Evaluation of Projects

My brief was to create a film trailer, of my choice, and also two ancillary texts, consisting of either a web page for the film, a magazine front cover featuring the film or a poster of the film. Due to not having any previous experience in using web page building programmes, and with working as an individual, I thought it would be best I did the other two, as this is where my strengths could be recognised more easily and it would also mean that my work would be to the highest standard I could give.

For my main task, I wanted to produce a thriller/horror trailer as I thought I would be able to effectively execute this with help from research and planning along the way. The research and planning I did previously to making my film trailer was textual analysis’ of other film trailers, of three different genres; romance, comedy and thriller/horror, I also did a detailed section on the history of film trailers and how they first began, I also did a LIIAR of film trailers, identifying the main qualities and representations a trailer should hold, but also the main production companies of trailers. Before I began to even think about what to do for my trailer, I researched film trailers in general, and then went into detailed analysis of how a thriller/horror film trailer was presented, and I also explored the ways in which the conventions of a thriller/horror trailer differed from other genres so that I was sure, when producing my trailer, it would be suitable to be classed as a thriller/horror trailer and not have the typical conventions of a comedy genre, for example.

As there were many conventions in the film trailers; ones that were typical of the process and production needed for it to be established as a thriller/horror trailer, I decided that when I would produce my film trailer, I would avoid trying to challenge the major conventions directly, as these conventions were important in creating the theme and genre that is required for it to be thought of as a thriller/horror trailer. Some of these conventions include the close up shots of the main characters, non-diegetic sound to create a desired atmosphere, dark and spooky Mise-en-scene, including costume, lighting and setting, the use of low angle shots to make the characters look vulnerable and also the inclusion of title pages being used to add extra information to allow the viewer to be more engaged.

By not attempting to challenge the major conventions of the film trailers, such things as close up shots, Dutch tilts, montages (which is a convention of most trailers, not just thriller/horror trailers), non-diegetic music, non-diegetic sounds used to add to the atmosphere, dark settings and dark clothing, I believe that I would be going with the ideologies and expectations of the audiences it was aimed at. The audience I was aiming my film trailer at were mainly late teens to older aged people of both genders. I came to this decision after surveying people of different genders, ages and people who enjoyed different hobbies which allowed me to discovering that this group of people were the most interested in this genre. Furthermore, I also found that stereotypical “moshers” were more interested in this genre, more than any other ‘stereotypical’ group of people. By definition, the term ‘mosher’ is referred to as a group of people who are a member of a subculture; they are also known to enjoy pushing and slamming each other into others within large audiences, usually at music events. This stereotypical group of people would also be expected to like such genres as horror and thriller, due to the dark and evil nature of most narratives. ‘Moshers’ are usually thought to be dressed in darkly coloured clothing with excess make-up (even male individuals of this ‘scene’) and also to have long hair which is either covering their face or is styled different to popular ways.

When creating my video, I did plan on having something different to the end product I ended up with. Originally, I wanted my trailer to have a linear narrative to it, which would almost present itself like a short movie, but after editing and trying to gain this effect, it did end up much more like montage presenting a non-linear narrative including a short scene and then a few other clips of the film which I thought would be more effective in creating the feel I wanted to receive from it.

In addition to this, I also changed the sound of my trailer quite significantly, this was due to the fact that, originally, I was going to be adding in quite a lot of dialogue, which would drive and direct the narrative, rather than just a glimpse of what the story is. So instead of placing in dialogue, I chose to use a simple song with no lyrics, which I believe complimented my film and unified the images and narrative. This song was called ‘Sleep’ by the band ‘Fightstar’.

Within my trailer, I did want to add in some narrative using title screens that had being placed specifically in place to match with the situation on screen, but also so that the viewer could read them and know what was going on, but also be prompted to think about where the story line could lead to. In addition to this, I also thought about adding in some spoken narrative, in the form of a voice over. The reason I thought about this was because it was a major convention of the other film trailers in which I analysed. This is possibly where I challenged how the presentation of a film is portrayed in the actual film trailer. This is because on other film trailers, there is the voice over to inform the viewer of the story line, but in mine, I decided not to put a voice over on, because I wanted it to seem slightly more mysterious, which would help with the development of the viewers desire to see the film.

While producing my video, much more skills were needed than what were needed in the first year of this course. This is because in the first year it was just editing still photos and adding in text etc, which was also needed this year as well, but in a more advanced way, with now knowing more about how to use Adobe Photoshop CS, and knowing how to take a still image further with editing and text etc. This year, it’s more working with moving images and needing to know what things to do, specifically, to achieve the feel I wanted, such as using the software ‘Adobe Premiere’ on the editing suites and being able to use all the different tools such as the ‘razor’ tool which I used to slice the shots into different sections, and the ‘stretch’ tool, which I used to extend the shots to make them slower, but go for a longer amount of time. Another way in which skills where needed to be developed over the two years, is the creativity involved. It is needed to be more precise and specific, which meant more planning and research, had to be done previously so that a precise direction could be achieved when deciding what to produce. The reason more planning is required is because, when working with the still pictures, you have more room to be broadly creative and you can practice and experiment with what you are working with, whereas in the second year you have to be more precise with your decisions and you have to know the exact end result in which you want to achieve, or else many things have room to go wrong. This also ties in with how my time management had to change over the two years. Last year, it was fairly relaxed and not much time was needed for all of the planning and creation of the product as it was a fairly small project, yet this year, much time and effort was needed for you to be able to achieve the end result. This is because you have more things to plan, such as planning the film trailer, with all the story board etc, and also being able to plan the execution of the filming and editing, getting the scheduling for the filming done, allowing time for errors to happen so that they could be amended and also to be able to acquire sound material.

When starting my two auxiliary texts, I began in a similar way to how I started my main text, as in I began by researching firstly posters, and the different types of posters that can be seen in everyday media products, such as magazines, billboards and bus stop posters etc. When researching these forms of posters I discovered how they are presented in different ways when they are located in different areas of the mediated world which allowed me to decide which poster to create, which is the type of poster that would fit in to the centre pages of a magazine. This would also be the magazine I am making my front cover for, as I thought it would be an effective way of intertwining all the products I have created into one, which is essential when marketing a new product/production. I also liked this idea, as I thought that it would be good to make it so that the poster and magazine front cover would be part of the same production piece.

When planning my poster and magazine front cover, I went about it in a similar manner to both my preliminary piece of work in my first year, but also my advanced piece of coursework from this year. What made it similar to my advanced coursework was that I did in depth analysis of 3 thriller/horror posters, and also 3 textual analysis’ of a film magazine front covers, which was done to discover the conventions of them, to be able to create a magazine and a poster which would be suitable for the real mediated world. The reason it was similar to my first year project was because, for both the poster and the magazine again, I had to draft the ideas I had, of how I imagined and aspired them to look like. I did this in my first year, but although it was only drafting a couple of rough picture to have a guideline on what to work towards, I feel that even this method of planning has developed since my first year, because I have gone more in depth with the type of features which could be included on the both the poster and the magazine front cover, which makes it easier to execute the end product more successfully.

Scheduling to do the filming for my trailer and to take the still pictures was fairly difficult, due to the nature of my chosen cast. This was because I planned to use my family as the cast for my film, which I thought would be an effective way of controlling the way I wanted my trailer to present the film, as I feel I could have more control over the actors but also because I believed they would have more of an interest, as I was there family member. Another reason I did this was so that it would be easier to arrange the setting, costume and lighting of the shots I wanted to take, as I was more aware of the cast and setting, as the cast was my family and the setting was my home. If I could have changed the cast, I definitely would have, without question. This is due to the nature of my un-co-operative family members, one of which happened to be playing the main role, which made it very difficult to be able to schedule the time I would shoot my filming as this particular cast member would not respond to any form of direction, and would take any request as a insult to his ability to act, making it difficult to control the situation, which is what I thought would be easier to do, with using family members. It was also difficult to arrange with other family members as well, as with them being in full time jobs and having their own educational responsibilities, it was hard to find a time when everyone was free to take part.

One thing that was difficult was the fact I had a single chip camcorder. This made it difficult because if I had had a higher quality camcorder, I would have had more of an opportunity to do my filming, as I would have being able to do it on a night time or in a slightly darker setting, but as the single chip camcorder is not very good at capturing the full extent of detail when done in the dark, this opportunity was not available. This limitation also meant that some of the shots I wanted to get were not achievable, this is because, as I was producing a thriller/horror trailer which has one of the main conventions of being dark and spooky, I wanted to produce shots that had this feature, but unfortunately had to access other tools whilst in the editing stages to be able to achieve this effect. In order to do this, I used the Adobe Premiere software, and used the video effects tools, one of which was a colour correction tool which was included on the matrox effects card, which you would drag on to the desired shot you wanted to change, and then you would go to changing panel and darken the colour of the shot and add a tint of blue to make it appear as if it was night time. Although this worked fairly well for me, I still feel that using a higher quality camera would have given me the opportunity for these shots to be perfect in the way that they presented what that film was about.Another thing I used this colour correction for was to change two shots at the beginning of the the trailer. One of these shots was were the main character of the film and his brother (the one who gets taken) are passing a ball to each other. I made this shot seem quite bright and I increased the contrast slightly. The effect this has is that it gives off the feeling that it was a possitive atmosphere, which meant that the characters were happy, whereas the shot following this one is were the main character is outside with his dog after his brother has being taken and he is sad, so I decided to make this shot black and white to highlight that it was quite a negative and sad shot as the boy was upset his brother had being taken.

For the poster, I chose the two pictures in which I thought were the best ones at communicating the feel I wanted across to the audience, and then produced them both into a poster, to see which one looked the more effective in presenting the film. I created the poster with using Adobe Photoshop and also by using Microsoft PowerPoint to add on the text. The text I added on, I got by searching the Internet and using the website http://www.1001freefonts.com/ to get the new fonts that I thought would be effective.

After finishing this piece of work, I started on the magazine front cover again I started by analysing several different magazine front covers that have being distributed into the real media world. The magazines I analysed were two Empire Magazine front covers produced by Bauer Consumer Media; one of these covers had the ‘Joker’ from ‘The Dark Knight’ on it and the other had ‘Willie Wonka’ from the film ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’. I also analysed a magazine front cover of ‘Total Film’ which was produced by Future Publishing. This cover has the main character from the film ‘Iron Man’ on it. I decided which conventions were the most important to add in to my magazine front cover after analysing these, and firstly, the most common ones seen on a magazine is the use of the title of the magazine, the main feature story, the bar code, date and issue number, the price and a main background picture. Secondly, other conventions which are also important to making a magazine front cover appear of real media standard are things such as colour schemes, fonts of text, size of text, positioning of text, added smaller features which help the cover seem complete and also a sub heading of the magazine. After doing this analysis, I decided which target audience I would aim to gain.

This time, when surveying people to discover my target audience, I went more in depth to see what type of people would be interested in buying the magazine, but also what people liked what type of films, to decide whether it would be best to create a magazine that would broadly involve all different genres of film or just to create a magazine that would surround itself around just one type of genre.

I decided that seeing as the film world was very broad and there were many things to write about, I would create a magazine that would be general in the way that it would write about many different genres so that it would attract many different types of people. Although this is true, I did decide that my main target audience would be younger people around late teens to people in the mid 40’s, of both genders. I chose this target audience because although it seems that many people of all ages, are getting more equipped with the technology which enables them to be able to acquire their entertainment and information on the Internet, many people are also still interested in purchasing hard copies of the information they like to read, not only as in interest, but also from a convenience point of view as well, for example, someone may purchase the magazine if they have no access to the Internet, or are just wanting something to read on their travels somewhere. These types of people are most probably going to be early 20’s to late 40’s, who have a job that may require them to get train or bus to their intended destination. It may also be that mid to late teens have limited access to the Internet, and by parental allowance may only be allowed to use it as a source of educational gain, which means that if they were highly interested in films etc, they would have to buy the magazine to be able to receive the information.

Before starting to produce my magazine front cover, I started to decide what features would be important to add on to my magazine, so that it would seem like it matched the conventions of the magazines that are in circulation in the real media world. This acted as a check list so that I was certain I had added everything that is important to add on to the front cover. On this check list were things such as the title of the magazine, a sub heading/title of the magazine, features which would be included and essentials such as the bar code, the date, the issue number and the price of the magazine.

I produced my magazine front cover in a similar way to how I produced my poster, using Adobe Photoshop to edit the pictures, and then using Microsoft PowerPoint to add in the text and pictures etc. I used this software as opposed to Microsoft Publisher, because I believed it was easier to position my text on the front cover than it would be with using Microsoft Publisher. I also used this software because I was more familiar with it, and with not using this software, I believe that I would have sacrificed some of the features I included within my cover, just to be able to gain knowledge about software I’m not comfortable with using. Again, when doing this part of the production, I did two different ideas, to see which picture looked best after the editing, but then decided that only one would be suitable early on. After this, I started to plan other features that would be included on my magazine.

One of these features was the font in which I would use for the name of my magazine. I created the name of the magazine in several fonts, and then decided which one would look the best on the front cover. I had originally decided upon one font, but then when it came to inserting it on to the front cover of my magazine, I didn’t feel it gave the right impression, so I chose the other font which I believed was equally effective.

Other features that were added onto the magazine front cover after this were things such as the subheading, the date, the issue number, the price and the feature stories that were to be included in the magazine. All of the text that is shown on the magazine front cover is in the same font as the title of the magazine, this was to keep it consistent and keep it feeling like it all belonged together.

One of the last things I added onto the front cover of my magazine was the ‘film strip’ effect at the bottom. I got the inspiration from the January 2010 issue of the Empire magazine, of which I analysed. I liked this idea, as it directly relates to what the magazine is about, but it also breaks the cover up and makes it easier on the eyes; making it more attractive to the target audience, making it appear more desirable.

Things I would like to change, if I had the chance to go back and do it again would be the cast of the trailer, as they were un-co-operative and very hard to work with, which given the chance again, I would spend more time on searching for someone that I believed would be a good actor for the part I wanted them to play, but also so that I would be able to have more control over the situation as I originally planned.

Another thing I would change if I had the chance would be to go back and completely change the brief, this is because, while doing the trailer, more things have had to be done to be able to make it a complete production, and, although I have enjoyed making the film trailer, I believe I would have enjoyed making a music video more, as I would have being able to highlight my strengths more by doing that, then I did doing this brief.

Another thing I would change about my trailer is the story of it; I would now have done more research into the different aspects seen in many more different genres, so that when making my trailer, I could combine many of these features together to make it seem like something new and fascinating to the people interested in film.

In addition to this, I would have used a different setting, this is because using my house, which is fairly dark place when it is not the middle of the day, means that the quality of the picture, because of using a single chip camera, is lesser than what it would be it much more of my filming had of being outside in the sunlight, but to have this type of lighting, may have meant that the ideology of this type of picture would have being wrong for the genre I wanted to gain, so to be able to include a shot like this, which connotes a fairly happy and joyful atmosphere , would mean I would have to change the genre from a horror/thriller to a happy, up-beat genre such as a romance or comedy.

Also, I would have changed the sound in which was included within my trailer, this is because there is only a song going over the images, which means that it’s harder for the narrative to reach the audience, yet if some diegetic dialogue or a voice over was used, this narrative would be easier to identify and it would mean that audience could relate to the film more easily.