Phoebe's Evaluation

Readers,

For my evaluation of my advanced portfolio I had to answer 4 questions.

My first question is a 3x3 picture collage with audio to describe my answer:

My second question as a Prezi:https://prezi.com/m87ygsldvll9/q2-how-effective-is-the-combination-of-your-main-product-an/

My third question:

Q3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

If I were to do this project again I would do more on my planning of the film and get more regular feedback e.g. show my product to more people throughout the progression of its development. The reason for this was that we left getting feedback to the last moment and found we had put the titling on screen for a very short time and people couldn’t read it. We had totally forgotten to add in the title of our film into the trailer. When getting feedback on our product this was highlighted so we were able to adjust these items for our final product and with hindsight we should have done this earlier. We put our trailer on Facebook and  YouTube.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/phoebe.lowes

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jicOzLiiTqE

I found that all my viewers on YouTube were from the UK and that on the day I posted my video (28^th Feb) that had the most views (12 in total). The other two views were on 1^st March to give me a grand total of 14 views on my YouTube channel.

 Here is a video of some girls watching our trailer and their positive feed back and reactions to it.

                                         

My fourth and final question as a Prezi: https://prezi.com/sqpr1myms0ym/q4-how-did-you-use-media-technologies-in-the-construction-a/

Final Products

Here are our final products consisitng of our Main Task which was a trailer, and our ancillary tasks; a magazine cover and a poster that link in with our main task.

Evaluation (Beth)

Here is my evaluation for our Advanced Portfolio Coursework:

We made a film trailer that has the same conventions of an actual trailer. We decided to stick to the formula because it proved to work well and look professional.

Q2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

I made a short Prezi answering this question:

Q3: What have you learnt from audience feedback?

Having had our audience watch our product we got some feedback to see what we could improve on. The feedback was generally positive and everyone liked the music plus our handheld effect.

The only things that were brought up improvement were the speed of the titling was way too fast, we missed the tagline and the title out and so we had to add that in.

Here's a small video of the AS Media class reacting to our trailer and then giving feedback:

From feedback we realised our magazine needed some editing. The magazine looked a bit amateur so we had to change it. We also noticed that all the branding didn't link together because we hadn't used the same fonts in the magazine that we used in both the trailer and the poster. So we changed to make the ancillary texts link neatly together with the main product.

Q4: How did you use the media technologies in construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Here's my little Prezi on how I answered this question.

Changing the magazine cover

In the light of feedback and having looked back on our magazine cover, we decided that it didn't link in with our other two products.

Having looked at other A2 Media magazine covers on Google Images we found that ours look amateur compared to what we could have done.

I used the same typeface in both the trailer and the poster but the magazine doesn't include this typeface so it doesn't link in with the ancillary text and the main product. We also found that there was too much blank space next to Allegra's head so we added more text after looking at real magazines.

So having looked at these problems we changed the poster:

Firstly we changed the title of the movie on the bottom. We took the red from the poster and added it to the title as well as putting it in the same font 'Trajan Pro'. 

However, the red didn't show up as well so we added a slightly opaque banner behind it and to bring the main focus of the magazine to the front. 

We then added a gradient to the masterhead so it looked just a bit more professional.

Having done all this we began to add the text down each side, trying to fill up the blank space. 

Beth

Music for graphic

Hi guys,

This is a short video explaining what I did to make the music for our graphic and how I got my inspiration.

Hope you enjoy! :)

Phoebe

Magazine cover 4th Feb

Readers,

This is a short film of how I made my magazine and the different stages I went through to get my final piece. Hope you enjoy!

Please comment and give me feed back. Thank you!!

Final Touches To The Poster

I added some final touches to the poster and these consisted of adding some film festival logos and critics reviews to complete the poster's look.

I took a high quality image of the 'Sundance Film Festival logo' off the internet and put it in Photoshop to delete the background and make it transparent then I put it on the poster. 

I firstly placed them below the tagline and by the silhouette of the school but I soon decided it took away the blank space either side of the school and didn't give it the same effect.

So I moved the reviews and logos up and decided to add some critics as seen in The Babadook poster, they have quotes from critics which looks effective.

Photoshopping the Poster

So Phoebe and I decided to make our poster.

I used Photoshop and took some different photos of the location in different light settings to see which worked best.

Then I began to edit the photo using a template I found on the internet.

I firstly added the text at the top of the page but when I looked at the template I decided not to put it there and move it down. 

I used the font that I had used in the trailer which was a sans serif. I felt this looked unprofessional and so I changed it to a serif. 

Then I added some shadowing to the text, seeing if it added an effect that made it look more professional. 

I changed the colour of the main title and the other text because the other one looked too pale and pink while this one matched the colour of blood. 

Then I used the eyedropper tool to get the exact dark grey of the building and then apply it to the top titles.

I also changed the font to a sans serif because it added variation.

I finally used rulers to straighten up the text and make it look more professional.

Costumes, Props and Actors

Readers,

For our final product (the trailer) we have had to source actors, costumes and props to create the desired effects.
We wanted to produce a natural school environment so the girls will be dressed in school uniform, the investigators (Beth and myself) will be in casual wear as we are meant to look like we are not at the school and finally the enigma (ghost, spirit, demon) will be dressed in black to cover their features from the camera.

Meet our actresses:

Allegra- 6th former at the school

Keira- The ghost, demon, spirt haunting the school

Cordelia- Terrified school girl

Mollie- Terrified school girl

Fay-Terrified school girl

Beth- Paranormal investigator 

 Phoebe (me)- Paranormal investigator

The uniform (costumes) of the school girls is a grey tartan kilt and maroon jumper with a white shirt like this -->

For the props we are going for the minimalistic style of very few, if any props in our production. The only props we will source are the duvet and pillows for the night scenes and our phones for the touches. We are also using the hand held cameras as props (even though they are recording the footage..) to create the illusion we are both filming at the same time.

Thanks see you next time for an update on our film!

Phoebe

Pictures for the poster

I decided to take some photos for my poster that goes with our trailer. I noticed that most horror movie posters have the location as the central image or the star of the film.

Going on this idea, I went out to take some shots on location that could be our poster. Bearing in mind that our film doesn't really have a famous star and there are really only four actresses.

I took some shots and over exposed a few of them to get a shadow affect and under exposed on Photoshop to make the school look more daunting.

These shots turned to perfectly for the poster as they had enough white space above the school to put the titling. 

Feedback

So having nearly completed our edit of our trailer, Phoebe and I decided to get some feedback to see what should be improved.

We asked 10 different people on their opinions of our trailer and they came up with similar comments.

This audio explains what Phoebe and I have changed in the light of the feedback.

Sound in Trailers

Having looked at some sound on movie trailers Phoebe and I have decided to less music but build up tension but we definitely need music.

I searched up some tension music on YouTube in order for find an underlying haunting tune which isn't too cliché like some trailers.

I found this audio track which is perfect for the trailer because it doesn't take away the tension from the trailer. 

I had a problem with the track though, because we need a climatic piece of music at the end but we couldn't find anything within this track that built up and fitted so we found another track which had the suspense build up we needed. 

Although we didn't use all of this track, the built up suspense was exactly what we needed.