A2: Evaluation

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

I produced a film poster as part of a promotion package. The poster ties in well with stereotypical conventions of a psychological thriller as it does not give much away about the film to the audience. In order to get the effect I wanted I researched and deconstructed several posters of the psychological thriller genre, not only giving me a greater insight into the conventions used but also enabling me to develop my research and analytical skills. Many of these posters used dark and dull colours with typical conventions such as the direct mode of address. This created a sense of tension linking again to its genre. Considering these stereotypical conventions for psychological thriller posters, I produced a poster using Adobe Photoshop. My poster included dark colours such as black, connoting concealment and mystery and the use of red which also suggests danger and obscurity. I used an image which looked as though it was a still from the film; creating more of an effect as it makes the poster appeal to more demographics. I also included another image of the protagonist’s eyes making direct contact with the camera; creating a sense of realism and connection with the audience and making the poster look more professional as the direct address is a typical convention. This improved my use of editing techniques, as I was able to merge two images with more layers without making it look out of place, also enabling me to challenge conventions of real media products, as it is not typical for a poster to include more than one image on the cover.

Many of the film posters I had researched used main images with the direct mode of address. To include the direct mode of address on my poster, I took an extreme close up shot of the eyes, and merged it with the main background still shot taken front the film. This not only challenged the conventions of film posters, but also successfully made it look professional and realistic.

The film trailer I created has many conventions of thriller trailers. After researching and analysing many trailers, I came to the conclusion that most of these had typical scary sound effects linked to suspense, with voiceovers and continuous cuts clear throughout. The beginning of my trailer features the MPAA rating card, suggesting that it has been approved for specific audiences, a typical feature for most film trailers. The first scene features a girl walking in a field with only her shadow visible to the audience. This links to the psychological thriller genre as it creates obscurity and suspense. The use of tense sound that has a low pitch at the beginning gradually increases whilst the trailer carries on. 
My films name is Mental State, which tells the audience what the film is about. It links clearly to the genre and supports existing media products belonging to the 'psychological thriller' genre as it revolves around the film and makes the clear link. The title of the trailer is black and white and in all my media products the title is justified to the right in order to create an effective house style that challenges existing media products.

The film magazine cover follows many conventional patterns of real media products such as, the positioning of the magazine name at the top of the page – the Masthead. The main image which reflects the genre and makes it clear to the audience, colour schemes of the text matching and tying in with the image creating a house style throughout, font sizes that vary on significant text and the use of a barcode, date and price. The magazine front cover features one main image following the conventions of other film magazines as well as the lures on both sides of the image. However, one convention that challenged many conventional film magazine front covers was the use of text that mentioned many other films on the bottom left side. The only magazine that seemed to follow this convention was an issue of ‘Empire’ which made it rare and perhaps more appealing to the audience as they may want to know about these films too, prompting them to buy the magazine, ultimately making more sales. 

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

The two ancillary tasks and my main media product all worked well together to create a successful promotion package for what could be a real film. The psychological thriller genre is rare for filmmakers, however I managed to gather sufficient information on the genre and construct a media product that reflects the conventions of many real media products. I had created a house style for the two ancillary tasks. This included the use of colours such as red, black and grey that made it look more professional as it all had a link. Film wise, synergy is the way all the elements are similar in style and themes, so they work well in promoting the film. I believe that my media products complement my film trailer, as they have many elements that link them together and promote them being a successful synergetic package. I used the same colour schemes throughout my products, reds, greys and blacks creating an effective house style.

Featuring prominent items on the poster and film as well as other promotional packages are a common form of synergy used in the mainstream film industry. Looking at existing and successful use of synergy makes clear that it is vital for the marketing of the film. One of the most recent and famous Hollywood films, Fast and Furious 7 (2015) demonstrates how significant the use of synergy is. It creates a house style that makes audiences be able to distinguish a film from the rest. All of the elements of synergy resemble each other in style and graphic. It is evident, from the posters and stills that the main characters are used on all of the media products. The film also has merchandise that is visually identical to the film to promote it. 

I successfully managed to use synergy as a promotional strategy for my media product. For example, the shadow figure is a prominent feature in promoting my product. It allows the audience to distinguish my media product from the rest.

The film poster could easily pass for a real media product as it evidently has much of real media product conventions on the cover as well as an easily identifiable house style. 

My main product the trailer was extremely effective when it was combined with my media products for the ancillary tasks as they had all linked because of my use of synergy.

The film magazine cover and film poster linked to each other because of the clear house style of the theme of mystery and obscurity. The colours are also similar and the backgrounds link to the film.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

The audience for my media product will include a wide range of people, mostly teenagers both males and females from the age categories of (12 – 18). Therefore, it will be relatively popular amongst the youth; they will probably be studying at secondary school. My target audience will most likely be attracted to the thriller genre and have an interest in action and adventure.

The majority of my target audience are likely to have mobile phones and other gadgets that enable them to watch videos or films on. They are likely to have iPods and maybe tablets. They are young, hence fond of modern technology and aware of all the latest news. They live an active life so keep track of things. Using social networking sites such as Facebook, twitter and Instagram will enable them to access film trailers on YouTube easily, and if it appeals to them, they will be prompted to watch it.

I believe my target audience is likely to contain a lot of people who are fairly interested in films and watching trailers and reading reviews before watching the film itself. The specific genres that they would be interested in would be pop and hip-hop music. I think they would also enjoy suspense and a sense of thrill that comes from the music and sound effects used. They would mainly watch trailers and films on TV and social networking sites. These include, Sky Movies. Watching thriller movies such as Psycho would be a popular choice amongst my audience. 

The audience would spend a lot of time on Internet because it is a place where they can easily access any kind of information, so my audience would be able to access the trailer and film posters easily. The social networking sites also appeal to a wider range of audience, so this may enable me to expand the audience for my media product.
I received feedback on YouTube after uploading my video:


Much of the feedback I received had been positive and showed that my initial product was good. However, online social networking platforms such as YouTube was not the only website I had received feedback on. I also showed the video to different students from my school. This was effective as I received suggestions on how to improve from different groups of the audience. I found that younger age groups '12-14' were more interested in the trailer than older students. Suggestions such as: 'Use less still image shots' was useful as I removed this and made the trailer look more professional and realistic.

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
While planning and researching my media products, I used a wide range of programmes and media platforms to help me with it. 
To help me with the research of my film trailer, I used websites such as YouTube to watch existing film trailers that were successful. 

YouTube is an online video based media sharing website, it was one of the main online products that I used in order to conduct my research and planning.

After setting up my own channel, I uploaded my trailer on it and received feedback in the comments section. The multi-platform nature of this website means that you can access it from mobile devices and tablets as well as computers or macs therefore users have constant and easy access to the website.Having my work online was a very positive aspect as it is easier to share with friends, family and colleagues.

I shot my film using a digital camera, the Panasonic HD digital Camera. I found this camera extremely helpful as it allowed me to take high quality photos and videos, whilst being relatively easy to use and requiring little skill to operate. Having no experience in producing films I was very worried that I would not be able to get a lot of footage, which would be able to become a product of a high standard. However, I was glad to see that my camera was ideal for using focus pulls as it created beautiful blurry backgrounds, whilst focusing on the object. Taking into account my limited budget and time, this camera was extremely useful and helpful and made my media product turn out better than I had expected. The fact that the trailer belonged to the 'psychological thriller' genre was helpful as handheld shooting links to this particular genre.

A program I had used to edit my images was Adobe Photoshop, this also included the editing of my trailer images such as the credits at the end of the trailer.

Adobe Photoshop was a helpful website to use to edit my photos and still from the video. Having no experience in rather simplistic editing websites such as iphoto, I was terrified of using adobe Photoshop as an editing program as I thought it would be too simple for my A2 ancillary tasks, however, I was able to do a variety of different editing techniques on it such as the merging of two images which I was not aware of during AS.

The Internet enabled me to thoroughly research different existing media products relevant to my production.I found inspiration from various platforms across the web, picked certain images and videos and inserted them into my planning and research post. Furthermore, I researched my target audience and looked at existing and successful trailer for films on YouTube. I also looked at the comments section on these trailers to help me whilst producing my own trailer.

I used Google Blogger to keep my coursework up to date. Blogger is a free and open source blogging tool.

It is a convenient way to display and distribute all of my work and it also provides a fast and convenient way to access your work from the internet. The blogs all belong to a domain blogspot.com. I added a lot of hyperlinks, inserted videos and images and kept my research and planning in it. In turn, this had made my work easier to access and understand.

Another useful program I used to edit my trailer was imovie. Imovie is a video editing software application on macs or any apple product. It is an easy and useful editing app and can be used to import and export videos and images after it has been edited.

I found that this software was easy to use and it had everything I needed such as transitions and the option to add text. 

Overall, I was satisfied with the websites I had used to produce my media products.