Evaluation

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

Similarities –

Large face at the centre of cover.

Large Masthead running across the top of the cover.

Competition mentioned.

Title of the issues main movie in large font.

Dulled or darkened colours.

Differences –

Cannot see the eyes of the main face on mine.

I mention the awards won by the magazine at the top.

I do not mention the names of any other movies.

Similarities –

The background is grey with a light centre.

The title of the movie is emblazoned across the bottom of the poster.

The picture is of something inanimate and is positioned in the centre.

Differences –

The strapline for ‘Grace’ is across the top of the poster and in a similar font to the title.

Mine has a reviewing quote across the top.

Mine does not have production notes.

The title ‘Grace’ is in a different coloured font to the rest of the writing on the poster.

Trailer – 

Similarities – Both trailers switch between a slow build up of tension to a quick release of fast paced editing.

Both trailers have interjected text between certain shots.

Both trailers use music throughout.

Differences – The number 23 had a more coherent and apparant storyline.

Mine is much shorter, more of a teaser trailer.

There is a lot of speech in the number 23 trailer and barely any in mine.

There are quite long sections from particular scenes left in this trailer, mine is largely all short snippets.

2. How effective is the combination of your main product (trailer) and ancillary texts (Film Poster, Film Mag Cover)?

I, personally, have never agreed with the Hypodermic model of audience reception. I genuinely believe that an audience does engage a lot more with its media than simply passively accepting everything. As a result, I feel it is important to keep audiences thinking, so they do not become bored with what they see. I do not like giving too much information away, be it through text on a poster, scenes in a trailer or a picture in a magazine. Instead, I like to suggest or imply things to the audience so that they piece together some kind of storyline themselves. This I feel I have achieved with my three media pieces. The trailer does not give too much of the storyline away, the magazine only gives away that the face is of somebody related to the movie and the poster just poses more questions overall. As a result, the combination of the three types of media combine to leave the audience questioning and thus hungry for more.
3. What have you learned from audience feedback?

I have learned a lot from audience feedback, including the following :

For my trailer I was told that it was too misleading, instead of it only hinting at the true storyline it seemed to tell a different one altogether so I changed this and added more scenes hinting at the true storyline.

The colours of my film magazine were not ‘horror’ enough and instead just seemed like a normal magazine so I deepened the colours to red and black.

The picture for my magazine is not scary or even sinister. I then re-evaluated the picture, darked it and hid the eyes.

The music for my trailer did not fit. I had used a Beatles song that, whilst I believed the music fit, the lyrics at least did not and hinted at a love story, completely different to my storyline. As a result I searched for new and more fitting music.

Having a lone voice speak over the rest of the trailer works quite well.

The rock effect of the arm in my poster was said to show ancient/ religious connotations quite well.

The storyline is interesting and well thought through.

4) How did you use technologies in the Construction and Research, Planning and Evaluation stages?

Research – To begin with I used ‘google’, this was just to get started by reading news reports and folk stories from around the world, to get ideas for a storyline. I then moved on to using websites like ‘IMDB’ for help with film names and posters. I used ‘Youtube’ to find trailers as inspiration and ‘google’ again for magazine covers. Though I also used the back catalogue section on the ‘Rolling Stone’ maazine website just to get a fuller idea of the progression of film magazine covers. I used CD’s and ‘itunes’ in order to search for suitable music and eventually ‘youtube’ again when I could find no music in my own playlist. I used microsoft word a lot as well, especially when writing the shot lists, storyline, character lists etc, this worked very well. For everything else I used old fashioned pen and paper.

Production – The most obvious addition in the prodcution side of things is obviously the camera. For the trailer it was a video camera from which I then uploaded the footage into iMovie HD and then continued to adjust from thereon. I also, for only one clip, used the webcam installed into the mac computers because this creaed and good effect when in dim light. For the magazine and poster I used a digital camera to take most of the pictures, the exception being the photo of my arm then used for the poster, this was taken using an iPhone as I wanted the poorer quality for a better effect when I altered it. And this altering took place using Photoshop, this was possibly the most used technology of all sat second only to the use of this blog, which was updated at the end of each lesson, or at least written about on paper and then copied up later.  I used Dafont for a large number of the fonts I used as well as a christian website for some information on various christian beliefs and quotes.

Evaluation – For the evaluation, the single most important technology is wordpress, simply because it is here where all my work is posted. I also used windows photoviewer to look back over screenshots to remind myself of various things that I created, devised and finished a long while ago.

Construction of Film Magazine

My original masthead and background.

I began searching for an appropriate font for my Masthead and came across a font called ‘Magnum’. This I liked and decided for it to be the name of my magazine.

I then set about creating the masthead itself, I used emboss to get a slightly 3D feel to the title, making the magazine have cutting edge undertones.

From here I really studied what other features on a front cover other magazines had and put these into mine. Things like price, awards won by the magazine, date etc.

This is after studying other magazines

I decided at this point that what I had did not suit a horror issue of a film magazine and so I altered a number of the colours. I also began to think about the picture that would be placed in the centre. It was suggested to me that I find a picture online that looks like the picture I would finally want and to photoshop that in to mind, just to see if it works at all.

This is with altered colours and a template of what I want as the picture.

I also had to design the title of the movie, ‘Magdalene’. This was done by selecting a font from ‘dafont’ and using it in photoshop. Having seen this mock up I was not entirely sure that this is what I wanted so I changed my ideas slightly. I liked the red background, especially how the church looked n the background. I kept that effect but instead of it covering a building it covered my face as a close up. As you can see in this picture I altered the brightness and hue.

Here I altered the hue and saturation, as well as the brightness.

Here is my finished magazine cover and the comments made thereon by facebook.

The reviews of the magazine front cover were generally positive and this pleased me greatly. I liked a lot about this particular piece as I do think it looks quite professional. From the picture, with a sinister lack of eyes to the font and the masthead. In general, the people in class to whom I showed this said that it worked well, especially the colouration.

Construction or Film Poster

The glass of blood.

Gave me initial inspiration

For a long while I had had no ideas for a film poster, with my film magazine taking precedence. I looked over the internet for anything that may have inspired an idea and came across the Pandorum poster. This lead me to the idea of having an arm as the main point of my poster and to show blood being drained away from it.

I created a synthetic blood by combining honey and red dye, this gave it a thick enough look to pass as blood. I then pured some into a glass and took pictures.

Next, I dribbled a small amount onto my arm, to suggest a cut or wound, and then then took pictures.

I uploaded both pictures into photoshop and cut around them with the magic wand tool. I then placed them one above the other and slightly darkened the arm, as it was too bright.

I then added a cracked rock effect to the arm, this added a slightly aged effect to the poster, making it seem a little ancient, closely tied to the religious aspect of my trailer. I also added a ‘plastic wrap’ effect to the glass, this came through experimentation of various styles and seemed to work to cover up the obvious streak of light reflected on the glass.

This is where I darkened the image of my arm and 'plastic wrapped' the cup

Made to look like a wound.

I also then added in the background, this was simply a very light grey with white streak down the centre. I tried with various other colours, including black but found the contrast of ‘horror’ and the purity of white, or at least largely white, interesting.

I then added in the quote at the top of the poster, from my magazine, and then a strapline for the movie.

At this point I felt the poster was still a bit bare and so I looked online for photoshop brushes, I found a set that had blood stains and blood drops so I used these to create the blood effects.

I moved these around for a while before deciding finally where to place them. I didn’t want to have too much writing at the top of the poster but needed to leave enough room for the titl

e to stand across the bottom of the page.

These decisions took me a while to get into place but I finally found a suitable place to put them. The other consideration was the font. Should I have the strapline and the magazine quote as the same font, I decided not to as this did not look pleasing.

Finally arranged and in place I added the names of the actors involved, placed the title of the movie across the bottom and was finished.

Here is my final poster – 

Here are comments made about it on facebook. 

I was generally quite pleased with the poster and how it turned out and the comments were generally positive. I do agree however that the names of the actors could perhaps have been improved upon if they were bolder. Even, perhaps if they were smaller but in a bolder font. My intention, opposed to the first comment, was not to sell the movie by using the actors names as the names are unknown, instead the poster itself was supposed to be the selling point.