Thursday, 6 January 2011
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
What have you learned from your Audience Feedback?
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?
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?
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.