A2 MEDIA STUDIES EVALUATION

By Lily Taitia

Introduction

For the A2 Media Studies course we aimed to recreate a film trailer of professional quality whilst following the codes and conventions of film trailers that are created, we also had to create a film poster that corresponded to the film trailer and then also using the previous skills we gained from AS Media Studies whilst creating a music magazine cover. Before all of this began we selected a genre and a target audience that we would like to create the trailer, poster and magazine cover; to gain the many attributes and research whilst also planning on what to uses and gratifications as well as codes and conventions of the media forms.

This course challenged our skills to be creative, constructive and technical, we evolved the skills we had already gained in the first year of Media Studies, we used all of the skills gained in the first year for the development of the media products.

In what ways does your media product

use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real

media products?

1.

Film Trailer

My film trailer develops and challenges forms and conventions of real media products of the usual film trailers created professionally.

My film trailer shows the companies/institutions involved with the development of the film trailer, this will allow the user to get more information about the people involved, this tends to raise the amount of audience that will watch or get attracted to the film trailer because of who is involved for example actors and actresses are used to capture the attention of the audience by many media companies in any industry whether it be music, television or movies etc. This just shows the ‘Star Theory’ as they are only paying more attention because of the people involved.

After watching and researching many other features as well as the codes and conventions used whilst creating the film trailer, for example I ensured that the traditional green MPAA ratings is at the beginning of the trailer, this shows me using the research skills to gain the information about trailers

Film Trailer

This is one of the scene within the film trailer, this shows the location we chose, which in this case is the assembly hall; this was the perfect place as it showed the profession of the video and also enhanced the emotion and atmosphere of a ‘real’ circus show.

To ensure the trailer has the correct attributes and will gain a wide range of audience I had to ensure that the story line was easy to understand and suited the genre, I did this by following the ‘Narrative Theory’ as it was simple to use and set a simple layout/storyboard for the film.

For a trailer the ‘Narrative Theory’ must be short and clean as it is not a film or a show so it must give the audience the information they need to be persuaded into watching the film itself. A trailer mainly consists of ‘flash forwards’ and ‘different characters POV’.

Vladmir Propp talks of a villain , a donor, a helper, a princess, a dispatcher, a hero and a false hero these are all characters in which Propp see to be involved, in this case of the trailer the villain is the ‘Ring Leader’, the ‘other children’ are helpers, and the hero is the girl ‘Leyna’.

Research & Planning

By using the normal professional film trailers already available I researched the details on the film and also watched the trailers to get a better view on how to create my film trailer to see what sort of structure it must follow as well as the audience that are interested in the genre of the trailer.

Whilst having a look at the trailer I can see the expert footage and the texture and features they use in the trailer to attract their target audience. I also researched the information that came from the film to see that the synopsis and the genre of the film was similar to the film trailer. Seeing these trailers and the information gathered I can see that the trailers support the film and give the viewer a reason to watch the films, it attracts the correct audience.

The ways in which my media product has developed, challenged forms and conventions of a real film poster is after using the information that I gained and researched I used the intel of the expert film posters created.

After going through many stages of drafts before coming up with my final film poster draft I had to use the skills that I had gained in AS Media Studies developing a school magazine as well as a music magazine, though I had not created a poster before so this was a new project for me so I was overwhelmed by the little detail that came with designing a film poster but also being able to attain the genre of the film through the poster.

I created this film poster with Adobe Photoshop CS3 to design this, I used original images and the font type I receive at dafont.com as I felt the font in Adobe Photoshop was limited.

Film Poster

Research & Planning

In order to demonstrate and show my understanding of a professional film poster I research and planned coming across posters like these ‘Perfume: The Story Of A Murder’ and ‘Red Riding Hood’, by looking at these posters the simplicity and yet the amount of information that is conveyed within the poster is something that I had to grasp whilst creating my on film poster.

Having looked at the expert film posters I was able to get a wider range of information that helped me to convey the plot of the film trailer and also attract the right target audience.

Film Magazine: Front Cover

Whilst designing the film magazine I was very confident as I had already designed a magazine in AS Media Studies, I had gotten to improve my skills as the year passed on, so in this section of developing the magazine I was confident. For the magazine I had to research and plan the events that the ‘Film’ category of magazines section, so I had to familiarise myself with the way the that the film magazines are laid out and how the function in getting the target audience that they wish for.

My film magazine cover develops and challenges forms an d conventions of a real film magazine is with the different font type that I used to ensure that the magazine suits the type of genre that the film was portraying, I had to also ensure that I was following the theme, layout and codes and conventions of other film magazines . It was a struggle for the texture and features of the film magazines as they are more interesting and eye catching for the audience. As the designing of the film magazine progressed the development of how the film magazine was going to look like also started to mature development into the right film magazine.