To be able to do our chosen product we firstly had to come up with some ideas of what our genre was going to be and what the teaser trailer was going to be about. We came up with lots of ideas (shown on a diagram on my blog), but in the end decided to do a drama. After watching many different teaser trailers we decided to do something similar to ‘My Sisters Keeper’. This was due to by doing this genre and that kind of trailer we felt we had the chance to be really creative. After doing a lot of research and watching many other teaser trailers my group and I knew that it was going to be challenging as we needed to make our target audience want to watch more but still not give the whole plot away. We needed to create something that was as short as our questionnaire results show but still say enough to make the audience intrigued. Once we had decided what we wanted to do for our film trailer we then needed to research and look into film magazine front covers and advertising film posters. To find out what we needed to do to meet our audience’s expectations we created three questionnaires, one for our teaser trailer, another for our film magazine front cover and also one for our film advertising poster. These questionnaires were filled in by 30 people of a mixed gender and age. By creating the questionnaires we thought that it would give us a much better idea of what we needed to do for our target audience and we were right they gave us the answer’s of what age group to aim it at, the length of the teaser trailer, the colours that would be good to on both the poster and film magazine cover and much more. Our questionnaire results showed us that we needed to aim our teaser trailers at mainly females aged between 17-40. They showed us that our ancillary tasks needed to be bright, bold and generally stand out to the audience and meet up to others already on the market. We were then ready to start our planning for the final products. We created a storyboard, time schedule, group and individual schedule, font tests, props list, call sheet, shooting schedules, costume plan and a draft poster plan and magazine front cover. By doing a lot of planning we were sure we would then be able to meet our target audience’s expectations.
Even though we did so much planning, we still came across a few problems. When editing our teaser trailer we found that it was telling the audience far too much information about the plot rather than keeping them intrigued, this then mean we had to edit a lot more than we had originally planned, the parts we edited out were Myself as a young child, played by Ellaouise Carroll and also we did a shot of Aimee in a graveyard which we also realised was unnecessary. When trying to upload our questionnaire results which were as a voice recording for some reason they just would not work, i tries youtube and lastfm but they still would not work, therefore for one of our questionnaires the voice recordings are not there. A member of our group (Elle) was better at editing than myself and Beth which meant she was the main editor and myself and Beth would give the ideas. When it came to creating our magazine and poster Elle insisted she had a editing programme on her home computer which if we gave her the ideas she would edit them together for us. We didn’t cross any major problems when creating our magazine front cover but found it a little bit more challenging when meeting our target audiences needs. Not many problems occurred when creating the film poster just a few last minute changes needed to be added. Overall, we didn’t come across any major problems and the problems that we did come across we fixed very quickly and got the outcome that we were hoping for.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Throughout my three media texts, i have used forms and conventions that develop and challenge already existing media texts.
Firstly, i am going to explain how our teaser trailer develops or challenges existing media products. After researching many other teaser trailers we then knew exactly what we needed to do to match up to the same kind of expectations that people have of a teaser trailer. Our teaser trailer matched up to be between 30seconds and 1minute which most other teaser trailers that we researched were as well. We used two songs for our teaser trailer, one which showed the sad theme that we were trying to make our film to be and the other song we felt showed a bit more excitement happening. By using two songs I definitely think it gave more excitement to our audience and perhaps added more to them wanting to watch the film itself. Another convention that we used was at the beginning and end of our teaser trailer we included the actor’s names and a website at the start we made a title for the production label. Our teaser trailer doesn’t contain a voice over, this shows that we have challenged convention of real media products as when researching we found a lot of them did have a voice over but as a group we didn’t think that a voice over was right for our product and instead we used text which we found more effective as the audience would have to constantly watch our teaser trailer if they wanted to know what was happening rather than just listen.
Secondly, I am going to explain how our film magazine front cover develops or challenges existing media products. We mainly looked at ‘Empire’ magazine front covers to help us with our own, this was because ‘Empire’ magazine are a very big film magazine. When looking at a lot of their magazines we found that most of them had a main character from a film in the middle blown up to cover the majority of the front cover. So this is what we did we got the main character from our film, Aimee and had a large image of her in the middle. Another convention we used was we made sure all our text stood out to our audience by using sharp bright colours and large fonts to stand out to the audience. We also included a bar code, issue number, date and titles which are conventions of a real media product.
Finally, I am going to explain how our advertising film poster develops or challenges existing media products. For this part of our product I mainly looked at the posters of the recent film,’Alice In Wonderland’ I found these posters were very eye-catching and really stood out to me, they all had a large image in the middle and that was basically it but the images used and colours used added a lot of effect. Due to these posters been so eye-catching I said to my group that’s what i thought we should do so we did. The conventions we included were a main image and a large title to stand out to its audience. We also added acts names and producer.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Our main product and ancillary texts I think all together are rather effective; this is because of the following, our poster and magazine both have the same type of text which adds effect as it lets the audience know they are linked together, our magazine included a main image of an actor in the teaser trailer which draws its audience in, the letter which is on the poster is also in the trailer itself which links the two together and also, the trailer even though it been so short we have included all the main cast within. The problem we did find here was that we wasn’t able to match the same font that we used on our magazine and poster with the text in our teaser trailer, this was due to us been unable to get the texted on the programme we used to edit on.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
From our audience feedback i have learned that everybody seemed to enjoy our teaser trailer and the criticisms made were all very fair. As a group we all tried our best to meet our target audiences needs and wants for a teaser trailer which i think you can see form our audience feedback.
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation?
Microsoft Excel:-
We usd Microsoft Excel to show alot of our results in and also to do our call sheets and shooting schedules.
Microsoft Word:-
I used Microsoft Word for our draft poster and magzine, our initial ideas, font ests and also my evluation.
Digital Camera:-
I used a digital camera to take pictures for our poster and mgazine and also our location reece.
I used a digital camera to take pictures for our poster and mgazine and also our location reece.
Gimp 2:-
We used Gimp 2 for our magazne front cover.
Paint:-
I used paint throughout my project for things such as saving documants as a picture and practising editing photos.
Internet:-
I used the internet for alot of my research and images.
I-movie:-
We used I-Moive to edit our teaser trailer.
Photoshop:-
In the end we didn't us photoshop to edit our final product but we still practised using different techniques on it
In conclusion, I think my group and I worked well together and all put in a lot of effort to achieve what we wanted. We came across problems but overcome them. I feel that we have made a film teasrtrailer and advertisment poster up to a high standard.
