issue and is more common in women, 1 in 4 women are treated for depression where as 1 in 10 men will. 'Dissociative identity disorder' can stem from anxiety, women are twice as likely to experience anxiety and 60% of people with phobias or OCD are female. Therefore we felt that representation in our trailer was correct or the ideologies in society and realistic. 

Audience Feedback Questionnaire

Audience feedback questionnaire

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Completed Film Poster

Editing - Film Poster

We used PhotoScape and Paint for the editing of our poster as we felt it worked well whilst doing the magazine cover. We were also therefore used to the program now and had discovered a lot of features that were of great use to us. 

Whilst editing the poster we found that the writing that was available on PhotoScape was far too small for the title and date in order to stand out vibrantly. Therefore we had to create the title on paint in a size and font that we wanted. We had to print screen the photo on PhotoScape at 100% and then paste onto paint. We then could add writing at a larger size. Then we added it back into PhotoScape and aligned it with the original. 

We also made our rating box In paint also as we did not have the resources on PhotoScape. We then saved it as if it were a single picture and added it onto PhotoScape as an image. 

 This is a print screen showing the changes regarding the lighting we could change. We changed the darken and deepen effects mainly, along with slight brightness. We also used Sharpen. The black background we achieved really emphasised the main character and text. 

We also used an effect called film effect - cinema - middle. This gives it a tint of colour and we feel adds to the atmosphere of the image. This does make it slightly more cinematic and realistic and enhance the shadows which just adds to the psychological effect. 

 Here we used Crop, as again we wanted our main picture as just half of her to convey her half self and her fading away from normality. Therefore we used the crop tool to crop freely, we had to make is just centre of her face to get exactly half. We then saved the cropped area.

We also wanted to ensure that every time that we were saving we were saving at high quality to ensure we got the best and most effective image we can. 

Poster - Photo Options

                                         Photo options for our poster:

Here are some of the photos we took on Fujifilm finepix S which is 12 megapixels for a high quality effect. We took them at Rebecca’s house in various locations which included the garage for a creepy old effect, the cupboard for a dull and dark atmosphere along with bottom of the stairs and also in the dining room for a white background. We felt by taking photos in these various places we would have more choice as to what our photo looked like and how effective it is. We therefore had more of a chance of finding the perfect image for our poster.

Close up: we took a close up of Sophie’s face to try and capture her facial expressions and emotions, which is obviously a big feature of this film as her emotions are essentially what drives her to insanity. However, we felt that because of the close up nature of this shot we could not capture her hair, make up and costume which are equally important to show her despair and sadness and struggle that she has been through.

Lighting: Whilst shooting in the cupboard it was obviously very dark which enabled us to create an atmosphere. However, it was so dark that we couldn’t see our character completely clearly, therefore we tried the flash on the camera but we could obviously only point the light in the direction of which the camera faced. Therefore we used the torch on the iPhone to shine onto her face, we could use it left, right, centre, from above and just below her face to create the shadows that distort her face in relation to her distorted and fragmented life.

Mid Shot: We took this full mid shot against a white background.  This is to show her costume and make up, which was an oversized shirt, dark eye shadow to one, show her dirt on her clothes but two to show bruises on her face. Also dark red lip gloss to represent fake fresh blood and hair gel to make her hair look greasy: this represents the struggle and journey she has been on to find answers.

Half Shot: We knew from the start that we wanted a half shot of our character’s face fading into darkness or not in the shot. This is to convey her alter ego side rather than her whole self and to convey her illness, she’s slipping away from normality. However, this photo is completely dark and dull where as we wanted the actual characters face to stand out against the black background.

High Angle Shot: This shot is looking down on our character. Representing how inferior she is which links to representation theory. People see others with psychological illnesses as weak and inferior and therefore stereotype them.  

   

Preliminary Posters

 I decided to begin to create posters with various ideas on it, we had the basic idea of having our main character's face as central to the poster and half of which faded into darkness. Representing her fading into her illness and two sides of her due to her dis-associative identity disorder. Therefore i decided to practice on paint and picasa 3 so that when it comes to the real poster, we would have an idea of what we can do and what resources we have. First i began with a basic idea with a random picture just to display what half of a characters face would look like. The i started to add pictures of our actual character to see what it would look like. I did this so that we would have the basic knowledge of what we need to include. for example, the title, a tag line, a main image, the production and distribution details, the release data and the rating.

When making our poster, we thought it would be a good idea for us to begin making a few posters, in order to test different ideas and layouts to ensure we find the one that is more effective. We would have a better idea of which pictures work best with what lighting and effects, but also whether it should be detailed or simplistic. When we completed each one, we did find that the detailed poster was more effective in promoting the film. We did not have to edit the photo too much, just the use of deepen and darken around the face, emphasised the face and making it very clear and striking. Also, the layout of only having half a face emphasises the dominance of her alter ego due to her disorder. The following posters could be classed as teaser posters. 

This poster is very wide horizontally, the eyes are really emphasised by the black background. They are in between D.I.D YOU? Which indicate that we are asking her did you? This will intrigue the audience. We also included the release date along with red smoke which is also featured in the trailer, integrating them together and red represents blood and anger which are themes within the film. Although we are not using it officially, we did think that this is the type of promotional poster for our film that would feature on the sides of buses or trains.

This rectangular vertical poster is very creepy due to the lighting and editing. We did use darken and deepen in order to amplify the shadows. This just includes the date and tag line making it very simplistic but we feel effective. There isn’t to much writing that it distracts from the main image. However, we did feel that this was very horror themed which may not be the best for our film as we wanted to avoid confusion.

Again this is very simplistic, however it does include essentially the most important thing: the title and date. We also felt that this effect really assists the costume and make up as the blood on her neck looks almost as if it were real which is exactly the effect we wanted. We went for a completely different approach here, with the shape of the poster, and the colour scheme but we feel it looks very effective. 

Although our task was to only make one main poster which we have done, we still felt it would be beneficial to show the others. Also, films have a multiple of posters they use in order to promote it well, often others more simplistic or more detailed than each other.

Deconstructions of Existing Posters

Before beginning our poster, we wanted to de-construct existing posters. Our project is to make a poster, trailer and magazine cover for a film we've created, therefore they have all got to link together. Therefore we felt it would be beneficial to de-construct a trailer, a poster and a magazine cover for all the same film to see how they all fit together to promote the film successfully. 
The first deconstruction was for the poster for the film 'Shutter Island'.

   

Planning - Poster

Now that we have completed our filming, we know what shots and images we have to display on our poster and magazine cover, therefore we thought we would mind map a few ideas as to what we are going to include on our poster for this film:


From deconstructing existing posters we've found that the main features are:
- A main image that in some way relates to the film, managing to indicate the genre
- The date of release
- a website
- production and distribution details
- the rating of the film which will be a 15
- a tag line for the film


By identifying these features we can work with them and put them all together to construct a poster to promote our film.

Completed Film Magazine Cover

This is our completed magazine cover, from our previous deconstructions, we gained knowledge of the conventional features and therefore tried to amply it to our magazine cover.

This is a deconstruction of our magazine cover, we did this to show why we used certain things and how effective they are. 

Editing - Film Magazine Cover

We decided to edit our magazine cover on a program called Photoscape. Due to the fact that we were unable to include the funeral aspect in our trailer, we felt we would take photos of our main character in black as if she has just been to a funeral. Along with this, we wanted her pose to be away from the camera, almost as if she is to upset to look up therefore conveying her feelings.  We did a photo-shoot against a white wall with a spot light in the hope of increasing the professional nature of our magazine.  These are some photos from our photo shoot. We each took a turn to take photos to ensure we got each of our ideas across, including different each of our different positions and angles. Her image in these photos really emphasise the change she goes through by the end of the film. 

 These are photos taken of our group taking photos. This is also our original image that we used on our magazine 





 In order to gain the best picture we could we downloaded some editing software - Photo scape. This allowed us to edit our original photo, add text, add more pictures if necessary and other effects that we found useful. We did encounter some problems when making the title for our magazine cover ‘latest’ we had to create this on paint to get exactly the font and size that we wanted. We then added this as if it were a picture and aligned it exactly with the image.

when editing in paint we did have to make sure every letter was black around the edges and some had white patches. We did this to ensure it looked realistic. 

This is some of the features of photo scape we used. The main features that we used were resize, bright,colour, sharpen and bloom. 

At first, we edited our original photo to much and found that it did not look as effective, there was to much change that was not needed. We compared this to our original photo and found we preferred that one. Therefore we began again, we simply edited lightly rather than changed everything. We changed Deepen, brighten, and darken. 

We edited so much so that the light from the spotlight blended to much with her face. I was hard to see her nose and left side of her face clearly therefore we started again. 

We also inserted text. This was key to our magazine cover, we had a consistent font through out along with colour scheme. More will be shown in the deconstruction of our final magazine cover.

On the original photo, the lamp stick was clearly visible and we felt that it effected the picture making it less professional and realistic. We used something called ‘clone stamp’ this meant that we could duplicate part of the image, so we did this on the area very next to the lamp stand in the picture, meaning we kept the colour consistency from dark to light. This allowed us to get rid of this area and it looks as if it were the wall. 

We were also able to crop the image, we did this as the shape of the photo was not like a magazine. We cropped the top and the bottom part, we did this so that the title would cover part of the actress' head. This is very typical of magazine covers as everything is linked together. 

Although we did encounter some difficulties with the title, and our original editing with to much. We felt that we managed to complete it successfully and the completed product looks realistic. 

Deconstructions of Existing Magazine Covers

We decided it would be beneficial to de-construct magazine covers like we did trailers. By looking at all the different features of existing magazine covers we can gain knowledge of what the typical conventions are and therefore create a successful realistic magazine. We also used the same magazine covers and posters for the films in the trailers we de-constructed so that we can compare how they link together and work together to promote the film.

Planning - Magazine Cover

Next we wanted to mind map the name of our magazine cover and what we would include on the magazine cover as we now know what we have that we can include:


Possible names for our magazine cover:
- Up-Coming
- Catch Up
- Coming Soon
- Just
- Latest 
- Weekly Thrills
- Thriller Week
- Film Times


All of these possible names our based either around our films genre; so a magazine that is dedicated completely to thriller films. On the other hand other possible names have stemmed from the idea of a magazine which shows the new releases and upcoming films that are going to be released. The second choice would reach a much larger audience as it would not just appeal to thriller audiences however the first choice would promote our film very well as to be a thriller


Aspects that we must include on our magazine cover is:
- 'New star answers your questions: 'D.I.D You' - this is relating to a special feature inside the magazine as the actress appearing in our film is new to the industry and answers questions sent in by readers e.g. Did you enjoy doing this movie? 
- The main image of the front cover - this will be our main character and we will also say who took the photographs 
- We will include the Name of the magazine, the barcode along with the price and date - this will be make our magazine look more realistic. 
- 'Top 10 films this Christmas' - another feature inside that will include our upcoming film 'D.I.D You' and other films that are out this Christmas and this is often a good feature during December to have within a magazine.


We decided on the name: Latest. We didn't want our magazine to be named specifically to a certain genre like thriller. We felt that 'Latest' as a name was short and catchy and memorable. 

Completed Film Trailer

This is our final trailer, and we have added captions to our video on YouTube to explain what certain features have been used. Our film trailer is relatively short, but we feel perfect for television. From audience research we found that over half of our audience watch trailers mainly on television and therefore this will reach more people.

As you can see, we de-constructed existing products like trailers, posters and magazine covers therefore with the products we created I'm going to de-construct them to give an insight as to why we have done certain things. 

The first still represents really the heart of the story. The whole plot revolves around the mother, Helena and the events that occur due to the death of her baby therefore this shot introduces the characters. By having this as a first shot we see happiness and innocence due to the white colour themed setting. However, immediately in the trailer it soon goes very negative. As you can see the rest of the stills in comparison to the first are very dark and creates an eerie atmosphere. The costumes and setting manage to convey where she is well and this is the hospital.

The second still introduces the company who produced this film: S.E.R Productions and as you can see we have a colour theme throughout our trailer. The main colour scheme is red and black which is typical of films with dark themes therefore conventional of trailers. The black background allows the red and white to appear more vibrant and therefore catch the eye of the audience. The red smoke represents blood but also anger for the loss of her child and her not finding answers.

The third still shows the baby in his cot in a darkened room which creates an atmosphere and indicates that something bad is about to happen. Due to the lighting we were able to create shadows and we’ve created a shadow of a hand going over the baby’s got which we thought would be able to represent the baby being taken away from her  mother. Although we find out that it is actually her who kills her baby, by doing this we through the audience off as they think that it has been taken from her therefore they do not realise any twist and turns in the plot which is crucial for a successful thriller film. We also used a high shot to show the baby as inferior to whatever this is and seem helpless.

The fourth still shows our main character sleeping and drifting into a dream. We have managed to convey this by using the camera to pan up to wall as this is often associated with dreams. The dark lighting indicates night time which is when bad things tend to happen and this is iconic of films.

The fifth shows the dream that our main character and we did have trouble with the lighting however it is clear what is happening, this conveys the killing of the baby but it is not clear who did it. This is essentially one of the most important parts of the film as this is what is going to unfold as the storyline continues. We also made it a mid-shot as we did not want to make this scene to graphic as it is a sensitive subject.

For the sixth still, we used a low angle here to show the private investigator arriving at Helena’s house in the film. We felt that a low angle would convey how superior he is to Helena. He has the power to give her answers that no one else can and therefore this shot conveys this well. It also establishes the location of her home; this location is very thrilling as to have these things happen in her home where she feels safe it just adds to the tension of the film.

The seventh still displays an extreme close up shot of her eyes, this part of the film is when she is really suffering from her illness and the close up of the eyes manages to convey emotion and feelings but is also quiet unnerving for the audience.  This shot also allowed us to really show the make-up of her face that we have used. We used dark eye-shadow to convey bruises which only adds to the mystery of this. The audience will be question how did she get these bruises? This will be an aspect which will hopefully motivate them to go and watch this film.

The eight still is crucial to the trailer as it is the title, D.I.D YOU? Special effects are in use with the red smoke that we used and also with the star flashing through the middle of the title which together really emphasises the title.

The final still is of the release date, the production companies information/logo and website, however we have constructed this part of the trailer so that the release date and website are on the frame before to give the audience time to concentrate on that image, but then fades into the production and distribution details.

Audio Track for Film Trailer

When mind mapping ideas for our film name, we came up with 'Rock-a-Bye-Baby' which would represent the innocence of the new born baby but also the alliteration in the title 'Bye-Baby' would mirror the story line as the mother is forced to say good bye to her baby. From this we decided that we wanted to continue this nursery rhyme theme however create a creepy and mysterious version of one to ensure it fitted with the thriller genre. 


Our initial software which we were going to use was 'Audacity' in which would could create our soundtrack however we were not confident in using this software as we were not sure we could get exactly the right effect that we wanted. Especially as we had a very specific idea of what we wanted. If we had started from scratch and not had an idea, then this software would have been useful. However, we decided to look on YouTube for a nursery rhyme that we could possibly edit instead of starting from scratch.


We found 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' edited on YouTube in a way that was very creepy and therefore we thought we would use this for our trailer. We also asked permission for us to use this to avoid any copyright issues. Although 'Twinkle Twinkle Littler Star' is in the public domain (meaning that anyone can use this song) we still wanted to get permission. We also ensured that we made it clear that we would include their names in the credits.

We did get a reply and therefore were able to use this music in our trailer. Here is the link for the audio music:    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfKem06m7Ys

We felt that this audio was perfect for our trailer because of the structure: it begins slowly, very calm and peaceful which reflects the situation in the beginning of the trailer. As it continues, small sections begin to get louder, but then go quiet which unnerves the audience. Mid way through the trailer, the pace begins to speed up dramatically which creates tension and an atmosphere. However, very sharply and quickly the music goes quieter again which just adds to the drama. We felt that combined with the trailer picking up the pace, the music would work perfectly with it.

This is audio is non synchronous which is defined as audio-track sounds that are mismatch or out of conjunction or unison with the images in the visual frame (or screen) sometimes accidental but sometimes intentional. This is intentional as our soundtrack does not exactly match the frames however this has been done to represent the unstable nature of our character.