I have presented this question in a video as well as a written up piece below containing the same information as seen in the video.
Conventions are the expected ingredients in a particular type of media text. Throughout all my media products I have either used, developed or challenged the conventions of my media texts.
In my promotional campaign I have used and developed conventions of the horror genre. One of the ways I have used conventions is by using the villain as dark, mysterious and anonymous person. In order to find out what the common conventions are of a horror trailer, I conducted some primary research on three recent horror trailers in order to come to conclusion as to the current trends in the horror genre. The reason why I looked at recent trailers is due to the fact that conventions are ever developing and changing and we need to keep up to date with the current conventions in order to make our trailer “fit in”. I decided to look at The Strangers, Saw IV and Friday 13th and from these, I felt that the concept of a villain being present and after the victims was a good convention in which I could pursue and develop in order to make the concept better. The similarities in which I came to terms with is that the villain’s identity in The Vanishing is kept a secret as throughout the whole trailer/film, the audience is not aware of who he is which is the same as the Saw villain and the Friday 13th villain where in both cases, they wear a mask which conceals their identity. Moreover, another convention which was common was the idea of a weapon in which is used by the villain to violate the victims. There was a common characteristic amongst all the weapons villains used, which were they were sharp. I decided to use the idea of a weapon but develop it where I further did some research with my target audience to find out the ‘recent’ weapons people are using when involved in violent crimes, amongst all the popular weapons which have been used in all horror movies, I found that the Baseball bat is the upcoming new common weapon criminals are now using. The recent film “Adulthood” which uses a Baseball bat to defend against a villain supports my idea of recent weapons. Therefore, the reason why I decided to progress my concept with a Baseball Bat as a weapon was given the fact that I want my film to contain new features and I wanted to innovate recent denotations in which people associate with objects which can cause a lot of pain and damage. Lastly, I found that in many horror films, the creation of riddles or problems throughout the film tends to be resolved or answers to the audiences questions are given. An example is in all the Saw series, there is the reason why the victim was selected presented to the audience, however, I have challenged conventions and have left the film on a cliffhanger, as I did not mention throughout the whole film as to why these four boys were the victims in the film. This creates enigma and will attach the audience to the film and will ensure that they will watch out for the second part of the film to be released so their questions can be answered. Moreover, I decided to further challenge conventions by presenting the whole film as a hand held style in order to create uneasiness and to make the audience feel a bit insecure due to the unstable shots. This is in high contrast to horror films where there are a few shots in the form of hand held, whereas, in The Vanishing, the whole film is in hand held. The reason why I wanted to develop and use conventions is because I was aware that a persuasive, new and innovative unique selling point will gather a wide audience. On the other hand, the reason why I used conventions was to allow easy identification to the horror genre.
The way in which I have used horror conventions in my poster is the way in which I have used conventional colours relating to the horror genre. The common colours found on many horror posters are black and red due to the denotations of these colours, for example, death and blood. The reason for this is because it will enable my poster to be identifiable to the horror genre directly targeting my audience. Also, I kept the layout of the poster very conventional too where the actor’s names are placed at the top, tagline and film name in the middle followed by the production crews names at the bottom. However, the way in which the complete poster is presented is totally unconventional, as I wanted to challenge the conventions of real media products, which would make my poster stand out. Instead of my poster being portrait, I decided to present it as landscape, which will catch any consumer’s eye due to it being different from its competitors. The way in which I have developed my poster from common horror conventions is the way in which I have edited the image. I wanted to keep it conventional by placing a close up image of a characters face, like in the poster for One Missed Call, however, I wanted to create a sense of enigma as well which is why I used studio lighting and small tweaks on Photoshop to help the image fade out into the background causing half the face to be in light and half in the dark consequently limiting detail and creating enigma. The reason why I faded the image into the background is because it will link to the film name, ‘The Vanishing’. Also, the image on the poster has low key lighting which has caused half the characters face to be darkened whilst the other half to remain in the light. This consequently created an effect whereby the details of the image became limited and gave a negative representation of the character due to black being a negative colour alongside him holding a bat. This is basically a conventional representation, which needs to be used in any type of media in order to create a certain feel you are looking for.
The way in which my magazine uses conventions of real media products is the way in which the main image is of the main character of the film. The reason for this is because it is normally the main character that is well known therefore, having a well-known character on the front cover will attract a wider audience. This explains the reason why a lot of film magazine companies do this. I have developed the convention of the image of the character on the front cover as he is carrying a baseball bat rather then a conventional knife. I wanted to have the character holding a weapon, and I felt that by using a different weapon, it would gather a larger amount of attention. Moreover, the way in which I have challenged conventions is the way in which I have used a black and white image instead of a colour image. Colour images are great to use as you can dress the character up in certain colours to give a particular feel, for example, yellow which will create a happy feeling. The fact that I have used a black and white image and have created an uneasy effect without the use of colour allows me to come to terms that the image was presented in the right way. I only found one magazine by an American magazine company which used a black and white image on the front cover and the reason for that was because the image was taken when colour images were not available.
Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Question 3: How did you use technologies in the Construction and Research, Planning and Evaluation stages?
Blogspot was used to help me track my progress throughout my media promotional package. It enabled me to create, edit and insert embed posts allowing me to present my work in a interesting way.
Prezi was used for some areas of my work which enabled me to digitally present my work allowing me to show contextual links throughout my work.
Photoshop was used in the second part of my media promotional package where I was creating a poster and magazine front cover. I used photoshop in order to edit the images; enhance/reduce brightness; add text; change colour levels on images; sharpen up images; add a rough texture to skin; adjust lighting angles; add filters and re-arrange elements and add elements in order to make the media text look conventional, e.g. mastheads, film name, production crews names.
Final Cut Pro was used in order to edit my trailer and my viral campaign. This involved copying and pasting, adding intertitles, adding sound, adjusting light within scenes, rearranging order or scenes and special effects as well as other types of skill such as a good photographic eye highlighting and selecting key shot types and angles, problem solving skills, flexibility as sometimes the production may be delayed and you need to be highly flexible to adapt to this, ability to stay calm and be confident when faced with situations that cause stress, willingness to stay up long hours in order to meet a deadline and to be willing and able to develop and improve skills in order to increase the quality of the finished product.
Logic and Reason 4.0 was used to create sound for my trailer alongside sound effects from iTunes. This requires an imaginative and creative mind as well as patience as this process can take a long time to complete depending on project size. The skill required is work ethnic and drive, some sort of musical training, knowledge of recording techniques in terms of vocals and instruments and lastly collaborative ability.
I used an SLR when taking images for my magazine front cover and the poster which requires a lot of skill. Some people do not realize the skill required which limits the quality of the finished product. Firstly, I highlighted the purpose and environment as well as the shot types which I will be using in order to come to terms as to which camera to use as well as lens. Secondly, I analysed myself as I wanted to highlight to myself the skills I have and the ability to edit pictures, I came to conclusion that I will shoot my pictures in a raw format and edit them entirely from scratch using photoshop as this gave me more flexibility. The lens which I used were 18-105mm lens which were used alongside a Nikon D5000.
Question 4: What have you learned from audience feedback?
I have presented this question in a video as well as a written up piece below containing the same information as seen in the video.
I’m trying to take a product-orientated approach where I base my product on my audience’s demand. The trailer I had posted on youtube and received feedback, which helped me to develop, and challenge conventions used which brought it to what it is now. Youtube has a huge audience of 85 billion viewers plus and it’s the number one place to receive audience feedback due to the development of web 2.0. The poster and magazine I put on Facebook where I received feedback from friends and family, both negative and positive, which allowed me to improve the media texts to its best. The good point about Facebook is that I am not pushing people to view my media texts and force them to give feedback as this can sometimes lead to unreliable data. The fact that people commented in their own time in their own comfort suggests that results will be more reliable.
I conducted questionnaires in order to find out the positives and negatives of my poster and magazine. The comments that I agreed with and was popular amongst my audience, I took forward, but the comments that I didn’t agree with and were outliers, I decided to ignore. I gave the questionnaires to the age range I am targeting and the fact that I could control this factor with questionnaires helped me a lot. It would have been no use me using results from an audience aged 40-50, therefore, getting results from specific age groups that relate to you is essential.
Lastly, I gathered a focus group of 8 people where I regularly asked them for feedback on my media texts. This was good because the feedback was instant and if I didn’t understand something, I could easily of asked for a further explanation which is not possible when using questionnaires. The focus group were boys and girls who were in the age range of my target audience.
