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.

Final magazine cover

this is a copy of our final magazine cover. this was created using microsoft word 2007 and photoshop aswell as a font from our chosen font theme.

Final poster

This is a picture of our final poster. we had to add a layer of brightness effect to the poster on the word "and" as this was un able to be read due to its darkness against the dark background of the street. Our poster was hard to create as we had to ask permission for the right to use some of the images in it as well as combining images in order to create a proffesional looking poster in the correct style. we decided at first to base our poster upon the poster we used for our group de construction with a close up of part of the car, mid-action. however as we did not own the car this shot would be too hard for us to recreate on our poster with special effects. we instead tried to make the car stand out against a suitable background in an opposing colour spectrum e.g. a red car on a background shot through a green lens filter. we hoped that by doing this it would look like the car was famous from an 80's police drama show or film and so our supposed audience would 'recognise' the car. this is what they did for the 2004 starsky and hutch film by using the tv shows iconic car to make their target audience seem intrigued. this is our final poster.

Magazine creation

When creating the magazine we decided that, as we had used the car on the poster and it was more usual to have the main protagonists of a film on the front cover, to use Harry and Robin as their characters, striking a pose. We then chose one of the pictures we took and played around with different effects to see how they looked.

After choosing a style we liked, we put it into word and placed in some text boxes. we then added words into the text boxes and inserted word art for the title in order to use Docteur Atomic.

We then added in a title and cut another copy of Robins head to place over the first one on top of the Magazine title.

after this we researched upcoming films using IMDb and put these in text boxes over the image. we then added pictures to go with these stories. these would act as secondary stories in our supposed magazine. we also added a picture of an i-pad and created a competition as this is another key feature of magazines and we felt it would contribute to making ours look more realistic.

we then coppied the complete picture to word so that we could easily mail it around and print it if necessary.

Making The Poster

when making our poster we had to be sure to keep elements of a 1980's action film to keep it in our time period. this meant we had to think of everything and do a lot of research into similar films posters to ensure ours was of a similar type. the first thing to do was to decide what our poster was going to show. it needed to be something that could sum up our film in one image with a few words to help. after much discussion we decided on two options. either a picture of the two main protagonists of our film or an old 1980's style car like the one from 'starsky and hutch' we decided that, as our magazine cover was of the two protagonists we would use a car. after finding a suitable car and taking some photos we decided that any modern street was to modern and was not in the right style due to lampposts and new signs etc. so we went onto the Internet and found some pictures of different landscapes that would be suitable. then we went about creating the poster.

1. first we chose one of the pictures of the car to work on


2. then we cut out most of the shadowed areas


3. after that we cut out all of the larger pieces of background


4. we then used the zoom tool to focus on the more intricate sections


5. after that we had to delete the Shadow from under the car


6. after cutting out all of the space around the car we had to change the colour of the background to 'invisible'


7. we tried out our car cut-out on the backgrounds we had picked and settled on one


8. we placed and re-sized the car so that it looked as if it was part of the background


9. we then added the text and started trying out different effects to make our poster look even more professional. we eventually chose a 'poster lines' effect to make all of the different objects in the poster stand out and a brightened effect on the title to make it more clear. We had to request permission from the owner of the red car to film and take pictures of it in order that he did not call the police as we were taking pictures of his car. Luckily the owner lived in a house close by the car. We also had to ask for permission to use the background as it was copyright protected. we sent the company an e-mail.

Participation

For our evaluations, we decided as a group to create video diaries to answer each of the four evaluation questions, as our characters within the trailer. We felt that to get good marks, we had to be imaginative and unusual with the way in which we answered these questions in our evaluations and it was agreed that we would film each question in a location that the character relates to the most. This was decided between Harry, Robin and I as Jack was not in school when the decision was made. we watched our film trailer to look at possible locations for these videos and then checked that the location was still available. We came to a conclusion that; Harry's would be filmed where he had made the deal (as D.C.Summers)with Toby, Robins would be in the car as if the interviewer had stopped D.C. Curtis whilst on the beat, Jacks would be down the alley where The drug lord had given Billy a gun and Mine would be down the side alley where Billy had made the deal with the undercover D.C. Summers. We then proceeded, after school, to send a message to Jack and tell him of the idea and if he wanted to do the same thing then we already had a suggestion of where we could film his, however, he decided that he would like to take a different approach to his evaluation. We were fine with this and gave him the opportunity to take part with what we were doing. We used facebook to ask him this question and then spoke to him afterwards to make sure that he was sure about his decision. He said that he was sure so we continued with ours.

post production feedback questionaire

we created another questionaire for our potential audience after they had seen our film in order to see what they liked and disliked. we then collected their answers and looked them over. after careful consideration we chose one of our research group members and interviewed him as part of our evaluations.

costume and props

These are some of the props we have used in the trailer. these props are; plastic gun, old style photographer camera, letter full of information, bag of flour (drugs), retractable pocket field glasses. in the next photo are; interview recorder, glasses, wig, handcuffs and a gun. the last picture of the three is of a bottle of fake blood we used in the informants death.

This is the costume i set up for Billy Blaze. it includes; light blue denim jeans, a white shirt and a black leather jacket. i chose this as the collar of the white shirt would go over the dark black jacket creating a strong visual effect on the audience making them remember the fassion of the 1980's (the time of which this was the style).

first draft of film trailer

We decided that hte best way to create our film trailer would be to create the initial trailer and then edit this to work out any kinks. this is the first draft of our film trailer.

editing

This is a nine piece story board of how we edited the opening scene of our trailer. to edit our trailer we used a programme called Sony Vegas. This editing software was provided by robin as was the camera and some of the props. We all met up outside of school after filming to make decisions about how to edit the piece, and what to add in (effects).

filming update

Today we filmed for the second time and we have got enough footage for oyr trailor aswell as pictures from the ancillary tasks. although we need no more footage we have not filmed all of the scenes we wanted to. also, we have too much footage and so we shall have to edit out a few of the scenes we have filmed. this may mean that their is less footage of one character compared to the others, if this is the case we shall try to edit out Jack as his part as the evil villanous boss means that his character may be shadey and not seen to create surprise and confusion for the audience so that they will want to watch the film. If we do edit Jack out of most of the trailor we will be sure to include him in our ancillary products where able and in the video entries for our evaluations if he wishes tp participate in these.

Contact

In order to know when we were going to film, we needed to speak with each other and have the opportunity to do so outside of school in order to solve any problems before filming e.g. if harry had said he had a dental appointment at nine oclock on friday, then if contacted early enough, this problem could be solved by arranging to meet up at ten. theirfor we decided the best metod for contact would be facebook as we all would use this every day and could see any messages immideatly.