Candidate information

Candidate name *Jake John Bourke* candidate number *7030* centre number *17131* John F Kennedy RC School

Final Design Magazine, Poster and Trailer

Here is a link to my finalised teaser trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZy1teajI14

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

In the production of our media trailer, me and my partner firstly carried out plenty of research in order to gain maximum information about romantic films. Once we had collected our research, our plan for our film trailer carried out regular conventions of a romantic film with similar plots and twists. Our film follows Todorov's theory where the couple are happy together, then the male must leave for certain reasons, then the end is resolved with the dramatic middle over. This theory is applied to many films we researched, nearly being all of the films we researched. The plot of our film could be seen as typical to various other romantic dramas which we researched.

Mis En Scene:

In our research of film trailers, one trailer we analysed was Dear John. We came across many shots and scenes in Dear John which seemed highly effective on the audience, therefore we decided to use a similar element in our trailer to provide a professional feel to our trailer. The shot which we decided to replicate was a kissing scene, a kissing scene is very typical in romantic trailers therefore we felt we must include one. We intended to duplicate various rain scenes we have seen whilst part-taking in our research of film trailers, yet this was unlikely as we had to depend on many different elements to come together therefore seemed highly unlikely. We copied the use of angle and light to produce an intense scene. In general the mis en scene of our trailer helps to follow to normal conventions of a romantic film trailer.

Characters

In our trailer we tried to stay within the conventions of typical romantic characters. The male had to be a handsome yet masculine image which would attract female audience members. Where as the female had to be cute and perceived as innocent. We chose to follow these conventions as from our research we discovered this was typical in many of the trailers we saw. The male character is has clean smart hair providing that handsome image which is needed yet he has a bit of stubble which was necessary as it brought the masculine image we needed. The female character has cute features providing the view that the male character must take care of her, yet we see a clip in the trailer that presents a strong side to her female character. Both of these actors suited the characters we pictured as having very well as their personalities were well suited to the characters which they played and managed to get along superbly on set also improving the chemistry between the characters.

Location

We decided to set our trailer in many various different locations, this creates a healthy image for the reader, widening the range at which it was based. Some of the locations we filmed were, a house, school, toilets, train station and also a local park. We filmed certain clips in the house to show scenes of the couple being together, these clips are usually seen to be the happy clips within the trailer, presenting the couple happily together. In school we filmed a close up shot of our female character, this was then used to create the effect of her 'thinking' about her options presenting more emotion towards the audience member. The clip in the toilets is a dramatic clip, we chose to use the toilet as an 'escape' for our female character to run into after hearing bad news, or after what could have been a break up, this is a vital location of our trailer as it is one of the locations at which we sucessfully applied Todorov's theory. The train station clip was also a vital clip in our trailer, this clip presents the male character as leaving therefore the audience member does not know what may occur in the film, with this clip we had to get permission from the local coucil to film in a public place.

Inter-titles

Many trailers tend to use inter-titles to communicate with the audience, they may also use a voice over effect in order to get a message across to the audience. In our trailer we only used inter-titles to communicate by showing the audience member the actors name and when the film is likely to be in the cinema. We mainly used a voice over effect, we got this idea from our research of watching film trailers, the effect we were trying to get across to the reader through the voice over, was a sad tone using a female voice acting as though the female character was talking to the audience, this may have a strong effect of the audience member as they may feel the emotion through the voice of the voice-over creating our trailer to have a more professional approach.

Music

In our research of film trailers we discovered that music was a vital part of the trailer, the backing music has a massive effect on the emotion set to the audience. We therefore managed to find someone who was able to play a soft acoustic tune for our trailer, once we recorded this we were able to add it to our trailer. We then had to mix it in to go in time with our voice over which was difficult to get correct, but once we managed to correct this it had a major impact on our trailer improving it massively, we recognised this as our audience members positively commented on the musical background quite frequently.

Editing

In our trailer we had a lot of editing which was needed to create the effect we were aiming to achieve. Our trailer began with very in sequence and long clips, which would give away the plot and was boring for the audience to watch. We therefore decided the best way to create a strong effect with the audience member was to create lots of short clips including many various cuts, once we added this we saw a vast improvement instantly, we gained this idea and skill through our research of analysing film trailers. From this we were able to mix our clips around more which provided a guessing effect for the audience member as they were unaware of the drama occuring. Therefore the editing of our trailer was highly important in the production of our trailer as without this we would not have been able provide our trailer with a professional effect.

Conclusion

In conclusion I believe that our media trailer does sucessfully develop, challenege forms and conventions of real media product. I believe that through the shots, cuts and characters used we were able to create a relatively professional romantic film trailer, also through the use of mis en scene, editing, locations and inter-titles we were able to challenge conventions of real media products, as our work is based around research from real media products.

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

In our production of our poster, magazine and trailer, my partner and I decided to make separate ancillary texts, although we chose to keep the texts in similar style, we chose this to emphasize the romantic theme at which we were trying to provide to the reader. We chose to keep a romantic theme throughout our ancillary texts in order to link with our main product creating an effective combination of the three. In our research carried out on romantic posters and magazines, we realised that posters were seen as very simplistic, they were bright, stand out to the reader catching their attention whilst containing little information and detail focusing mainly on the photograph and the title of the film boldly standing out for the readers attention. From this research we came to realise the magazines which highlighted romantic films were usually seen to be your typical 'gossip' magazine therefore we had to ensure we had a similar style to create a romantic vibe to the reader.

Our magazine and posters both used different photographs, yet it is obvious that the photographs used were taken for the same production improving a link between the ancillary texts and main product. The photographs used in both the poster and the magazine are wearing the same clothes, which is also seen to be highly similar clothes to the trailer. We decided to do this as it would leave our film as being individual having a certain style through the clothes and poses they use. From the production of our trailer we were able to link the poster and magazine sucessfully with the trailer due to the similarity in clothing and specific poses, allowing the ancillary texts to positively promote the actors in the film. Therefore we are able to see the effectiveness of our main product linked with our ancillary texts, they are all used sucessfully in the promotion of our film trailer.

The romantic style we presented included various colours which sucessfully gave the romantic vibe, for the title 'Remember' this consists of mainly light blue and white. The colour blue can be represented as a romantic colour which was able to be continuingly used throughout the products. With the use of the colour white represented a sense of peace within our work, as white can be acknowledged with enlightenment and peace showing a calm nature to the reader, which we also able to use throughout our products.

Finally in the production of our ancillary texts and main production, we decided to create a company production name 'Drone productions' this is included in both the main productions and ancillary texts enabling the readers to recognise the production label, they may remember the logo or production name for future reference, as our target audience members are seen to be relatively interested in new and upcoming ideas, leading it to be seen as 'fashion', therefore heightening the effectiveness of both our main product and ancillary texts.

Question 3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

The negative feedback given to us from our audience members was just as effective if not more effective than the positive comments given. The negative feedback helped us to recognise and acknwoledge the main points of our work which needed to be improved either it being slightly improved or dramatically improved as both were seen to be of vital importance when coming to our final designs. We appreciated the truthful constructive criticism provided to us by our peers, we were able to take these comments and use them to improve our work and knowledge.

We received many comments pointing out that our trailer's plot was seen to be too 'obvious' giving away the plot of the film, from this we then decided to vary certain scenes mixing many shots around, this was to keep the audience members guessing as to what was going to happen in the film, also we hoped it would entice the audience members into wanting to watch the film once we had improved this as they want to find out what happens. From our negative criticisms we realised that various parts of our work was not set our in a very 'professional' manner, we decided to look back at our research of trailers, poster and magazines to improve our skills and professionalise our work. The negative feedbacks we received were of vital importance to our final designs as we would not have recognised these certain set backs ourselves, therefore allowing us to create the best possible trailer we were able to.

Question 3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

The feedback given to us from our audience members was highly useful from both the positive feedback given back to the negative feedback. Without our audience's feedback we would not have been able to improve our trailer, enhancing our skills from the constructive criticsm given to us from our peers. The positive feedback given back to us increased our confidence levels therefore we were able to make more confident suggestions and improvements. The positive feedback helped us to recognise and acknowledge the good aspects of our work compared to what was needing to be improved. Once we recieved much positive feedback we then decided we would recognise this feedback as being the parts at which we would not have to change to our work. We were able to take the positive feedback from our work and use it for our final designs knowing they were our best aspects of our trailer. Although we had many positive comments on our work, does not mean we did not still change parts which our audience members enjoyed, for example we decided to change certain sequences of our trailer which our audience members thought 'worked well' yet we still thought there was room for improvement in order to leave our trailer being more effective. Through the feedback we were given, helped us to establish whether our trailer was attracting our target audience, yet through the positive comments and feedback from our audience members we recognised we were successfully attracting our target audience members.

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