Thursday, 29 March 2012
Question 4 How did you use media technologies in the construction research and planning and evaluation stages?
In my coursework I constantly used media technology in both my evaluation stage and in particular in my planning. The media technology ranged from social media like facebook, to software like Photoshop elements 2.0, and hardware such a Sony cameras. Using this technology helped to shape the direction that my coursework went to, and it also helped to involve as many people as possible in to the creative process.
The first steps of using the technologies were to pick which ones were best for my work. I chose to use a Sony HD camera. The camera was best because the image was very clear and crisp. Secondly it enabled me to shoot some shots out of focus, which I really wanted to be able to do to distort the image of the villain the creeper. Evidence of this was the two different test shots that I took which I posted on YouTube. Another advantage of the camera was to do with the mise en scene. I intended to use lots of Dutch angles in the shot, which are tilted camera shots used for add a sense of uneasiness. The Sony camera worked well when I had to constantly tilt the camera sideways, although in the tripod it was sometimes quite troublesome achieving the Dutch angles because the tripod would constantly slip upwards or downwards and so it took a while to get it still. The storage compacity of the camera was also quite good so had the ability to take lots of different takes.
Another example of technology that was used was a camera to take pictures of some of the locations that I liked. So for example I travelled down to Avenue Park and took images of all the places that I thought would work well in my trailer. The advantage of this was that I could eliminate the locations that were not practical and the ones that were. However of course not all of the perspective locations were used, but some were, therefore showing how the use of a camera was key in helping me plan efficiently because when it got down to time to shoot I had already established the best place to shoot. The use of the camera led me to use other presentation devices like prezi and slideshare. Prezi helped me to create a visual presentation of the locations that I was look at for my trailer, and so it made my blog a slightly more interactive experience. I then used slideshare to present my pitch. This was especially important because originally I had filmed my pitch but I had problems converting the work. This meant I would of wrote my pitch word for word. However slideshare allowed me to write my pitch but at the same time making it easier to reader, and more accessible. The use of wordle of worked very well because even when I did use a questionnaire instead of copying it onto my blog I could use wordle to combine all the words that people used to describe my work and put into a funky image.
Another form of technology I used arguably the most obvious is the internet. In the modern age convergence is growing and growing. And therefore I used social networking sites to get my target audience involved in the planning stages. I had a small questionnaire placed onto facebook to gauge what film titles my target audience would be interested in. Using facebook was much more practical than constantly writing up questionnaires and handing them out in the common room. This ultimately meant I could save valuble time and use it on other aspects of planning. YouTube was another important tool for research. Using Youtube I could look at some of the best examples of film trailers to learn what makes them so good. For example I looked at recent movies like “Prometheus” and the “woman in black”. The importance of this was that by looking at contemporary examples I worked today and therefore I was also learning what would appeal to my target audience and demographic. YouTube also makes old horror trailers available to look at. The use of the internet also allowed me to research for my 2 ancillary tasks. I mainly used google to look for images of front covers of 2 of the biggest film magazines empire and total film. By having hundreds and thousands of covers to look at I had a wider understanding of the conventions that remained consistent in all of them. This was similar to what I did in AS for research. For instance the color schemes and fonts most of the front covers were consistent and complimented each other. So therefore I made sure I did something similar in order to be successful in appealing to my target audience.
For the editing of my posters I used Photoshop elements 2.0 which was a basic version of Photoshop used at my sixth form. The advantage of using Photoshop was there were many effects that I could add. For example of my teaser poster I added a graphite effect to blur the main image. I also corrected the lighting of my original image to heighten the spookiness of it. In terms of my magazine front cover I also added subtle effects like adding a drawing effect that made my image looked like it was hand drawn.
For editing of my main task I used final cut express. The advantages of this program was that I was used on a mac, and therefore its speed was incredibly fast when compared to something like windows movie maker. And similar to Photoshop the amount of effects on final cut express was that amazing. You can add things like dissolves and fades, as well as editing the length of music etc. This allowed me to make more horror even more frightening than I had originally planned. Final cut express also allowed me to zoom in and out of shots, this was especially good because I had not originally intended to do this
Also using my blog was a an effective way of using media technology. This because I could regularly update the blog showing which stage I was on. This meant that I had evidence to show that I was planning every element of my work.
However there was many problems that I encounted. Firstly the sony camera used for filming shot had a short frame. This meant it was difficult trying to get everything into the shot. So I had to readjust myself to get the shot that I wanted, and this meant taking up to 1 or 2 more shots than I wanted. Also the biggest problem faced with the camera was converting my work. When I tried to put my shots onto a computer I would not be able to open, and sometimes there was no sound at all. And the only way I could convert the work was by downloaded an app on a Mac. However the Mac’s I used at school did not have any internet, subsequently I had to constantly go to my friends house to convert the work. This was incredibly time consuming and resulted in me being up to a week and half behind schedule. Another problem with the camera was in relation to final cut express. Often the battery life of the camera was so low that it would disconnect from final cut express. This meant I had to spend up to an hour trying to get all the scenes back, at sometimes I even had to edit large portions of the trailer together repeatedly because of this problem. Furthermore final cut express was extremely difficult to get to grips with. And as a consequence I ended up 2 weeks behind schedule and it made it difficult to meet my deadline.
Question 3 What Have I learned from our audience feedback
During the duration of my coursework I learnt that audience feedback was crucial in the development of my product. It helped me learn from my mistakes, it also helped to improve areas of my work, which without having feedback from my peers I wouldn’t of been encouraged to do in the first place. Not only did I get constructive criticism from my target audience of 18 to 24 year olds but also I received feedback from people who had previously of A2 media. This not only helped me to see the do’s and don’t from people that could relate to what I was doing, but also it was crucial because it helped me to stick even closer to the conventions of horror that were crucial if my work was actually to be representative of a real world media product.
Firstly one of initial things we did to involve our target audience was to have them help us choose the name of our film. This was important because I was having difficulty choosing a name. We gave them multiple choices to choose from. To help us we used social media, in this case facebook. Using facebook helped me learn what my target audience wanted best and whether their opinions correlated well with mine. When giving them the choice of film titles I thought I liked “the creep” best out of all of the selection, and when my peers chose this, my opinion was validated. So therefore I learnt here that I was doing well in trying to conjure up things that would appeal to my target audience.
In terms of editing my audience feedback was crucial in enhancing my work. I screened the first draft of my trailer to one of my friends and she stated she found it difficult to follow the narrative of the story. She also had problems in terms of continuality. As she thought that the changes in clothing were not intentional and therefore she thought it was a mistake on my park. However the changes in clothing of one of my characters were planned carefully in pre production and therefore I could justify it. So after this feedback I took the decision to research existing film trailers to see what conventions they use to make things more clear. One of the examples of this was Halloween which included a voice over that helped to set the scene and told the audience what the story would be about. So instead of using a voice over which I thought would be to time consuming I used more superimposes in the trailer so that everything would be much more coherent. For example some lines included things like “now his next victim has been chosen” and “day by day it stalks its victims”. The last example is the best because the line makes it clear that the character is being stalked by the creeper over a period of time. And therefore it made it an easier viewing experience for my audience. Another criticism is that people thought that although I did a good job at adding a flicker to the trailer, that there wasn’t enough of it for it to achieve the desired effect. So to improve this I added almost double the amount of flickers in the trailer. Another criticism was about the blood. Some of my audience believed the blood wasn’t striking enough because it looked almost light red in colour. So instead of reshooting the scene which would of been incredibly time consuming, i decided to colour correct the scene. And so I brightened the colour and added a artificial glow that made everything stand out, and it helped make the blood more dark in tone, and I was especially happy the way this turned out.
Not all my feedback was negative. I posted my first draft onto YouTube and asked some people in to comment on it. Some of my audience liked some of the colour filters that I used as well as the 2 types of music, the slow sombre piano music, and the violent suspenseful violin noise. My audience also liked the way I added the release date of the movie on Halloween. They said that it
To add some more weight to my audience feedback I asked a previous A2 student to look at my second draft and to assess what was good and to help me with what to improve. After watching it one of the most important things he suggested was that I editing the music to make it more coherent and so that it flowed better, because he argued that I although he thought the concept of using 2 songs worked it needed to an improvement. So I ultimately learnt that by using someone who had experience in what i was doing that It was the little details that were crucial if my product was to be most conventional that it can be.
For my first ancillary task which was my teaser poster I first made a draft and then I asked a couple of people in my common room about what they liked and what I could improve. The first impressions were very positive because in general people like they way I added a graphite effect on Photoshop and how it made the poster look cool and realistic. They also loved the close up shot because they thought it was the most intimidating and thought provoking. However some people in the common room suggested some minor changes like for instance I had used the word Halloween twice in both the tagline and at the top of the poster, and they suggested that this was slightly distracting. Another minor detail that was criticised was my spelling, which of course was easy to correct. When I had made these minor corrections I asked more people in my common room to participate and asked them to describe my work in one word so that I could use it and make a wordle. Almost all of the feedback was positive, as people said things like “ Wierd”, “convention”, and “creepy” wich in esscene is the reaction I wanted to have because such words showed that my teaser poster was fulfilling the conventions of the horror genre.
For my last ancillary task my magazine poster I followed a similar pattern. I first planned out what I thought would appeal to my target audience trying to ensure that the feedback would be as positive as possible . So I use all the things I learnt from feeback on the teaser poster and incorporated them onto the front cover. To do this I first chose a holistic colour theme that mirrored my teaser poster, especially because the poster got very positive feedback on that aspect in particular. So red white and black were all used. I also tried to imitate the layout of the teaser poster. So for example the fonts In both ancillary tasks were both quite similar. As well as the positioning of my villain the creeper was right in the centre to because in reaction to the fact my target audience thought a close up shot was the most conventional thing to use. However I learnt from my audience feedback on my first draft was that people the level of professionalism, in particular the little details. For example not all of the text started on the same side. Therefore It made some of the text look really lopsided. Another problem was that some of the font was not aligned properly. So what I learnt from the feedback here that was crucial is that with my target audience being young, they still wanted all aspects of my work to be of the highest quality.
In conclusion I feel that the way I tried to involve my audience in the development of my film trailer was very effective because they were involved in almost every step, and every decision I made was in reaction to what they wanted and this worked beautifully in my main task. However If I could do the task again I could definitely improve the audience involvement in both ancillary tasks. I could have asked more people in the common room about the designs, especially whether they thought it was important whether both ancillary tasks connected together or whether they wanted them to be completely independent. I also could of gotten more audience feedback in pre production phase. So for example having people comment on my storyboards, and potential locations would of made my work an even more intimate experience for the demographic that I wanted to attract. Another thing I could of possibly of improved was asking people who were not from my intended target audience, just to see whether their ideas correlate with mine, and more interestingly with the 16 to 24 age group. So getting adults perspectives on things could of added an extra dimension of my work, as possibly I alienated other demographics a bit too much.
Question 2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?
When doing this coursework I was always aware that I had to make all 3 of my tasks work together in a holistic manner. So in essence my teaser trailer, and both ancillary tasks had to link together into a collective whole. After completing my work I feel that I have accomplished this goal very well. To the point where If I presented my work to my intended target audience they would find it easy to identify that all 3 pieces of my work are connected and are all part of the same product.
Firstly, one of the key things needed to make everything connect was choosing an appropriate colour scheme that could work with all of my tasks. I decided to use red, black, and white. The importance of these colours is that in particular red is synonymous with blood and therefore the horror genre. And also used black because when I used super imposes in my trailer a black background added a haunting atmosphere. These colours also worked with my teaser poster and magazine front cover. I used a black background in both because I did research and discovered that most horror trailers used this, and for my front cover it helped to keep everything muted, but at the same time very intimidating. In addition to this for my magazine front cover I planned carefully which places I would use each colour. I wanted red at the top and at the very bottom. So that the black and red would combine and strike the audience. I then wanted little bits of white, for important information like what celebrities would be included and information on articles. As without the white, i thought that the red and black would almost to be overbearing. For my teaser poster I also planned the layout thoroughly. The things that I covered from the magazine front cover was the red colour for my font. I also tried to make the fonts quite similar so that I looked like it belonged among the same promotional package.
I also added conventions in all 3 tasks in order to enable them to connect. One of the best examples of this was the fact that in my magazine front cover was a advertisement for my teaser poster which was on the bottom left. I got the idea from this by researching existing magazines like empire. Moreover the layout of the teaser poster and magazine front cover mirror each other. For example at the bottom of the posters there the font sizes of the text are similar. Once more the pictures I used are also reflective of each other. When I was planning this out I made sure that I took a variety of different pictures for example long shots and medium shots. But I thought the close up shots worked best, and so I made sure I used them in both ancillary tasks.
In terms of my film trailer and its mise en scene contained lots of flicker shots which blurred and distorted the image, in particular of the films main villain, the creeper. So therefore for my teaset poster I had to try and find a clever way to reflect this. So I chose to a graphite effect onto the poster, so that when applied the audience could barely see the fact of the villain, but at the same time after seeing the trailer, they would identify the fact that they were all from the same product, and thus were all working holistically. In all 3 tasks our villain also wore the same item of clothing, although it was difficult to see this in the teaser poster, but in the magazine front clever, it was easy to identify.
In conclusion I feel that I have achieved my adjective in making my tasks work in unison and that they are all holistic. However there are numerous places in which if I did the task again I could improve on. I do feel that the connection between the magazine front cover and the teaser poster could be improved slightly. For example I could of added a bit more effects onto the front cover to match the graphite effect I applied on the teaser poster. However it could of potentially of been to distracting so I probably made the right decision not to do so. Another thing I could of improved on was possible adding more characters into the actual trailer, maybe 1 or to more. This is because I made reference to them in my teaser poster, and so potentially my target audience would of been surprised to see so little characters in the trailer when in the poster there’s around 5 characters I made reference to.
1.In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media texts?
For my media coursework I looked rigorously at real life media texts in order to establish some of the conventions that are used, and therefore it helped me to decide which conventions I wanted to implement into my work, and also some of the conventions that wanted to reverse and change. I believe that as a result of looking at real life media texts, and conventions that it helped to make my work both relevant to my target audience and unique enough that it surprised my target demographic because it had surprises that they were not expeecting.
Firstly my target audience was the 16 to 24 age group. This is because our trailer contained blood and murder and I thought this would be unsuitable for anyone below the age of 16. Also I targeted this age because this group have factored in some of the biggest box offices grossing movies in the horror industry. For example two of the media texts I researched was paranormal activity , which in 2011 got 50 million on opening weekend.
Secondly, I made sure that my work incorporated real life norms and conventions. To achieve this I looked at movie trailers both past and present to learn about the codes and conventions that were needed to make my work as relevant to my audience as possible. Some examples of old movie trailers I looked at were “Halloween” and in particular “scream”. What I learnt from these trailers were the stereotypes that were utilised. For example the uses of superimposes that helped to establish to the audience the narrative of the story and also how superimposed helped to increase the tension of the trailer. For instance at the end of both trailers it would reveal to the audience the release dates of the movie. So I decided to conform to these conventions by adding a lot of the superimposes into my trailer. Not only did it improve the amount of tension but it helped to show my intended target audience what my movie was about. Other conventions that I learnt were imperative was the use of music. In almost all the horror trailers I looked at the music was one of the key elements of making the trailer as suspenseful as possible. The more loud and piercing as possible, the more effective the trailer was at frightening its audience.
Other conventions that I conformed to were the use of music. Trailers like saw and Prometheus use high pitched music to elevate the tension and to make the trailer much more striking. So I used a high pitch sound in the most of the trailer, so that it would scare the viewer. However to go against the conventional use of music I used a slow piano music at the very beginning to create a false sense of security and at the end to create a feeling of sombreness. By adding this unique twist I believed that my audience would be like it more because it had an element of surprise, and in contempary media and film, movie goers are always on the look for something different and rewarding. A primary example of this was my research of Cloverfield, which had the surprise of a handheld camera technique which paid off because it earned 35 million on its opening weekend. The other conventions that I followed were editing style. I used lots of cuts. The effect of this is that it distorted some of the scenes so that the audience could not see everything in the trailer clearly, which would force my target audience to watch it more than once. One of my inspirations for using this technique was the Saw series where all its trailers follow this technique which has led big box office success. I also added a muted colour palette of the trailer, especially in the opening establishing shots, which had hints of red and grey in them to create a feeling of gore and dread and to immediately foreshadow the death and murder that was to come. In terms of stereotypes I chose to use 2 blondes. As in some of the most popular horror movies they blonde are the typical damsels in distress. And therefore as soon as the audience saw such characters it would add the tension as they knew that something shocking was about to occur. For camera shots I used a large range, to make sure it was not too simple. For instance long shots and establishing shots close ups, extreme close up, over the shoulder shots etc. But I combined those camera angles with other conventions like Dutch angles which are tilted angles, this helped to create a feeling of disorientation. Dutch angles is another good way to show how I used existing conventions because Dutch angles has been used in film for over 60 years, and one of the pioneers of it was the famous Albert Hitchock.
Also the length of the trailer helped to conform to type. I chose a sub 2 minute trailer because I wanted our trailer to have its own sort of story. With horror trailers there is always a choice of choosing a short 1 minute teaser trailer or doing a 2 minute and a half theatrical trailer and I chose the latter. The first victim in our trailer is killed in the first half of the trailer which helped to shock the audience early one during the viewing experience. And I wanted the second victim to be gradually lead closer and closer to her death, and thus a longer time running time helped to make the narrative as clear as possible.
I also looked at other mediums like music to learn whether they use similar conventions and to learn how they developed them. I chose to look at in particular the song disturbia from Rihanna because the video revolved around horror and used effects to great effect. What I learnt was that that music videos use the stereotypical conventions of the genre that I had chosen, such as low and high angles, quick editing etc. But it developed this conventions by making them more graphic so that the perverse images would linger in the viewers head for a long time. And therefore in my editing process I tried to add subtle effects to replicate this style to a certain extent. For example my first establishing shot is shrowded in intense white. However ultimately I did encounter trouble trying to add the effects that were used in the video. Because the editing program final cut express was soo complex I couldn’t learn how to add complicated effects to my trailer.
In terms of my teaser poster I conformed to conventions by using the stereotypical colours. Red, black, and white. I did this because as soon as my target audience saw these colours they would be able to identify with it. For example the colour red is synonymous in the horror genre for blood. I also tried to connect my teaser poster as much as possible to my trailer. So I deliberately distorted the image of the creeper in order to reflect the flicker effect that I used in the my film trailer. Another way in which my teaser poster was conventional was because of its simplicity. I used simply 1 image because I thought it was the most effective. For my magazine cover I also made everything connect by using the same 3 colours and similar font sizes.
In addition, my film trailer also challenged existing conventions. Firstly I chose not to include any real dialogue. This is because for a film trailer to be able to properly entice I thought that it would be better to show the more action horror orientated elements of my trailer. Another way that we challenged conventions is that we eluded the ending of the movie, although we didn’t exactly reveal what happened the audience was still left with the impression that the character was almost certain to die. Also we developed on conventions with the 2 types of music. Although it was not necessarily going against horror conventions per se, they way I implemented it possible did. The piano music at the beginning and end was evidence of this.