Evaluation - Question 4

Q4 - How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? on Prezi

Evaluation - Question 3 : What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Mood Board:

Below is a mood board i have created using photoshop, it indicates my feelings towards future products, i would very much like to keep in theme of aged musicians, however have this be more of the films focal point, appose to experimenting with opposing views, I would look for iconic 'Englishness' for this, an abandoned seaside town, would offer a great location. In the mood board i have used The Smiths' lyric "the seaside town that they forgot to close down" to draw all the ideas together, this is a process i would often use for various projects. The theme of fading into the distance, more of an elderly 'coming of age' film.

For my focus group, i was unable (due to long distance travelling issues) to film or sound record, therefore it was conducted virtually, i thought the ideal group of people to involve would be my main actor's older brother, along with his close friends, they are all 20/21 years old. I will re-create images with text to show how the focus group went, which should be a creative and alternative enough medium to present the findings!

Question: What genre do you think my film trailer is?

Question: What makes you think this?

Question: How have I met your expectations of the music-drama genre?

Question: Have I used Archetypal characters successfully?

Question: How do you feel when you watch the trailer?

Evaluation - Question 2

Below are photo shopped images showing how my media products would work as a package and also stand up against contemporaries.

Here is the DVD cover for my product scattered with other DVDs like it, purely to visualise how it would compete with competitors in the same market.

In this image I have used a favourable Album cover of mine (Bob Dylan "Bringing it all back home") to show how the magazine cover and film poster contain vintage and retro qualities, they are not out of place being products of the year 2010 in an image taken in the mid sixties.

The main reason i think my combination of products is effective is because of the underlying theme that runs throughout, there is a sense of mystery about both the print products and the film product, i think this works to draw in the crowd who are intrigued as to what it all could mean. The iconography works in all three pieces, the film poster shows scattered Kodak prints, a very relatable iconic factor that oozes quality, the same photo prints appear as a title background in the film product, allowing the audience to instantly connect the two. The initial connection between film trailer and film poster is the more important one, it isn't until days or weeks later that the magazine appears on shelves, this is to allow audience to get acquainted with the ideas and character(s) through advertisement free to them before actually wanting to part with their money for a magazine. There isn't a connector as such between the magazine and poster/trailer, this is because the character is being used as the iconography now, an assumption is being made by this however it is quite an iconic looking image and again relatable to the audience. The text inside the '74' title impression on the poster is mashed together from parts of song lyrics i found appropriate, and perhaps could be seen to be the writings of the main character, it runs like a monologue not dissimilar at all to the one used in the trailer. There is also a conceptual theme present in each of the products, a battling relationship between father and son is very clear though the film trailer, the film poster also portrays some sort of negative feeling (though the writing) towards the main image (which could be assumed to be the father), it could also be presumed through the mise-en-scene that the creator of the messed photos and text is a teenager. The magazine cover again shows less of a theme, however it is clear that there is some kind of trauma going on through the bleak colour and close up hidden facial expression. Out of the two ancillary task, the magazine doesn't work quite as well as a promotion package, however I am still pleased with its turn out as an individual piece.

Evaluation - Question 1

My media product challenges the conventions of the magazine, my magazine cover features text and images that can be viewed portrait or landscape, giving it u.s.p qualities on the shelf next to contemporaries that are either or, appose to both. Out of the three products, i feel it is the magazine that is the more innovative and challenging towards the genre, retreating to the simple roots, of plain colour and bold imagery. The film poster lifts the 'scrapbook' style mise-en-scene that is often seen in films regarding teenage scorn, perhaps it is often a girl as the protagonist, this is challenged with the main character being a male, creating an opposition to the norm within this sector.

Final Cuts of Products

DVD case design:

Film Trailer:

Film Poster Layout 1:

Film Poster Layout 2:

Film Magazine Cover:

Regular Audience Feedback With Discussion Of Refinements That Will Be Made In Light Of This

Photographs Or Videos Of You Producing The Work

Rough Cuts

Film title overlay:

First Cut:

Second Cut:

Screen Shots Of The Construction Process

Below is a scanned image of collected old photographs i arranged, the image was used in the film poster and in still shots within the film trailer.

I used script style handwriting, inside the shapes of 7 and 4, to create the illusion of a title, the content of writing was derived in similar ways as the script in the film trailer, taking various phrases from song lyrics that suit the mood I was trying to create. The handwriting, alongside the scattered photos combine to create the scrapbook of an 'arty' teenager, relating back to the audience grouping.

I used the scanned image alongside a rough, torn paper image as the 'base image', the photo from the photoshoot was rotated and adjusted to fit into place of one of the scattered scanned photos, this was to allow this photo to appear in more focus than the rest but look to be in the same pile. A light white transparency was applied over the titling area to ensure the title would not be lost to the background chaos.

I altered the Hue of the background lighting, to a pale blue, this and a bold black were to form the sleek colour palette for the magazine colour. I used a layer mask to position the '74 behind the model's head, i applied a plastic wrap effect to it, to make it ever so slightly 3D, the same was applied to the circular button seen in the above screenshot.

I decided to create my own introductory audience rating still, to fit into the start of the trailer, i copied almost word for word what appears in the real audience rating shot but applied it to my own product, I used different fonts and no copyrighted material or logos.

Shooting Schedules

Photoshoot Images

Call Sheets

Skills Development

The below images are production and distribution logos that i produced in Photoshop, i gathered fonts online that i thought suited the style of the trailer, the sizing of each canvas is important for the trailer formatting at a later date, i set each canvas to 720 x 576 pixels with a 76 dot per inch ratio. For the first logo there is extensive lighting effects used, 5 spotlights down creates the effect of a live performance or glamorous showpiece. The second logo i drew and selected a triangular shape to form a mountain and free hand painted 'snow' on top, which i then texturised to add something a little bit unique to it. It was only when inserting into final cut pro that i realised the exact invert (dark one) of Avalanche Productions looked a lot more professional so that is the version i used. For the main logo i wanted something innocent looking and handwritten, so i found the font i wanted, terxturised the background to appear like canvas and then created a childlike black painted border to emphasise the look. (Number 9 film logo changed during final cut and uploading the jpeg onto blog, the image below is the one i plan to use for the final).

As a skills development task, using the video editing programme final cut express i have edited together a 'would be' promotional video for the college, i have used techniques of sound layering to achieve a good mix and also created a soundtrack in 'Garageband' which helps the video run smoothly. These are techniques i have picked up and will develop in the process of editing my own film trailer.

scripts

I decided to follow suit of the idea of this film to almost be used up realities of other lives and re-created in a 'new' perspective, that the script would work well being comprised subtly from various song lyrics from artists pre or around the time of 1974, when the film is set. The artists in which words/ phrases are taken from are Bob Dylan, leonard Cohen, Lou Reed, John Lennon and The Doors. (Also having looked closer it would appear accidentally the more contemporary Pete Doherty's and Arcade Fire's lyrics have also fittingly been referenced). The voiceover reading the letter will be conducted by me, i have tested various accents before finalising on the most appropriate to the genre and film, a heavy gruff american voice, perhaps similar to the latter day voice of Lou Reed or various other aged New Yorkers.