The advanced brief was to create a film trailer, along with two ancillary tasks, which we had chosen to be a film poster and a film website. Due to the fact that our chosen genre of our film trailer was a hybrid genre of British (social realist) and melodrama, we had to find a way to successfully combine codes and conventions of the two genres. For us to really grasp the codes and conventions of both Britsh and melodrama genres, we carried out research into trailers of the genres to see what was common; from this, we decided to apply some of them in the most appropriate ways we could. Although British and melodrama film did have some conventions in common, we felt that our choice of combining the two meant that we were challenging normal codes and conventions of most films and their associated film trailers because most tend to follow codes of one particular genre, and even sometimes exaggerate them. In terms of narrative, both British and melodrama genres have narratives that include a sense of realism, so the audience can relate to it; a sense of high emotion, and elements that allow escapism. We tried to incorporate this into the narrative for our film trailer, for example by showing the 'downward spiral' of the main character, exacerbated by the death of a loved one, we incorporated the conventions of high emotion and escapism in the film trailer. The audience can escape whilst watching the trailer as it is not a part of their regular lives to constantly drink or take drugs. Within British film, a range of social issues, such as alcoholism and drug taking, are explored in depth, so we decided that it would be best if we incorporated this convention into our narrative. One common convention of British social realism films is the style of the filming and camera work. For example, from research it was clear that long- and wide-shots are heavily used, especially when introducing the narrative of the film. From our research, we saw that films such as Nowhere Boy (2009) and The Riot Club (2014) used these types of shots to open the trailer, as well as being used throughout. In a sense our trailer did follow this convention as we did include some wide shots within the trailer, however, I feel that our trailer more challenged this convention because the opening shot is an over-the-shoulder shot, subverting what we saw in The Riot Club and Nowhere Boy. The use of wide- and long-shots were limited in our film trailer, with most of the shots being close-ups or over-the-shoulder shots to emphasise the narrative more, in terms of allowing the audience to see more emotion; so in this way, our film trailer could be seen as subverting the codes and conventions of already exisiting products. Further research showed us that the majority of modern-day film trailers, regardless of genre, include some kind of review, as shown here:
Above: The Selfish Giant (2014)
Above: '71 (2014)
We decided that we wanted our film trailer to follow this convention as it appears in nearly all of the existing film trailers that are seen. By adding reviews into our trailer, we felt that it gave the trailer a more professional look and also appeared to be more like a real product.
Above: Screenshot from YouTube - Missing You
In addition to what we had already learned from our research, we saw that the majority of film trailers have different paces of shots and editing; for example, the majority start off in a slow pace, often to build up suspense to the action sequence, and then build up pace towards the climax of the trailer. By nature of our narrative and the storyboard we had created, our trailer followed this convention; in the first 30 seconds, the trailer starts off with slightly slower shots and editing, lasting longer than the majority of the ones in towards the climax of the trailer, where the shots become shorter and the editing then become more fast-paced to relate to the disoreintation of the narrative.
As with most other film trailers, our trailer followed the ordinary conventions of placing the company logo at the beginning of the trailer, and placing the film title, release date (although for our trailer it was 'coming soon' - also a generic convention), social media links, and the billing block at the end of the trailer, so that the title and release date stays in the audience's minds. We decided that by following the convention of most trailers in terms of social media links, this would mean that audiences could actively engage more in the news of the film, and it works well with our website page with two hyperlinks. From research, Blumler and Katz (1974) uses and gratifications theory could be applied to the convention of social networking links, as it fulfills the audience's needs for information, as well as social interaction, for example they can talk to friends about the film, and allows them to be an active audience. As our film is targeted at a younger audience, from teenagers to young adults, we felt it was necessary to follow this convention due to the massive engagement with social media that many young people are associated with. Below is a screenshot of this:
As our trailer is a hybrid genre of British film and melodrama, a lot of the camera shots used in our trailer follow the conventions of melodramas, with a lot of mid-shots and close-ups to capture the emotion of the main character, mostly, and to emphasise the situation she is in. For example, the beginning of the trailer shows the main character mourning her partner who has just died and is hearing about his death on the news; here we decided to use a close-up of her to let the audience focus on her emotion, shown below:
One way our trailer subverted codes and conventions of already exisiting trailers was the convention of placing the age rating on the trailer; as we hadn't released the date of the film, just that it was 'coming soon' we did not choose to add an age rating. From my research into British film trailers, however, I noticed that many did not include the age rating, regardless of the age of the film and the film trailer. Another way our film trailer did not follow conventions of most other trailers, especially within our chosen genre, is the use of texts in between shots, for example:
These time reference texts are used several times throughout our trailer to emphasise the time frame of the narrative and the time lapse of the main charater's downfall. We choose to do this because our trailer moves from present day, to a flashback from 3 months ago, and back to the present day again, finishing on the same camera shot that we started with, shown here:
Although this is not usually seen in the majority of film trailers, similar editing styles are often used in 'art house' or cult film trailers, for example:
Pulp Fiction (1994) Trailer screenshot
Casablanca (1942) Trailer screenshot
We decided to not following codes and conventions of most trailers in this way so that our trailer became more understanable in terms of time, and to make it seem more fast paced in terms of editing to capture the audience's attention - as our trailer is targeted at a younger audience, we felt it was necessary to have relatively fast-paced editing throughout to entice them into continuing with watching the trailer. As the narrative of our trailer followed the line of finishing how it started, this could be seen as developing on the conventional linear narrative, as we have experimented with editing in terms of the use of flashbacks and ending the trailer with the same camera shot as we began it with. Other film trailers, such as Crank (2006), have also experiemented with this; I feel it was an effective way to edit our narrative and film trailer together as it leaves suspense for the audience because the trailer appears to give hints into how the film will end but it does not show how it finishes, leaving a cliffhanger (a convention which we have followed). Also by editing it this way, we have emphasised the importance of the present day in the film, and the use of drugs to help the main character escape what she is feeling after her partner had died.
Throughout the trailer, a lot of the editing simply consists of continuity editing, especially during the scenes in the same locations, as this is what seemed the most common for a lot of the trailers we had researched, so we followed this convention. Also during research, we saw that a lot of trailers used shot-reverse-shot or over-the-shoulder shots for the dialogue, which we decided was an effective way to film dialogue, so we also followed this convention, using a shot-reverse-shot for our dialogue. A screenshot of this is shown below:
Furthermore, following conventions of both British social realist film and melodrama, we used a tilted, over-the-shoulder shot during the 'party' scene editing to show the disorientation of the character's mind, and even life, after drinking and taking drugs - often a significant element in British film as a convention is to deal with wider social issues, such as these. This shot also exaggerates the negative state that the main character is in, which is a convention of melodramas, i.e. to exaggerate emotion. A screenshot of this camera shot is shown below:
Finally, from research we found that the majority of British film trailers used music produced my British artists, so from this we decided to find appropriate music. From trial and error, as other songs we had tried to use such as Hunger of the Pine by Alt-J and Slow Acid by Calvin Harris did not fit the editing of the trailer effectively, we decided on Prelude by Foals. We found that film trailers, in general, had songs that ran in time with the editing and the narrative, and we decided that this song was best for our trailer for a number of reasons such as; it followed the convention that British film trailers often including soundtracks from British artists, it was an unvocalised track meaning that it would not overlap with the dialogue/diegetic sound in the trailer, and it matched well with the editing of the trailer. For example, as the pace of the editing began to speed up, so did the track.
Overall, our film trailer largely follows codes and conventions of film trailers, and follows the codes and conventions of the two genres we had combined. In ways that our trailer did not fulfill these codes and conventions, as explained above, we experimented with our creativity to see how the outcome would look and I feel that they were carried out fairly successfully, but I would probably stick to following the generic codes and conventions if I were to re-do the trailer again. I think that by combining two genres together made it difficult to follow the codes and conventions of both genres simultaneously, but in that sense we managed to challenge conventions and produce something unique, creating our own USP, that worked fairly well.
As for our ancillary tasks, we created a film poster and film website to accompany the film trailer. From our research we concluded that the majority of film posters had one central main image of the main character(s) within the film. However, we saw other film posters that developed this convention such as the Trainspotting (1996) poster (below) and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011) poster (below):
We decided that we would also develop on the generic convention of one main image on our poster, to experiment with our creativity, and use different camera shots of our cast in several images to signify how the narrative changes, as shown by the mid-shot of Devon and Connor close together, and the close-up of Devon. I felt this worked well because the poster appeared to be more creative, and although it did not use generic conventions it was effective becuase the main character's were still apparant to the audience so they could identify with the poster. We did use conventions that are essential to make the poster effective, such as the placement of the title of the film, in the middle of the poster towards the top, where it would stand out to the audience, mainly due to the colour of the font against the background colour, making them look at it first; and reviews to create buzz around the film, often a typical convention of most film posters, as we had seen from our research. As well as this, we followed other conventions such as placing the billing block (referred to as cast and crew in my research) at the bottom of the poster. In terms of using, developing or challenging codes and conventions of existing film posters within our chosen hybrid genre, we tended to follow the conventions of the colours used in British and melodrama posters, for example, as we had worked through in our planning stage, the majority of colours used on both genre's posters were blues, reds, whites and blacks. We decided that we would include colours such as red and white because of the connotations the colours have with both genres, as we discussed in the colour scheme ideas powerpoint, and to follow the codes and conventions used by other film posters within the genres.
In terms of our second ancillary task, a website for the film with two hyper-linked pages, we used codes and conventions of existing websites, from what we had seen in our research, because there was no need to develop or challenge them as it would mean that audiences would not be able to access aspects such as social media and who produced the film etc. Our film website follows the conventions of having a clear navigation bar that is easily accessible for the audience, on the left hand side of the page, and a social media widget bar, including sites such as Facebook and Twitter, which is essential to build hype, for example by word-of-mouth, of the film. This is because it allows the audience to actively seek out more information on the film and they can keep up-to-date with when the film would be released and other behind-the-scenes aspects. We also kept to the same colour scheme that we used for our poster and trailer, using reds, whites and blacks simply becuase of the connotations within the two genres. From most other film websites we have researched we saw that there is often one central main image which is continuous throughout, for example on The Riot Club website:
From this, we decided to chose one main image, which is also featured on our film poster, to use on our website and keep it continuous throughout our website, following the convention; the screenshots below displays this:
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
For our ancillary tasks, we had to create a film poster and website to accompany the film. The purpose of these ancillary tasks in combination with our film trailer was to successfully promote our film. I think that the combination of our film trailer and anciallry tasks was successful for a number of reasons. One very simple reason is the fact that we had related our trailer to our website by placing the website link in our 'coming soon' title screen at the end of our trailer. This allows our audience to actively seek out our website for more information on the film, including behind-the-scenes footage and social media links. Furthermore, I think that to have an effective combination of the tasks, the genre and narrative of the film should be continuous across the trailer, poster and website. I think we did this within our tasks as the poster shows images of Devon and Connor being close with one another and suggesting that there is romance/melodrama genre aspects, and this is also seen in the film trailer with Devon looking through photos of her and Connor. This is also linked in the website as one of the images used for the poster is the same for the website, reinforcing the melodrama genre and effectively combining the three tasks. The use of the same image on both the poster and the website makes the combination of the ancillary tasks particularly effective. Furthermore, the image of the pill bottle on the poster is effectively combined with the trailer as it reinforces the signifiance of the pills in Devon's 'downfall', that the audience would have previously seen in the film trailer.
In terms of colour scheme, our tasks have been combined effectively because we tried to keep the colour scheme constant across the tasks, with the red border of the poster relating to the red title screens in our trailer, i.e. the reviews and film title, and the red film title 'Missing You' on the website, as well as the black borders on the website also linking to the black backgrounds on the title screens in the trailer. This shows the continuity across the three tasks, which makes the combination effective.
The combination of our film trailer and poster was particularly effective in terms of the continuity of the texts used within the two tasks. For example, the reviews used within the trailer are the same as those used in the poster, which reinforces the credibilty of the film, a key factor in the success of a film trailer, as seen in our research and audience surveys. The website does not include this because from our reseach we saw that reviews were not as common on websites as they were film trailers and posters. For this reason we decided against using reviews on the website, so in terms of continuity and effectiveness with the other tasks here, the website is not as effectively combined.
Another way our trailer and ancillary tasks are combined effectively is through the use of the same font for the film title across the media texts. By doing this, we have effectively and successfully combined the tasks because the film title will be recognisable. Once the audience have seen the trailer and the film title, they would associate the that with the poster once seeing the title, and the same is true for the website. Ultimately, the aim here was to engrain the film title into the audience and by having the title look the same throughout the tasks, this achieves this. Overall, the idea of continutiy is vital to the effectiveness of the combination of tasks.
One problem with the continuity throughout our main task and ancillary task was that we could not effectively combine the three in terms of having our production logo on each of the tasks clearly. For example, on both the website and poster our logo is seen towards the bottom of the poster and website, as well as it being on the top navigation bar on the website. In our film trailer, we had to compromise our final production logo with just the name of our production company, as shown below:
For our ancillary tasks, we had to create a film poster and website to accompany the film. The purpose of these ancillary tasks in combination with our film trailer was to successfully promote our film. I think that the combination of our film trailer and anciallry tasks was successful for a number of reasons. One very simple reason is the fact that we had related our trailer to our website by placing the website link in our 'coming soon' title screen at the end of our trailer. This allows our audience to actively seek out our website for more information on the film, including behind-the-scenes footage and social media links. Furthermore, I think that to have an effective combination of the tasks, the genre and narrative of the film should be continuous across the trailer, poster and website. I think we did this within our tasks as the poster shows images of Devon and Connor being close with one another and suggesting that there is romance/melodrama genre aspects, and this is also seen in the film trailer with Devon looking through photos of her and Connor. This is also linked in the website as one of the images used for the poster is the same for the website, reinforcing the melodrama genre and effectively combining the three tasks. The use of the same image on both the poster and the website makes the combination of the ancillary tasks particularly effective. Furthermore, the image of the pill bottle on the poster is effectively combined with the trailer as it reinforces the signifiance of the pills in Devon's 'downfall', that the audience would have previously seen in the film trailer.
In terms of colour scheme, our tasks have been combined effectively because we tried to keep the colour scheme constant across the tasks, with the red border of the poster relating to the red title screens in our trailer, i.e. the reviews and film title, and the red film title 'Missing You' on the website, as well as the black borders on the website also linking to the black backgrounds on the title screens in the trailer. This shows the continuity across the three tasks, which makes the combination effective.
The combination of our film trailer and poster was particularly effective in terms of the continuity of the texts used within the two tasks. For example, the reviews used within the trailer are the same as those used in the poster, which reinforces the credibilty of the film, a key factor in the success of a film trailer, as seen in our research and audience surveys. The website does not include this because from our reseach we saw that reviews were not as common on websites as they were film trailers and posters. For this reason we decided against using reviews on the website, so in terms of continuity and effectiveness with the other tasks here, the website is not as effectively combined.
Another way our trailer and ancillary tasks are combined effectively is through the use of the same font for the film title across the media texts. By doing this, we have effectively and successfully combined the tasks because the film title will be recognisable. Once the audience have seen the trailer and the film title, they would associate the that with the poster once seeing the title, and the same is true for the website. Ultimately, the aim here was to engrain the film title into the audience and by having the title look the same throughout the tasks, this achieves this. Overall, the idea of continutiy is vital to the effectiveness of the combination of tasks.
One problem with the continuity throughout our main task and ancillary task was that we could not effectively combine the three in terms of having our production logo on each of the tasks clearly. For example, on both the website and poster our logo is seen towards the bottom of the poster and website, as well as it being on the top navigation bar on the website. In our film trailer, we had to compromise our final production logo with just the name of our production company, as shown below:
We had to do this becuase the software would not let us successfully apply our final production logo in an aesthetically pleasing way, so we decided to simply write the name of the company so we could at least follow the conventions of film trailers rather than starting the trailer footage straight away. In this sense, the lack of continuity here means that our products have not been as effectively combined. However, our production logo is seen at the end of the trailer in the 'coming soon' title screen, but in a small way, along with other companies, so it may not be as noticeable as it is on the poster and website. Overall, with this aspect I feel we could have combined the three tasks more effectively so that the production company name is reinforced highly successfully throughout them, but there is some effectiveness in the combination here.
As a whole, I think that the combination of the main task and two ancillary tasks is effective for the reasons already discussed as it does promote our film, mostly follows codes and conventions of already existing products and each has similar aspects of the others.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Overall our audience feedback was fairly positive, with many of our viewers saying they would watch the film after watching the trailer, and that the trailer held their attention throughout. To gather feedback we decided to use focus groups, asking them questions such as "what did you enjoy about the film trailer?" and "what, if anything, would you improve about the trailer?". All people asked enjoyed the trailer, especially in terms of camera shots and angles used, and thought that our trailer did in fact reach out to our chosen demographic (16 - 24), which suggests our trailer was effective in terms of reaching our target audience and using effective camera shots to keep an audience interested. One criticism is the fact that the sound of the dialogue was not as clear over the soundtrack we used, but some felt that the soundtrack was effective in terms of "building up to the climax" and "fits well with the scenes in the trailer". This was a key element within our planning of the trailer; as previously mentioned we decided to change our soundtrack because it did not effectively run alongside our footage so the fact that our audience feedback responses mentioned that the soundtrack worked well with the trailer means that our planning and construction was appropriate and successful.
We found that from our audience feedback, our trailer followed conventions of film trailers well, in terms of successfully achieving a cliff-hanger, with our audience saying that they felt the ending of the trailer was "built up to extremely well and left (them) wanting to know more." It was also mentioned that the heartbeat sound through an EEG monitor at the end of the trailer, where Devon is seen picking up the pills, was "extremely effective" at building up the cliff-hanger. This was also a major part of what we wanted for our trailer during our planning stages, as the heartbeat/flatline sound has strong connotations of tension and despair, which we felt was necessary to target the melodrama aspect of the film trailer. However, a criticism of our trailer was that the trailer "may have given too much away" into the narrative of the film, which in hindsight, I can agree with in some ways as the rest of the film would involve more of what was included in the trailer; however, others said that the trailer gave away just the right amount of the narrative. This suggests to me that the trailer works well for some people, and not for others, and this may be due to multiple factors, such as the film not appealing to specific age groups.
We also learnt that the editing of the film trailer became more effective; before showing the final trailer to our focus groups, we learned that the editing of the trailer was a bit slow, which might not have appealed to our target audience successfully, which Alba and I agreed with, so we decided to make the camera shots duration shorter at the beginning and speed up some of the footage during the party scenes. After fixing this and showing our trailer to our focus groups, we learned that the editing was favoured by our audience and they felt that it worked well with the narrative of the film, particulary during the party scene, and kept them interested to want to watch more of the trailer.
The majority of our audience thought that the text screens - "Present Day" and "3 Months Earlier" - were useful in identifying the chronological order of the trailer and "helping to identify which part of the trailer was a flashback", but was not completely necessary to understand the trailer. We agreed with the audience here, as these kinds of text screens are not normally seen in film trailers, but I feel it was effective for our trailer as it made the editing flow better and created an 'art-house' film effect, which I feel is a creative element that works well.
The majority of the audience said, bearing in mind that we did not have extremely professional resources or enough funds, that the trailer was semi-professional looking, with more aspects of it looking more professional than others; for example, the text screens with the reviews, film title and the billing block all looked professional, but some of the footage was not amazing quality which made the professional-look decrease slightly. However, this is good feedback as it means that our trailer did follow conventions of film trailers effectively, which would entice audiences leading to success of the film.
In terms of our ancillary tasks, the audience feedback was postitive, with the all of the individuals asked saying that the website looked professional and included all of the features that they themselves would actively look out for when looking at a film website. Many said that the links to social media were effective in making the website look more professional and "targeting the film at those who use social media", which is the majority of people today. With the increased popularity and normality of consistently using social media by most individuals in today's society, all of the indiviuals asked said that this could be seen as a necessity for the success of many films. This is what we were aiming for as we wanted to let the audience be more interactive with the film itself and because of our demographic using social media for nearly every aspect of their lives we felt that having social media links would reinforce the idea of audiences actively seeking out what they want from media.
For our film poster, the audience feedback showed that it was overall a successful poster at promoting the film. The overall feedback for this task was also postive, with the audience saying that features of the poster such as the reviews and the billing block, especially, made the post look professional, which is good for us as it means that we successfully followed conventions of film posters. Other postive feedback included the fact that the film title stood out to the audience, catching their eye first, which is what we have aimed for by following conventions, and to have the title of the film appear the biggest so that it stays in the audience's minds; in addition to this, the images - the audience said that these acheived the idea of a melodrama genre, which is what we were aiming for as we felt that it was important to have images that connoted the hybrid genre of our film, which is also following the conventions of film posters. However, a minority of the audience suggested that the images could have been edited to be slightly brighter as the colours of the poster, i.e. the red border, made the poster look too dark. In hindsight, I agree with this. Overall, the audience said that the poster had a good layout, with the images showing two aspects of the film (happiness/love is connoted with the image of Devon resting her head on Connor's shoulder and the close up of Devon connotes the despair incorporated into the film after Connor's death), being successful, and "works well alongside the trailer."
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
We found that from our audience feedback, our trailer followed conventions of film trailers well, in terms of successfully achieving a cliff-hanger, with our audience saying that they felt the ending of the trailer was "built up to extremely well and left (them) wanting to know more." It was also mentioned that the heartbeat sound through an EEG monitor at the end of the trailer, where Devon is seen picking up the pills, was "extremely effective" at building up the cliff-hanger. This was also a major part of what we wanted for our trailer during our planning stages, as the heartbeat/flatline sound has strong connotations of tension and despair, which we felt was necessary to target the melodrama aspect of the film trailer. However, a criticism of our trailer was that the trailer "may have given too much away" into the narrative of the film, which in hindsight, I can agree with in some ways as the rest of the film would involve more of what was included in the trailer; however, others said that the trailer gave away just the right amount of the narrative. This suggests to me that the trailer works well for some people, and not for others, and this may be due to multiple factors, such as the film not appealing to specific age groups.
We also learnt that the editing of the film trailer became more effective; before showing the final trailer to our focus groups, we learned that the editing of the trailer was a bit slow, which might not have appealed to our target audience successfully, which Alba and I agreed with, so we decided to make the camera shots duration shorter at the beginning and speed up some of the footage during the party scenes. After fixing this and showing our trailer to our focus groups, we learned that the editing was favoured by our audience and they felt that it worked well with the narrative of the film, particulary during the party scene, and kept them interested to want to watch more of the trailer.
The majority of our audience thought that the text screens - "Present Day" and "3 Months Earlier" - were useful in identifying the chronological order of the trailer and "helping to identify which part of the trailer was a flashback", but was not completely necessary to understand the trailer. We agreed with the audience here, as these kinds of text screens are not normally seen in film trailers, but I feel it was effective for our trailer as it made the editing flow better and created an 'art-house' film effect, which I feel is a creative element that works well.
The majority of the audience said, bearing in mind that we did not have extremely professional resources or enough funds, that the trailer was semi-professional looking, with more aspects of it looking more professional than others; for example, the text screens with the reviews, film title and the billing block all looked professional, but some of the footage was not amazing quality which made the professional-look decrease slightly. However, this is good feedback as it means that our trailer did follow conventions of film trailers effectively, which would entice audiences leading to success of the film.
In terms of our ancillary tasks, the audience feedback was postitive, with the all of the individuals asked saying that the website looked professional and included all of the features that they themselves would actively look out for when looking at a film website. Many said that the links to social media were effective in making the website look more professional and "targeting the film at those who use social media", which is the majority of people today. With the increased popularity and normality of consistently using social media by most individuals in today's society, all of the indiviuals asked said that this could be seen as a necessity for the success of many films. This is what we were aiming for as we wanted to let the audience be more interactive with the film itself and because of our demographic using social media for nearly every aspect of their lives we felt that having social media links would reinforce the idea of audiences actively seeking out what they want from media.
For our film poster, the audience feedback showed that it was overall a successful poster at promoting the film. The overall feedback for this task was also postive, with the audience saying that features of the poster such as the reviews and the billing block, especially, made the post look professional, which is good for us as it means that we successfully followed conventions of film posters. Other postive feedback included the fact that the film title stood out to the audience, catching their eye first, which is what we have aimed for by following conventions, and to have the title of the film appear the biggest so that it stays in the audience's minds; in addition to this, the images - the audience said that these acheived the idea of a melodrama genre, which is what we were aiming for as we felt that it was important to have images that connoted the hybrid genre of our film, which is also following the conventions of film posters. However, a minority of the audience suggested that the images could have been edited to be slightly brighter as the colours of the poster, i.e. the red border, made the poster look too dark. In hindsight, I agree with this. Overall, the audience said that the poster had a good layout, with the images showing two aspects of the film (happiness/love is connoted with the image of Devon resting her head on Connor's shoulder and the close up of Devon connotes the despair incorporated into the film after Connor's death), being successful, and "works well alongside the trailer."
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Research:
In terms of research, a lot of the media technologies we used were Internet-based due to the majority of new information being processed and distributed in this form, rather than the old-style book format. However, for early research, typical media studies text books were helpful to start a basis of what to include in research and introduced me to the idea of first, second and third cinema - which can be seen on my research page as a justification as to why I chose to write about it - and A, B, C, D and E films. To develop this part of my research, I used the Internet to gain a better understanding of first, second and third cinema in particular, as it related to our chosen genre in some ways, for example in terms of third cinema challenging ordinary views and focusing on social realism, just as British films do. The Internet was incredibly invaluable to my research on the history of film and film trailers in general; as well as the history of our chosen genres film trailers - where I researched British film and Alba researched melodramas, as we were not originally in a group. For this type of research, I used IMDB.com and filmsite.org to gather an undestanding of how the codes and conventions of films, and film trailers, as well as the technologies used for these media producrs, have developed over the years.
To display my research I mostly used Prezi, a software I was new to this academic year; I found Prezi to be an effective way of formatting my research and looked more interactive, creative and aesthetically pleasing than just using Microsoft PowerPoint or Microsoft Word. By using Prezi, I could place images of film posters and several film trailers with the paragraphs relating to them, meaning that the research was backed up and continuous. We did also use Microsoft PowerPoint to display some of our research, for example the difference between British and American film, and uploaded them to SlideShare where we could then embedd the slideshow onto our blogs. SlideShare was also useful in terms of others being able to comment on the presentations, which could have allowed feedback on our research.
For our audience questionnaires we used the online programme, Survey Monkey, which meant that we could distribute the questionnaire online to our social media sites and gain more audience feedback, and a wider representation of audiences, on what they liked in a trailer, how long they felt a trailer should be etc. which was extremely helpful for our planning and construction of our trailer as we could follow what the results showed from our audience feedback. Survey Monkey also allowed us to look at individual responses for each question so we could pair up what certain demographics enjoyed most about a trailer and what they would have included in one, meaning that we could specifically target our trailer at our target audience and demographic. Furthemore, it formatted the responses to our questions in graphs - for quantitative responses - and listed out each of the qualitative, or descriptive, responses, to make the analysis of the results a much more simple process.
To analyse existing film trailers for our research, which was necessary to the success of our film trailer in terms of codes and conventions used, as well as the conventions used for our chosen genre, we used Youtube and IMDB to watch our selected trailers on, from which we could easily pause and rewind certain parts of the trailers simply to find out all of the conventions used. For the display of this, I used Prezi, again for the reason that I could simply add in screenshots of the trailers at the point of the paragraphs where needed. Analysing these trailers, using these two websites, allowed us to gain inspiration for our own trailer.To analyse existing film posters and websites, we used the internet to find the images of the film posters, which were analysed using Microsoft Powerpoint, and to search for certain film websites, by typing in films to the google search engine.
As well as this, we used Microsoft Word to display some of our research, such as codes and conventions of major film genres, and for me I felt it was best to produce my research into first, second and third cinema on this programme as the content of it was very much written-based, which couldn't really be displayed effectively in a powerpoint, for example. The internet was also played a huge role in this part of my research, as I felt I had to find out some more on first, second and third cinema to have a comprehensive understanding of it and how it related to our own project. I used google to find out more about this topic, looking at sites such as Wordpress.com and Thirdcinema.blueskylimit.com, among few others.
In terms of research, a lot of the media technologies we used were Internet-based due to the majority of new information being processed and distributed in this form, rather than the old-style book format. However, for early research, typical media studies text books were helpful to start a basis of what to include in research and introduced me to the idea of first, second and third cinema - which can be seen on my research page as a justification as to why I chose to write about it - and A, B, C, D and E films. To develop this part of my research, I used the Internet to gain a better understanding of first, second and third cinema in particular, as it related to our chosen genre in some ways, for example in terms of third cinema challenging ordinary views and focusing on social realism, just as British films do. The Internet was incredibly invaluable to my research on the history of film and film trailers in general; as well as the history of our chosen genres film trailers - where I researched British film and Alba researched melodramas, as we were not originally in a group. For this type of research, I used IMDB.com and filmsite.org to gather an undestanding of how the codes and conventions of films, and film trailers, as well as the technologies used for these media producrs, have developed over the years.
To display my research I mostly used Prezi, a software I was new to this academic year; I found Prezi to be an effective way of formatting my research and looked more interactive, creative and aesthetically pleasing than just using Microsoft PowerPoint or Microsoft Word. By using Prezi, I could place images of film posters and several film trailers with the paragraphs relating to them, meaning that the research was backed up and continuous. We did also use Microsoft PowerPoint to display some of our research, for example the difference between British and American film, and uploaded them to SlideShare where we could then embedd the slideshow onto our blogs. SlideShare was also useful in terms of others being able to comment on the presentations, which could have allowed feedback on our research.
For our audience questionnaires we used the online programme, Survey Monkey, which meant that we could distribute the questionnaire online to our social media sites and gain more audience feedback, and a wider representation of audiences, on what they liked in a trailer, how long they felt a trailer should be etc. which was extremely helpful for our planning and construction of our trailer as we could follow what the results showed from our audience feedback. Survey Monkey also allowed us to look at individual responses for each question so we could pair up what certain demographics enjoyed most about a trailer and what they would have included in one, meaning that we could specifically target our trailer at our target audience and demographic. Furthemore, it formatted the responses to our questions in graphs - for quantitative responses - and listed out each of the qualitative, or descriptive, responses, to make the analysis of the results a much more simple process.
To analyse existing film trailers for our research, which was necessary to the success of our film trailer in terms of codes and conventions used, as well as the conventions used for our chosen genre, we used Youtube and IMDB to watch our selected trailers on, from which we could easily pause and rewind certain parts of the trailers simply to find out all of the conventions used. For the display of this, I used Prezi, again for the reason that I could simply add in screenshots of the trailers at the point of the paragraphs where needed. Analysing these trailers, using these two websites, allowed us to gain inspiration for our own trailer.To analyse existing film posters and websites, we used the internet to find the images of the film posters, which were analysed using Microsoft Powerpoint, and to search for certain film websites, by typing in films to the google search engine.
As well as this, we used Microsoft Word to display some of our research, such as codes and conventions of major film genres, and for me I felt it was best to produce my research into first, second and third cinema on this programme as the content of it was very much written-based, which couldn't really be displayed effectively in a powerpoint, for example. The internet was also played a huge role in this part of my research, as I felt I had to find out some more on first, second and third cinema to have a comprehensive understanding of it and how it related to our own project. I used google to find out more about this topic, looking at sites such as Wordpress.com and Thirdcinema.blueskylimit.com, among few others.
Planning:
In terms of planning, we used the internet to aid us, as well as expanding our use of technologies to certain programmes such as Serif MoviePlus. Originally, in our planning stages, we decided that we were going to use a software called Serif MoviePlus, a simple software to use, and both me and Alba had previous experience with Serif applications before. In planning I decided to trial out this software by producing our production company logo on there, as that would be the first part to appear on our trailer, finding it to be an easy software to use with the necessary tools to make an effective film trailer. To display the planning of this, I used Microsoft Word as it was simple to place screenshots of how the software worked and to write around the images of what was happening in a particular image. However, as we progressed through planning we decided to change the software we were going to use to another film editing software called Power Director, which was much more advanced and included more features for us to be more creative with our trailer.
As previously mentioned, the internet aided us in our planning stages. We used websites such as Youtube and Soundcloud to find appropriate music for our trailer, after deciding on an idea of what kind of music we wanted. Using this enabled us to see what worked best alongside our film trailer, and once we had decided on what song we were going to use we created a music timeline of the trailer to see how much of the song we would need and how it was going to run alongside the footage; we completed this on paper originally and we were going to scan it in to the compute to upload onto our blogs, but decided to re-do them on Microsoft Word as it looked more organised and neat. We also used the internet to create our script for the trailer on a website called PlotBot.com which was effective as it allowed us to easily edit parts out that we no longer felt were necessary, and created a professional-looking script as it allowed us to put the location, i.e. exterior or interior and dialogues from certain characters. One further way we used the internet in our planning was through using google search engine to find out the record label which signed the artist who produced the music we used in our trailer. After finding this, I used their website to contact them asking their permission to use the song for a non-profit project, in the form of our film trailer.
A lot of our planning, such as the timeline of camera shots, poster layouts, and website layouts were originally completed on paper as a rough copy, but then were transferred onto powerpoints and uploaded to SlideShare, where we then embedded them to our blogs. Planning this was more simple on paper at first because we only had rough ideas of what we wanted our layouts to be, but after deciding on a few layouts we thought that transferring these ideas to Microsoft PowerPoint and SlideShare that it would be a much more effective us of technology, as well as making them look neater and being able to write about how they were or were not effective, and where the inspiration for them came from.
For the other parts of planning, such as locations, and costume and make-up, we displayed these using Blogger, as we only had to explain what locations and costume/make-up we were using and why. In addition to this, other technology I used was my phone to message the main characters of our film trailer and poster to take part in our media project.
Construction:
During the construction stages, a lot of media technologies were used, ranging from simple technologies such as the internet to the softwares we used to create our film trailer and ancillary tasks, such as Power Director and Serif applications. The internet, although still playing a minor role in this stage, did not play as big a role in this stage as it did in the research and planning stages; we used the internet for small logos to be included at the end of our trailer in the 'coming soon' screen:
In terms of planning, we used the internet to aid us, as well as expanding our use of technologies to certain programmes such as Serif MoviePlus. Originally, in our planning stages, we decided that we were going to use a software called Serif MoviePlus, a simple software to use, and both me and Alba had previous experience with Serif applications before. In planning I decided to trial out this software by producing our production company logo on there, as that would be the first part to appear on our trailer, finding it to be an easy software to use with the necessary tools to make an effective film trailer. To display the planning of this, I used Microsoft Word as it was simple to place screenshots of how the software worked and to write around the images of what was happening in a particular image. However, as we progressed through planning we decided to change the software we were going to use to another film editing software called Power Director, which was much more advanced and included more features for us to be more creative with our trailer.
As previously mentioned, the internet aided us in our planning stages. We used websites such as Youtube and Soundcloud to find appropriate music for our trailer, after deciding on an idea of what kind of music we wanted. Using this enabled us to see what worked best alongside our film trailer, and once we had decided on what song we were going to use we created a music timeline of the trailer to see how much of the song we would need and how it was going to run alongside the footage; we completed this on paper originally and we were going to scan it in to the compute to upload onto our blogs, but decided to re-do them on Microsoft Word as it looked more organised and neat. We also used the internet to create our script for the trailer on a website called PlotBot.com which was effective as it allowed us to easily edit parts out that we no longer felt were necessary, and created a professional-looking script as it allowed us to put the location, i.e. exterior or interior and dialogues from certain characters. One further way we used the internet in our planning was through using google search engine to find out the record label which signed the artist who produced the music we used in our trailer. After finding this, I used their website to contact them asking their permission to use the song for a non-profit project, in the form of our film trailer.
A lot of our planning, such as the timeline of camera shots, poster layouts, and website layouts were originally completed on paper as a rough copy, but then were transferred onto powerpoints and uploaded to SlideShare, where we then embedded them to our blogs. Planning this was more simple on paper at first because we only had rough ideas of what we wanted our layouts to be, but after deciding on a few layouts we thought that transferring these ideas to Microsoft PowerPoint and SlideShare that it would be a much more effective us of technology, as well as making them look neater and being able to write about how they were or were not effective, and where the inspiration for them came from.
For the other parts of planning, such as locations, and costume and make-up, we displayed these using Blogger, as we only had to explain what locations and costume/make-up we were using and why. In addition to this, other technology I used was my phone to message the main characters of our film trailer and poster to take part in our media project.
Construction:
During the construction stages, a lot of media technologies were used, ranging from simple technologies such as the internet to the softwares we used to create our film trailer and ancillary tasks, such as Power Director and Serif applications. The internet, although still playing a minor role in this stage, did not play as big a role in this stage as it did in the research and planning stages; we used the internet for small logos to be included at the end of our trailer in the 'coming soon' screen:
To film the actual footage of our film trailer, as well as some of the 'behind the scenes' footage that is included in our film website, we used a Kodak PixPro AZ526 digital camera, which possessed a digital screen which we could focus on as we were filming to focus on the shots we were using and the framing of them. The camera allowed us to have high-quality footage, which unfortunatley does not always show through when watching the trailer, depending on what level of quality it is playing on, but if played in HD it shows perfectly fine, demonstrating the quality of the camera.
To edit the footage in terms of what was being used in the film trailer, we used a software called Power Director, which was an effective software as it allowed us to add effects, overwrite certain audio clips with the soundtrack, and created text screens with transitions on - for example, the reviews within the trailer and the billing block screen. I found that this software was much more advanced than the previous software we were planning on using (Serif MoviePlus) and other software such as Windows MovieMaker, which Alba and I already had previous experience with. Power Director had many features that made the quality of the camera work better, such as a 'stability' feature, which made any shakiness of the camera even out, making the footage look more professional. However, because we had British social realist conventions within our genre, hand-held and slightly shaky footage would fit well with the codes of this genre. As well as this, the software allowed other footage-enhancing features such as speed, where we could speed up some of the footage by 1x or 1.5x the original speed - which we decided to do as there was some party footage that looked a bit slower than the rest, so by speeding this up our footage linked in well together - and lightning. We decided to enhance the lighting of some of the clips by brightening some of the slightly darker clips we had to make the trailer look continuous in lighting, especially for the footage which was filmed in the same location. For example, when filming the beginning of the trailer, the over-the-shoulder shot of Devon looking at photos had brighter lighting than the footage of her looking at the 'pills' because of where the light was positioned during filming, so we decided to make this part look brighter so that there was continutity of lighting throughout this part of the trailer. In hindsight, it would have been better to move the light to create the same lighting effect at this part whilst we were filming the footage. However, there were parts of the software we chose to avoid such as the majorityof the transitions avaliable because they looked very basic and unprofessional, so we decided against using ones such as 'fade' due to this. We did use one transition that is apparant throughout the trailer though, which was 'amplify vertical', an effective transition that looked the most aesthetically pleasing and professional.
For our film poster, we originally started editing the photos on Photoshop, an advanced editing software, but we decided that using another software - Serif PagePlus - would be easier for us to use, as me nor Alba were fully aware or confident on how to use Photoshop effectively. We both had experience of this software before the start of this brief, and found it to be effective for creating the layout of our poster and editing the photos we were going to use, as it allowed us to use a feature called 'cut-out' studio to cut around our main characters to remove the unwanted background we had. This was useful as we could then add any other background we wanted. It also allowed basic photo editing in a sister programme called Serif PhotoPlus, which had features to make the images brighter and more defined, which was extremely useful as we found that some of the images were darker than we wanted. This software also allowed us to create a billing block for the cast and crew, a typical convention of film posters, and to effectively create the title of our film to stand out against the background and images to attract the audience's attention.
For our other ancillary task, a website to accompany the film, we used another Serif application, Serif WebPlus, which neither me nor Alba were familair with before this year. We found that we had to learn how to use the software before attempting to create our final website design as it was more complicated than we thought. However, we grasped the functions of the software fairly quickly and found that it created multiple features that we needed in order to follow conventions of film websites. It enabled us to create a navigation bar, which could then be hyper-linked to other pages such as our 'home' page, 'film trailer' page and 'bloopers/behind the scenes' page, which is a part of our brief. It also allowed us to include aspects such as a social media widget bar, where we could select certain social networking sites and place them in a small bar on our home page. The software was effective and it had a feature called the 'master page' where anything placed on that page, in our case the navigation bar was a necessity here, would appear on all of the pages included on the website; for example, the navigation bar would appear on the home page, film trailer page and the behind the scenes/bloopers page.
To complete our film trailer, we decided to upload it to Youtube, so that we could embedd it onto our blogs, meaning that the internet played a vital role here. Overall,the construction stage used the widest variety of media technologies, with a larger range of software being used and still including the internet in some form.
Evaluation:
For my evaluation stage, I mainly used the internet to look at what has been uploaded onto my blog so I could use certain bits of evidence to support my evaluation, and using Blogger to write up my evaluation. I used Youtube and Google as well to use screenshots of other exisiting products, and used these to back-up my explanations of how these relate to my productions. To gather audience feedback I filmed others talking about what they liked about the film trailer and used a questionnaire to gather audience's opinions on the trailer. To do this, we simply used a mobile phone as we only needed simple technology to gather this feedback.
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