EvaluationLiam Denton

Q1. in what way does your media product develop or challenge forms and conventions of a real media product?We followed most of the conventions associated to the melodrama soap while creating our trailer. The first being the use of costume.

To appeal to our audience, which is teens and young adults we needed to make sure that they could relate to these characters. So by having the characters dress in the way the viewer would, the soap becomes a lot more appealing to them and relatable, allowing them to believe that this is something that could happen to them or there friend ship group.

MCR trailer

Autumn 2013 Hollyoaks trailer

Season 4 The OC

Another convention we have kept, is the use of idents to create interest and to foreshadow events which could occur in the actual soap, drawing the viewer in to watch.

The OC trailer Hollyoaks trailer

MCR trailer

We see this use in two very popular melodramas, the OC and Hollyoaks. Also the idents are broken up into ether single words or extremely short sentences, but never full sentences this is to keep

the view watching the trailer and creates suspense as to whats coming next.

A convention I though we challenged during the production of our melodrama was the need to establish a regional identity in our soap.

Many melodramas such as the OC and Hollyoaks don’t really have any regional identity. Hollyoaks for example you see many different regions being portrayed from cockney to scouse, but we felt it important to establish one. The way we did this was through the use of establishing shots and sped up tracking shots through iconic areas in the Manchester city centre.

The Printworks

Deansgate

The Arndale

Regional identity is usually a lot more associated with the likes of a scripted reality soaps and realism soap, not so much with the melodrama genre of soap.

Another convention of the melodrama genre is the use of non diegetic music. I have used a song by an artist that is very well known to my target audience which is teens and young adults, the song is ‘power’ by Kanye West.

‘power’ is an up tempo song that this means my audience can relate to this as I want it to connote a party/night club atmosphere. Also the song is slightly aggressive the connotes the action and violent side of the show, not just the care free attitude that most my audience my have due to there age. The hollyoaks trailer and The OC trailer both have music

over them. Although I am not as familiar with what songs they are, they both are up tempo with a slight sound of aggression in them. This is as these show are aimed at a similar age group as my soap and are about similar things.

Q2. how effective is your combination of main and ancillary texts?

This is the billboard poster I created for my soap trailer MCR

Here I have used the MCR logo in the top left corner, I create this logo as I believe it is very important to establish a strong brand associated to your soup so that it becomes recognizable from not only the characters but form something as simple as just the text font used.

The use of the tag line creates enigma within the audience and even if they haven't seen the show before or even the trailer they will be intrigued and want to find out more about it.

By associating my soap with such an established broadcasting company as ITV it means viewers will trust my soap as they already trust ITV.

Behind the characters is a well known Manchester landmark, the printworks. This is important as it established as setting for the soap and creates a regional identity.

Date and time that the show is on so that passers by in cars and walking van see what day and time its on

In the trailer we also see the use of an establishing shot from outside the printworks. This again inforces the regional identity but also creates an association between ‘MCR’ the soap and the Printworks. For example people from around briton visiting Manchester might walk by the printworks and think “that’s what ‘MCR’ is set” therefore strengthening our brand recognition.

These are screen shots from my MCR trailer

The idents during the trailer are in the same font as the tag line on the my billboard poster. Again this strengthens the MCR brand as people can begin recognizing our show even when they cant see the characters.

Here on the final seen we see both the MCR logo and the ITV logo in synergy on one screen. This means that the viewer sees both of these at almost the same time, suggesting MCR in now apart of or very close with ITV making the audience trust the brand even more. The MCR is also the same MCR see on the billboard poster just in a different colour, this way the audience are never wondering what there watching. Also the date and time that it is on so that viewes can make a note and make sure to tune in weekly.

The MCR logo top left the the screen, just as on the billboard poster.

The ITV logo also on the website means that the site can be trusted so the audience wont be afraid of using the site.

Links to twitter so that fans can interact with the show and voice opinions. This also broadens the brand reach of our show by fans retweeting us and there friends seeing it and wanting to check the show out

A link to the trailer on youtube along with plenty of other features such as ‘video extras’ and ‘cast’ that allow people to see behind the show and get to know the characters better

Strap line used again on the website. Spreading the brand.

Date and time on the website also. Maybe the most important peace of information, as if people didn’t know what time it was on and what day then they would not be able to tune in and watch it and once people have missed a couple of episodes they genually don’t want to be catching up

Q3. what have you learnt from your audience feedback? prosgood use of quick straight cutsI like the use of editing techniquesgood montage Good use of sound effectsconscut some of the clips down to make it snappierover all really goodthe sound on some of the scenes needs altering as you cant hear what some of the characters are saying

From this feed back from my draft trailer I found that they like the use of my straight cuts as this made my trailer look sharp and fast paces. They also liked the sped up tracking shots that what called a ‘montage’, which again gave my trailer pace but also was a good use of editing. Finally they liked the sound effect of rolling thunder when the gun is fired.

The cons of my trailer where that they though that some of the clips where to long, so cut the clips down to make my trailer snappier and look more action packed and exciting. Also some of the clip had poor sound which needed altering, this was probibaly to do with the fact that we were filming in the city with a lot of back ground noise, so I had to reduce the backgroud sound I many of the clip except for one, which sound was so poor I had to rerecord the sound on a Dictaphone and edit it back over the clip.

Another problem we had was the stability of the camera. Most of our

early scenes were shot with handheld, but this made them shaky and were not very pleasant to watch.

We corrected this by borrowing a tripod and reshooting most of the

shots. This worked great and mad the footage look a lot more professional. We still had this problem though on

the scenes we wanted to be hand held but it didn’t really affect us after

we had sped them up

Finally there wasn’t enough use of editing transitions. Although this was the case I didn’t go mad with the transitions and begin adding

fades and wipes in everywhere as this would lose its professional

look and feel. Instead I used them only to intensify the drama in the

action scenes

Q4. how did you use technologies in the research and planning construction and evaluation stages? I used many different media technologies such as, DSLR cameras for taking my pictures for my billboard posters ect and for the actual filming of my trailer. Another technology I used was imovie, this was used to put my trailer together. Other technologies ive used are, publisher, word and powerpoint. These were used to type up work and power point is what I have used to do this evaluation as it give you a professional looking presentation. Green screens and Photoshop was also used in the production of the billboard poster. Finally social network sites such as twitter were used, as well as youtube.

Imovie

Probably the most important piece of tecnology I used was imovie. This is where I actually constructed my trailer. By using this program I learnt how to take the raw footage that I had shot, from the camera and produce a professional looking trailer through cutting down clips, adding effect to the clips such as transitions, colour differences and also adding my chosen music over the top of it while still being able to hear the actors speak.

In order to place my chosen track over my trailer I had to use a website called ‘youtube converter’ this converts your youtube video into an MP3 file which you can then download and place over your trailer.

I went onto youtube and found the song that I was looking for, which was ‘power’ by Kanye West. I then copied its URL into youtube converter and clicked ‘convert video’. Then all I had to do was download and save the song to my desk top so that I could just grab the MP3 file and drag it onto imovie.

Once the clip was on it could be moved to where you wanted it on the clip and also cut down and chopped in places if I wanted.

Microsoft word and publisher Microsoft word and publisher were some of the most important programs when creating my trailer, particular during the ancillary tasks and the planning stages. Without these we would not have been able to create digital versions of our shooting script, proposal, story boards and draft versions of our billboard posters ect. Without these things we would have struggled to have any organization and therefore the quality of our trailer would have suffered.

Thinks such as this moodboard were created on Microsoft word and publisher along with many more

Photoshop and green screen

Photoshop was pivotal in the production of my ancillary products. Without photoshop I would have struggled to create a professional looking logo, billboard poster ect. Most every graphic or edited picture you see on my website would have been created in photoshop.

Not only was photoshot a big part but aslo so was the use of the green screen. The green screen made it easy to remove the background and allowed me to place whatever picture I wanted behind.

Youtube

In an attempt to broaden the brand reach of our media product, I up loaded the trailer up to youtube as this is a platform with millions of views and subscribers, which allows you to upload videos freely, no charge.

To upload a video I had to create an account and from there it was easy, it was just a case of exporting it from imovie then posting it onto my account.