1. Evaluation
Refer to each product (Trailer, Magazine Cover and Poster)
Refer to specific examples and the reason behind “repeating” (Steve Neale)
“Challenge” – What did you offer that connotes a USP over other similar products
from the genre and why.
How did you challenge (Steve Neale) certain conventions in your final outcomes?
In our soap opera trailer for “Black and White” we targeted specific key areas
within every other soap opera trailer such as Skins and Hollyoaks trailers. These
soap operas target specific areas within their trailer and present different events.
In order to make our soap opera snappy so that we can create an effective
equilibrium we had to exploit and include a non-linear multi-stranded narrative.
We did do a non-linear storyline because all of our characters have links
throughout the trailer. The trailer may seem linear however it is not because we
have shots where chess pieces are moved to show relation between each
character or event. We exploited features of a non-linear trailer because we
made sure we did not have a continuous storyline and it involved breaking
scenes up through the use of chess scenes where the supposed killer is playing a
game of chess, which symbolises him playing with characters in the soap.
For this to work we had to pick a suitable soundtrack to go with our trailer. This
meant that we had to find a song, which has an increasing tempo as our trailer
was jumping shots faster the more it was progressing. With this we wanted to
achieve building pressure within our audience so that they would want to know
more about the soap just through watching the trailer. We also wanted the song
to be easy to remember and copyright free so that we may edit it and even add to
it where needed to make our trailer as good as possible.
We had to leave our trailer with a cliff-hanger at the end to top this effect off so
that we can leave our audience wandering, what will happen next? We did this
through building pressure until the very end shot which is, in this case, where we
used our symbolism of chess to represent conflict. We showed chess pieces
falling to the ground to quickly break the tension with calm, slowed down time
as the pieces fall. This convention was repeated (Steve Neale) to give an enigma
clue to the viewer about possible events in the trailer.
We wanted our trailer to look as realistic as possible compared to the real world.
In our trailer we have used misandry to represent a woman’s hatred towards
men. This was shown where one of our female characters pushes away a male
character away from them while shouting, “get away from me”. We have
challenged this convention as it is not repeated throughout our trailer
consistently and is only shown once.
2. We wanted to base our ident off a stereotype. We have exploited an example
from the Hollyoaks logo to create our own. The Hollyoaks logo included two
gender signs and a very sophisticated yet creative font. We tried to use this to
our advantage and create our own ident which in this case is our triangular style
logo which allows the soap to be quickly identified and easy to remember as it
has a very simple colour scheme of black and white which is also what our soap
is called therefore we were aiming for our audience effectively because we used
the right font and a very easy to remember logo and colour scheme.
We repeated the conventions of non-diagetic sounds in the subject of song
tempo. As the trailer progresses we made sure that the song has a higher tempo
as it progresses. We used the song Shy by Darwin as it includes an increasing
tempo and matches the pace of our trailer very well. We have repeated this
convention because other soap opera trailers build up tension as they progress
until the end when everything stops or slows down and is ended with logos. We
did use juxtaposition because we had 2 things being shown at the same time as
the song progressed. These 2 scenes were the chess moving and a normal natural
storyline, which included a contrasted effect to the storyline as these scenes,
would cut each other.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Combination – Refer to terms such as cross media convergence and synergy
What theory is represented?
How effective was it on the audience
Originally all my work and production was aimed at teenagers between the age
of 16-24, so I had to make sure all my work was modern looking and easily
recognisable. I have used a simple colour scheme of black and white to represent
our production. I wanted my soap opera trailer to convey a personal identity
(Katz) with the audience so that they may find the show intriguing and perhaps
find a solution to the viewer’s problems in their reality. I have achieved a
symbiotic relationship in my ancillary texts because I was able to implement a
Facebook logo onto my magazine and poster to promote my soap opera. This
was effective because teenagers on social media make up for today’s “Global
Village”(Marshall McLuhan-1967) on various platforms such as Facebook or
twitter, which can help promote the show more and therefore become popular.
In order for the soap to appeal to the audience I had to use Hartley’s 7
subjectivities to make sure I target the right areas within my trailer and ancillary
tasks. I have targeted women by presenting a “strong woman”(Rebecca Feasey)
in my trailer so that the female audience can “personally identify” with that
character. It can also target men as they most likely to experience a “male gaze”
(Laura Mulvey) from it.
My trailer was released alongside a magazine and a poster so that it becomes
more popular faster and so that both products promote each other. This is a very
good effect because the main reason for using synergy is to make promotion of
both products more efficient as this effect is repeated within different media.
Through this those products are able to become symbiotic meaning that they a
3. mutually beneficial relationship, in this case the popularity of both the trailer
and the magazine itself becoming more popular and gaining more profits. My
work also included cross media convergence as it related to other media
products within my main products themselves. I did this by adding social links
into my poster and displaying their logos for quick reference (Facebook, Twitter
and Snapchat), This allows the product to be recognised quickly within society
and allows the product to become more popular through “liking” the specific
page, and also inviting your friends to like that page, or following and
“retweeting” posts made the show. This boosts popularity and
What have you learned from you audience feedback?
A majority of my responses were from females. There was no surprise here as
the soap opera genre is more popular among women than men and this
particular type of genre is usually discussed between them. I have also come to
realise that my trailer met my target audience (16-24) as all my audience
feedback came from teens aged 16-20 years old. These teens found the trailer
enjoyable which was the aim of our trailer to make sure the audience is
interested as much in the genre as possible, however not all of the audience
would recommend this soap to a friend as they might have found the soap opera
not appealing enough for them to tell anyone else about it. From the feedback
received I also realized that most of the audience picked up on the fact that this
soap opera picks up on teenage pregnancy the most, which is good because we
were aiming for conflict and to show how teenage pregnancy can affect
someone’s life. Other applicants also picked up the fact that there is mystery
included in the show through the enigma code of chess being played in between
each event. The audience also commented on the fact that the show would be
successful on BBC2, which is good because the show is already receiving positive
feedback and it would mean that people would watch it. Of course the audience
also did not forget to comment on the use of music and all responses have said
that the choice of music was good.
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning
and evaluation stages?
I used media technologies such as Adobe Photoshop CS4 to achieve my ancillary
tasks. As it enabled me to easily edit all my pictures, logos and other things,
which related to my media coursework. Photoshop CS4 played a big role in the
development of my soap opera magazine as it helped me create a layout based
on an example magazine that I have found online. Using Photoshop allowed me
to challenge the conventions of a soap opera magazine and I was able to recreate
something that had an original touch to it and it also included original images
that I have taken using a DSLR camera. I have also used Photoshop CS4 to create
a soap opera poster, which will allow the soap to be easily recognisable, but also
it will raise awareness about the upcoming soap. In the poster I have included a
screenshot from one of the trailer scenes, which shows a chess board and pieces
with a shadowy figure in the background, as I wanted to reach an effect where
the audience would want to see more about the soap and see what is going to
happen within it. There were specific tools that I had to use in order to achieve
4. the effect I have in my current work. I had to use blending options to create a
stroke for my letters within the logo, in the word “Black”, and then colour the
stroke white to contrast against the background colour of black. I had to make
the stroke size appropriate to the resolution of the logo so that it was not too
thick or thin; this size was 3px with opacity of 100%. The font I used for my logo
was “Dreamwalker” which I found online. I chose this font because it suited my
targets for a modern looking logo, which would be easily recognisable. For most
of my work within Photoshop I used blending options, as they were the most
appropriate tools for creating a modern looking effect. This included blending in
shadows and adding strokes to text or images where appropriate. I have also
used various types of brushes to create a dirt looking effect on the “black” and
the “white” to show how both contrast each other and that they are a part of each
other which shows that the show might include a multi-stranded narrative.
I have also used Adobe Premier Pro CS6 to create my trailer itself. When making
the trailer I ran into a problem involving not understanding how to use Premier,
so I had to learn the basics before I even attempted to put all my shots together
and edit them. The trailer was rendered to 720p and 30 frames per second,
which meant that the quality was good and we were able to gain positive
feedback from this. We used a wide range of effects such as lowering music
volume to emphasize dialogue, we also used a fade in effect on our logo and the
BBC2 logo, and we also added voice-overs at the end of our trailer to announce it
to the audience. Within our trailer we used a song by Darwin – Shy. We used to
song as its copyright free and therefore we were allowed to edit it within our
trailer.
