Final Film Trailer

although we have put our film trailer onto disk we have also posted it to our blogs in case of any technical errors that may occur. this is our final film trailer.

evaluation question 4 - How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

During the four main stages of our assignment we used Media technology such as the Internet, cameras and software to help us to create a well rounded product. For the research aspect of our product we used the Internet and looked on such websites as YouTube and IMDb to get inspiration for our film trailer by looking at other media products of the same genre such as the TV show Life on Mars which is a fictional drama set in the late 1970s early 80s we also looked at police action films based in the 1980s such as Starsky and Hutch and Lethal Weapon. I also used Wikipedia to research directors as this is the role I played off set. This helped me to understand what the job entails and gather inspiration from directors such as Mike Leigh and Neil Armfield.

For the planning stage we used Microsoft word to plan out our scenes and I used this to create a running order for our scenes and to help us manage our time effectively. We also used a Sanyo xacti cam-corder to take pictures of the area and locations we may want to film in so that we could refer to these when deciding where to position each scene and how effective the setting would be.

For the construction stage we used an editing programme called Sony Vegas to edit our film and add in effects such as explosions and text. We also used an Olympus digital camera to take pictures of characters and the car for the poster and magazine cover. These were then edited on adobe Photoshop and on word where I added in text boxes to make the magazine cover look more professional. I also used an animation programme called serif draw plus to create two animated title sequences for our film and then converted them to gif files using a file converter. We also had to pick out a font for our title and download this to a word processor to use in the trailer, magazine cover and poster.

In the evaluation process we used a Sanyo xacti cam-corder to film these video entries. We also used blogger to document all of our work and we used windows paint to edit together screenshots of our film to use as another visual reference. We also added these to the final storyboard to give it a more finished and professional look. these helped us to plan out our evaluations.

Evaluation Question 3 - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

After reviewing our feedback i have noticed that whilst the audience feedback was generally quite good, some of the things the audience mentioned in the questionnaire we sent out showed some faults in our work such as; the props were less believable and this made our main product seem less believable itself, also the costume, whilst most of our feedback results were good, a few people said that their was not enough distinction between the costumes of the good guys and the bad guys, making the trailer confusing. whilst we wanted to confuse the audience and question what they saw so they would watch our film, we also felt that this was an issue that we could solve if we had a larger budget. The interview with a member of our audience proved that the costume and props were a problem and so as two indipendent sources had told us this it was obviously something we had to work on as was the camera and our skills with a handheld camera. after a lot of editing we were able to get rid of much of the camera shake but their is still some in our trailer. this does not cause much problem as it is usually seen in action films of this era that their will be some scenes with a handheld camera. although we interviewed the audience member to gain feedback we decided that the idea of an inerrogation style interview would work well in our evaluations and tie in with our other evaluation videos so we filmed this feedback with the characters from our film as if it were a featurette film for our main task.
I think that whilst the audience said mainly good things which backed up our feelings about the film did have some comments these will help our group in the future because now we can work on these things and we shall know where we need to develop our skills.

Evaluation question 2 - How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Through the combination of our main and ancillary tasks we were able to create a new style of film by using old conventions and themes and then push them out and expanding on them, using an old type of film genre (1980s buddy cop) and then, by adding in conventions from other genres of film and TV creating a new style.

We also did this with our poster by basing it partially upon the posters of the Starsky and Hutch film and then taking inspiration from other movie posters such as Batman and Layer Cake to create a poster that would both sum up our film and keep the audience in the dark. We did this by basing the poster around the car instead of the people.Although this has been done before, we decided that this would be a good way to go as a brightly coloured car is used as a symbol of the lack of uniformed authority in police action films.

With our magazine cover we decided that the picture should be of the main protagonists of our film as this is almost always the case on magazine covers such as Terminator Salvation in Total FILM magazine and The A Team in Empire magazine. We decided that this would be best as we wanted the audience to not recognise the people in the shot as they are new actors therefore having to find out more about our film by watching the trailer or finding our poster online.

The combination of the three elements of our promotional package was effective in as much as they could all easily promote our film individually but together they created an even better depiction of our film.

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

We use typical conventions of both the action genre and the buddy cop genre such as explosive effects, most action movies have explosions in the trailers to entice the audience like in Die Hard or RED. These are usually placed at the end of the trailer to pull the audience back and leave them thinking about the film. They also usually have a famous action film star walk in front of the explosion to make the audience aware that he is the reason for the explosion and think about other explosive films with that actor as the main protagonist.

From the buddy cop genre we used conventions such as the good cop bad cop theme where the pair of policemen are totally opposing in character and so one is very formal, follows regulations and keeps in check, also they are usually kind to captured criminals,beliving that they will get a confession with their kind words. whilst the other is strong, aggressive and bloodthirsty, usually using more agressive interrogation techniques. this is especially seen in 1980's films as the police did not have to worry about suspentions and law suits from violence as they do today. this is seen in things such as Life on mars and Starsky and Hutch.

We developed these conventions by using inspiration from other media types in the same genre such as the TV drama Life on Mars in which both the good cop bad cop theme is used and there are many explosions. These explosions also helped us as we saw a more realistic acting approach to acting and reacting to an explosion. We decided that the more neutral style would suit our explosive finish even though it is not part of the action movie genre. We challenged this convention by blending the two styles of acting. In films the explosions are always followed by the characters feeling strong emotions usually of panic and sorrow, but in TV dramas the expression of the characters is much more neutral and unable to feel emotional. This seemed more realistic and so we chose to do this. If the explosion is planned in a film then the characters are always shown walking away with a smirk or a very serious face. this is usually in slow motion. this is seen in such things as James Bond and Iron Man.

In a TV drama the character is again more neutral and may look on from a distance as the explosion goes off. We decided that as our project was a film trailer we would refer more to film acting by using slow motion and having the main protagonists of our piece walk away, but we had the police turn at the end to keep the audience guessing as to wether or not the explosion was planned.