How Did You Use New Media Technologies In The Construction And Research, Planning And Evaluation Stages?

Throughout this project I have used a vast amount of new media technologies, here I intend to discuss some of the technologies I used and what I used them for, I will also be comparing them to older media technologies such as analogue technologies for example, VHS.

Throughout this project there has been one major technology I have constantly used, blogger, this site has allowed me to upload every single piece of work I have created very easily, it also meant that I could upload images and video I have created, and with the comment box tool it made it very easy for my colleages to leave comments on my work, from which I could improve it, however there are several bad points that I have found with blogger, firstly, inserting pictures and video into a post does obscure the text, meaning the layout on the post was very different to that of the editing box, also lately blogger has added an updated editor, which in many areas is a large improvement, however this does meen you have to constantly revert to the old editor in order to upload video, which made it very time consuming.

Another new media that has vastly improved my work is upload sites, such as scribd, youtube and photobucket and I have used these for many different reasons, firstly I used scribd to upload word documents onto blogger without them turning into an actual post, making the layout much better and taking up much less space.

I have also used Youtube a very large amount generally to view other media texts such as movie teaser trailers or short films, it also means that if I wanted to I could upload my work onto it, possibly getting a wider audience feedback.

One of the most important pieces of software that I have used throughout my project is Adobe Phoptoshop, this photo editing software has allowed me to create teaser posters, final poster, a magazine cover, a production logo and many more. This piece of software is widely used and is classed as a proffesional piece of software, below are some of the images that I have created using it.

This year I have been very lucky to use a proffesional piece of editing software, Final Cut Express 4 which is used largely in the media industry, that has been a very big step up from the previous software we used in the AS course, I movie 6, there are many different features between the two such as editing tools and sound tools, however Final cut also contains it's own programme used for editing text called, Live Type which has been extremely useful in creating high quality dynamic pieces of text, which can be seen in the final cut I created. 

This piece of software is a very new piece of media and allows digital footage to be easily edited however some older media such as VHS would not run on the programme and therefore shooting with modern camcorders is crucial to the uploading stage of the footage.

In terms of audio I have been using garageband, this is not an advanced piece of software however it is very easy to create good quality pieces of music and has a very large libary of sounds that can be used.

To record my footage I used a brand new digital camcorder, which unlike the previous camcroders I have used records onto a hard drive instead of a DV tape, at first this seemed a much better option, however some of the computers, Macs, that I had been using do not accept the format which my camcorder recorded in and so it limited me to the type of computer I could use, below are some of the key specifications of my camcorder,

Price: £329.99
Record Format: 120GB hard drive
HD Ready: Yes
Recording Time Limit: 150 hours

In conjunction with audience feedback, I have uploaded all the footage onto a social networking site called Facebook, this meant that not only my class colleagues but many other people of different ages could give me good constructive feedback on my work.

What Have You Learned From Your Audience Feedback?

Throughout this module, audience feedback has contributed greatly to most of the tasks I have carried out, I have shown audience feedback in each of the posts where I have received it, I then used it to improve my products, take my film poster for example, previous to audience feedback it looked like this,

However, after receiving the following audience feedback,

• Doesn't reflect the content of the trailer
• Too cluttered
• Copyright image used
• More images needed
• Title not clear enough

the finished product looked like this, which I believe is an enormous improvement

One of the first items I received audience feedback on was my animatic, this is basically an animated storyboard made up of pictures and title sequences, below is the audience feedback I received on it,

Chris Benisek

Age: 17

Comments:

• got confusing in the middle
• not enough blood!
• not sure if the comedy was intentional
• why was there a random girl? what was the purpose?
• i enjoyed the soundtrack

Tom Copland

Age: 17

Comments:

• unclear narrative
• not very convincing acting
  
  

Conor Potts

Age: 17

Comments:

• I liked the storyline
• music needed to go together better
  

Alex Jowett

Age: 17

Comments:

• zombies may be hard to make look realistic in the actual trailer
  

Joe Shrimpton

Age: 17

Comments:

• more of an introduction at the start is needed
• soundtrack worked well
• would look better and scarier if it was set at night
  

Helena Beason

Age: 17

Comments:

• Unclear as to why the two characters thought it was a zombie
• relevance of woman was unclear
• would look better set at night
• better looking zombie!

as you can see i received a large amount of feedback relating to the lighting and that it would be better if it were set at night as it would create a preffered reading to the horror content, however after attempting to film in the dark i discovered that the lighting was too poor and characters along with actions could not be made out easily enough.
I also received a large amount of comments as to the purpose of the girl involved and that it was not clear as to why she suddenly appeared, this took a large impact on my storyline as I decided it was best to change the cast accordingly.

After receiving audience feedback on my animatic I then decided to change my storyline, once this was done I created a rough cut of my trailer, again I screened this infront of a class of pupils and recieved further audience feedback which is shown below,

• as-well as an american age rating screen have a version with a UK rating screen
• Treadman character does not project his voice loud enough
• change the font to represent genre
• Some of the voices are too quiet
• music does not go with the production title
• Girl is laughing when getting her stomach ripped open
• Elroy does not appear as their friend
• Colour of the font
• Over dub some of the voices
• controversial rock music
• eery music should be added
• speed up the spade hit

after recieving this feedback I decided to change a large amount of things, firstly I changed the font of the titles, this signified s supernatural style i.e. linking in to a preffered reading, I also changed the font colour half-way through the trailer from white to red, which was in key with the action starting i.e. killing the zombies, however I beleive I maybe could have found a better font as the one I choose was a little plain, also, with the assistance of final cut express 4, a proffesional editing software, I managed to raise the sound of the characters voices, which seemed to be a big issue as many of the audience said they could not hear the voices clear enough, however if I were to do any re-shoots then I would most likely use the boom mic that I have access to, as not only does this pick up sound better but the sound is also of a much higher quality.

Although the final cut was a huge imporvement on that of the rough cut, I still beleive there are a few things i should change, such as the quality of some of the acting, however, at the present the weather has been very different to that of my other scenes and would challenge the continuity of my trailer. 

I would also change the music, although I beleive the soundtrack is of a high quality I beleive it changes to often and is too overpowering to the actual footage.


After receiving an initial grade I combined it with the audience feedback I received especially on the ancillary texts, generally saying that it did not reflect what was seen in the trailer, I used this to help recreate both the film poster and the magazine front.

How Effective Is The f Your Main Product And Ancillary Texts?Combination O

The main part of my project was obviously the final product i.e. my teaser trailer, however both the main poster and magazine front cover are hugely important to the success of my project.

Before I created the main poster I also created a teaser poster campaign, which led to the final poster which I created.

when designing the poster I wanted to get across a number of things, firstly that the film is about zombies, clear anchorage is given to this through the hooded character in the image, I also wanted to portray vioence and horror, which I beleive is shown through both the blood dripping from the zombies mouth and the 18 certificate located in the cottom right corner, finally I wanted to portray what the zombies in my film are like, in most zombie films there is a general theme for example in Dawn of the Dead, the director, George A. Romero wanted to portray the zombie like nature of shooping malls and how the general public walk mindlessly around them buying everything in sight, in my film I have attempted to portray the zombies as hooded youthes, representing the violent nature of hoodies living in Britain.

When creating the front cover of the magazine I wanted to portray a very similar message to the main poster I created and so I kept the background of the poster the same and then obviously changed it according to the title of the magazine (Rewind).

I also included some sub texts on the magazine, one of which I thought was very important, an interview with the "unusual" director Ellis Clark, due to the bizzare storyline and comedy shown in my teaser trailer I thought it was very important to include something that portrays me as a director and why I added some of the unusual scenes shown in the trailer.

The ancillary texts were a very important section of the A2 module, however so was the final product and so once I had collected all the footage I needed for my trailer I thought it was important to edit the footage at a proffesional level using Final Cut, for this proffesional programme I watched a few tutorials along with some tutorials for the text creating side of the software 'Livetype', below are some of the tutorials which I used,





After receiving an initial grade I decided that my ancillary texts were not of a good standard and so I decided to completely recreate both the magazine front cover and the main poster for my film, below are the before and after products,

Main Poster
Before

After

Magazine Front
Before

After

I feel that after doing some more research into movie posters and magazine covers it meant that I had a much better understanding as to what I could include in mine.

Before I re-did my ancillary texts I received feedback that both my poster and magazine front cover did not reflect my final trailer and so I decided to completely re-create both of them, to do this I took some more photos as well as using this photoshop tutorial to create some zombie/undead styled faces to signify the zombie parts of my film.

In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop Or Challenge Forms And Conventions Of Real Media Products?

Throughout the whole project I have had to research into other films and media products in order to get a clear insight as to what I could include in such things as the ancillary texts and the final product, however throughout collecting the research and planning my tasks I wanted to be original and use some creative flare, which I beleive is shown through the work I have produced.
In this section of the evaluation I intend to compare my film to that of others, how it's different, similar and how it challenges them.

Throughout my project of creating a zombie film I have looked closely at a number of similar films, mostly looking closely into Shaun of the Dead, Dead Snow and Zombieland,






I choose to look into these three films as they are generally very similar to my idea, they originate from the same style genre i.e. comedy/horror and of course are based around zombies.

One of the key areas I researched into was casting, to create a preffered reading for the text of my film, I felt a strong cast was needed and, when creating my post on the cast, and who I attempted to base my characters on, I originally looked deeply into Shaun of the Dead, attempting to recreate the two binary opposition chracters, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost along with the steroetypical good looking female character, Kate Ashfield, however, later on during my research I decided upon a new idea to mix the genre of road trip with horror including teenage characters to play my main roles, from this I decided to look closely at the cast of Road Trip with the idea to use 4 average college students with whom their personalties constantly clashed.

I feel that the characters I casted for my trailer fitted their roles very well, although some acting was unconvincing and perhaps if I had more time I would re-shoot some scenes, for example some of the fighting scenes looked inconvincing.

When it came to creating my ancillary products I wanted to keep a similar idea to that of my teaser campaign, i.e. with the tagline of the film being "How Far Would You Go... For A Beer?".
Early on when creating my teaser posters, I took a large amount of inspiration from that of the Saw posters, i.e. with the cut off hand, however along with my tagline I put a beer bottle in the severed hand giving a preffered reading to not only horror and violence but also comedy.

When creating my magazine cover I knew that it was important to create a similar layout to that of many other magazine front covers such as Empire, which is renowned as the biggest film magazine or Total Film for example and so when creating my front cover i attempted to use similar layout strategies that would attract a large audeince as both the other magazines do however I feel that my magazine cover did have a few weaknesses, firstly i beleive the title did not stand out or look proffesional enough to that of my target audience, and there fore did not bind well with the front cover image, when looking further into magazine covers with film specials, I noticed that the title sometimes would change colour or style in order to match that of the front cover image, for example when empire magazine did a special on the latest Batman film, The Dark Knight.


To create my teaser poster I did a very large amount of research into both teaser trailers, broken down and also the codes and conventions on teaser trailers, i.e. what they usually include, I feel that this was one of my strong points throughout this A2 course and meant that my final product could be highly related to that of other real media products such as the teaser trailer for Shaun of the Dead. However I feel that if I had the time to change any aspects of my teaser trailer then I would posibly change the music to relate more closely to that of other real media products.

Introduction To Evaluation

Throughout this evaluation I intend to evaluate the A2 module which I completed in December, When I originally handed in my A2 module I was not fully satisfied with a number of aspects such as my ancillary tasks and some of my research and so I decided to re-submit my coursework.


After initially receiving a C grade for my coursework I decided that I could vastly improve many sections of it, mostly the ancillary texts and also the evaluation itself, within my evaluation I will also need to include an evaluation on all that I have improved.