Eval

Jack Croton

ORC A2 Media Evaluation

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

My media product (Abhorrence the film) challenges forms and conventions of real media products in various ways, but in other ways it uses and develops conventions too.

Firstly, the way how it challenges the real media conventions can be related to my teaser trailer, because it only uses one camera angle going down the corridor. The reason why I chose to do this one camera angle was because I thought as it is only a teaser trailer I didn’t want to give away too much about the actual plot or storyline, but then I didn’t want it to be too vague, and that’s why I chose to add the flashes to the text so that the audience would have a bit more of an idea of the storyline and then that way, the text acted as a medium to give the storyline without the need of a visual clip from the film. The reason why I chose to have text instead of actually recording it wasn’t because I didn’t have time to record it or could not be bothered, but it stirs up suspicion and suspense for the viewer as they will conjure up their own thoughts and mental images of what it’s about and how they’ll perceive it.


With the trailer as well, it focuses on the door at the end of the corridor, now with a normal door it’s not that scary, but when the image is manipulated so it’s slower, has a black and white effect on it, and it is actually as if someone is walking to it because you can see the ups and downs that happen with footsteps. This is an effect that I wanted too, because it puts the audience and the viewer in the film, and sees it from the perspective of the malevolent force which is what’s walking towards the door, not only that but with the reflection of myself walking towards the door, it worked well, because the audience can see that something in the reflection, and the reflection tool in horrors is a useful tool. A good example of this is in Shaun of the Dead when Shaun sees Pete’s reflection behind the shower curtain but in the mirror, and therefore, I used a similar effect to create a similar suspense effect.


A way in which my trailer however used and developed conventions is that with the countdown of the text from 4 to 0. The reason why I used this technique is because when you see a countdown, your brain automatically expects something to happen when it gets to zero, but when you know it’s going to be something negative like in a horror film, then you become more apprehensive, so the psychology of the countdown, which each time had a different aspect of the story to it, was something that I wanted to introduce and use because of the psychological effects it would have on the audience, which I kept in mind when making the trailer.


For my two ancillary tasks, I stuck to the conventions of real media products quite well, as I used the Empire magazine for a template for my front cover due to the high success of the brand.

I laid out the way of the front cover in the conventional way to how real media products of this type are presented. The competition at the bottom of the page that I added is something that I thinks adds real authenticity to the text because it is a way that the magazines entices viewers to buy the magazine. I then also changed the ‘WIN’ to stand out more so that looking at the front cover, after the audience will have seen the main image and the text that accompanied that, their eyes will be drawn to the competition which was inside the issue and so they’d have to buy the magazine. Something that, with research, I found out was some magazines come wrapped in a plastic wallet and so to see what’s inside them you have to open the plastic wallet and the only way of doing that is by paying for it, therefore, with that technique as well, it’d sell more issues.

The colour scheme I did for the front cover too was to keep a constant theme running throughout. As you can see it is fairly dark and when there is white writing there’s red not far from it. The dark red to it obviously has suspicious connotations to it because it is indicates danger.


For my poster, I did a lot of research for horror posters, and look on various websites such as www.Odeon.co.uk/, www.allposters.co.uk/ and hammerhorrorposters.com/ which I all found helpful.

When compiling my poster, I looked at the whole layout and especially the way in which the text was in comparison to the image, because I wanted the audience to look at the image and see the figure looking around the corner, but then see how everything was in black and white apart from the title of the film, which is in a mysterious red and like I previously stated, red indicates danger.

For the tagline of my poster I wanted it to be on the wall so it was almost as if it had been written on the wall by the evil presence. When editing the writing on the wall I used the shadow tool for it to give the effect that I wanted as it gives off a more grainy type of look to it, something that it wouldn’t have looked like if the effect wasn’t added.

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

The combination of all three tasks in my opinion is really good as they compliment each other nicely.A constant theme throughout each task is the black and red colours, as it is a horror based film, the

two ancillary tasks were based around the trailer, and so before I thought about making the trailer, I made the two ancillary tasks first, but I had planned out that I would have a dark colour scheme because of the nature of the film I was doing.

In all good horrors, the darkness effects the story and effectiveness of the horror greatly because of the whole not knowing factor, but not only that, but how the black and white theme is used in the poster and in the trailer, because when something is black and white it is an abstract view as it’s not normally seen anymore, but when you add another colour in there like the red, it makes it even more abstract, because of what red implies.

As a mixture, the poster sets the tone I think for the film as that and the trailer are so alike in terms of colour scheme, images and the editing done to them, but then the front cover is a good edition due to the different look it gives on the project.

The poster is the first and only time that you see the actors and that’s not by accident, because with the front cover, if this was a real film and everything, the people acting in it would be real actors and the audience would know them and know that they’re in the film and so there would be no need for them to be in the teaser trailer as I wouldn’t want to give it away too much, which is what I have said all along.

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

As a compilation of all three together, I think that the texts all give the project something unique in their own way, because with the front cover I would say it looks as much like a proper front cover as I could’ve made it with the tools I had at my disposal, and so with that, the front cover would add a different level of advertising to the film because it’d be on the shop selves, opposed to the poster that’d be poster in town centres and outside cinema’s ect. But then with the teaser trailer, that’s something that you’d see on YouTube or on the big screen before a film.

I think that the fact I made a Twitter account and a Facebook page for the film makes the whole project seem more legitimate, as real world films have twitter accounts and Facebook pages so that they can communicate with fans and give them sneak previews before anywhere else.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

From my audience feedback that I received from various different methods such as a questionnaire, just asking people as I was going along on their opinions and from the Twitter and Facebook pages, I think that I learnt a lot from it, because when you have got your mind set on something it is sometimes very easy to find yourself missing out really obvious things because you’re so glued to a different aspect.

I found the questionnaire the most helpful because I compiled my results in graphs and that way I could see what the majority thought in terms of improvements or things that they liked, so with that in mind, if I had to do round of improvements I would have to opt for the questionnaire method.

The Twitter and Facebook route however was very good as I had a much rather reach to people and could have longer to get feedback, because obviously being in a school environment I did a quick questionnaire with the people who had frees when I had my Media lessons, whereas with Facebook and Twitter I could post something then come back a few days later and it’d have feedback on their with people that I won’t have seen at school or people that I won’t have been able to see, such as people from sports that I do but that don’t attend my sixth form.

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

For the research stage of my project I used various websites and programmes to help me map out what I was looking to do.

When looking at the horror genre, I did a lot of research which saw me go from web pages such as Wikipedia to certified and successful horror films to see where they did things right and wrong. When looking for the type of things that I had to include in order to get across the atmosphere that I wanted, I found out that a lot of things that people find scary are all to do with their brain and a lot of horror based films base themselves around weaknesses in people fears, such as spiders (Eight Legged Freaks) aliens (Signs) ghosts/demons (Paranormal Activity) or anything paranormal, so basically things that people don’t understand. For me personally, I always wanted to do a demon/malevolent force based film because that’s what my weakness in films is, if it has anything to do with things that you can see having an effect on something you can see, like an object moving, it creeps me out.

With the research going well, I decided to make my research search a lot finer and so I then started to go down the route of looking for paranormal films like the Paranormal Activities or the Grave Encounters, which I watched so I could see what things from those films made me jump the most and then find a way of putting that idea into my film but no into the trailer, as I made a decision afterwards that I wanted my trailer to be suspense building, not giving away the storyline or any clues that would comprimise the ending of the film.

In terms of research too, throughout the project when I wanted to know what my audience thought of things, questionnaires, Facebook and Twitter were brilliant ways of getting feedback from a mass audience.


Now for the planning aspect of my project where I used a few ways of media to help me plan.Firstly, I made this blog so that I could keep a track of everything that I was doing and so if I

was thinking something I could just write it down and not forget it.Another way that I used media, was that on my iPhone, where if I was unable to blog, I put a

little memo in the notes section to remind me, as these becamse very helpful, because after all, if I wanted to save something for later but couldn’t write it down on a pen and paper, then my phone was there for me.

I also used Photoshop for a while to play around with the tools on there, where I found myself planning on there things such as layout of the front cover and the colour scheme of the poster without realising I was really planning it. The reason why I would say I was planning it after all, was because I set things up on there like the exposure and contrast and things and then stuck with them until I found a good mix between all of the things and then stuck with it for my final piece, whilst keeping in mind my original ideas.

Apart from planning it on a piece of paper and putting various ideas onto paper, they were really the only few ways that I used media to help myself plan out what I was going to do, because apart from that, I had a good mental thought of what and how I was going to do things as soon as I saw the brief to the course.


Constructing all of my pieces proved to be very time consuming, as all of the various websites, programmes and software that I used to put together the pieces.

For my poster I started with looking on websites for inspirations as to how to lay out a good horror poster, then with that came the construction of my poster. For my poster, like with the other two tasks too, I used my iPhone 4’s HD camera, which I found more than adequate for that task and what I needed it for, but then when it came to editing everything, that’s when the time consumption was really used up.

I assembled my poster on Photoshop CS5 in school and at home, as I found the utilities on Photoshop were fantastic for putting things that I wanted in my poster onto my poster, for which I used various tools in Photoshop such as to increase the exposure on the poster, change it to black and white and change the way the writing appeared on the poster.

With the writing I added certain things, like I have commented on with the writing on the walls making it look shadow like, I changed the properties of the actual ‘Abhorrence’ text by giving it a red outer glow and putting a cover over it which gives it the streaky affect.

The main lot of editing on the poster was the removal of the doors on each wall as I was not sure at all how I was going to do it, but once I watched a few videos on YouTube to patch things with Photoshop it was straightforward from there, but as I learnt, I had to patch it from something already on the image, so doing the little indentations on either side was time consuming because it was a case of getting a little bit at a time and patching it very slowly and carefully.


For the construction of my front cover I took all of the images with my iPhone 4 as it was the easier way for me to do it.

For the front cover I chose to use Photoshop again because after doing my poster, it gave me more confidence with the programme so I used it for the building of my front cover.

With the front cover of Estate I had to re draft it, as I learnt that from the first time to not have the image as the canvas of the file, so when I re drafted it I had a black canvas then put the main image on top of it, and that way I was able to add more layers to it because I wouldn’t be overlapping on all of the main image and just the black canvas.

I used four images for the cover of Estate, the one main and three down the left third. The reason why I used images down the left third is because that’s what real magazine front covers have on them so that the audience recognise the people in the images. With the images I had to edit them quite a lot because if they were left how they were then it wouldn’t have looked how it does because it’d have been all blocky and squares, but with the eraser tool that I used, I was able to rub out everything that I cropped from the images, so that just the image (or person/people) were in the picture with no background from the photo.

The ‘Estate’ text on the page has an outer glow and transparency alterations, as to keep with to the theme of shadows throughout, I made the actual text of ‘Estate’ see through, and the only way how you see what it says is because of the red outer glow, and it had to be red because of the colour scheme that I decided I would have.


The last part of construction was with my main task, and for this, the recordings I took from my iPhone had to be converted online at www.online-convert.com/ because in order for me to use the clips on Windows Movie Maker.

When putting together my trailer, I only used one clip but breaks between it for the text that then subsequently came after the flash with a different message about the plot.

For the visuals I added a blur and a black and white effect to it too, whilst adding a half pace effect for the timing of the trailer to make it appear like it had been a longer distance travelled by the camera.

Towards the end of the trailer are images that are flashed on the screen, images which I edited in Photoshop by adding black and white to the layering and changing the brightness and exposure levels to give the images more of a darker appearance.

The text in the trailer were available to add in within the WMM programme and so I used them to create a more suspense look for the trailer, especially as they come out of the darkness and grow bigger towards the viewer. This again is something I wanted as it makes the trailer more suspense filled because the text is almost reaching out to the audience and closing in on them, just like the camera is closing in on the door.

Finally, to get my video live, I used YouTube to post the video when it was completed and after that it was all done.


Evaluating my overall project was straightforward, but I wanted to use PowerPoint like I have to do an evaluation because I thought it was more creative than just writing a thousand word plus essay on why I did everything I did on word, not only that, but the videos on YouTube where I talk through all of the questions in this presentation but try and explain myself further and make myself crystal clear was another way I thought that I could use different media technologies in my project, and that’ll nicely go with SlideShare.net the website where I posted my PowerPoints including this one.

OverallEvaluating my overall project has probably been one of the highlights of the

whole thing, because as much as I enjoyed putting it together and watching it all grow, being able to sit down and type this has given me time to reflect on everything that I have achieved, because seven months ago I didn’t think I’d be able to put together something like this at all, and so looking back I would say the evaluating stage has been one of the most enjoyable because all of the work was done and there was no stress added to it with programmes not working or people not being able to help me record or take photos.

Technology

Eval