Evaluation: How did you use media technologies in the contruction and research, planning and evaluation stages

Media technologies were a very important part of this project and were used all of the time and at each different stage. We of course used a blog to upload all of our work including images and videos, blogs are becoming very popular now because it allows people to show off their work to the world and gain feedback from the readers of their work. All of my research and planning and evaluation was done on this website which is calledhttp://www.blogger.com/. I also used the very popular video website 'youtube' which has

millions of videos created by non media giants, it has allowed the average person with a basic

camera to create content that millions can view and enjoy, it has created some internet superstars

such as 'star wars kid' and 'numa numa guy'. I used youtube for the research part of the blog by

copying the embedded code into the blog so a video could be viewed.

Later on i also uploaded my finished trailer to youtube so i could get comments and gain feedback off

people

To edit my trailer i used a piece of software called Adobe Premier pro which in the end was very easy to use and edit film. I was able to crop scenes and add sounds with ease after getting used to it.

Whenever i edited an image or even just cropped it to put on this blog i used the graphic manipulation software called GIMP which is a free alternative to photoshop which i downloaded for free off the internet at this address www.gimp.org/

Evaluation: What have I learned from my audience feedback

Audience feedback in the media industry is vital because media products are created for the consumers as they are the ones who will be paying the money.

Before starting this project i produced a questionnaire asking members of the public what they thought made a good teaser trailer, i also asked how many people viewed the films website and it turned out that the majority didn't view it so thats why i decided against that as one of my ancillary tasks. This kind of audience feedback is vital to a successful project.

From the audience feedback i retrieved from the questionnaires i found out the following things:

• The most popular genre of film is horror
• People think that the best teaser trailers last around 30 seconds (I didn't follow this feedback because 30 seconds wasn't long enough for all of the footage that i wanted to put in)
• People normally view film trailers on TV
• A film trailer should only give away a little bit of the story compared to lots or none

However, the feedback i received while i was making the trailer and the ancillary tasks is just as important because they allowed me to see what i was doing wrong and how i could change things from a non biased point of view, i also uploaded my trailer onto youtube and facebook but unfortunately no one added any comments that were sensible, some people did however 'like' my video which has become an important part of facebook. However, i will show you that someone did at least comment on the video which shows what kind of feedback could be possible.

I also gained some feedback through this blog and its ability to place comments on peoples post, i took in all of the feedback and changed parts of my project where necessary, here is some

examples of comments i got.

Evaluation: How effective is the combination of the main product and the ancillary tasks

Before starting out producing all of the tasks i knew that i wanted to create a brand which could be advertised over different types of media, i wanted to create a logo which could be seen everywhere so that it could build up public recognition which would ultimately create interest. My logo was simply the films name 'Stalker' but it wasn't in ordinary font, i downloaded a font from dafont.com called polla which looks like blood written on walls when colored in red. This was a common convention of horror film titles which when shown on posters were always colored in red due to the connotation of red which is blood or danger. I have used this logo over all three of my tasks so everytime someone looks at them they will recognise what film it is related to. This is the logo below:

I think i chose the best ancillary tasks because it is two forms of media coming together to advertise one film, a mix of film and print is one used very often in cinema. All three tasks compliment each other perfectly, when releasing a new film you need to build awareness of it, the poster and magazine front cover do that perfectly. The poster and film magazine can be released before they film so that it builds up recognition.

Evaluation: In what ways does your product use or challenge forms and conventions of real media products

Now that i have produced all of my work i must evaluate it by looking at a series of questions to help me asses whether or not my products have been successful.

Before producing my trailer, poster and magazine front cover, i researched existing materials from the genre of my choice which was horror, I knew straight away that i wanted to produce a video of some kind because last year all our work was print based so i wanted to improve my skills elsewhere, i narrowed down my options to a music video along with a magazine advertisement and a digipack and the film trailer option along with a magazine front cover and a poster for the film. After narrowing down to two options i looked at what would be most suitable for me, i decided that it would be more suitable for me to choose the film trailer option because i watch more movies than i do listen to music. I then began to research all aspects of horror including the conventions of trailers such as paranormal activity which i analyzed earlier. I noted the following things

• Always set at night time
• Use of sound effects to create suspense and tension e.g. sound building up
• Use of quick editing to create a sense of panic
• Point of view shots

These are some of the things i have tried to recreate in my trailer, i have followed most of the conventions of film trailers, the hardest one to do was to film at night time, the camera i was going to use wasn't very good at filming at night so i had to rethink, i asked if i could borrow a friends camera which had a night vision option. This helped a lot and in the end i think it added to the effect. The blair witch project used night vision cameras. Filming at night on the other camera was impossible because there simply wasn't enough light (obviously), the camera did have a light on the front which was meant to help but at long distances it was useless. I think my use of sound effects helped to make it more scary, the use of heartbeats and woodland ambience and also the screaming, screaming is found in a lot of trailers because it shows the fear someone is going through.

I think my magazine challenges a lot of conventions, mainly because of the amount of information on the front, normally there would be one main story but then little stories on the outside. however, i decided to go against this because i believe it would look to crowded, instead i put some contents down the bottom of the cover where they are not in the way, i personally believe this makes it look a lot cleaner and easier to understand.

My poster challenge one convention of posters because it doesn't include any of the characters on it just a picture of woods with the slogan 'something is out there'. i done this to create unknown and to make the reader guess what the story is about instead of handing it to them. On other horror posters like in the examples i showed before it shows the main villain and what he looks like so its not a surprise when you first see them in the film.

My three final pieces

This is my trailer along with the two ancillary tasks

Trailer

Film poster
Film magazine front cover

Finished movie trailer

Here is my teaser movie trailer for my horror film called stalker



Overall the production of the film trailer went very well, after getting over the intial problem of knowing how to use the software i managed to get used to all of the buttons and what they did, i also worked out how to download sound files from the website http://www.partnersinrhyme.com/pir/PIRsfx.shtml, this website contains 100's of different sound files kept under different categories including one called 'horror, scary, halloween'. After looking at other examples of horror trailers and ones from other genres i took some of the conventions and implemented them in to mine , including the green rating screen at the beginning of trailers, the logo of the production company which shows who made the film and some filming techniques which have been used in horror trailers before. My favorite part of the trailer starts at 0.30 and ends at 0.40, in this bit i have edited it so there is a black screen between each bit of filming so it gives the impression of skipping time and also gives the impression that they have been running for a while, i also added a heartbeat sound effect in the background while this is happening so it gives the impression that the person running is panicking and skipping a beat. Adding heartbeat sound effects is a convention from horror films because it adds suspense and the viewer thinks something is about to happen so it makes them tense, this is what horror films are meant to do.

Stalker magazine cover analysis

This is my analysis for the front cover of my magazine 'popcorn'