By Craig Fallows

Our media product challenges real media products in many ways which consist of challenging, developing of convention from real media products. A way that we use conventions of a real media product is the start of the plot which I based around a death of a family member within a normal family. A character which is ready to go to university soon has someone very close taken away which affects in such a way that she starts to go from being normal to being very strange, very strange that she is going mental within her mind. Many real media product use such as tragic event or a plot such as which a real media product uses this tragic event to build upon a situation that lasts throughout a film, an example of this is daredevil that consists of situation/plot within the film that up brings a character from good to evil that effects other character throughout the film. Upon this, our trailer uses such a plot that is similar which our plot is based around a situation (Main characters father died), Overall I feel the idea of the plot is in some what an original idea as I feel that the audience would be intrigued due to our trailer not having a strong antagonist that does the opposite of them which our main character (Kelly) is the protagonist which isnt challenged by a antagonist character throughout the trailer. Other film trailers such as irreversible had elements of a plot which we took inspiration of as the irreversible has a plot which an event happens that is throughout the film similar to ours which we took inspiration from and developed upon this idea for our plot of the trailer.

Our target audience is females aged between 16-21 years old, due to the target audience we feel that females within this age group will be able to establish the protagonist and that our main character is female will have an impact off females to be attracted to the trailer. Within this age group will be mainly students within college to university which the age group would be educated which we feel would be an ideal audience so that they understand what the trailer/plot is. A part from our target audience, our demographic will be based middle class background, over these two elements of target audience and demographic we felt that having conventions from similar media products such as the film irreversible would give us a strong interest and more appealing within a our specially chosen target . Further more in order to have our target audience have a more strong internet we used conventions from similar genres such as producing shots that appealed to our target audience within a cultural way that the target audience could relate to themselves such as shots within Kellys house which consisted of a similar typical living room space that our target audience would be familiar with such as having a TV, mirror and a settee within such as living room space within Britain, overall I felt that this represented Britain within a cultural way and that our target audience would be familiar with but also relate to as within the scene is what you would expect in a average British home.

Within our trailer we used a variety of shots throughout our trailer such as high angle, waist level and but also used camera movement such as panning the camera, we had also used a technique called match on action seen here. This technique helps the audience know what is going on by using this technique is also an example of continuity editing.

These were some of the shots that we developed such as match on action, using this connotes to the audience of how our main character is position alone on the bench which may signify how she isnt popular, the use of body language and the long shot of her on the bench alone also suggests this.

Act Structure

Act 1

Act 2

Act 3

Within our media product is the 3 act structure which you see within many media products, within our trailer you can see that we following this as the climax comes within the last act where you see the montage editing of Kelly (main character) standing their while we have these two shots of her contrasting where she is standing in the town centre and goes back to her drawing on the montage piece on her wall with the sounds of the telephone which overall reaches within the climax of act 3 which we followed that many real media products use.

Throughout our trailer we used a range of shots that we edited within a negative effective shown below. Using this effect connotes to the audience a sense of instability of the character due to her body language which she is colouring within a post although the audience cannot see this within its original colour may also suggest that what she is doing is personal and something close to her isnt meant to been seen. I feel that these shots give an impact off to the audience as although her body language is strange it also isnt very fitting due to the negative effect used which shows dark colours, using dark colours can associated with some kind badness. I feel that within this shot which is accompanied by a soundtrack that gradually becomes high tempo which I think is the climax of the trailer which leaves the audience on a complex issue that needs to be explored due to Kelly (Main character) that doesn't seem to be normal which is also shown throughout the trailer with a shot of her in public with people walking by but her standing there also suggest to the audience that she is different to the rest.

We used conventions of psychological and thriller genre with ideas based around the plot of the trailer and the conventions you would find within media products such as visual aspects of colour example dark creates a sense of scary ness and confusion. By using these conventions we developed upon original ones in order to build upon therefore putting our own ideas into original ones which overall developed a new meaning. Throughout our the process of our pre production our main comparison was films like Donnie darko and shutter island which we looked at similar conventions such as the plot and settings used and tried to develop upon this and create our own original idea, furthermore we wanted the idea of loneliness, confusion and insanity that consisted within our plot to be developed on through the use of our main character that we felt would appeal to the audience by having similarities within our target audience so that it would appeal to them.

Setting Throughout our trailer we had different settings although our main setting was within a house. The house was the main setting due to the main character Kelly who lives there is situated around her own living space although our target audience is based around 16-21 years which many may relate to living at home as a student, another reason for choosing the house as our main setting is because it is an average living space which an audience would be familiar with although they may also be able to relate to, this type of settings is appropriate towards our plot due to the setting being realistic and is also appropriate for our media production as it creates a level of verisimilitude as the setting, main character and the plot supports this and that the audience may feel that this believable plot could also happen in reality.

A part from the house being our main setting, we had also chosen other specific settings within the plot that consist of a public area which we had chosen town, to establish her life which we think that college was an appropriate setting. Our setting of a busy area was to film at a town centre which was to distinguish her (Kelly) not being normal to people who are normal due to her becoming unstable throughout the trailer which we think that using a town centre as one of our settings proved effective as well as her body language within that setting established to the audience that she isnt normal in contrast to other people.

Throughout our trailer we have many characters which many wear similar costumes in which we chosen for every character to wear casual clothing , we chosen this because we wanted scenes to represent a normal average day but also the character itself to be normal. In most thrillers you see that the antagonist is wearing some kind of dark clothing to represent evil or in some cases appear to look an innocent character, within the terms of our protagonist we wanted to interact with our audience in a way that they can relate to in which our main character dresses and that the character has more of appear from the audience due to dressing normally.

Within various shots of the trailer is casual clothing being used for costumes throughout the trailer

Throughout our trailer we used a soundtrack that matched on scene which therefore created an effect of a sense of relationship that linked within our acts throughout the trailer. Within the start of out trailer we had it calm and just a general establishment of what is going on, within act 2 the pace of the sound track started to kick in where climax and the equilibrium therefore much louder with the bass and much more pace at the end of act 3 leaving it with a high reaction from the soundtrack that linked in well within the acts which therefore provided us with a strong link towards our acts within our trailer which overall the soundtrack assisted us to establish the acts.

Throughout the combination of our main product with ancillary texts is being consistent but also linking them by having our main character within each of the ancillary texts. Within our products our main character is the main focus throughout the magazine, film post and the trailer but within each product is the colour os costumes used, as our character has a consistent or main colour of costume which is mainly dark colours. Using such dark colours round the costume is mainly the idea that we used of a visual aspect within our products to suggest her personality as very dull as the plot consist of her being unstable due to a tragic event of her father dying which such as tragic event you would associate the colour black (i.e. funeral) or other dark colours. The title within such products are consistent and that they represent a font that you would see within a old fashion style (example below) which may suggest to the audience an insight to her life around that her parents are old fashioned ? I feel that such combinations of using colour within a visual aspect of our product reflects the body language of our main character but also reflects the plots as being very striking and in some part upsetting such as the funnel scene within our main product that you main associate such dark colours within the film that gives an effect of sadness and gives an insight as to how our character is becoming unstable by using such colours.

Using the colour black may represent how see feels which also helps the idea of her body language supporting this idea

Using an effect of blur may connote to the audience a sense of confusion, not sure what is going on and that her body language and her positioning helps the idea of this towards the audience

Old fashion style of text may suggest the type of situation she is such as her parents being old ?

Throughout the process of collect audience feedback, we had learnt and variety of elements that we leaned from interviewing our audience who had watch our trailer. We had learned that our audience understood our plot as that was our main challenge to get the audience to understand due to the idea of the genre we had chosen at the start of the year which is psychological thriller, on the other hand picking such as genre would be easier is action due to having your usual conventions such as guns for props, black clothing for costumes where we thought that picking such as difficult genre would be a challenge which we all agreed as a group that we think it would be appropriate to produce. We learnt from our audience members that they understood that our main character well as they had said that our main character is going unstable or I quote mental which was one of the main goals that we tried to get across to the audience that she was going mental as that was one of the main elements within the plot, I feel overall that this goal is achieved due to them understanding this rather than the audience confused about this which I think we can say that the audience successfully established this idea of our main character. I feel that the help within our trailer such as the soundtrack helped the idea within the establishment of the audience knowing that she is mental as well due to the sound track having bass and not the sort of soundtrack that you would relate happiness to such as the pace of it which therefore I fell that the soundtrack was effective in this way.

In order to plan our media product together, the use of our media blog assisted use with the ability to post various materials of construction media product such as planning and filming which we used our blog post our production schedule but also to put our ideas for costumes, and filming location ideas in order to develop more ideas and strengthening them. In order to develop and strengthen our ideas together our blogs played a big part in planning our film trailer, overall it resulted in filming and editing our film trailer within a efficient way due to each other use using our blogs to develop upon the ideas we have by posting our ideas on our blog, by using our blog it had gave us a foundation as a group to help form our ideas together by the use of posting it on our blogs, looking at each other blog and strengthens our ideas together as a group had helped by the use of the blogs which I feel played an important role in order to construct our film trailer together by planning and forming ideas. A part from posting on our blog, we had also upload material such as production schedule so that our group know what we need to do when it came to the production of our film trailer, uploading pictures of location has also enabled us as a group to challenge these ideas for location scouting so that when it came to the production of a film trailer we knew as a group that we had appropriate location to film. Overall the effective us of a our blog was to upload task's so that our teacher could mark our groups work and to improve upon our work so that we can achieve the marks that we need in order to meet our target grade.

In order to construction our production together, we used a digital camera which was a cannon camera that had useful function to us such as zoom in, zoom out and also dual shoot mode which could give us the highest quality when filming and also other useful features such as playback so that we can evaluate a shot that we have filmed in order to ensure that we have the necessary shots for our film trailer, using these features have given us good progress to construction our trailer together. Having this technology of a digital camera had given us a efficient pace to make good progress in constructing our trailer together of which the useful features of the digital camera also helped us to evaluate shots and improve more. While a digital camera was one of technologies, camera equipment that enabled us to get the shots we got was the tripod. The camera tripod was also vital to getting the shots we got due to the functionality of the tripod which we could tilt side to side and with the adjustment of the height we could also get high and low shots and angles appropriately. Although the use of technologies through the digital camera, other technologies such as sound equipment and lighting wasnt needed due to the use of editing software which enabled to edit the footage instead of using this equipment but also within a our trailer was non diegetic sound which therefore such sound equipment wasnt needed, due to the nature of the location to film our trailer, lighting equipment also wasnt needed as only natural lighting and lights within the house which was the location we used was only needed therefore sound and light equipment wasnt needed through the production of our trailer.

Another technology that we used into to construct was apple mac, the apple mac have given us the ability edit out film which was important as the mac had vital pieces of software that we utilized such as final cut express, adobe Photoshop and garage band. The use of mac enabled us to have the process of film shots that we could then us the mac to edit, by doing this we had a memory card within the digital camera and that we used the memory card to transfer our shots from the camera to the mac. A part from transferring footage from the mac and camera, the mac was also useful with its programs such that we had used such as final cut express which was important for us as final cut express is a professional editing software that our group was familiar with from last years film opening, the use of final cut express had given us the ability to use effects that we used as such as speeding up shots that consist of our main character stand their in public which gives a strange sense of her not being normal due to stand their for a long period of time which was to portray her as not being normal but also the speed of that shot which connotes to the audience that time has passed and that she is standing their also helps the idea of her not being normal to the rest which therefore the location of her standing in town a public place also helps the idea of her not being normal from the rest. The speed of the shot was edited with the final cut which helped us engaged the idea of our main character not being normal. Apart from using final cut express, another piece of software that we used is adobe Photoshop which we used to create our magazine and also film post. Our groups film poster is to show that our main character (Kelly) is shown to be a lone, in the corner of the room in a cradle position which shows that this isnt a normal thing to do which gives you a suspicion that she isnt all there by the using the effect of the blur tool it suggest to the audience that she doesnt really care about anything else around her and the position of the character within the corner of the room also suggest that she feels small.

The mac as used to edit our trailer together

Final cut express was one of the useful software's that used to edit our trailer together, this software was used on the apple mac that was also one of the technologies that we used. iMovie was used to create our titles

Adobe Photoshop was used to create our film poster and magazine which you can see here

Adobe after effects was used to create out titles which you can see here although after many drafts of our trailer we felt that the titles was not appropriate for our film trailer which we decided to create more simple but effective within iMovie

Research and Evaluate With the use of the internet, researching with a our group was helped by use of the internet due to websites such as YouTube. YouTube had given us the ability to upload our drafts and then build upon our drafts by posting or embedding the video on our blog so that we can analyse to see what we need to do in order finish our trailer although this also helped us with researching. YouTube had helped us research as a group we had looked at real media products such as film trailer that we felt was similar to our genre, by looking at the film trailers on YouTube we looked at how we looked at how we can develop upon the conventions used within the same genre as ours. By looking at similar film trailer that are within our same genre and by looking at its conventions, we looked at how we can then use similar conventions within our film trailer. While we upload our final drafts of our film trailer, it can also give us the ability to look at comments on our videos and to see if the comments can give us constructive feedback which is an efficient way of gaining audience feedback through using this technology. YouTube was a useful site which we used to research upon other real media products such as trailers that we looked at as a group to look at conventions within our genre. Although our group used YouTube to research, we had also used YouTube to evaluate how we compared to others with similar genres and how they convey them. With the technologies at hand, the evaluation was efficient for us to evaluate our own trailer, the process of uploading of our videos had proved important for us as we compare and evaluate our own work upon our blog which as a group we can look at each others and give suggestions of how we can improving by the use of YouTube and our blogs. These technologies had proved useful to research and evaluate but also allowed me to embed the video to share on my blog with my group which also proved effective within the planning of the production of our trailer.

YouTube was used to upload and share our film trailer by the use of embedding it on to our blogs, we also looked at other film trailer to look at the conventions of our similar genres.

Google was used to research upon the conventions of our genre

Edublogs was used to upload all of our content within a blog which our group can look and how see how we can develop upon improving it more such as looking at out production schedule which we also uploaded to our blog.