Evaluation

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

We stuck to the original convention of having the title and release date at the end of the trailer. We did this so that it would stick in our audience's mind. We used pink and orange font to stick to the rom-com genre and this clearly relates to the genre. The font was an original block type so it was bold and easy to read and would be clear for our audience.

The coffee shop setting was an original idea that rom-com genres seem to use a lot such as, 'Valentine's Day' and '500 Days of Summer'. We also used this to show our main girl and boy together. We used this idea as we knew people would relate to it and it would be a good start for our trailer to stick to the conventions to make the audience comfortable. This worked well because it is an original idea and would appeal to our audience as they could imagine what the scene in the actual movie would be like.

We used quite a few close-ups as rom-coms tend to do this with quickly cut shots. This is so the expressions on the actor's faces can be seen clearly and would appeal to the audience.

The close-up of our female protagonist was used for comic effect with her dialogue which worked well with the first parts with the four boys and explained their part.

The boys were used to show how they were supposedly 'imperfect' and not what our female protagonist wants. This works well as it is ironic to our tagline and film title which makes it our comedy.

For this shot we used another close-up to show the expressions on the character's faces. This would draw the audience in and is similar to lots of other teaser trailers that use close-ups to show expressions.

The clip where the characters are walking hand in hand was shot towards the light so they are just dark silhouettes. This gives the romantic genre feel and it would tease the audience. It would tease the audience because, the title Imperfect Mr. Perfect suggests there is something 'imperfect' about the guy but this scene would show they are happy together and there is no sign of any disturbance, but that is the whole twist of the film that would make people want to come back and see it.

The quick cuts of close-up shots with the boys at the beginning of the teaser trailer was quite typical and was used them to start the teaser trailer while the voiceover captured the audience's attention by explaining the story. This works as it hooks the audience in by making them wonder what these close-ups of different boys were about.

The green screen with the age limit of the teaser trailer is a very typical convention as most trailers have this so that people know the right age who should be watching it and it also indicates the target audience it has.

The poster for our teaser trailer was quite conventional sticking to the typical rom-com genre with pink and orange writing. The font was bold and bright and the colours were bright. This works at it will catch the audience's attention with the bright colours and they will associate they gerne of the film with the colour. Most rom-com genres use pink or bright colours so we did this to as we wanted our genre to be immediately obvious. The layout was quite conventional with the actors names at the top and the billing block at the bottom. We did this so the audience would feel comfortable with the poster and that would help attract them to it. The image shows the main boy and girl showing they are the stars which people will instantly recognise with the teaser trailer. The picture could have been taken in a better setting as the two stars sitting on a bench looking at each other doesn't really catch attention as it is a little plain and boring. If we could do this again we would make the picture more dynamic and interesting. The poster also has our tagline on it which represents our trailer and links them together so that our audience will be able to associate the two medias together.

The magazine is very realistic and quite conventional. We made the title up ourselves but as we called it 'Film Today' it links in with other magazines like 'Total Film' so our audience would recognise the type of magazine it is. We kept the font bold and easy to read and kept to our colour scheme of pink and we also used purple and white, this links our genre in linking all three elements together. The image is of the main girl as her real actor self. We used this as most magazines typically use the main character for their main story and people would recognise her from the poster and trailer. The picture works well as the girl has a relaxed and inviting pose so that readers will be drawn to her although, it may be a little too relaxed and we should have made it a little bit more professional so that our magazine would look more professional and realistic.

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

We wanted to create a mainstream product that would target audiences of 16-24 year olds. We feel we have achieved this through our teaser trailer, poster and magazine as we used the right colours and fonts linking to our genre and tried to make it as young and fun as possible. All three elements work together as we have linked them by using the main characters in all the images and by the colour scheme. This works as the audience would instantly recognise them and link all three medias together.

In the trailer I think our variety of shots, fonts and music is quite successful. The shots and quick cuts really gives the element of a teaser trailer and the fonts and music help to enhance the genre of the film making it obvious to the audience it's a rom-com. I think the fonts also are very successful on our poster and magazine as they all match the genre and will attract our target audience. The poster image creates fun and gives a relaxed mood with the relaxed body positions of the characters. The magazine is successful as we have tried to make it as realistic as possible by using sub-stories that would target our audience. We found that these were successful through our audience feedback questionnaires as they didn't have any bad comments and the main criticism was on the trailer itself.

We had a few small difficulties while creating our teaser-trailer. It took us a little while to find an actor who would act for us. So, when we did get someone we made sure we did all the filming we could to minimise the possibility of having to film again. Last year we had a problem where we filmed part of our trailer in HD settings in the camera. This year we did the same thing. Having learnt from last year though we sorted this out easy enough, through editing, by using some of the 'fit to screen' software on Pinnacle. Also there was a clip where it looked like our main girl was talking but as there was no dialogue and it was just music playing it didn't look right so we just changed it for another clip we hadn't used. Also, at the beginning some of the boys were slightly off centre but just like with the HD settings problem we used the editing software to fit it to the screen. All these obstacles were things we either noticed ourself or were noticed by audience feedback. It is essential to have audience feedback so problems like these can be spotted and overcome.

The biggest weakness in our trailer is probably the shaky camera in some parts of it. We didn't really have enough time to improve this as it was only noticed towards the end and time and continuity was a problem for us. So if we were to do this project again, using a tripod would be a better idea.

We also could have made it better by doing a close-up of the main girl's face when she is picked up by the boy to give more variety of shots and to show the expression so the audience feel more included.

Also the two opening titles (green screen and Paramount Pictures) aren't very good quality because they are just pictures that we filmed ourselves because we couldn't get the original software copy. We should have taken more consideration to the amount of time it would take to get them.

The poster picture quality wasn't great. Perhaps we should have made it bigger to make more of an impact. But then again we didn't want to overcrowd the poster and wanted to give it a simple look. So perhaps we could have thought of better suited poses.

In the photo of our magazine, in the background there is a bin which we did our best to cover up with the title, but it isn't very visible, we only know it's there because we know the area the picture was taken so the audience wouldn't spot it. Also, the main girl is sitting on a rail which isn't very professional, but we like the rail as it made her look more casual and open suggesting the audience might connect with the image more and want to buy the magazine.

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Our audience feedback was very effective and gave us some very good criticism. The main points that were mentioned were; shaky camera

at the beginning, the voiceover was a bit flat and the ending was a bit quick. Most of the people who gave us feedback from facebook were our target age and we accepted the feedback they gave us.

The shaky camera feedback we got was true and the camera is a little bit shaky but as we only noticed this quite late there wasn't a lot we could do about it as we wouldn't be able to get the continuity right if we tried to re-film it.

As for the voiceover being a bit 'flat' i think that all comes down to personal preference. But we didn't want the voiceover to sound too comical as our teaser trailer shows a very definite romantic element to it so we wanted our voiceover to be a bit more serious and match.

The longer ending we did change, as our feedback suggested it would make more impact and we agreed with this so therefore we lengthened it. This worked as it gave the audience more time to see the title and more chance to remember it. We also gave a questionnaire to our classmates after they had watched the film. This was perfect as they were right for our target audience. They gave us pretty much the same criticism that the facebook audience had but it was still good to do so that no fresh concerns that could have come up weren't missed.

Our initial audience research really matched our feedback now as everything we anticipated with genre, music, the poster and magazine matched. This shows how important initial research is as how this has really helped us.

4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

The technologies we used were;

-camera

-still camera

-edirol

-laptop

-pinnacle

-blogger

-facebook

-voice recorder

-youtube

-photoshop

-copyright free music site

All of the technologies were things that helped us to produce our teaser trailer, poster and magazine. Last year we had used the camera, flip video, edirol, laptop, pinnacle, blogger, facebook and youtube, so none of these were new to us and they didn't present any challenges.

The new pieces of technology we used we the voice recorder, photoshop and a copyright free music website. As a photography student photoshop wasn't a problem at all when creating the magazine and i felt completely at ease with this task. Photoshop helped greatly as it gave us the tools to cut around our photos and also change brightness and contrast etc.

Using the voice recorder was a little bit more difficult as we had to record quite a few times as we didn't realise how precise the speaking had to be to make sure it was clear when listening to it. We recorded it quite a few times in the end until we got the clearest version. This worked as it gave a clear voiceover for our trailer and the audience understood perfectly.

The music copyright free website we found just by browsing on google and it was the most useful as it presented us with so many tunes and sound effects that we had a complete element of choice. This was effective as we managed to find the perfect song for our trailer which was something people were happy about in the audience feedback so it must have suited our genre well.

Editing Evaluation

The film poster was very easy to create, and the photo was enhanced a little on photoshop, and took no time really. The film magazine cover took a bit more time though. After we created our first cover, feedback showed that people thought the picture was 'too posed' and didn't really reflect our genre. So we took more natural looking photos and used that instead and just had the main girl character on it was after research we found that a typical convention was to just have the main character on the front cover.

The editing was pretty easy as we got most of our filming done in one day and as teaser trailers are quick it was easy selecting the little bits we wanted. The music and voiceover were the hardest parts as we found it hard finding someone who would do it and the music was difficult to find at the right tempo and fit it all together. But with good planning and organisation we managed to find someone and plan a time to do the voiceover and the music was a production of someone else that gave us permission to use it.

Titles and Font Analysis

For our teaser trailer we kept the text to bare minimal showing just the title and tagline and on another shot 'coming soon' and an internet site for more details. We put this text on a white background and made them pink and orange to stick to the typical convention of bright colours.

For the magazine and poster we stuck to the same colour scheme so they all relate to each other and the genre. The font is pretty basic to make it easy to read it. On the magazine however we made the fonts all different so it is diverse and it's easier to read all of the different points. But all the fonts are kind of similar so it all relates to each other and the genre is clear enough still.

Filming Evaluation

At first we decided to stick to most typical conventions. We had the conventional story of boy meets girl and they fall in love. We kept the typical conventions of the bright colours like pink and white for all our font too as this would reflect our genre choice.

After just beginning to plan our teaser trailer however, we decided that our trailer might be boring as we have stuck to all of the typical conventions. So, in order to overcome this, we decided to change the story slightly by making the main boy black. By changing his race it goes against the normal convention, white with white or black with black and makes our story more unique and therefore interesting.

We filmed the beginning part with the boys first and then moved on to film the parts with the main characters. We did this as filming the opening part with individual boys and the part of the main girl by herself was easy and quick to do. But for the part with the main characters we had to arrange a date and we made sure to film lots of them together so that we wouldn't have to re-film.

The overall concept

Our first initial idea came from the film title 'Imperfect Mr Perfect' and tagline, 'love makes the imperfect, perfect'. This was our inspiration for our whole idea really. After we had these we based our story on it.

We wanted the teaser trailer to just show a few clips so as not to give away the whole story. We kept it simple so that when people come to see the film they wouldn't expect the twist.

The twist is that the main man is black and the girl he falls in love with, parents do not agree with it. This creates an interesting twist that the audience won' be expecting.

The magazine and poster promotes the genre and works to reflect what the teaser trailer is promoting. The colour scheme really ties everything in together and shows the clear link between all three elements.

New media and technology

We used a range of new media products to create our film as we wanted our film to look new and recent and couldn't create an effective teaser trailer without it.

We used the still camera to take pictures for our magazine front cover and we also used it to take pictures as we were filming as proof. We then uploaded these onto the computer and used Adobe Photoshop Elements to edit them and print as our magazine front cover.

We used a flip camera also, this was so we could film our animatic and then upload it and analyse it on blogger. We did a similar thing with the edirol but instead of uploading it to blogger we used it to record our voiceover and uploaded it to Pinnacle for our teaser trailer.

We used Pinnacle studios a lot for all of our editing on our film clips that we filmed with an ordinary cannon camera. The camera we used a lot as well for all of our filming. We managed to do all of our filming involving our two main characters in one day which made everything easier as we then could concentrate on editing.

We also used Facebook and Youtube to get feedback for our film. We used these as they are very useful as people reply quickly and critically.

We used all of this technology as it was the best suited for our film and the extras bits we had like voiceover, feedback, etc. All of the technology played a big part of our teaser trailer and we couldn't have completed it without any of the technology.

Developing Skills from AS to A2

At the beginning of AS Media was a new subject to me so i hadn't really had a lot of experience with anything. During that year i learnt many new things with cameras and particularly editing. This year as i have had experience with the cameras and editing i am a lot more comfortable with it and as a group we have been a lot more relaxed and adventurous. Last year as we were all beginning we were very simple with our ideas and stuck to original things and always chose the 'safe' options. This year however as we now knew our way with the hardware and software this enabled us to think a lot more about storylines and perfecting the image of our trailer, magazine and poster.

At the beginning of our teaser trailer we had close-ups of four boys. Last year we may have only used mid-shots as this would have been easier and we would have felt more comfortable. But this year we felt that we knew when it was acceptable for close-ups to be used and how they should be portrayed, especially for comical effect, in our trailer.

Continuity was something we were a lot more aware of as well this year. Last year we had do to some re-filming as we hadn't quite got all the parts that we had wanted. This affected some scenes as some parts were different in the lighting of that day. It wasn't a major issue in the end but to avoid any major problems like that this year we made sure we did all of our filming on one day and had all the props we needed with us.

Also our research was a bit better this year as we had more direction of what we were looking for and as we were confident with our filming and editing skills this time we could afford to spend more time on our storyline and ideas for the poster and magazine. This helped a lot with our poster and magazine as these were something we didn't do last year and so we had to carefully prepare for them.

Last year with our editing we encountered a problem where we had filmed some of our movie in the HD settings of our camera. As we hadn't had much experience we didn't realise this until editing. But with a little help we solved the problem by using a simple Pinnacle tool where you could zoom in and fit the film to screen size. We also had the same problem this year but it didn't matter as we learnt from last year and we knew exactly what to do so we didn't need to re-film or worry or even waste time over it. We simply dealt with it and moved on.