Evaluation Questions

1. Evaluation Questions By Sam Insley

2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? • For the first question I will describe our film genre, its conventions and how we used and developed these conventions in our teaser trailer as well as our poster and magazine front cover. I will also explain our narrative, changes in our narrative and genre and Todorov’s theory of narrative. • Our original genre idea was Film Noir. Film noir began in the 1930's and remained as a strong cinematic medium until the early 1960's. Film noir literally means "black film" in French and features themes which are more negative than positive, with an overall dark and shadowy outlook--being filmed in black and white. This film genre takes in detective and crime noir as well as many gangster films of the 1930's. Noir also moves into more modern films combining with other genres. Main Characters are commonly a private eye, a plainclothes policeman, an aging boxer, a hapless grifter, a law-abiding citizen lured into a life of crime, or simply a victim of circumstance. Film noirs often involve Crime, usually murder, is an element of almost all film noirs. Then followed by an investigation by a policeman/private eye. Other storylines include heists or con games. Data gathered fromhttp://www.slideshare.net/kirstymarie27/conventions-of-film-noir

3. Changes in genre • As we moved through our project we realised that Crime thriller was a better suited genre for our film idea. This genre is a hybrid type of both crime films and thrillers that offers a suspenseful account of a successful or failed crime or crimes. These films often focus on the criminal(s) rather than a policeman. Crime thrillers usually emphasise action over psychological aspects. Central topics of these films include serial killers/murders, robberies, chases, shootouts, heists and double-crosses. Some examples of crime thrillers include, Seven, No Country for Old Men, Hostage and The Town. Crime thrillers often revolve around criminals and commonly include murders, robberies and other criminal behaviour. Films of this genre use fast paced cutting and quick angle changes in shots. Music is key in this genre as it often generates tension. Data gathered from http://www.filmsite.org/crimefilms.html

4. Narrative • Our film is about a man (Steve Holt) and his previous work as a top poker player for an underground syndicate. He leaves the syndicate as he gains too many enemies much to his boss’s disappointment. He wants a normal life. The film begins just as his normal life begins to change. The syndicate find him once again and ask him to help them win a massive poker tournament that will win them thousands of pounds. Steve is taken to the ‘boss’ by the henchmen to speak of this poker tournament. He doesn’t want to be dragged back into the world of gambling. He refuses the job offered to him but instead agrees a deal with his old boss. If he wins a poker game against the boss and his henchmen he can walk away, if he loses then he must take part in the tournament. After a long game he beats the syndicate and walks away, the boss tries to stop his escape but Steve overpowers them and leaves the underground for good.

5. Changes in narrative • The narrative we chose changed several times over the course of our project. We began with a film noir storyline that involved crime (as mentioned above). We kept the film noir black and white style until the end and but changed from film noir to crime thriller. We decided to make this transition as the crime thriller conventions and narrative fitted our storyline more (gambling/the focus on criminals). As we filmed over the course of the project our ideas changed a lot. The first ideas were very poker based and after 2 days filming we realised we had too much footage of poker rather than an equal split to make a better narrative. We then filmed again to get more range in shots, locations and costumes. It was in the second set of filming days (days 3 and 4) that we really changed our film into a crime thriller.

6. How we used and developed the conventions – The trailer and its conventions • We kept parts of film noir in our filming style for example the use of black and white. This is a typical convention of film noir and we wanted to make sure we kept parts of our original idea in our piece.

7. We also made sure we used a range of shot angles and fast editing. This was introduced as it is a big part of crime thriller films. Below is an example of how we used fast cutting to accompany the music.

8. In a way our film challenged the conventions of crime thriller by including an agreement between the protagonist and antagonist. They both agree to play poker for a big prize. Despite focusing on criminal behaviour (gambling in our case) our film doesn’t include criminal behaviour typically found in crime thrillers (murder, robberies etc).

9. The magazine and its conventions Magazine conventions: • Big master head • Strap-line • Pricing and date • Main image • Secondary, commonly a separate story The magazine Charlie created was again made with film noir and crime thriller conventions in mind. Charlie used the ‘Empire magazine’ outline to create our magazine front cover. The title of ‘EMPIRE’ in large and red. Again in this text we made sure we used the same colours as our poster red, white and black. These 3 colours are the only colours found on the front cover. Like many other Empire magazine front covers the colours are simple, go well together and don’t use too many to create confusion.

10. The poster and its conventions Poster conventions: • Bold, stand out title with appropriate colours • Names of actors/actresses • Credits • One or two main images related to the film In our poster we made sure we kept to the typical conventions. We used a big bold title with colours that contrasted the background, white and red in front of dark background. We also used the technique in which we colour the word ‘RED’ with the colour red. The red, white and black used in our poster was taken from our interest in Sin City. A title that stands out is very effective and I think our poster achieves a stand out look. Similarly the actor’s names have a contrast to the background and are large enough to see quickly. It draws the readers to the names of the people starring, again this is a common technique used in film posters.

11. Todorov’s Narrative theory This is the theory of 5 stages of narrative. These stages are as follows: • A State of equilibrium • A disruption of that order • Recognition of that disruption • An attempt to ‘repair the damage’ • A restoration of a new equilibrium Equilibrium is a state of stability or mental balance. A fuller explanation on Todorov’s theory can be found below. More on this theory can be found at http://www.adamranson.plus.com/TODOROV.HTM

13. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? • Firstly I am going to write about our brand image and how it is effective. Our poster is a typical crime thriller poster for several reasons. We used a black based poster like many other posters of this genre to show the mystery and darkness of the characters for example Sin City and The Town. Ben analysed the Sin City poster and wrote about how the main protagonist has a small image in the poster.

14. We used a similar technique in our poster in which we put our protagonist smaller and on the bottom with the antagonist (above him) towering over him. When our audience looks at this poster they will know the genre due to the techniques we have used to create a accurate brand image.

15. Brand Image Our brand image as seen in these images was typical noir and crime thriller conventions. We liked the use of red with black and white (typical film noir) taken from the film Sin City. We made sure we used the correct costume of suit jackets and ties to create a brand image that catches the eye and shows its genre clearly.

16. Why we chose ‘Empire Magazine’ • Empire magazines audience would fit nicely the target audience of our film. Typically Empire magazine features Hollywood blockbusters like Avatar and Transformers, full of CGI and special effects with very high budget. Our film is not as big as these example but we as a group felt it would still be the best choice of magazines as it has previously featured noir style films of a low budget and no CGI such as classic noir Cassablanca (1942) and The Third Man (1949).

17. Target audience • Our target audience will be from 15-25 years old. This is due to our 15 age certificate. It will be a predominantly male based audience as the film involves criminal behaviour including gambling. As a result we started a viral marketing campaign as the age bracket we decided for our film will be active internet users.

18. Promotion – The use of Web 2.0 • The term Web 2.0 is associated with web applications that facilitate interactive systemic biases, interoperability, user-centered design and developing the World Wide Web. A Web 2.0 site allows users to interact and collaborate with each other in a social media dialogue as consumers of user-generated content in a virtual community, in contrast to websites where users are limited to the active viewing of content that they created and controlled. Examples of Web 2.0 include social networking sites, blogs, wikis and video sharing sites. • Web 2.0 has had a massive effect on the World Wide Web, making it a “Global Village”. A site in particular that is thriving from web 2.0 is YouTube. Instead of one person (company) sharing videos to everyone else using the World Wide Web now everyone in the Web community can post videos to others.

19. Viral Marketing • For our film we decided to use sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to reach our target audience via the internet. Below is what we planned to do: • YouTube - Posting trailers, interviews with cast, directors and producers. • Facebook - Poker App, creation of fan page, easy way to promote our film as a large majority of our target audience will be using Facebook.

20. Example of what our YouTube page for our film would look like: Videos here would include interviews, trailers and updates with the films progress. Below the main video we would have information about the film to let first time user of the site to learn more about the film.

21. Word of Mouth • This technique of viral marketing will be very important for our films production. For example, our audience will join fan pages on social networking sites like Facebook and will have the opportunity to learn more about the film and spread to others (friends and relatives). • All three of our texts (teaser trailer, poster and magazine) will all be displayed to an online audience. Therefore we hope to ‘spread the word’ across the web. • For texts like the poster and magazine they will be published in a different way. Word of mouth however is not only viral, it is universal. Where you put your poster is a big part of promotion and if placed correctly (for example on a billboard in a busy London high street) people will be attracted to the poster (brand image) and will tell others about it.

22. What have you learned from your audience feedback? • How we got our feedback We obtained our feedback by showing it to friends and family and asking them for feedback, posting online to get a wider range of feedback from people who may feel more able to give critical feedback. For example posting it on YouTube.

23. What feedback did we receive? • We got our feedback mainly from classmates and family. We got it after showing them our final piece. This was very useful as it gave us a chance to edit anything people didn't think worked. We found that after the feedback was given to us we felt more confident that we could sort it out and create a really good teaser trailer. • Some feedback we received will be in the next slide.

24. Feedback we were given Positive • Viewers liked the costume of our characters • The black and white worked well and the red fitted nicely into the shots (poker chips and cards). • Pace of the trailer • Slow-mo Negative • Soundtrack highlighted some concern with the audience that the soundtrack was not representative of the genre. • too poker based at times • the titles

25. Results of this feedback After we got our feedback we made these changes: • Changed the text font into something more suited for our chosen genre • Cut out a large majority of the poker based shots to give a more varied and interesting trailer. This change was made after we got our initial feedback from our original rough cut. • Despite some people stating that the soundtrack was possibly not representative of the genre we as a group decided to keep it. This was because we believed it was effective as a soundtrack. We gained more positive comments about it than negative therefore we were happy with the end product in terms of the soundtrack.

26. How this feedback could help broaden our audience • Because we changed the things the audience didn’t like it meant that those people who wanted those changes now may be more interested in seeing it. For example if someone who criticised the amount of poker scenes found out that a large proportion of those shots had been cut they may be more interested therefore broadening the audience.

27. How to expand our audience • We predominantly used a viral campaign to promote our film. Sites such as YouTube and Facebook were our main targets in terms of how we would reach our target audience. We had the idea to create a website in which fans would have a page to go to for updates. Links for this site would be found on both YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. Ben’s blog post on Jan 28th explains the reasons behind our decision to create this viral website idea.

28. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? • For our project we used new media technologies in construction, research, planning and evaluation of our final pieces.

29. Research • We used Microsoft PowerPoint to display our research. This was useful as they are visual (lots of pictures and videos can uploaded) and are much less time consuming therefore you get more work done. • Research relies on the internet to gather the information needed for PowerPoint's or other means of research. Websites such as http://www.imdb.com/ and http://www.ukfilmcouncil.org.uk are very useful when trying to gather information about films. Information about Actors starring, storylines, producers, distributors, gross revenues and much more can be found here. This is where I found a large majority of my research in terms of films.

30. Planning • Technologies used to show plan work were mainly scanners used to scan in storyboards and posters onto the blog. For example Ben scanned in the storyboard on November 26th. • When making posters a commonly used new media software is Adobe Photoshop. This is a programme used to create posters and other images from scratch by using editing. For example cutting, fading and colour filling.

31. Example of how to make a poster using Photoshop CS5 Colour effects Example of finished poster Selected layers

32. Evaluation • This evaluation was created through new media technology Microsoft PowerPoint with the data originally coming from a word document. As I have been through this PowerPoint I have used other new media technologies such as the internet.

33. Construction • We used the editing software Adobe After Effects CS5 to create our teaser trailer. The camera used to capture the footage was another new media technology we used to create our piece. The camera has become a huge part of filming (in terms of picture resolution it can reach and the ability in which almost anyone can use them).