Here I come

Magazine front cover

'Here i come' film poster

Changes to poster

Whilst reviewing my poster and gaining further feedback i decided to make some changes to my poster, the first change I made was to add in more titles and details, i included 'experience in imax 3D' to fill in the blank space below the credits. Another change was including another rating, i felt this added more detail to the poster making it more professional and realistic. The last change i made was making the release date red, i felt this made the date stand out and add further colour to my poster. 

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

Panasonic HD video camera - Perhaps the most important piece of technology used was the Panasonic HD video camera - we accessed this camera through the school by booking it out, it meant we could film all the clips we wanted in many different locations, whilst also being able to take the camera home and get any extra shots. As there was a lot of transportation with this camera from different locations it helped that this video camera was lightweight and easy to set up. The HD element to this video camera was immensely useful as it meant we could create still and clear shots that added to the realism our trailer, this was important as we wanted to make our trailer as professional as possible. The HD video camera also came with many useful features, it was extremely simple to navigate so we could easily view our footage and delete clips that were not needed. The zoom feature was another useful tool, it allowed us to zoom in and out on specific detail or objects we wanted to draw extra attention to, we had a lot of fun with this feature and experimenting how it could make a simple shot more interesting and also add suspense which is the most important feature to a thriller film. The video camera also came with a tripod, this helped with the steadiness of the shots which again adds to the professionalism of our trailer, as we could adjust the height of the tripod it meant we could create high or low angled shots to display emotion like vulnerability through a high angle shot. However we did not always use a tripod, there was also hand held shots included, these type of shots created the illusion of an unsteady and chaotic environment, an important hand held clip in our trailer was when we created a shot from a wooded area looking at our main characters, by having an unsteady shot it gave the impression we was looking from the antagonist's eyes.

Canon camera - Throughout our production we used a digital camera for a range of uses - once again we accessed this through the school. One use of the camera was to take pictures of characters, locations and props to use as evidence on our blogs. The camera created still, professional pictures that was used for the images on my poster and magazine front cover.

Adobe premiere pro- All of the editing for our trailer was carried out on adobe premiere pro, we had some previous experience with this software when creating our year 12 opening sequence, however we wanted to develop these skills for our trailer to create a professional trailer. The clips and audio could be easily imported to the software where we began watching the many clips and began editing them. We played around with the different effects that premiere pro had to offer, we used features such as fade to black, reversing clips to create an unusual effect, this helped create one of my favorite clips of reversing the direction of the train. An effect we used on almost every clip was the Luma Key - this effect darkened the lighting of the clip, this was a very useful tool as it gave an average clip an edge that built on the storyline for our trailer.

Blogger - We used blogger to create blogs recording and detailing all stages of creating our trailer, blogger was easy to navigate and gave the flexibility to make our blogs how we wanted. One of the most useful aspects of blogger was that it could be accessed on numerous devices, my laptop from home, the school computers and even through my iPhone on an app, I found this extremely useful as I could upload something quickly. 

Blogger was easy to set up as the website is run through google, it meant signing up was quick and simple by using my existing Gmail account. Blogger also allows you to save work as a draft, this means I can save a post if it was unfinished or needed touching up.

Voice Recorder - As there was some non-diegetic voiceovers throughout the trailer we used a voice recorder to record and them embed in our trailer. Throughout the trailer there is a countdown from our main character and voiceovers from numerous individuals, by using the voice recorder we created the illusion that the voiceovers were inside the main character's head.

Adobe Photoshop - Photoshop was crucial for a few tasks, I used Photoshop to create my poster and magazine front cover for my trailer, I had a basic understanding of Photoshop and how to use it from making a poster and a magazine front cover for my year 12 coursework, however this was basic and my skills needed expanding to improve on my work from last year.

Using Photoshop I was able to manipulate images, I played with the brightness and contrast to darken or sharpen up images. I used the smudge effect to blend my image around the edges and used a colour tool to make the actress' eyes whiter to contrast with the black background. The software allowed me to layer different images to achieve my desired outcome. As we were trying to make our trailer as realistic as possible we attempted to create synergy throughout our products for this trailer, we done this by using the font 'chiller' across all products to build recognition, however Photoshop offers a variety of fonts that I could use for other texts on my products.

PowerPoint - Powerpoint was essential throughout planning our trailer, we used it to create powerpoints with our idea's on that helped us build towards our final outcome, the main use of Powerpoint was to create a presentation of our idea to pitch to the rest of the class, Powerpoint allowed us to create a separate page for each topic to present our idea easily.

IPhone 7- Another important piece of technology I used was my IPhone, my IPhone allowed me to download apps that helped me communicate with my group, such as facebook messenger to plan filming dates and discussing idea's and also meant I could download the blogger app for easy access Other apps such as youtube and my IPhone allowing me to access the internet at any point helped during research by viewing other trailers and searching for music.

I also used my IPhone a lot to take pictures of different locations, filming, constructing scenes, this created evidence for my blog posts and I could upload them straight from my phone.

Social Media- Facebook and Twitter are social networking sites, we used Facebook Messenger to create multiple group chats with everyone involved to arrange filming dates, share idea's, research and send links.  Facebook and Twitter were used as platforms to promote our production and gain feedback from multiple sources, social media is a free platform for promotion and many film productions have both a facebook and twitter page to post interesting information and keep people interested and create awareness. Social media was also a great way to communicate with our target audience, as mainly teenagers and young adults use social networking it meant we could reach them.

YouTube - YouTube is a platform for individuals to share videos, comment, share and communicate. I used YouTube mainly for research, I viewed other trailers with the same genre to get ideas for my own trailer, YouTube also allowed us to post our final product.

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

Script for voiceover:
Throughout my main product and anciliary texts I attempted to include typical conventions of the crime thriller genre and conventions of the product themselves. Across all three products I also created synergy through elements such as the font, colour scheme and characters, by using synergetic elements I believe it establishes my campaign and creates recognition for the audience, reminding them of the film, release date and plot increasing anticipation.

The main way synergy was created across my products was the font used in all of them, whilst creating our trailer we found the font 'chiller', it became our staple font. On my poster, magazine cover and trailer we put the title 'here i come', strap lines and inter titles in the font chiller, this makes the products recognisable for audiences. The font is a unique style that we believe well suits our plot, the font is wrote in a child like form with dots and smudges, we felt as our plot involves a missing child it creates a link and gives a disorienting edge to our products. By using the same font and creating synergy I believe it adds to the professionalism to our products and is a strategic and advanced marketing technique.

There are two main characters shown in our trailer, the mother (the protagonist) and the daughter who  goes missing, as this was the case I decided to use one of them on each of my ancillary texts, the mother is featured on my poster and the daughter as the main image on my magazine front cover. On my film poster I used an extreme close up of the mother, the image is mainly of her eyes but enough of her features are exposed to make her recognisable, the image is inspired by other posters from the crime thriller genre such as scream. I used photoshop to emphasise her eyes, further showing her fear and distress through them. This image was used as I felt it created mystery for the audience, it was a snapshot of what is to come and it makes the audience want to figure out what has happened to this women to create the emotion portrayed. My magazine front cover features the daughter laying in the leaves with her teddy bear in her hand - i strongly wanted to incorporate this prop as it is heavily used when creating the equilibrium for our trailer and is a reminder of the victim's young age, making the audience more involved with the plot as the disappearance of a child is the most soul destroying and discomforting for anyone. The girl is wearing the same costume worn throughout the trailer, a green coat with a red bow, further creating synergy throughout my products, the colour of the coat connotes nature and purity, qualities of a young child, however for my magazine cover I used photoshop to inverse the image, making it black and white, except for the red bow in her hair. I felt like the bow was an important feature as a bow is a stereotypical convention for a young girl, however the colour red connotes danger, making the bow an important feature with an underlining message that links to our plot. The image shows the girl smiling as she is playing in the leaves, i used this image rather than a distressed one to reflect her fun and loving personality to the audience, once again making her disappearance more heart breaking.

Whilst creating the equilibrium of our trailer we focused heavily on establishing the relationship between the mother and the daughter, the clips used shows them playing and laughing together through a variety of shots such as mid shots of them walking holding hands, an over the shoulder shot of them chatting happily and a long shot of them playing in the leaves, it suggests a happy and loving relationship between them, developing our plot further. The antagonist is not featured in any of my three products, i felt leaving the antagonist unknown created a mystery that needed to be solved, an important convention of a crime thriller, also attracting the young adult audience who enjoy thrill and mystery.

I included institutional information in my trailer and ancillary texts, my magazine front cover includes only the production company (SKS productions) whilst my poster and trailer feature SKS productions, as well as other information such as the actors\actress' and schedule for release. By having this information across all three texts I concluded it would be beneficial to the audience and makes the information more memorable, if the information only appears once it may be forgotten. Including 4 and 5 star ratings on my poster attracts the audience as it shows a good quality product, also having quotes from known institutions adds to the realism and portrays a good product.

Our trailer includes many visual effects such as colour inverse and effects to darken the footage, the effect 'luma key' was often used in the editing process as it created a low key lighting effect, an important and popular convention for the thriller genre as it suggests danger. As previously mentioned, my magazine cover also used the inverse effect and my poster is dim lighting with bright eyes, ultimately creating the convention of low key lighting across all three texts, creating synergy through the lighting of my three texts.

In conclusion I believe the combination of all three of my product creates a successful campaign, the main feature of success for my campaign is the creation of synergy throughout as it allows the audience to create recognition for the campaign. By using popular genre conventions I aimed to successfully promote to my target audience, I believe this would make them interested in all three of my texts as well as persuading them to visit the social media sites and purchase the 'here i come' merchandise.

In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms of conventions from real media products.

Frame 1

The production company logo is the first image that the audience will see, having the production company logo appear first is a typical convention for trailers as a whole. Our logo flickers as it comes up to add an eerie and mysterious vibe, other logo's for the thriller genre were not a still but had some form of movement, this is what helped us come up the flickers. Whilst researching into thriller production company logo's we found they typically stick to a minimal colour scheme, consisting of 3 or less colours. We used this convention and mainly used black and white, in our first draft of our production company logo we also included red drips of blood at the end of the name, however we decided against this as we felt in ventured towards the horror genre rather than a thriller. Our logo is relatively simple, with SKS written in white also underlined with white on a black background and production written underneath, the  K was stretched in height to shape into the shed building, we wanted to incorporate a type of building into our logo as settings and buildings are a big part of thrillers, a typical setting is usually an abandoned warehouse/shed, this added detail to our logo that made it stand out amongst other logo's whilst also conforming to typical conventions. A lot of production company logo's also include an image, although the image does not always reflect the genre of film, we built upon this idea by hinting at our genre.

Frame 2

The second frame is important to the trailer, it shows the first glimpse of the main character and establishes the relationship between the mother and daughter. Our trailer only uses 3 characters overall, we decided upon this as our plot is a mother's independent mission to find her daughter, therefore we felt too many characters may distract from this idea. This clip only lasts for roughly 6 seconds, however in this short period of time we establish a loving and happy relationship between the mother and daughter, we done this by asking Alissa (actress for Sarah, the mother) to engage with Bluebell (actress for Rosie, the daughter) by asking her what she wants to do at the park, holding hands and having the child skip rather than walk to represent her upbeat and youthful nature. By establishing this bond between the mother and her child it makes the plot of her going missing even more heart breaking and tragic, this is a typical convention for thriller films. Whilst researching we looked into films with similar plots/storylines, films such as Kidnapped where a  mothers son gets abducted and Gone that involves a young adult determined to find her little sister, both of these trailers establish a close net bond between the characters; by doing this it engages the audience with the film and stimulates sympathy with the main character. This shot also establishes the equilibrium of the film, Tzvetan Todorov's theory, which states the equilibrium before the disruption.

Frame 3

Frame 3 shows Sarah and Rosie sitting on a bench in the park, this point of view is a handheld unsteady shot hidden behind leaves, it gives the impression that it is from someone else's perspective and that the main characters are being watched. This is the only indication of the antagonist throughout the entire trailer, in almost every film a protagonist and antagonist are introduced, it gives the audience someone to root for and hate, resulting in the audience engaging and being involved, therefore we have conformed to this typical convention. In our trailer the antagonist is never revealed, we believe this left mystery, by leaving this ambiguous we felt It would encourage the audience to see the film in the cinema or purchase on DVD.  This is the first indication of disruption, we begin to destroy the equilibrium, this begins to set a tone of danger and thrill for the trailer. Having a protagonist and antagonist is a hugely popular convention, almost all western cultured films use this idea, as an example, marvel comic films are solely based on this convention; spiderman fights the lizard, the hulk has the abomination and the X Men fight Magneto. 

Frame 4

This frame is Sarah angrily tying up her coat, this clip is shown after the male detective tells her to not get involved with the investigation. Our main character is an 18 year old girl, stereotypically this age group and gender are seen as irresponsible, vunerable and weak, whilst women should also be at home whilst the men are out at work. Our main character challenges this typical convention in many ways; firstly, she is defying what the male officer has told her by continuing to search for her child, this shows determination and strength, she is not at home like a stereotypical women should be, she is being active in finding her child. Throughout our trailer we have incorporated the idea that others find her child going missing her fault as she Is too young to have a child,making her irresponsible, this is often how young mums are portrayed in the media. We actively challenged this convention throughout the trailer by showing her love from the equilibrium throughout the disruption and her active role in finding her child shows her dedication and consistency, defying the irresponsible stereotype. By having a main character that is relatable and reflects real life issues we felt it would normalise the situation and bring the reality that this could happen to anyone, making the film more terrifying for the audience.

Frame 5

Frame 5 shows one of the many important settings to our trailer, during filming we visited many locations to find the ideal settings for our plot. Frame 5 shows a park, typically a park is seen as a fun, playful environment and more importantly safe, we contradicted this convention in a few ways. During the trailer we see the child goes missing at this park, this conveys the idea of safety. Secondly, we made the image darker on photoshop, the low lighting is a typical convention of thriller films. Whilst filming we also waited until the park was empty to take the shot, therefore contradicting the idea of a park being full of children and laughter. Another well used setting is a house, we used an ordinary house to film the mother starting to become unstable, relying on alcohol and drugs, a home is conventionally seen as a happy and safe environment, by showing the mother use alcohol and drugs in her home it also contradicts this idea. To make the audience sympathise with the main character we wanted to make her character as relatable as possible by using settings our audience would recognise such as a park, this helps normalises the main character life, therefore once again relating the fact that this could happen to any of them.

 Frame 6

For frame 6 I chose a close up of the main character reaching for a bottle of vodka, this shows the protagonist turning to alcohol and drugs for comfort, For the protagonist to be shown resorting to frowned upon substances is an unusual concept in films, this shows we challenged this typical view that a protagonist should follow guided rules set by society, meaning golden morals and beliefs. An example of a typical protagonist is in any Disney films, Disney films all contain a damsel in distress. The damsel is almost always treated badly in one way or another, however they always remain kind, morally intact and treat everyone with kindness, these are the qualities a typical protagonist possess. Our main character contradicts the normal view of how a protagonist should act, however in the real world people do make mistakes, we felt this made our main character more relatable and made the storyline more realistic as a mother who's child is missing is unpredictable.

Frame 7

Frame 7 is one example of the different camera shots used throughout the production, before we filmed we created a list to plan what camera shots should be used. In the image below it shows a low angled shot of the protagonist, this shot helps emphasise her feelings of helplessness towards the situation and feeling powerless to stop it, low angled shots are a common convention in thriller films as they help display characters as weak or innocent. We also used hand close ups and extreme close ups throughout our trailer, the close ups were often the main characters face, these type of shots exaggerate the expression on a face and better display it to the audience, close ups and extreme close ups are also used to highlight other important factors throughout the production such as a close up of cuts and bruises at the end of the trailer, creating an ambiguous ending and leaves the audience with questions, acting as an incentive to view the film. Another stereotypical shot included in our trailer is point of view shots (POV), in our production we used a handheld point of view shot to imply this was the antagonist view, beginning to create the storyline. The camera shots used also begin to link with our editing, by the point of frame 7 the editing became face paced and in non chronological order, these are both conventions of the thriller genre as they build up tension but disorientate the audience at the same time and create thrill for the audience. To further build upon thrill and suspense we built up the speed of our music to fit in with the editing, this indicates a climax, seen in well known crime thriller films such as shutter island. These techniques are used in many media products and shows our production follows real life conventions.

 

Frame 8

Frame 8 shows my poster for our trailer, as my main image for my poster I decided to include an extreme close up of the main character/protagonist from our production, when I conducted research, a close up of the protagonist was a typical convention for a thriller poster. I manipulated the image by playing with the contrast and brightness, low key lighting is often used in thrillers, although my image was already dark, I continued to lower the brightness slightly and brought the contrast up to make the image sharp. The only other manipulation I carried out on the image was brightening the eyes, as the eyes are the main focus of the image I whitened around her iris' to further stand them out and create a bigger contrast with the black background.

After editing the image I began adding in the text, as 'here I come' needed to stand out amongst the other writing I put this on first, making it the biggest size. For the title I used the 'chiller' font that is used across all media for our trailer, thus creating synergy and recognition. For the release date I decided to lay it out as 31.10.17 - I found this to be the most popular way in communicating the date rather than writing. Almost all film posters include their main actor/actress, this add star power to the production, acting upon this I decided to put AISSA KING UNDERWOOD at the top of the poster in the same simple font as the date. I wanted to include ratings and quotes from institutions to attract the audience, as I wanted to keep my writing all white to stand out against the deep black background I layered in yellow stars to add some colour.

The final convention of a film poster was adding in detail such as the production company, further cast and crew. I tried to recreate the typical style of writing used for this detail, finding the right font for this was not easy, after finding the best one to match, I made the gaps between letters and lines close together to create a text similar to other film posters.

Frame 9

The last frame is the magazine front cover I created for 'here i come'. The main image featured on my magazine front cover is of the missing girl from our trailer, the image was taken on the day of filming therefore she is in the same outfit as the trailer creating synergy and recognition. Before creating my magazine cover on photoshop I conducted research into other magazine covers, especially focusing on magazines such as Empire and Total Film as they are solely film based magazines. To make my cover as professional and realistic as possible i followed the already established conventions for a magazine cover, such as a barcode, price, title, cover lines and a puff. Whilst researching i found a popular colour theme of red, white and black, i decided to follow this convention and have the title 'update' in white and cover line of 'here i come' in white with black drop shadow's to make them stand out amongst the black and white background. For the other cover lines i promoted films with the same genre as ours and used the star power of 'Alissa king-undewood' to attract the audience. By adding in conventions such as the barcode, price and date it adds to the realism of my magazine, resulting in a more professional outcome.