Final Artifact

Final products

Movie trailer

This is our final movie trailer. We have included a YouTube link where the trailer can be found. This is the final trailer after many drafts of our movie trailer. We have incorporated small changes each time to take our trailer from a amateur looking trailer and transform it into a professional looking movie trailer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vym6lvEzMdE

Movie poster

Magazine front cover

How we got to the final product 

Movie trailer

Now we have filmed all of our scenes and have already experimented with post production editing we can now begin to assemble our movie trailer together. This will be a very challenging task  because we have to think about why every shot is where it is and what effect is captured. We want this trailer to be gripping and exiting, so we know that we need to make the trailer more dramatic as the trailer unravels. This means incorporating dramatic cinematic sounds and incorporating the action scenes towards the middle and end as this will help build tension and adrenaline within the audience and the trailer itself.

This is a list we have put together of all the factors we need to consider when it comes to assembling the movie trailer together:

• The order of which scenes will appear
• The sound to accompany the scenes
• The overall aim of the trailer
• The desired effect to have upon the audience, what emotions are we aiming to capture?

All of these factors will help us to achieve a professional looking final product. The priority of taking each of these into account is vital because the factors work within each other. For example a sequence of action scenes might be paired with fast pace sounds with the desired effect to create tension within the audience.

The software we will be using to put together our movie trailer is Final Cut Pro X. This software is Apple only and therefore we can expect only the best performance. The software possess a very sleek design and seems very easy to use. The features are layed out nicely and are easy to locate. This will make putting the video trailer together a lot easier to do.

This is Final Cut Pro X main interface. As you can see the timeline is situated on the lower part of the interface, which is where i will be placing the scenes and assembling them together. The settings are all located on the top panel, which keeps things out of the way unless i need to use them. The video editing options pop up when you select the video clip you want editing.

Overall there are 46 video clips altogether that are going into our movie trailer. This is accompanied by 11 clips that include MPAA, Motion graphic titles and the production company logos. These are extra parts that we thought would enhance the professionalism of the movie trailer.

The first thing we had to do was to begin to put all the clips onto the timeline. This was an easy process as it involved a simple import process where we selected the folder that all of the video clips were situated and imported them all at once into the timeline. This was done by clicking on file, then followed down the list to import and then selected all the clips and selected import.

Once the clips are all assembled it's time to put them into an order that made sense, had some structure and order to it. We needed to split the trailer into a beginning, a middle and an end, this was because they have different purpose to each section. The beginning aims to draw in the audience but starts off slow and shouldn't contain lots of action, just enough to keep the audiences attention. The middle aims to build up tension and adrenaline within the audience, the pace is increased and things start to speed up. The middle also begins to tell the plot of the movie, enough to entice the audience and bring them in.

Each clip we used and put in place was done with an intention and wasn't done at random. We had to decide what sort of clips we were going to put into each section. This is a list of the type of shots that we wanted to put into each section:

Beginning section: In this section we want to start off by including a MPAA so the audience will treat our trailer as a professional trailer. We also want to place shots that introduce the characters involved so we will include the scenes of football match. We also want to introduce the psychologist early on so abit of mystery begins to emerge early on so the audience will start to think about the movie at a deeper level.

Middle section: In this section we need the pace to be advancing and to be speeding up slightly to get the audiences adrenaline going and to start building up tension. A disequilibrium will be established which will help build up the tension and the adrenaline in the audience. We will need to begin adding some action scenes into the trailer so we will be adding the lightning scene when kennan sees the lightning. We will also be adding shot when Kennan is running, existing trailers we have seen use scenes where the characters are running, which we felt is a good way to build up tension and forces the audience to begin asking more questions. Why are they running? And who from ? We also wanted to begin to introduce the villain, The Shadow to the audience. By introducing the villain this late on begins to introduce new questions the audience will be asking themselves, which will keep them on their toes. We will include more of the psychologist in the middle section to keep the audience asking more questions about the psychologist and his role in the movie.

End section: In this section the pace will need to be increased and the tension and adrenaline will need to be at its peak, which is what will keep the audiences attention. We will need to incorporate the action scenes that will make an imprint on the audiences mind, which they will remember and will act as the reason they want to return to watch the movie. We will include the scene were Kennan and the Shadow have the face off, we will see the shadows ability and Kennan's new ability, which is where the tension will be at its peak. This is where we aim to have the audiences maximum attention and the point in the trailer that will be remembered the most.


Movie Poster

We started off by starting a new project in Adobe Photoshop CS6. We changed the background to black to be the base for our movie poster. This wasnt chosen for a particular reason as we would be replacing the background with something else to make it more appealing. In photoshop we imported two separate images of me and Jordan into separate projects. We had to cut the photos in half but on opposite sides so they could be placed opposing to one other to give the impression of one person. This way we came up with this idea was through studying binary opposition, which is the study of related terms, which have a opposite meaning. for example our understudying of the word yes, is due to our acknowledgement of the word no, its direct opposite.For our movie poster we wanted to give off the impression of good and evil, by incorporating elements that make one side look good and the other bad. Ofcourse without our understanding of the binary opposites good and evil, we wouldn't understand the meaning of the poster we are assembling. We have left a gap in the middle of me and Jordan so we can add a strike of lightning to separate us. The lightning would give our poster an interesting element that correlate to Kennan's power. Thus may give off the impression of Kennan being more significant in terms of domination over the poster and the movie itself.

After careful analysing we felt the gap between Jordan and me was too significant and decided to close it up a bit. The split has been primarily placed so the lightning could be fit between them and wouldn't get in the way of their faces. We abhored the idea of the lightning covering up the faces so the characters were not recognisable to the audience. 

We wanted to give off the impression of the Shadow being fractious, Callous, and dangerous and Kennan as being intrepid, amiable, jubilant and kind. This we have tried to represent through the Mise en scene, in particular the lighting. Using Photoshop I have made the right side where Kennan lies lighter to emphasise his good side and the Shadows side darker to represent his sinister side. ~To achieve this look of having the building in the background we had to incorporate layers and placed an image of the building in the top layer so it will be behind the Shadow and Kennan. 

Once we sorted out the background look and the divide between good and evil it was now time to include the platform for some typical codes and conventions. We needed to include a billings box at the bottom of our movie poster as this is a code used in almost every professional movie poster. When we looked at existing movie posters the billings box were placed on top of a black box, that was faded into the rest of the poster. We wanted to follow this convention, but we also challenged it slightly by instead of making it fade out we have created rectangular boxes that we have made transparent each time, but not blended together, so this would add a style to our movie poster. We felt this effect like a transition will draw our audience down to the bottom of the movie poster so they can acknowledge the billings box that contains essential information of everyone who's involved with the movie.

Now the basis for the billings box were created it was time to introduce the lighting bolt, which would run down the entire movie poster. To create such an effect, we needed to move into Adobe After Effects CS6, which would possess the tools to allow us to create the effect much like we did in our movie trailer. I had to first import the photo into After Effects before we could do anything so I had the image to work with. The lightning was created using a useful sophisticated plugin called, Advanced lightning, which enabled me to create a realistic looking lightning bolt, which I could place in the middle of Kennan and the Shadow. 

It was now time to add the billings box details. We could have used either Adobe After Effects or Adobe Photoshop to create the text, but because we were already in After Effects we decided to use this instead. This software contains some useful tools that allow us to create the billings box to a detailed professional standard. To the bottom left you can see a box that contains all of the text tools we would need to create texts of all different styles, colours and sizes. Looking at many professional Billings boxes they all contained many different font sizes when mentioning specific information. For example the part in the Billings box when we were detailing the 'Music Composer' and who it was, we had to put the 'Music Composer in small font and then who the music composer was in big font. Maybe this was to emphasise their importance in the production in the movie trailer and without whom it wouldn't have been successful. 

We have also faded out the lightning towards the end to ensure the billings box was visible to the audience. We have also managed to create the illusion that the lightning bolt has coiled through the letter 'E', which gives it a cool look. This may also represent the link between the movie and the lightning bolt.

I had now saved the progress we made on the poster in After Effects into an image format, JPEG and imported it back into Photoshop to continue with the editing process. I still felt a lot was missing from the poster and so i took a step back and had a look at some movie posts again. I noticed a lot of them would include photos of some of the important actors/actresses that are involved within the movie onto the movie poster. I decided to play to this convention and added four images of the four of the characters within our movie trailer and placed them under the movie title. I tried to include photos that look dramatic and sinister and involved the charecter playing to an extreme emotion to draw in the audience. This may also force the audience to wonder what it is the character is doing at that stage in the picture and leaves a bit of mystery, which may help us to sell more movie tickets and increase profits.

I had also included another new feature towards our movie poster, which i feel helped to emphasise exactly the relationship between Kennan and the Shadow. In the top left and right corner of the movie poster I have included a transparent image of Kennan and the Shadow staring directly towards each other. The gaze they have upon their face tells the audience that the Shadow is purely a foe towards Kennan. 

This is our final draft of our movie poster. We have made one small adjustment to the movie poster that we felt would make all the difference. Within movie posters one code and convention that is certainly used on every movie poster is the inclusion of the actors/actresses name towards the top of the movie poster. We felt this convention was necessary and have included the names of the most important actors/actresses within our movie trailer. This technique of including the most important actors/actresses name is a method of attempting to appeal to as many consumers as possible. By including big name actors/actresses in the movie will attract fans of that specific celebrity. This is also known as celebrity endorsement.

Magazine Front Cover

We started off in Adobe Photoshop to assemble the foundation to our Magazine front cover. We started a new project and filled the white background with a black colour fill. We chose the black colour because it would act nicely against the blue lightning we were yet to formulate. We then imported our finished logo into Photoshop and assembled that onto the top of our magazine front cover. We had imported an image of Kennan that we took and placed it in the centre of the magazine, we ensured Kennan's eyes were looking directly towards the camera so this will engage the audience and make them feel apart of the magazine. This is commonly known as a 'direct mode of address'. During the photoshoot I considered the Mise en scene, in particular the costume design. I have placed Jordan in a red hooded jacket to make him look like a typical teenager, however we found after placing the photo of him onto the black background that these colours didn't go well together. This was something we had to amend.

We had also followed the essential convention of including a barcode onto the bottom right hand corner, without this our magazine wouldn't be able to be sold in retailers such as supermarkets, corner shops or the off-licence. The reason we had placed it in the bottom right corner isn't just to follow a common convention, but also to follow with the left-side-third rule. This rule suggests that when a consumer is faced with a new magazine they read in a specific pattern. They start in the top left hand side and then work there way across to the top right, then their gaze will take them across to the bottom left hand side, and finally to the bottom right. This pattern ensures they see all the important information on the magazine front cover, but also the fact the barcode is last is so before they see how much it is, they would have decided to whether or not they want to purchase it.

We then saved our project as a picture file, JPEG and imported the file into Adobe After Effects. We now needed to create streaks of lightning to spread across our magazine to show off Kennan's ability. To show that it was Kennan that was creating the lightning, we made sure in the photo shoot that Jordan was holding his hands out, palms facing up, so we could strike the lightning off his hands in the editing phase. The lightning we wanted to be loose and to look natural, sticking in all directions, but we had controlled the direction of the lightning from the head up. We wanted to show a connection between the magazine 'TheBigScreen' and the movie itself. With some issues of Empire magazine they changed the look of their magazine logo to fit in with the movie they were promoting. For example I had analysed an Empire magazine issue that were promoting the movie Iron Man 2 (http://www.themovieblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/empire-ironman2.jpg) and they had changed their logo to look electrified like the core of Iron Mans chest. I have done the same with my magazine's logo, I have designed it to look like its running a current of lightning through the letters, much like the lightning that charges through Kennan's veins. I have linked up the lightning from Kennan's hands to the lightning charging through the logo of the magazine to establish a connection.

The next draft contains only a small change to the lightning direction coming from Kennan's hands. In the previous draft the lightning bolt to the left of the front cover was charging upwards and appeared to look too random. I have changed the direction of the lightning to come in closer to Kennan's head, but still wanted the lightning to link with the magazines masthead logo. I have also formulated the shape of a pyramid with the lightning around Kennan to give off the idea of Kennan being superior and dominant. The triangular shape represents that of a temple, a building that is devoted to worship of the gods or a dominant, superior being. I wanted Kennan to appear dominant and the fact he's surrounded in this veil of lightning in the shape of a temple helps to augment this idea.

I have also included the Lead article within the centre, which is positioned on top of Kennan's chest. This is the main article within the magazine and therefore the size of the title has been enhanced and made larger so it dominates over the remaining text on the front cover an shows as being the most important. I have used the original typography style, Stasmic to present the Lifeline title, this decision was made so consumers can recognise this title against the remaining products created for the movie release. The consumers may have seen the movie poster prior to the magazine so they will have had an imprint on their mind to what the movie title looks like. Using the same font style used on the movie poster will allow this movie to be recognised and therefore more issues may be sold as a result.

Finally, I have made an alteration to the overall look of Kennan's costume. In the previous draft Kennan was wearing a light red jacket that didn't fit with the other colours used within the magazine. I had to make alterations so it would look right and would fit in with the colour scheme, this was a challenge as red doesn't fit nicely with my colour scheme of blue, white and black. After many changes in Photoshop to the look of the jacket, I had decided to alter the saturation and contrast. The saturation had made the colour of the jacket turn darker and the contrast altered the tone of the red to a sharper, darker look. This I felt worked extremely well with the colour theme, which surprised me as usually these colours wouldn't work together.

Within this draft I have made several more adjustments and improvements to the previous draft. I have included a puff to the right hand side of Kennan's head to highlight and put forward information to the consumer of content that is within the magazine. This convention used helps to sell the magazine to the audience by including information of articles found within the magazine. The placement of the puff isn't random, but falls within the consumers gaze if the left-side-third rule is accurate. The consumer should come into contact with the puff as they trace down towards the bottom left of the magazine, they shall start from the top right, which is when they will see this feature. The choice of colour for the puff was a light blue background to stick to the theme of blue with the lightning and then a white and black as the primary font colours, which will be seen clearly against the blue. The colour theme I'm trying to stick to is white, black and blue.

I have also included some cover lines to the left of Kennan's head, which addresses the audience of exclusive movies that are discussed within the magazine. The placement of these cover lines were done intentionally so they would be seen directly after the consumer has seen the puff. This is so the consumer has many more reasons to purchase the magazine other than the main article. The choice of font for these cover lines was a simplistic look for the title and a bold look for the movie names. This was decided so they where clear in terms of being a title and then the contents under the title.

I have also included some more cover lines underneath the puff, which provide more information of what can be found within the magazine to help sell it to the consumer. I have placed these in blue and white to stick to the colour theme of my front cover.

The next draft I have included some more cover lines that lie within the left-side-third rule down towards the bottom left hand side. These cover lines include information about Avatar posters, which come free with the magazine. The fact the consumer gains not one, but three free gifts with the magazine may persuade them to purchase the magazine.

I have also rearranged the look of the cover lines underneath the puff so they fit to the side of the magazine rather than overlaying onto the lightning, which overall makes the cover lines very hard to read. Now the text is clearly visible for the consumer to see and it looks more professional, which may help to give off a positive vibe of our magazine to our consumers as we take pride in the look of our magazine.

I have also changed the cover lines to the left of Kennan's head. I have made the text smaller so it can be seen easier and again doesn't overlay on top of the lightning and also included some more movies to the bottom of the list to appeal to more potential consumers.

This is my final draft of my magazine front cover. I have made many changes to the previous draft to make it look as professional and realistic as possible.

Firstly, I have included a date of the issue on the top of the magazine. I have made it very small to fit it inbertween the masthead to keep it out of the way, this has been done in many magazine front covers I have analysed. I have made it white so it is clearly separate from the masthead and isn't confused by the consumer as being apart of the masthead design.

I have included photos of the Avatar posters that come free with this issue underneath the cover line situated in the bottom left hand side. These photos lie directly within the audiences gaze according to the left-side-third rule. These photos will show the consumer exactly what their getting, instead of keeping it hidden. This may help build up trust between the consumer and the magazine, the consumer may feel they can trust the magazine as there aren't any hidden aspects, their open and honest.

Evaluation

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

Trailer

Throughout the research, planning and design stages of our project we have refered to numerous existing movie trailers that fit within our genre of thriller/paranormal to help us gain inspiration for the codes and conventions that are used that we can address and implement into our trailer. This allowed us to make our movie trailer look professional and to guarantee the final render will carry through many codes and conventions that strenghthen the quality of the final product.

Some of the movie trailers we looked at include Underworld Awakening, Knowing, and Paranormal Activity. Underworld Awakening used many codes and conventions that we felt we could implement into our film trailer. Some codes and conventions we used included the motion graphic text such as "This Spring", "Brought to you by the director of..", which provide the audience with essential information and acts as anchorage to hold down meaning of the trailer. This typical convention is used throughout every professional looking trailer we encountered and therefore we decided it was an essential convention to follow in our movie trailer. Movie titles are also used to help build up tension or to give small details about the movie, which help to sell the movie to the consumer. Underworld used six movie titles within there trailer, which helped it to build tension and keep suspension all the way. These start appearing about half way through the trailer onwards, which we followed within our trailer. There is no point using them at the beginning where the aim is to introduce the audience to the characters and the storyline. The middle to the end is where the action begins and the clips are fast paced, gripping, enhancing and moving, the factors that gain the audiences attention.

Some other codes and conventions we followed in our trailer was the use of the MPAA ( Motion Picture Association of America ), which is demonstrated at the beginning of the trailer. The aim of the MPAA is to state the age of whom the trailer is aimed for and also states the factors that exist within the film as a pre warning to the viewers. We decided to follow this convention because it enhances the professionalism of our movie trailer and may make the audience take it more seriously when viewing the trailer.

Another code we followed was the link to Facebook at the end of our trailer. We noticed in many trailers we watched that at the end of the trailer they have included a Facebook page and twitter page to follow. This is a very modern method used to reach out and promote the movie to a large number of people particularly in teenage audiences. The majority of people in the world now have access to social networking sites such as Facebook. With the total number of Facebook profiles now peaking 1 billion users, this large number of potential audience members couldn't have been avoided and the opportunity to reach out to them has been made by the creation of a Facebook page dedicated to the movie.

We have also looked at gender roles within movies. We payed particular attention to how females are usually portrayed as the weak minded characters who need rescuing by the strong fearless male character. Vladimir Propp's theory suggests that female characters "The Princess" are in need of saving by the brave masculine hero. Some films we looked at that challenge this stereotypical gender view include Underworld, where Seline, a vampire hunter, embraces a life where she dominates over the rest and truly is the undeniable heroine in the movie. Another film that also challenged this gender stereotype was Alien, even though this film doesn't lie in our genre it was the first ever movie to possess a female character as the hero, this sparked off an era of movies that followed this anti-stereotype.

Another code and convention we followed very closely was the camera shots we used for specific scenes. The shots we used we saw in other existing movie trailers and felt that they captured a specific emotion and effect that we wanted to capture ourselves. One trailer we looked at was Underworld - Awakening. Within this trailer we can see they use many behind the shoulder shots to position the audience either behind the villain or behind the hero. This shot is effective at helping the audience to capture the emotion of the character being hunted or capturing the emotion of the villain looking down upon the hero. We decided to use some of these shots in our trailer to allow the audience to feel the emotion of the character and to feel like they are involved in the scene. An example of where we used this type of shots in our trailer is where Kennan and the Psychologist are talking. We have paced the audience behind the Psychologist when Kennan is talking and behind Kennan when the psychologist is talking. This is to allow the audience to feel apart of the conversion and to help them become emotionally attached in terms of Kennan and how he may be feeling.
We also decided to incorporate some low angles to show a sort of negative approach to when Kennan is being shouted at or under threat. An example of when we used this is when the psychologist tells Kennan to get himself out of it, we used a low angle, which we felt achieved the effect of Kennan becoming frightened and interrogated.
We decided to use close up shots in our movie trailer to help the audience clearly see the characters emotions in the shots, this alone can help the audience to establish the scene or shot quickly. An example of when we have used this is towards end of the movie trailer where Kennan and the Shadow have a duel. We have included two close ups of each of their faces to show them looking towards each other. We can clearly see their facial expressions and the fact their looking directly towards each other with a sinister look in their eyes clearly shows the disequilibrium within the shot.

Another code we followed was the sequence of actions within a film trailer. During our research phase we found that all adverts have a set order in which certain things appear in, and specific emotions and feelings are targeted. We split trailers into three catergories, beggining, middle and end and then looked up at what different features are contained within and what are they trying to achieve in each section.
In the beggining of a trailer we are shown the MPAA, this presents to the audience the sort of nature that the trailer inhabits, for example whether it contains actions of a sexual nature, gore, romance etc and states the recommended age you should be to watch the film.
Next we are usually presented with the logo of the production and distribution company such as 20th Century Fox, Paramount and Dreamworks. This presents to the audience the production and distrubtion company for the movie.

The beggining scenes of the movie itself now enravel and seem to present scenes that present the charcters within the movie, for example in the movie trailer for Donnie Darko we are introduced with a shot of a school bus with Donnie coming through the back. This presents the main character, Donnie to the audience as well as the fact that he is at school, which shows his age and what he's currently doing in his life. We can also look at his actions and can determine his behaviour and characteristics instantly. The non-diegetic music tends to be slow and soothing, which sets a slow beggining to allow the audience to become engaged within the trailer slowly so they take in all the scenes and actions. There tends to be very little if any major action scenes, but a storyline is triggered off to get the audience engaged and interested. In our movie trailer we have followed the code of the slow pacing non diegetic sound to help the audience become engaged in the trailer so we know that they understand whats going on. We have also followed the convention of revealing the characters at the beggining, so we have included several scenes of Kennan, Bolt and Zane playing football together to present the charcters to the audience.

The middle of the movie trailer begins to speed up abit in terms of faster and louder non diegetic sounds to keep the audiences attention throughout. Diegetic sounds such as speech may also be included more often to help show some of the storyline and to add to the tension. The sounds help to accompany the scenes, which begin to get more interesting. The scenes start to conatin alot more action, with new characters being introduced, which may trigger off questions being asked by the audience, resulting in mystery. A love interest may be present in this stage, which usually ends up being a major part in the movie, where the love interest (Princess) has been taken by the villain and its up to the hero to save her, as proposed in Vladimir Propp's theory. An example of this in an existing movie trailer was in the Underworld - Rise of the Lycans, about a minute into the movie trailer we can see Seline, the warrioress and hero of the movie has become in love with the prisoner and this is presented in passionate scenes of them both. This helps to build the solid foundations of the trailer for the audience in terms of charecter building and the plot. Instead of a love interest and a hero we may see a villain performing some sort of action that the hero now has to sort out. An example of this is in the Underworld - Awakening trailer, where we can witness the hybrid werewolf being hunted by the military. In the audience's mind, the military is a Symbol for war, and war is an Icon of death, which presents the idea that the werewolf has performed an act of judgement and solitude. We can then witness Selina attmepting to hurt the creature, but witness that it gets away, showing that his gruesome acts are not over. We have challenged this code of presenting more important charcters towards the middle of the trailer by revealing the psychologist at the beggining. We felt by revealing the psychologist at the beggining and presenting him throughout the movie trailer, this may help to build abit of suspension and mystery early on so we could grab the audiences attention early.

The end of the movie trailer is where the tension is at its peak and the maximum attention of the audience is captured. The non-diegetic sound is usually fast tempo to help sustain and build up tension, the sounds act as a guidance for the scenes, to help them get the most emotion out of the audience as possible. The scenes towards the end most of which contain action and scenes that will imprint on the minds of the audience, which will aim to bring them to watch the movie. An example of this is in the underworld awakening trailer, one of the last scenes we see is an elevator falling down towards Selena, who we see struggling to stop it and then the scene ends there, so were left with a mystery to whether or not she survives. This action scene will play on our mind to find out what happens next, this technique is great in trailer to help capture the audiences attention. In our movie trailer we have created a similar effect, where the audience are left with  cliff hanger. The scene we have included is of Kennan and the Shadow duelling together, Kennan brings down a super lightning storm and aims it towards the Shadow, we are then left at this cliff hanger to what happens next between them both.

Movie Poster

For the planning and research of our movie poster we had looked at several existing movie posters that lie within the genre we have chosen to base our own movie poster on. I have conformed to most of the codes and conventions that are used on other movie posters on our own movie poster. One example is the actors/actresses names that have been placed on the top of the movie poster is a popular convention used to show the audience who the major stars are in the movie, which helps to sell the movie to the audience. Another convention we followed was the Billing's box. This is a legal requirement and is therefore found on every movie poster that is created officially for a movie release. The Billing's box includes information about everyone who's involved with the production of the movie including actors/actresses, music composers, editors and producers etc. We have included a Billing's box on our movie poster to meet these legal requirements to ensure our movie poster looks as professional and realistic as possible.

We challenged slightly one commonly used convention where the main character is facing directly towards the camera to establish direct eye contact with the audience. Instead we had split the face in half of two of the main actors using Photoshop and brought them together to form a new face, which was sealed down the middle with a single lightning bolt. This I felt was quite effective at adding some creativity to our poster, but also delivers mystery, where the audience may start to ask questions about who are the two guys that are joined at the face are. When this concept of conjoining two faces came into my mind I was trying to capture the ideology of Binary Opposition first explored by Ferdinand De Saussure. I wanted to put this idea forward within our poster to show that to understand one meaning you must know another meaning. This works well with our movie poster because we focus on good and evil, but to understand what 'good' is, we must have an understanding of 'evil'. We have clearly shown Kennan as the Good guy and the Shadow as the bad guy through use of carefully chosen Mise en scene, most importantly lighting and costume. By costume I mean I have placed Kennan in a red hoody and the Shadow in a dark blue hoody. I have firstly chosen a hoody to clearly represent them, the connotations associated with hoods indicates their youth, but the colours I have chosen carefully. The connotations assigned to the colour red include love, passion, vitality and life, however the colour red can also mean danger, anger and burning. The choice of putting this colour upon Kennan is so he can be seen as a good guy, but with the intention to harm only to protect his family and circle of friends.  The connotations assigned to the colour dark blue are confidence, importance, authority and power, which is how i want the audience to see the shadow, as a confident intelligent villain. The colour dark blue can also carry the same connotations as the colour black, which revolves around death, evil, and is associated with people who carry an authoritarian personality. These colour meanings sum up the Shadow perfectly and by placing him in a dark blue hoody can pass on these connotations directly to the audiences gaze.

Magazine front cover

When we were planning and designing our magazine front cover we took into account many codes and conventions that we had analysed in our research where we had a look at existing magazine front covers. Some of the codes and conventions we followed included the of cover lines throughout the front cover. The cover lines helped us to put forward information of other articles that were within the issue of the magazine, which would help to sell the magazine to our target audience. We could also put forward information on free posters that were being given free with this issue of TheBigScreen to our audience.

Another convention we used included the use of a masthead to show the audience, which magazine they are looking upon and to use as the magazines identity. The name of our magazine is 'TheBigScreen', which was chosen specifically to represent that of a cinema screen ,which relates directly back to movies, which our magazine focuses on. In this issue we have customised our magazine logo to look like the movie the magazine is focusing on this month. This idea of transforming your logo to look like the movie your promoting this month is a technique used by magazine editors to put the movie on a pedestal, almost a review in itself by the editor. Its like the editor is personally telling their target audience to watch the movie because they are, almost a conforming technique. One issue of Empire we looked at that changed its masthead to look like the movie it was following up was an issue based upon Iron Man 2 (http://www.themovieblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/empire-ironman2.jpg). With this issue they had gave their originally red Empire logo a change, by issuing lightning bolts to charge across the typography with a static blue colour to replace the red. This has been topped up with an extremely bright glow that replicates the look of Iron Man's core, the very feature that sakes him who he is, without this he would be a mortal human. The magazine has taken what is most precious to Iron Man and transformed their logo to look like this, maybe to show that the logo is the magazines power source, without which it wouldn't be what it currently is, everything they stand for would be demoralised.

Another convention I have followed is by including an environment in which is set in the movie. This is done to help add some uniqueness to the movie poster by including an environment, which is unique to the movie. For example within my movie poster I have included large buildings in the background to show an urban environment in which my movie is based within. The buildings have been shown at a low angle to help emphasise the dominance of the two characters shown on the movie poster. They can be represented as powerful and dominant much like what large office buildings represent. The taller something is, the more dominant it becomes, the low angle shows the building as being higher, more dominant and overpowering.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback? 

I want to adumbrate how audience feedback is an area that is highly underestimated within the media industry in terms of importance and as a very valuable form of feedback. The audience/consumers are the group of individuals who a producer is aiming to produce a product/lifestyle for. It is an arduous task to produce a product for these individuals and feedback from the audience is fundamental and highly valuable for providing the producer with details on how they have grasped their audience's attention, but also how they could have improved the product/lifestyle to attract their audience better. These responses are far from being a set of fabricated responses, but give the producer a detailed description of all the things that are positive and negative about the product/lifestyle.

Our target audience consists of individuals between the ages of 18 and 20. Although this is quite a small age bracket we have not just aimed to reach out to this group minority but to also aim for people slightly younger as they where also quite a high percentage who had answered our questionnaire at the start of the project. My group have devised a new questionnaire to give to our target audience to ask them about how they felt our movie trailer has delivered in terms of what they asked for when we carried out our audience research at the beginning of our project. Criteria our target audience looked for included the movie had to be a supernatural thriller and consisted of a villain, a hero and mystery. These codes and conventions where our stepping stones and we used these to help us to create a movie trailer that would inhibit the features that our target audience required, therefore appealing to them.

We had asked our target audience numerous questions such as 'What genre would you say our movie trailer fell into?'. This question was asked so we could find out whether or not our movie trailer had fallen into the genres Supernatural and thriller, which is what our target audience had asked for. The results from this question showed that our target audience had thought our movie trailer had fallen into the genres Supernatural, superhero and mystery. These were a very good set of responses due to the fact that our target audience had identified some of the genres we were aiming for. They also said why they thought the genres were what they said, they said the Mystery element was explored because they couldn't identify some of the characters, which added towards the mystery genre. They said they had identified Supernatural as an genre due to the fact that the main character and villain had possessed supernatural powers beyond human capabilities. They finally added that the superhero genre was explored because of the hero and villain that where present within the trailer. These are codes and conventions we have captured that can be found within existing movies that fall within the genres of mystery, superhero and supernatural. We were a bit disappointed because only one of the responses out of 20 had ticked the Thriller genre box. This was one of the genres that we were aiming to capture within our movie trailer. After careful analysis of our movie trailer we came to the conclusion that the reason our movie trailer may not have captured the thriller genre was due to the non-diegetic sound effects we used and the lack in action scenes. The sound element throughout our movie trailer was probably the weakest aspect of our movie trailer because we found it difficult to find what music goes with specific scenes within our movie trailer. This was maybe one area we could have done some more research within so we could find out exactly what types of music scores are used within thriller trailers.

The next question we asked our target audience was 'Were the special effects used in the movie trailer effective?'. The response we got for that question from all of our respondents was 'Yes', the special effects were effective and looked visually stunning and enhanced the realism of our movie trailer. The next question we asked was whether or not they would be more likely to see a movie because it contained special effects. 19 out of 20 respondents had agreed to this question that they would be more likely to see a movie with special effects.

The following question was as follows 'Did you find the costume used were appropriate to the character roles?'. 18 out of 20 of our respondents had said yes to this question and were able to identify all of the characters within our movie trailer, however the two respondents that said no had pointed out that they recognised all of our characters apart from the psychologist who they mistaken for a teacher. If we were to go back and repeat our costume design we would have included a name badge on the psychologist to identify who he was so there wouldn't be any confusion over his occupation.

Our final question asked 'Would you watch our movie after watching the movie trailer?'. All of our respondents said they would watch our movie after watching our movie trailer. This was a good indication that we had included all or most of the codes and conventions of supernatural/thriller that they were looking for. The only criticism I would give about the movie trailer is the sound, which is an area that we should have paid more attention too. If I were to do something different to the movie trailer that I didn't do this time would be to include more diegetic sound within the movie trailer and to make the diegetic sound of the psychologists voice a bit louder. On Final Cut Pro I had maximised the sound on the psychologists clips, however they still weren't loud enough for his voice to be heard clear, therefore if I were to carry this out again I would have brought the camera closer to the actor so his voice would be heard clearer and so would be heard on the movie trailer.


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

Within the different aspects of our project we were forced to deal with many media technologies to help us present our findings in an interesting way and to create and develop our final products. I will talk about each of our final projects individually and what media technologies we used on the journey from researching and planning to creating and developing.

For all of our project I had used blogger to record and take note in all aspects of my A2 project. This was used to store information regarding our progress made within our project.  

Trailer

When we began to research and plan for our movie trailer we looked upon the popular video streaming website Youtube to help us find existing trailers that lie within different categories for us to dwell upon and analyse. Youtube was a very helpful media tool for us to use as it helped us gain access to millions of videos that helped us to gain an understanding of existing movie trailers that we could analyse in terms of codes and conventions used. 

Once we had researched existing movie trailers we then moved onto researched codes and conventions of our chosen movie genre, Thriller/Paranormal. We used Microsoft powerpoint to present our research and ideas on codes and conventions. Microsoft powerpoint was a nice piece of software that enabled us to present our research in a more professional and interesting way. We had to take screenshots to show our powerpoint as we were unable to upload the powerpoint directly.

When it came to constructing our movie trailer we had a huge array of media software that was tailored towards assisting producers at assembling and creating professional videos. Of course each software available comes with its perks and drawbacks, which would affect our final product differently. The different software we could choose from included Final cut pro X, Adobe Premiere Pro, Serif Movie plus X6, Windows movie maker. Since having experience with Adobe premiere pro, Serif and Windows it would seem logical to use these software platforms to construct my movie trailer, however i recently brought a Macbook Pro. I thought it would be a good opportunity to purchase Final cut pro X and to give it a try to allow u to construct a professional looking movie trailer. Once I downloaded the software i wanted to have a look around at the layout. The softwares components are layed out easily, which makes it easy to locate different tools needed to perform specific tasks. the timeline is located at the bottom of the screen and contains a drop in tool, which makes it easy to import and export video clips and sound files. 

Final cut pro X i felt was very easy to get top grips with. The drop and drag feature made it easy to drop clips into the timeline and also gave me the ability to relocate clips if i needed to, which speeded up the construction process abit. I also liked the feature that allowed you to crop clips once they were in your timeline. This was very helpful because I had many clips that I had to deal with and a lot of them were too long and needed trimming down. The fact I could trim them down in the software makes it very easy to perform this action and to move on to assembling and rearranging the clips quicker and smoother.

When it came to editing specific clips, for example the clips I needed to add the lightning effect into couldn't be done within the Final cut pro software package. The only software capable of such detail and precision is Adobe After Effects CS6. This software is specifically tailored to allowing the user to add special effects to desired clips. The possibilities of these effects are endless and can be produced in multiple ways with desired effects. The software isn't isn't easy to accumulate and get used to I had to perform a lot of research into how to understand the basics of the software and involved a lot of investigating into the whereabouts of tools. I had used Youtube to find tutorials on the basics of After Effects and once these skills were attained I was able to experiment and begin to dwell into the more advanced levels of editing. Some examples of advanced editing techniques I had to understand included colour mapping, advanced sky replacement, particle systems, movie titles, day to night conversions and light streaks. Without this software we would have been able to create realistic looking special effects and our movie trailer would not look as professional as it does. This goes to show that the choice of software and the availability of different software will affect the outcome.

Poster

Planning and researching for our movie poster involved a different approach to how we researched and planned for our movie trailer. Instead of looking on Youtube for existing products, which comprehends of videos, we looked on google images for existing movie posters that we can analyse and look at the codes and conventions used. The way that google images work, is by collecting a group of images based upon the users search, which works in our favour because it does the searching for us quickly and effectively. Once the search has been performed a group of images appears, which we can then allocate the ones that are most suited to our needs, in our case, researching.


When we began to plan for the font design of our movie poster title, we used the software Adobe Photoshop CS6 to design them. This particular software contains all the tools and elements needed to create and design an effective movie poster title. I had used in particular the features of text producing, colour editing, font type altering and the size altering of the text. A handy feature was the fact that Photoshop imports different fonts that are downloaded onto the computer, which allowed me to create my movie title quicker as I already had the typography type planned out.

When it came to constructing the movie poster I had used two different software packages. Photoshop CS6 to assemble the photo of Kennan onto a black background and to add all the photos onto the poster, and Adobe After Effects CS6 to incorporate the lightning effect down the middle of the poster. Both of these software packages had allowed me to make my poster look as professional as I can. They have taught me a lot in terms of editing techniques used and how to develop professional looking products. The skills I have learned can be applied to future projects I may embark on. Skills I have learned on Photoshop include how to rotate an image so it is facing the opposing way, this was useful when I had to flip images over to face the opposite side. Even though this seems basic to understand and to rut into practice, I found it was quite difficult to figure out because the tool we assumed would be able to perform this task only rotated the image.

Another skill I have learned is too how to make an image transparent, this was needed to alter the transparency of the top two images on opposite sides so they were transparent and could only be seen a little. The reason for this was to add a cool effect that would seem different from existing movie posters.

Another advanced skill I have accumulated that is essential in almost every project undertaken using Photoshop is mastering how to use layers. Layers act like different layers of paper compiled upon one another. Changing one layer will alter how the overall construction of the project will look. An example of how changing the arrangement of layers affects the overall look is when we were constructing layers in our project for our movie poster. We had the foundation layer, which was a black fill depicting the background and another layer, which held the image of Kennan upon it. When we swapped the arrangement of the two layers so the layer containing Kennan on it was on the top and the background layer was underneath, the image of Kennan disappeared. This was because it was now hidden behind the background, therefore its essential to place the layers in the correct order so essential codes and conventions are clearly shown instead of becoming hidden and unnoticed.

Movie magazine

The task of planning and researching for our movie magazine was undertaken in a similar manner to that of our movie poster. We researched existing products by looking upon the internet, in particular google images, where we could find a large selection of movie magazine front covers that we could take and proceed onto analysing and deconstructing them into codes and conventions used.

I found two different movie magazine front covers that where particularly good at demonstrating what I wanted to achieve in my movie magazine. The issue of Empire where Iron Man is the cover star had used a particular convention that I felt would be particularly striking within my movie magazine front cover. This convention isn't used a lot within font covers, which is why when it does occur it has such a large impact on the audience. The convention used is when the movie the magazine is representing has had a direct impact or relationship with the magazine itself. This is shown within the Empire issue with Iron Man when the Empire logo has been changed to look like the core of Iron Man's suit. Lightning can be seen projecting from the masthead with a light glow shrouding the typography, which transforms the usually red stricken logo into the look of the core of Iron Mans suit. This convention of changing your logo to look like the movie the issue is representing is a way of putting the movie on a pedestal. I have chosen to do this within my movie magazine, to change the look of my magazine logo to look like LifeLine, which is the movie I am representing.

To achieve this transformation of my logo, I had to use media tailored software to perform these changes. I imported my original logo of the 'TheBigScreen', which was created within Photoshop, into Adobe After Effects. The reason for using this software is because it provides me with the tools necessary to add effects to the logo whilst allowing me to retain proffessionalism. I had to consider what I wanted my logo to look like once it had been edited, however I needed to remember that it needs to look like my movie or have some resemblance, which the audience could recognise. I decided that one element that is continuously present within my movie trailer, is the lightning that Kennan has accumulated the control over. A tool I used to create such lightning bolts was an After Effects plug in called 'Advanced Lightning', which would simulate lightning bolts that I would have full control over in terms of making them look like how I wanted. Once the basic lightning bolt had been simulated, I had to layer it over the masthead to look like it was being created via the logo. I had used the colour tool to change the colour of the lightning from a pale yellow to a light blue colour to give it a naturalistic look. I then decided to use the glow tool to add a glow effect to make it look slightly unnatural in terms of looking more supernatural. I then decided to change the look of the bolts and their direction to look like they were assign from different letters within the logo to look like they where being generated simultaneously. I had altered the direction of the lightning from 'Breakey' to a 'Strike', which made it look more natural instead of out of control. This decision was made so it would look like their was control over the lightning rather than being perfectly natural, which is what I didn't want to give because Kennan is the person who wields the lightning. I also wanted to change the look of the lightning slightly more, but wanted to change where the lightning strikes to. This is more challenging to devise, but nonetheless is still possible through the use of 'key framing'. This method would allow me to put in place a frame that tells me where the lightning will begin to move and then another key to stop the lightning moving. Once in place I will then play the lightning as if it was a moving image and stop where I feel it looks best and then place a keyframe to hold it in that position where it will remain. This feature, although advanced, I felt made all the difference within the look of my masthead and made the lightning look like it was being generated through each letter.

I have also used Photoshop to place a photo of Kennan onto the movie magazine front cover. I have encapsulated this photo onto a layer, which I could then include new layers to base more codes and conventions upon. I have also used Adobe After Effects CS6 to create lightning bolts going from Kennan hands, which then strike upwards and reattach to the masthead, the movie magazines logo. This connection I wanted to help establish a connection between the magazines logo, or identity with the movie itself. This connection helps to show the significance of the movie, with the movie itself revealing a power over the magazine, which is also demonstrated through the practice of the magazine allowing itself to change for a movie its promoting.

This media technology gave me the oppotunity to create realistic professional effects and also allowed me to force all of my creativity into the final artefacts through the use of software that encouraged me to use this part of me.

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

The main product consists of a movie poster for our movie 'Life line' and our ancillary texts consists of a movie poster and a magazine front cover. The three of my final products both relate to one another through the movie that I had created called 'Lifeline'. I feel the two ancillary texts I had created both compliment and enhance the clarity and realism of my final product. By this I mean both the movie poster and magazine front cover help to enhance the reality as if it were created in reality from a professional media company.

The movie poster would be ideal for those that can't see the movie trailer maybe due to the lack of access to the internet or maybe due to problems with the internet access at home. Because the posters will be positioned all over society, potentially on the side of buses, on shop windows etc. The poster will be viewed by consumers of all ages including kids, teenagers, adults and the elderly therefore I have a large target audience to appeal too, which will maximise my potential for more consumers.