A2 Media Studies
Wednesday, 4 May 2011
UNEDITED TRAILER AND FINAL TRAILER
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Omg7SNaNLE0
Final trailer with edits today:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9JV3AgczJk
Final trailer on you tube.
Thursday, 24 March 2011
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Youtube is an extremally popular site used worldwide. We used this site to explore the genres and the conventions of the other genres. It was also really useful to look at the types of setting,costume and props used so that we could get an idea of how to construct our trailer. Youtube was also used in our evaluation stages as we posted our trailer to the site to get audience feedback. We did this because it allowed us to gain feedback from poeple all over the world, not jsut in our immediate community. Although this wasnt as successful as we had hoped it was still intresting to see how many views we got.
The website http://www.google.com/ was used throughout our production we used this to collect research look at other products and for general information use.
http://dafont.com/ the well known website font provider website was also a great help to us throughout the final stages of our production. This website combined with google and youtube allowed us to research and try out the conventional fonts for a trailer/ film poster and magazine front cover. When using da font we also used

when trying out fonts we print screened them into paint, this then allowed us to crop and cut the font we wanted, and then we could place them into microsoft word and compare them.
To create the magazine and poster and also edit the images we used a combination of three programmes. These were Indesign, photoshop and paint.
In design was where each of the products were made and put together. This software was the base of each product and this allowed us to plan our ideas and
Movie plus five was the main part of our trailer production as this is where the trailer was actually constructed. In movie plus we inserted each of the shots and put them together to create our trailer, we then put music in and overlayed effects such as slow motion, fades and flashes. Without this technologie our tailer wouldn't have been possible.
Obviously to film our actual trailer we needed to use a video camera, this technologie was a fairly simple piece of equipment which allowed us to film different types of shots e.g. close up, night vision and just a normal long shot.
Facebook the worldwide social networking site was also used within our project, we used it to get general research, it helped us look at our age group in society today to see who to aim our trailer at. We then used it later in the project to post our video on for people to see. This allowed us to gather audience feedback from people our age group which is who the trailer it aimed at.
It is apparent that each bit of the construction process would have not been possible without the use of media technologies. These helped us plan construct and complete our production.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Audience feedback for magazine front cover:


This is the final magazine front cover:

The changes we made were:
- Aligning the edges so that the border was even the whole way round as this made it look neater (feedback from media class)
- We moved the tag line over to the right so that it was more visible for onlookers (facebook feedback)
- We moved the images at the bottom around to work better with the colour scheme (media class feedback)
- We changed the colours of some of the writing so that it was more visible
Film poster feedback:

This is the feedback from our film poster. The feedback in general over all was really positive most people made similar comments which in a way was a good thing. The most common comment was that people didn't like Ellie our main character being in red. When uploading the image onto face book the colour red changed slightly making it brighter so on our actual poster it isn't this bright so that was one of the bits of audience feedback dealt with. Another thing said was that 'night cameras are usually green' this is true but we weren't using the red to look like a night camera we were giving an enigma to the genre and trying to represent danger. When talking to our class about our poster there wasn't many comments made on things we needed to change. Overall our feedback on our film poster was positive so we decided as a group that no changes needed to be made.
This is our final film poster:
Audience feedback for film trailer:
We gathered audience feedback for our film trailer on youtube and facebook.
Youtube- Youtube was unsuccessful as it isn't something that people would necessarily view on their own accord, meaning that we only got five views and no comments. Although this was unsuccessful our facebook feedback was very successful.
Facebook- We uploaded the video onto you tube on my account and then I titled it 'media trailer, please could people leave constructive feedback, thank you.'
Tuesday, 22 March 2011
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
On each product it is clear that Ellie is our main character again this is a very clear indication that the three products are linked. In each image of Ellie we put her in the same clothing and did the same style hair and make-up, we did this because if she was dressed completely differently it would most likely confuse the audience and therefore the link between the products would be weak.
Another image we kept the same throughout was the image of the house. We obviously made sure we used the same house otherwise the image would be irrelevant.
All in all I believe that we have successfully linked the products. It is a very important factor of our production as it will help successfully market them.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
- sound and editing- Low pitch music and beats. Quick cuts, low camera angles, night vision, fade in and out and flashes. All of these help build and create the tension within the trailer which is vital part of a thriller film.
- The conventional music for a thriller trailer is generally music that gives tension and adds a hint of fear making the viewer scared, but generally it begins with a steady slow beat song to introduce the story line it then picks up pace to create anticipation for the main event.
- lighting, especially the use of shadow and darkness, this might be used if there was something that needed to be kept a secret to create more suspense.
- props can also be effective such as the use of mirrors or weapons, although not really a prop, stairs can also be really effective as they create a chase that is nerve-racking
- Setting- This is a very wide category as a thriller can take place pretty much anywhere but the most common settings are woods, houses and holiday homes.



Throughout the project we as a group paid attention to the fact that that we needed to follow the conventions of our genre. We followed the conventional story line using Longacre's theory by beginnining with a 'once upon a time opening' then a 'climax' but also adapted it, as are production is only a trailer we didnt finish with the conventional 'conclusion' as that would defeat the object of it being a trailer. We decided to follow this narrative as we felt it conformed to other real media products. It is a very common theory used in our genre trailer. For example 'The shining' begins with a family going to stay in a hotel. The beginning of the trailer is very calm and happy this creates an atmosphere to the viewers making the almost unaware of the happenings that are about to take place. This also helps build up the tension and suspence and this is exactly what we wanted to do in our trailer. The trailer then takes a turn and the husband becomes violent, there are alot of chase scenes which is really nerve-racking to watch and we have also used an idea like this in our trailer. The trailer then ends on a cliff-hanger almost a "what happens next" and again our trailer does this so that is doesnt reveal what the story line is.
We used similair settings to other films we had looked at for example- Paranormal activity- is set in a normal house, for our trailer we used one of our homes to make it as normal as possible. Another main theme in paranormal activity is the found footage throughout, we also used the idea of a found footage but decided to only use that for a section of our trailer not all of it. Our idea behind this was that it gave it a realistic feel. The fact that the girls were filming themselves would make the viewers feel more involved in the 'excitment' of the girls holiday.
The images below show paranormal activity found footage (op) and our found footage (below)
Another way we used and developed the standard conventions of a real media product was attracting are viewers in the same way. In any film these days if an actor in it is highly famous and good-looking it immediatly attracts more viewers. For example the film Jennifer's Body
This film made a huge $2.8 million on its first day and most of this money was proberbly drawn in because Megan Fox was playing the main part. We needed to attract are viewers with an attractive girl that could be a 'star' we chose Ellie as she has the typical look of an actress. It was important that ellie was our main picture on the magazine front cover and film poster as these were are main advertisement for the trailer and film. We also devloped this idea, by editing the images of Ellie before they were placed on the magazine front cover and poster. We did this to make them more dramtic and eye catching to the audience. On the magazine front cover we decided to make the image of Ellie red, although this is not a common convention this is an idea has been seen before in films such as 'Red Riding Hood', 'Red white and blue' and 'Dead end'.
Another important aspect of making a realistic trailer and other products was that we followed the conventions of how much information they should hold and how much they should tell the reader. We looked at lots of trailers to see what sort of information they hold about the film. We found that generally it was the Logo- for the production label, the Title, the Release date and maybe a web address. We used all of these in our trailer but also developed them by adding in snippets of writing and the tagline.
For our film poster we followed the conventions of a Teaser poster which almost has set guidelines for what information it holds. We followed these guidelines but also added and took away text where we felt appropriate. To make our poster look as realistic as possible we again did more research into what the conventional film poster looked like. This helped follow but also develop these original ideas. For the magazine front cover we wanted to make it look busy and exciting. We realised that a magazine was much more interesting and appealing when it looked busy but we had to make sure it didn't look to cluttered as it could become confusing. We followed the conventional layout, with this title at the top we also stuck to a colour scheme so that the magazine didn't look tacky.Overall I think we managed to develop and challenge media conventions successfully. Although there are some areas we could of taken the research and ideas further I think what we did do has made our media products look more realistic to the target audience.
Monday, 21 March 2011
Thursday, 3 February 2011
Font Changes
These are the new fonts we will be using, some have remained the same but some have changed.
- Playback- Magazine front cover name will be in font - Franchise.
- Darkness Awakens- Title of the film on the magazine front cover, film poster and movie trailer will be in font- ACID LABEL of Dafont.
- Film awards 2010 highlights- writing on magazine front cover will be in font- impact
- Exclusive interview- writing on magazine front cover will be in font- Copper STD
- Issue 217-writing on magazine front cover will be in font-200 Century gothic
- Trailer writing (Eleanor Failes/ release date)- will be in font Tosca Zero
- Behind the scenes- magazine front cover- impact