Evaluation

Jordan Smith

Question 1
In what ways does your media
product use, develop or challenge
forms and conventions of real
media products?

Genre
The first thing to consider when considering whether
we used, developed or challenged forms or conventions
of existing media is what our genre is. After sending out
a survey to a general public, we found out that the
most popular genre was that of Romantic Comedy, so
to please our audience and reach out to a greater
number of people (Uses & Gratifications theory- give
the audience what they want and generate a higher
profit) we made this our genre. We also understand
that due to genre-hybridity our film will reach out to
more than one type of audience, which will of course
also generate a higher profit.

Deconstructing the Genre

After we decided on our genre, we had to sit and deconstruct
certain films within our genre to gain a better understand of the
forms and conventions of our chosen genre. We deconstructed the
following films (which can be seen on my blog):
The Notebook
500 Days of Summer
Silver Linings Playbook
10 Things I Hate About You
Sleepless In Seattle
17 Again
Crazy Stupid Love
About Time
From these deconstructions we aimed to gain a higher level of
understanding of the genre and to break it down into conventions.

Genre conventions
From our deconstructions and some additional research
online, we discovered that the following conventions exist
within the romantic-comedy genre:
Boy meets girl scenario
Voiceovers explaining characters
Obvious that the lead characters will end up together
Two lead characters, one male, one female
Sexual innuendo in the script
Film is told from the females point of view
Typically styled with flowers and hearts and red colours
Set usually between young people in a location where
the meeting is likely to happen

Trailer conventions
From our deconstructing of general trailers, we
have discovered the following conventions to
exist within them:
Most trailers seem to last for 2/2:30 minutes with
the only real exception to that rule being twilight
which was a lot shorter
It is quite rare that any sort of dramatic camera
movements are ever really used
There are a lot of changes in music during the
trailers to reflect the current situation the trailer
of portraying
These can be seen on the blog.

How we have used these

conventions of trailers
In our piece we felt that the best way to give
audiences what they wanted was to stick
entirely to the conventions of trailers, so that
what allows ours to stick out is the changes in
the generic conventions. We have made our
trailer 2 minutes 33 seconds long, all the cuts
are slow and natural and there are an awful
lot of focusing long shots. Finally there are 3
changes in music to reflect the atmosphere of
the trailer that we wanted to give off.

How we have used these generic

conventions
The first genre convention we have used based on the list above is using
voiceovers to explain the character; something that we have done throughout
the trailer so that our audience is aware of the situation at hand. Another genre
convention we had used during the planning stages was the use of sexual
innuendo in the script, where a desperate Dave walks in on Lauren and Simon
in bed and suggests (rather inappropriately) a threesome, which the two reject
simultaneously. This was meant to be a comedic aspect of our trailer which we
decided not to include due to the fact that we wanted our trailer for general
viewing rather than restricted in any way whatsoever. We have also styled our
film with typical romantic comedy symbols such as the red coat Lauren is
wearing, showing that she is NOT the object of lust (also associated with the
colour red), but is the object of affection (red love hearts) but also, we have her
engaging in flower arranging, something which is typically female. The final
convention we have used is the setting between young people in a location
where something is likely to happen. Our main characters are three young adult
friends who have clearly known each other for a very long time, and it is set in
an urban area where the three are likely to "hang out" and spend time
together; allowing the necessary feelings to grow from that.

How we have developed these

generic conventions
Out of our list of generic conventions, we only chose todevelop
two of these. The first convention we developed was the 'Boy
meets girl' scenario. While that does still happen within our
trailer, it is clear that our boy met the girl quite some time ago
as she is the girlfriend of his best friend, so although the two
have obviously met, unlike the majority of Rom-Com's where
the attraction is instant and it is inevitable that the two will get
together at the end of the film, our lead character has to work
to obtain his goal as a friendship has already been established.
We have also developed the convention of the two lead
characters - one boy, one girl - to contain three lead
characters - two boys, one girl -so that the girl, Lauren, is open
to the affection of both males, making the effects more
comedic and distasterous as the boys friendship is on the line.

How we have challenged these

conventions
Similarly we have only challenged two conventions of the Romantic
Comedy genre. The first and most important convention that we
challenged in our whole plot that we wrote was the inevitability of a longlasting, happy relationship between the male and the female. Instead what
we have is them getting together halfway through the film, but that
relationship breaking down friendships between the three so our lead
female goes back to our secondary male character and our lead male ends
up with another person who's only introduced at the end, however there is
still a happy ending in that the three are friends again, and all has returned
to normal with Lauren and Simon back together and Dave still "Third
Wheeling" but with a girlfriend of his own. The second convention (and less
important) was the notion that the films are usually told from the females
point of view. Our film is told by Dave, our unlucky-in-love hero who is
desperate to get a girl, even if that means stealing him off his best friend
(morally questionable). Again, we havent stuck to generic conventions
when making our point of view be from the male character, but we feel it
made for a successful comedic effect.

How we would improve upon this

should we get another chance
As a whole we feel we did a good job at using,
developing and challenging conventions as our
audience responded positively (which you will
see later) and seemed to enjoy our trailer.
However, should we get the chance to go back
and do this again, we would possibly use some
of the more important conventions (such as the
inevitability of a relationship) so that if our film
was released in full, audiences would at least
get some of the more important things that
they were expecting.

Question 2
How effective is the
combination of your main
product and ancillary texts?

Visual
I feel that visually my poster and my magazine go together very well not only
together but with my trailer. To achieve this we got our actors- in full costumeto participate in a photoshoot in front of a white screen, which was also used to
film the credit screens. For both the poster and the magazine cover I decided to
keep the white background so that it matched each other and the credit
screens within our trailer, simulating successful synergy between the separate
organizations that would have created these pieces independently. Also, I have
incorporated the use of the font "Showcard Gothic" consistently throughout my
texts (even if in some places, such as my magazine cover, it is only used for the
films logo). The logo for our film is red and as a result we felt it appropriate to
include red on the actors credits on the poster and the credits in the trailer.
I have attempted to secure a certain style throughout my pieces, giving off in
the poster that Dave is a menace getting in between two peoples relationship
and in my magazine cover that Dave is a lonely, small character deserving of
viewers pity. When you watch the trailer you understand that Dave is both,
showing that my poster and my magazine cover both match the story perfectly,
even though it would seem that both are very different.

Audience Feedback
To gain audience feedback, I sent out a survey on
http://www.surveymonkey.com. This short, 8 question survey, asked audiences
their age and gender (so that the results could be analyzed to see which
demographic thought what), how regular a movie watcher they were, then they
were asked to rate the poster and the magazine cover, asked whether they
would watch our film based on what they saw, if the genre was easily
identifiable, then left a box at the bottom for constructive feedback. Out of the
responses we gained, 100% were aged between 18 and 25 showing that we
had hit our target demographic and 66.67% of these were males who regularly
attended the cinema. 100% of viewers were able to successfully identify our
genre- showing that we were successful and clear in our presentation- and half
said that they would view our film should it be released to the cinema.
The general rating for both my poster and my magazine covers was 7/10
showing that although it wasn't perfect, my poster seemed better than average
to most viewers and I feel as though this means that I was successful in my
task to create realistic posters and magazine covers, with some area for
improvement.

Personal Feelings
When I originally set out to do these pieces of ancillary text work, my
designs were somewhat different to how they ended up looking. With
this in mind however, I feel my pieces are now stronger and look
more professional now that I have taken it in a completely different
direction (as this direction was undertaken with complete reference
to existing products, despite personal opinions over them). However I
feel my poster went more successfully that my magazine cover as I
feel my colour scheme for the cover doesn't look appropriate and
there isn't enough going on (such as trigger words, graphics, various
article references) to make it as busy as a conventional magazine
cover.
In general, across both my poster and my magazine cover, I found
myself consistently frustrated with the amount of white space that
wasn't being filled, but based upon my audience feedback, I
understand this this has worked successfully and if I'm honest with
myself, I can genuinely see these pieces being advertised in public.

Question 3
What have you learned from
your audience feedback?

How we gained audience

feedback
As our demographic was people aged
between 18 and 25, we felt that the
best way to gain audience feedback
was to screen our trailer to a group of
individuals who filled that
demographic. We have videoed this
process and then recorded their
responses as an audio file.

Questions- audio
The link for our question audio is also
on the blog

What we have learned from this

feedback
From audience feedback, we have learned that as a
whole our film was successful, however some
adjustments needed to be made. For example,
some felt that our actors were cast inappropriately
and that we should reconsider our actors. Our
genre was easy to arrive at based on what could be
seen on screen and the story was easy to pick up
on. Based on the trailer we discovered that the
rating we had been given wasn't appropriate for
what we had presented. Similarly the story was
easy to pick up on as our group was able to identify
successfully what was going on in the trailer.

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

Pre Production
Like last year, all our work is presented on an
online blog. Last year my blog was with
Wordpress, a website which I found very
difficult to use and as a result it wasn't very
neat or organised. As a result, this year it was
suggested to me by a few friends to use
Weebly. Using weebly to mount my work on
was probably the best pre-production
technological decision I'd made as it is easy to
use and organise and I feel as a result my work
is easier to access than it was last year.

Production
This year for production we used various
pieces of digital technology. Last year we
purely used a camera to shoot our entire
film on location, this year we used a higher
quality camera as well as a professional
photography booth for our photoshoots for
the ancillary work and as a result the
quality has come out much nicer. Similarly
we used a green screen to shoot some
scenes that were not doable.

Post Production
Last year we solely used Windows Movie Maker as
our editing software when it came to postproduction and as a result we were fairly limited in
our capabilities. This year we used a mixture of
Adobe Premiere Pro to edit things such as the green
screening (as it contains a tool called the "Chroma
key" which takes out the green background), Serif
Movie Plus, which we found very easy to use as the
clips were extremely easy to upload and edit as we
wished, and Windows Live Movie Maker, a software
which our editor was comfortable with and knew
very well.

Ancillary texts
Our primary software when it came to the ancillary
texts was photoshop. However, due to our teacher
(Mr. Lupton) having a lack of knowledge in the
field, we had lessons with a man called Mr. Cook
who knew how to use photoshop who talked us
through the process of editing, using tools such as
the clone stamp, colour adjustments, masking and
giving drop shadows on texts using the blending
options. As a result of this help when it came to
learning photoshop, we were able to create
professional looking anicillary texts.