My evaluation

What have you learnt from audience feedback?

I carried out my own audience research to find out my own feedback. I found out by asking other pupils at the school what they thought about my trailer. I found that the majority thought my trailer asserted itself with the horror genre. The other members of the audience who watched my trailer believed it was more of a mild horror but more thriller.  I also carried out a questionnaire to see if audience members understood the narrative of my trailer.

 Most of the feedback concluded that they did and the others said that after a second or third viewing they understood it then. I carried out another questionnaire but due to the sample sizes being too small the results were not valid.

I have found that audience feedback is extremely important. The reason for this is, if I was to make a trailer again every so much editing I would then ask them to watch the trailer again and see if what I had changed worked better. However with this comes a problem, I would have to change the audience members because otherwise my trailer would become too suited for those few people.  I could have a few groups of people I could alternate.

How effective is the combination of your main task and the ancillary tasks?

I feel that all three of my tasks (trailer, poster and magazine cover) work well together due to the continuity between them. I kept the same picture for the magazine cover and the poster. This allows the readers make the connection between them due to the same picture.

I believe that all three together would work effectively due to the fact the posters image is relevant to the trailer itself as it’s the same image and also on the magazine cover. Straight away from the trailer the audience can work out who the main character is, so on the poster just using the ‘caretakers kill board’ was a good connection so the audience know who the girl on the board is and will associate her with being the girl in the trailer. I used the poster image on the magazine cover because that is the main image the audience would remember. If I had put another image of another part of the trailer on my cover the audience would not have maybe realised that this was the featured film in that issue. The poster would have been displayed in cinemas, bus stops, bill boards and on the side of taxis. For this reason I needed something which could be remembered and something that was eye catching but also stayed in the colours of the genre and trailer.

I feel that from audience feedback that our film would appeal to an audience and would be wanted to be viewed. I would give the film a 15 certificate because most of the audience sample I showed the trailer to was 15/16 years of age but older audiences said that the trailer was good and they would watch the film but it was not as scary for them as it was to the 15/16 year old viewers. This meant that my trailer was effective by making people want to watch my film by viewing the trailer.  The feedback about the poster was similar. People who had seen my poster had said they would like to see the film which was good feedback, but because I didn’t want to use unknown images from the internet I used the pictures of the ‘caretakers kill board’ the detail of the image once made large enough for the poster became slightly grainy. This gave the image I good effect as you could still see what the picture was of and who, but it gave an old, worn effect which was what I wanted.

All of the audience members I asked about the poster and the trailer together said that yes they would recognise that the poster was being used in conjunction to the trailer and they would also associate them together. The magazines normal audience would buy the magazine as normal and would learn about the film and see the poster inside so that the next time a reader saw the poster else where they would  know about the film and know what film it was for.

How does your media product use develop and challenge conventions of real media products?

We used the normal stereotypical conventions of a horror movie trailer after looking at plenty through the research process. We decided to use technology such as a slow motion camera and green screen. Unfortunately we did not use the green screen footage in the end but we still have the skills now about how to use the green screen and what the effect looks like.  We wanted to break the mould by using a telephone call to tell the story which works well at the end. We used a phone call which was to the police which immediately installed fear and panic into the audience because the only reason the police is called is for bad things or people in trouble.

We wanted to make our trailer as real as possible so we used the typical conventions such as the synchronicity between the music and the images. This gave our trailer a pace and rhythm along with the heartbeat sound affects this gave our trailer a professional feel.

The challenge we had at the beginning of the task was to make the trailer, and through doing this we discovered more challenges we could take on as we became accustomed with the technology. We set the challenge as being to be able to make a trailer with a matching poster and magazine cover which would appeal to people to come and watch it. Well we did this. From my own personal audience feedback I have concluded that over half of the sample audiences would come to view the film.

We challenged other tasks such as using the green screen and slow motion camera, even using an apple Mac was a challenge because neither Louise nor I had used one before. Trailers made of today’s standard are full of technology like what we used to this meant that using it would make our trailer look up to date and of the time period we wanted.

Another challenge we were faced with was being able to tell the audience our narrative by watching the trailer but not giveing too much away. From the audience feedback it was clear that 7/10 understood the narrative the first time they saw the trailer but the other three needed to watch the trailer a second or third time.

How do you use media technology in the research, planning, ancillary and main production?

We used a lot of new media technologys through-out the task.

.slow motion camera

.green screen

.Apple Mac

.I-movie

.blog

.editing software

.digital camera

These were some of the main media technologys we used to make our trailer. The slow motion camera was the most important to catch something iconic that the eye can not see. We chose the image of blood dripping onto snow. It was snowing at the time so we used red food colouring and dripped it onto the snow capturing it with the camera. The results were increadable showing you every flake of snow that moving when hit with the colouring and the drip itself falling slowly.

The green screen we used and became used to but unfortunatly did not use the actual footage we shot in the trailer. Once we had a firm idea on what we wanted from the trailer the green screen footage was no longer relevant. However just being able to use it was a great experience because i now know how it works and what the final footage looks like.

Using a simple digital camera we shot most of the footage. Normally only taking pictures with it, it was a new experience and challenge to have to use it on filming mode and see what lights worked the best and what way the camera should be held to shoot certain footage.

Using the apple Mac was  great fun as i had never used one before. At first is was hard to come to grips with how to work one and where everything was, but once i had understood it and had started editing everything else came with trail and error. The software we used to edit was I-movie. It is in fact what some studios use to edit their trailers and even even films so it gave a great sense of realism knowing this.

Having to use a blog to record and post all my research and planning was easy to learn how to do but had several downsides. Not being able to post because of technical difficulties was fustrating, and even worse was when the site would crash and loose your work.

Over all the experience has been increadable and has really helped me to be able to understand media software easier. Being able to make my own film trailer has been such good fun and i now have something to be proud of making.

My Film Poster

This is the first draft of my poster:

This is the first draft of my poster for my film. As my film is of the horror genre, black is a colour most representable of fear. For this reason i used the black colour as my background colour. The black highlights any important information i would add onto my poster. 

For the images i used on my poster i used shots of the same police board from my trailer and cropped them into more individual pictures and then over lapped them on my poster. This ment i could make the more important sections of the board larger and more noticable where as i could add more parts of the board which are not as important and i could use these to fill in the gaps of the poster so the black background wasnt showing too much. 

i thourght that over lapping the images would give a better effect as the person looking at the poster would not be able to read all of the fake headlines that we made for the police board. I put on the poster the most important parts for example the 'killer caretaker' headline and the picture of the main girl character when she was younger and when she was older which allows the audience to make the connection themsleves instead of having everything made easy to understand. 

i added anouther picture of a hand holding a knife which is covered in blood. This is a section in our trailer also and this is anouther connection between the too that the audience can make. I made sure all the edges of the pictures were blured to give a more old and scary effect to my poster. 

I used i black text for the title of the film even though my background is also black. I then made the back ground fade out a little bit more at the bottom compared to the top so this ment that the black text of the title would then stand out ontop of the grey background colour. I also added the line 'coming soon to cinemas near you' to give realism to the poster. 

I think that the over lapping effect is good and works well to give the effect of not being able to see all that is written on the poster but only being able to read the important parts. It gives me more control onto what i want the audience to be able to read and what i dont want them to know just by reading the poster. The text maybe isnt right for my poster and does not stand out as much as it should. I should maybe use the same text as has been used in the trailer. 




This is the second draft of my poster:

Like the first i kept the over lapping of the pictures because i think this works well with the background and gives the poster a good effect. 


I have moved my pictures further down the page to change the layout slightly so i could put the title of the film at the top to see what that looked like. I think having the title at the top looks and works better on the posters because it draws the eyes straight to the title and makes the audience look down the poster so they dont miss anything. 


I also changed both texts on the font of the title and the font of the 'Coming soon to cinemas near you' line. I prefer the titles new font type from the first draft but the other lines font is too gothic for this poster. I kept the colours the same though. Keeping the title in black and the tag line in white shows opposition.


I like the layout of this poster more than the first draft i think it looks better with the images more centered with the title straight above. I think another image is needed for example a picture of a caretakers tools or a garden rake for example. 


I also changed all the background to being grey instead of just having the bit behind the title being another colour to make the title to stand out. I dont think this works as well because i think it is too light and doesn't have as much contrast with the white text.


This is my final poster design that i would use for my film:

This is my final poster design for my film. I firstly didnt go for a all solid black background but i went one shade lighter so that the black title of my film would stand out. 


I kept the title font the same as in my second draft because i thourght that the style i had chosen suited the film as it being of a horror genre the text font should be a little strange. 


I kept the tag line as white but i changed the font style to a long lettered type. It makes the tag line stand out more and look like it's been scratched and this gives a scary effect to my poster. 


I also added another image of a garden rake. This image can say many things from just being present on the poster. It could be there just for effect to show about the title being 'The Caretaker'. Or it could be there to maybe show what he used to kill his victims.


If someone who has seen the trailer would be able to make the connection from the trailer to the poster by the images of the police board. I wanted to keep one thing the same through out the trailer, poster and magazine cover range so that the audience would be able to associate them with each other.


I also added a white outline around the the font of my title which made it stand out yet again. I think that this layout and design of poster for my film works the best for an advertisment for my film. 

Through out all three of my posters i have not used a tagline to accompany the title of my film. I did not feel that in the trailer there was a line we had used which was catchy so that the audience would remember the film from one line. All of the film posters i have looked at have has a tagline. Not having a tagline i dont think will affect the audience being able to remember the film .

Magazine Research

A list of all the Film magazines.

Boxoffice
Box office results, top ten, movie reviews.

Bright Lights
One of the best film magazines online that examines classic, commercial, and independent films from a wide range of vantage points from the aesthetic to the political.

Cineaste
Selected articles from the magazine on the art and politics of the cinema.

Close Up
Online UK film magazine. Find reviews, features and interviews for new cinema and dvd releases, articles on independent, low-budget and regional filmmaking, more.

eFilmCritic.com
Australian movie magazine offering film reviews by visitors to the site.

Empire
Features news, reviews, top movies, upcoming releases, box office results (UK), forum, and more.

Errata
Presents collection of essays, reviews, commentary, and discussion about cinema.

Eye For Film
UK site with movie reviews, news, critique and festival coverage.

Film Comment
Quality magazine providing articles on films old and new, foreign and domestic, narrative and documentary.

Film Journal
Movie reviews, news, and interviews for Hollywood, indie, and foreign films.

Film Threat
Covers cult films, underground shorts, alternative films and independent features.

Filmink Magazine
Provides film news and gossip, movie reviews, video and DVD releases, Australian and international film industry information.

Filmmaker Magazine
Presents an insider's perspective on the world of independent filmmaking, including: interviews, case studies, financing and distribution information, festival reports, technical and production updates, and more.

Films in Review
Online version of the oldest film magazine in the US. Find reviews, interviews and feature articles.

Future Movies
British movie review guide features profiles of new movies, cinema releases and latest DVD reviews.

Guardian Unlimited Film
Film news and reviews from the Guardian and Observer newspapers.

Hollywood Reporter
Newspaper providing movie reviews, box office info, entertainment and celebrity news, more.

iF Magazine
US magazine on indie filmmaking.

Images Journal
Quality reviews and analytical articles on old and recent movies, and popular culture.

Inside Film
Provides news and information on the world's film festivals.

Kamera
Intelligent UK magazine that mainly concentrates on arthouse and independent films.

MovieJuice
Hollywood's movie satire site.

movieScope
Magazine explores the various aspects of filmmaking from the perspective of the filmmakers themselves.

MovieMaker
Guide to independent film and filmmaking from around the world.

Premiere
Features Hollywood movie news, reviews and previews, celebrity interviews and inside stories.

Preview
International magazine packed with information on the latest big screen movies.

Rotten Tomatoes
Reviews and previews of Hollywood movies and videos from the nation's critics.

Screen
Online edition of the bollywood weekly magazine offering Indian movie news and interviews with stars.

Screendaily
Daily film industry news from around the globe, reviews from the world's leading festivals and box office comment from every major territory.

Senses of Cinema
Online film journal devoted to the serious and eclectic discussion of cinema.

Sight and Sound
Well-known magazine from the British Film Institute. Features top ten movies, the best film music, in-depth interviews, retrospective articles and news.

Strictly Film School
Online journal offering a collection of short essays featuring the respective filmmaker's notable films.

Uncut
Popular UK music and film magazine. Features hundreds of music and movie reviews, interviews and news. 

Total Film Magazine front cover deconstruction. 

This magazine front cover is an extremely busy cover with something in every corner to attract an audience to read it.  The main image is a group of four with the picture of them taken from looking up to give the effect of the group being of greater/higher authority than the individuals reading the magazine.  The individuals on the cover are in character giving the other effect that it is not the actor/actress that is of greater importance than the audience and that it is in fact the character itself. The characters shown on the cover are relevant to what is inside the magazine. For an example in this issues case the main film being written about is the ‘x-men’ so the characters are from the film and the audience can make that connection.

The colour scheme of the magazine cover in this case is very dark. I have looked at many other front covers from the same ‘Total Film’ company and have discovered that the title of the magazine displayed at the back of the cover in block, full capital text is usually in white which is a good contrast with the usual bright colours of the cover. However in this case the title of the magazine is in the metal effect fonts with a grey/metallic colour to connect and match the rest of the colour scheme on the cover which are also mostly misty greys and blues. The way the picture of the characters are positioned slightly over lapping the title shows that the magazine is well known and the audience/ readers it already has will recognise the magazine cover by the font or another feature so wouldn’t automatically look out for the stereotypical white title.  

The rest of the text on the covers are following the normal colour white and have added another eye catching colour to then be using the rule of three. This would be the grey, white and orange that would all act to catch new reader’s eyes. Because the whole theme of the magazine cover is quite dark, the white text lights the whole feel of the cover up a little and unlike the normal ‘Total Film’ magazine covers, this issue does not have a bright coloured background with a picture on top, in fact this covers picture is the background.

The usual magazine necessities are included such as the barcode and the ‘puff lines’ which indicate about other features inside of the magazine itself. Competitions are mentioned on the cover slightly highlighting other things which are inside.

New feature films which are released would be on the front of a film magazine which is another great way for advertisement. Not only would the film be advertised to the less enthusiastic members of the population via bus posters, bill boards and television but also to the members of the population who do love film and would by the magazine. The fact the film would be mentioned and talked about inside the magazine would entice the audience who have already seen it but would also attract the people who yet were to still see the film but just want to know the facts about it already and maybe see what other people thought of the film and what the critics had said more importantly.

The other text around the magazine balances out the darkness of the image and lets the reader know what is inside the magazine without having to actually open to the contents page to finds out. The cover has a mixture of bold text and smaller less noticeable text on it to make the reader read around.

The name of the film is first noticeable but the boldness and the way the title has been centred on the cover just underneath the image which relates to the text. There is another group of writing at the bottom of the cover which has been split into three using an orange chequered block which also balances out the white and orange because the text is in white.      

The way in which the Title of the featured film is set out with the tag lines under and so on gives the impression on a skull but the way the magazine has added a simple ‘+’ shape in the same chequered pattern as the separators on the bottom of the cover. This gives the impression that death is featured in the film and that the darkness is to do with death along with the colours of the cover. With the white text at the bottom also shown looks like the skull has teeth.


Deconstruction of empire magazine.

This magazine front cover is for the company called ‘empire’.

This magazine issue was focused on the new feature film called ‘Hellboy’.

The main image is of a character from the featured film. The audience would portray the character on the cover as being the main character as they are the only image on the cover. The fact that the main image takes up most of the space on the cover also shows that the character is quite important as a character in the film. The images main colour is red which is made to stand out by the dark black background. Like the other magazine covers the character on the front is looking straight at the camera. It is extremely rare to find a magazine cover where the person on the front is looking away.  The fact the character is looking straight at the camera adds a personal feel to the audience because of the fact the readers will feel like the character is looking at them.

 The title of the magazine ‘Empire’ is slightly covered by the image which means that the audience would recognise the covers set out/title font to be able to know what the magazine is. The title is written in the same recognisable font and size but for the special featured film the title has taken the effect of being on fire to be in the same theme as the image. For people who have already seen the first of the ‘hellboy’ films would understand that fire is a major part of the film and even if it wasn’t, fire is a connotation of Hell and red. As well as the title being in red there are a few other sections of text which are also in red, for example the date and issue number however apart from that the rest of the text on the cover are in white which balances the black. Along with the white text as ‘puff lines’ underneath them there is a small description of what the page is about. This is the same font as the white text but is a smaller text size which shows the importance of it is quite small. The way the text size goes down shows the order in which the text is most important for an example the title is the biggest and then the ‘puff lines’ or headings are next in size and so on.

There are three colours which are on the front cover which are red, white and beige. This is another rule of three which is used. The use of the three colours was also used on the other covers I have seen like ‘Total film’ which used grey, orange and white. The title of the main featured film in the magazine is centred and is a larger text size than the other text apart from the title. The title of the film is over lapping the picture of the main character but stands out more as the text is white and has good contrast between the red. 

The magazine cover also includes all the normal and stereotypical information such as the barcode, the publisher, issue number and the date.

This cover would work along with the trailer being shown on television. There would be other ways of advertising the film for example on the side of buses and on bill boards. If they all had the same image the audience would make the connection themselves. Seeing as the main character is all red the connection can be easily made as just the character would be an advertisement in itself.  

My Film magazine Drafts 

This is my first draft of my film magazine front cover:

This is the first draft of my magazine cover which was to feature my film. I wanted to keep one feature the same through out all three of my products. I decided that one thing which was quite important was the police notice board. This one image could give a lot away to the audience. On my first draft i took individual parts of the board and over lapped them differently to the poster and how they were on the board in the trailer. This gave a good change from the poster and although looking the same and being recognised as the same film, the layout was different. I took out some of the headlines from the poster which wernt needed because it made the magazine look too full of text. 


For the title of my film i wanted to chose a font where the capital letters would stand out and be considerably larger than the lower case letters. This would make the F, O and other F stand out allowing the readers of my magazine to recognise just the letters/word FOF. I wanted to chose a font that also looked fun and not tied down to one genre for example text that looks scary would be for a horror magazine, therefore because my magazine talks about all genres i needed a broad font type. For this reason i picked a text which looks fun, neat and plain but still gives a good recognisable title.The text and font styles for the tag lines around the magazine i kept the same to keep it consistant through out the cover. This on the otherhand made it look boring and plain which didnt make the rest of the magazine look eye catching.


The one main set of images i had used only covered a third of the magazine so most of the colour was the one background colour coming through. This made the purple background a very dominant colour which wasnt balanced by any other colour on the cover. As i have seen from other magazine front covers, on most they have three main colours which are used all over the front cover. 


I chose my three colours as being purple, black and white. I have the purple as the back ground and then i have the black and white as opposites for all the text on the cover.I put some of the tag lines in capitals and some tag lines in lower case this gave variation to the text on my cover. 

I also added another picture of a pair of 3D glasses which went with a tagline i have included on my cover which is about a competition about winning tickets to watch 3D movies in the best cinemas around. 


I also included a barcode which added a sense of realisum to my magazine cover. 




My second Draft of My magazine cover: 

This is the second draft of my magazine cover. I decided to keep the title font the same because i think it works well with the all round genre of my magazine. As well as keeping the title the same font and colour i used the same colour background. I liked the background colour and the two together were eye catching.


For the image of the featured film on this draft, i used the films poster itself and not other photos. This gave a section of the trailer which could be associated with the poster and the magazine. Using the poster also filled a bit more space on the cover and showed less of the background colour which was visable a bit too much on the first draft. 


I changed more of the text tag lines to being more of a black and white range and not mostly white with black highlighted words. 


As well as this, i added another picture to one of the taglines which covered more of the background. 


I used a block strip of a darker purple to seperate the title from the poster on the cover. As well as seperating the cover up into sections the darker purple strip gave a bit more detail to the magazine cover.I changed a label of text to the same colour as the darker strip so it didnt look out of the blue there just being a strip of darker purple for seperation purposes.


I decided to keep the layout of my magazine cover the same as all of the magazine covers i had researched into had the main title at the very top of the magazine and sometimes the title were partially covered by the image used.


I kept the layout of the image and text the same as well. This is mainly the same layout for all magazines. It is a simple layout which leads the readers eye around the page so they do not miss anything on the cover. 


This is the third and final draft of my Magazine cover:  

 

This is the final draft of my magazine cover. 
I decided to keep the layout the same as usual. Behind the title i added a white box to make the title stand out even more. I also did this to add more of another colour to the cover. I kept the seperation strip of the darker purple colour because it worked well. The white block behind the title also covered more of the background colour.

 I also kept the position of the image the same but made the image/ my film poster slightly larger to cover a littlebit more of the background colour.

the main change i made on my final draft was to make each and every tag line on my cover a different style of writting to give my poster a bit more of an interesting look. Each different font style has been matched to the tagline it is being used for. For an example the font used for the tagline about having a competition is fun and funky but this font style would not have been used for a more serious matter for an example the interviews.