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

Research & Planning:

Word was an essential part of our coursework. We used it to script, to plan, and print out things we needed whilst filming. It helped us If we needed to write things down so we wouldn’t forget and we also used word to make a questionnaires for our target audience research.  

YouTube allowed for easy distribution of our film and gave us new opportunities for sharing information during research and planning. It wasn’t only used of practical work but it helped us when researching teaser trailers as there are thousands uploaded to it.

Slideshare gave us another way of displaying our work on our blogs which would stop them from becoming too wordy and more visual and interactive for the viewer.

Blogger – we used blogger throughout our coursework. We used it right from the 

brainstorming of ideas, through the development and onto our final finished pieces. We could easily embed pictures, text for visual posts and even videos from YouTube.

Wordle -  Was great fun to uses as it would take a list of words and then arranged them at different angle with different fonts and colours which made our posts more visual and eye catching to look at.

Construction:

IMovie was where we did all of the trailer editing. It is modern and contemporary so we had very up to date software that made editing a smooth and reasonably painless process.

Panasonic HX-DC2 is the camera we used when we began filming. However, after reviewing the footage we realized how bad the image quality was. Its short battery life also caused us many troubles throughout the filming process.

IPhone. Through the use of technological convergence the IPhone gave us a very high spec camera that was always with us, allowing for very easy use. We took photos for posters and filmed our feedback in post-production. It also has filter and cropping abilities to improve said pictures.

Photoshop was used mainly to create our poster and magazine cover. It is the most effective way of turning regular photos into professional looking images. 

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

What we learnt from the audience feedback from the questionnaires (Left) that we sent out was that the target audience of 16 to 21 would be primarily male but however after handing out more questionnaires to mostly females this gave us the opportunity to widen our audience. Addition we found that the people would mostly go to the cinema once every two months or annually. Therefore this means that we would have to time the release of Utopia to co insider with a holiday period such as summer. With a high level of ‘other’ being selected it must mean that either they don’t go to the cinema or they only go when a film captures their interest which we hope to recreate in our production. 

Different way in which we received audience feedback was on our trailer: 

• CHANGING THE NARRATIVES - Originally we were going to show the narrative of two different characters in our film similar to Kidulthood and then see them interact with one another to fight their problems.. We were told this was to hard to follow and didn't work as a teaser trailer. Whilst the film is still about those two characters we only used one narrative in the trailer.

• NO DOG - Owen has a pet Rottweiler that we used in the film. We only had one quick shot of
him that we would use. Rottweilers are associated with crime and urban life. However the
shot didn't fit and only really break up the trailer so we decided not to use it.

• GREEN SCREEN - We had filmed a green screen scene that we would later going to use in our film. It was a news broadcast showing how current and relevant cyber bullying is in modern life. It was deemed by our piers as not necessary for the trailer and so, we didn't use it as it would only hind the trailer not help it.

• GUN FINAL SCENE - The final shot in our film is a gun cocking. The was because of audience feedback as in the original trailer draft we have the character would have a hand full of pill and then the second character would then place his hand on his shoulder and say "Its alright mate". However this sort of gave the film away so the idea of the gun was added to have suspense to the trailer and keep the audience intreged and interest.

Poster & Magazine Feedback:

We handed out the first draft of our Movie poster along with a questionnaire that they could fill out, to our teachers and class mates as these mostly co in sided with our demographic for our target audience, so would mean this information would be more current and relevant. The results where that they generally liked it and was well received but with the following criticisms changing the lighting in the background so the foreground images are clear and to reducing the ‘blur’ effect on the title and the tag line and final to putt our production logo in the bottom right corner as it is a convention of a typical movie posters.  

We did a similar process with our magazine cover and gain feedback on however we could improve its needed. There was only two faults which could be found and that was the we needed to place a website address as this common in magazines as they keep with the modern age of the internet with social networking therefore attracting the online reader as well as the print version. Finally the feedback suggested that we add more selling lines and in the 'Left Third' as the magazine was looking 'empty' and this was not what film magazines looked like.

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

What are our main product and ancillary tasks?

Our main product is our teaser trailer for a social realist film called ‘Utopia’. We will not create the full film, we have just created a promotional package for the film.

Our ancillary tasks are a film poster and a front cover of a magazine featuring our film to accompany our teaser trailer.

How effective is the combination of our products?

Our poster allows our audience to become aware of our film it introduces the two characters and a few of the main themes of the film and the underlining message that ‘Is it Possible?’ and make the audience want to find out what the film is about, and hence, go and see it. It also shows a 'COMING SOON' sign and the bottom, which tells our audience to watch out for its release.

We used the same iconography between all three of the products creating a link between the products so they all give off the same image and representation of our film. Using the name ‘Utopia’ is ironic as the meaning of Utopia is “an imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect” which means that it’s a myth as there is not a place where everything is perfect as this is impossible which creates this irony as the film is about finding the characters utopia but it is the impossible dream as they will not be able to achieve this. Our magazine cover provides more information for our audience. If they have already seen the film they can read the magazine to find out more about the film such as production and interviews with cast members to further enhance their experience of the film. In addition, it offers the opportunity for people who have not seen the film to read about it and then go and want  to see it because of the articles in the magazine.

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

In the construction of our media product a teaser trailer for a film called Utopia we aim to conform to and challenge different codes and conventions typical of media products alike such as the codes and conventions which co inside with similar genre, target audience and mode of production.

Most films in the social realism genre show the main character overcoming their situation or commonly so their involvement in crime and or drugs. The main concept of our trailer is the audience follow the narrative of a boy who is being bullied but more importantly cyber bullied. Cyber bulling is not a typical feature in terms of the theme or plot in most films, however it is a extremely current issue and we saw this as a gap in the market and decided to represent it in our film. Bulling in general however is a conventional theme that is covered by lots of films and even more so for British social realist film genre such as the girl in fishtank and the girl in Kidulthood. A noticeable feature of was when the main narrative focus on bulling or rejection the victims are usually female where we challenged this convention, we decided to use a male character who is being bullied as we feel that this is not addressed enough in other media product and this helped us give our film a USP and therefore possibly attract a wider target audience. Also in terms of plots we decided to remove ourselves from the conventions of drug use and teenagers and hoped to challenge this convention and stereotype which is overly used by films focused on the teenage audience.         

Our location for the teaser trailer conformed to conventions of a British social realist film as it is set in alley ways, parks and council estates similar to locations in Kidulthood. This is England one of the most success British social realist films directored by Shane meadows who is from our hometown of Nottingham. The house where smell has her birthday party is located not far from there I live and have walked past it many times before, with the excess to this house we originally decided to use it as a establishing shot for one of our characters house as it would of helped us convey similar codes and conventions. However after our first draft of the trailer we had to change the narrative and as result the house was no longer needed as one of the homes for our characters but we were keen to use it in our film was it is used in the montage it is hard to make out because it being at night but there are some street light which give it some lighting. Another location we use was an alley way which connotes the loneliness of our main character and represents the dark state of mind that the character is going through as he is holding the gun.

The gun is a typical iconography of teen dramas it is used in many social realist film trailer such as Kidulthood, Adulthood and My Brother The Devil and all of the characters that a wielding the guns are unnerved and comfortable with the gun but at the same time look taken back by the gun which we decided to use in our own trailer. The gun alerts the audience to danger as the trailer has been building up to this point where he is in the alley way with not clear outcome for the character which makes the audience wonder what his outcome will be and therefore want to find out what happens so they would go out and watch it at the cinema.  Our film as a similar scene in kidulthood were the character its attacked the shot is only a few seconds long be is enough time for the audience to know what is happening but not too long to give two much away and keep them guessing why it happen and who did it.    

Audience video feedback + questionnaires on Utopia

We handed out these short questionnaires that our audience could fill in once they had finished watching our trailer. The major criticisms that we found were there was some grammer that should of been changed as well the music could be slightly changed and there could be some alterations to the narrative. However it was clear to us from the feedback that they said that they would more then likley go and see our film if it was at the cinema.

Our Teaser Trailer - Utopia

Our Film Editing

Final Utopia Movie Magazine & Poster

Final Product

 

These are the final finished products of our Magazine front cover and Film poster

 

And this is the Film Poster