Candidate Details and Final Products

Candidate Name: Thomas Cassidy
Candidate Number: 7055
Centre Name: John F Kennedy Catholic School
Centre Number: 17131

Magazine Cover

Poster

Link for my trailer


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01blH2S9TMc

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

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

Evaluation Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

For the feedback on my poster and magazine cover, I used a program called Voki which is a digitally enhanced software used to express opinions through the computer.

Poster - http://www.voki.com/pickup.php?scid=6034577&height=267&width=200

Magazine cover - http://www.voki.com/pickup.php?scid=6034646&height=267&width=200

Evaluation Question 4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation?

For this question of my evaluation, I used the website Prezi, where I created a slideshow that answers the question.

http://prezi.com/cbfwtjhsu3kg/death-town-evaluation/

Final film trailer

So far we had filmed and edited the first draft of our film trailer. We had uploaded it to Facebook and YouTube in order to receive positive and negative comments concerning our trailer, that including points that were good, and points that we could work on. After this we went back to our trailer and finished the editing for our final film trailer. Here is the film trailer, posted on YouTube, followed by my own analysis of how we filmed and edited our trailer, and why we did it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01blH2S9TMc

Film magazine cover

As well as creating a trailer and a poster for our media coursework, we had to produce a magazine cover showing how our film is being presented, advertised and distributed. I looked back at my AS coursework when we designed a magazine cover, and at my magazine cover analysis in order to achieve a professional magazine cover. Here is my magazine cover, followed by my own analysis of how and why I created it.

My final film poster

After creating my first draft for my poster, I decided to look back properly at my original sketches, and create a poster based directly of that design. The original sketch had been a boy walking down a corridor at school. This sketch had been the basis for one of the scenes in our trailer, were the protagonist walks down the school corridor to be confronted by the antagonist. I then decided to create a photo shoot that reflected that exact scene. Here is my poster, followed by an analysis of why and how I created my poster.

Film poster first draft.

After my photo shoot, I choose some of the photos I had taken and started to create my first draft for my film poster. I played around with different ideas based on some of the designs I had sketched in my initial design ideas. Here is one of the first drafts of my poster, followed by how and why I created and designed it.

Feedback from our First Draft

We waited for a while after posting the first draft of our trailer on the internet for people to see it and reply to us with feedback on what was good about the trailer and what we could of done better. Here is some of the feedback we received from people on Facebook and YouTube.

After receiving the above feedback we decided to go back to our editing and try and find a way of extending the music so that is plays throughout the trailer which would keep up the tension, and built suspense during the course of the whole trailer, instead of just certain parts. However, even though this was possible, we decided that it was not necessary as it would mean deleting the scenes with the new reporter, which acted as our voice over. We came to a group decision that the news reporter was a vital part in the film, and that we could not remove it, so we kept the music at the same length as it had originally been.

We received quite a few comments on YouTube about the news reporter and its effectiveness. Some of the feedback suggested that the scenes with the news reporter were unrealistic and unprofessional. After agreeing to work on this criticism, we set about changing the actor who played the news reporter. We had decided that an adult would work better instead of a teenager and we also edited the dialogue for the reporter so that it sounded more professional. By displaying our first draft on the internet we could positively and successfully use the constructive feedback given to us in order to improve our trailer.

We received more feedback from our peers, and reviewed comments made about the colouring of our production logo. Originally the production logo had been red, and we received comments about the improper use of colouring and how it did not relate to the rest of the trailer, which had teal/light blue writing. So we decided to go back to our production logo, and revert the colour to the teal/light blue that we had used throughout our media production. 

Finally, we added one more scene to the end of the trailer, where our protagonist walks down a school corridor. We did this after receiving constructive criticism that the protagonist should be the last scene that the audience views. This is because the whole trailer has built up mystery and suspense about who the character is, so the image of the protagonist walking away will persuade the audience to watch the film to find out more. 

Death Town Trailer - First Draft

As a group we had our shooting schedule and we had the initial storyboard of what was going to happen in our trailer. We then had to find the time to fit in filming it. Unfortunately filming took us two weeks instead of the initial one week that we had planned out. After filming we uploaded everything to iMovie, the program that we were going to use for our editing. As a team we sat down and edited our trailer, cutting down scenes and deleting some other scenes entirely. We then set about finding the right music to add into the background of trailer so that it would fit with the films genre, and we also added different editorial effects such as cuts, fades and intertitles which would make out trailer look professional, keeping in line with the conventions of a real film trailer. After we had finished editing our first draft for our trailer, we uploaded it to Youtube and Facebook in order to receive feedback on what we could do better. Here is our first draft;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul9dtGzfnq4

Shooting Schedule

After we had decided on our props, location and costumes, we had to organize a shooting schedule. This would involve deciding how long our filming would take us, where we would have to do it, and what each day of filming would involve. Our shooting schedule was an essential part of planning as it gave us a plan for what we had to do, which made filming much easier.