Tuesday, 3 April 2012

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.

Friday, 30 March 2012

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

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.




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.





Kwame Mensah-Sarpong: Question 3 - What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback proved to be very useful and constructive for us as it enabled us to learn about the importance of being an independent genre and different conventions we should use to shown the distinction between an independent and mainstream product.

At first we agreed on the idea of having a specific font to match the genre and the events that take place in the movie. However we were criticized for making it unclear on our film magazine because it isn't clear enough. Through this criticism we have been able to make our title, "Gone For 6" stand out more on the front cover.

Here we can see how the font is a creative showing some conventions of gangster movies. Here we see that it is a bold font in which it will grab peoples attention. The idea of splits in the letters connotes violence. The extra trail dripping from the "F" is another connotation of violence, indicating blood from a wound from the other cuts which are seen through the splits through the other letters.

A Facebook page has also been created in order for our audience to post their opinions and views about our package. We have generally been getting a lot of positive feedback.

http://www.facebook.com/groups/264264870328144/264278510326780/?notif_t=group_activity






Kwame Mensah-Sarpong: Question 2 - How effective is the combination of your main product?

Our promotional package contained many contained effective similarities and also some conventions of the genre in order for audiences to able to identify our film and that it will be effective individually and as a combined product.

We used the images of our main character, 'Barry White' in our movie poster and in a magazine front cover in order to promote our film. Through this, we were able to create different images to try and create an idea of how our character is in our film. These two different images enable audiences to see that our character contains different personalities through his posture, props and clothing.

For our trailer, we were able to show a brief outline of what our story is about and some scenes that may be in the film. The fast paced editing and violence that are shown, give audiences the idea of what conventions used to show that it is a British gangster movie. This is the main product in our promotional package, and through this, audiences are able see the main idea of what we are trying to promote.



The magazine and the poster are also as effective as our trailer because the images of our main character that are used for these products, mirrors the personality that is seen in the trailer.

Monday, 26 March 2012

Finlay McGow Q4 How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluating stages?


Media technologies were involved throughout the production of our media product. There are two types of technology that are involved hardware, which is mainly the filming equipment, including cameras and sound recording equipment. We also used software to produce everything else that goes with our product, for example I am using word processor to write this response.




Another example of digital technology that we used was, I-movie it was the editing software that we used to construct our trailer ready for it to be realised. I found that on the whole this editing software was easy to use but it did lack that fine tuning aspect to make everything seem perfect. Another product that we used to for our production was Garage Band to produce the soundtrack for our trailer, again I found that this piece of software was generally easy to use, but lacked that precision needed to make a top quality piece of work.














More products that we have used throughout our production have been Prezi. We have used Prezi to try and present our work and research in new and different ways, which makes it more interactive than a PowerPoint presentation. Here is a link to where we have used Prezi
(http://shadkayf.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/magazine-brainstorm.html) Another piece of software that we have used is Microsoft Excel which we have used to collate our research and present it in graphs which al
low for easy reading and extraction of information.

Finlay McGow Q3 What have you learned from your audience feedback? Finlay McGow

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

The initial idea that we had for main product was that of a British Gangster film. We choose this genre based on its dry humour, action sequences and sophisticated and creative editing which are often not found in other genres of film. Based on this we set about our questionnaires which were aimed at seeing

* What our audience like

* What they watch

* How they find out about it.

Throughout the process of market research we learned that the genre we had chosen would not be the most popular, as it is a more independent style of film. However one of the questions that we asked were about, how people feel about gangster films. The result of this was mainly positive with the vast majority answering that they don’t mind the genre. This would suggest that they are open minded, although perhaps would prefer a more mainstream approach as they may not be diehard fans of the genre.

We have also set up a Facebook page to allow people to interact and give us feedback on what they think of our productions. Although through our product research it doesn’t prove that our audience is in tune with the internet or uses it, I think the question were unfair, in that they did not give much option for the internet to be shown as an important source of promotion. However from experiencing that nearly everyone has a Facebook we created the promotion page.
http://shadkayf.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/social-media-promotion.html This page allows the audience to interact and get the up to date information, about the progress of the film and inside news about it. This spurs interest in the project.

Finlay McGow Q2 How effective is this combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

How effective is this combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

We have chosen throughout our main product and ancillary texts to go with a mainstream look to a product which would be mainly associated with a more independent audience, as its theme are not widely recognised. The idea was to make the audience feel more comfortable with the genre with the trailer, poster and magazine all being friendly to take in.

Throughout our products we have aimed to keep core values to be shared between all of them to make it easily translatable and share core values, which try not to contradict each other through mixed messages. The main theme that we have running through our main product and its ancillary texts, is the cricket theme. This theme links all the products and makes them easily relatable to each other. Most notably is the running theme of a cricket bat which is used in all three, and the tagline “let the innings begin” shared between the poster and trailer.

Other themes that we have running through our pieces are the suit which gives the character his identity and makes him easily identifiable throughout all three texts. The suit also gives the audience an insight into the character, and what the story could be about. This starts peoples intrigue into the product and will help promote the product.

Finlay McGow Q1 In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media product?

Monday, 27 February 2012

Audience Feedback

Magazine cover

-Make the 'Gone For 6' font more clearer
-Banner at the bottom, change the colour and shape maybe? i.e. ripped effect. Make the font brighter/different colour
-Tagline, add the film name on top
-Get rid of the blood dripping from the 'Gone For 6'
-Language, seems a bit mainstream, focus more on producers + directors, try and make it a bit more understated
-Possibly include some information on other films, a bit too focused on our product.
-Image, raise it a bit more so it's more central, makes it more intimidating.
-Maybe a quote from film/interview?

Poster

-Include certification, Blackberry/Facebook/Twitter icon
-Font needs to be changed, image and text don't seem to be related
-Make the cricket bat more visible
-Get rid of the blood dripping from 'Gone For 6'
-Include image/shot of character in a hoodie?
-Tagline needs a little bit more work, otherwise the connotation of the image is misread
-Change the 'Coming Soon' to a release date, gives audience more information + it looks a bit more realistic
-Background effect, make it more gritty to add that British Gangster film realism

Trailer

-Work on the soundtrack more, so it flows more smoothly
-Include a Voiceover
-Scenes need to be more shorter, especially the clothing scenes
-change the running order, especially at the beginning, to introduce the characters better/outline the plot more
-Desaturate some scenes, adds the gritty realism for a British Gangster film
-Maybe shoot more scenes?

Kwame Mensah-Sarpong: Question 1 - In what ways does yout media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

We used the conventions of the British gangster genre in a very straightforward way.

The narrative follows a very conventional storyline as it is about a young gangster trying to scale the heights of his “profession.” This is also seen in films like Rock’n’Rolla, Layercake and Snatch. We did this to allow the audience to easily identify the films as a British Gangster film. If this was a real media product, this would ensure it commercial success by making its promotional package more accessible to the audience.

The movie poster consists of our main character, Barry White; from a low angle shot makes him look intimidating. This emphasises the idea that he has been through a journey to get to this stage which. This can be seen in other gangster posters like Rock’n’Rolla, and Snatch. This is something that will enable audiences to identify it as a British gangster film. This ensures that its commercial success as it will be able to reach audiences.

The magazine front cover enforces the isolation of our character and encourages our product to be able to emerge into other independent streams of the media. This enables us to reach other audiences ensuring commercial success as it is the main feature of the magazine. Due to the intriguing image that has been displayed on the front cover; this will make audiences want to explore the genre of British Gangster.

The editing in the trailer is a main convention of British Gangster films as we have enabled the fast editing to emphasise the tension that is in the film through the extreme violence and action that will take place in the movie.

The voiceover used in the trailer invites the audience to feel what our main character, “Barry White” is feeling and what his problems are. It also invites the audience to see how he is able to solve those problems.

Friday, 20 January 2012

Social media promotion


Here we have our social media promotion page set up on Facebook to allow people to interact with our product and give us feedback and information.