A2 Media Evaluation

A2 Media Evaluation serial D I F F erences Scott Cook

Introduction Rhys, Me and Siobhan Powell created our own film trailer in which we had to make a storyline from scratch and come up with the best parts of that film and put them into a trailer. We as a group had full control of this as we produced, edited and directed it all. We gave each other separate jobs, with me doing most of the camera work and editing , Rhys being the actor and Siobhan doing all the other jobs that were required to make it as successful as we wanted to. We had to pick a genre that our film could be classed in and make a plot that would be suitable for that genre. The genre that we had decided to make is a cross genre of Science Fiction and Thriller with a slight twist of Action. We chose this because we thought it could be interesting to film as long as it works and we are able to pull it off. We needed it to be challenging and better than last year’s film opening. We wanted to make it more detailed and that is what we tried to do. The basic plot of our film production is about two people Mollie and Paul, who are both in a relationship that is packed with arguments. This leads to Mollie abusing Paul on a numerous occasions without reasons and that provokes Paul to genuinely feel bad about his life. This leads to Mollie being killed for the first time, with the murderer unknown. This is when the start of the time loops comes as Mollie wakes up the same time the next day and doesn’t suspect a thing. The day repeats and she soon realizes that she is stuck in the time loop and she can’t seem to figure out who is murdering her or how to get out of the time loop. It is quite a difficult plot to grasp but we have managed to simplify it with the trailer. Here is the link to our finished film trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AcNF9j6xA4

In what ways does our media product use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? In the build up to making our film trailer, me and my group analyzed everything from developing our product, challenging forms and conventions of real life media products. The first thing that we found out was that every trailer will have a 3 act structure. The first act will be when it sets the scene for the trailer and it tells the audience about what is going on. The second act will be the climax of the trailer where something will happen to shock the audience or make them want to watch more. Finally, the third act is the montage footage which is a selection of shots and clips from the film and used to build up tension to the climax of the montage footage and this is the part which tell the audience more about the film and the bit that intrigues them the most and will make them want to go to the cinema to see it. The use of music is also important in the montage editing. I find that the most successful music is parallel sound, the sound that matches what is going on, on screen. This is because it causes a bigger effect and make the clip more interesting to watch and listen to. That is why we chose Bryan Adams’ song Run To You as it collaborates with what is happening on screen and it make it more interesting and helps us build up the tension. A lot of running is used in our trailer and it shows the Mollie running away from the serial killer and it combines with what is happening. Like I said in the introduction, we thought mixing the Thriller and Science Fiction genres would be quite difficult because we would have to include different conventions from each genre and combine them successfully. The time loop was something that would come up in a Science Fiction movie, where as the mysteriousness of who is the murderer would come up in a thriller film. The action also comes from the content of the scenes, such as the car scene where Mollie gets run over. From everything that we have got for our film trailer, I think that our group did well because we didn’t have the budget of big name film production companies such as Columbia Pictures and 20th Century Fox etc. We made a good trailer from the resources we had and we now know that we can make a successful trailer from having next to nothing. I also think narration is very important in the film trailer. Ryan Rheeston Audience Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojMMmYfrTQY Craig Fallows Audience Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZ-zmd8w0BQ

In what ways does our media product use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Second part This is because it asks us and the audience rhetorical questions and it also helps us break down the scenes of the trailer to make it interesting for the audience. All of these conventions are found in real media products. This is the slide that is more about the actual trailer and the conventions of the trailer itself rather than anything else. When we decided to make a sub genre of Science Fiction Thriller, we had to find out some of the conventions of each genre. We found that Thrillers tended to be mysterious, dark, confusing and insane whereas Science Fiction films tended to be abnormal, opposite to reality, strange and quite random. We had to add this to our film trailer to make a successful trailer of each genre. We also had to subvert the genre and make it unique to our product. We wanted it to be different from all the other films of these genres and stand out to make the audience gasp. We also had to choose an age range for which our film trailer would be aimed for. We found it hard to decide between two particular age groups, 12A or 15. We researched on the British Board of Film Classification website to see what kind of films are for each age group. We found there were some films that were 12A that we think should be classed as 15 and some 15 films that should be classed as 12A. This made our decision difficult but we decided to go with the 15 age group, purely because of the fact that it contained some strong content what some 12A classifications might find too much so we just chose the safe option. Here is the link to the BBFC website:http://www.bbfc.co.uk/

In what ways does our media product use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Third part These are a selection of shots from our film trailer which basically highlight some of the key point of the plot. These some of the conventions that we used from our genres. The first image is of Mollie waking up and this shows the time loop and that the chain has already started. This pops up quite a few times throughout the trailer as she consistently wakes up to a new day every time that she gets killed. The second picture is a convention of the Thriller genre. This is because it is a mystery into who is following her, why they are following her and why do they keep killing her. It is constantly asking the audience questions which will hopefully intrigue them enough to want to watch more. The third image is more about the storyline and shows off what Mollie’s character is actually like towards other characters, especially her boyfriend Paul. She is violent towards Paul even though he treats her well and it is a mystery as to why she does it, again which relates to the Thriller genre. The final image is of Mollie lying dead on the floor after being run over by her attacker. This also shows the mystery because the audience will never find out who actually killed her until they watch the actual film, if we ever came to the point where we actually made it.

In what ways does our media product use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (Part 4)… • In relation to making our film trailer, we did a lot of research about other real media products that are out there now and also some up and coming ones. This helped us choose what genre we wanted to do based on films that we had seen or are interested in making. The very first thing we did was that we had a group discussion and thought of three films that our media product could be related to. After a long period of time thinking about it, we came up with three films, all linked to either the Science Fiction genre, the Thriller genre or even both. The three films are as follows: • 1993 – Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis) • 2003 – Final Destination 2 (David R. Ellis) • 1999 – The Matrix (Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski) • These trailers were only used as templates to help us gain ideas and these particular three we thought would be the most useful to get that from. This is because they are all related together and all three sum up exactly what we are trying to achieve with our film trailer. We basically pastiche all three films into our own. • Groundhog Day Trailer: • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSVeDx9fk60 • Final Destination 2 Trailer: • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEUYk2xU4R0 • The Matrix Trailer: • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPBuOAxOb2E

How effective is the combination of our main product and ancillary texts? To create a successfully promoted and professional film trailer, we will need to create a film poster and also a magazine cover. This is to help us pull in a wide range of audiences and also to help us specifically pull in the audience that we are aiming our production for. In terms of creation for all these texts, they normally get made in the order of Film Trailer – Poster – Magazine Cover. These are known as the Ancillary texts.They are put in this order because if a magazine came out about a film before the actual audience, it would be unprofessional and the audience probably won’t be as interested and therefore won’t buy the magazine. The same applies for the poster because it is yet again promoting the product before the trailer come out. I suppose this can be a good thing because if the trailer isn’t released and the poster promotes when the trailer comes out and give us an exciting insight into what the film might be about. The audience wouldn’t really know the meaning behind the film if the trailer wasn’t released first. The magazine cover has the most information on simply because it is telling the audience, who are now aware of the film and get a basic idea of what happens, about the director and when the film is going to be released. It will also give other extra information that the poster don’t so it will help promote the product further. The audience will be able to fully understand our product because if the poster is good enough and eye catching enough, it will intrigue them enough and get them interested in watching the film and the information about when it gets released also tells them so they can get down to a local cinema to view it. The professionalism of the produce will be seen through the posters and the magazine covers. For example, if the poster has a dark background, then the audience can expect it to be a dark film. This also applies with the font and the images used for the magazine and poster.

How effective is the combination of our main product and ancillary texts? (Part 2) The following images below are our film poster and magazine cover. This is what we decided as a group we would do for them so that we can make them interesting not only for ourselves, but also for our audience. This is how we know if they were successful enough. The main image on the poster is the lead characters face to face with the evil character with his hood up and the lead girl character staring up at him. The shows the status between the characters as he is taller and hooded, which makes him look intimidating and the girls facial expressions show that she is intimidated. Him being taller shows that she is looking up to him with him being bigger and overpowering. These images wont be seen in the film. This is because we wanted to do an extra shoot to show the relationship of the characters to the audience as they hopefully will have seen the trailer and then they would understand why it is like that. Also in the poster, we decided that we wanted to put something in from the film and that is why we have used a small collage of the car and two scenes from the trailer. This shows that the Mollie is a nasty character and it also shows the mysteriousness of what is happening throughout the trailer with Mollie consistently being killed. Also the background of the poster is white and shows the local area being surrounded in fog. This also suggests to the audience that the product was filmed locally and also tell them that the trailer is quite mysterious and will keep them guessing. The magazine cover has again our own photo on, which is quite unique to our product as it shows the relationships between the two characters. We also have a bigger images of a hooded figure in the background. This also adds more mystery and suggests that there is a dark character in our production, with that being the serial killer. The magazine cover was different to the poster in terms of colour. This is because the magazine cover is in completely black and white. This shows that our product has a dark and dull atmosphere which sets the scene for when the actual film will be released. We also had to think about what genres we had chosen and fit it to their audiences expectations of what they would expect to see in a poster or a magazine cover of that particular genre. We have also chosen Empire as our magazine cover company. This is because we are aware of how respected they are as a company and how many people buy their magazine monthly and we decided it would be perfect for us to use to promote our product.

What have we learnt from our audience feedback? The audience were perhaps the most vital part in terms of making the whole film trailer and making it as successful as we wanted it to be. This is because without them, we wouldn’t know what to include in our production or what conventions would be successful to use. The target audience for our film trailer was 15. This was a difficult decision because we couldn’t decide weather to put our product in the 12A group or the 15 group that we eventually chose. The thing what pulled us more towards the 15 rating was the content of the trailer. It contained many violent scenes and scenes that are too strong to be a 12A. The first thing that we did to get audience feedback was to put together a questionnaire to find out what the audience thought about our chosen genre and what we will need to include to create a successful product of that genre. It was hard for us because we had to combine both genres of Thriller and Science Fiction and so therefore we had to ask questions about both genres to get the information that we needed. The information that we received was vital because it helped us plan out or production and is the reason that it is so successfully built. Below are some examples of the questions we asked and the answers we got back. The questions that were asked in this questionnaire were all thought of by me, Scott and Siobhan. The questionnaires were completed by randomly selected students from the sixth form. We needed to have random people to answer them so they don’t become biased to the questions that we are asking them.

What have we learnt from our audience feedback? Second part Another thing that we used to gain audience feedback was to interview three members of our media class by using a random selections website www.random.org. The chart we used to determine who we was going to interview was the image below. As you can see, the three people that were chosen were Craig Fallows, Ryan Mills and Ryan Rheeston. To conduct this interview, we came up with a series of questions for them to answer in order for us to get feedback on what they think of the questions that were asked. We also wanted to meet our specific audiences needs and so asking the interviewees what they though gave us more ideas and helped us a lot with our production. Unfortunately, we were only able to interview Craig Fallows and Ryan Rheeston because Ryan Mills was busy doing work with his own group but we still got the information that we needed to learn from the interviews we have got. Here are the links to the interviews below: Craig’s Interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rZ-zmd8w0BQ Ryan Rheeston’s Interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=duTkSPWR7Pk

What have we learnt from our audience feedback? Third part The final piece of audience feedback that we had to do was after we had finished the trailer and posted it on YouTube and our blog for the audience to see. The whole point of conducting our final interview was to get feedback on what was good and what was bad about our actual film trailer. We needed to know if it was good enough to be a trailer and we was hoping we would find out during the interview. We also needed to know if we would have hit the target audience that we were aiming for and also to see if we managed to successfully subvert the Science Fiction Thriller genres. This is important because we need to learn for what can be improved in future references. We had to yet again come up with more questions and they are below. The questions were quite open and we’re only really asking what was good and what was bad and we also had to film it so we can look back and reflect on what they said as a group so that we can make an even better trailer the next time we do it. The link to the interview is below. The interviewees are William Partington, Mohammed Ackbar and Lee Rowe. Interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xfc3DRMR_2c

How did we use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? The first thing that we had to conduct before we started the film trailer was our research. This was perhaps the most important thing about the whole of the production process. If we hadn’t have done the research that was required, we wouldn’t have made our trailer as successful as we have and we would probably be looking back on it now disappointed rather than overjoyed. To do our research we often used websites such as www.imdb.com, www.youtube.com, www.Wikipedia.org and www.google.co.uk etc. These are all part of the massive range of internet technology that we had used. We used these to find information on the age classifications, film trailers, film reviews etc. Using these websites gave us the opportunity to compare and contrast our product from other real media products of the same genre. This helped us pick out the conventions from each genre so that we can include a few of them into the mix and also to develop our own which is making us subvert it. To construct our media product together, we had the opportunity to use some of the latest filming and editing software that is available. We had access to the Apple Mac’s which featured programmes such as Final Cut Express, iMovie and Adobe Photoshop, and also throwing in the high definition cameras that we were given to film our footage on. All three of these software were used in the making of our film trailer, with Final Cut being used to edit and put together all the footage that we had that was good enough to be in the trailer. iMovie was used for all the credits as it had some of the most interesting fonts that we could use for our narrative and also for the credits that were used at the end of the trailer. Finally, Photoshop was used to create our film poster and magazine cover. This is because it was the best editing software for images and we would be able to create many effects on there that could make them as interesting as possible. An example of an effect would be the transparency effect. Another smaller thing that was used was the tripod. This was to rest the camera on top of it to ensure that we have a clear shot when we were filming a scene.

How did we use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? (planning) • Another important thing about the trailer was the planning of it and the structure in which we were going to use to create it. We had many tasks to do in the planning of the trailer. The tasks include making a three act structure of our trailer, creating a storyboard that follows the three act structure and then finally creating an animatic which follows on from the storyboard but moving it from paper to video. The three acts structure of our trailer is as follows: • Act One – Mollie wakes up at 7:00AM to her alarm clock going on. She then goes downstairs and makes herself breakfast ready for the day ahead. Then it cuts to her being at school and walking around the corridors. It then cuts to her again walking home from school when a car comes our of nowhere and runs her over, killing her. • Act Two – Mollie wakes up again and the time is yet again 7:00AM, with her alarm clock going off to the same tune as the previous time. It then cuts to her walking in a field on her way to school. It then quickly cuts again to her boyfriend’s house after he invites her round for dinner as he was cooking. She complains that the food is cold, leaving her boyfriend devastated. It then cuts to her being followed by someone in a red hooded jacket, who is the serial killer. It quickly cuts back to the dinner scene and then back to Mollie walking as she is grabbed around the neck by the hooded guy. She screams as he drags her away and kills her. • Act Three – This is the start of the montage editing. It again starts with the clock going off and Mollie angrily reacting to the way it keeps going off at the same time everyday. Also the music has been quite slow up until this point and now fast paced striking music is introduced. It cuts to Mollie getting off the bus where her boyfriend Paul and his friend Imogen are sitting and she explains that something bad is going on and that she needs help. It then quickly cuts to her stroking the gas man’s chest and then cuts again to her running up an alley way being followed by the serial killer. It then cuts to her walking around school like she’s the top dog and telling people to move out of her way like she’s something special. It then cuts back to her being chased and then slamming her boyfriend against the lockers and then again going back to her being chased. Then it cuts to the dinner scene again where she folds her arms as if to say that what has been cooked isn’t good enough for her. It then cuts to her being chased again, with the killer getting closer each time. It then cuts to her pushing Imogen through a doorway and then back to being chased and then back to the dinner scene and then back to being chased. It ends with her being hit with the hammer and her lying motionless on the ground dead. That is where the credits start rolling.

How did we use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? Planning continued After we had done the three act structure, we had to draw out the storyboards that came from that and scan them so that we could put them on the blog. Some pictures of the storyboards are below. The whole point of doing the storyboard is that so we knew what was happening and when it was happening. It also told us what cut we would use, if there was any dialogue, music or narration and how long that the cut was going to be. All of this can be show on the pictures. The pictures are of the first scan of each sheet. We also cropped the images that were scanned using a program called paint as it was the best programme to use to help us do that.

How did we use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? Planning continued After we had cropped all the images from the storyboard, I was able to put them together using Window Movie Maker to make an animatic that would be similar to how the film trailer should look when its finished. After putting all the shots together for the time that we put down on the storyboard sheet, we came up with a rough estimate for what will be the actual time of our real trailer for when it comes to being finished and fully edited. It was also useful to do this animatic because it would show us any problems that we may encounter when it comes to editing the real production and it will help us be able to solve them if they did happen. We did two versions of the animatic, a drawing’s version and an animated version. Here is the link to the animated version. Animated Animatic Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flUZdqGgylY

How did we use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? evaluation When we have finished our production, we will upload it to a blog where we keep all of our work for the course. This is the link to the blog that we use for all of our work http://mediablogs.keshacademy.com/rhysa2blog/. The whole point of having the blog is to keep all of our work in one place and also to give members of our audience the chance to view our posts so that they can see for themselves how we prepared for the production. It also gives them the opportunity to give us feedback and comment on the posts to give us feedback so that we can improve our work in the future. After we had finished our trailer, magazine cover and poster, we had to come up with two different types of evaluation. There was this written/typed version of it and we also had to do a filmed version of the evaluation. We just had to sum up all of our points in the evaluation and talk about it with other media products. The link to the filmed evaluation is below. Filmed Evaluation Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvPF6jS5sNQ

A2 Media Evaluation