Trailer and Ancillary Tasks (Poster and Magazine Cover)

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

Using new media technologies within my research and planning stages:Firstly, to create our coursework we have used Blogger, an advanced way to keep a diary for others to see and comment on. This gave me the tools to keep organised and up to date with my work, to record everything I have done, to upload all my work to and also to be marked through. Blogger is easier than traditional paper coursework as it is hardly ever lost or damaged, it is also easily saved and stored. It enables you to use videos, voiceovers, screenshots, sounds and do endless research. In the research and planning stages I mostly used computers and the internet, with websites likeYouTube, IMDB and official film websites to explore film trailers and gain ideas for our own promo. The disadvantages of this is that it might constrain originality, the information isn't always relevant or reliable, as well as our area S.W. learning grid often blocks us our of Blogger and other websites. The benefits of the technologies is that they are mostly convenient and we can access a wide range of genres very easily.

Besides this, we did audience research using Vox-Pop, a visual device which gave us instant feedback, was easily and creatively presentable, and for planning on the blog, we used the presentation tools bubbl.us and slide.net which are also creative. For our animatics and storyboard we used transitions, continuity and added titles to keep it interesting. Lastly in the planing and research we used casting and location shots to show extra detail in our work.


Creativity: This section involves thinking and behaving imaginatively, so for this side of our project, we chose to do the genre 'social realism' which i think was an interesting and thought-provoking choice, when compared to a horror or thriller. We have shown this genre by using ordinary, eye level shots, everyday situations and realistic settings and lighting. We used the software GarageBand for our soundtrack with the non-copyrighted range of music that has many options for any feeling or mood you wish to create, and we wanted our music to look and sound professional. It also allows unmusically talented people to create soundtracks simply. For our camerawork in the production stages, we used a HD video camera and tripod to film with. The HD cameras are more effective than the DV cameras. They produce a much higher quality of video, improving the overall look. Using DV cameras produces a much more grainy image quality. However, some of our lighting is a little dark, for example in the 'clubbing' or 'party' scenes, so the quality is not always at its best. 

Throughout our coursework we have used new media concepts to help promote the trailer. Having our trailer on YouTube allows us to see how much our trailer is being viewed, who by and where in the world they are watching it. Knowing the demographics of our audience would really help use in marketing and distribution as we are more likely to have a clearer idea of who is our target market. To encourage more people to support our trailer I posted the link on my social networking site allowing friends and other Internet user to go directly to YouTube and watch the trailer.

Here is a screen shot of when I posted the link on my Twitter. My Twitter privacy settings are completely public so this link was open to anybody who found it. With over a hundred follows, and many of which are not direct friends, this post was made very accessible. Also the privacy setting for the actual trailer on YouTube were set in such that anybody was able to view as well. I also published the link to my Facebook profile, which although is not public, the direct audience was much larger than that of my twitter account. Another point on this matter is that the viewers are all people I know so their responses should be more ‘helpful’ than some of the ‘haters’ that post on many viral productions.

After posting our trailer on these social websites I noticed that the view count started to rise quite significantly. After a week of being on YouTube without having posted to my networking site the play count was around twenty, however after doing such the play counts are now in the high sixties which is really encouraging. Media 2.0 shows that gaining instant feedback for your productions is extremely achievable today. Viewers are able to comment on the film straight away voicing their opinions and hopefully providing constructive responses helping the producers.

Evaluation 3: Audience Feedback Questions.

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

- Introduce our selves.

- Logos (still & moving)

- Writing and Narrative

- Handheld camera (documentary style)

- Styling of shots (artistic)

- Diagetic sound

- Master/Abstract shot (walking)

- Editing (contrast of bad/good)

- Montage #1

- Transitions

- Mise-en-scene

- Montage #2

- Music (piano repetition)

- Introduction of new Actress (up beat music)

- Film Title

- Magazine Cover

            - Character’s personality (good/bad)

            - Characteristics reflection in costume

            - Hue

            - Title

Poster

            - Character’s positioning

            - Urban vs. Country theme

            - Title

            - Conventions of a poster

Preparing for Director's Commentary

As part of our evaluation we have chosen to complete a director's commentary to talk about how we completed such like camera work, editing, magazine cover and poster and comment in real time. To make this easier to structure we have written a prompts list first which we can then post along with our director's commentary video. Here is Cally working on this as I time to the trailer. We hope to compete this task over the weekend!

Audience Feed Back Planning

To gain valuable feedback we set up a viewing of our trailer infront of peers such a GCSE Media Student and Year 13 English Language Student. We gave them each this questionnaire and whilst watching our trailer for the second time they completed for us. Now we are studying their comments to evaluate at a later date.

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

More niche and independent films rely on reviews and other’s opinions from reliable sources, which will gain greater audiences.  The independent social realist film on the left has a quote made by a respectable source in the middle of the trailer. As there will only be a small audience for this film, a positive quote such as this would have boosted sales. We have used this idea and replicated in our work. Total Film magazine is definitely a reputable source and should help draw in a larger audience.

Social realist films use a lot of more artistic techniques to portray the narrative. Here we are looking specifically at lighting. Lighting the subject from behind is not a ‘normal’ method as it is less obvious to recognize the character. However film of this genre revolve around one or a small group of characters. Therefore artistic shots like silhouettes are much more plausible to use such techniques with effective outcomes. 

As I mentioned before social realist films tend to revolve around the lives of a small group of characters, or possibly even just one, such as our film. Therefore a typical trailer of this genre will have many close up shots of the main character(s) to help convey the emotions of these characters at different stages of the film. Another approach to communicate with the audience their feeling is ‘to-camera’ shots, where the character addresses the camera directly. Eyes are a great indicator of people’s emotions, so looking directly into them includes the audience to have a better relationship with the character. Both approaches me have used throughout.

CCTV-like shots, such as these high and wide angle shots, help to produce a realistic themes that are needed to improve the nature of our genre.  We have also chosen very realistic lighting in this shot, which would be characteristic of a social realistic film, as we can see on the left.

For the shot of our character ‘Cally’ with her friends, we chose a long shot and this generally shows the image as approximately "life" size. To create verisimilitude, which is a key convention in a Social Realism film, we have focused on the characters, but still allowed plenty of background detail to set the scene.

This mirror shot shows our character close up and is used to establish an emotional moment within the film, enabling the viewer to sympathise, gain greater understanding of the character or relate to them. By concentrating on her face, or a specific detail of mise-en-scene it creates an intimate atmosphere, meaning the close-up takes us into the mind of our character.

This extreme close up again also exaggerates facial expression which helps convey realistic emotion. The viewer is drawn into the subject's personal space and shares their feelings. This is done within the genre of Social Realism in a confined space to take the viewer out of the cinema experience and place them into actual life.

This shot is to exemplify the location used; here we have used a typically British small town which conforms to Social Realism conventions as you need a convincing setting.  An important theme within our trailer was the contrast between rural and town life as well as the difference between the working and upper classes.

This establishing shot shows the spatial relations among characters and the space they inhabit clear, but here we have used it to establish our characters change in mood and it becomes symbolic of her moving from one life into a new brighter one.  In the comparison shot from ‘TopBoy’ the camera moves toward the character, forming a state of realisation for both characters.