My evaluation

Rory Parker

In what ways do my mediaproducts use, develop or

challenge forms & conventionsof real media products?

Throughout my media coursework my products convey forms of conventions that are clearly seen throughout many real media products. These products include movie posters, movie trailers and magazine covers. When creating my products there were many conventions that I had to follow to make them successful. The main conventions that I focused on were font size and colour, this is very important as the products rely on the right font and colour to make them successful.

 When creating my magazine cover I used many different types of fonts, for example the title “review” is bright red and also bold. This is to make sure I get the best effect out of the title, if I made it small it wouldn’t stand out and if it wasn’t red the main colour conventions wouldn’t be matched. Red is often used throughout the horror genre as it signifies blood, evil and death which all link to the horror genre. For the film title “the cure” I used larger font and also changed the colour to yellow. This signifies peace, which contradicts the horror genre but coincides with our film title.

Throughout the magazine cover I constantly use different fonts with different colours, I have highlighted key words i.e. “free” and “competition” as these are words that will appeal to the reader. The main two colours that I have used are red and white; I used these colours as they oppose each other, which links to the constant contrast between good and evil throughout horror films.

As I said I used red for the main phrases as it links directly to horror whereas white balances the cover as two bright colours wouldn’t work. Also in some areas of the magazine cover I used different fonts as there was a different genre i.e. for the “free competition” I used “cooper black” and for “the cure” I used “academy engraved”, this was because I wanted a clear difference between them and as “the cure” is more important I made it clearer and also larger.

I also included other film posters, this would interest the reader as it brings more scope to the magazine. They are both well known, popular films so they will attract attention well. The hostel poster is red and the ring poster is black, these colours once again reinforcing the horror genre. The main picture on my poster is very distinctive, the hand and arm are both covered in blood which is a common feature seen in horror posters.

The picture only shows the “persons” arm, so the identity is hidden which adds to the tension of the film as it could be anyone or anything holding the chain. The chain also adds to the horror theme and is commonly seen throughout the horror genre. It is usually associated with zombies and also portrays violence which ties in well with our film.

When I created my magazine cover I wanted to stick to the conventional layout, I needed the path of the eye line to be used effectively and also my cover to look professional and also realistic. I wanted the reader to know it was a horror magazine the minute they looked at it; I feel I have achieved this objective and that my cover works successfully.

The first thing to be seen is the title, which is made large, red and also has a distinctive font. This will ensure that my poster attracts the attention of the reader. The main image is next to be seen, it is large and the picture clearly relates to the horror genre.

It was very important I chose a distinctive image for my cover as it needs to attract a lot of attention. “EXCLUSIVE” is the next sub title to be seen, like the title it’s large, red and also has a distinctive font. It is made smaller than the title as I don’t want to attract too much attention to it; I have used a different font as well as a variety makes the cover look more professional.

The next thing you see is the film title “The Cure” I have made the font colour yellow to emphasise its importance and once again used different font. I have a large red arrow directed to it as well, this once more attracting more attention to “The Cure” as it’s the centre piece of the cover.

As you move through the rest of the cover the path of the eye line shows all the main images and speech that I want it to. In the bottom left corner I have “More MASSIVE movies coming soon”, massive is made larger than the other text and this emphasises the statement and increases the importance of it.

The statement itself included more information about what is to come and increases the chance of the reader buying the magazine again. The end of the poster finishes with “Other main film interviews include” which has small font and is used as an interesting end to the cover. It is more information for the reader to be interested in and the other films titles will also make the cover more popular.

How effective is the cross-media package as a whole?

Overall I feel that my coursework piece works very effectively, throughout research and planning I have constantly used conventional themes and colours which link to the horror genre. I have related all my planning to the horror genre and I have used many ancillary texts to help me.

The magazine promotes the film effectively through special interviews with the actors, and the poster also promotes the film through the imagery and reviews. The film encourages the magazine to be bought so the audience can find out more about the characters and behind the scenes.

We have also used many convention in our media trailer. Examples of these include a happy beginning and a mysterious finish, written narrative, for example:

3 weeks later different shot types upbeat music.

We decided to include all of these after analysing horror trailers for their conventions.

Our main narrative is the news reader, which i feel is an effective way of telling the story line because it gives the main facts and shows the seriousness of the topic. We then introduced short and snappy violent clips to pick up the pace of the trailer as shown in conventions.

Much of the editing included ducking - where we made the background music quieter whilst the news reader scene was playing to allow her voice to be clear. We added a ticker at the bottom of the page and typed in news stories as this is conventional for a news reader scene.

For our media trailer we got our soundtrack from this copyright free website:

www.freesound.org

We felt that this soundtrack was effective as it had many horror conventions such as mysterious instumental sounds and a heartbeat effect. To get this onto our trailer we downloaded it and then imported it onto our production.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

From my audience research I have attained some very useful results. First of all we learnt that our audience enjoy watching horror films, which is obviously a good start. The majority of the audience agree that horror is favourite movie genre and also that they expect to see death/violence throughout the movie.

These are all good results for us as our film includes both death and violence. The main aspect of horror that the participants would change is that they would make a less obvious ending and have a male victim.

I also made a questionnaire to show my product feedback, there were three possible answers, “Definitely, a bit and not at all”. The results I received were also very positive, the main answer that I received was “Definitely” and no one answered “not at all” which clearly showed that my magazine cover was successful in fulfilling its horror genre.

I have learned a lot from attaining audience feedback, using conventional techniques to create research and make a trailer works, but there are “conventional” aspects of the horror genre that are unpopular so in future I would definitely change them i.e. make the victim male.

 For my movie poster I made sure that it was dark, gloomy and mysterious. This is a conventional setting of a horror film so it works very well and makes the genre used obvious. I also had zombies as my main picture; this once again clearly refers to the horror genre and also means the audience can easily relate back to these characters in the film. I used the colour red predominantly throughout the poster and also the zombies have blood over their clothes.

Feeback on our movie trailer

I have recieved this feedback from a questionnaire done by our group on FormSite.com

How did you use new media technologies in the construction

and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Whilst creating my research, planning and evaluation I used new media technologies to aid me. The main technologies I used were:

• i-movie

• Fireworks

• Slideshare

“I-movie” was to edit our trailer and “fireworks” was to crop and edit images. Another modern media technology we used whilst creating our film trailer was a video camera, which had attributes such as night vision. I used SlideShare to upload this presentation and get a URL for my blog.

All the research, planning and evaluation I have completed has been transferred to my blog, which is another example of new media technologies. Without these new media technologies I would not have been able to make a successful horror trailer, as the conventional themes would not be able to be used. The video camera enabled us to shoot in the dark, which meant we hit the conventional theme of the horror genre.

In the production stage I used imovie to edit our movie trailer and make it more professional, and I also used the night vision on the modern video camera to create an effective trailer in the dark.

In the research stage I used fireworks to crop images I found and analysed.  

For my feeback questionnaire I used FormSite.com which involved alot of ICT skills, I also had to use SumoPaint.com to get URL links to place my images onto my feeback questionnaire.