1. My Evaluation of all 3 products (Trailer, Magazine Cover and Poster) By Dayle Alex Latham Candidate: 6192 Year 13

2. Secondly, we looked at various ways of making it easy to tell who is the villain and who are the protagonists, so we went for the easiest and time efficient technique. We also started to notice a pattern in the trailers, those who had been singled out as villains or were guilty of something would wear black or be followed by a black figure of some sort, for example: a crow or dark clouds anything which represented evil or darkness. So we chose to dress the villain in a dark attire, a black coat, black trousers and black shoes, with aviator sunglasses that had mirrored lenses to hide his eyes the villain represents evil and darkness which is why we chose so many black clothes as it was a repeated (Steve Neale) convention throughout most of the trailers we watched. Throughout the trailer we followed certain conventions we had deconstructed in other Soap Opera trailers specifically Eastenders and Hollyoaks. The following are conventions we chose to follow: Non-diegetic soundtrack having a symbiotic relationship with the action on screen, a clear and obvious outline of a villain (Propp) and protagonists in the new Soap Opera and finally we chose to change the colour of the flashbacks to black and white from colour the idea was collected from: Hollyoaks Promo: The Wedding where we agreed it had a very dystopian and unsettling effect. Firstly, I chose to use the soundtrack because it was ironic and gothic as it was a happy and upbeat song (you are my sunshine) accompanied with a slow, dark and gothic instrumental which highlighted our themes of: Drama, Hate and Love the lyrics expressed love and drama, whilst the instrumental conveyed the idea of hate with its dark and gothic connotations. Certain lyrics deepened this idea, for example: Youll never know dear how much I loved you and Please dont take my sunshine away as they both connote how the villain feels betrayed by his ex girlfriend, as his sun is being taken away from him therefore the lyrics have voiced the villains inner emotions and feelings. 3. Lastly, by having the flashbacks in black and white, it hides a connotation that his thoughts of his ex and her new boyfriend are dark and could lead to something terrible which travels deeper in to the psychological side of the villains mind. The constant jump cuts to reality and back to his head, show how what hes just witnessed has clearly messed him up, as he cant stop thinking abut his ex and her new boyfriend conveying anger and hate towards them both. Infuriated with what the villain has seen, he lights up a cigarette as quickly and then moments later stamps it into the floor cigarette smokers tend to suggest that cigarettes calm them down this clearly underlines how angry the villain is and smokers amongst an audience could make personal relation to his situation. These small enigma codes all add up to one over riding image; The Villain. To expand on our trailer and give something new to an audience, we decided that we should place our social media idents at the end of the trailer in order to encourage a wider fan base, exploit the new Soap Opera further, get it as many likes on Facebook and make it trend on Twitter. This way were not just finding a niche audience that views BBC Three, we are going much further and reaching a worldwide audience through the worldwide web. 0:57 0:59 1:01 4. I decided to use a white outer glow to keep to the conventions I had seen across nearly every Soap magazine I wanted it to follow this convention so it would be recognized as a soap magazine, but stand out because of its bold magazine ident. Its shape is original and the title is so basic but works well, as it stops you in your track and draws you in to have a look Britains Newest Soap Mag. I also made this main image the largest on the magazine front cover to again keep to what I had seen in other Soap magazines it makes The Avenue the center of attention and indicates to the reader there is a new Soap story headlining on this new magazines front cover. Other Soap stories from Eastenders, Coronation Street and Hollyoaks are around the edge of the magazine in order to keep the main image the biggest focus, all with mini straplines keeping the audience in suspense for their favorite Soap Operas. This followed the conventions of every Soap magazine I had looked at on the market, having the Soap Opera ident was a ritual thing too, which is why I reproduced it on to my own magazine front cover. I expanded on my magazine by using Puff/promotion to get a higher amount of buyers as its a new film that has come out for children, which is also popular to teenagers and adults some people will simply buy in order to obtain a free Despicable Me minion toy, but this will also help to sell the magazine more easily, I chose to do this because I believed it had good relation with the Soap Opera genre and sales. Incorporating a Twitter and Facebook logo makes the magazine unique as I didnt see this done on any other magazines, but I thought it was a convention I should carry across from my trailer and poster to show similitude in all 3 products I had created and like the trailer help the new magazine Trend on the social network. 5. Firstly, I used the main characters from the new Soap Opera: The Avenue to gain an establishment of characters who will be the main focus of the new Soap. This is a convention that was derived from most posters and billboards that I had looked at involving film and various television promotion. Secondly, the point of call information is extremely important which is why I have placed it in as this gives the audience all the information they will need for The Avenue, most of the posters I saw for new TV shows and films had information on release dates and show times. Thirdly, the ident is the biggest writing on the poster to exploit the new Soap to the public eye, by being the boldest piece of text, its the part that will stick in the audiences head the most, which will get people talking about it. Lastly, I placed the BBC Three ident in to the poster, in order for the audience to have a clear idea of what channel they can find The Avenue on this is a commonality amongst the posters and billboards I have seen, which is why I felt it was relevant to have it in my poster. Most posters follow the convention of having their tagline under the title or the point of call information, so its all together and presented in an orderly fashion thats where I thought I would be different and place my strapline around the outside of my poster to act as a picture frame, to convey the following suggestion to the audience; that the pictures are in a frame because they are frame worthy images and that their picture perfect to create an ironic connotation as thats clearly not the case with what they see on the poster. 6. The convention/theme of a break up runs through all three products, which is represented in the trailer through the action on screen, when the audience see the villain (Propp) following his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend to express in more detail that he is following his ex lover we chose to have Harriet (ex girlfriend) show an extremely shocked facial expression when I (the villain) enter the pub, to convey the idea that she is totally blown away by the villain turning up. It is then portrayed in the magazine cover through the main headline under the new Soap Opera trailer main image, which quotes: Hes Back! But who will she choose . The poster then utilizes the same theme by having the villain stalk his ex girlfriend and the new boyfriend through Facebook connoting the trending phrase; Facebook stalker as well as revealing they break up and that there is a past between them, as the audience can see the images of the ex girlfriend and villain in the background of the poster. The verbal code; She loves me, she loves me not further emphasizes the narrative idea of a break up. Secondly, the villain is shown as the antagonist throughout the three products by the use of dark colours to indicate that he is a dark and villainous character, which is supported by the fact I kept his attire all black across all the products I produced. This was used to get a familiarity with the characters in this new Soap opera, so that the public can easily identify the characters across all three products. 7. Thirdly, the social media convergence spreads across all 3 products to establish a much wider fan base/audience through the ever growing social networks such as: Facebook and Twitter. With it being across all of them more people will start looking in to it creating a wave through social networks getting the new Soap Opera as many viewers as possible. Lastly, the ident of: The Avenue has been put in to all three products to establish the new Soap Operas brand and get it out there and make it a recognizable ident to more than just a selected amount of viewers. 8. If the video analysis doesnt work please go to blog page where the video will be embedded, thank you very much. 9. From the feedback I received of Jordan I could collate pros and cons for my three media products and see where I could rectify certain faults. I gathered these points for the trailer; there was a clear theme established, dark and sad were two themes that were highlighted for Jordan. At first it made him feel uncertain and unsettled, the music hinted to him that something bad had happened or was going to happen. The enigma codes worked well as small hints were all leading up to the final action of The Avenue and Jordan noticed this very easily. The connotations behind the soundtrack were picked up on and Jordan believed that it created a sad and angry feeling when he was watching the trailer. This made me learn that I had successfully crafted a trailer that would give off the themes of a gothic nature. The strokes around the main characters made them stand out on the magazine front cover and made them look interesting, which made me realize following conventions of other magazines made my magazine stand out, even though so many before me have done this same convention. Jordan had picked up on the hinted connotations behind the pictures he realized that the two protagonists seemed happy, whilst the villain seemed sad and jealous, which is what I was going for I had clearly identified key ways of opening up the audiences/readers minds. I learnt also that by putting small Soap Stories from different Soaps increased the overall value of the magazine because it would still be something of interest to those who dont intend to watch; The Avenue as it has their other favorite Soaps. I followed the codes and conventions of other magazines very closely and this has paid off. The representation of the villain was clearly understood, as the attire became recognizable by the time Jordan had got to the poster the villain was branded as the antagonist throughout. He believed that it connoted evil and darkness within the character. The picture of the new boyfriend and his ex girlfriend in black and white connotes that its been designed that way because their happiness is the villains demise. This also connotes how they were all colourful and happy on the outside when they were together, but now; she has left him to love another all the happiness is gone and he's dark inside. The only negative that was given throughout the three products was that some pictures in the poster were unclear in what they were representing, so this is something at a later date I could rectify to make up for this negative. 10. Canon 500 Sony Pro HVR Z1 Four cameras were being used in order to catch several shots at different angles and with various shot types; this also helped to save time and get a lot more footage in a sufficient time period. The two types of cameras that were used to film; The Avenue were called: Canon 500 and the Sony Pro HVR Z1. In order to edit the footage we had caught on, we had to use Adobe Premiere CS6. In this software we created various folders, which were called; bins, in order to keep the footage split up in to groups, which made it a lot easier to edit and find specific scenes. This made life a lot easier for my group and I, because everything was so much easier to find. To control the volume of the soundtrack we used key frames in order to be able to lower the volume, tone and pitch of the sound and place voice overs/SFX on top of the sound track without there being a sound clash, it being to loud (decibels being to high) or having to cut the soundtrack entirely just so the point of call information can be heard probably, instead we were able to just make the soundtrack softer and it could just run smoothly without any clashes throughout the trailer. Lastly, we used the black and white effect to have the flashbacks contrast against the coloured footage and create dark and dystopian notions to the audience about the thoughts of the villain being evil and dark. 11. The outer glow was used to convey conventions of other Soap Opera magazines, I selected the image and added a white outer glow, by clicking on layer style/properties in Photoshop CS6 this was to suggest key connotations of good and evil; dark and light. I became more familiar with the quick selection tool which helped save time, made the images look much more professional throughout the magazine and poster images. It made the edges and the image all round look a lot more smoother, at AS level I used the rubber tool to remove background and parts of the images I was editing, which was time consuming and a bit messy at times, so having gained this knowledge it helped me edit faster and have my images cut and clean a lot faster than they would have been done last year. Lastly, by using the software Photoshop I was able to lower the opacity of the background images and could make the black and white image of the villain stalking his ex girlfriends Facebook, stand out a lot more than it already did, also the point of call information could be seen better and more clearly. 12. When presenting my work, I used the blog page Wordpress to display my research material and finished pieces of work, such as; The Avenue trailer, Magazine front cover and my poster. This makes viewing a lot more easier as its all embedded on to one page, which makes finding specific pieces of my work a lot easier for others. To embed my work on to this page I used a sharing blog site called Slideshare this allows me to embed work from Microsoft Word; Excel and PowerPoint, this way the viewer can easily scroll through my blog page without having to click on to links, which may not always works, this way there is a reassurance that the viewer will not have trouble looking at all aspects of my work. Throughout my coursework for my pre production tasks I had to use the following Microsoft software: Word, Powerpoint and Excel. I used Word to present certain pieces of work differently, for example when producing a letter to the council and record label I used Word as it would not be suitable to use Powerpoint as it doesn't fit the purpose and would look unprofessional, which could lead to getting little or no response from the occupant. The format of Word makes it look a lot more formal, which will engage the reader in to taking the letter more seriously, which overall is what you want in a response. As for the; prop list; script; production log and locations it was a lot more neater to present them in Word as it created a clean overall layout for these pieces, however if I could go back and change the format for the locations I would use Powerpoint to present it as I believe it would look a lot better, having the pictures contrast against the words on separate slides, an altogether have a better look. Powerpoint was used to present my: textual analysis and storyboard as it was a tidy and presentable format, the images allowed me to work from visual elements and gave me something to work from when producing this piece of pre production work. Having these two pieces of work on Powerpoint allowed me to place a large amount of information in a small space, to avoid it becoming tedious for the reader; not only did I use the storyboard on the day of filming to help know which scene came next and which camera shot/angle we were using but it also helped me post production to get a general understanding of how the trailer would look when we began editing. 13. Value of Social Media The benefits of using Social Media are endless, here are a few examples that I found: Increased business exposure Facebook and Twitter alone serve reportedly 1.5 billion users globally, this means that by using social media I am more likely to have my magazine seen as it could become a trend on Twitter or have a high number of likes on Facebook which would lead to it being on peoples News Feeds increasing the overall value of the new trailer and/or magazine. This is why social media was a huge benefit to our group as it allowed our trailer and magazine to become more exposed to the public and more specifically the prosumers. Insight about customers social media provides a social area where I can interact with potential customers/audience about new Soap Opera The Avenue and the new magazine Soap! I can also establish what they are already looking for and what they really want in a magazine or trailer. Reduced marketing expenses social media/networking is extremely cost efficient as its free to create a page on Facebook and Twitter, it is also very cheap to pay for promotional ads if we wanted to go that one step further, roughly I could spend 0.59p on a targeted Facebook ad and I could generate from this 1 result; thats one more result than I would have had, and that one more result could be the catalyst to my magazine and trailer exploding on to the market. The internet served crucial for secondary research, throughout my coursework I used the internet to constantly back up my ideas and points that I had made on certain areas of work, especially when involving figures and statistics. It also helped me to source various images for my magazine, trailer and poster which helped add originality to my work, for example having social media idents present throughout all pieces of work especially in the trailer as this made it unique to other Soap Opera trailers that are present today. 14. When looking at which technologies and software to combine in order to show my work to others I decided to use Powerpoint and Slideshare, this was due to the formats suiting one another so well. Slideshare allowed me to not only deliver my pieces of work and other post production pieces but it also helped aid as a visual factor. It also allowed me to embed my work easily in to my blog page on Wordpress, which was beneficial to myself and others as they dont have to click on links, which may or may not work every time, which made the reliability of my work much higher. By using this software it also helped me gain time and professionalism in my work, I could find work a lot quicker, assess where I needed to adjust work and make edits, it helped extremely in my time consumption as I didnt have to make links instead I could just imbed the URL code straight on to Wordpress and it was then visible on my blog page, without having to follow a series of directions to find my work.