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

Script:

To ensure our media products look as professional and high quality as possible we looked at a number of existing real media products and noted what we liked and disliked about them. This way, we were able to use our favourite parts of each product (including the film's trailer, poster and magazine cover) and change the parts we didn't like about them to improve our products further.


Trailer

Once we had decided on a plot for our trailer, we could categorise it into a genre of dance, and therefore look at similar products' trailers. There are three main influences that we used from existing media products and put into our trailer.

Firstly, after watching the trailer for Center Stage we immediately liked the shots of the ballet dancers stretching, as it built up tension using the short clips and range of shots. We then decided that we could use similar shots of Lauren (playing Savannah) stretching at home in our trailer. We did this at her house as we tried to show the audience that Lauren was not a professional dancer by the fact she was falling when doing stretches and struggling.

Secondly and similarly to the first influence, on the trailer for Billy Elliot there were many fast paced shots of him practicing his ballet at home in a mirror. We liked the way that as Lauren was practicing to herself in a mirror it gives across a message that she is an amateur at ballet but also very passionate about it as she is doing it in her free time.

Our final influence was inspired by the film Black Swan. It features a shot following a girl in the spotlight ballet dancing on stage. It was a very effective shot as all eyes were on the ballet dancer as the lighting meant that the rest of the shot was in complete darkness. We featured a similar shot to this at the end of our trailer, which was a shot of Lauren ballet dancing in the spotlight on stage, but differed the original by the fact that it was a long shot from a distance away from the stage and lasted a long time without being cut.


Poster

Our main inspiration for the poster was from the Centre Stage poster. When designing our poster we looked at al our initial influences' posters to see how they had made their trailer's storyline into one picture. The Centre Stage poster feautures the main characters with the soles of their ballet shoes facing the camera. From the shoes being the main feature of this poster, we then thought of using the two types of shoes: ballet and trainers, to represent Lauren's two personalities within the film would be a simple and effective way of displaying this on a poster. However, we then went one step further and realised that we could include the lower body in the shot which would show more of the two costumes and would hint to the audience clearly exactly what the plot of the film would be. By doing this and also not including the face, it meant on a practical note we were more able to produce our posters without involving Lauren as she was very busy, meaning Mia and I could pose for the photographs.

Our poster also features a tag line and a release date at the bottom, as from researching film posters we found that this was very common throughout the posters as it gives the audience a hint of the plot through the tag line, and then directly tells them when they can go and see the film by the date being on there.

Magazine Cover

With the task of designing our magazine cover, the first thing we had to think about was which magazine would feature Believe on the front cover. After researching film magazines such as Sight & Sound, Little White Lies, Empire and Odeon, we realised that Odeon magazine would best suit the plot and genre of our film, as the other magazines featured either a lot of independant films or action blockbusters in Empire's case. After some more research we found a Odeon magazine with a Twilight featured cover. By looking at this, we were able to copy and edit the title to look as similar as possible to the font, as well as use similar content features for the magazine on the front of our cover.

One particular piece from the Twilight magazine which inspired us was the lens-flare effect put onto the lettering. This added a glow to the font and make it really stand out. We then found a similar effect on Photoshop and decided to place this on the 'Odeon' and also 'Believe' lettering which adds elegance to the page and connotates the glamour of ballet.

We also really liked the colours of the font used on the magazine cover with the fuchsia pink and black theme. We decided to keep to this colour scheme because it could easily relate to our storyline and ballet theme. We also added in a subtitle called 'The Dance Edition' as we wanted to ensure the audience were fully aware of why the black and pink colour scheme was so strong.

When thinking about the positioning and pose of Lauren on the cover, we researched into other magazine covers and found that many of them featured the main actor/actress of the film but in a natural pose in character. Because of this, we placed Lauren sat on the floor in a posey but natural position, meaning the audience would be aware that it was a ballet film due to her costume, but also may feel like they're getting to know the actress aswell as the part she plays in Believe, which could boost the publicity and make them more interested in seeing the film.

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

How effective is the combination of your main products and ancillary texts? on Prezi

Script:
To ensure our teaser trailer, magazine cover and poster could easily be recognised and related to by the audience, we wanted to create synergy between particular parts of all three of the products.
The most obvious way of doing this which is used in many real media products is by using the same font in every piece. We found a suitable font connotating an elegant ballet-like theme and used this in our teaser trailer for the tag line and also the main title.
We then wanted to use this in our poster, so that the audience would see the font and clearly relate it to Believe, linking the trailer and poster together to further advertise the product.
When it came to the magazine cover however, after researching similar covers we realsied that it was not common for the film's font to be used on the cover, as this was the magazine editor's choice of design and layout and would not be done by the film distributors themselves.
Because of this, we decided not to use the original font for Believe when we were designing it, and therefore used a plain bold font in capital letters stating Believe.
I think the use of fonts is an important identifier for films and therefore I am pleased that there is a clear link between the trailer and poster, making it easily linked between audience members.

Another clear way we have combined the main product with the ancillary texts is by keeping a costume throughout.
This is first noticed in the trailer by the costume worn by Lauren (playing Savannah). At the start of the trailer she is dressed in a hoody and tracksuit bottoms, to reflect the typical troublesome teenager stereotype.
However throughout the trailer as she becomes more and more involved in dance, her costume reflects this by increasingly becoming more girly and is dressed in a leotard and tights with ballet shoes byt the end of the trailer.
This difference in costume is highlighted on the poster.
It displays Lauren wearing tracksuit bottoms with trainers on the right hand side, vertically reflected down the centre with her wearing tights and ballet shoes with a tutu on the left.
This highlights the stark difference from her past to her future throguht the film, which is the plot of the film, meaning audience members' who have seen the trailer can then easily relate it to the poster, providing further advertising and publicity.
The magazine cover features Lauren wearing the ballet costume once again, giving her an almost 'uniform' for the film.
This means that whenever she is seen in this costume, the audience think of both the trailer and the poster where she is dressed like this, promoting the film within their minds as they try to think where they have seen that girl in those clothes before.

An obvious but important feature for creating synergy between the 3 products is Lauren being featured in them.
Although this is a simple idea, if the poster was to feature another character in without Lauren this may confuse the audience completely, perhaps thinking it was another film called the same name that was being promoted.
However saying this, Lauren's face is not shown on the poster, however there is also no one else's face shown, leaving he audience to assume that the characters are Lauren.
We also decided not to use either the teacher from the trailer or the ballet student Eleanor featured, as we didn't want to take the attention of Lauren being the main character.
By doing this, just seeing Lauren featured it immediatly creates synergy for all 3 of the products to the audience and they will immediatly think of Believe.

Finally, a subtle yet important use of synergy between our products was the use of a pink tint in the background.
This is first noticed in the final shot of the trailer where Lauren is ballet dancing in a spotlight. This shot has a pinky glow to it, and we wanted to further this look into the poster and magazine cover.
When creating the poster, the images were shot against a white backdrop. This meant we could easily change the colours used in the image, allowing us to do an all over tint on the image of a subtle light pink tone, which was only mainly highlighted on the backdrop.
We chose this colour as light pink is so commonly related with ballet and this would promote the theme of the film clearly to the audience.
We once again used this same pink tint on the background of the magazine cover. Although it is only subtle, I think there is synergy between the products because of this and I like how such a small difference can create yet another link in the audiences' minds, promoting all 3 aspects of Believe's promotional material.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback

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Part of script:

This is one part of our audience feedback, made by watching eachother's trailers as a class and making notes on what was done well and what could be improved on. From looking at all the different feedbacks from within our class there are parts of the trailer which have been commented on of which we expected, and also other parts which have not been commented on but of which we expected to be.

The first point which came up twice in this feedback session was our music. It was said to be 'very appropriate' and 'fitted with our theme', of which we agreed with and ensured to keep it in-fitting with the ballet theme when we created the trailer.

Another point which was commented on twice was our titles 'fitting with the genre' of our film. We also agree with this statement as the titles looked very delicate and the font we used was elegant and reflected a ballet theme. I'm glad the audience liked the titles as they took an unexpected amount of time to make as we had to use a different version of iMovie on another computer, which meant transferring the downloaded font and importing it into the new iMovie, and then transferring our saved titles back on to our original cmputer and editing them into our trailer. A long process!

Thirdly the editing was picked up on by the audience. This includes the faster montage of shots of Lauren practicing her ballet at home, and also the slow motion shot of her falling over when dancing on stage at the school whilst she is supposed to be cleaning. The slow motion shot was one our our favourites from the trailer so I'm glad the audience enjoyed it too.

After receiving the feedback I thought that there would be some areas of our trailer of which we had expected the audience to comment on, but did not. Actually, this was not so, and all our main areas have been explored in the audience feedback, inlcuding the sound of the music and voiceover, the camera shots as there was a 'variety' and also the lighting of Lauren dancing on stage at the end in the spotlight. One thing they have not commented on is the mise en scene, however I think that we did use costumes and props appropriately but the audience are used to seeing this in ballet films and therefore it does not jump out at them to comment on.

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

Script:

New media technologies were vital in the construction, research and planning stages of all 3 of our media products.

Trailer

New media technologies have completely revolutionised the research and planning process for our trailer compared to how we would have made it 10 years ago.

Firstly, when looking for influences for our trailer we could go straight onto YouTube and search for dance film trailers. This made the process quick and easy, and also meant we could copy the trailers we were most interested in onto our blogs for later reference. However, the first video published onto YouTube was only in 2005, meaning if we were creating our trailer before this time then this would not have been available.

Secondly, we were able to upload our storyboard and film schedule onto our blogs using a scanner. This meant we could go onto the internet on our blogs and refer back to this either at home or at school, and did not just have to photocopy the original piece of paper it was written on between the group.

However, the most important use of the new media technologies was in our production stage. Using the digital cameras meant we were able to watch back the footage we had shot to see if we needed to refilm it again then and there. If we did not have this option we would have had to upload it and then realise we needed to film the scene again which would have wasted a lot of time.

The main change in media technologies however is the ability to edit the footage shot. Using programs such as iMovie, we as amateur film producers are able to cut, copy, slow down/speed up clips, add titles and add music. This means our films can end up looking semi professional.

We created the background music for Believe using GarageBand and were able to change the instruments playing and the length of time they played for all digitally. Before programs like GarageBand were invented we would have had to record music by playing instruments into a microphone or plugged into the computer like a keyboard for example.

The internet was helpful when making the titles for the trailer, as we wanted to find a new elegant font to match the ballet theme of the film. We could go onto a number of websites and look for a suitable font and then download it onto the Mac for free quickly and easily when we had found some that we liked.

Finally, the new media technologies helped me complete this evaluation. From looking at my blog I can reflect back on the work I have done over the past months, to see what has changed from my research and planning and can easily watch my videos from the influences to see what has been used in the final project and what has not. It also makes it a lot easier for me to present my evaluation on here rather than having to handwrite everything I wanted to say, as using the blog means I can also provide visual images and video clips which make the evaluation a lot more interesting.

Also, we needed feedback on our trailers for our evaluation, so not only did we get other student's opinions on it from our media class, but we were also able to upload our trailer onto YouTube and let other people from around the world comment on it, giving a completely unbiased opinion.

Poster

The internet made the process for designing our design for the poster a lot quicker. We could search for the poster for each of our trailer's influences on google images and save and upload them onto our blog quickly, meaning we could then see them all next to eachother at once on our blog.

We were then able to have a photoshoot for the pictures for the magazine, of which we could upload all the pictures from the camera straight onto the Mac on Photoshop. This meant that we could edit the colours of the image, crop it add titles and retouch the image so that for example the background was smoother.

Magazine Cover

We once again used the internet to search for influences for our magazine cover. This was mainly using google images but also the magazine's website to see which magazine would best suit the plot and genre of our film being featured on the front cover.

Photoshop was also very useful when making our magazine cover as we were able to use the picture we took and upload it straight onto the program. It then let us edit the colour, font and size of the writing we wanted.

Finally, media technology was important for the feedback of both our magazine cover and our poster, as we were able to post both images on Facebook and let our friends comment on them. This provided more of a general audience feedback and was less concentrated on media-related features and wording, and more on simply whether they liked or disliked it. This was useful as it gave us an idea of what a normal memeber of public looking at our film and poster would think of it in an everyday situation, and the feedback was a lot more honest.

Magazine Cover

This is our final magazine front cover. Overall I am really happy with how this has turned out, as it took a lot of deliberation over what to do with the background and I feel that this looks professional enough to be a real magazine cover. I like the photo of Lauren as she is in character as Savannah by dressing up on the ballet costumer featured in the trailer and poster however she also looks quite natural as she is just sat down smiling, so it is a mixture of her character and herself which I think is common on magazine covers. I also think the layout looks very similar to the original Odeon cover. We managed to download similar fonts to the ones featured on the cover and added the sparkles on the letter using an effect on photoshop. The main 'odeon' title we copied off another image and pasted into our photoshop piece, and then edited the colour and background of the text and smoothed the edges as it had gone blurry from it being stretched.

Similarly to our poster, we added the subtle pink tint to the whole image, maning that the background was not as grey as when we first started and gave it more of a ballet feel to it. our final addition to the cover was the wording of 'The Dance Edition' below the title. This helped to establish the colour scheme of the black and pink writing used throught the cover.

Magazine Influences

When we were assigned the magazine cover task, the first thing we had to decide was which magazine would best suit our film being featured on the front cover. After much deliberation we decided on Odeon Magazine as after looking at other magazines such as Empire and Little White Lies, we realised that Empire featured an action blockbuster on the front cover and Little White Lies was too edgy for our film. After seeing this cover we realised we could also use the stars on the text as i would relate to our dance genre. We also thought the pink and white writing of the theme would suit our film's delicate image of a ballet dance-genre film.

Final Poster

This is the final design for the poster for Believe. I really like the simplicity of it as it does not look cluttered yet still gives across what the film is about and how Savannah leads two different lives within it. The font used is very elegant and suits the ballet theme, and the background ripples almost represent a curtain-like feel, such as on stage at a show.

We felt the font displaying 'in cinemas 2011' needed to be in a more neutral font as we wanted this to stand out a little to stick in the public's mind so that they would know when they can go and see the film.

We also added a very light pink tint over the whole image meaning the background especially was less white and more pinky, to add to the ballet elegance.