Main and Ancillary Products

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

After reviewing our audience feedback we found that the audience thought that the sound throughout the trailer was most effective element. We tried to use a range of sounds in order to reflect the mood of the trailer. The trailers opening was accompanied with a very atmospheric soundtrack therefore setting the scene. We then used a sound mix as the pace of the trailer increased in order to buildup the tension.

The audience feedback chose mise-en-scene as the least effective. We tried to steer away from using too many conventional props such as weapons to try to not reveal major parts of the storyline. However, this technique seemed to be unsuccessful which shows us that maybe it would be more beneficial for us to stick to successful conventions used in other films.

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

After comparing and contrasting the main product with the ancillary tasks we found that the products were successful in creating synergy due to the repeated uses of the protagonist Tommy and similar fonts and layouts in order to form an association with the products and make it more recognisable. 

The only technique which was not carried through was the use of dark backgrounds and colours in the trailer compared to a lighter palette used on the poster and the magazine cover, however we found that the use of white colours in the trailer would not be appropriate as it would not reflect the action genre and make the trailer appears less dark and gritty in reference to the plot. 

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

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

Final Magazine cover

Here is our final Magazine cover. Overall we are very pleased with the outcome and glad that we managed to finish the poster in time for our deadline.

Photo options

Rather than taking completely new photographs we decided to use some of the photographs that we had already taken during filming. This decision will allow us with more time when we begin to produce the poster. Below are the options that we thought would be most appropriate for our idea out of the images that we already had.

After much discussion we all finally agreed on an image that we all liked and thought would be best for our magazine cover:

Magazine title ideas...

We decided to begin coming up with ideas for the title of our magazine . We started by looking at different words that would be associated with the genre of our film. We looked on the thesaurus and started brainstorming words that we found from that website.

We then produced a poll and opened it up to peers to vote for name which they thought would be most suitable for our magazine.

Portrait Styles

In terms of developing our magazine cover we decided to look at different portraits in order to find one that is best suited for our actor/character and the film itself.

We looked at portraits from iconic photographers such as Mario Testino and David Bailey

Mario Testino

David Bailey

We also explored the idea of using two characters in the magazine cover such as Scott and Layla in order to promote the romantic side of the film as well as the action/thriller of the storyline. We feel that this could broaden our audience with the use of both genders. 

Magazine Cover Ideas

We were experimenting with magazine covers and looked at creating our own magazine in order for it to be appropriate for our genre/film as we felt that the magazines researched were not tailored enough for our film.

We decided to take inspiration from the Little White Lies magazine cover, in particular the Drive/Ryan Gosling cover due to the similarities in character/genre of our film and Drive. We also liked the artistic/creative approach to each magazine cover but didn't like the Little White Lies logo as it takes our attention off of the image itself and the logo could be experimented with in order to suit our film and the "mainstream" magazine covers.

Trailer Feedback

Magazine research

We began by looking at a popular film magazine commenting on the conventions that it used: 

There are a variety of different types of magazine covers for us to choose from, before making a decision we thought that the best starting point would be to research the types of magazines and chooses the one which would be most appropriate for our film.

Mainstream

The mainstream magazines are mainly used for large well-known blockbuster films starring well-known actors. The images used are the actors in character, including costume and props. The editors assume that the audience will know the actors which is why their names have not been placed on the magazine cover. The Empire magazine is more of a males magazine as it usually features more action films, such as 007, Batman and Captain America.

Art House

Art House magazines are usually feature films which are more creative and usually less mainstream than other films. The images used are usually just of one person- actor or director.  The Little White Lies magazine cover is more minimalistic and uses an image which is more artistic, with a painterly effect which portrays the more artistic sorts of films.

Specialist Audience

Specialist magazines are focused on a particular target audience. Studio is the UK's first film magazine and the only one of its kind. This can be used when there is a specific target audience for our film, such as a female audience in terms of Studio. The images used for the magazine are mostly portraits of the actors themselves as opposed to as a character they are playing however this particular magazine cover does look classy/character like due to the positioning of the actor.

Genre

  

Genre Magazines focuses on a specific genre for example SFX focuses on science fiction whilst Fangoria focuses on horror films. The images used are in character including costume/make up etc. this is to make the genre evident and especially for Fangoria it is to attract the target audience, because if someone from the target audience saw a gruesome character on the cover of the magazine it may influence them into buying it.

Final poster

After all our hard work we have finally finished our final film poster as below:

Poster Influences

We are now going throught the process of researching ideas for our film poster. We thought that the main focus of our poster should be a close up of our main character Scott's face. Despite the 'Ides Of March' not being from the same genre that our trailer would be placed in, we found that this particular shot could be used in order to reflect Scott's schizophrenia. Whilst the 'In Time' poster is from a similar genre and story line as our trailer and contains the close up image of the protagonist so can be used as inspiration for our poster. 

Race Against Time Trailer

Here is our amazing masterpiece, Woo! It's finally done! after all the hard work we're really proud of the outcome and proud of how we have worked together and achieved everything. Now...poster and magazine, here we come!

Credit Fonts

The first text that we found was on a text website, therefore it restricted us from editing it and adding effects to it. We watched more trailers to find some inspiration and settled on the text that we used in our storyboard which is similar to the text in 'Taken', we wanted to be more creative with our credits so on livetype we added the effect of 'frigid' which shakes the text which adds to the pace of the trailer. It also reflects the character, Scott's instability.

Plan of filming

Today, me and Florence are filming some extra pieces to add to the trailer, inspired by the taken trailer we felt it would be interesting to have a triple split screen shot in our trailer. We felt this would be a good idea due to compressing a lot of action into one shot which will add to the fast pace of the trailer.

The triple split screen will consist of:

- A POV shot of Scott looking at his watch and walking over to Grant's approaching car 

- The window of the car winding down

- The handing over of the money 

alternatively if the shots don't flow well we can use:

- Long shot of the back of Tommy against the car

- POV shot going through the money and the window of the car winding down

- The handing over of the money

In these shots the character's faces may not be revealed to the audience to add mystery but this may confuse the audience so we will experiment with this when filming.

Character Voiceovers

One of the final things to do in terms of sound are the voiceovers, we need to record the following:

Scott: 

I ran but running wasn't fast enough, love is a dangerous thing when put in the wrong hands (opening of the trailer)

Grant: 

7pm sharp (during phone call)

Filming and Editing Updates

After watching through our trailer we have found that the following things are missing that we had put in initially;

1. We found that there is discontinuity between two shots where our character Scott answers the phone and in the next shot when he is dropping the phone where he has switched hands.

2. Sound - We still need to insert our protagonist Scott's voiceover as well as Grant's dialogue for the phone call.

3. The triple split screen of the exchange of money and the plan to kill Layla in which there will either be:

- A POV shot of Scott looking at his watch and walking over to Grant's approaching car 

- The window of the car winding down

- The handing over of the money 

alternatively if the shots don't flow well we can use:

- Long shot of the back of Tommy against the car

- POV shot going through the money and the window of the car winding down

- The handing over of the money

In these shots the character's faces may not be revealed to the audience to add mystery but this may confuse the audience so we will experiment with this when filming.

Filming session 3

Today we had our third filming session, due to one of our actors being unavailable we were unable to film everything that we had planned, however we did manage to capture quite a few good shots.

We managed to film the scenes with just Claire and Ben alone. This includes when they were in the car together and when they were on the Train Station platform.

The above clip is an example of some of the scenes that we managed to capture. The clip is only a rough copy and it will be edited until it is perfect.

The photos above our from our filming throughout the day including travelling to the locations (which we now may use in our final trailer in order to add variety of shots and context) and filming the appropriate shots.