A2 Level Media Studies EvaluationBy Bradley Judge

The Product

For this unit, in a group of three we have created...

▪ A film Trailer, for our film Circus▪ A poster, advertising our film Circus▪ A Magazine cover, advertising our film Circus

In this presentation I will be evaluating the process in which happened to make these products.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? RE: Trailer

I think our trailer most of the time uses the codes and conventions of film trailers. It follows a broken up narrative and shops different parts of the film that doesn't give too much away, but enough to entice an audience. I would say that the titles throughout the film that have reviews pretty much stick to the conventional trailers. I don't think that you can really say we developed or challenged these codes and conventions because we wanted the trailer to look professional.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? RE: Poster Again with the

poster I think we have kept to the codes and conventions as we also wanted it to look professional. Here is our poster and a horror film poster that loosely follow the same codes and conventions.

I think again we have followed the codes and conventions with the magazine cover. It follows the image of a face and the stories littered around it with sub-headings for different features within the magazine, complete with a title of the magazine.

Here are again is our magazine cover with a past cover of Empire film magazine.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? RE: Magazine cover

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

I think all three products compliment each other. Obviously the trailer gives away most about the film as it shows previews of the film. The magazine cover shows a picture of the clowns face along with the “Circus” logo to advertise the film. The poster then shows a different picture of the clown to show a different image of the clown, slowly revealing more to the audience about the film. The tag line on the poster enhances the horror aspect to the product. We have made all three texts to fit in with the horror genre to make sure that they all fit in together to advertise the same product.

Audience Feedback

After completing the film trailer we showed it to a group of teenagers aged 17-18 who are the perfect target audience for the film. We asked them to fill in a survey which is listed here.

Results After completing the

survey I have collected their results and created Pie charts to show how different points we marked.

Editing

1234

Camera Work

1234

Mise en Scene 1

234

How well Mystery was

created1234

How Scary it was 1

234

How Pro-fessional it

looked 1234

Editing

People generally thought the editing was well done. No one said that it was poor of even not very good. Although 11% thought it was very well done and 22% said it was average, 67% of the people I asked said that it was done well but wasn't perfect. I think this is a fair judgement because if we had better equipment and spent more time on the product we could have slightly improved this factor.

22%

67%

11%

Editing

1 2 3 4 5

Camera Work

For looking at these results you can see that people thought that the camera work was either average or very good. No one thought that it was perfect which I thought was fair as we non of us are professional Camera operators and therefore, although we are A-Level media students, we cannot be expected to have the same level of expertise.

22%

78%

Camera Work

1 2 3 4 5

Mise en Scene

I think the Mise en Scene in our film trailer was our strongest part. This is reflected in the audience feedback. It is the only point where more than 25% voted that it was excellent. Again as with the previous two points no one has said that it was poor or not very good and more people have said it was very good rather than average.

11%

44%

44%

Mise en Scene

1

2

3

4

5

How well Mystery was created Unfortunately no one said that

the way we tried to create Mystery was excellent, and the majority of the people said that the way it was done was average. However 33% thought it was done very well. I am disappointed with this result because of the fact that this was something we really tried to create. I think if we were to repeat the process then this would be something we would have to look at. With more research and better facilities I think we may have been able to improve on this point.

11%

56%

33%

How well Mystery was created

1

2

3

4

5

How Scary it was

When it came to look at the fact of how scary the trailer looked, the results varied throughout. People did say that they thought it wasn’t scary at all, however when questioned on why they had put this someone said “If you were scared of clowns, then it would be scary, but I’m not”, so I think its just generally down to personal preference, and although this age group were our target audience not everyone will like the same kind of film.

11%

33%44%

11%

How Scary it was

1

2

3

4

5

How professional it looked The last point that they were

questioned on was on how professional the film trailer looked. I’m not surprised that no one said that the trailer wasn’t excellent when it came to professionalism because we are still learning about the industry and how films are produced. However most of the group of people we asked said it was very scary. I am pleased with this because as a horror film trailer the two main things that you want to achieve is

a. Make the film look appealing and intrigue people

b. to scare peopleSo I am glad that 78% of the group did vote this.

11%

11%

78%

How Professional it looked

1

2

3

4

5

Feedback continued…

After completing the rating part of the survey they were then asked 3 questions that would ask them▪ Which was your favorite part of the trailer?▪ Was there a part that didn’t work, and why?▪ What could be improved?

On the next slides are some of the comments that were said…

Which was your favorite part of the trailer?

“ The Camera work where the girl screamed” I am glad that someone liked this point as we tried to make her look inferior as she was being pulled away from the camera as if to ask for help.

“The titles at the end looked professional” from research into films we looked at titles at the end of trailers and based ours on film trailers such as Saw, Orphan and Insidious.

Was there a part that didn’t work, and why?

“The shot where the Clown was first introduced was too dark” After filming and editing we realised that the shot was too dark and unfortunately we didn't have enough time to change this.

“The dialogue was hard to hear in places” we should have used an external microphone when filming as the microphone on the Camera was too weak and didn't pick up the sound clearly.

What could be improved? “There should have been more

action/scary parts” I agree that the film trailer did lack action parts so it probably didn't captivate the audience at all times.

“The Locations could have been more fitting” The locations were a big problem when it came to filming as we were stuck on where to film the parts where the girl was kidnapped. If we had planned better we could have probably found a better fitting location that would have enhanced the scariness of the trailer.

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

Research and Planning. We used the internet, mainly Google to look at different film trailers, posters and magazine covers to find out what the codes and conventions were and what looked professional. We also used

YouTube to look at different film trailers.

Continued...

Construction. The programs that we used when constructing the 3 products were

imovie & Photoshop

These two programs I have learnt top use and feel now that I am a lot more technologically knowledgeable. Last year we used Adobe Premiere Elements to edit so learning again to use a different editing program has given me a lot more success. Also Photoshop I found really hard to use, but through tutorials through people in my group I have been able to use this program comfortably. The Camera, tripod etc. Were the ones we used last year so I was comfortable in using these instruments.

Continued...

Evaluation. I was comfortable on using the program Microsoft PowerPoint

so I thought I would use this program to create my evaluation. I have inputted pictures from Google and also used pie charts to make it more accessible to understand the stats received from the surveys. I have managed to input our film poster and magazine cover into different slides and used a simple design so it is easy to read and understand.