Question 4: How did we use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

During the course of our A2 project, we had used a variety of media technologies from software such as iMovie and Garage band to the film cameras and photo shop. Each software allowed us to create our trailer and our film magazine and poster. We had used i Macs during the majority of our project as it enabled us to create a proficient trailer and film magazine as it had all the software on one computer and all of us had apple products to download any audio we created our of school. Most of our Microsoft products was used during the research, planning and evaluation of  our media product and create a realistic trailer at the end.

Each software helped us during these stages for example, our Microsoft power point allowed us to collect film magazine and collate them into a collage so we could then compare them with one another and figure out which conventions were suitable for our media product at the end. Microsoft allowed us to create our timeline table and the questionnaire which we then had given to our target market, this had helped us when creating the narrative of our trailer as we knew what our potential target market where looking for at the end. Photoshop allowed us to create the film magazine and poster, Ashleigh was the strongest member to do this as she had experience photo shopping skills in different ways. As a group we decided that Ashleigh would be the maker of both magazine      and poster but with our help as well. We each had a task to do in order to create time efficiency among st the group. Often the Microsoft programme were use during the research of our trailer and planning and the apply programmed were used for the construction of our trailer, film magazine and movie poster with the exception of photo shop. The apple products had been the best option to use when constructing our media product. For example iMovie was the best option as it had the transitions, titles and an easier uploading programme. Microsoft word allowed us to write our evaluation of the trailer. YouTube and IMDB assisted us during the research of our trailer. YouTube allowed us to see the conventions of the trailers and different genres whilst IMDB allowed  us to see the feedback of other target markets and ratings of the movie.   When constructing our audio we had used garage band to create it and   during the evaluation stage we created a project on garage band that       allowed us to record our feedback from our audience. During the            research of our trailer we researched into garage band and used              YouTube to find our different methods on how we could do it. The cameras we had used were the digital standard cameras and to create the consistency of the pixels on the footage we used the same one each time so the quality would not differ from each scene,. We used a                                                                   handheld camera to create the idea of a hand filmed documentary                                                                 footage which was successful. Overall media technology allowed us during the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages. Each programme enabled us to create each element of our trailer and ancillary text which allowed us to create the media product overall.

Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

As a group we had created an audio to answer Question 3, before creating this audio we decided to look back onto our target markets feed back on both Facebook and YouTube. Audience feedback is essential for any industry to listen to their target audience, without their feedback or their input their movie will consequently become unsuccessful because it will not suit their needs and meet up to their expectations. As a group, Lauren, Ashleigh and I agreed with our audience that we needed to add further quick cuts at the end. They believed that the trailer did not create the suspense and tension that they were longing for. When looking back at our trailer we saw the difference the quick cuts created following the conventions of our documentary thriller trailer. There was also feedback on our audio so we added dark suspense music instead of just the dialogue and the voice over. We had also added a walkies talkie garble for our billing block to finish it off. We have added print screens at the bottom, I have also added a before and after video from our original trailer to the finished trailer with audience feedback changes. Overall there had been a lot of changes towards the trailer and at parts we challenged the conventions of the trailer to suit the needs of our target market.

Screen shot 1

Screen shot 2

Screen shot 3

Screen shot 4

Screen shot 5

Feedback from Facebook

Before:

After:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEnPd24saCw

Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main products and ancillary texts?

For our Question 2 we have decided as a group to film our answer as there was a lot of strengths and weaknesses to go through for both our main product and ancillary text. Each group member had shown their own opinion of what they believed had been successful in the trailer or the film magazine and poster. When evaluating the effectiveness of the Film magazine I had agreed with Ashleigh about the image we had used had delayed us with editing the title and text because it had been hard to figure out the placing of both. When answering this question we had our film magazine and movie poster side by side so we could pick out how effective the combination had been with our ancillary texts. For example; we believed that the image for the film magazine had been a great combination with our media product as one of the characters had not been introduced in the trailer. This allows our target audience to create a sense of suspicion and interest when they see there is another character involved. When going through this I had realised I did not disagree with my group members as the form of communication we had with one another during these tasks allowed us to voice our opinion and resolve any issues that we did not agree on. By filming this question it had allowed us to to create follow on questions from the answers from my group members. We had also talked about the experience we had relating it back to how effective the combination of our media product and ancillary texts are overall.

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

In this question we will be using evidence from our trailer to answer how we have used the conventions of our trailer and have used, developed or challenged it in our media product. We have decided to do this by print screening different scenes from our trailer that represented whether our media product had showed  the conventions of our genre. Below we have analysed 7 scenes that we believe shows the answer to question 1.

This is a shot from the beginning of our trailer which clearly  shows our target audience the location of our trailer and the characters. From this long shot we can see how our characters are portrayed as vulnerable by the use of the trees towering over them, making them look insignificant. It is clear from the backdrop and the ambient lighting we can tell that our characters are on a hill, symbolising the idea that they are on a journey and their journey is going to go downhill the deeper into the forest they go. In films such as Paranormal Activity and Blair Witch Project it is a typical convention for the characters to look into the camera and break down the 'fourth wall', this scene conforms to this convention as we have made our characters imitate the way that other actors directly address the audience.

The reason why we have chosen 'The Sun' as a review in this trailer is because their primary audience is working class men. Stereotypically thrillers often attract men more than women therefore we have successfully targeted men. The use of the word 'riveting' creates an impression of a compelling trailer and one filled with excitement and suspense. This therefore builds up the idea that this movie is everything that our target market would expect and want from a thriller, enough to intrigue and persuade them to watch this movie. During our research, we had looked into the different reviews of each genre allowing us to understand the vocabulary for it. For example; a romantic comedy trailer will have vocabulary such as 'love' 'romance' fun' whilst horror movie trailers have vocabulary such as 'frightening' 'scary' and 'unexpected' which fits into both conventions. When deciding what to put in the review we have decided to go with 'riveting' as our target market will understand it and it will bring the suspense that we want it too.

In this part of the trailer, we had we had wanted our Protagonist who’s character turns evil to have a direct gaze into the camera. We have broken away from the convention of the Protagonist being filmed by someone else into filming herself. The angle we have chosen to do so allow the target audience to have a close up view of the characters angst expression, in this case our character has adopted the feeling of fear and curiosity when going into the woods. This follows the conventions of most typical thrillers as the main character that is ‘chosen’ .

This is a middle shot of both our characters, in this case the Protagonist and the Antagonist. In this case we have challenged the conventions of most trailers where often the antagonist is often hidden to give the feeling of suspense and suspicion for our target market. The angle of this shot allow us to the both characters and the location they are in, the reason why we have decided to opt for a middle shot instead of the other various shot, was to get both characters and location in this scene. The background allows the audience to understand that in this location and in this scene the only people there are the characters giving a signifier that an 'accident' or a crucial scene is about to occur. Often in most trailers, the director would not like to give scenes like this away however we had decided as a group it would be best to do so for our target audience to be engaged.

This scene shows the title of the film 'Shady Woods', we had placed this scene write at the end developing the conventions of our media products, often the title of the during a thriller trailer comes before a crucial scene and then the billing block for example the 'blair witch project' has the title come up then the woman speaking into the camera 'I'm sorry to Jacks mum and dad, and everybody else, it's my fault that this has happened.' and then the billing block however for our trailer we have developed on this by having the trailer right at the end along with the audio of both our Protagonist and Antagonist screaming to create the mystery as to why and who is screaming. The text we chose for our title challenges the convention of the real media product, often the colour of real media product texts are often red but we have chosen to go with the white as it stands out from the black background. The title we had created 'shady woods' had been chosen from our target market after we gave them different possible options of what our title could be, after much consideration Shady Woods had been chosen as it does not give too much information away about the narrative for our trailer and movie.

Often along with the reviews, real media products have an award stamped onto the trailer representing how their movie have succeeded, we have used this convention as we believed it had been powerful when researching other trailers when it came up. We have applied this for our genre to persuade and bring in our target audience to watch this. This is the highest recognition a movie can get which is why we had wanted to put this in our trailer. Often known as the sun dance award but we had decided to go with the Audience Choice Award as it shows our target market that other people their age believe that this trailer is worth watching.

Promotional Package

A promotional package essentially allows an industry to promote their movie in different ways, often a movie poster and a film magazine is used to promote the movie. When marketing a product it is important to reach the target market that we have created it for, the advertisements and marketing should be located where my potential target markets are. Marketing is a way for an industry to promote their product and create an awareness towards their target market, if an industry decided not to do this then their film would not be successful because people would not be aware of it, marketing of a movie can be done by:

Bill boards 

Cinema

Buses and Coaches

Posters

Magazines

Facebook

YouTube

Our Promotional package for our media product consisted of a film poster, a magazine cover and a trailer in order to ensure that our target market were fully aware of our film trailer. Both our trailer and ancillary text showed the consistent message that 'if one goes, everyone goes.' This could be interpreted in different ways in which we wanted out target market to thing of. Could it mean that if one goes missing, everyone goes missing or if one friend goes to the woods everyone else will go to the woods too. However due to our genre for the trailer our target audience will think of the darkest possible meaning for it. Throughout our promotional packaging we have shown the unity of the characters in different ways however we had kept the movie poster different so it did not give a lot of our narrative away. Our Promotional packages were these:

Shady Woods - Film magazine

Shady Woods - Movie Poster

Character Profile

Lauren Butler- We have challenged the conventions of the trailer and have developed the genre by making the main character female. Often most thriller genres have the main character as the man for example; the butterfly effect, paranormal activity etc. We have kept with the conventions of having a brunette pale girls, especially in thrillers when the characters are often ghost like. Lauren Butler fit straight into the convention and has had previous experience acting in her previous media product. For her costume we kept Lauren in generic costume however we had supplied her with boots in order to create the camping gear that we wanted to create. Lauren was also confident and understood the narrative which is why she was perfect for the part too. Overall Lauren had been the best person to be the protagonist and antagonist. We had also used Lauren's face for both film magazine and movie poster as she was the main character for both trailer and ancillary text.

Ayyaz Mehmood- We needed a male character for our trailer as it fit into a narrative. As a group we decided that our trailer would not be as interesting or successful if there were no male figures within the trailer. Ayyaz dialect and accent has the stereotypical London Kent accent which our trailer had been sent in. The clothing we had decided for Ayyaz had been the same colours as Lauren, Ashleigh and I. A male character is essential for any movie and trailers, there are portrayed as the saviour or the hero when the plan becomes a problem. Unlike Ashleigh who is an introvert during the trailer, Ayyaz is an extrovert and is very outspoken who will fill in any silence during the movie. In every movie there is a mix of character personality and in this case Ayyaz will be the person who decides to go to the camping trip which would begin during the beginning of the movie but also mysterious as his personality is very different.

Ashleigh Fearne- Having another female had fit into the narrative of the group. We were going to have another male within the group but we did not want our target audience to presume there would be romance within the trailer which is why we decided to have Ashleigh within the group, also she is a group member and would understand the narrative than a person from the outside. Ashleigh is an introvert within the trailer which gives the trailer a further mystery as the target audience cannot read her thoughts or expressions. Ashleigh costume consisted of dark clothing but also generic clothing that a teenager would wear if they had gone our for a walk when they are camping. Ashleigh's height also represents the vulnerability of the group and allows the target audience aware that we are teenagers and not adults from her footwear choices, converses.

Rebecca Rahman- To fit into the conventions of thriller genre we had added another female character, often a friend of the main character as the camping trip had been strictly for friends showed in the narrative of the trailer. We also wanted to expand the ethnicity within the group so we can reach a bigger target market. This is what we had learnt during our research, the bigger the ethnic group the larger the target base. For the costume we decided as a group to wear darker clothes so we could fit into the conventions of our documentary thriller genre. Each character had to wear something unique for example; Lauren had her scarfs and I had my blue jacket this allow this to become a symbolic representation as the person who has the camera can notice the other character while they have the hand held camera for them. Overall each group member had been involved during the process of the construction of the trailer.

Timeline Task Sheet

Creating a timeline task sheet allowed us to see which tasks have been completed and which tasks had to be completed before going onto another task. For example; the tasks that we had not completed had been colour coded Red, allowing us to focus on those tasks instead of the ones in black. By creating a to do sheet it allowed us to create time efficiency between us which was crucial at this stage as we needed to balance out filming the footage we needed and editing the footage we already had. Each individual member of the group had different tasks to complete as some had more than other. We had formatted it into a table as it showed us clearly which tasks had to be completed. We used this sheet regularly to colour code the ones we had completed and read the ones that we have not.

Product Plan Task Sheet Schedule

Costumes

The costumes in our trailer should fit conventions of our genre. When researching different trailers we had decided to just research on the costumes. For example; often Disney trailers would have their princess dressed in a fanatical way. Often dresses is associated with disney pixar films. Our costume for our genre and theme will stay casual due to the target market we have. 
Actors
The actors that we have will consist of 3 girls and 1 boy, originally we had wanted a a big group bet kept it small.
For the costumes that we have decide for our actors are just casul, everday clothes the reason for this is we want it to look like a group of teenagers out of the blue have all come together to all talk about  what they want to do now that the exams are over. For the girls we have thought about them maybe just wearning jeans and a jumper seeing as it is still winter and it is cold and for the boys we thought they could wear the same bottoms and maybe just a hoddie.

When it comes to the scenes when they are filming themseleves in the woods we talked about how they are going to need to look like they have prepared themseleves for the time away and they are wearing warm clothes. So in the end we said that they should wear the same as before but just a maybe a hat and a coat and because its going to be muddy they should wear something like boots.
Some other things that they could have as part of there costume is thing like a camping bag or a backpack, as this would make it look more real that they are going on a trip away.

Music

We had used garage band to create the different element of music on our trailer. The audio we were going to have within our trailer will be consistent and sharp shown in most documentary thriller trailers. Often the audio heard within the trailer will be the dialogue that the characters will say. Using Garage band and iTunes we had created dark suspenseful music for our trailer, this would often occur when the crucial scenes were happening to capture the audiences attention. The melody we had made had been successful and after our target markets feedback we then added an extra walkie talkie garble during our billing block to finalise our trailer.

Printscreens of Garage band

Creating a new project

Saving Project on itunes

iMovie Analysis

Before we had started editing our footages for a trailer we decided as a group to experience the tools on iMovie as some of my group members have not used iMovie in their AS but had used final cut express. By going through iMovie it had allowed us to understand the variety of tools that we could use for our film media trailer which therefore allowed us to create a professional finish for our trailer that somehow I could not achieve during my AS when I used final cut express. We had used youtube to look into effects that was not obvious when we looked into iMovie, by using youtube it allowed us to broaden the knowledge we had on iMovie as we were not experience, by finding different tools we could then apply it for our trailer. For Example; we had used youtube to figure out how to delete the audio but keep on the film. We had tried different methods until we used youtube. By clicking on the right mouse iMovie will give you the option to remove audio from the film, this will allow us to see the audio separate underneath the film which we can delete without deleting the audio. Therefore this allowed us to have the film playing without the voices which we could then place the itunes music on.

Print screens on Imovie

Split Clip

Deleting Audio

Play Voiceover

Transitions

Titles 'Left bottom corner'

Inputting itunes music

Dragging clip into selected area

Inspiration from Blair Witch Project & Paranormal Activity

Shady Woods (Left) , Blair Witch Project (Right)

When researching into trailer I believed that this very scene in the bale witch project was captivating. The angle and close up position of the hand held camera allows us as the audience to be pulled out from our reality and understand the pain she is going through at that very moment. As a group we had decided that we want to create a similar scene like this, as our genre is documentary thriller we ha wanted to create a way for our target audience to know that it is a documentary by having the camera angle like this they will comprehend because a professional movie would not do an angle like this. However our context and scene for this will not be the same as the Blair witch project but the camera angle and positioning will be so our main character is the focal point within this scene.

Paranormal Activity (Left) , Shady Woods (Right)

During our trailer I had noticed that most documentary thriller had the location of the characters. Both catfish and paranormal activity showed their location and we had wanted to apply this convention into our trailer as we believed that the location would make our target audience interested and make the movie relatable for them if they came from the location or they knew it. We had changed the font and size of our text compared to the paranormal activity one as theirs had been narrow and we had wanted it bold and bigger to capture the audiences attention.

Blair Witch project (Left) , Shady Woods (Right)

Having a mid shot of another character is also important for any trailer. It allows the audience to see the location, often with an establishing shot, but also the character itself. Non verbal action from a character can tell an audience about how the character is feeling at the scene. In this scene Ayyaz is standing in a tough position but with a confused look on his face, combining this with Laura Mulveys theory of active male this scene further on shows how Ayyaz protects Lauren.

Titles

During the process of creating a trailer we had decided that the name of our media product will relate to the narrative or location of our medial film trailer. Before creating a focus group we had asked people their opinion on the following possible title for our trailer. these were:

• No Entry
• Shady Woods
• The point of no return
• Restricted
• The Holiday

The final decision for our titles had been the point of no return, but was soon changed to shady woods as there had been copyright restriction for 'the point of no return'. We had rejected the others as our target market had believed that 'The Holiday' gave them the impression that it was a Christmas festive film, No entry and Restricted had been rejected also as it looked too simple. We had researched into different trailers from different genres and realised that there had been different ways as to why a movie had a particular name for example when looking into animated films, as a group we had realised that often the name of the character will be incoperated with the title itself such as James and the Giant Peach and Matilda. However we have decided not to do this as we had many characters in our movie and it was not just focused on one protagonist. The name of our film trailer will be:

SHADY WOODS

Creating potential movie poster

We were inspired by many thriller movie poster, from the Blair Witch Project to the Paranormal Activity to create this however we had decided that we really wanted to make sure that our target audience understood that it will be a paranormal thriller that will be documented from the actors and actresses perspective. This is why we had come up with different ideas that our movie posters will be. Our original image will be developed differently as we want to put other images into our poster too. We had drawn different ideas of the magazine