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.