Media evaluation

IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

Raj Dhesi

POSTERThe poster title is in a white bold font to help it stand out and make it more eye catching, this would help as when the audience looks at the title they are more likely to remember the posters name. They are not on the same line as I felt that it made the rest of the poster plain and this helped to fill up space of the poster.Same font as the

title it shows more of a link between them rather than having different fonts making the poster look too busy and not blending together well, making it look sloppy.

I felt as though the image helped to create mystery on the poster as the audience would question what relevance the necklace would have to the film and make them want to watch the film to find out, also it is quite dark showing that it that the story is not a happy one.

RESEARCH For the poster many other different posters of the

horror genre were looked at to try and make it look a realistic as possible, I wanted to try to use some similar ideas but also make it my own product and keep it original. The first step of creating the poster was looking at the codes and conventions of other posters and what I wanted to keep the same, develop or change I had to do this by looking at many of posters with the same style of our filming as we decided to create a horror film in the form of a documentary as we felt that this was a good way of having more angles to shoot from the view of the character. While analyzing the posters the main thing that they had in common was that the picture was of a screen shot from a scene in the film where the character is either looking scared other something is happening they have edited the picture to be in night vision, an example of this is The Blair Witch Project where the character is filming herself, which is a scene from the film she looks scared and cold, you can only see half her face with the camera light shining on her and in the background you can see trees, making clear to the audience that she is in the woods, but instead of editing to look as though it is night vision it is black and white.

Another example I looked at was paranormal activity 1-5, they had the same layout for each poster, I focused on paranormal activity 1. The image that they choose was from an actual scene they had chosen one with both the main characters in bed with the women pointing to the door where there is a large shadow with no one standing there, she seemed petrified its looks as though she has moved all the way over from the other side of the bed to be closer to her partner in the image as though she is seeking comfort. In the right hand corner there is a time showing which show the audience that it is being recorded, the time is at 3.08.26AM this time represents that it is being films but it also represents witching hour which is stereotypically used in films.

Although I liked both posters as they had the same genre and style of film when taking the picture for the poster I felt that having a picture of a character didn’t look like as professional as the other posters, so after taking the pictures and editing them I felt that it would be more appropriate to choose a different image. Deciding that I wouldn’t use a picture of a character and a scene from the trailer I expanded my research to films of the same genre but different filming styles. After looking at some I noticed a reoccurring theme where the poster is kept quite plain with white writing and a dark background to make the writing stand out and contrast with the background. And the image was of an object that had relevance to the film and linked with the trailer. I preferred the idea of having a picture of an image rather than a character of them film as I could have a better focus of the object. While filming for the trailer we used a characters necklace and recorded a scene of necklace so we decided that it would be a good idea to use this as the picture for the poster, the picture came out very clear and very focused. The picture was taken during the day so the picture of the necklace seemed very bright and wouldn’t seem as though it was for a horror film, so during editing I had to make it darker and less of an ordinary picture.

The film poster that helped me to decide that an image of an object would look better was the poster of the film Hatchet, it had a plan black background with plain white writing at the top or the bottom, and had a picture of an axe in the middle which had a small shine around it, which brought more attention to it. I liked that it wasn’t too busy and it gave the audience something to focus on. Although I did like this Idea I preferred that our poster did have a background to show the location of where the necklace was found, as in the image used for the poster it has woodland scenery in the background.

The layout of the film poster seems to have been kept quite simple, and still portraying a dark and gloomy atmosphere. It is dark and cloudy, not showing much light. The main focus in this poster is the young boy in the centre, he has a blank yet disturbing expression on his face all of these features instantly tells the audience that the genre of this film is horror. He seems to be dressed in red stripped pj’s, red is associated with danger, so this shows that the plot could have to do with this boy being in danger, although as innocent as he may seem in pj’s. Also there seems to be an odd glaze in both of his eyes which seem almost super natural, as though he is not in the right frame of mind, or that he is possessed, this could be foreshadowing the events that are to happen in the film. The house in the background is also a focus in the poster, which shows the plot also revolves around the house. It seems like a normal house but the gap in the top curtain could show that there is someone else in the house watching the boy, as all the other curtains are closed apart from one, which makes it seem odd and unusual.

The colour scheme of this poster is red and white, this could represent the struggle between evil and good, so it could show that there is an evil that could be in this film. In the film title, ‘INSIDIOUS’ is in capitals to stand out and also in the middle if the page rather than at the top, the ‘SI’ is the only letters in red while the rest being white so attention to is drawn straight to the title. While the rest of the text is smaller than the title the title is also on a 90 degree angle and is the only thing that is compared to the other text. On top of the title in smaller writing show that the creators who made this film had also mad other well-known films, such as Saw and Paranormal Activity. This is to show to the audience that have enjoyed the other films that they will most definitely find this one enjoyable as well. Below the title at the bottom of the poster is the release date amongst other writing but it stands out the most as it is in capitals.

FONT While making creating the poster

our group had decided to use the font chiller for the title, but while piecing the poster together I felt that it didn't look like a suitable font for the poster. So I tried to find a font from online, I came across a font that stood out to me and I decided that it would be an effective font to help make the title stand out on our poster, but I thought that it was too thin and hard to read on the actual poster, so I edited it on paint making it thicker and also changed the colour of the text to white instead of black this way it would contrast with the dark background meaning that title would stand out.

LOCATION The location we used to

take our image was Warley woods, we felt that it was a condensed place full of trees and bushes so that buildings wouldn't get in the way or in the background of our shot, although it was shot during the day while editing I was able to make the scenery look darker than it actually was.

MAGAZINE This was the first mock up of the

magazine, which has similarities to the final due to positive feedback during a group discussion with our other peers. The main difference was the image has been changed, due to the fact that the genre of our trailer was a horror the image on the front of the magazine didn't give the audience that feel as the actor seemed happy and the background was quite bright. Whereas with the final magazine cover the actor was in costume and in a darker, remote environment.

The colour scheme was also changed in hopes of it being more eye catching for the audience, rather than this darker blue, which deems dull it was change to a brighter blue.

The colour of title ‘The 16th’ was changed from black to red to once again catch the audience’s attention and symbolize dear and blood as the genre of the film is horror.

More side headings were added as the magazine cover seemed plan and lacked writing.

FINAL

The title ‘Premiere’ is written in bold and capitals to draw in the audiences attention and it also obvious that is a magazine title, the colour scheme of the magazine is blue and red, the genre was horror, so the red is a representation of blood and fear.

The poster title is in a white bold font to help it stand out and make it more eye catching, this would help as when the audience looks at the title they are more likely to remember the films name.

Similar to other magazines a review of the film from a reliable source.

The image itself links to both the poster and trailer as it is the same location of most of the trailer and the location of the image of the poster.Inspiration for the

film poster

TRAILER INFLUENCES Before making the trailer we decided on

the genre of our trailer to be horror in form of a documentary, so when we started our research we already had 3 trailers that we had seen before in our mind, as the fit into our category. The first was Paranormal activity 1-5, having us all watched the film and the trailer beforehand we decided that this was similar to how we wanted to film to in forms of having a handheld camera and while film have someone talking while filming asking question and occasionally turning the camera on themselves, a more relaxed approach as well as a more realistic one. Also small things that we picked up on was that when they first started filming they asked for the person in front of the camera to introduce themselves, we also did the same in our trailer as we felt that it was a good way of the characters presenting themselves. Paranormal activity had more than one camera but we felt that in our trailer we only needed on, as with the storyline being a group of college kids, we felt it would be more realistic if they had one as they wouldn’t be able to afford many cameras.

Another film trailer we looked at was Grave Encounters, this was again a horror but in terms of a documentary, we felt that his was a good trailer but it didn’t link as well to ours in terms of how they film as they were filming with night vision and the camera’s were set up for some of the film. But one thing that we did pick up on was the fact that they talk to the camera about stuff that was going on, if they heard a sound or if they were lost or they would show their facial expressions as well as them walking and talking. And also after a character has put the camera down in a certain place and the camera would pick up something that they did not see, we did this with our trailer at the end with the tree moving.

The Blair Witch trailer was particularly similar to ours as it linked not only without our genre and style of filming but also our storyline. As a group of kids go to the woods so they can do some research on a murder case study that was never solved and after researching they decided to go themselves in search of clues. After camping they notice strange things happening around them and they are able to catch this on camera, in fear of their lives they decide they shouldn’t separate until a friend goes missing. We tried to link our to this trailer as they have a similar storyline and filming techniques. We tried to use ideas such as turning the camera back on ourselves so that we could talk to the camera and show our reactions to the environment around us.