My Magazine Cover

My Poster

My Final trailer.

Convert from Curtis on Vimeo.

4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stage?

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

While Planning and researching I used many programmes such as:

Research.

• When doing research for the genre of my film which I wanted to make I had to use the internet and I watched videos from sites such as YouTube and I also used Google a lot as it's my main browser so media technologies in this sense helped me to find the information that I needed so that I knew what to expect from within my genre which I was doing. Google also helped because I needed to get images of posters and of magazines from real media texts so that I could analyse them and get ideas from them, so Google helped me to get the images and the information I needed.
• TV also helped when making my project because on the TV you see a lot of trailers from new releasing films and this helped me to plan my project because I wrote down key things which trailers had in common which were things such as fast paced shots and little to non dialogue. I also found a great deal of trailers through the site You Tube.
• Blogger also helped a lot to show my research because it allowed me to write about the information I got and also to plan about it it allowed me to do so much more with techniques like adding images so that I could talk about them on my blog, I also used Blogger like a diary where I would constantly update when I had an idea that was relevant to my project.
• Microsoft office word also helped a lot with my research because it meant that I could do my questionnaire on it then print it out easily and pass it out to people I also used Word for getting screen grabs from my project so that I could use it in my Magazine front cover and poster so that aided me a great deal.

Construction.

• In the construction process I used a computer which the school had which was used because it had all of the software which I need to edit with such as Corel video studio X5, to do the film I got given a camera which could shoot the film in HD which was a nice bonus and I also got a tripod and the tripod was very essential for getting my shots steady and it also aided in some of the tracking shots which I had within my trailer and after I got the footage I would upload it onto the computer and edit it using Corel Video Studio X5 which was very easy to use and didn't take long to get the hang of. I also used Photoshop during the construction process because I needed to manipulate images for my poster and magazine front cover. During the construction I also used a programme called Adobe After effects which from my trailer you can see I made the titles at the start using it.

Corel Video Studio X5

This is the editing software which I used as you can see it's easy to use and you can easily cut pieces of film and stick them together with other pieces, it's also good in the fact that you can add effects so that the transition of one shot to another is smooth, so Corel aided me greatly in the construction process of my film trailer. As you can see from this screen shot in which I took from my trailer editing process you can see many other functions which Corel has to offer such as being able to add music over your project which I used (can be shown by the purple bars in the screen shot), you can add effects, text (which I also used) and also voice overs and so there are many ways in which you can get creative with Corel as there is much you can do.

Evalutation:

• For my evaluation I used a website called Prezi which I thought would make the answering of the question look more fancy as it takes you on a journey of how I went about answering that question also in my evaluation I have used images which have been taken from Google so again Google has had a big role to play in the way I have brought my entire project together and made all of this possible.

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

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

I believe that my ancillary work is as good as the main product, and combined they create a great synergy, which sends a clear message to the audience. As you can see from this CSI: Miami poster I wanted to make my poster look similar and have the police tape going across with the detective in the foreground dominating most of the page and have a crime scene going on in the background but I wanted to add a bit more and I added a snappy one liner which is "Brace yourself for a killer film" which I think is clever as the film is based around a killer so it's a homonym because it has two meaning.






In order to promote my film I also had to make a poster. And my poster takes great inspiration from my trailer as it includes the same character and the setting is the same which helps people to know what they can expect from within the trailer/film.
In order for my poster to look realistic I spent a lot of time in research which can be shown on my blog, I researched 3 different posters which were CSI themed and I took great inspiration from those posters and based my poster on them .

My Poster and magazine front cover reflect very well what genre will be in the film trailer because of the details I put into mise-en scene for example the actor on the front cover is wearing a suit behind some police tape so we can expect a detective and a crime to be involved so we can instantly relate it to a CSI genreI also included my distributors logo on the poster so that people would see a recognizable distributor and may pay attention because of that, I also included my actors names in large writting at the top of the poster so that people would know who was in the film and also the date so people know when to expect this film to be released. I believe that my poster and magazine front cover is effective combined with my trailer as it's eye catching and would attract  the target audience.


When doing my Magazine front cover I based it around Empire magazines but I didn't want to copy all of their elements for example I copied the way the main character dominates the page and the background relates to the focus film I also copied the fact that there is some snappy quotes like Kameron Brimble has his first big case because obviously it's a crime thriller, but I didn't like the fact that there was so much on the page and looked messy so I changed that and only added a few other things to my magazine with the main focus of Convert.










As you can see in my magazine front cover I wanted to make sure that my actress dominated the page so that it would snatch peoples attention when walking by and seeing it, I also wanted to make the magazine to look like that of a real world magazine so not only did I talk about Convert but added other captions like "SciBorg's Sequel announced!" and "The Hottest new films" so that people would know what to expect from this magazine, also as you can see from my magazine I included a background of trees and I did this because the murder takes place in a wooded area so I wanted to bring some details from the film into the poster.


The main product

I decided that in my trailer I wanted to pay a great deal of attention to the mise-en scene and the setting and I knew that from doing this it would also help me in doing my ancillary tasks because then I could put the detective wearing a suit on the front of my poster and people would know the genre of my film.
The trailer I believe is done well because it's like other trailers where it shows small amounts of action so that it doesn't ruin the main plot and in the trailer the shots are very fast paced and this is done so that the audience doesn't get bored. But overall from the research I did in my ancillary tasks it greatly influenced my finished product for my trailer because it helped with things such as the costume and the props that were expected in the CSI genre.

To Conclude

I think that my ancillary tasks and my main product create a great synergy that attracts a wide variety of audiences because it's eye catching because it's bold and stands out.But not only that each of my products help to promote each other as well because if you were to see the Poster you might think that it looks interesting and would want to see the trailer or read the magazine that has the picture on the front cover so they also work together through other ways as well.

2. Evaluation question

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

The way in which I answered this question was through a site called  Prezi which there is a link of bellow.

http://prezi.com/jjr5pxu7xar_/how-effective-is-the-combination-of-your-main-product-and-ancillary-texts/

1. Evaluation Question.

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

Conventions of a trailer.

• Trailers are short 
• The shots within the trailers are fast
• The trailer shows a lot of scenes with action involved 
• Minimal dialogue
• Trailers include key moments within the film which are not placed in the sequence of the  film and don't give away any crucial plot details (some films are criticised for giving away too many details) 

How I challenged the forms and conventions.

I challenged the forms and conventions of a trailer in that I didn't use that many action scenes and instead focused on the scenery of the police station and of the woods - although I did use a lot of shots where the victim was being followed. Using more action shots could have been a better idea to stop the audience from getting bored and to grab them into the trailer.

Used.

My media product uses conventions of real media products and an example of this would be that I have based my theme around a CSI idea which has been shown through my research and the ways in which I use this is that I include details to the mise-en-scene with thing such as costume - my actor is wearing a suit and so we know he is the detective, also there are forensics which are wearing special suits to represent that. I also used props within my trailer to also represent the genre in which I wanted I used police tape which showed that there was a crime scene. In my trailer I used a lot of fast shots which were edited at a fast pace and this was done to help prevent the viewer from getting bored, Trailers are short so the fast pace shots help this because it makes the audience think they are seeing a lot when it's really just 1 minute long.

I managed to stick to the typical conventions of a CSI genre trailer and I did this by putting a lot of research into seeing what was included int hose genres for example in a CSI show you would expect to see police tape a detective and perhaps forensics on the scene and within my trailer you see all of these things so my media product does use conventions of other real media products but I also twisted the convention a little by doing some of the shots where the audience is looking at the victim from the killers eyes and we don 't actually see the killer throughout the trailer so that no crucial details would be spoiled.