Film Poster

Empire Front Cover

Feedback

R&P = 11
Production = 22
Film poster = 0
Magazine cover = 0
Evaluation = 0

Total = 32 F

Targets:
Storyboard
More audience profiling posts, including what this suggests about your target audience and how you intend to appeal to them
Film poster completed
Magazine cover completed
Evaluation activities completed

There is a lot to do here Josh. Make sure you are working to complete these outstanding pieces of work.

How did you use media technologies in the construction ad research, planning and evaluation stages?

The most immediate program that was used in these stages was blogger.com. This website allowed the creation of a blog in order for the various stages to be written about. This has led to it becoming something that i have become very familiar with over the two years i have used it.

This is the camera that was used for filming the trailer, as well as taking various screenshots for use in our other two projects.  This was a very good camera for our film trailer, as it showed pristine quality video's, which could be made into HD footage. This would allow for less grainy shots, which would improve the overall video quality. Zooming however was an issue that we struggled to rectify, as zooming, especially in low light, did show some amount of grain, which could have decreased the overall video quality.  












Rather than use adobe premier elements, we instead decided to use a program called imovie. This was because there was a mac to hand. Imovie contains many more options for editing type, as well as having the advantage of it being arguably more user friendly. Another thing is that imovie gives lots of ways to add sound effects to projects and we can add your own music from your music library, which is faster and more efficient than various alternatives








Photoshop was very important in regards to the creation of the film poster and the magazine front cover. Whilst, at first, fairly complicated to use, it soon became rather fun to discover the various ways in which you could create and change the posters them selves. I was taught the basics of photo shop by my project partner Connor, who is very good at photo shopping, and with his help, came up with the eventual products featured.



Youtube was used as a tool, not only for uploading the trailer onto the website itself, but was also used to have a look at trailers for the analysis step of the project. While this was to be expected, I also decided to look at the comments sections of the trailers that I was analysing in order to understand how similar films were rated and considered by audiences,and how we could incorporate the feed back from the trailer into our own work.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

The various comments recieved from the social networking site Facebook include:
"Some of the sections really made me want to know more about the characters involved, good job"   S Woole
"It was ok, but it could have done with better construction of the interview and the Danny No scenes." A Locke
"Very well made, it's just a shame that I wasnt in it!" G Bonnefoy
"The plot seemed a bit jumpy, which may have worked in its favour actually" O Kent
"I enjoyed it, and wouldn't mind actually watching it" L Walker

General Points
You can tell from the very star what genre the trailer is of, that of a dark action. The genre is also useful in comprehending what the rest of the trailer is like, and the type of conventions it will follow. The trailer showed two characters that would feature heavily in the movie if it was ever made, and also mentioned another important character called Danny. This sets up the characteristics and the various changes that would take place, not only in the trailer, but also in any future production. Lastly the the way in which the interrogation scenes start and finish the piece off ts very similar to other film trailers, and is a quite common convention of the genre

Strengths
The strengths that the audience had identified included the section with the various voices in the main characters head. This added to the fact that it was not a straight forward superhero film, and was slightly more inclined to be akin to a psychological thriller and added an aura of unease around the character, something that made out the character to not be wholly moral. The use of vlogging within the trailer was liked by the audience who noted that it is only a recent trend for that type of shot to be used, which also showed that the characters mental state was changing. The music had been slowly building up to the dramatic finish of the trailer. The audience noted that this was very similar to many other action films, but also akin to several horror films as well.

Weaknesses
The second interrogation scene was noted as being far too long and that the overall volume was too quite, which took the audience away from focusing on the plot of the trailer, leaving them a little disjointed. This was mainly due to the program that was used at the time could not pick up the video footage very well in the final cut.

Weaknesses
2nd interrogation too long and quiet

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

I think that my main trailer, magazine cover and poster work well together. The main poster consists of  a hooded figure surrounded by fire and the wreckage of some wooden structure. This is mentioned within the trailer itself with the line "This world will burn". This really brings these two pieces of media together. The Fracture logo is very similar in both pieces of work, except that the one on the poster is dirtier and grittier, to really highlight what the tone of the film is.

The trailer works well with the magazine front cover as well because of the theme of fire once again being highlighted  If you look at front cover, the character actually has the colour of  fire in his eyes, adding to the connection, not just with the trailer, but also with the film poster itself.The inclusion of fire in each part creates an atmosphere of fear that compliment each others feeling at the time. They each show a different angle of the the primary character as well. The magazine front cover is shown facing the character, so that audiences can see what kind of person will be leading the film, and also to gain a sense of whether they would enjoy watching the character for the whole movie. The poster is taken from behind, leading the audience to believe that he is responsible for mass amounts of chaos and leaves the audience not really sure as to his intentions and whether he is the protagonist or the antagonist, something that is not often done conventionally. Lastly the trailer really only shows the character before the event that drove him to become what he had, which adds the perspective that he is indeed  still the protagonist, but some how his views of the world have become clouded.

Lastly each piece highlights the actors and the settings, and show various clues to the plot with each piece. This is especially true of the film poster as the setting of the destroyed structure showcases both the main character and what seems to be a main focal point of the film. The magazine front cover tries to create hype to showcase actors, locations e.t.c. in order to tie things in, not only for the audience, but also economically as with out any form of publicity or advertising such as this, then a film can only rely on an audience that exclusively only view film posters, and are not interested in other feature films or film related news articles, which this front cover has tried to capatalise on. Each piece of advertising used uses different ways to draw our target audience towards our film and helpfully with the different approaches it would succeed in attracting the audience.    

In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

In the first shot here we can see my character of the detective as seen from a high angle view. The setting here is that of an interview room to set the stage for the beginning and also the end of the trailer. From what we can see, there is only one person in the room a t this time, but the character is clearly talking to somebody. We did this to temporarily keep the main protagonists appearance secret to add to aura of mystery and unease. This is a fairly common thing to be used in situations such as this, especially in the quieter moments of action and crime based films. The only prop that was used was in fact in this scene, where there is a phone/ intercom present. This was to give the film a minimalistic approach and for the use of props to not be overboard.

The second image is that of the main protagonist playing around with his hair. The shot is done in the mirror so that whilst direct contact with the camera is not made, there is in fact a persistent mid shot of the character. This is to show the audience the transformation that will be taking place later in the trailer. As you can see, there are only a few different locations, with many taking place within the protagonists house or within the interview room, once again keeping everything fairly minimal as to not distract the audience from the transformation taking place.

Picture 3 and 4 have much of the same effect on the audience, but each are taking in a different way. In picture 3 there is a close up shot once again displaying the pre-event character. This is actually filmed from a laptop and is similar in style to a vlog, which the character actually appears to be doing at this point. In picture 4 you can start to see the change slowly develop as the character peers out the window. Here the character looks very similar to his previous shots, yet you can start to see some small amount of worry and paranoia set in.

Picture 5 is where you see the character change set in. It reuses the previous idea of being filmed in the mirror, but this time rather than show a self confident young man, it shows a depressed and mentally unstable one instead. This is an increasingly common convention in action films, and a similar idea was explored within the movie law abiding citizen. In fact the trailer does display several hark backs at that trailer, except obviously on a lower budget and with different shot types. The mise en scene has changed a lot as well, with the character having his hair stuck down, and the atmosphere seems a lot more depressing. This hopefully shows the audience what the character is going through, and hopefully the audience will feel a sort of empathy with the character from the get go.

In shot 6 you see the detective character again, but he seems more forceful and ignorant this time around. The character of the detective was based on the character portrayed by Keith David in the film Smiley. In the trailer at least, he is also a very ignorant and apathetic character, with the added character trait of ridiculing the person he appears to be interviewing. The aim of this was for the audience to feel as if the police force were in a particularly bad light and that the characters involvement was very unnecessary indeed.

In the final two shots containing the main protagonist there are similarities that were intentional and necessary.  Here you can see the character acting stressed out grasping his head in anguish, before donning the hoody as well as other pieces of clothing. The thing to note in this part that we did was that this entire transformation was filmed pretty much from the same angle (mid shot) apart from close ups on the gloves. This type of shot has been used for many years within the action film genre, being seen when a change of clothing takes place. An example of a trailer that has done this in recent years is Kick Ass were a character gets dressed up in his superhero garb/ I think the effect of using this technique is to show the audience an immediate change between the characters appearance.

The title of the film was positioned at the end of the trailer, as was done by many film trailers. The title of the film is Fracture. This is used as the title to demonstrate the fact that the central characters world has been broken, and because of it so has his sense of right and wrong. The title itself is white and bold with a simple black background to make sure that it stands out as much as possible. In total our trailer has shown to follow many conventions of other trailers in this genre, but has shown a few independent moments as well.