Advanced Portfolio Evaluation

Q: In what ways does your media products use, develop or challenge form and conventions of real media products?A trailer is a plays a vital role in the promotion of the film therefore I made sure that it was interesting enough to grab the interest of the audience. After doing a lot of research on the Romantic-Comedy genre I learnt the codes and conventions of this genre and realized that such movie rely heavily on stereotypes and conventions. Therefore I decided to produce a pure conventional romantic comedy that would seize the attention of all the romcom lovers.Romantic comedies are usually based on the “boy meets girl” story. The male characters are usually the ones who take the lead and propose the female characters and this is exactly what is shown in my film trailer as well. The nerd boy in the very start shows his love for the girl he likes by presenting a teddy bear. Women are emotionally weak and tend to believe anybody when it coms to love. This is a stereotypical image of women and I used this convention in my trailer when the young girl is ready to run away with a boy she met on Facebook. These are some of the stereotypical images of the both the genders I used and decided to stick to the conventions otherwise the media text would have lost its romcom feel.

The mise en scene, camera shots and editing techniques in my media text were also mostly convectional. Bright lighting, colorful clothing and atmosphere, lively music and “love-dovey” props like the teddy bear, roses and heart-shaped gifts, all added to the feel of the romcom genre. Without these props and brightness all around it would not have looked like a romcom and would have disappointed the audience. Similarly the camera shots were also simple and conventional as such movie do not require complexity of camera angles and shots. The editing techniques were mostly 180 rule and shot-reverse shot. I used some transitional effects while editing as it was a trailer and I had to show four different storiesto the audience. Romantic Comedies rely more the humor, romance and plot rather than complex shots and editing therefore here also I followed the conventions.

However there were some instances where I experimented with being unconventional. In the Love triangle story where the boy cheats his girlfriend, the girl when finds out instead of feeling bad and crying she has a fierce reaction and dominates the boy. With the progress of women in the global I wanted to show a more confident and courageous look of women therefore this character's reaction was so aggressive and I was proud of breaking the stereotypes here. Similarly where majority of the popular romantic comedies were based on the lives of mature adults I choose to focus on the teenagers and made a film regarding their love issues.

The poster and magazine cover were also made after a lot of research. Most of the romcoms have a collage of the pictures of the actors and I also did that. Similar was the case with the magazine cover. The colors I used were pinks and maroons. Teenage Love is a movie related to the romance of the youngsters therefore instead of a mature color I used pink and maroon and followed the conventions. However I did not add the releasing date the poster which I should have added but I saw a lot of posters without the releasing date. It does have tag-line which is conventional.

Q: How effective is the combination of your main products and ancillary texts?

The combination of my main product and ancillary texts turned out to be very successful. I worked very hard to make sure that there was a uniformity being followed when it comes to the theme since the brand of a successful trailer is established through a consistent and attention-grabbing theme of its promotional package.I made sure that my poster and magazine cover were bright and colorful like my trailer. The trailer could had a lot of lively colors such purple, orange, pink etc. Considering the plot and the audience in mind I decided to have the color pink as the background color of the both the poster and the magazine cover. The poster had a combination of the pictures of the characters of my film and therefore I decided to do a similar thing for the magazine, it was made up by cropping the characters out of their single picture and arranged in a heart shape indicating the sign of love which is the backbone of my film.The font used is also cheerful and bubbly. It addresses to the teenaged audience and matches their tastes.

Q: What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

I was looking forward to get some feedback from the audience after finishing my media product. Audience feedback is the foremost important thing as they are the one to will eventually show a red or green signal to the media product we produce and it is important to know their views in order to improve.Even before making the trailer I carried out a questionnaire and confirmed whether they would like to watch a pure Romantic Comedy and majority showed a thumbs up to it only then did I carry forward the idea of making “Teenage Love”.After producing the trailer, its poster and magazine cover I took the audience feedback on Facebook and it was overwhelming to see such positive response. Majority was pleased with my work and said that the trailer was good enough to convince them to watch “Teenage Love”.

A few of the comments of the audience on Facebook about Teenage Love:

Before production, when asked about what types of films they like the second highest votes were for romantic comedies (age 15-30). 52% of the audience said that they like the plot and star-cast in a film. These were some of the main questions that made me decide what type of a trailer I will produce. Similarly after completing my work when I took the audience feedback on Facebook 78% (age 13-35) of the audience showed “Teenage Love” a green signal and the rest who were not very pleased with the trailer were males who were action movie lovers. My target audience were mainly the female audience therefore it did not attract some male audience. However I learnt that one should also produce movies that targets both the genders.

Q: How did you use new media technology in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?The completion of the advanced portfolio would have been impossible without the use of technology. Various pieces of technology played a vital role in production stages (pre-production, production and post production) for my film trailer “Teenage Love” and in the design and execution of its poster and magazine cover.Pre-production:Before the production had to do some research on the romantic comedy genre to know its codes and conventions. Google has been of great help in achieving that. Similarly since YouTube is banned in my country websites like “DailyMotion” and “Trailer Addict” made a easier for me to view a few trailers before producing my own. Microsoft word allowed me to form a questionnaire for the audience and know about their tastes in films.

Production:My Nikon D5100 has been my partner during the production. I shoot all the scenes of my trailer on this camera and also did the photo-shoot of the actors for the poster and magazine cover on this tremendous DSLR. It provided me with HD quality videos and photos.It also helped me record the music of the video when the software audacity did not work well. My Dell laptop contained all the footages and the pictures and helped me in all the production stages. Hard drives and usbs are some small device that are of great help in media production. Transferring videos, music files and pictures in the school computer.

Post-production:Post production relies heavily on technology. Windows Movie Maker was used to edit the footages and formulate a trailer. Similarly I used Adobe Photoshop CS to edit the photos and make a poster and magazine cover. I also used a convertor to convert the music I recorded on my DSLR into an mp3 file.

Blogger and Vimeo have helped me in uploading my work and making its accessible for the audience.

As a whole I enjoyed each and every production stage. I believe that my media skills have improved over the time and it has enhanced my interest in media. I believe that I have done my work with hard work and sincerity. Technologies play a major role in the production of media texts. I had a few reservations about my movie trailer and the ancillary texts however the overwhelming positive response from the audience made me confident and once again I thanked technology for making it so handy to gain audience feedback over the internet.