A2 Coursework Production 6332 MEHWISH FIAZ

1. A2 Coursework Production 6332 MEHWISH FIAZ

2. 1. In what ways does your media product use develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Our ‘The Night Stalker’ trailer follows the conventions of a thriller trailer and a hybrid genre of biographical. It included a range of jump shots which are showing the best bits t the film to engage the audience. It shocks and excites the audience leaving them wanting to watch the film more to discover what is actually happening in each jump shot. Our Teaser 127 Hours Teaser We also have sound effects to match what is going on e.g. a low sound a prison surrounding at the start of the teaser when the character is talking. In all thriller trailers, the use dark eerie lightning to give it more of a scary atmosphere, so we have used to technique in our trailer. The composition of the teaser used the conventional media form of showing equilibrium breaking into disequilibrium. Use of dark lighting creates an eerie atmosphere The editing also followed conventions of thriller trailers by having extreme close up shots proceeded by eerie music to enhance excitement. We have music which is played throughout the teaser which makes it dramatic and suspensing as the audience is watching this. This way it matches the pace and is more exciting, this is what usually happens in thriller trailers to make it more intense. Based on true events - USP

3. 1. In what ways does your media product use develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? As you can, I have followed some conventions to the Insidious film poster as it has dark lighting and a negative look to the poster. Our movie poster also conforms to other thriller movie posters as it displays the main character in the film. Well known cast names Title of the film is the biggest font which stands out Main logo – recognisable font and in capital letters which given a dramatic impact. Red colour is used to give it a thriller element to it. Release date information - adds anticipation as no specific date it given Low level lighting – appropriate for thriller genre – creates enigma Credits of the film and directors in order to make poster as realistic as possible and gives credit to the producers of the film

4. 1. In what ways does your media product use develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Appropriate lexis “win”, “free” which attracts the audience. Bold masthead grab the readers attention straight away and the red colour theme reinforces the thriller genre. • Coverlines around the main image • The front cover makes use of emboldened and large font to attract the audience’s attention. Recognisable “The Night Stalker” as it is shown throughout the three products. Both advertising on other films to watch Eye catching main image which has a sense of enigma as it is unknown of who the character is therefore creates excitement and outlining the plot as the pentagram is drawn on his hand. I realised that a lot of magazines have information on issue date and number, price and website address included in the bar code strip. I have done this so I could the give the reader something that is normal to keep up with the consistency of the features in a magazine. Both have very simple colour schemes: black, white and red/ purple, white and yellow

5. 2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? ‘The Night Stalker’ trailer, film poster and the magazine front cover worked really well with the whole production. We used the same colour scheme throughout all products which were red, black and white to emphasis on the thriller genre. By keeping the colour scheme in all tests the same it makes it look more professional and creates house style. We used the same text of “The Night Stalker” in our ancillary texts in order keep the consistency going. By displaying the villain in the film poster and the magazine front cover shows the audience who is going to be in the film and the role he is playing. By having pentagrams and a jail uniform on portrays that he has done something wrong creating a sense of mystery as well as it being displayed in the trailer. The main image in the poster and front cover magazine includes the character in the same costume he wears in the trailer. This makes the poster and front cover magazine look as if it is a still frame from the film, showing consistent combination of style. On the magazine front cover, the villain’s face in covered by his hand creating enigma and suspense of the unknown, so the audience has no idea of who he is. All texts constantly show the main character reminding the audience who features in it, which is effective as the audience can recognise and relate to the characters. The trailer consists of dark colours and low lighting in order to create enigma. In contrast, the magazine and poster features red and black which brightens effect but still creating a thriller element.

6. 3. What have you learned from your audience feedback? We received feedback from members of our media class after they had seen our first draft of the trailer. The are to be developed was the order, length of the clips, and how dark the clips were as the audience were unable to understand the plot. The main improvement that was needed was the to add the title and text in the film as the audience was unable to understand was happening and the title and text could give a lot away. The voice was unclear of what the serial killer was saying and so we needed to either shoot again or make it clearer by editing it. The initial opening sequence was unclear as it did not say anything about the plot, so we had to edit it to make it clearer and add text to let the viewer know what is going on. The feedback showed the music needed a lot more pace to flow with the clips shown in the trailer. However, The music fitted well with the trailer as it was dramatic and eerie which created a sense of mystery and enigma. The trailer should be more fast faced. This would involve more jump cuts and we could have filmed more shots so the audience saw a lot more in the trailer which would create more enigma.

7. 3. What have you learned from your audience feedback? There were various of different things the audience liked about the trailer which suggests that we have created a trailer that includes different things, giving the audience a lot choices. The music and the fact that the character was evil was the most popular choice suggesting that the audience could notice that the teaser trailer was a thriller genre. Most of the audience started that it was a 15+ due to the violent scenes it has in it, therefore they could understand that it was not suitable to view under that age. Audience stated that the trailer was the most effective in conveying the message or plot of the story. Therefore, the trailer has been successful as the message has been conveyed to the audience. 72% of the audience that we gave the survey to said they would watch the film at the cinema. Therefore we met their expectations of the thriller teaser as majority answered yes.

8. 4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? Previously, for my AS production, I had used Blogger but then for my A2 production, I changed to Weebly, as it was a lot more organised and had a navigation bar which allowed me to navigate easily around my blog page and allowed me add pages whenever I wanted to which was a lot quicker than Blogger. I had never used Weebly, and as I was used to Blogger, it was challenging for me to get used to it as everything was much different e.g. when adding text, there were boxes to add text which was different to Blogger. After a while, I learnt how to use Weebly. I learnt how to create new posts and insert pictures into them. Weebly showed the progress made throughout the production of my teaser trailer and showed how I improved it gradually to suit my target audience. Using Weebly allowed me to keep myself and others up to date with what I had done and allow feedback such as comments on what worked and did not with the trailer. Personally, I think that it is easier to communicate meaning through pictures and print screens rather than trying to explain it. Digital camera was the most important piece of technology that we used as we able to film the trailer. We used this to film all our footage for the trailer and we used it to take pictures for the poster and magazine. We were able to export the footage onto the Mac computer and as it was JVC camera, the process was very quick. I hardly had used Mac and so the software itself was hard to use as most of my time I use Windows and so it took some time for me to get used to it and find my way on how to get to some of the programs. It was challenging to use at first, but once I started using it to edit my trailer in Final Cut Pro, it wasn’t a major problem for me to use. We used Survey Monkey, in order to collect survey results online rather than on paper. This proved more useful and easier as using paper was time consuming and could have got lost or not fully completed. Using Survey Monkey, we had the option that is was essential answering all the questions so the audience had to complete all the answers enabling us to improve on any of their opinions they suggested.

9. 4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? In the research stage we used Mac computers and Internet such as Google and YouTube to research trailers and the generic code and conventions, thriller directors, thriller films, posters, magazines and developed survey in order to create audience profiles. Google was very useful when researching different genres that we needed for our tasks to come up with our final idea of a thriller genre with an hybrid of biographical. We used YouTube to watch other trailers and teaser trailers to get an insight into what to expect for teaser trailer and what conventions we had to meet. We watched Inception, Insidious, and 127 Hours to get an insight into the conventions of a thriller film – most of these were there was some kind of chase between binary oppositions so we included this in our trailer. Planning the construction of the trailer and ancillary texts involved in using programs such as Final Cut Pro, Sound Track Pro, Publisher, Photoshop and Fireworks. We exchanged information throughout the group by emailing and blogging to each other about what we have to do and who would do it. The footage was edited using Final Cut pro, the software that allowed me to edit the trailer more manageably in a short time space and was easy to use once you used a few times. We put together all of our shots and clips into the program to make our final production and also inserted texts (titles) e.g. coming soon to give the reader some kind of notice of when the film will be out. Sound Track pro was used to create all our music to which we added it into the trailer and also sound effects that we needed e.g. guns and prison cell chatter was added in the beginning of the teaser trailer. Our ancillary texts were created in Microsoft Publisher as I was familiar with the program so thought I’d be able to use my previous knowledge of it to produce them as I has used Publisher in my AS music magazine production. I do not often use Publisher, so creating the ancillary in this has helped me to become very familiar with the program. We also used Fireworks and Photoshop to edit our ancillary texts, e.g. we edited the serial killer’s head as it was out of shot so we used the head of another picture and edited it to fit in. We darkened the image to suit the genre of thriller and added a scary background to make the overall effect daunting.