Advanced portfolio evaluationBy Rose Flaherty

Conventions :• Cultural codes – teenagers stereotypically drink, smoke, in love etc.• Symbolic codes – short skirts, cigarettes, drinking alcohol, drugs, tracksuits etc.• Film title ‘Last chance’ appearing at the end of the teaser trailer.• ‘Coming soon’ also appearing after the film title letting the audience know it is a teaser

trailer.• Enigma is left by only giving away parts of the story line in the trailer but giving away enough

to make to audience interested and want to see more. For example when the audience are shown a grave stone they don't know who's it is but they know someone has died.

• The main song I used for my soundtrack was called ‘streetlife’ which relates the genre of my film trailer and lyrics link to the storyline. The music I used gave your audience a strong indication of the genre of my trailer.

• Synchronise sound. • Used a range of camera angles and shots to focus on the main characters. • Me and my group tried to follow all the conventions of a social realist teaser trailer to target

our specific audience.

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

Challenges conventions:• It is unusual to have two contrasting soundtracks been put so closely next to another

in a film trailer. This is why we merged the two contrasting tracks together to make the difference less noticeable. Firstly we added the fast paced track to show the equilibrium of the trailer when the characters are living life, drinking and having fun. We then added the slow track to show the disequilibrium of the trailer where the problems and the consequences start for characters.

• My film is based around two female characters which is unconventional for a crime based film.

• My trailer is mainly aimed at females because of their dominance in the film. Although it is also aimed at males as they do play an important part in this film as you can see by looking at the trailer they are also drawn to this film because of the female presence.

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

Film poster Magazine cover

• I used similar images for my magazine cover and film poster as both photographs were taken in the same setting near and under a subway, also we kept the clothing of both the main characters the same. I then edited them in Photoshop elements. I used the same colour scheme throughout the production of both my ancillary tasks to make them flow and link together. The three main colours I used were: Red, black and white.

Red – danger, passion and love. Black – darkness, mystery and negative. White – pure, innocence and peace. I used these colours as they relate to our genre. • My group and I thought about the mise en scen before taking the images for the

ancillary tasks as we knew it was important to get the perfect image that would let the audience know what type of genre our teaser trailer is this kept our coursework consistent.

• The teaser trailer I produced does its job as its teases the audience with lots of action packed clips without giving to much away to the audience.

• I used the same font for our movie title ‘Last chance’ in both my ancillary tasks and my trailer. This is so the audience would recognise and be familiar with our movie name. The font used was from www.dafont.com which gave me and my group a wider range of texts to choose from. The text we picked is big and bold to make it stand out.

Audience feedback: Me and my group asked 15 teenagers questions about our teaser trailer and

ancillary products. We said they could expand on questions and give criticisms if they wished. These were the questions and responses:

• Does the ancillary task and final product link? YES (15) NO (0)• What genre would you associate with these products? SOCIAL REALISM (13) DRAMA (2) ACTION (0)• What age range do you think our film is aimed at? 15-21 (15) 13-18 (0) 25-30 (0)• Is to much of the plot given away? YES (0) NO (15)• Does our film title relate to the narrative of the film? YES (15) NO (0)• Are the colours and typeface used relevant to the genre? YES (14) NO (0)

What have you leant from your audience feedback?

“Some of the shots at night weren't as clear as they could of been” – We could of shot clips slightly earlier to get a clearer picture.

“Some of the shots could have been less shaky” – We could of used a tripod to help the shots be more focused rather then holding the camera by hand. However using the hand held camera did fit in with our genre

I can see from our audience research that me and my group have been successful in targeting the right audience by using the correct colours, font, mise en scen and generic conventions.

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

Digital still camera:We used the digital camera for our magazine front cover and poster images. This enabled us to upload the images and view them there and then in digital format.

HD Video camera: We used the HD video camera to collect all out footage. As the camera was HD it gave a better and clearer image which make out final product look professional.

Adobe photoshop elements:I used this program to edit my magazine front cover and film poster. I used a large range of enhancement tools when working in Photoshop but the one I used most was the lasso tool. With the lasso tool I traced around the head of the girl on my main image. I then copied the head and then pasted it on the top layer so my masthead was slightly covered by the image. I did this as I wanted my magazine to appear professional and recognisable to target audience.

Final cut pro effects:Me and my group used this program to edit our footage and create our teaser trailer. We took the footage from the HD video cameras and uploading them in this program choosing the clips we wanted and cutting the footage we didn’t want. We used slow motion several times in the editing of our trailer. We contrasted it with fast motion images and clips top show the contrast between the two.

used a large range of enhancement tools when working in Photoshop but the one I used most was the lasso tool. With the lasso tool i traced around the head of the girl on my main image. I then copied the head and then pasted it on the top layer so my masthead was slightly covered by the image. I did this as i wanted my magazine to appear professional and recognisable to customers.

Youtube converter:I used a track from youtube called ‘street life’ We added this audio track into our trailer using final cut pro which runs over my film trailer to give further classification of the genre. Throughout the track me and my group changed the audio levels in places so the track quietened for a moment this gave the audience chance to hear the important speaking parts of the trailer. We also used a cross dissolve to fade one upbeat track into a slower track so the contrast between the two didn’t seem so drastic.