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?