Evaluation

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

Our product uses forms and conventions of real media products in ways such as going along with the narrative of the genre. In the way we have an equilibrium at the start, a disruption of the equilibrium attempts to restore the equilibrium and then leaving it on a cliff hanger to encourage audiences to want to watch the film.

Also, we gathered inspiration for our film poster by looking at other film posters within the same genre as ours – apocalypse. We decided to go with a teaser poster to run parallel with the teaser trailer we had created. This meant that we limited the information on our poster to again entice people to want to find out what our film was about.

We used other magazine covers to base our magazine cover on using things such as the left side third, skyline, masthead, cover lines, anchorage texts, the puff and the plug to create a magazine cover that looked like a professional product.

We were able to develop forms and conventions of real media products for our trailer by looking at other films of the same genre such as ‘The Road’ which we developed the way there is very little speech, just key bits that are important for the audience to hear. When we hear this speech, the music dies down and we decided to use this technique in our trailer to create an atmosphere and to signify to the audience that it was a key part within the trailer. We also looked at the ‘I Am Legend’ trailer which effectively uses a voice over at the beginning of the trailer which we decided could be an effective way to begin our trailer.

We developed ideas for our film poster mainly from the teaser poster of ‘Paranormal Activity 2’. WE decided to use this poster to develop our ideas because it was an extremely popular film that used a teaser poster rather than a theatrical poster and therefore as a group, we decided to continue with the teaser theme and create a teaser poster.

The ideas for our magazine cover mainly stemmed from the most successful British magazines such as ‘Empire’ and ‘Total Film’. We researched a lot of magazine covers from these two brands and found that the Masthead of the magazine was always in the same font but often changed colour according to the genre and style of the film. As we wanted to stand out from the rest of the groups, we decided to create our own brand of magazine called ‘Eminent’ and the colours of the font in the magazine synergised with the colours in the poster and the titles in our trailer.

We have challenged the forms and conventions of the genre that we chose. We created an apocalyptic film which was in the form of a hybrid because the horror comes from the fear of the world being taken over by a water virus, which is a very real issue and therefore appears to be very scary for the viewer. We attempted to base our film around real ideas such as the water virus ‘Sparganosis’ being a real virus that can be a cause of death.

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

We felt that our product used an effective combination between our main video and our ancillary texts, showing a continuity of brand, and synergy throughout things such as font, colour, text, etc. Within our main product, the film Sparganosis, the title is in the same font as we have used in both ancillary texts the film poster and the magazine cover. We also tried to stay with the same colour of font throughout all of the film titles with the white body and an outer glow created on Photoshop. This font was used throughout all of our products as we felt it looked effective in the way it stood out and the way if a viewer saw this type of text, they would know that it was from our brand. To continue with the synergising of our products, the title ‘Sparganosis’ is situated in the same place on the magazine cover and film poster.



We also included the same tagline across our three products which was ‘A Necessity, Becomes a Nemesis’. As a group we created this to really emphasise the genre and what our film was about. The Necessity represents the water and the nemesis represents the virus which is sweeping the world.

We synergised our poster with our film well because the image that we have used on our poster to promote our brand is a still taken from the closing stages of our teaser trailer. After carrying out some research into other films we felt that we should use a different image on the magazine cover, so we used a stock image of a zombie from Photoshop that represented a person that had been ‘Sparged’.

Still image from Trailer

After receiving some audience feedback, we discovered that after watching our film and viewing our poster and magazine cover they were able to identify that they we’re all from the same brand and that they worked effectively with each other.

From our research, we understood that one of the most important things that you must think about when creating a film trailer, assisted with a magazine cover and theatrical poster, is that they somehow all link together and share some essential things. One of the most important things that must appear on all three is the title of the film, of which we decided is: 'Sparganosis’. This is the most essential thing as it portrays what the trailer, poster and magazine cover are advertising and immediately tells the audience the main thing about the product. 

Another element of the three products that is essential to have a link between is a main image that is being portrayed, therefore it is important that on at least two of the products such as the magazine and poster that we try to use the same central image, even if it may not be possible to make visual in the trailer. These must be the same to make the audience aware of important things that may be in the film, whether it be setting or characters.

Another element that we assured was going to be the same on all of our media products such as the poster and magazine cover, was to make sure that the font and colour scheme matched. A decision that we made early on in the process was that we were going to use red as one of our main colours in the products, this was because we felt this colour was not only eye catching and relates to the horror genre, but also portrays things such as blood and danger which help relate to our film. This decision was later reviewed whilst creating the ancillary texts because we felt that we should use colours of destruction to go along with the genre of a film. We also felt that it was important to make sure that we made other details included in our three products matching, such as showing the same release date and the same age certificate. It was essential that the three products related to each other and helped to support the information being shown on all three of them. Through the three products the audience were able to grasp a good idea of what the film was about, for example the genre of the film, a basic storyline and also who the antagonist/protagonist were.

3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

To make sure that wegathered enough feedback from our products we showed all of our products to ten females and ten males between the age range of 15-18. We chose this age group as not only is our film got an age certificate of 15, but it was easier for us to access people between these ages. 

To collect feedback we created a questionnaire for people to look at, and also filmed people asking them the questions and giving reasons to support their answers to help support our feedback and make it stronger. In the questionnaire we asked direct questions so that it would always be a yes or no answer; however we also asked for reasons.

I feel that the questions we have asked on our questionnaire will help us to understand whether or not our aim of creating a horror trailer with matching ancillary products that all linked together was or was not successful. From our feedback, we put the majority of the answers into different forms of graphs and charts to make the results more visual and easier to understand. Below are some of the results that we collected all put into the form of a graph or chart.

What genre do you think that the film is?

One set of the results that we have put into a pie chart is for the question: What genre do you think that the film is? Just fewer than 75% of the people asked agreed that our products were made for a film of the horror genre. This shows that many of the conventions including, locations, shots, mise-en-scene and characters all matched the typical stereotypical view of things that are included in horror products. It also proves that we followed our research well and developed it.

On the other hand, at least three people that participated in our questionnaire also thought that the products were for a film of the thriller film, and one also thought that it was for a sci-fi film. The people who answered differently also provided reasons for thinking this.

Do you think that the three products support each other, using fonts, colours, images etc.?

Another set of results that we have put into a chart is for the question, ‘Do you think that the three products support each other, using fonts, colours, images etc?’ Our results show that 75% of the people who participated in the questionnaire felt that the three products all linked together. They gave different reasons for this such as using the same fonts for the title of the film and also for the slogan. Another reason that was given was because the centre image on the poster of the shadow is also featured in the film trailer. Three people in the questionnaire felt that they wasn’t sure whether or not the three products linked together, one of the reasons that were giving for this opinion was because the central image on the magazine and poster were not the same, and they feel that for many other films they are. Only one person who participated in the questionnaire felt that the three products didn’t match at all and felt that the magazine cover was portraying a ‘completely different image that had nothing to do with the film.’  Other feedback from our questionnaire shows that the majority of people agree that the film should have an age certificate of 15; however others felt that there wasn’t too much gore or too much violence and therefore the film could be classed as a 12a. This could be one thing that we would need to take into consideration. Other results show that the majority of the people who have seen the trailer are glad that it is in non-chronological order for reasons such as; builds up suspension and excitement, has hidden messages and it allows room surprises.

19 out of the 20 people that participated in the questionnaire said that they would like to watch the film to see how the storyline is portrayed and if it was what they expected it to be like. Other reasons that they gave for wanting to watch the film is to find out more about the main girl featured in the trailer and why the story is based around her. Therefore this is a very positive thing as we have attracted an audience using our three products. This shows that our previous questionnaire before we began to do any work helped us a lot and that we used our results to follow and help us with our productions. The feedback that we have received from our audiences has taught us a lot about the successful and unsuccessful traits throughout our three products.From the feedback that we received I think that one of the things that we have learnt is an improvement that we could have made or could have focused on to make the film appear more successful and to make it easier to understand is assuring that the magazine cover and film poster have the same central image of something that is also featured in the trailer of the film. This would also help to show a connection between the products and stop any confusion

4.

 

This slide show is part of our evaluation stating how we used different forms of media and programmes etc. throughout our coursework. We also analysed and evaluated them stating both strong and weak points and also our view on our experiences of using them.