In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms & conventions of real media products?

For my media studies advanced portfolio I decided to work with a fellow classmate (karishma) to produce a promotional film poster, website and film trailer which will meet the conventions of a real life media product. The film trailer I produced consists of many forms and conventions of real media products in our research section I analysed various horror film trailers such as Halloween 2007, Paranormal Activity, Sorority Row, Halloween 2, The Unborn Movie Trailer, My Bloody Valentine 3D, also as our film trailer was targeted at teenagers and set in a school I decided to emulate bits from the film trailer mean girls as it had a similar story line and target audience to dead girls (film trailer I created). In order to create a horror film trailer I researched the forms and conventions of real media film trailers and emulated these forms and convention into my film trailer, below I have listed the conventions which I have included to match the convections of real media products:

How effective is the combination of main product and ancillary text?

I designed a film poster, website and film trailer all my products work well as a package because throughout all of the products I have used the same style for example the title “dead girls” font and colour is the attention as the audience, these are the reasons behind me using

the colour red. The colour red represents danger, death, blood and killings.

Moreover the images used on the poster were taken while the trailer was being filmed therefore has direct involvement with the actually image of the whole trailer. The poster reflects the film trailer and has a consistent theme with the trailer. Furthermore the poster and website are products that advertise the main product (film trailer) and therefore all three individual products complement each other and as a whole work well as a package. Lastly the film trailer and poster is incorporated in the design of the website this connotes that all three products are shown as one combination. The narrative also is shown throughout all three products as the title ‘dead girls’ which indicates that the girls are going to die, the narrative is also shown on the poster as the image connotes the three popular girls in the background with the main character (mia) holding the knife indicting that she is the killed.

Website – title

Poster

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

During the evaluation stage of the coursework my fellow classmates were assigned to evaluate all three of my products in order to give me feedback, I was pleased to find that my classmates were able to identify the following: the target audience was teenagers and the signifiers that reflected this were the characters and the fact that the film trailer is set in a school, the genre of the film trailer is thriller/horror, the narrative is seen in the product by showing explicitly of blood shown, handheld cameras which shows confusion and the intense soundtrack, the emotional response to the product is shocking as it is set in a school were pupils are supposed to be safe but they are not as unexpected events have occurred and lastly the product has achieved its aims as it captures forms and conventions from real-life products.

From the following audience feedback I have learned that:

•The products that I have developed have successfully matched the criteria of a teenage horror film trailer. •Shows several concepts of horror film trailer forms & conventions. •The things I wanted to reveal were shown and the things such as did Sonia get killed at the end were not shown and the audience is left on a cliff-hanger.•The audience are left anxious to watch the actual film which is one aim that i hoped to achieve during the planning and research stage. •My film trailer does not follow the classic narrative pattern constructed by Todorov

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

During the research & planning stage I used media technologies such as you tube and the search engine Google to find out forms and conventions of horror film trailers, I used to you tube to watch various trailers and to analysis them so that I could find out the trend and conventions of the trailers so that I could gain an understanding of the elements I would need to include into my trailer in order to reach my aim of constructing successful horror film trailer.

Horror film trailers I looked at were:• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kww5KSqzV9U• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_UxLEqd074• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbdY3_vLc2k• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHslouUNi00&feature=channel• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNjpWjdRX54• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rcoc46onlE

Moreover during the construction stage I used a video camera which I had very little experience in using and my partner also had limited experience, therefore we practised filming irrelevant shots at first so that we could gain some understanding of using simply functions on the video camera. During the filming of the trailer me and my partner took turns filming so that in future we would have greater understand in using the video camera. We also used the camera in which we took various shots for the poster me and my partner had previous experience of taking different shots on the camera from last year’s AS coursework.

Furthermore while developing the trailer I used adobe element software which allowed me to edit the film in order to meet the conventions of a horror film, I used various features from the software such as, time stretching, adding in effects such as dip to black, enhancing the light, adding in credits, cutting out parts of the captured film, adding in diegtic and non diegtic music, changing the style of the text, making clips faster etc. As I had no previous experience of using this software I found it difficult to understand how to do things and therefore the editing of the trailer took longer than originally planned.

Dip to black Adding credits Enhancing light

Time stretching Non – diegtic music – reeking of door

Making clips faster

Also I used Dreamweaver 7 to construct a homepage for the trailer, this homepage was constructed to advertise the trailer and poster, as I study ICT I did have knowledge and understanding of using Dreamweaver such as adding tables, adding buttons, adding a soundtrack, changing font style, changing font colour, adding in images and adding in text, however I did struggle in adding a the actual trailer to the website but did overcome this problem.

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