Media Evaluation

SamMorris

IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

Our teaser trailer ‘Conspiracies’ is an action thriller film with elements of mystery involved. I feel that our completed teaser has indeed used, developed and mainly challenged conventions of Action Thriller films on the market. Through extensive research using the internet and media text books we were able to follow all the conventions expected within this genre; e.g. editing, camera movements, shot types, lighting, props, mise-en-scene, transitions, special effects and the narrative of the story are all things we needed to consider in order to make a gripping teaser. Through using website such as YouTube to watch teaser trailers so we could take notes from these and apply the narrative and the conventions to our teaser.

The most relevant forms and conventions we relate to our genre and the audience expectation of our genre is music, mise-en-scene, and length of shots was vital in order to meet the audience expectation. It was also important for us to not give away too much of the narrative of the story but give snippets to the consumer and use this as a plug which will draw the consumer in wanting to go and watch the whole film. We did this effectively with the narrative and this way we knew that we had an excellent teaser trailer to broadcast. Our trailer followed similar conventions to a film named ‘Shooter’ which carries that same narrative theory of our teaser which is the ‘enigma code’ and the ‘Hermeneutic code’ which I will touch on shortly. The average time for a teaser trailer is 1 minute to 1 minute 30 seconds, so we had our trailer at 1.30 seconds so we could put as much as we could but we were still cautious about giving the whole narrative away. But our final piece was very similar to that of the research of trailers carried out on YouTube such as ‘Shooter’. See Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogb72h4vYKU

It was important to follow the forms of genre but also to challenge it in the trailer rather than all fast action some of it is very subtle, which is challenging forms and conventions of Action Thriller, using subtle transitions and one subtle scene but quickly transitioning to a high intense scene I thought was very effective. However there was one convention that we missed, using a recognised film distributer on our film such as paramount, studio canal rather than ‘shotg8 productions’ that would give the product more identity I believe.

Narrative theory is a method of deconstructing the narrative of a text in detail, and finding the meaning of a text, or this could be the layout of how a story will evolve. There are many famous tehorists who have different theories and we researched those theories and selected ONE of theorists’ that was most applicable to out production we desired to make.

Rolande Barthes was a theorist who was interested in concepts of negotiated meaning between institution and audience, he believed that everyone is individual consumption and their own ideas of meaning from texts, he believed that the cultural context of consumption in media becomes as important as the content of the text itself. He explained different theories or know as ‘codes’ for different narratives that apply to different forms and conventions of certain genre, so in relation to our teaser trailer, following Bathes theories we applied two of his theories to our product, they were the ‘enigma code’ and the ‘hermeneutic code’.

Firstly the enigma code is probably the most well known to consumers as a hook to make sure that after they have observed the first text, a mystery is left and this is the hook that makes the audience want to solve the mystery themselves, this is a technique that is linked to quite old fashioned texts with the ‘come back next week and see what happens’ idea. This is used in many trailer and even trilogy films such as ‘lord of the rings’ or ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’. Or in soaps Eastenders would be a classic example of this technique.

Secondly the ‘Hermeneutic code’ refers to any element of the story that has not been fully explained and hence fourth becomes a mystery to the reader. So the full truth is avoided, for example linking this theory to our products we used something called EQUIVOCATIONS which means incomplete answers which are teaser trailers does pose to the audience, and this provides expectation onto the audience to go and find out for themselves the answers. So from looking at both of these theories we could apply this to our text and also linking this theory to existing media texts such as ‘Shooter’ and ‘James Bond Quantum of Solace’ see trailer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6acw690AqQ) we were able to create the desired narrative to link to our genre (Action Thriller) , and meet the audience expectation and gratification we could make our trailer effective and professional to the audience.

Watch suspense and mystery in the final scene in pirates of the Caribbean (click picture to watch)

Our teaser trailer was very intertextual which means borrowing forms, styles and conventions from other texts, for example in our AS production we created an opening two minutes sequence, we took the idea of a ‘spoof genre’, e.g. Films such as Johnny English, which is a mock for secret agents and we used Johnny English as our incentive to make an entertaining and hilarious production. However in this years production in our planning we were thinking of producing something similar but we both came to a conclusion that we were to create a Teaser with a lot more meaning, and something more serious. Which we both saw as a challenge as we are very comedy bound people, but this was a challenge we relished. We wanted to create suspense, action and mystery. From extensive research on YouTube watching various trailers that matched our genre, we realised in order to make a powerful trailer we needed to incorporate typical conventions in our trailer fast before even thinking about developing and challenging them. Such as Props, lighting, music, transitions and effective shots. When we compared films such as ‘The Bourne films’ and ‘James bond’ and also the narrative is similar, the types of shots, the length of shots are all similar. (see first slide s for link). The two main shots for me was the torture scene, and the quick jump cuts back to the dialogue in London , the torture scene, low lighting and the setting of the container created a very intense atmosphere. The fats change from the free & vibrant atmosphere in London was very similar to that of a James bond movie apart from we developed the fast transitions back & forward between the two settings. Also in general having London as an iconic setting is so effective as when the audience see the sights they automatically know that it is London, which is the place where so many things occur and that's the ideology and terminology i wanted to create with the audience

The main part of our trailer that I believed where we challenged forms and conventions of real media texts was certainly the antagonist of the story, which are the government rather than having the government as the good people who we want to win. The government have become a corrupt enemy, rather than in James bond (who works for the government) and having foreigners as the enemy, having the government portrayed as corrupt is giving them a new identity and changing peoples mindset towards the government. As the real question I wanted people to start asking themselves after watching the release of the film is. Is the government corrupt in certain areas and us everyday life? This is what I wanted to achieve from using a powerful narrative to broaden people and make them a little more open minded. 4

Using , developing and challenging

Overall I think that we developed, used

and challenged all the conventions for

an Action movie, even though I think it

was quite difficult to use and develop

conventions as we used all the

conventions that an audience would

expect to see in an action thriller trailer.

I think the most exiting part is

challenged representations of people

and organisation I found so exiting to

do. Our narrative theory was perfectly

matched to our conventions and

portrayed the images we wanted to.

Aslo the setting pleased me the most

HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE COMBINATION OF YOUR MAIN PRODUCT AND ANCILLARY TEXTS

The ancillary texts that I worked on with my partner away from the main production was my magazine front cover and our website for our film. Firstly talking about how effective the combination was between the website and the main production I think was so effective to the consumer. We wanted to portray the website to the film as similar as we could. The website is an excellent form of viral marketing for our fans where they can browse the website and read information about characters, and more of the plot. I think that the website portrays the genre of the film well, and all the generic forms and style and We stuck to 3 colours, white black and yellow, 3 distinctive colours that all coincide well,. I think that the fact that we have parliament in the background is powerful as that's one of the main shots and then the main picture on the home page is the empty chair, it may be only chair but it creates a lot of thought to the consumer as they start wondering, is agent Morris dead? So I think the combination of the website to the film is brilliantly done and looks professional with all the ratings issued by top newspapers and cinema magazines. With real film websites I have looked at such as www.terminatorsalvation.com coincided with the genre and the trailer so it was important that the combination worked well. Link to site: http://site.google.com/site/conspiraciesmovie/home

My second ancillary product was my own magazine front cover, after extensive research on what conventions are on magazines (see blogger.com) . It wasn’t as easy to link to the main task as the website was, but through simple techniques and through research I learned that it is possible that colour and picture can tell you a lot. I knew that you need something that will be unique and to catch the audiences eye is vital to an effective magazine cover, after researching I found that the best one to take ideas was Empire film magazine, as the always seemed to make excellent representations just on a front cover for example one i really admired was the hellboy magazine which everything was red (represents death and hell) and the ‘EMPIRE’ letters were on fire which I thought was such a fantastic link to the idea of the film, With my magazine i wanted to make something dark and gloomy, with a certain effect. And to keep the range of colour to a minimum. As least colours turns out more effective, eventually i went with an old fashioned black and white shading effect which worked really well

With the genre of the film. Also the main idea of a magazine is to broaden the market for my film. Overall I think the combination between the magazine and the product itself.

Overall I think that both ancillary products look authentic professional and powerful and are suited to equip for media in the online age, and if they both can be a success there's no doubt that the main production will be an even bigger success as a movie. We received very positive feedback from our class mates and we also have a sixth form forum where people posted their ideas and general thoughts on our ancillary products. Plus me and my partner gathered feedback from a B-TEC business class who are expertly in marketing and they all gave positive feedback, which shows my magazine and our website is adaptive to a wide spread audience and is very authentic.

Above: hellboy magazine cover.

FEEDBACK We received very positive feedback from our class and the Sixth form

forum about our narrative in particular and the genre and the plot in general, people gave positive answers about our shot types, our transitions and also lighting and we received a lot of praise for the setting we choose for the trailer. Also the mystery and the enigma technique was praised as well, they thought that the teaser looked very authentic and also they thought the sane for our ancillary products, and on the sixth form forum there wasn’t any negative comments.

There was one negative to our teaser and i will touch on that in the next question from what have I learned.

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM YOUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK The main thing I have learned from my audience is that your audience is who really matters and without

them giving you their ideas on what they think you can improve on and being open about this is vital in order to giving your production that cutting edge that the audience are requiring from you.

For our rough cut teaser we set ourselves to improve 3 aspect, music, transition and sound, these are vital firstly with music the rough cut had no music and seemed plane and boring. This has thought me that music is so important as it creates the atmosphere you want the audience to fell apart of weather its scary or fast paced. We had a slight subtle soundtrack for an ‘Action Film’ but its fitted perfectly with the ideology we wanted to create, the music was western but everyone thought that the music suited the shots being shown. Also we had a minor amount of transitions so that was important to get right as a teaser requires fast pace and quick transitions of shots to entertain the audience rather than let the get bored.

The main thing we received negative feedback in the rough cut before the final cup was one shot with sound being affected which we took a lot of time editing to make it sound better for the audience, it was the shot where the two protagonists were looking on parliament, but we learned that maybe when filming being prepared fro any conditions is vital, luckily we have such good use of technologies so we blocked the sound but apart from that feedback was positive and we learned a lot just from that short shot.

Also we learned on how a film is perceived by the audience (reception theory) where our soul goal was to have the audience on Agent Morris's side and I think we achieved that through general feedback everybody was on Agent Morris’s side and wanted him to defeat the government, from just following simple principles in media theory we were able to make an effective production which I believe is outstanding.

HOW DID YOU USE MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH, PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGES?

Firstly, during the making of our production we used many digital technologies in order to make a different, authentic and professional production. We used many that i have never used before and have expanded my skilled in the media digital world.

Firstly, we had to plan our production, we needed to story board simply all we did was use a digital camera with no implications whatsoever this was very simple to operate compared to other we would encounter throughout the production period. In order to upload our picture we used a scanner that enabled it to be uploaded onto our blog.

Secondly with no internet, no production. This is because we need the internet to broadcast and research, in the planning phase and throughout research i used YouTube. A public broadcasting site without YouTube i wouldn't of been able to research teaser trailers and therefore my production would not be of a high standard, YouTube is very easy to use and access on the net.

Our key digital access is most certainly blogger. Without blogger we wouldn’t be able to publish our work, so effectively no one would be able to see it therefore no point in making a production. Blogger allows to publish power points, pictures, and all sorts of software. With a lot of help from blogger Conspiracies was a major success. It was easy to use you just set up an account very similar to how face book. And then you create and share. The whole ethic of web 2.0!!!

I also used slide share to convert my PowerPoint research onto my blog, so I could say no blogger, no production but these are exceedingly important to the production as showing research is so important.

The main part of all the technologies was the actual filming camera which was the JVC-D860, 3which was an excellent camera to film with and way easy to use, the lighting automatically adjusted itself when required, and the sound was outstanding and the picture literally HD ready which was immense. From getting our footage onto the editing programme which is Adobe Premier Pro, which we thought was excellent last year to edit footage and still was easy and with a simple tutorial everything was easy to use such as cutting and transitions. Moving up a step this year from Adobe me moved onto using I Mac which is apple McIntosh this brought our skills just onto a completely different level, we decided to stick to adobe and then once we had roughly cut what we wanted we transferred these onto the Mac, and the application we used was I movie which just was so enhance compared to adobe. Transitions were easier to make just on the click of the button. We used I movie to edit the movie to standards.Also we used I DVD which created our DVD menu which all looked so professional and authentic and considering we only got these applications halfway through the production in no time my film making skills and media product creativity has hit another level which is amazing for me. We also was going to use I web for our website but it looked very complicated to use even though it looked affective we thought that doing it through Google was much easier.

That is all of the technologies used stage by stage in the production and i think interacting with these new technologies has enhanced me as a producer and as a person in general. I felt so privileged to work with some of the technologies i worked with and overall our production was a major success and will be a big hit theatres soon I'm sure of it!