In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The
genre of my film is a bad (comedy horror) horror film, which normally
follows the story of a character who faces some low budget monster.
I
the majority of bad horror movies the setting is in a remote
location, to show the characters as being isolated from the outside
world, creating a sense of the characters being hopeless. I decided
to also do this with my film, setting it in a remote location away
from the world, and the school field and the forest like area that is
available to me from there also adds to this as in a woods it is
darker than the rest of the world, creating a greater air of terror
for both the character and the audience of the film. One of the best
parts of using the school is that there are a few shots where it can
look like the field is on the back of a remote science building,
which the monster that terrorizes him throughout the film is from.
I
developed the genre by making it so that the character is part of the
team that created the problem, not just some random bystander who
gets into a random situation of which he has no idea how to deal
with, but as Cai was on the team that made it he stands more of a
chance against the unseen monster.
However
I challenged the genre by making it so the monster is never seen
throughout the film, or the trailer, we only ever see the things from
its point of view and even then it still feels bodiless as we can't
see any arms of the monster from it, the only hints with to the
origin of the monster are what Cai tells us throughout the trailer.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
I
feel like the combination of my main product and that of my Ancillary
texts is effective, as I used the same fonts throughout each piece, I
also did the same with the effects that I used on the text via
Photoshop to add an extra level of depth to the text in the ancillary
text. However, I didn't always use the same font as when I was making
the magazine title I used an entirely new font for “Screamaphile”
as after all the magazine itself is made by a different company to
that of the trailer and the poster.
The
main colours that I used in the texts was: Black, Red, Blue and a
Gradient of Blue and black together to create the sense of the
letters being frozen over as that is a key aspect of my movie.
The
feedback I received on them was overall positive as the audiences
thought that they complimented the film trailer nicely and acted as
good marketing for a fictional movie.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
From
the audience feedback I learned a lot about my main product and my
ancillary products. Thankfully the feedback was positive towards my
film. The main points that I learned from my feedback were that:
- I had made a funny trailer that would get people to watch the movie if it did release.
- The trailer feels like a genuine trailer even though it is for a mostly comedic movie.
- The music blends into the film and adds a new layer of depth into my film trailer.
- I had left enough of the plot open to allow everyone to keep wondering what happens enough.
- My use of Mise en scene was effective.
- My use of camera angles also is effective.
- The magazine cover feels like one that would actually be published.
- The poster looks like one that would belong in a movie theatre which is mainly the look I was going for.
After
surveying people who are in my target audience I have learnt that
they would go see the film if I released it based off of all three
products put together as they have created enough intrigue in what
is going to happen in my film.
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
In
the research stage of production I mainly used YouTube to research
what other movie trailers in my chosen genre are like so that I know
how to effectively base my trailer off of it. I then googled to find
how most of the posters of films in my chosen genre are constructed
and what media conventions they use to help construct their poster, I
implemented the majority of these aspects into my poster as well.
Finally I looked at other magazine front covers that reviewed films
like zombeavers so that I know how to make a serious looking product
out of something that isn't serious at all. I had also looked at the
typography of the examples of the posters and the magazine cover so
that I knew exactly the type of colours and fonts that I was going to
need for my ancillary texts.
In
the planning stage of I made a lot of rough digital versions of what
I wanted to make, so that I was able to effectively map out how I was
going to do what I wanted to do. At first I started with three main
ideas for my magazine cover and my poster, but after time I refined
them down into one plan each and then took this to create a template
that I used to create the ancillary texts.
In
the construction stage of my coursework I used many different
technologies to create the whole project. To film and take the photos
that I needed for my film I mainly just used my phone as the camera
isn't as good as some cameras that I would have access to as I
thought that this would emphasise the purposeful badness of the film
trailer and ancillary texts. The editing I did of the trailer was all
done on adobe indesign CC as that is the industry standard. The
voiceover that I did of my film was also recorded on my phone through
the inbuilt microphone and the microphone app that comes
preinstalled. The ancillary products were created on Adobe CS2 as
that is the one that I had installed on my laptop at the time. I had
also downloaded a lot of fonts through the website Urbanfonts, the
vast majority of the typography is achieved through fonts that I had
found on the website.
