Final Product

magazine and poster

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

http://shadkayf.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/no-description.html

We used an online programme called prezi to present our ideas, such as our brainstorm, to present it in an interesting and interactive way.

It allowed us to experiment and use different technologies to present our ideas/evaluation in different ways, rather than in the standard format that Blogger uses.

Youtube was very helpful in the pre-production of our trailer. Before creating our trailer, we

used Youtube to look at various trailers of British Gangster films, as well as a few American Gangster films, to get a general idea of what themes run in both of them.

Moreover, we were able to identify what conventions we need to put into our trailer, as the genre we were working in is very niche.

We used Apple Mac software such as, iMovie HD and Garageband to edit shots we filmed on the camera for our trailer and our soundtrack. Garageband was tricky to use, as we had to create our own sounds, unlike our production work from last year where we allowed to use un copyrighted soundtracks. It was difficult at first to work out how to use this programme, but in the end we were able to create a successful soundtrack that fits the genre of our trailer and one that connotes action and fast pace. iMovie HD was simple and easy to use, from our previous production work in Year 12. It was just a matter of recalling on prior knowledge to edit all our filmed clips.

Photoshop also played an important role in the construction of our film poster and magazine front cover. In my case, it was simple and quick to use due to prior experiences working with this programme from GCSE and A level Graphics Design. It really helped in bringing our ideas to life and making them look more visually stunning. This allowed our ancillary texts to look like the media forms we were creating and brought it to level where it almost looked like professional magazine front covers and film posters. It was essential that every detail was linked together and made correctly, as it was marketed at our audience and had to communicate the British Gangster genre across to them.

Shadia Mohaiyuddin: Question 3 - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Throughout our market research, we learned that the genre we had chosen would be quite difficult to work in, nonetheless, we stuck to it to try and make a successful independent film. From our research we found out that, our audience generally reacted positively to the idea of watching a British Gangster film, but more from a mainstream perspective. With that in mind, we started to create our products for a independent audience, but with a few mainstream elements to it.

http://shadkayf.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/audience-feedback.html

From our audience feedback, it proved to be very useful and constructive. Generally, our products weren't clear enough in terms of communicating the genre to our audience. Therefore the audience feedback greatly helped us improve our whole promotional package and to make our genre more clearer to our audience and easier to follow in the trailer and poster.

In addition, we also got feedback from our peers on Facebook. We created a page for our products, so our friends can post their opinions and constructive criticisms about our whole promotional package.

Shadia Mohaiyuddin: Question 2 - How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

http://shadkayf.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/experimenting-with-different-typography.html

Title: All our products feature the film title, 'Gone For 6', effectively linking them all together as a promotional package.

Use of colour: Red, symbolizing blood and violence linking towards the genre that our film is from.

Image: We used our main character; Barry White, in our film poster and magazine front cover, in order to promote our main product. The images depicting Barry White as a hoodie and suited figure allows the audience to see how our character has developed/changed in personality. The theme of metamorphosis, In addition, we has the theme of cricket running throughout our product from the use of the cricket bat as a weapon and from our tagline, "let the innings begin."

Throughout the production of our promotional package, we wanted to give our products the appearance of a British Gangster film made for a mainstream audience, even though it is aimed at an independent audience. This is due to the fact the genre we were working in isn't largely recognised and if our products were real, it wouldn't be successful enough to generate a lot of money, especially when our product would be along side those made with a larger production value and a widely recognised genre of films, such as, action and fantasy.

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

Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? on Prezi

Kwame Mensah-Sarpong: Question 4 - How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

In the very first stages, even before creating our promotional product, we used YouTube to

watch different trailers of British Gangster films that have already been made. This enabled us t
o gain an insight to what conventions we needed to apply to our trailer in order for our audience to identify it under this niche genre.

We watched film trailers of Snatch, Rock'n'Rolla and Layer cake.

We also used an online programme called prezi in order to display show how we brainstormed

rough ideas and brought it together in order to produce our product.

http://shadkayf.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/magazine-brainstorm.html)

We used software on Apple's Macs in order to make our trailer and our soundtrack, along with camera to allow our product to have conventions of a British Gangster movie. We used editing software called iMovieHD in order to import our what we recorded on camera onto the Mac's in order to edit our clips to make it more like our chosen genre. This was also emphasized through the music we made through the programme garageband. Both these softwares were generally easy to use because of the fact that we had prior knowledge to use it through Year 12 and in my case, Year 10 & 11 for Music GCSE. Through these programmes our product was bought to life and was ready to be our spearhead for our promotional package.

In addition to this, we finished off the promotional package by creating and developing our magazine front cover and our film poster on Adobe Photoshop. This enabled us to create a selling image of our film without any sound, but just by visualizing. This programme was generally easy to use, but was at time challenging, when it came to adjusting things to the smallest detail in order to make it a commercial success.