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Evaluation: What I have learnt through the Advanced Portfolio
This project has probably been the most daunting and hardest piece of coursework that I have ever done so far. Not only are the differences between AS and A2 staggering but due to issues outside of our control the amount of time in which we had to complete this in was littler over a month. We know when starting that this would be quite a formidable task (hence why we decided to work as a pairing instead of seperately) but all in all I feel like we’ve achieved some great work.
“In what ways did your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?”
When planning out and creating our film trailer, movie poster and magazine front cover our first main resource was the internet. Using video sharing websites like “Youtube.com” as well as search engines like “Google.com” we found almost all of the products we used for our research stage, something which was a great asset to us. Before beginning this projecy we both had a fairly reasonable understanding of the Action Thriller genre, beginning our research stage with films that we had watched and enjoyed to see how they had been originally advertised and it was quite striking in how many various conventions we discovered. Of course there are the main elements such as fast paced edits between shots, usage of dramatical and fast paced music to help match the speed of the editing, but as well as these we also learnt of other seemingly obvious conventions as well. Whilst researching the film posters I was surprised to discover just how little text is used within the posters, as aside from the main title, the billing and possibly a sub-title there is very little in the way of text on the posters, instead keeping the focus on the main images that took up the majority of the poster. In my first draft of my poster I used too large a font size for my sub-title and the images weren’t related enough to be attractive and eyecatching, so I went back to my research notes and rectified my mistakes, using a smaller more subtle font style and size which ironically had a bigger impact.
Within the production of the trailer I made sure to try and keep the editing of the shots as fast as I could, making sure that it kept with the conventions of these trailers whilst still showing the information needed. Scenes like the establishing shots at the beginning of film trailers we tried to imitate but unlike most major film studios we didn’t have the opportunity to film a sweeping landscape shot from a helicopter, but instead used a long shot of an underpass to try and keep with the tone of a mysterious and dark situation, which I believe has turned out better than if we had tried to keep with the conventions of a larger establishing shot.
A screenshot taken from the final trailer showing
the establishing shot we eventually used.
As well as seeing the more subtle conventions within the real media products we also followed (and challenged) many of the other conventions found too. The one which I believe stands out the most is our use of music, as we spent a lot of time using the royalty free music downloaded from Kevin Mcleod’s Website to make sure that it fitted in within our own production and when compared to the Law Abiding Citizen Trailer with regards to how music is used to follow the pacing of the shots with our own trailer I feel that, though obviously more amateur, we make a good effort at using non-diagetic music and voiceovers along with diagetic narrative in the video clips and it feels like it is worth the effort which we put into experimenting with different tracks from McLeod’s website.
“What have you learned from your audience feedback?”
An area that we found didn’t follow the conventions well enough was the second to last shot in our original draft of the trailer (the “Bored Now” line). It was added in as through our research we found that most trailers ended with a last climatic/action based shot to give the audience a final blast to remember, but when we tried to re-create this effect or viewers felt that it didn’t work well enough with the rest of the trailer, so instead we deleted that clip from the film and ended the trailer on a more suspenseful clip of Staker talking over the phone, which developed on the idea of leaving the audience with a lasting impression of the trailer with a scene that was possibly more shocking or threatening instead of memorable for being violent.
A screen shot of a conversation I had with a friend
giving me feedback for the first draft of the film trailer
“How effective is the combination of your main task and your ancillary texts?”
With the ancillary tasks we tried very hard to combine the feeling of an action/thriller trailer within the poster and magazine cover, using the conventions during the research stage to great effect. I first tried to challenge these ideas with my First version of the film poster but people responded that they felt it wasn’t interesting enough and some of the elements (e.g. the sub-title) seemed out of place. in my Final Version I decided to try and work on combining elements of the Duality shown in this poster with the almost emptyness of this one to create a poster which exlemplified the connection between these two characters much as how the trailer had gone to great lengths to present them as opposing forces. The final version of the poster gained a far more posistive response and it proved just how crucial it was to not only try to follow the majority of conventions unless you have specific reasoning to do otherwise but of the usefulness of audience feedback, as without it I wouldn’t have known how to edit not only my own ancillary task but our film trailer either.
Screenshot taken from a facebook feed about
the finished poster.
“How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?”
What I also felt had a great impact on our products was the programs and technoloy we used to create them. Originally for our film trailer we used “Microsoft Movie Maker,” in order to combine the shots for our film but we found the program highly limiting, without it allowing us to edit the music or shots just how we desired and after our original project file corrupted we searched for other alternatives. Fortunately our school has access to a suite of Macintosh systems and I was impressived by how more efficient the program “IMovie” was. It had a larger selection of shot edits that we made a great use of (particularly during the “Mirror sequence” where we were able to greatly affect the image to show the change that had gone over James) and the way it dealt with music within the film let us tinker with the tracks down to the point where we could edit a single note out from a song.
This is the clip that was modified using IMovie by
changing the saturation and brightness levels of the original clip.
It seemed that Microsoft was of very little help to us during this project as for my ancillary task I had began by using “Microsoft Publisher” to create the film poster (having used it previously for other work) but again found the options available far too limiting and instead experimented with another program called “Macromedia Fireworks” at the reccomendation of a friend. At first I found it rather confusing at it was clearly designed to be used by people far more skilled with this type of art program than myself, but eventually I managed to get to grips with the various effects and tools and was also pleasantly surprised by just how much I could effect the images and create what I feel to be A highly superior poster.
All in all I feel like this project was a considerable success. Other technological issues have bugged us throughout (my scanner still refuses to accept that I own a computer…) and if I could have changed anything it would have been how we managed our time. We started off working quite efficiently, completing plans and getting prepared for filming sessions. Unfortunately we had several problems with actually getting all of our actors with us during a shoot and we had to edit and modify a lot of our shots in order to get them to work (originally the conversation between James and Laura was to take place in the same place, but due to the actor playing James having other work-related commitments we changed it to a mobile phone conversation.) Given the chance to try this again I would definitely focus more time on the production stage, as had it been planned out more efficiently we could have had a much larger selection of shots to work with which would have improved our post-production and ultimately our final products greatly, as well as given us more time to use more audience feedback for fine tuning as what audience feedback we did recieve improved the quality of the work to a standard that I doubt we could have achieved otherwise.
Final Product: Film Magazine Front Cover
Film Poster (First Draft)
Here’s my first version of my film poster, that was made trying to follow the original planned version. It was made using Microsoft Publisher as for previous work I’ve found it useful for creating posters and other advertising. However in this case it clearly shows that it’s not up to the task of producing a high quality version of the work, as the images all look seperated instead of blending in despite my best efforts using the program. I showed the poster to my teacher and peers and they both agreed that it didn’t look like a professional poster that would be created by an actual advertising studio. The sub-title at this size is too large and overshadows the film’s title, which mislead some of the people who I showed the poster too.
I’m now working on trying to edit this and remake the poster using Macromedia Fireworks, a program that I haven’t personally used often but that has been highly reccomended by a friend who uses it for graphic design. I’ll upload the newer version of the poster ASAP.
Movie Trailer (First Draft)
Here’s the first draft of our film trailer, complete with sound and backing music. We showed this version of the trailer to our peers and target audience (Young adults aged 15-18 interested in gothic/dark fantasy) in order to get response on which parts worked, what they enjoyed and how we could improve the trailer. Overall it was rated quite good, with many people commenting on the music and quality of the shots. However some people also didn’t feel like certain parts didn’t work as well or as smoothly as they possibly could have done and the final ending confused many with how it was relevent to the overall trailer. We’re hoping to try and improve the pacing of the editing as well as modify the ending to make sure that the trailer is clearer to understand.
I’ll have the finished version of the trailer uploaded as soon as I can.
A2 Media Studies: Advanced Portfolio 