Cody, Izel Media A2 - Final Trailer

Magazine Front Cover

This is mine and my partners final magazine front cover. We tried to re-create a traditional movie magazine front cover in which our movie trailer was being advertised and was the main story. This again was created on the mac computers we are fimiliar with on the software of photoshop. As i mentioned, this made it simple for us as we knew how to use it due to previous tasks.
We stuck to our colour scheme of black and white but it looked too dull to be a magazine cover. This is why there is also red featured on the front cover which sets the mise en scene of a horror trailer. This adds emphasis and this si what we wated to create for our audience to visualize.
We used several components which most other magazines used and we done this to look professional. The first we used was a pug, this is feature on most magazine covers and just draws attention to audiences. This is what we wanted to do, we wanted to attract our audience and this is the reason for us putting it in. We also used a title for obvious reasons and a barcode. The barcode give the magazine cover a look as it it was real and would be on sale in a shop. The use of stories running sown the side of the cover is also present as this is a common magazing cover component. the rhetorical question is also present again as it fits in with our movie trailer.
The biggets part in which tells our audience that it is our movie trailer is the image. Again, we have included the image of our serial killer and this tells the audinece immediately that it is our film being advertised. However, the audience will have had to see the trailer to distinguish this, vice versa. So by me and my partner using these conventions, we tried to create a realisitic movie magazing cover that was advertising our horror movie.

Movie Poster

As you can see, this is the movie poster me and my partner created for our horror movie trailer. We tried to make it fit a horror mise en scene and more will be explained below:
This was pretty straight forward to create ans we used Photoshop. This made it easy for us to create as we were fimiliar with using this software in the previous year during our construction of our music magazine.
The first point me and my partner looked out for was the colour scheme. We wanted the colours to fit in well with the movie trailer so we matched the ancillary text colour with the movie poster. This made it have a horror feel about it and this is what we wanted to enforce on our audience. The next thing we done to make it a convincing horror poster was added the only image of the mask. This was put there to be a tell tale sign to our audience. This gives them an istant recognition as to what the film is and also represents the killer of our horror trailer. This, along with the film title will enable our audience to know what film is being advertised with just a glance at the movie poster.
We also chose to add a rhetorical question on the poster as we thought it would make the audience want to see the film. We added the question 'who do you suspect?' This will make the audience feel as if they want to find out who the culprit is which is good for us getting views. The last part we added was the smaller text. All film posters contain the banner accross the bottom of small text which inclued things such as the film make, director, actors etc. This is a common media trend and we thought it would be best to add it to ours to look professional.
Those were the reasons we chose different parts to add and why we done this. Overall, I think this is a convincing movie poster which was created in a very short space of time thanks to the software.

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

All of the texts we used throughout our year 13 media coursework was thought about and we tried to fit the horror stereotype as well as possible. To start with, our ancillary texts within our horror film trailer were put there after trial and error. We searched for some time trying to find a scary text which fitted the horror mise en scene. The reason we used this because we tried to fit in and represent the genre as well as we could with our choices. For this reason, we chose to use black and white as our colour scheme. This is a very popular colour choice in horror trailers, and we followed this. All of our texts inserts within our horror trailer was of the same size and the same colour scheme. This is because we tried to add professionality but also wanted to hold a tense atmosphere within our trailer. Being black and white, the ancillary texts were very easy to read as we assessed this before the trailer was finalized. Above is a print scrren showing the example of our ancillary texts. You can see our colour scheme, its fairly easy to read and also sets a scary mise en scene which we was aiming for.

We didnt only use ancillary texts within our movie trailer, we also used ancillary texts on our movie poster that we had to create. To fit best with the film, we chose the same colour scheme as our movie trailer texts which was black and white. This again made it simple for the audience to see and matched our stereotype (being horror films). A lot of time and thought went into our text choices and the main reason we chose them was to add emphasis on our audience. horror trailers dont just affect the audience with 'jumpy bits' but also affect people on mise en scene, settings and also text. This is why we recognised the importance of our ancillary texts and tried to match them with a horror film as best as we possibly could.

What have you learned from your Audience Feedback?

There is no doubt that to get the best possible trailer, we had to listen to what others around us thought about it and adjust minor parts to make our trailer a better success. Our feedback was split into two sections, these were early ffedback and late feedback. Our early feedback come from by blog. This was and electronic way to see what our audience and people around us thought we should do. So from the blog i got different bits of constructive feedback from peple around us. The first bit of feedback i got was to aim our fil at a target audience between 16 and 20. This was the most popular section on the poll and this told me and my partner that these people would be most interested in watching our trailer. The next part gave us feedback on what genre movie trailer our audience thought we should make. This come back highly positive for the horror genre and again, this ffedback helped us in the selection process of what we were going to do. The last part gave us feedback on how many films our audiece watched per week. This came back as around the 2 mark. This gave us feedback that our film had to be good if it was going to be seen as they only watch 2 per week. So all of these points provided us with audiences thoughts and opinions which was construcive enough that we could make the horror trailer.
However, late feedback was also an occourance in the later and editing stages of our coursework. Examples of lat feedback is things such as teachers telling us about beneficial changes and also class mates doing the same. So during our late feedback, my teacher approached us and asked to watch our trailer, after she watched it, there was feedback that we should change our text. It was black and red and the red was blending in with the background making it quite hard to read. This was then changed due to constructive feedback to black and white which was a huge success as it was easy to read and matches the genre very well indeed. This made me learn that if the wrong text is chosen within a trailer, it can make it look messy and the audience will recognise the mistake. Our teacher also gave us feedback on the length on some of our shots within the trailer. Some were too long and the teacher reccomended that we cut them down. This also made me learn that shot lengts are vital to keep the audience engaged in the horror trailer. We did this due to us following professional feedback and I believe it was very beneficial for our trailer as it drew more attention from our audience. Besides these two points, other feedback was minor such as to get more work done etc.
The last feedback i encountered was self reflection feedback from me and my partner. From talking to eachother and getting eachothers thoughts, we learned to work well as a team and work was done at a good standard. This really helped me get the coursework done and is very beneficial in small groups.

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

This question is cut down into two sections. The first part is the technologies we used in the construction and research stage whereas, the next part is about the planning and evaluation stage. In both parts, we used a very wide rrange of technology which is going to be explained why and what we used in what stage of the process.

Construction and research:

In this section, me and Izel used several different pieces of technology to help us construct and reserach everything wee needed to achieve. These were:

• The internet
• Mac computers
• Blogger
• Photoshop
• Sony Vegas
• Scanner
• Video Camera
• Camera

Firstly, the internet was used by both of us for both construction and research. We used the internet for cunstruction as we had to get onto our blog account to construct our blogs and add coursework to it. It also enabled us to carry out significant research such as looking at horror trailers, finding our about Freytag's triangle and much more. This was a useful part of technologh we used which helped us succeed and excel in several areas within year 13.

Mac computer were used for countless reasons in the construction and research stages. This first of these is that it gave us the chance to access the internet and therefore we were able to access blogger and undertake significant research. It also gave the opportunity to use software such as photoshop to construct our movie poster anf magazine cover. So this was the most important part of technology that we had to have to achieve in most areas.

Photoshop was the software we used to construct our movie poster and magazine front cover. Having used it in the previous year at AS level, we were already fimiliar with its operations and we easily and promptly put together a successful few pieces of work to put onto our blogs. This was an effective part of technology that i thing work on my side throughout the construction of our coursework. Sony Vegas was another software we used however, i had never used it before so it took some getting used to. This was used to edit our groups trailer and i quickly responded in a positive way to the software. However, this was on my laptop and not on the Mac computers the school provided. Therefore, i was fimiliar with my laptop which made it more useful for me to encounter.

We also used a scanner, camera and video camera in order to achieve in different areas of our media coursework. We used a scanner to scan our filming schedule onto the mac computers and then put them onto our blogs. Cameras were used to take photos of our filming loactions and the video camera was obviously used to film our clips of footage that we later used in our horror trailer.

On anoverall basis, only one piece of technology gave me trouble which was the Sony Vegas software. Apart from this, all technology was pretty straight forward to use and was simple to get along with. Izel helped me out with a few technical difficultys we experianced. However, nothing was too threatening.

Planning and evaluation:

There were only three pieces of technology used within this section of the coursework. These three pieces of technology are:

• The internet
• Mac computers
• Blogger

The planning we undertook was a general analysis of differnt things to do with our trailer such as analysing other trailers. The internet was the main use of this where we logged onto Youtube and watched several and gained a better knowledge of film trailers. However, in the evaluation stage, the internet was used to access our blog account and therefore we used mac computer and my laptop. This was the only use of tchnology within this section and i had no difficulty with any of it.

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

During the production of our coursework, me and Izel tried to create a life like trailer and give it a sense of reality to our target audience. To do this, we had to stick to media conventions that are in other horror trailers. This would give us the best result and below are conventions that we used in order to achieve this.
The first horror trailer convention that we used was a non diagetic soundtrack which plays throughout our trailer. All horror trailers we studied used a non diagetic soundtrack. This is done for several reasons, the first being to add effect and highted the drama for the viewers. This is the reason why we chose to put this into our trailer. It therefore gave our trailer a scary atmosphere which generates a horror feeling towards our audience.The music we found to go into our trailer was picked for several reasons. The first being that it fit our trailer well and the second, we though it suited the story being shown on the screen. As we put this into our trailer, we found we had to play around on the editing softwre in order to get in in effective positions to fit the images being shown. These are the reasons why we used the horror trailer convention and i think we used it to a good standard.
The next convention that me and Izel used was the scary mak that the killer was wearing. Mostly everytime in a horror trailer, there is a killer with a mask. If we look at the like of Freddy Kruger and Jason X, these are the most recognised horror films and the use of masks also hightens the drama and creates a tense atmosphere towards our viewers. I believe that the mask we used created a successful storyline and becomes effective at the end with the fast editing. The mask gives us a scarier atmosphere than a plain face, so this is why we input it into our horror trailer. This is also what our target audience would have expected to see as this is sterio typical in horror films. This is how we followed and used this media convention within our A2 coursework.
A convention we used which all other horror trailers use is the way the trailer is edited. As we have established from Freytag's triangle, trailers begin calm and then the rising action leads to a series of fast shots which you will see in all horror trailers. We chose to use these fast cuts as every horror trailer we analysed had quick editing showing scary images.People put this sort of editing into trailers as it hightens the drama and increases a tense/scary atmosphere. This is the effect we wished to give and portray to our audience and the two combined reasons is why we put it into our trailer. We stuck to Freytag's triangle and had falling action eding with a steady pace of shots. This enabled us to follow a very commonly used convention which was not hard to follow in the slightest of ways. So the general overview of this convention was us using fast shots in the middle of the trailer sandwiched between slower and more prolonged shots.
Text is also a convention in all film trailers including horror trailers. This gives the audience a general understanding of the storyline and helps them stay focused throughout the trailer. This along with conventional camer angles keep the viewers maintained in the story line. Camera angles give the ausience time to see characters faces and get an understanding of their feelings. These are both typical media convention used within horror trailers that we used.
We followed a lot of horror trailer convention within our coursework, however, we didnt develop any of our own conventions. But on the other hand, all the horror conventions we could think of, we challenged to use them in the most effective way as we possibly could.