A2 Media Evaluation

Evaluation of A2 Media Production

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Film Poster- Ancillary Task

Filming report

After deciding that certain shots needed to be re-filmed and that we need a wider variety of shots we set off to our filming locations the next weekend. luckily for us the weather was very dry but not too sunny giving the abandoned church a dim lit effect which we would have otherwise had to edit into the final cut as this was the desired effect we wanted in our production. secondly we needed to re-film a lot of footage that was damaged by the tape as the filming was overlaying footage we had filmed over and sounds and lines of previous footage was permanently imprinted on to our work during playback which was a shame and a real step back for our group, especially in terms of morale. Once we began re-filming we encountered no real problems and was satisfied with the improvements made on the original footage.

Editing for our rough cut

When we attempted to capture our footage we encountered a selection of varying problems. First we tried on several separate occasions to capture our footage using adobe premier, but each time we encountered the same problem again and again. The problem came in the form of an error message which said 'Media Offline'. To try and solve this problem we tried all the conventional methods of dealing with a software issue; we turned the computer off, restarted it, open and closed the program. Due to our unsuccessful attempts to fix the problem we asked our teacher what was wrong, it turned out to be a problem with one of the software's default setting being changed preventing new footage from being captured.

Despite the minor set back that occurred we where still able to get a good amount of editing don; in this lesson we where able to use our variety of quick shots to build a tense atmosphere, these shots were further complemented by the use of snappy transitions which are frequently used in horror trailers. We also included the use of dips to black and a selection of different shots featuring the killer. However we all agreed that we certainly did not have enough variety of shots that included the victims of the killer. Although we had the quantity of high quality shots we did not have enough time to edit the shots into the production. unfortunately I was unable to help edit outside of school hours before the showing the class our rough cut due to a work commitment. Therefore it was up to Will and Lyle the other two members of the group to edit the shots together in order to produce a respectable rough cut for our film trailer to present to the class. The rough cut shown was enough to present to the class as the 'rough' cut but we were still far from producing and presenting our final product

Re-filming shots to a higher quality

In order to make our production look more professional it became apparent that some shots should be re-filmed to a higher quality as the shots were too dark or blurry. One shot in particular was an establishing shot inside an abandoned church where you can see the word "Help" written in chalk on the wall, however once played back on the computer you could barely see it so we decided to go and re-shoot that shot along with an establishing shot of the woods which was simply a bit too blurry, as the shot was done in the early morning in the woods it is possible that there was some condensation or moisture on the lens distorting the filming. The church is on public land so we re filmed that shot straight away and the shot in the woods we received permission to film on the land again at the weekend.

Changes to our schedule

In order to have our final production up to the highest standard by the deadline we had to up the output of work so we had to adjust our weekly schedules and each of us was working on the production every minute we weren't in other lessons. Every free period we had and time outside of school at home was spent discussing changes to be made to our production, we had created a message on Facebook allowing us all to add to the message as we had each added to the final product. As we all have smartphones which can be linked to our with Facebook accounts we were all able to instantly know when an update had taken place and allowed easy communication simultaneously between the three of us and allowed a kind of written record of who has done what in the production preventing any duplicates being made.

Weekly timetables

As the final deadlines approach in order to make sure we use our time appropriately we have created weekly time tables that show which group members are working when and what part of the project said individual will be working on. An example of one of our time tables is shown to the right.

Edit to our main production

After listening to feedback from our class and comments left after posting our first cut on youtube it was clear that there were still some areas that needed to change in order to further develop a more sophisticated final product. one area that we all felt definitely needed to change as it mad our production appear cheap and quite cheesy was the title that appeared at the end of the trailer. It was bright red and was animated to appear as though something had clawed at the title and blood dripped through it afterwards, the clawing had no relevance to our killer as he uses a pistol to kill his victims and bright red just looked childish so we completely revised the end title. After a bit of brainstorming with the group we managed to produce a new title that gave a much more mature feel to the whole product, our new title had a black and greyish background with a kind of sepia effect and the the title "The Recluse" appeared in black and lit up into a white in flash like approach and then returned to a backlit black, the change made the trailer appear much more professional.

Selection of our ancillary tasks

By choosing to produce a film trailer as our main production task we therefore had to chose two out of three following ancillary tasks to enforce our main task. The three tasks we had to chose from included;

• A film poster, appropriate to our main production
• A web page including all relevant information about our main production as though it were a feature length film yet to be released
• The front cover of a film magazine such as Empire or Total Film magazine featuring our production on the front cover

As only one member or our group has extensive knowledge in web design and all of us have well developed skills in image editing software such as photo-shop from GCSE graphic art classes we decided it would be most appropriate for us to design a film poster and a front cover for a film magazine as we would all individually be able to produce separate drafts of each task and then decide which ones are the best to refine and put forward as our final product.

Film poster analysis

The above image is one of the first posters we looked at before designing/planning out our own poster for our first ancillary task. We annotated all the different parts of the poster such as title, billing block, reviews etc and listed them so we did not miss any out when producing our own poster. Areas of this poster we liked were the black silhouetted figure against the blood red background, the simple bold font and the simple colour scheme of black red and white. This film poster is from a British horror film so it was very useful for us because it is of the same genre as our trailer and appeals to the same target audience, we also like that the killers identity is a mystery and these are both areas that we wanted to takeaway to our ancillary tasks.

Feedback

When we showed our rough cut of our main task to the class there where mixed reviews,we had many positive aspects pointed out to take away from it, however the class did emphasise a few mistakes and areas that have room for improvement. the good points that the class highlighted to us were encouraging, the bad points we made note of in order to straighten out for our final cut. By showing our rough cut to the class at this point we were able to make good use of the feedback as the age of the class is the age of our target audience and is likely to be the age group our film trailer will most appeal to.

Positive areas

Music – a member of our class said that the slow and eerie music towards the beginning of our trailer helped to build tension and a escalating sense of fear, people also liked how the increased pace of the music was accompanied by an increase in the pace of the shots.

Shots – It was pointed out to us that the opening establishing shots helped to build suspense and help give off an eerie atmosphere which is exactly what intended with our opening shots. people also like our use of a point of view shot that used a low angle of the killer to show his dominance over his victim.

Sound – we were praised for using all our own sound effects, we spent a lot of our production time in the woods recording different sound effects such as birds and crows, gunshots. feedback also included appropriate use of the sound effects throughout the production.

Transitions – Most of the class agreed that we had a good variety of transitions and they were typical of what you would expect in a horror film trailer. We used transitions including cross dissolve, dip to black, dip to whit. The class also stated that they enjoyed our use of quick transitions between each shot to build pace.

Negative
Music – despite our music having the right pace and tempo, some members of our class believed that the music was not quite what was expected of a horror film trailer.

Shots – Our teacher said that in her opinion our killer was introduced far too early in the production, we then asked the class for a second opinion on this matter and some members of the class agreed that this immediately took away the enigma code, we took this feedback on board as the people evaluating our production are the age of our target audience.

Sound – it was suggested by our class that we remove any background noise from our production as in some parts there are footsteps of our crew that the camera microphone has picked or sounds that simply do not fit with filming.

Transitions – some of our transitions between shots where considered too long and created friction in the flow of the production, to correct this we will just simply shorten them so that the transitions are much faster pace.

Poster template

This is a basic template of how we may choose to layout our poster. We designed this template to experiment with different use of composition of the elements, such as having the title at the top or bottom of the poster and having the reviews in different places around the poster. We chose to have our billing block at the bottom of the poster as this is traditionally where a billing block is located.

Mind map-font ideas

This is a brain storm that our group carried out to help develop the fonts that we would use within our main and ancillary tasks. The fonts selected were from magazines and posters and certainly influenced our final designs.

Film magazine feedback

We printed an A3 version of our poster and handed it around the class, each member filled out a post-it note with piece of feedback written on it. The feedback included; Our fonts are effective as they are very large and eye catching. We need to get rid of the white outline around the font; the black background needs to be lightened. The picture of the barcode needs to be a higher resolution, we have too much empty space.

Film Cover Influences and research

The magazine front covers here are taken from the internet and are what we have used to help us compose our second ancillary task. As you notice all the covers feature a leading character at the centre of the page and contains additional information about other films due for release. The magazines also contain effects such as bleeding in between the characters in the picture and the titles. when we create our film poster we ensured that we contained all of these features

In order to research what people liked in magazine front cover I showed these four front covers to a variety of teenage boys and girls (all within our target audience for our production) and asked what they found most appealing about each poster shown.

the majority of people said that they like how the images and title of the magazine overlay (bleeding in), the different locations of texts promoting other film etc (composition of design elements) and finally the different colours of fonts spread around the page.

our group all received similar results in their independent research and therefore we incorporated all of the elements when creating our film poster ancillary task which took the form of a Total Film magazine front cover.

my research concluded that the most favourable composition of a magazine front cover is the as the on pictured above and believed that it would suit the the typical style of a film magazine such as the will produce for our final ancillary task. This is because a picture of the villain is featured with a bleed in effect to the picture of the front cover. My research also demonstrated that the example shown is a typical example of a magazine spread containing a picture from the film in question alongside valuable information such as different features in the magazine, about other recent film releases. in the example above the hobbit is also featured on the front cover of the magazine alongside the real jaws. such information will also be used on our front cover to show relevance to real life magazine front covers as it is very unlikely to see a magazine front cover that only features a single film release.

initial idea for poster

This is a rough idea of how we might compose our final film poster. I have used basic web images and photosho in order to build this simple design and will use this as a stepping stone to create more complex designs using pictures of our actors.

Poster design and influence

For the second part of our production we have to design a poster for our production as well as a magazine front cover featuring our film. We looked at different posters for horror films and discussed how we would like to lay out our poster, text, billing block, different fonts etc.

The picture on the left is an effect i feel would work well in our poster as a back ground, if i had this picture I would use photoshop to edit the background in order to keep in touch with our visual style. I would make the trees black with a white sky or have the trees red with a white sky or a combination red, black and white.