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

When producing my media product (The Film trailer, The Film Poster and the Film Magazine), I had to ensure that they were all linked, or had close similarities between them. This was so that they were all related and shared the same themes. It wouldn’t be good if the trailer was different to the film poster, because the audience could be mislead as to what the film is really about, or they may change their minds about going to see the movie.

My film trailer shared similar codes and conventions with the magazine and the poster. The Production Company ‘Sharp Productions’ is continuous throughout the trailer and the film poster. In the trailer, the first clip is the Sharp Productions clip. The production company is then mentioned again at the end of the trailer, where it shows the credits. In the film poster, the Sharp Productions is also written in the credits at the bottom of the film poster is very small font. All film posters have this, they credit the producers, the production companies and the main actors.

'Sharp Productions' appears in both the trailer and the film poster. This shows the link between both texts.

The Genre of my film trailer was horror, so I also had to make sure that my Film Poster and Magazines Front cover matched the same horror forms and conventions as my film trailer. I used very dark colours in my poster, with just part of the face of the main character showing. A close up of her red bloody eye and a reflection of a hand creates a very effective horror atmosphere. The text I used for the title of the film in the poster also works well because I used a special brush in Photoshop that I downloaded of the internet. The brush tool had a blood splatter effect that I added, which allowed me to create realistic blood drips and splatters. Although the film trailer doesn’t show any blood, it is still an icon of horror. Almost every horror film contains blood, which make the poster effective and relates it to the genre of the trailer.

I think the link between the magazine front cover and the film poster/trailer could be improved. This is because i used a different font and style in the film title on the magazine front cover. I should have used the same font and style throughout all three pieces of media texts. Films usually have their own unique font style for their posters and DVD covers ect..

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

All the way throughout the production of my media texts, technology has had a huge impact. Without, the production would have been near impossible to do. The most important piece of technology I have used in the production is my camera. To film the trailer, I used a Nikon D5000 Digital SLR Camera. This particular camera, unlike others like it, had the option to film 720p High Definition video, which meant that the quality of our finished trailer would be very impressive. The camera’s wide angle and zoom lens allowed me to experiment with a variety of shots. The lens allowed me to film extreme long shots, wide establishing shots, and zoom shots to create extreme close ups . I used a DIY aluminium handle in order to hold the camera steady when filming. This worked well and allowed me to film looking down at the screen rather than holding it at eye level. I used a sturdy tripod with my camera, allowing me to have very still shots, and it also let me create stunning panning shots. The camera had a pop out screen, which could be viewed from above, like the viewfinder from a professional camcorder. This meant i could get steady shots by resting the camera against my thigh and look down at the screen. 

Before starting the production of my media texts, I had to research into film trailers and their codes and conventions. For this I used the internet to view real movie trailers and analyse them. To watch the movie trailers I used the popular video sharing website ‘Youtube’. It is very useful as it has so many videos, not just of trailers, but also other video presentation made my students talking about the codes and conventions of trailers. Watching horror film trailers gave me some ideas on what to base my film on. After watching many film trailers, I began to take notice of similar codes and conventions in other trailers of the same genre. I started to notice that almost all horror film trailers contain dark atmospheric music. The trailers tend to start slow at first with gentle transitions, and then fast paced at the end with more sound effects such as screaming and louder music. After finishing the production of my film trailer, I used YouTube to upload the final trailer. This was i could display it on Facebook and obtain feedback from my audience.


I created a presentation that i could show to the class and pitch my idea for the film trailer. To produce this, i used Microsoft Powerpoint, an excellent piece of software which makes it simple to create presentations. 

Once I began filming and I started to have enough footage, I could start editing. I used my own laptop, which has a copy of Adobe Premier Pro installed on it. This software is a professional grade editing suite, with multi track timeline, allowing me to overlap footage and add more than one soundtrack or sounds over each other. I cut the clips I had filmed so that only the necessary footage was in the project timeline. I used a stock sound effect website to download the soundtrack I had used. The website contained a free collection of music which contained dark, horror ambient music. This software also had a lot of effects, typically relating to colour. I had researched online into Colour correction for my trailer. Colour correction is used in every movie production, even in trailers. Editing the colour of a film can add to the atmosphere and the mood it creates. War films tend to be high contrast and de-saturated. A fine example of this is Steven Spielberg’s ‘Saving Private Ryan’. Horror films tend to do similar things, often adding a tint to the video. I wanted my trailer to have a blue-ish tint to it. The colour correction option on Adobe Premier Pro made it very easy for me to do this.


To display the final trailer to the class, I used an interactive whiteboard to show it on a big screen. The high Definition really stood out on the big screen, and my teacher and my peers were very impressed with the quality. 
When producing the film poster, i researched existing ones using the internet. I analysed all of the codes and conventions of posters and thought how i would include them in my own media text. I had looked a few horror posters where the main image was simple and was over a dark background. I wanted my poster to be simple like this one, but still effective as a form of advertising the movie. Before starting to produce the poster, I went out with my group and took some photos that i could use for both my magazine front cover and my poster. For this I used my Digital SLR camera. The location for the photoshoot was a wooded area. This was suitable for the film as the abandoned house where we filmed was in a woods. http://miguelpilgrima2media.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/magazine-photoshoot-some-photo-edits.html
I edited some of these photos using Adobe Photoshop Pro. I could change the colour slightly to enhance the horror feel of the movie. Photoshop Pro is so useful for creating professional looking edits such as blending photos together.

Photoshop works in layers. When editing photos, you can create different layers, so that you can work with each photo separately, this is so if you make a mistake, you don't destroy the whole project. It also makes it easier to re-arrange the text, images and the effects applied to the image. I downloaded some brush tools from internet and applied it to the main title of the film. The brushes created realistic looking blood splatters, which goes well with the genre of horror. When making a big change, i saved the poster as a draft. This meant i could get feedback on each one and easily make changes to it after.
The magazine front cover went through the same process as the Film poster. I used my Digital SLR to take the photos, and then i produced it using Photoshop. I saved several drafts of the magazine and uploaded it to the blog in order to get feedback from my audience. This worked really as they gave me ways of improving it, such as moving the main image down a little bit, or change the font of the text.
http://miguelpilgrima2media.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/magazine-4th-draft.html

To obtain Audience feedback, I used Facebook, a popular social networking site, which came in really useful as all of my friends use it on a daily basis. I could upload my work on there and ask them to comment on what they thought of it. To the left is an example from when i uploaded my film trailer and asked my friends for feedback.








To upload all of my work, I used the service called Blogger.com owned by Google. The service is free and easy to sign up. I continued with my previous account i made for my AS Foundation Coursework. The blog service is very good for displaying my work. I could select different themes and color schemes. I used a simple layout which had different Labels on the top, each linking to a different aspect of my media product production.

Technology played the most important role in my production of the media products, without it even, none of this would have been possible. In Hollywood movies, technology is rapidly improving in the use of special effects, filming such as highly expensive, high definition, 3d cameras and incredible editing. Due to my love of photography, i was familiar with every piece of technology i used, so i could use it to every potential.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback is critical in the production of media products such as the ones I have created. The feedback allowed us to make changes to our ideas and make the film trailer better. Before we began filming our trailer, we thought of some ideas and drew up storyboard to bring them more to life. We then produced a presentation so show our class our plot for the film.  Film producers regurlarly hold cinema screenings to a mixed group of people during the production phase. This is to gain feedback on the footage and help improve the final production. This is the reason why some movies are released with alternate endings as part of extra footage on the DVD, because they had changed the ending depending on what the audience thought.

First Feedback from our film trailer pitch

First interviewee – Maria Gonzalez

“I thought your story was very inventive and something that could attract those with horror passions. I think your storyline could be just a bit more unique. You also have to think that there are other films out there which could have a similar storyline”

This bit of feedback from Maria helped us to change our plot slightly to make it more unique and original.

Second Interviewee – Mr M Morris

“I think your idea is reasonably good. However, you didn’t offer a lot of detail about the characters. But I like the idea of being out in the woods, getting lost and the idea of people going missing one by one building the tension. A couple of issues; 1 which Miguel had already guessed and that is one of location. I’m a bit nervous about you actually finding an abandoned house to film in. You are also going to be out in the woods, so be very careful not to just run around with a camera screaming. We have had a lot of cases of people doing just that and it does not look very original. We are a few weeks away from all the leaves falling off the trees, so that might be a problem with continuity. You will either need to film before or after the leaves fall of the trees”

The feedback we received from our teacher has really helped us to think about the location and the setting of our film. I also made me think more clearly about continuity and how much time i had to film.

After we began filming our trailer, we uploaded a short clip of the footage we had filmed so far in order to obtain audience feedback from it.
http://miguelpilgrima2media.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/first-and-second-scenes-edited.html#comment-form

James Clark said:

I thought the initial footage was good, you could have improvded on editing the sound as you can hear the wind in the background. This detracts from the dialog in the clip. The last clip had an effective scene where you walked away from the camera.

The feedback from James helped me to notice the problems i had with the sound. The camera i was using to film (Nikon D5000) had a very small mono microphone and the wind was making the sound very loud and irritating. It distracted the viewer from the voices of the characters involved which was not a good thing. So what i did was is to mute the sound of the clips, and then record my voice separatly using an external microphone. This worked much better because you could not hear the wind whistling past the camera. Feedback like this has helped me and my group to improve our trailer.

When my trailer began to take shape, i decided to hold a screening for my class. I played the trailer twice to my class and then asked what they thought. They picked out some spelling mistakes, which I could then change easily. The audience like the way i faded in and out of scenes using the crossfade transition. I was then sure to use them throughout the trailer, as it clearly appealed to the audience. Again, the sound had a few problems. This time it wasn't the wind causing havoc, but it was the distance the microphone was to the actors. The microphone could not pick up the sound clearly when it was further away. So on the trailer the voices sounded very quiet. The audience suggested that i recorded the voices separately using an external microphone.
http://miguelpilgrima2media.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/trailer-so-far.html#comment-form

As the finishing touches were being applied to my trailer, i uploaded it to facebook so that my friends could give me some feedback. The results i got back were honest and very helpful.


















Moving on to my magazine production, the feedback here was more essential to that of my trailer. It was also easier to obtain, as i could upload drafts of my magazine front cover more quickly than uploading clips from the trailer. I uploaded the magazine front cover to facebook, where i asked my friends to give me some honest feedback to help me improve the layout of the front cover. the feedback was very honest and it helped me to improve the look of the magazine.
http://miguelpilgrima2media.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/magazine-4th-draft.html

Audience Feedback is an important part of the process of production for any producer or company. It helps them to finalize their idea to a finished product which will appeal to it's audience. I think that during my production, of the trailer, Poster and magazine cover, the audience feedback has also helped me to improve the products. However, i do think that i could have done better by using a wider range of ways to obtain my feedback. I could have printed out some simple questionnaires and handed them out to the class during my screening. My Film poster could have been improved a lot more i think if i had gotten some feedback from that too.