Evaluation
As you can see from above the first thirty to fourty seconds of my trailer try to build suspense and catch audiences attention by introducing the story sking very rhetoric questions. I’ve got this idea from “The Dark Knight” teaser trailer, but I’ve also added some scenes from the actual movie which can’t be seen in the “The Dark Knight” teaser trailer, so in a way I was both using and developing the traditional codes and conventions that are used in professional teaser trailers.
The second product that I had to create was a promotional movie poster. Like with the teaser trailers one of the first things that I’ve done is a lot of primary research. I’ve looked at a lot of different posters and I’ve tried to pick out the most common codes and conventions that I will use to create my own movie poster. I didn’t want to create something that is completely new, unconventional, but instead I wanted to create a media text that will be easily recognized by my target audience.
As you can see from above my poster looks very conventional. One of the main common patterns that I’ve identified in other movie posters is that almost all of them use a combination of images or a single image of the main character which gives a clue of what could potentially happen in the movie. In this case I’ve used my main character standing in an empty corridor with a blury background to forecast that something bad will happen to him (strapline saying “What would happen if your life fell apart?”) and he will be completely on his own.
Another popular convention that I’ve applied to my own promotional poster is that I didn’t use a lot of different text elements to make the poster too distracting.
As you can see from above the poster of “Matrix Revolutions” uses almost exact text elements as “Truth” poster. There’s a one single image of the main character and a strapline above him which forecasts the events that will happen in the movie – “Everything that has a beginning has an end” strapline gives the target audience a suggestion, an idea, a possibility that the Matrix saga will end and the same thing applies to my own movie.
I’ve also noticed that a lot of movie posters for popular movie releases have their titles at the bottom of the media text. My research had shown that this popular convention is applied to almost every movie poster simply because it follows natural human flow of reading:
- The person starts at the top, sees a strapline that gives him some ideas of what could potentially happen in the movie
- The eyes move further down the poster and the person see the main character who is either agonist (villain) or protagonist (hero)
- The person relates the strapline to the character in the poster
- Reads further down and sees the name of the movie
When trying to create my own movie poster I’ve tried to follow the same flow. I’ve started with a strapline which gives the target audience an idea of what could potentially happen in the movie, then I had the main character positioned in the middle of the poster standing on his own in an empty corridor and then finally I had the name of the movie which is “Truth”. In fact I’ve picked this name for my movie simply because it is strongly related to the theme and the events that will be happening in the movie.
Finally when I was creating the website I have decided yet again that I will not try to reinvent the wheel. I’ve used the traditional codes and conventions in order to make the website appealing and easy to “read” and “understand” for the visitors.
During the research phase I’ve discovered that almost every promotional movie website has:
- The names of the main actors positioned at the top of the website. In my opinion this acts as one of the main elements which grabs the attention of the visitors, because once the person visits the website and if he or she sees the name of the actor that she/he likes – the visitors will more likely stay on the website and watch the trailer which will possibly make them interested to buy the ticket and see the whole movie.
- The actual teaser trailer is positioned right in the middle or on the right side of the website. This is the main element of these promotional websites and in my opinion companies who create these websites at the end of the day want the visitor to see the trailer and become interested to see the whole movie. This is why so much valuable space is given to the teaser trailer.
- Either at the bottom or top of the website there are no more than five to ten links which lead to various articles, pictures and other information about the movie. I’ve noticed that a lot of the promotional websites that were created to promote big movie releases tend to have very little links on them, because I think this is done because the creators of these websites know that the more links there will be – the more attention they’ll distract.
- Also very often there’s an image on the background which is related to the theme of the movie. Sometimes there are no images, sometimes the image is of the main character, sometimes the image is completely unrelated to the events that will happen in the film.
These are the main conventions that can be found in promotional websites of popular movies, so when I was working on my own website I’ve tried to use all of these main elements to make my media products easy to read and understand for my target audience.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
In my opinion the combination of my main product and the acillary texts is very effective, because all of them are congruent with each other and there person who obsverves these products can see a clear main theme of these products that is carried out through all of them.
My main goal was to create something that professional media production companies do and I think that I’ve achieved this goal successfully. I’ve been following the traditional codes and conventions throughout the whole production process and none of these three media products that I’ve created challenge the traditional codes and conventions.
During the creation process of the teaser trailer my main goal was to create a teaser trailer that will built suspense and interest in order to make my target audience want to buy the ticket and see the whole movie. According to my audiences feedback I’ve achieved this goal successfully. On the 4th of March I’ve presented my teaser trailer and the ancillary texts to the audience of 23 people aged 17 to 18 and majority of them were able to identify the main theme of the movie. The big majority of the group stated that they woud like to see the rest of the movie because the teaser trailer cought their interest.
What Have You Learned From Your Audiences Feedback?
I’ve tried to get audiences feedback from as many different places as I possibly could. I was reviewing the comments I was getting on my Youtube videos, I was reviewing the comments I was getting on this blog and finally I’ve decided to get some live feedback from an audience of more than twenty people who fitted into my target audiences profile. The video above is from the “Feedback Session” we did on the 4th of March.
Before the session had started we’ve asked the audience to be very critical and tell everything they think about the media products that I’ve created.
The audience had viewed the trailer exactly three times and after that they were given time to give comments about this media product.
From this feedback session as well as from the majority of the comments that I’ve received on Youtube and this blog I’ve learned that the goals I had that were related to my media products were achieved successfully.
I had a clear goal in mind that I wanted to create a conventional teaser trailer that my target audience will easily recognize. I wanted to built suspense and interest with the use of soundtrack and some video editing techniques. It looks like that I’ve achieved this successfully, because majority of the people that I’ve received feedback from have told me that my teaser trailer was very conventional. They told that the first thirty seconds of the trailer looked like something they would expect to see in a professional teaser trailer of an action thriller and that it built suspense and interest.
How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation strategies?
During the research phase I’ve used the Internet a lot. I’ve mentioned previously that my main goal was to create a conventional promotional package for a movie and I wanted to create something that my audience would easily recognize.
The first thing that I’ve decided to do is to watch at least ten or twenty different teaser trailers on YouTube to learn more about the traditional codes and conventions that are used in teaser trailers of thriller/action movies.
After the research phase I knew how do the conventional teaser trailers look like so from this point onwards I needed to start working on the production. In the list below you’ll learn about the technology I’ve used to produce my teaser trailer as well as the website and the movie poster:
FLIP MINO
I’ve used Flip Mino video camera to record the footgage. Flip Mino is a very simple pocket camera that is very easy to use. For a project like this I thought it was the perfect camera to use, because it was easy to carry it around all over London, it was very simple to use and most importantly the video quality of the footage was good. Another great thing about this camera is that it was very easy for me to transfer the footage onto my computer and later onto my video editing software called Sony Video Vegas, because all of the data is transferred via USB.
I had an opportunity to do some filming with more advanced video cameras and I’ve noticed that very often it was pretty difficult to convert the video footage into an appropriate format so it could be used on video editing programs. With Flip Mino I didn’t experience any of the problems described above. I didn’t need to convert the formats simply because all of the recorded files were already .avi files which were easily “read” by my video editing software.
The only bad thing about this camera was that the quality of the sound recorded wasn’t perfect, because most of the time the microphone that was integrated into the video camera wasn’t anywhere near the objects and there was no opportunity to connect an external mic. I think if would’ve worked on a short film or any other kind of movie where voice recordings were needed then this sound issue would be a problem, but the good thing was that I didn’t need any of the recorded sound simply because I’ve used a soundtrack.
SONY VIDEO VEGAS 7.0
To edit and put all of the video footage together I’ve used Sony Video Vegas. In my opinion for a project like this this software was the perfect fit, because it had provided a lot of possibilities and it wasn’t too complex to use.
Some time ago I’ve tried to work a little bit with Adobe Premiere and Adobe After Effects, and I’ve found these two softwares to complex to use whereas it took very little for me to get used to Sony Video Vegas and start putting some footage together.
In the video below you can see how I’ve used Sony Video Vegas to produce the first thirty seconds of my trailer:
I’ve used Sony Vegas to:
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To combine all of the footage to create one continous piece of work.
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Create the text effects that are used in the first part of the trailer. To achieve those effects I’ve used a lot of motion blur as well as the positioning and size of the text.
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To render the final product so I could introduce it to the viewers
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Use the right video codecs to get the best quality (WMV 9.0)
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Add soundtrack
ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CS3
This is the main software that I’ve used to design my poster and the website. It is a powerful image editing software that is used by a lot of professional designers, editors and other skilled workers who work in the creative industry.
I’ve worked with Adobe Photoshop previously back in year twelve and year eleven. This had helped me out a lot, because I didn’t waste a lot of time on learning how to use the software, because I knew the most basics and some more advanced tricks since I’ve produced my music magazine (Year 12 coursework)
I’ve used Adobe Photoshop to:
- Add gradient overaly effect to the text.
- Create a blurry background by duplicating the original background, adding the duplicated version on top of the original one, adding blur effect and setting transparency to around 30%
- Cut out the main character out of the original image so I could add blur effects to the background which would not affect the main character.
NVU Open-Source Web Editor
Here are few examples of CSS language:
body {background-image:url(‘paper.gif’);}
h1 {background-color:#6495ed;}
p {background-color:#e0ffff;}
div {background-color:#b0c4de;}
During the production process of the whole promotional package I’ve found this software the hardest to use. It’s not because I’ve never done any HTML work, but because it took some time to learn how to use CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) language.
Read MorePoster Test
Here’s a rough version of how the final design of the poster will look like.
As you can see I didn’t want to challenge the traditional codes and conventions, but instead I’ve decided to use them so I could make my poster and my movie more appealing to my target audience.
I’ve decided to make my main character as the main focus of the trailer. My research has shown that a lot of production companies use this same technique and after some testing I’ve realized that the final result doesn’t look bad at all.
As you can see the main colours of the poster are red and white. I’ve decided to use these colours, because there’s a good contrast between them and dark red background makes the white text stand out more, which at the end of the day cathes the eyes attention.
Red colour indicates violence and blood in the movie, whereas the white colour is used simply to catch audiences attention.
As you can see I’ve used very large font for the title of the movie, because the two main elements of this poster are the main character and the title. I wanted to put as much focus as I could on these elements and this is why I’ve chosen to use this colour combination and these large fonts.
On the top left corner there’s some typography. The words used in that corner are related to the main theme of the movie. They say: deception, mislead, distortion and etc.
I’ve made them hard to to read on purpose, because I wanted to slightly brake the pattern of what do you usually see in a movie poster and in a way I wanted to catch my audiences attention with this element.
What would you do if your life fell appart? is another really important piece of information. It allows the audience to see into the future and expect what could potentially in the movie. Because there’s a lonely male character standing in an empty corridor, the audience can expect that his life will fall apart and to see the reason why this had happened – they’ll need to see the movie.
Storyboard
One of the best ways to visualize on how your ideas could look on the screen is to grab a piece of paper and a pen, and draw up a storyboard.
Storyboards are graphic organizers such as a series of illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing a motion picture, animation, motion graphic or interactive media sequence, including website interactivity.
Above you can see my old storyboard which I’ve found not so long ago.
There’s a slight possibility that some shots will go in a different order in the final piece, yet roughly this is the order of shots that I will use in my final production.
Read MoreEdit Decision List
Today I’ve made an edit decision list (EDL), which will allow someone to understand what my trailer will look like without even watching it.
The first thirty seconds of my trailer will introduce the story and there won’t be a lot of different shots. The soundtrack will be getting more intensive and at the culmination I will start to show the different scenes from the movie in the same order as in edit decision list.
Read MoreAnalysing the promotional websites
I am adding some final touches to my trailer and now I need to think about how my promotional website and the poster will look like.
Over the past few days I’ve did some research and I’ve realized that most of the movie promotional websites follow the same generic codes and conventions.
It looks like the main goal of these websites is to promote the main trailer of the movie. Almost every movie website that I’ve looked at had its main trailer on it’s homepage. In my opinion the people who create these websites know that it’s not the website that makes the person see the movie, but the actual trailer.
So even though I was analysing websites I’ve realized how important it is for the production company to make a trailer that will catch audiences attention and make them want to see the movie.
Below you can see how the promotional website looks like for the movie called “The Men Who Stare at Goats”
Even though the genre this new movie is not related to my movie it think that the website below represents the generic codes and conventions of promotional websites very well.
There’s not a lot of content and when a new person visits the website the first thing he or she sees is the trailer and the names of the popular and well known actors.
In my opinion this promotional website puts so much attention on the trailer and the names of the actors, because this what makes people want to see the movie.
There are some links at the top right, but in reality these links don’t mean a lot and while analysing some of the movie websites I’ve realized that I’ll need to focus on the trailer and the names of the actors to make my wesbite appealing to my target audience.
