Evaluation

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

From research and analysis as a group we decided that it was essential to use various forms of conventions that are typically linked to a fairytale. We also had to include modern conventions to capture modern audiences attention and convey the setting of the film.
One of the main areas we focused on was the captions. We decided that due to our modern setting, costumes and general mise en scene which conveys the typical romantic comedy genre, we would need to portray to the audience the fairytale like storyline. We used these in chronological order to illustrate the individual storyline to the audience and capture their interest in the twisted modernized fairytale. Whilst analysing other film trailers which genres parallel our attention was captured by a particular open sequence which is in both 'Ella Enchanted' and 'A Cinderella Story' which are also both well known successful adaptations of classic fairy tales.

The narrators both begin with the fairy tale line of a book 'Once upon a time..' which is a stereotypical convention of a fairytale and implies this genre to the trailer. We decided to use this opening as our own and like in Ella Enchanted, inserted the captions upon a story book. Instead of using typical fairy tale images for all of our pictures accompanying the captions, we took a selection of images of our actors to use. By doing this we aimed to create a contrast between the fairytale genre and modern pictures, which would keep our trailer different to average film teasers and make it more interesting for our viewers. 

The plot is another example of how we followed a typical romantic comedy genre. From analysis of modern trailers such as 'A Cinderella Story' and 'Mean Girls' and 'Failure To Launch' we were able to determine a typical exciting plot with some characters which paralleled to Propp's theory. The setting is one form of convention which we did challenge, as we only filmed in one key location for the majority of the shots which was at our school. However we did this not out of convenience but to again capture our target audiences attention, as they have spent the majority of their lives at school and this is a setting they we can relate to. It could be understood by some that by using one main location it would be a disadvantage and so we decided to also film in a variety of other locations, such as: at a park, bus stop, roads, and many more. Within the trailer the majority of our shots are at school as we felt that this was important for the target audiences attention as the specific location kept the plot simple and understandable. We also decided to use a  variety of  shots such as: close ups, medium shots, long shots, bird eye view shot, this helped us to keep our film teaser which are used in this present day and keep the audiences attention throughout the trailer. One example of a shot that we used was a close up of the popular girl not getting her way and that her enemy has taken her Prince Charming away from her. We used this shot to show the viewers that the character was unhappy and angry with the princess. By showing an angry face we made the character push up one eyebrow which worked extremely well.




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


We decided that by keeping a consistent theme between all three of our products, our trailer would be more recognizable and memorable to our target audience. Each product contains obvious parallels between them, such as the title 'Hes Mine' in the same text and colour and also the images with the main characters which appear in both the poster and the magazine front cover as well as the film trailer. Having the characters relate to the audience will gain the viewing. We completed our trailer first and then decided to create some sketch's of initial ideas of poster and magazine layouts. We also brainstormed several ideas of images to appear on the poster and front cover of our magazine which would help the typical teenage Romantic Comedy plot. To extend the link between the teaser trailer and our other products, as a group we came up with a logo which was a heart shape which was used in all our final pieces. Overall, I feel that as a group we successfully created a lot of consistency in our piece which was our target as we felt that it was important for the audience to be able to link each of our different advertisements.


3.  What have you learned from your audiences' feedback?

I have learnt a lot from my audiences feedback, that as a group, we posted our final production pieces on Youtube in the understanding that we would recieve some critical and benificial feedback. Our audience felt we had a very interesting storyline and were eager to find out the ending. Even though some of our  critics felt that some of the narrative captions didn't make sense with the voice over but they were only able to understand it from the written captions itself making our production successful. Narrative appears to attract the viewers to want to go and see this film. Other critics commented on the modern twist to a fairy tale and quick changing shots, this then made the final outcome more exciting and interesting. Even though the main purpose of all our shots was the location of the school some people felt a wider range of locations were needed and that it may have been useful to have carried out different surveys for this, by asking our target audience which locations we could have taken in account for future reference.

Stereotypical fairytale setting, although an unrealistic location for filming.

A modern setting, in London which could've been applied to the plot.

















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

I used YouTube to find examples of particularly effective teaser trailers with a similar genre to our theme, of a typical convention which i felt would capture the target audiences attention. I posted these on my blog and carried out focused in depth analysis's of my personal favourites in order to get a wide knowledge of the typical conventions used within these trailers. 

I also concentrated on Costume, Setting, Narrative and Mise En Scene to help inspire me in my own ideas and adaptations of different targets of the teaser. Whilst we didn't want to reuse any of the previous trailers used, we analysed a wide variety of trailers and wrote down their effective techniques i felt that we could combine and create a plan for our own trailer. I posted these on my blog and used it as a sort of diary extract to note down all my research into theory, existing pieces of media which relate to our products and the planning of our own product. By using the blog i had a clear list of all these things that could relate back to them in the planning and evaluation of the final three products. I also used YouTube to post our  final product in an attempt to receive some critical and positive feedback.

 

We were also given the resources in order to edit and complete our final products. For this stage in our assignments, we used the Macs variety of programs to suit each of our products.

 Photoshops effective tools enabled us to edit these quite easily and also to add particular individual effects to our pieces, such as the logo which we found on the 'shapes' tool, or to clone part of an image to the background as we liked the colour better than the background.

Firstly we used Photoshop to edit our captions for the trailer and to edit and complete the majority of our poster and magazine front cover. The images we used for these covers were taken by a camera. We used a tripod in order to take the best shots we could. We also used lighting in our Drama department in our school as this helped to improve the images we were taking and provided us a simple effective backdrop. All of these contained a variety of different layers, from tag lines to titles in the front cover of a Magazine and Poster, to the narrative and logos included in the captions.

To focus on the editing, we used Premier Pro, which allowed us to edit, cut and erase any footage we had taken. Through Premier Pro we added a series of effects to our trailer, such as the turning of pages as the storybook changes to the shots we had the sound effect of a book turning a page. Premier Pro also allowed us to speed up shots, slow them down or even rewind the shots among many other effective tools. As a group we also debated using some magical effects which would emphasize on the fairytale twist, as well as the captions. However due to timing we did not know whether this would be possible and wanted to focus on finishing our final three products first as these effects weren't a convention we planned on using. Tripods and video cameras were also used in filming the footage for our teaser, we tried to ensure as much filming time as possible as we felt that the shots involved were more important to creating a successful trailer than the actual storyline but still keeping it as close to the stortline as possible as the shots on the trailer are what capture the attention of the audience.

Overall the use of media technology used within our planning, research and evaluation of our products was essential as it allowed us to carry out in depth analysis, note this down chronologically and edit our products to maximum potential.