In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
We collectively decided to both use and challenge current forms and conventions of real media products as a way of both appealing to a viewer whilst also not portraying the trailer in any kind of generic fashion. We wanted to keep an element of mysticism and enigma about our trailer, and this was shared across the board of projects. But let’s start on the trailer.
The trailer that I have created this year is completely different to the opening sequences to films last year, in both style and substance. The main difference is the forms and conventions, as last year we stuck to very generic ones, which whilst possibly making it the most widespread in terms of appeal, was actually presented in a poor fashion, and didn’t eventually live up to our original expectations. Whereas, the trailer that has been created this year has taken direct influence from many recent indie ‘dramedy’ movies such as ‘(500) Days of Summer’ (2009, Mark Webb), ‘Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist’ (2008, Peter Sollet) and ‘Juno’ (2007, Jason Reitman), all of which contain incredibly similar styles and certain elements, yet all are so unique in their plot lines and character development, hence their critical success. The elements of these films that we attempted to, in a sense, replicate, are each of the film’s relatively low budget and almost homemade styles. This is presented in our trailer through the (now hugely popular within the indie genre, so much so that there are YouTube videos dedicated to the craze) hand drawn title pages. We also attempted to recreate the element of enigma that all of the trailers have.
The one thing that we collectively aimed to use was the inclusion of music into our trailer. There was a long discussion period between two of the members in the group who decided that it was between them both to choose the song that would be assigned to the trailer. The song would have to tick all of the metaphorical boxes and we would have to be confident that we were covering ourselves with the right knowledge that we would have no issues through copyright infringements. The song that I eventually recommended was ‘Sympathy For The Devil’ by ‘The Rolling Stones’. This was an instant hit with the group and we decided that due to every factor of the song from both a technical level and the fact that the message that the song carries is perfectly suited to the general plot and character development within our film. The song was then dropped into Adobe Premiere where we were editing the trailer. The most difficult element of the trailer was adapting the music so that the levels were always suited to the visual image on screen and the audio that was supporting it. Overlapping the conversation would result in too much happening at once and the audience would not be able to understand what they were listening to, whilst at the same time thinking about how poorly produced the trailer was.
Another element of the trailer that was designed to break the codes and conventions of regular film trailers was the inclusion of an anti-climax. We inserted the title page that said ‘Charlie Oak lives and average life’. This instantly breaks the generic codes and conventions which would usually say that trailers end on a high and usually will use the climax as their main selling point. The reasoning behind this anti-climax is due to the hope that it would actually inveigle the audience into the sudden impact of the enigma that the title has set on the trailer.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
The combination that we targeted was to not have one specific genre that we would be trying to promote, but to mix the formulaic codes and conventions of promotion up by trying to broaden the appeal of our film to a wider audience. This meant trying to appeal to our core audience through the trailer, and this was the indie ‘dramedy’ fans that enjoy the films that we drew influence from such as ‘(500) Days of Summer’ (2009, Mark Webb). Whereas with the ancillary texts we attempted to portray the film in a different way so that the film’s appeal would be widened.
The front cover of ‘Sight & Sound Magazine’ portrayed the film in much more artistic and dramatic light, whilst also portraying the film, to those who had either heard about the film before or had seen the trailer, as a spoof of the hardcore drama franchise. The mock suicide picture of the lead character is something that is likely to not be something that occurs within the film, but the inclusion of this in the promotional stages of the film could in turn attract the more ‘drama-heavy’ audience members who we hope the film would still appeal to.
The front page of the website promoting the film is also something that I tried to impose an increased concentration of drama into so that the magazine cover would not be the only part of my range of products that was promoting the dramatic side of the film. Sadly, I believe that the website is arguably too dark for the genre. The indie forms and conventions are still applicable and there is still a good amount that the film actually is attempting to portray included in the website, but to the majority of the viewing audience it is likely that this would not instantly jump out at them, and would have to do more research in order to understand the film.
The radio advert was made more comedic in order to keep some kind of balance between the darker magazine and website and the more light-hearted trailer. The radio spot was not edited by me, but originally I had planned for the song supporting the advert to be ‘Here Comes the Sun’ by The Beatles, but eventually the editor of the radio spot chose a more modern and ‘laddish’ song to support it. Whereas I don’t find this to be as effective in terms of both its symbolic nature and also its general pleasure to listen to.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
I asked four people to produce feedback that would be as honest as possible and as descriptive as they can be. None of these four people were members of the media group nor had they been involved in either the shooting of the trailer, the recording of the radio advert or had any previous links to my media campaign of either AS or A2 Media Studies. This was specifically decided so that there were no biased decisions, no holding back what they really felt about the trailer, and most importantly it outlines the true feedback of a generic viewing audience.
Audience Feedback #1: The feedback that we received was mostly positive. The main highlights that they described were the well integrated choice of songs into both the trailer and the radio advert, although they did describe the radio advert as being much less appealing than all other products. Other highlights were how the colour scheme was likeable in the titles within the trailer. Brilliantly they did instantly bring up one of the main influences for the trailer ‘(500) Days of Summer’ and described how it did stand out in that similar style. They expressed how they enjoyed the humour of the trailer and how it seemed very British in its nature. The downsides however were such as a lack of any substance that made them want to find out what happens to the character. This was later described as being due to the lead character ‘Charlie’ not seeming interesting enough for the audience to form a relationship with him in the time the trailer takes. Other aspects that they didn’t enjoy were how not enough is given away in the trailer, which arguably, could be taken as a positive aspect to some. A hugely important and integral element of storytelling within a trailer that I wanted to implement within ours was how too many modern films give away overly large amounts of their films twists and turns within the trailer, and only recently a romantic comedy called ‘Leap Year’ (2010 – Anand Tucker) was called out for how the most dramatic and eventual catalyst for the film’s predictable twist was included in the trailer, therefore rendering the trailer, to an extent, obsolete. The feedback stayed on the same theme of lacking any real statement that made an audience be drawn into the plot, and this was brought up when discussing the website and magazine cover, although again, I firmly believe that there should not be too much given away before the film is even released otherwise there is no enigma.
Audience Feedback #2: The feedback we received from the second audience member was much more positive than the first member. This is likely to be due to them being a self proclaimed film fan and therefore possibly having a more of an insight into the forms and conventions of the projects we are creating compared to the other audience members. The two projects they enjoyed the most (and I should add they are the two that were the most highly praised by all four of the audience members) were the trailer and the magazine cover. They were both praised for their amount of credibility and how they instantly felt believable. The website was described as being “believable but too dark for what the trailer, magazine cover and radio ad all present”. Other elements that they enjoyed were the choice of music, the colour scheme and the comedy. These were three running positives that we enjoyed hearing as they were all integral elements of the projects that we hoped would be appealing to our target audience.
Audience Feedback #3: The feedback we received from the third audience member was the least positive of the four. The highlights were essentially the same as the rest of the four members, yet one thing they did highlight as being particularly pleasing were how the use of language in the magazine and the titles for the film were both aimed at the educated, and also the member enjoyed the locations that the film presented, such places as the very traditional pub and the scene from inside the car. However, the negative views the person had were to do with how the film seems to be presented as different films in the different products. The three different varieties they listed where that the trailer was a Dramatic Comedy (Dramedy, which was exactly what we had written all along), that the magazine and website were focused on Drama, whereas the radio was focused on Comedy. I can understand this being possibly misconstrued as being a mistake, whereas this was something that was planned to an extent. It is obvious that the idea has been stretched, but we aimed the four products as if they were being presented simultaneously within the modern world, and as we are trying to broaden the possible views of the products and create a sense of enigma and hype around the film, if we were presenting possible different genres for the film in different areas of the media then it would inspire a consumer of the media products to go and discover what the film actually is for themselves. One other not particularly pleasing spot of feedback was when the audience member called it pretentious film making. When questioned they replied that “The trailer assumes too much of the audience...” This is understandable. As highlighted, we have described how due to our neo-noir elements of the film we do have the right to believe that our target audience would be of a higher intelligence and more likely be a fan of the genre as opposed to the average movie-goer.
Audience Feedback #4: The fourth audience member was more positive, praising how we integrated the flashes of the lead character alone in the darkness within a conversation with his closest friend. They also commented on how all three parts of the trailer all seem like they flowed. They explained that this meant that the footage, the music and titles all seemed like they were all working in the same genre, for the same film and promoting a singular idea. The flaws that were pointed out were more based towards things that were out of our control such as the acting and accents of the characters. One interesting factor that they did highlight was how it was obvious that it had been inspired by American frat comedy. They questioned if ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ (John Hughes, 1986) was a direct influence, which it was, and whether we had based our lead character on Ferris. Interestingly, we did partly do this, but this is mainly just in the factor of his rebellious nature, his relationship with his one best friend and also the obvious matter that he breaks the fourth wall and turns the film into more than just a ‘run-of-the-mill’ frat teen comedy, but into a neo-noir ‘dramedy’. One other expansion on the Ferris Bueller’ link is that the two lead characters (Charlie and his best friend) do recreate that partnership in the film that has created much internet buzz as to whether Ferris is actually just a figment of Cameron’s imagination. So in this case, Charlie would just be a figment of his best friend’s imagination, and is just everything that in his mind he would like to have. This is obviously just speculation and due to it only being a trailer and us not having the ability to continue this story in much detail, or follow this sub-plot to any real level, we have to only mention that that was eventually something that we wished would be an inclusion to the film.
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Media technologies assisted our coursework products throughout all stages of creation.
During the pre-production stage when research and planning were key in the development of the projects, there were a few different media technologies that I made sure were being used to their full capacity in order to maximise the production. These were YouTube, Skype, Microsoft Word and Google Documents. These four different media technologies were vital in research and planning due to their accessibility, ease of use and widespread availability.
YouTube was used in the research stages more than at any other point of the production, this is due to the vast amount of footage that you can take from all over the world displaying everything from the movie trailers and radio spots that we gained influence from, all the way to the fonts that we would use and discussions on camera shots and music choices.
Skype was used to broadcast discussions between the groups when it wasn’t practical for us to meet in certain places whether it is due to cost, weather or other reasons. Using Skype was crucial in the planning not only due to the time effective nature of using it, but due to how all three of the members of the group were connected to the internet and therefore able to research and recommend things as they please. Due to Skype being able to support conversations between more than one person at a time, we were all able to join together and plan just as easily and clearly as though we were there in person.
Microsoft Word is an obvious inclusion into the discussion of new media technologies as it is the absolute pinnacle of text documenting. Thanks to it being the most widely accepted and universally used document creator we had absolutely no issues when creating word documents and sending them to each other or hosting them through Google documents. Also, due to the ever expanding ideas that are thrown into the newer Microsoft Word programs, we were able to utilize this and attach all ranges of different files within the documents and set up hyperlinks to exterior websites.
Google Documents was also a key player in the evolution of our projects. The ability to easily host thousands of files on one private page is perfect for a consistently developing project like ours, and the fact that we could put anything that we felt would contribute anything to the group onto the site, we could just as easily log on and read an idea that one of the group members had posted up at any moment in time. Also, due to the recent surge of Smartphone’s that have embraced the hands of tech-lovers across the country, certain phones are designed with Google such as my phone the ‘HTC Hero’. Now within this phone there are certain applications in which you can access everything that Google has to offer such as Google Documents. This meant that if I had an idea whilst on the bus one day, at the tap of a button I could be posting it into our group’s Google Documents page and letting the group read it at any given time.
Throughout the construction stages I firmly believe that Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere and Adobe Audition were the key media technologies that were used to create all of our final products.
Adobe Photoshop was imperative in the creation of both the Website front page and the Magazine cover. The immense assortment of tools that can be used to edit images within the program is astounding. I was introduced to Photoshop at the beginning of the academic year and earlier in my blog you are able to see my first attempts at using the program, and in doing this you can compare and contrast the development of my progress on Photoshop.
Adobe Premiere was arguably the most difficult piece of software that I have had to use before, but thankfully due to the teaching that I was subject to, I was able to at first learn but eventually have a genuine understanding of how it worked and how to design certain elements of the trailer which were left unused by others. These were elements that involved the addition of music, and also factors that involved changing the decibel levels in certain frames. The progression to Adobe Premiere was made easier however by it being more of a step up from last year’s ‘Windows Movie Maker’ as opposed to just being thrown into it and having to pick everything up from scratch.
Adobe Audition was used more by a fellow member of my group who spent more time creating the radio spot so I did only have a small period of time using the software. However, it was clear that it was a much simpler piece of editing software to use than Premiere, and due to it only being audio it seemed apparent that it would be something that, if I was ever to create a product like this in the future, would be better to use and insert the audio from Audition into Premiere thanks to the bigger range of audio editing it supplied.
Finally the evaluative stage in which Blogger was everything to us.
Blogger is an online Blog (Web Log) that tracks the frequent progress of its users as they update with their current happenings or views. This is instantly obvious as to why it would be of use to us. Now what was being included on the site through our individual Blogger pages was our constant progress through the Planning, Research, Construction and Evaluating stages of the coursework. Blogger allows for its users to implement photos, videos, embedded objects and more. This was such a huge assistance in the presentation of our coursework, and without the site none of this would be feasible.
