Media EvaluationBy Max Schofield

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

My Movie Poster which I have created follows many of the different codes and conventions that you will discover on a number of different horror posters being published in the world today.The main first convention which I have used on my movie poster is the title “Asylum” this is used to create the film brands identity an because of this it has to stand out so it will catch peoples eye when it is out in the public in places like outside the cinema, on bus stops and on billboards, I believe that the title is one of the most important features of the poster, so as I was creating the title in Adobe Photoshop I did not want it to be difficult and also over complicate, this is because I wanted it to be short and able to stay in the audiences head, this was because through are research about different horror films the majority of them did not have big titles e.g. Mama, Saw etc. After selecting the font and the name it was deciding what colour to have the title and because we wanted to create a brand we had to decide as a group what colour we wanted because we would all have to use the same title throughout our product, so we researched into different posters and the most effective ones were the ones that had black background with a blood red colour, we all agreed that the colour red would be affective and also linked to the plot it stood out on the black background, I have also centred the title directly in the middle of the page so it is clear and people can see it this is followed after research through the SAW posters and The Strangers.

I have also followed another convention when in the process of creating my movie poster is to use a tag line, the reason I have sued one is throughout my research every horror poster has a tag line, so when in the process of thinking what it could be I wanted something that could relate back to the film but also give it that twisted feel and creep the audience out, because we named the film “Asylum” I wanted to incorporate in the tag line something to do with the mind, because this is what mental asylums are used for and also fear because that’s what the point of the film was to inject fear into the audience so eventually I came up with “Do you know what the mod does with fear?” I thought this was effective because it is a rhetorical question and it makes the audience think what happens with our mind when we are scared.

The rest of the poster is my main image which I too myself as the background and has been edited with the use of photo shop, I have followed to types of conventions with the use of my main image the first one being having it as the background different posters which I have researched have some sort of main image as there background not all have the main Villain on the background this then leads on to the second convention I used which is when taking the photo I positioned the model to look slightly over their left shoulder but not much just enough so the audience could see part of the mask, this gives them a small snippet of the film, then as having a black background I used Photoshop on the image so that it looked like it was fading into the darkness.

Other small conventions which I used on my poster was a billing back nearly every poster researched has a billing block showing who did what it is not large this is so it does not take up as much room on the poster.

Another one is the use of the date of the film and a website this give the audience information of when the film is out and also many horror films have websites so that people can find out as much as possible about the film and the story behind it.

My Movie Magazine which I have created follows many of the different codes and conventions that you will discover on a number of different Movie Magazines being published in the world today.The first convention used in my movie magazine is the masthead, I wanted to use a known brand and I couldn’t think of a bigger one than EMPIRE one of the reason I chose this brand is because everyone one knows who EMPIRE are and that famous bold red title so when people see it on the shelves they are more likely to purchase the magazine, I believe that the mast head is one of the main features on a magazine because it can be the main reason why people buy it, I edited the title a little bit in Photoshop to give it the more Asylum feel I wanted it to be the same colour, this gives a bit of brand identity and shows that the main article is about the film “Asylum”

I have also followed another convention when in the process of creating my Movie Magazine this where I made sure that the text which was on the front cover was not covering the main image of the villain I have followed this through the research on the majority of the movie magazines there is not a big bulk of text covering the main image, this is so that the reader can have a clear look at the main image, to do this I used Adobe Photoshop to create the text and adjust the size and placement so it did not cover the image. Another convention which I followed is the cover lines which have used on my front cover are placed on top of the image in a stand out colour this is because then it makes it easier to read and see for the readers, the text has also been placed in an organised form so it is not spaced all over the magazine.

Another convention which I used was a lure this is something which Is used to attract the reader’s attention to the magazine and is a tactic to persuade the reader to buy the magazine, the one I have used on my movie magazine is “2 limited edition covers to collect” this is placed at the top of the page above the masthead so when they see the title they will also see this, another way why this is a good lure because I have not stated what covers they are so the reader has to look inside to see what covers they are.Another convention is I have not used the main Villain as the main background instead I used a photo of a crumbling wall which I had taken this refers back to the film, of an old abandoned Asylum gives the cover a specific feel.

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

The Film Poster After researching and also annotating a real film poster (Jaws on

the next slide), the main purpose of the poster was clear it was there to advertise the film through different aspects such as the title, images, actors names, the design and colour and also the tagline. These different factors are all used to make the poster sellable to its target audience, also that it is attractive and it links with the other products. Within our group we created our own poster.

My Film Poster Analyses

After researching, and annotating and analysing film magazine front covers, I showed me that I should include a USP (Unique selling Point) and this would be the main character this is because it then allows the audience to make the links between the front cover and the poster and also the trailer. The magazine I choose was EMPIRE and use this title to create my own this is because it is one of the most famous film magazines in the world and this will benefit me the most in the terms of attracting my main film audience.

Magazine Front Cover

My Magazine cover analyses

The Film trailer After researching various horror trailers. I learnt that the trailer Is

the basis for which themes, characters, images, colours of the film are made and then the campaign of synergy begins it shows pats of the film. Overall I believe that our own trailer adds the main overall packages because it includes the same characters from the magazine cover and also the poster, it shows that the killer is mysterious and you don’t really get a good look and it this is then emphasized in the two products this shows the repetition because it allows the audience to know that they are part of the same film by looking at the three different media texts. The font is the same throughout all three of the products this then creates another link for the audience.

Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

The different uses of audience feedback are:•Questionnaire Results•Padlet •Groups Questionnaire ResultsRight at the start of our production me and my group decided to find out what people’s opinions were about films, so we created 6 questions to ask, we then posted this on each of our blogs and we got responses we then used this type of data when it came to deciding what genre our film was going to be we got. The results showed that 38% answered that Horror was their favourite genre film, also 62% of the questions were answered by males this meant that we main target audience would be the male side and this is what we would have to incorporate in the poster and the trailer, these questionnaire results were beneficial because it gives us a small insight of what attracts the audience and also a path to go down before creating.

PadletPadlet is new type of technology I have used but it is a brilliant tool for getting audience feedback the purpose of Padlet is people are able to post something on a wall and people can comment on whatever it is, now I decided to use this tool both for my movie poster and also my movie magazine because I wanted to see what opinions people had of them, for both there was both tings people liked and little tweaks people suggested I should make I took these changes in mind and tried to make as many as possible to suit the target audience some of them were only minor changes like, on the poster just centre the title and the billing block more and maybe make the website text smaller, then on my magazine some of them were make the picture slightly darker and the title stand out more.

Group FeedbackThe next type of feedback which our group used was

more to benefit the trailer the most, so what we did was we got groups of children from year 10 and 11 to watch our trailer two are three times, and after they had watched it we asked them some questions, could you tell us what genre you think it is, did you understand the story these were the main, then we were open to feedback and some of them suggested that we cut a certain section out near the start because it was really relevant so we did and we could understand why they said take it out because it followed a lot better, another suggestion was to add title slides throughout the trailer to give it that more creepy feel.

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

Blogger was one of the main technologies which was consistently used throughout my media coursework , the reason this type of technology was useful and why it benefited me through the three different stages: Research, Planning and evaluation stage, because it is simple to use also it keeps everything organised and separated into different sections this is with the use of the label tool in blogger were it allows you to create different sub headings and then put certain blog posts under them headings this makes it easier and quicker for a user to see a specific blog post.

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

The majority of my project (Movie Magazine, Movie Poster and Trailer) was all produced with the use of a computer so I had to use different pieces of software to produce this product the different pieces of software that I used was, the main two were IMovie and Adobe Photoshop CS5, these were all used in the creation of my media products.Adobe Photoshop CS5 I have previously used Adobe Photoshop CS5 so I already had an understanding of the different tools, however it give me the chance to show how my skills using this type of software had progressed since I last used it, I used Photoshop when it came to the construction of my Movie Poster and Magazine cover mainly to edit the photographs that I had taken in a photo shoot I used different skills such as Move Tool The move tool allows me to move aspects of my pictures which have been selected, and with the use of this tool I can select layers and objects this toll will move them when clicked on and dragged.Type Layers Any of the text which you on my project is put on with the use of the type layers tool this tool is where text is entered and placed on the layer of your choice.Magic Wand Tool This tool was the most used tool in my use of Photo shop this toll when sele3cted will select the block of color this is based on where you click it and if you want to remove the selected space you simply click delete.All these tools we all beneficial when it came to the creation of my products.

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

Another new technology which I used in the process of my research and planning section was YouTube, this was a key technology because it allowed me to look at different horror trailers as many times as I wanted to pick different key points in them to try and influence them within our own trailer, also when it came to researching and showing that I have analysed different horror trailers before when had started to create our own horror trailer it connects with blogger so it allows me to type up an analyses in blogger through a normal blog post but then also allows me to copy the embedded code on that particular trailer and put it on the post so that whoever is reading my poster can watch the trailer as well and see the different parts of the trailer I have analysed.

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

The next new type of technology which I used in the production of my film trailer was IMovie on a Apple Mac, I had never used this type of software before so this is completely new to me, so it was a challenge to start with getting used to the different tools, IMovie is a program which allows the user to import video footage and edit it how they want and turn it into a video clip, with different tools such as transitions. So after we had filmed or footage which we thought was suitable enough to be made into a trailer, we imported the clips into IMovie and started to edit, it started off quite difficult I could not get my head around the different tools, an easy things such as how to cut a clip down and make it shorter, but after coming in a lunch times and staying behind after school we eventually got the hang over the different tools and our trailer started to take shape, then I started to come easy once the sound track had been imported are trailer started taking shape, however the biggest problem we came across when we in the process of making our trailer was when we imported the clips from the camera into movie maker everything was fine then when we took the camera out and started editing the clips it would suddenly come up with missing camera we quickly got rid of

the problem by importing them into a different file.

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

Padlet is a new type of technology which I used throughout my research and planning stages this tool allows me to gain audience feedback on my products almost like a reviewing system, this product benefits me 100% because it is audience feedback so I will complainants on the products and improvements from people on their opinion on how to improve me so it is constructive criticism so it is going to benefit because if I meet the opinions of the audience then they will want to watch the film, and it will increase my mark, but this software is easy to use it takes seconds to set up and it is also accessible because you are able to write a blog post and as the same as the YouTube clip it gives you the embedded code which means you can copy into your blog post and it will show up on your bog. I used this specific tool on my movie poster and the magazine front cover.