Eval

Jack Croton

ORC A2 Media Evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
My media product (Abhorrence the film) challenges forms and
conventions of real media products in various ways, but in
other ways it uses and develops conventions too.
Firstly, the way how it challenges the real media conventions can
be related to my teaser trailer, because it only uses one
camera angle going down the corridor. The reason why I
chose to do this one camera angle was because I thought as
it is only a teaser trailer I didn’t want to give away too much
about the actual plot or storyline, but then I didn’t want it to
be too vague, and that’s why I chose to add the flashes to
the text so that the audience would have a bit more of an
idea of the storyline and then that way, the text acted as a
medium to give the storyline without the need of a visual
clip from the film. The reason why I chose to have text
instead of actually recording it wasn’t because I didn’t have
time to record it or could not be bothered, but it stirs up
suspicion and suspense for the viewer as they will conjure up
their own thoughts and mental images of what it’s about
and how they’ll perceive it.


With the trailer as well, it focuses on the
door at the end of the corridor, now
with a normal door it’s not that
scary, but when the image is
manipulated so it’s slower, has a black
and white effect on it, and it is actually
as if someone is walking to it because
you can see the ups and downs that
happen with footsteps. This is an
effect that I wanted too, because it
puts the audience and the viewer in
the film, and sees it from the
perspective of the malevolent force
which is what’s walking towards the
door, not only that but with the
reflection of myself walking towards
the door, it worked well, because the
audience can see that something in
the reflection, and the reflection tool
in horrors is a useful tool. A good
example of this is in Shaun of the Dead
when Shaun sees Pete’s reflection
behind the shower curtain but in the
mirror, and therefore, I used a similar
effect to create a similar suspense
effect.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge
forms and conventions of real media products?
A way in which my trailer however used
and developed conventions is that
with the countdown of the text from
4 to 0. The reason why I used this
technique is because when you see a
countdown, your brain automatically
expects something to happen when
it gets to zero, but when you know
it’s going to be something negative
like in a horror film, then you
become more apprehensive, so the
psychology of the countdown, which
each time had a different aspect of
the story to it, was something that I
wanted to introduce and use
because of the psychological effects
it would have on the audience,
which I kept in mind when making
the trailer.

For my two ancillary tasks, I stuck to the conventions of real
media products quite well, as I used the Empire magazine for
a template for my front cover due to the high success of the
brand.

I laid out the way of the front cover in the conventional way to
how real media products of this type are presented. The
competition at the bottom of the page that I added is
something that I thinks adds real authenticity to the text
because it is a way that the magazines entices viewers to buy
the magazine. I then also changed the ‘WIN’ to stand out
more so that looking at the front cover, after the audience
will have seen the main image and the text that
accompanied that, their eyes will be drawn to the
competition which was inside the issue and so they’d have to
buy the magazine. Something that, with research, I found out
was some magazines come wrapped in a plastic wallet and
so to see what’s inside them you have to open the plastic
wallet and the only way of doing that is by paying for
it, therefore, with that technique as well, it’d sell more
issues.
The colour scheme I did for the front cover too was to keep a
constant theme running throughout. As you can see it is
fairly dark and when there is white writing there’s red not far
from it. The dark red to it obviously has suspicious
connotations to it because it is indicates danger.


For my poster, I did a lot of research for horror
posters, and look on various websites such as
www.Odeon.co.uk/, www.allposters.co.uk/ and
hammerhorrorposters.com/ which I all found
helpful.
When compiling my poster, I looked at the whole
layout and especially the way in which the text
was in comparison to the image, because I
wanted the audience to look at the image and
see the figure looking around the corner, but
then see how everything was in black and
white apart from the title of the film, which is
in a mysterious red and like I previously stated,
red indicates danger.
For the tagline of my poster I wanted it to be on
the wall so it was almost as if it had been
written on the wall by the evil presence. When
editing the writing on the wall I used the
shadow tool for it to give the effect that I
wanted as it gives off a more grainy type of
look to it, something that it wouldn’t have
looked like if the effect wasn’t added.

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

The combination of all three tasks in my opinion is really good as they compliment each
other nicely.
A constant theme throughout each task is the black and red colours, as it is a horror based
film, the two ancillary tasks were based around the trailer, and so before I thought
about making the trailer, I made the two ancillary tasks first, but I had planned out that
I would have a dark colour scheme because of the nature of the film I was doing.
In all good horrors, the darkness effects the story and effectiveness of the horror greatly
because of the whole not knowing factor, but not only that, but how the black and
white theme is used in the poster and in the trailer, because when something is black
and white it is an abstract view as it’s not normally seen anymore, but when you add
another colour in there like the red, it makes it even more abstract, because of what
red implies.
As a mixture, the poster sets the tone I think for the film as that and the trailer are so alike
in terms of colour scheme, images and the editing done to them, but then the front
cover is a good edition due to the different look it gives on the project.
The poster is the first and only time that you see the actors and that’s not by
accident, because with the front cover, if this was a real film and everything, the people
acting in it would be real actors and the audience would know them and know that
they’re in the film and so there would be no need for them to be in the teaser trailer as
I wouldn’t want to give it away too much, which is what I have said all along.

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

As a compilation of all three together, I think that the texts all give the project
something unique in their own way, because with the front cover I would say it
looks as much like a proper front cover as I could’ve made it with the tools I had at
my disposal, and so with that, the front cover would add a different level of
advertising to the film because it’d be on the shop selves, opposed to the poster
that’d be poster in town centres and outside cinema’s ect. But then with the
teaser trailer, that’s something that you’d see on YouTube or on the big screen
before a film.
I think that the fact I made a Twitter account and a Facebook page for the film makes
the whole project seem more legitimate, as real world films have twitter accounts
and Facebook pages so that they can communicate with fans and give them sneak
previews before anywhere else.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

From my audience feedback that I received from various different methods such as a
questionnaire, just asking people as I was going along on their opinions and from
the Twitter and Facebook pages, I think that I learnt a lot from it, because when
you have got your mind set on something it is sometimes very easy to find yourself
missing out really obvious things because you’re so glued to a different aspect.
I found the questionnaire the most helpful because I compiled my results in graphs
and that way I could see what the majority thought in terms of improvements or
things that they liked, so with that in mind, if I had to do round of improvements I
would have to opt for the questionnaire method.
The Twitter and Facebook route however was very good as I had a much rather reach
to people and could have longer to get feedback, because obviously being in a
school environment I did a quick questionnaire with the people who had frees
when I had my Media lessons, whereas with Facebook and Twitter I could post
something then come back a few days later and it’d have feedback on their with
people that I won’t have seen at school or people that I won’t have been able to
see, such as people from sports that I do but that don’t attend my sixth form.

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

For the research stage of my project I used various websites and programmes to help me map out what
I was looking to do.
When looking at the horror genre, I did a lot of research which saw me go from web pages such as
Wikipedia to certified and successful horror films to see where they did things right and wrong.
When looking for the type of things that I had to include in order to get across the atmosphere that
I wanted, I found out that a lot of things that people find scary are all to do with their brain and a
lot of horror based films base themselves around weaknesses in people fears, such as spiders (Eight
Legged Freaks) aliens (Signs) ghosts/demons (Paranormal Activity) or anything paranormal, so
basically things that people don’t understand. For me personally, I always wanted to do a
demon/malevolent force based film because that’s what my weakness in films is, if it has anything
to do with things that you can see having an effect on something you can see, like an object
moving, it creeps me out.
With the research going well, I decided to make my research search a lot finer and so I then started to
go down the route of looking for paranormal films like the Paranormal Activities or the Grave
Encounters, which I watched so I could see what things from those films made me jump the most
and then find a way of putting that idea into my film but no into the trailer, as I made a decision
afterwards that I wanted my trailer to be suspense building, not giving away the storyline or any
clues that would comprimise the ending of the film.
In terms of research too, throughout the project when I wanted to know what my audience thought of
things, questionnaires, Facebook and Twitter were brilliant ways of getting feedback from a mass
audience.

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

Now for the planning aspect of my project where I used a few ways of media to help me
plan.
Firstly, I made this blog so that I could keep a track of everything that I was doing and so if I
was thinking something I could just write it down and not forget it.
Another way that I used media, was that on my iPhone, where if I was unable to blog, I put
a little memo in the notes section to remind me, as these becamse very helpful,
because after all, if I wanted to save something for later but couldn’t write it down on a
pen and paper, then my phone was there for me.
I also used Photoshop for a while to play around with the tools on there, where I found
myself planning on there things such as layout of the front cover and the colour scheme
of the poster without realising I was really planning it. The reason why I would say I was
planning it after all, was because I set things up on there like the exposure and contrast
and things and then stuck with them until I found a good mix between all of the things
and then stuck with it for my final piece, whilst keeping in mind my original ideas.
Apart from planning it on a piece of paper and putting various ideas onto paper, they were
really the only few ways that I used media to help myself plan out what I was going to
do, because apart from that, I had a good mental thought of what and how I was going
to do things as soon as I saw the brief to the course.


Constructing all of my pieces proved to be very time consuming, as all of the various
websites, programmes and software that I used to put together the pieces.
For my poster I started with looking on websites for inspirations as to how to lay out a good
horror poster, then with that came the construction of my poster. For my poster, like
with the other two tasks too, I used my iPhone 4’s HD camera, which I found more than
adequate for that task and what I needed it for, but then when it came to editing
everything, that’s when the time consumption was really used up.
I assembled my poster on Photoshop CS5 in school and at home, as I found the utilities on
Photoshop were fantastic for putting things that I wanted in my poster onto my poster,
for which I used various tools in Photoshop such as to increase the exposure on the
poster, change it to black and white and change the way the writing appeared on the
poster.
With the writing I added certain things, like I have commented on with the writing on the
walls making it look shadow like, I changed the properties of the actual ‘Abhorrence’
text by giving it a red outer glow and putting a cover over it which gives it the streaky
affect.
The main lot of editing on the poster was the removal of the doors on each wall as I was
not sure at all how I was going to do it, but once I watched a few videos on YouTube to
patch things with Photoshop it was straightforward from there, but as I learnt, I had to
patch it from something already on the image, so doing the little indentations on either
side was time consuming because it was a case of getting a little bit at a time and
patching it very slowly and carefully.


For the construction of my front cover I took all of the images with my iPhone 4 as it was
the easier way for me to do it.
For the front cover I chose to use Photoshop again because after doing my poster, it gave
me more confidence with the programme so I used it for the building of my front cover.
With the front cover of Estate I had to re draft it, as I learnt that from the first time to not
have the image as the canvas of the file, so when I re drafted it I had a black canvas
then put the main image on top of it, and that way I was able to add more layers to it
because I wouldn’t be overlapping on all of the main image and just the black canvas.
I used four images for the cover of Estate, the one main and three down the left third. The
reason why I used images down the left third is because that’s what real magazine front
covers have on them so that the audience recognise the people in the images. With the
images I had to edit them quite a lot because if they were left how they were then it
wouldn’t have looked how it does because it’d have been all blocky and squares, but
with the eraser tool that I used, I was able to rub out everything that I cropped from the
images, so that just the image (or person/people) were in the picture with no
background from the photo.
The ‘Estate’ text on the page has an outer glow and transparency alterations, as to keep
with to the theme of shadows throughout, I made the actual text of ‘Estate’ see
through, and the only way how you see what it says is because of the red outer
glow, and it had to be red because of the colour scheme that I decided I would have.


The last part of construction was with my main task, and for this, the recordings I took from
my iPhone had to be converted online at www.online-convert.com/ because in order
for me to use the clips on Windows Movie Maker.
When putting together my trailer, I only used one clip but breaks between it for the text
that then subsequently came after the flash with a different message about the plot.
For the visuals I added a blur and a black and white effect to it too, whilst adding a half pace
effect for the timing of the trailer to make it appear like it had been a longer distance
travelled by the camera.
Towards the end of the trailer are images that are flashed on the screen, images which I
edited in Photoshop by adding black and white to the layering and changing the
brightness and exposure levels to give the images more of a darker appearance.
The text in the trailer were available to add in within the WMM programme and so I used
them to create a more suspense look for the trailer, especially as they come out of the
darkness and grow bigger towards the viewer. This again is something I wanted as it
makes the trailer more suspense filled because the text is almost reaching out to the
audience and closing in on them, just like the camera is closing in on the door.
Finally, to get my video live, I used YouTube to post the video when it was completed and
after that it was all done.

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

Evaluating my overall project was straightforward, but I wanted to use PowerPoint like
I have to do an evaluation because I thought it was more creative than just writing
a thousand word plus essay on why I did everything I did on word, not only
that, but the videos on YouTube where I talk through all of the questions in this
presentation but try and explain myself further and make myself crystal clear was
another way I thought that I could use different media technologies in my
project, and that’ll nicely go with SlideShare.net the website where I posted my
PowerPoints including this one.

Overall
Evaluating my overall project has probably been one of the highlights of the
whole thing, because as much as I enjoyed putting it together and
watching it all grow, being able to sit down and type this has given me
time to reflect on everything that I have achieved, because seven months
ago I didn’t think I’d be able to put together something like this at all, and
so looking back I would say the evaluating stage has been one of the most
enjoyable because all of the work was done and there was no stress added
to it with programmes not working or people not being able to help me
record or take photos.

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