Media Evaluation

1. Media Evaluation By Jessica Mechen

2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? For our A2 Media Advanced Portfolio Product we had to create a teaser trailer for a film, which we finally decided upon being a film of the Social Realism genre. We chose for the genre to be social realism because having watched some social realism films, we became interested in how they were made and what they were based on (the issues within the film), the main films that really struck a chord in our interest was Andrea Arnold’s ‘Fish Tank’ and Stephen Daldry’s ‘Billy Elliot’. It is through our teaser trailer and overall film plotline that we chose the challenge the convention of a female stereotypical chav who aspires to be a professional boxer – something that is commonly distinguished as a male-dominated sport. Similarly we chose to use and interpret a stereotypical female teenage chav as portrayed in films such as ‘Fish tank’.

3. The next step – having decided upon creating a teaser trailer for a social realism film – was to research the generic conventions of social realism – basically, what they normally include and issues that they normally revolve around; such as locations and themes, character-types ect... This research was then showed through our social realism power-point presentations of research that were uploaded to our blog. Although there has been some breakthrough in terms of representation of characters – more specifically race in films such as My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) and Bhaji on the Beach (1994), We chose to challenge the typical social realism representation of characters in films because they have mainly focused on white working class males, so by making our main character a female stereotypical chav who aspires to be a boxer, we believe that this would make our film also appeal to women and let them know of the inner message that we want our film to leave them with.

4. In addition to creating a teaser trailer, we also had the choice to pick 2/3 other options to put together a promotional package to promote and distribute our fictional social realism film ‘Knockout’. Of the 3 options we chose to create a promotional poster for our film and a film magazine front cover which included an image of our film on the cover and would initially help to get our film recognised and seen by the public. Possible other sub-genre/issue faced within film – used to draw other audiences in to see the film (romance) We then had to research the generic conventions of promotional posters and film magazine front covers – this was also displayed as research on our blog. The generic conventions of a promotional poster usually include an eye-catching image (from the film it’s promoting) as well as any addition detail or information that the distributer may want the public to know of for example the main actors and actresses in the film, who the distribution company of the film is, who’s promoting the film, if it is up for any awards or nominations ect... Promotional posters may sometimes also include the films classification certificate to inform the public of the films age restriction. Review/ Recommendation Film’s tag-line/ Slogan Film’s title Eye-catching image Additional detail /info

5. Similarly the generic conventions of a film magazine front cover is again normally an intriguing image (of the film it’s advertising) so that the public are enticed into picking the magazine up and having a look at it/through it and possibly buying it if they are interested enough. Other generic conventions of film magazine front covers is that they also include sub-headings and the main-heading (title of the magazine e.g. Empire magazine or Sight and Sound magazine), as well as articles and interviews, film reviews (in particular because it’s a film magazine) and more obviously a bar-code.

6. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? We made the decision to create a promotional poster for our film and a film magazine front cover advertising our film rather than picking to create a website homepage for our film because although the internet is frequently used in today’s society with the outbreak of new media, we decided that our film in particular would benefit more from being advertised and distributed externally and locally (out and about locally and around other areas) because we wanted to make the most of our chance to open-the-public’s-eyes and get them to notice our film; rather than advertise solely on the internet where we would be less likely to maximise our audience awareness.

7. Therefore with the combination of our teaser trailer, film promotional poster and film magazine front cover we have tried to make them the best that they can be so that they are quite effective in attracting the public’s attention and persuading them to want to view our film, we wanted them to crave so much knowledge about our film that they will also be persuaded to purchase the film magazine that features our film – ‘Sight and Sound’ The Social Realism special – our designed front cover of which is located on our blog as well as existing film magazine front covers which work to pinpoint our decision to choose ‘Sight and Sound’ magazine to promote our film, and the way that we wanted to design our own film magazine front cover – as well as analysis of existing film magazine front covers (all of which are located on our blog as well). In the initial production of our film promotional poster and film magazine front cover, my input was more reviewing and analysing, looking for things to change and improve our products so that they are of a quality standard, as I am not technically confident with the software used (photo-shop) to design and modify our promotional poster and film magazine front cover. However regarding the coming-together of our teaser trailer, I worked to contribute with the editing in the early stages of production - mainly rough cuts - putting together some shots and expressing ideas on what works and what doesn’t in order to change it and try something else.

8. Although as far as brand image and representation goes I think that our overall promotional package is quite effective, especially considering the ways in which we want to expand our media products in order to broaden our target audience – as discussed in our distribution plan. As discussed in our distribution plan, we intend to promote our film in a variety of ways using the internet – mainly through social networking sites such as Facebook, YouTube, MySpace – basically anything that can have discussions and reviews/ideas [ect...] talked about and posted on them so that it creates awareness amongst the generation that the internet most applies to. And then because the internet only appeals to a certain age group, we have also chosen to advertise on T.V in order to reach the older generation that have no use for social-networking sites. We have also decided to promote our poster on things like bus shelters which are widely used and seen by the general public because of the transport they provide, and we have also chosen to distribute our film magazine in various places – including the internet for those more reserved people who prefer to subscribe to specialised film magazines – so that they are greatly processed and seen by the general public.

9. What have you learned from your audience feedback? Having finalised our decision to create a promotional package for a social realism film, consisting of a teaser trailer, promotional poster and film magazine front cover, we thought that the best way to ensure our package would be to the best of its capability was to give it a test-run. We first showed our teaser trailer to our primary audience: the peers in our A2 Media class who are categorised in the age group (17-19yr olds). This feedback session I thought went particularly well because there was a lot of ideas and opinions coming back to us on what they thought worked well and not so well, and how we could improve on it. Overall we did take into account most people’s feedback which is what made us push-on even further to get our teaser trailer up to a respectable standard - which we did from adding a few more shots into it to give it some more variety within the trailer and let the audience know that it is a teaser trailer and therefore everything hasn’t happened overnight - which some people picked up on because most of the shots consisted of either our main character walking around in a tracksuit or boxing in a gym.

10. The second test-run, I showed our teaser trailer to people between the ages of 20-35yr olds. I think this feedback session didn’t go so well because this is the broadened target audience - whereas the primary target audience would be people our own age because social realism films tend to be a hit with young people between the ages of 15-21. Some of the feedback that I received from this session was more a matter of the trailer not saying very much about the film in general, and therefore nobody could tell what genre it was; they just knew it was about a girl who boxed. Other feedback was that of a lack of variety in different shots, and was suggested to me that we should have perhaps filmed the main character engaging in something else like a fight for example or an actual boxing match (to give the illusion that she is in a boxing match), or perhaps getting some shots of her doing different kinds of exercise such as running or skipping.

11. Some of the feedback that I received from this session was more a matter of the trailer not saying very much about the film in general, and therefore nobody could tell what genre it was; they just knew it was about a girl who boxed. Other feedback was that of a lack of variety in different shots, and was suggested to me that we should have perhaps filmed the main character engaging in something else like a fight for example or an actual boxing match (to give the illusion that she is in a boxing match), or perhaps getting some shots of her doing different kinds of exercise such as running or skipping. So overall the second test-run of showing our teaser trailer to potential audiences didn’t go as well as the first, however it should be considered that the social realism genre itself is more recognised by young people and therefore would initially appeal more to young people - particularly between the ages of 15-21, because it deals more with issues that people face and go through during those time periods, as well as almost always revolving around a main character between those ages as well to show more adolescence and make the films seem more realistic and genuine.

12. Lastly we also had to show our film magazine front cover to potential age groups of our target audience and the feedback we received from that was quite positive which I was pleased about because it meant we had finally started to break-through in terms of getting a response from our potential target audiences and possibly even creating a buzz for our film. Some of the things that were said back to us regarding our film magazine front cover were things like it looked a lot better than the promotional poster and you could easily see that our main character was boxing in the poster (from the boxing glove that is shown), and it generally is just an informative picture which is what a film magazine needs for its font cover in order to lure the public into picking it up and possibly even buying it – should this happen, the front cover of the film magazine has done its job because it has persuaded the public to become interested in it and purchased it to want to know more.

13. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? Firstly we thought it would be best for us to research the social realism genre some more in order to know all the ins and outs of it before deciding our films general plot line. This is how we came across The BFI British Social Realism book by Samantha Lay, and Raymond Williams. Samantha Lay said that social realist representation throughout the early stages of social realism films tended to focus upon white working class males however later on in the 1900’s there was some breakthrough in terms of social realism films dealing with racial issues such as ‘My Beautiful Laundrette’ (1985) and ‘Bahji on the Beach’ (1994). However Raymond Williams argued that social realism films incorporate four-main criteria’s: Firstly that the texts are secular, released from mysticism and religion Secondly that they are grounded in the contemporary scene in terms of setting, characters and social issues Thirdly that they contain an element of social extension by which previously under- represented groupings in society become represented Fourthly there is the intent of the artist which is mostly a political one although some artists have used the genre as route into a mainstream film-making career.

14. So by having some minor book research under our belts, we decided to try the internet in attempt to find more recent and contrasting social realism films; we ended up finding quite a lot of social realism films each that revolve around there own issues and scenarios and each that portray different versions of character-types and personalities. This is also how we came to decide upon our plot line or a female stereotypical chav (similar to Fish Tank) who aspires to be a boxer (similar to Billy Elliot – only with a twist). When it came to actually filming and putting together our teaser trailer we used a variety of software that enabled us to freely experiment with the different kinds of effects and transitions that we could use to move from shot-to-shot rather than the basic cut, however as we were doing a social realism film, it restricted the amounts of effects we could include in our trailer because our trailer (and film) needed to be realistic. Firstly we used a digital filming camera to film our different shots and locations which created a very detailed effect in the shots because it was digital, we then used a digital shooting camera to take stills of our days filming and location ideas for inspiration. Then after all the filming was done it was time to start editing the shots together to start making it look like an official teaser trailer for a film. We used the software Adobe Premiere Pro during the various editing stages we did, these are a kind of new modern-technology programmes that enabled us to do almost anything with our various shots and rough-cut trailer edits including adding in titles (Muhammad Ali quote) and joining 3 of our shots at the same time and cut them carefully so that they matched up in continuity.

15. Aside from all the camera, digital equipment and editing software that we used in order to put-together our teaser trailer and make it look realistic, we still had some more research to do if we wanted to make sure our entire promotional package was a good as it can be. In order to research other promotional packages to create one for our social realism film we used things like the internet to search examples and information online about media promotional packages (for social realism films) which we thought was efficient because the internet was already there for us to use, however we also thought it made it quite time consuming because there were so many pages and links that came up, so instead of going through all of the pages we made the choice to choose a couple of links and check them out in order to save us time. The unfortunate problem with this was that the links we choose may not have been as informative or explanatory as others that we did not choose.

16. Secondly we also looked at existing film magazines such as Empire, Little White Lies and Sight and Sound magazine which we also found to be quite productive because we could see everything first-hand and in detail rather than do some more searching on the internet and try to read everything clearly. From doing this we also got the sense of how a film magazine is structured – particularly on the front cover – and what kind of things that attract the audience and draw them in and what exactly persuades them to pick up and buy the magazine, it is also from this that we discovered that film magazines – particularly Little White Lies and Sight and Sound magazine – are mostly bought through online subscriptions whereas Empire magazine is more likely to be found and bought in a shop.

17. In order to create our own film magazine front cover and promotional poster we used the software Photoshop – which is not entirely a new media programme regarding technology, however regular updates and instalments are available to those who have the software. This in turn took some time to complete because all the while we were looking at existing social realism films promotional posters and seeing what techniques worked well and not so well, and then tried to adapt some of those techniques in order to fit our own film poster. All of the research we conducted prior to creating our own promotional package for a film really helped us out in the evaluation stage of our own products as well as existing products through analysis. It is through the analysis of various existing products that we also found helpful regarding generic conventions of real media products and then working to create and test-out our own media products with these conventions in order to generate a response from the public. Overall throughout the planning and production stages of our film promotional package we used a variety of new media products - some of which enabled us to do things that others couldn’t – in order to create a well-rounded and realistic promotional package for our social realism film ‘Knockout’. New Media encourages consumers to become producers of media products, and using the variety of technology and software that was offered to us we actually managed to become producers of media products ourselves through creating the film promotional package for our film.

18. We also used a blog to store and present all of our work and ideas on, which helped us to organise our thinking and planning so that when the time came to produce and distribute our products, we knew what we were doing and how we were going to do it. During the production of our teaser trailer we also used digital sound technology to be able to include a soundtrack overlay our shots, as well as feature diegetic sound within some of the shots in the trailer to give it that extra realistic ‘feel’ to it - as a real teaser trailer would include both diegetic and non diegetic sounds or music. We used a variety of technology from books about social realism and British drama, to the fast-expanding internet, to recent editing and designing software and even looking at olden-day social realism films such as ‘Kes’ (Ken Loach, 1969) and ‘Dirty Pretty Things’ (Stephen Frears, 2002) as well as modern-day social realism films such as ‘London To Brighton’ (Paul Andrew Williams, 2006) and ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ (Danny Boyle, 2008).