How Effective is the combination of your main products and ancillary texts

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

Audience Feedback For Products

When asking students in my school what the thought of my film poster these are some of the comments I have received:

·         I like the simplicity of the colour scheme as it allows the characters to stand out more.

·         The black eyes on the male looks really scary and it really draws my attention to the poster and makes me want to watch the movie.

·         The poster looks quite professional and really good.

·         I don’t really know who’s the villain in the movie, as there is a ghostly guy in the background but he is , kind of hard to see in but the guy in front has black eyes? But it is still really scary.

·         I like the demonic symbol on the poster as it really relates to horror.  

The comments I received were overall quite good and showed me that my poster did fit some conventions and overall achieved its aim of enticing my audience and creating a scary horror poster. One of the comments I received was that they found it hard to see who the villain in the movie was due to the fact the male in the background is really hard to see and the male in the foreground has black eyes. I chose to have the poster this way as I wanted the male in the background to be seen as the ghostly figure and wanted the male in the foreground to be seen as possessed. This I hope would entice the audience and possibly cause confusion, which may entice them more. However I went back to the poster and changed the male’s eyes and made the male in the background more prominent. I then asked the same person again what they thought of the poster and they said it ‘it didn’t look as scary and the male in the background no longer looked like a ghost and made it harder to see the other characters’.

By asking my target audience what they thought I was able to get a clear idea of what I could improve on and what was good already.

When asking students in my school what they thought of my horror magazine these are some of the comments I received:

·         I think the magazine looks really good and professional.

·         I like the fact you can’t see the villain yet you can see someone getting dragged away it makes it more appealing.

·         There isn’t too much writing which means the picture is still the most important aspect of the cover.

·         The colour scheme is a little boring the black and the white looks good but could have looked better if there was more red to relate more to your genre.

The comments I received were overall good and showed that my target audience liked the magazine front cover even though the magazine may be seen as somewhat unconventional. For example my magazine front cover showed one of my characters instead of the villain this is somewhat unconventional of Horror Magazines. One of the comments was that there wasn’t any red on my front cover. However I chose not to have too much red as the red has connotations of blood and in my trailer there is little blood due to the fact it’s based on demonic possession.

When asking students in my school what they thought of my trailer these are some comments I received:

·         Trailer looks really good, suits the genre nicely.

·         I like the demonic symbols that pop up, it looks good with the poster.

·         The editing wasn’t great and the quality of the actors could have been better but I still like the trailer.

·         The dragging scene at the end was good as it made me want to know what happened after. 

·         I like the summoning bit, I think it looks good and the editing of it works really well.  

·         I like the fact it’s in a school.

As you can see overall the feedback I got was really good and showed that the research and planning I did paid off. As you can see from some of the responses from my trailer fit certain conventions of other trailers such as the idea it leaves the audience in suspense and wanting more. Although all the comments I received weren’t as good as I hoped but these comments are useful as they will allow me to edit my product to fit the audience needs and wants.

The audience feedback I received was extremely useful and allowed me to understand what features of my products my target audience liked and what I could improve on to make my products more conventional of the horror genre or what I could improve on to suit my audience needs and wants.

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

One convention I used in my media product was Todorov’s narrative theory. I chose to do this as I believe his theory is conventional of most if not all films and therefore should be a key feature in my trailer. The equilibrium in my trailer is the scene where the students are entering the school and searching around the school as at that moment in time everything is as it should be (normal). The disruption is caused by the students using an Ouija board to try summoning a spirit. I believe choosing to use this theory made the future scenes of the spirit scarier as they were being compared to the equilibrium scenes. Due to the fact my product is a trailer there is no attempt to repair or restore a new equilibrium, again following the convention of a typical trailer. Another theorist is Propp. I think the characters in my trailers show little resemblance to Propps character functions although in my poster it seems as if the females are cowering behind the male, although this is not a function of Propps theory it is somewhat conventional of other horror movies, following the idea that the females are scared and the male has to protect them. Although the eyes of the male are black possibly suggesting he is possessed therefore making it somewhat unconventional of other media products as he is meant to be protecting them.   

Another convention I chose to adhere to was the age rating at the beginning of the trailer. As I believed it may my product look more professional and also due to the fact I choose a horror, I chose a rating that was “Restricted” to make it as realistic as possible.

Another convention was fact that I mentioned my production company at the start of the trailer.

Another convention I have used was having a flashing image being shown during my trailer. I got this Idea when watching the sinister trailer and they had a very fast image appears, relating to the movie. I have chosen to do this as I feel it breaks up certain scenes and can be quite eerie when watching.

Another convention I have is that just after the credits role for the trailer, I have tried to make a scene which scares and surprises the audience. This has become more and more conventional in recent years.

One way my poster challenges the conventions of a real media product is that on most posters they only show the villain or possibly one of the characters looking scared or afraid. However on my poster it shows all the characters who are seen in the movie as well as the villain although the villain visibility is quite poor due to the way I edited the poster. This is unconventional as it seems as if the villain is being overlooked and is showing the characters to be more important. Furthermore as I stated before the male character eyes are black, possibly showing connotations of evil and therefore making it seem as if there are numerous plot twists. I chose to have my character staring at the audience (direct address) as I believe it makes the image more intimidating and makes the poster in general seem scarier.  Another convention on my poster is the billing block at the bottom of the poster, this is important as it makes my poster seem more professional, one problem I faced was that due to the fact I had a small cast and crew the billing block was rather small and I believed due to this it look amateur. Another convention I followed was the….just above the title of the movie.

Final Trailer

Final Film Poster

Final Magazine Front Page

Potential Images for my Magazine or Poster

Progression of Poster

Progression of poster from kristinacsm

Progression of Magazine

Progression of magazine from kristinacsm

Conventions of a Similar Product

Billing Block

Colour Scheme Ideas

Film Magazine analysis

By looking at the two different types of music magazine, one more mainstream and the other more specialised I was able to see the codes and conventions of a film magazine, therefore enabling me to decide if I am going to stick to the codes and conventions of a magazine or subvert the conventions and choose to structure the cover in my own way.  Due to the fact I am making a specialised magazine I am likely to adhere to the second magazine more .From my template it is clear that I am going to make my magazine cover quite conventional. I have chosen to structure it similarly to the first magazine ( Total Film ) as there are certain aspects of the mainstream magazine I find appealing , such as the layout as I believe the second magazine looks somewhat more clustered than the first as on the front cover of the first magazine there is more space around the main image and the cover lines are smaller thus making the main cover line more important. 

Poster and Magazine Layout

Potential Script

Paranormal After School Activity

 Potential Script

Shot 1

S: So is this the school?

J: Yeah...

W: Doesn’t even look that Scary 

S: What did they say happened here again?

J: I heard some boycommitted suicide after school in one of the classes

B: Well let’s go and investigate then

Shot 2

Shot 3

B: Where are the others?

J & W:  *making loud noises on the floor below…move camera around school from second floor and then focus on them two*

W: Hurry up I think we have found it

Shot 4

J: This place is vile

B: It’s not that bad
W: It’s perfect

Shot 5

*Text Appears on the screen*

Shot 6

B: Hey watch what you’re doing

W: Stop worrying I aint gonna break it and anyway I think this is the room *Kicks the door*

S: Do we really have to do this?

J: Stop worrying

*W&J start kicking and throwing stuff around, S is kind of disgusted. S stands in the corner alone, move camera on to S and away from W&J*

B: You ok Shan?

S: I don’t wanna do this anymore

W: Why? We are here now so stop moaning

Shot 7

B: This should work

S: Can we just hurry this up

*All hold hands around the table*

J: So how does this work?

W: Just Wait

*Everyone’s hands slowly move in to the centre of the circle*

W: Ohh Shit its working

S: I don’t like it

B: Will you better not be taking the piss…

J: I agree with Shan we should leave

*D appears next to the group, then the lights turn off suddenly and the girls scream and run out as they do so the camera is knocked on the floor*

Shot 8

*Camera is fuzzy as it hits the floor, you can see W legs as he’s standing up*

W: Guys wait; it just got interesting…Guys

*Turns the lights on as he leaves the room*

Shot 9

*Camera is still on the floor, we see a small dark figure in the room crouching down on the floor as he raises his head slightly he vanishes *

Shot 10

*Text appears on the screen, Based on a true story*

Shot 11

*Walk in the room and pick up the camera*

B: You’re lucky it still works

*W follows with A&S behind him*

W: It weren’t my fault was it if the girls didn’t run out none of this would have happened

J: Don’t try and blame us

S: I didn’t wanna do the stupid thing in the first place

B: No one made you

S: Shut up Ben, let’s leave…I wanna go

J: So do i

W: What? We just got started

*Door slams shut, W runs over to the door, J&S scream as door slams*

Shot 12

J: Open the door

W: It won’t open

B: What do you mean it won’t open?

W: Come help then instead of just commentating

S: I told you we should have left

*S starts to get upset and A comforts her, as I step close to the door it is pushed open and W drops back, BSJ all scream*

Shot 13

*Start to walk out turns around and sees E standing at the end of the corridor*

B: Ohh Shit, run

*Pushes door wide open and starts to run*

Shot 14

*W is running behind B, loud panting as I am running, camera is moving frantically as I run*

W: Run

Shot 15

*W vanishes from behind me, loud yell is heard, I then drop and scream, camera drops with me, image is blurred *

Shot 16

*Boy in the corner of the room, hear a camera sound effect, she slightly looks up in the direction of the camera, he then disappears*

Shot 17

*suddenly he appears in front of the camera, loud scream follows, roll credits*