19. Evaluation

1)In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms of conventions of real media productions?

After completing audience research and research into the genre including other film trailers, posters and magazine front covers we were confident in our ability to create three media products that would both follow and challenge media conventions and codes. We defined our target audience at around the age of 14-16, materialistic and hedonistic and therefore all our products should be constructed in a way that calls out to them.

Trailer: We conducted extensive research into real media products following the same genres to make sure our creations resembled them as well as possible. We watched and analysed existing trailers of the same genre such as KiDULTHOOD, Harry Brown and the TV series Skins. We decided the best way to reach our target audience would be to analyse, costume, lighting, sound and shots. To then make our trailer as relevant as possible. By doing this it enabled us to notice frequent conventions used in these trailers which we could use for our own.

The KiDULTOOD trailer is filed with different angled, quick cut shots. This is to represent youth and the madness of a world filled with drugs and violence. We therefore spent an extensive amount of time in pro-production, making sure our shots were edited correctly and sharply to fit the conventions of the KiDULTHOOD trailer. We decided our target audience was similar to KiDULTHOODS therefore it was important for us to match the style of lots of small quick shots as it meant we were reaching out to the right audience.

The majority of the shots in all the trailers we analysed appear to be at night time. The shots are dark and dull. We challenged this convention as most of our shots are outside in daylight with the sun is shining.Characters in our trailer are 14-16 years of age and are therefore still at school.  We did this to imply it's the school holiday or may be thier weekend. We thought this would be more realistic than multiple shots at night time and due to the equiptment we had it would of been difficult with the lighting to get any good footage and therefore felt it would be easier to edit this in post production. We understood however that shots were dark and dull to represent sad times, therefore we darkened some shots in post production, E.g. our establishing shot to show audiences that our trailer involves solomn themes. 


We had trouble with adding sound to our trailer. We had a few sample songs we potentially wanted to use. However when it came to adding the songs, Windows Movie maker did not recognize the software. However we managed to use an online converter and managed to change it to the right software. We also had trouble with sound effects and getting them to play over the music. It was crucial for us to have sound effects and narrative as it told the story a bit more. From our research we noticed most trailers have some sort of narrative as well as a sound track. Therefore it was important the narrative and sound effects we're heard over the soundtrack. 

We also created our own fictional production company in order to feature it in our trailer, as it is a common code and convention to feature this as the oppening shot.

Poster: Again after extensive research we quickly became familiar with the codes of conventions used on posters for films. We used an image that used a direct mode of address, where our main character is looking directly into the camera in order to stimulate eye contact with our targeted audience as an attempt to engage with them and draw them in.


Film magazine: The magazine front cover strongly follows the codes and conventions of other film magazines, with a mast head, cover lines, strap lines and hooks to add value. We also decided to call it the 'review issue' to further add value to the magazine and differentiate it from other magazines.

In terms of breaking codes and conventions we used an image where the main actress was not making direct eye contact with the audience as we were confident that the slight high angle to give the image a slight look of power combined with her makeup look and tattoo (a popular look amoung youth culture and with celebrities) would draw in the reader as they would feel that buying into the magazine they will gain group acceptance and membership. We also decided to have the image in black and white to make it striking and the main focal point of the magazine and also link in well with our poster.




2)How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Overall we have attempted to create three porducts that fit together well. Research into existing media texts shows that Posters and Magazines for films include similar themes, colors and fonts. 


Although trailers are not designed to give away to much of the film storyline we wanted to make sure it was obvious who the main character was. So we made sure the main character was on the Magazine cover, the Poster and was also in the establishing shot of the Trailer. 

By not involving other characters in our ancillary task it causes the audience to speculate there significance within the film. In the poster and magazine cover our main character looks sad, we also made the images black and white to compliment that she is grieving. The shots in our trailer involving other characters are mostly violent and drug related. Therefore implying that these characters are bad and are the reason for our main character being so sad. This allows the audience to wonder what has happened and will entice them in to find out what they have done to make her feel this way.


We did just as much research into existing products for our ancillary tasks as our main product. This is because we realized the importance of the ancillary tasks in complimenting our main product. However most of the research into the main product can be applied to our ancillary tasks. 

Below is all three of our ancillary tasks and the 'RETRIBUTION' masthead on each. It was important for them to all hold some similarities as they are what is going to be recognisable to our target audience. The same font has been used throughout in order to give it order and to make them compliment eachother. However we had to use certain differences in order to comply with the codes and conventions of each text.

Therefore we have certain links between our main product and our ancillary products. It's important for them to link and compliment each other from a marketing perspective as well as making sure all the products our successful in targeting the right audiences. We wanted to make them recognisable and clear, this was why we felt using a simple bold font worked well.

We also wanted to make sure that all of our products were as effective as one another so although we did more research into the trailer, much of our findings could be applied to both our ancillary tasks.

3)What have you learned from your audience feedback?


From the very start of our project it was important to collect audience feedback and research to help us create the best possible outcomes we could for our target audience. By asking other peoples opinions it enabled us to target wider audiences of different ages and genders. We carried this out for all of our three products using the comments and take them on board.

From conducting our audience research at the beginging of the project we quickly realised how helpfull and important it is to know who your targeting. Opinions of others helped us greatly to develop our product.

We initially made our trailer completely black and wight to compliment the poster and magazine. In black and white it expressed to dull and sadness of the film and to support the theme of grief. However we asked some of our peirs what they thought of the trailer poster and the magazine cover as a whole. Most said that after reading the storyline they think that having all three products in black and white made the film look to serious and too sad they would not want to go see the film. They said it would be better if the trailer focused more on the action and exitment in the the film to draw audience's in rather than the grief and sadness because the poster and magazine focused on those themes. Therefore we changed the trailer to be in colour and later decided we liked it better that way anyway.

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

In order to create 3 texts that were equal in standard it was important that we chose our media technologies and software fitting for our needs. Each software used is suitable in its own way, we played to our strengths by working with what we know. Each software and hardware was used for its appropriate purpose.

From a very young age we are taught to use paint for simple things such as copy and pasting, we used this for simple edits like cutting, rotating images. Changing fonts spacings and general simple alterations, due to previous experience it enabled us to complete these simple tasks quickly and efficiently and focus on more important things within our text production. It was also important to use when converting images to enable us to upload pictures and screen shots of our progress on the blog. We also used it to create our storyboard images, and although they were simplistic we felt this way it would be clearer to read and therefore easier to follow.

Photo shop was used for more complicated photo editing within our front cover and poster, it enabled us to remove blemishes and change our images to black and white quickly and effectively. We had gained previous knowledge of the software through previous projects.

Another photo editing software used was Picasa, a programme designed for home users to easily make simple changes to their photos. This was very effective when using the 'shadows', 'highlights' and 'fill light' tools in order to create our desired effect for our images to give them a certain feel, further appealing to our target audience and reflect the themes within our film.

In general though, one of our main software used was page plus. Here we were able to create our poster, magazine front cover and even the text used within the trailer. The software enables you to quickly move, re-scale and rotate images and fonts which was important as we did a lot of changing after discussion. For example with the film poster we took our time when deciding where the mast head would be most effective, page plus allowed us to experiment with lots of different styles and looks without the risk of changing the rest of the text which was very beneficial to us and we feel that it has helped us to create the best text possible.

It also allowed us to add shadowing to our Mast Head which was easy to do and after several different looks we decided that is what we felt looked best. It also meant we could edit colourings simply further allowing us to branch out creatively with no risk of ruining our work.

When creating the trailer we decided to use Windows Movie Maker, with little experience with using this type of software it was a great learning experience and allowed us to experiment with different edits and effects (slow-motion for example) easliy, at times it was a little slow and we did have trouble with the sound but we gradually became more familiar with it and found the software relativley simple to use in terms of editing and changing the length of shots etc. Importantly, it allowed us to created the desired look of our trailer, due to the gloomy nature of the themes within our trailer we wanted to reflect this and therefore decreased the brightness within most of our shots.

In future I would reccomend the use of windows movie maker, although it may take a while to learn once you know what your doing it is relativley simple and can be effective in creating home videos etc, however on a large scale it would differ greatly from software used industruraly.