Megan's Evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
 As our trailer is for a Western film (entitled ‘The Eagle’), there were many codes and conventions already in place for the genre. Due to this, we had to break conventions, if only to produce the text, due to our limited abilities. For example, there are no actual gunshots, explosions or horses in our trailer, which is a huge change from the convention of a Western movie trailer. However, we used many of them to our advantage, in order to ensure that the trailer was still recognisably Western, such as the costume and setting in places. In order to maintain the forms and conventions of a trailer, we have attempted to give a small insight into the film, but barely give anything away – after all, this is a teaser trailer. We have included the title, approximate release date and names of those involved, in order to generate interest and follow conventions. Of course, as this is simply an A2 production, we are unable to use big names in our trailer, like most do in order to create hype.


 How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
 I definitely think that our products could be more effective, but seeing as we had much difficulty with our group task for various reasons, I am pleased with how it has turned out. A clear theme is made through the combination of them, and this allows us to tie the texts together – a desired effect. We follow the colour conventions of a Western film in the ancillary texts, and of course, use the same characters and font, in order to tie them together more effectively.


What have you learned from your audience feedback?
After having been told that very stereotypical elements were expected in a Western trailer from our first questionnaire, we attempted to compile what we could of these. We included a gun shot/shoot out, train tracks and other elements that were expected in order to meet conventions. Of course, we were unable to do so with everything, such as horses, as we did not have access to that kind of thing.
From our audience feedback following the trailers creation, we found that we had succeeded in incorporating these things, and that the music to our trailer was one that had not been expected. As we used Soundtrack pro, we were limited to the components available, and found that any of the harmonica type melodies didn't work with our trailer. We were also asked to include more information in the trailer, as what was given wasn't  very good at demonstrating the narrative or makings of.


How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Many different programmes and technologies were a part of our coursework for various different reasons. Initially, we made a preliminary trailer to get used to using Final Cut Pro and Soundtrack Pro, which were essential for the construction of our text. We also had practice with Microsoft Publisher last year, which was very useful for the production of our poster and magazine cover. Photoshop was also a large part, as we used it to edit our images and put effects on them, so that they were more recognisable as linking to the Western genre.
We used Survey Monkey in order to effectively collect information from our audience, and Youtube to look at other film trailers in order to create our own adhering to trailer conventions.  I also used Windows Movie Maker to comment on a trailer of Sherlock Holmes for our initial genre research.
For the evaluation all the way throughout the process of creating our coursework text, we used Blogger, of course. This helped us to keep up to date with what was going on, and see each other's contributions. Using this site has been very useful for exactly that reason, as it makes it possible to keep everything well ordered, and also manageable.

Trailer

Bye Bye Georgie ...

Unfortunately, one of our group members, Georgie, has decided that this isn't the path for her and has decided to leave ... So, we just want to say 'Thank You!' for all your contribution, Georgie, you will be missed and good luck! :)

Poster & Magazine Cover Template

After analysing several posters and magazine covers, we have come up with rough ideas for the creation of the poster and the magazine front cover:

Poster Template:

(By Bhawana)

Magazine Cover Template:

(By Megan)

As you can see I have chosen the title of the magazine, after having searched through common Western slang. I decided to play on the term 'Iron Horse' which is the term for a steam train. I then combined it with 'bullet' as the magic bullet/hypodermic needle theory came to mind, suggesting that a lot of information is provided quickly.

It is also apparent that I have started the piece, using the same font title for the film title as a method of tying the two together and creating a house style. There is also an article title which I used the film 'Cowboys & Aliens' for, as it is the most recent Western themed film to have been released.

Questionnaire

In order to determine what is desired by our audience, I have created a survey which asks questions about the genre of Western.
It will help us realise what is expected from such a trailer, in order to follow genre conventions, and possibly what to avoid, to provide that the trailer doesn't become too over the top.

The Questionnaire

Genre Research: Crime

I chose crime as I felt that it would be a good genre to use for our own production piece. It has become clear to me, however, that crime is viewed as a sub genre, and so I had difficulty finding explicit 'crime' films.

As a result, I focused on films that I am familiar with, as I know that they have important crime themes running through them. I chose to look at the popular 2010 film, Inception, due to its underlying crime storyline. Sherlock Holmes is another film I have focused on, as most of the common crime conventions have arisen from its origin.

Sherlock Holmes is an extremely well known crime fiction piece, and is probably one of the most popular detective based texts.

Let Us Introduce Ourselves ...

Hello,

We are Megan, Georgie, and Bhawana and welcome to our A2 Media Production blog! Here we will be posting everything to do with our production so you'll be able to get an insight into all our thought processes and the various stages throughout our journey to realise our task of creating a trailer, a poster and a magazine cover.

So wish us luck and enjoy the process!