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

In order to evaluate the main strengths and weaknesses of my individual ancillary products i have written a paragraph for each of my trailer, magazine cover and webpage outlining what i feel worked well and what could have been improved/changed.

Trailer:

I feel our main strengths in our trailer was our use of real media conventions. Like real media products we tried to include as many typical conventions as possible as we believed that this would be the most effective way in attracting our target audience. We included conventions such as soundtrack (to create an eerie, tense and awkward atmosphere),camera angles/framing (to manipulate the audiences point of view), editing techniques (such as fades and dissolves to tie the footage together in the appropriate way. And also representation (showing a focus on a group(s) within society- and in our case we focused on teenagers)

I believe that our main weakness was our complicated storyline, as we found that with conventional trailers the storylines presented were minimalistic and easily followed, however due to our in-depth complicated storyline we needed to establish a number of things with our audience in our first trailer. Although effective in other areas we found from audience feedback that this made the trailer harder to follow and create a continual flowing theme through out.

As it being our first try at creating a soap trailer and not having any previous experience in this field, i believe that as a first product our trailer is a success. From the process of creating this product both as a group and individually we were able to gain a number of different skills, some of my personal skills include learning how to use a number of different programme techniques such as Final Cut Pro, Photoshop and iWeb, matching a soundtrack to footage and also how to effectively carry out basic camera skills.

If we were to carry out the task again my group will change the effort and time spent on planning filming days so that there was no time lost on the day of filming due to lack of preparation. This was especially the case on our first day of filming, as previously we did not know to the full extent what was required of us planning and preparation wise and so we waisted time time on tasks that should have been done more effectively before hand. On our second and final days of filming we had previously made sure that a variation of planning and preparation had taken place, as for each day we planned each scene,involving camera angles, framing, editing (fade/dissolve), character position, props and also location of scene.

Magazine Cover:

As research into contemporary soap magazines i was bale to decide what type of 'look' i wanted to go for, as on the market there at two particular styles of soap magazines. The look that i went for was similar to that of the 'Radio Times'compared to a cheaper style of 'TV Choice'. I felt that is better suited our product and our target audience.

For the creation of my magazine cover i used a variation of products to benefit

specific areas of my cover, for example i used Photoshop to edit an image, i used

Microsoft word document to edit text and create text boxes and shapes. i also

used iWeb to mock up a draft of what i wanted my cover to look like.

I feel my magazines cover main strength is the full length image and bright bold

text.Its most effective in attracting a reader and creating curiosity as to what is

inside. I believe that my magazine is effective in advertising my groups product

I.V and its main storyline.

However i feel my main weakness of my magazine is the main advertisement of one

product, i feel that my product would have been more effective if i included the

advertisement of other contemporary media products, therefore broadening our

media product.

Webpage:

My groups joint effort in the creation of our website allowed us to expand on our

creativity and ideas, and give us the benefit of offering a mixture of conventions

that are featured on our website. Thus broadening our target

audience.

My groups webpage main strength was in the creativity and ideas involving the

content of our page. My group did a variety of individual and group work involving

research into contemporary soap websites, studying what they offered to the

audience, how they did it, and what techniques they used to do so.

Our groups main focus was to attract our target audience, we did this in a number of

ways, including, competitions, polls, gallery of images, cast crew interviews and

also videos. i believe that because this was my groups main focus it turned out to be one of

be our strongest area. However an area in which we were lacking in was the

broadening appeal in which our webpage could have offered, as we focused our

page specifically on one group in particular- teenage girls, our webpage

unconsciously turned out to target girls rather than boys i belive this is due to the fact

fact that we are all girls and also in our research we found that girls are more

likely to watch soap operas compared to boys, thus real soap websites lean more

towards females (of all ages) in their target audience.

evaluation activity- what have you learnt about technologies from the process of conducting this product

Over the process of constructing this product our group used a variation of programmes specialised in specific areas for all stages of pre and post production, including: planning and research and also the process of editing and filming. Our group was able to broaden our knowledge of different technologies and understand how available these programmes are due to the benefit of the internet.

*The programmes which we used over the completion of this product are:

-Photoshop: Used to manipulate, edit and create images. Used in the creation of my magazine

-Google: Search engine used to research both images and websites. Main programme in which i created my magazine on.

-Final Cut Pro: used to edit our trailer. Useful techniques such as fades, dissolves available which we used in our product.

-IWeb: Th main programme in which we used to edit our trailer. We also used this program to draft a group copy of what a front cover of a soap magazine advertising our soap would look like.

-Word Document: The main program in which i created my magazine in. Useful for editing and manipulating images and text.

-Youtube: Used to search for videos as part of primary and secondary research

Screenprint of Final Cut pro

Screenprint of Microsoft word document

Screenprint of IWeb

image1

image2

Above: Here are images taken of my group whilst filming using the equipment. I have labelled what equipment i have used and how it help us in our  product.

9 box grid:

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

1. title
2. setting/location
3. costume/props
4. camerawork/editing
5. title font/editing
6. narrative/storyline
7. genre (how sequence suggests it)
8. characters and how they are introduced
9. soundtrack

In order to better understand how i have used developed and challenged conventions of real media products i have created 9 boxes demonstrating the technologies i have used, how iv used them and how they have benefited my product.

below i have uploaded the 9 boxes via scribd:

9 box grid

evaluation task -(audience feedback) -target audience,

Who would be the target audience for your media product and how did you attract and target that audience?

Name: Sarah Thomson

age:16 years old

living: At home with mum, dad, older brother and younger sister in suburbs of Enfield

Class: She is of a middle class family, where both her parents work

Education: like her friends and family she attends a public school and is likely to go onto further education in university

style: Girly, casual, whats found on the highstreet

favourite shops: River Island, New Look, Topshop, H&M,

hobbies: shopping with her friends, going to the cinema, sleepovers, chatting to friends on the phone and via internet on Facebook, MSM, twitter

favourite films: Mean Girls, Wild Child, St Trinians, Sex and the city, Mamma Mia, Dirty Dancing

TV programmes/ channels : (tv programmes) Eastenders, Hollyoaks, Emmerdale, Friends, Scrubs, X factor, The BIg Bang Theory, The Inbetweeners, (channels) Channel 4, E4, ITV, BBC, E! entertainment, VIVA,

music : whatever is in the charts- mainly a variation of pop, RnB, Hip-hop

** Sarah Thomson is the ideal target audience for our trailer as our trailer includes aspects of everyday life which are included in her lifestyle and involve events which are presented in contemporary life, which will appeal to her, whilst also providing an enjoyable viewing experience for the audience by the use of typical soap conventions used by the producers in order to manipulate the experience for the audience.

In order to display to the audience how we used, developed and challenged conventions of real media products my group have posted our trailer on Youtube and used their annotation tools to create speech bubles commenting on what techniques we have used, how we have used them and what effect this has on the audience.

Our group was influenced by a number of conventional soap trailers, these were one of our main influences in the creation of our product as we wanted our trailer to be conventional and successful enough to attract our target audience.

Below: An Eastenders video in which my group used as part of our research. We believed the trailer included all the specific conventions that are included in creating an effective trailer and successfully attracting an audience. The conventions included: narrative enigmas, effective lighting, atmosphere setting sound, different character types and also a (single) typical storyline.

Looking at our trailer my group feel that we have effectively incorporated these conventions in our trailer and used them in a way of attracting our audience.

Audience Feedback:

As part of gaining audience feedback we carried out a number of tasks in order to hear our audiences opinion on our product, we wanted to find out from them what the liked about our product, what they didn't like about our product, how we could change specific areas and if anything needed to be added. We believe the voice of the audience is a key component in the creation of an effective media product because if your audience does not like your product then it is not going to be successfully distributed and known.

From the beginning of the task we have been keen to find out from our audience what they wanted to see so we distributed a questionnaire asking a variety of questions such as age, gender, what tv channels they watch, what are their favourite soaps, why, ...etc in order to have an understanding of our potential market.

Further into the creation of our product we also carried out a pilot focus group. This consisted of the group mimicking a focus group practising questions and revising effective feedback techniques. The focus group consisted of random pupils within our media class, who were 17years old fitting our target group, this allowed us to have a better understanding of what we were to expect in our real focus group and also gave us the opportunity to modify our pitch and treatment that were also given out in the group. However we did not receive effective feedback as our product was not fully completed and we needed time to further discuss issues that had not yet risen in the current stage of production. Yet we received positive feedback on our pitch and treatment.

For our main focus group we filmed our target audience watching the trailer and their responses afterwards (the video can be found on the groups website). We received positive feedback on our product in particularly the narrative enigmas which where created, the eerie atmospheric music and the framing of particular shots. Again at the screening we handed out copies of our treatment and pitch, which was praised for representing different character types, and different groups within society bringing a sense of realism to the soap. At the showing we also gave the audience the opportunity to view our website, here we gained positive feedback due to our easy to follow lay out, drop-down menu style, fonts colours and layouts and also our variation of pages.

Below are some of the question which were included in our focus group:

1. 
   

1. 1)"Our target audience are people aged between 16-25, do you think this trailer would attract our target audience, if so how? "

1. 2)"What is your opinion of our trailer and what worked well/didnt work well?"

1. 3)"The soap will be aired on Tuesdays at 8pm, would you be willing to watch it?"

1. 4)"Does the timing of the soap affect anything else you usually watch?"

IV Trailer

We uploaded the video to Elena's brothers Vimeo account, Vimeo is an easy video sharing site giving us the opportunity to upload videos wherever and whenever .

IV Trailer from Louis Christodoulou on Vimeo.

shooting schedule for trailer

Here is the shooting schedule of our groups trailer. We did one for both our trailer and episode. Our shooting schedule was very beneficial for us as we used it as a way of planning and informing group members of who and what was needed for our filing days. 

shooting schedule episode 1

*Shooting Schedule: first episode

Here is a print screen of the shooting schedule for my groups first episode. The shooting schedule allowed us to know what we needed for each shot, concerning camera angles and also dialogue. We found it as a brilliant way of planning filming days and informing each group member of which individual roles were needed. For example, someone needed to control sound, lighting, continuity.. etc. 

*Shooting Schedule: Trailer

Here is the shooting schedule of our groups trailer. We did one for both our trailer and episode. Our shooting schedule was very beneficial for us as we used it as a way of planning and informing group members of who and what was needed for our filing days. 

-print screen of our trailers shooting schedule:

page1                         page2                      pge3

page 4 

extras featured on our website

On my groups website we made sure that we kept our audience attracted through the extra features featured on the site. Through our groups research into soap opera websites we found that a recurrent feature on all soap websites was the opportunities they gave the audience. For example some of the features that we have included on our group website include:

-backstage

-gallery

-out takes 

-character diary

-character profiles

-bloopers

We believe that this is an effect way in attracting our target audience and keeping them interested in our products. Also the we believe the bright, funky layout which changes with the storylines is an effective way in keeping our audience coming back. An effective aspect of having such a varied website allows our website to appeal to a number of people within the target audience.

Written Storyboard for Trailer of soap

For both our trailer and first episode my group has written out a step by step storyboard. We have also included editing techniques such as fades and sounds in order to be easily followed:

• Close up of girl 1 crying with make up running down her face
• She closes her eyes to a heartbeat sound
• Close up of the first note on the floor 'We'
• Scene fades to letters coming through the letter box
• The note with 'We' falls out from in between the letters.
• Close up of girl 1 with her hands on her head. she closes her eyes to a heartbeat
• Close up of the second note on the floor 'Know'
• Girl 1 sitting in a cafe
• A waitress brings her a drink and hands her a note from someone
• Girl 1 reads the note but audience do not see it.
• She looks around in the hope of seeing who it is from but the cafe is empty
• Close up of her hands covering more of her face and the sound of her whimpering
• Close up of the third note on the floor 'What'
• When girl 1 gets home from the cafe she looks in her bag and sees the third note
• Close up of the girls face, tears rolling down
• Close up of the 4th note on the floor 'You'
• Girl 1 sitting on her floor doing homework, as she lifts up a folder, the fourth note falls out from it.
• Close up of the girl crying
• Fifth note on the floor 'Did'
• Girl 1 in supermarket she gets her purse out to pay and the 5th note falls from it.
• Girl in her bedroom putting the notes together
  'WE KNOW WHAT YOU DID'
• The tempo/pace of the music increases as she puts the notes in order one by one. the music stops as they are put in order and a cardiac arrest beep comes on.
• The scene flashes to a dead body
• I.V appears on screen with the days and time the soap is on - 'Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at 8pm
• Final sound of a heart beat then silence as the trailer ends.

Treatment of trailer

(also on group blog) As follows is the treatment of my groups soap opera trailer:

Our soap opera will have a mixture of short and long term storylines which will all run concurrently with each other. This will allow the audience to get to know the variety of characters. Some of the less important storylines will be short term, only lasting for the period of one episode. The long-term storylines will run for perhaps two episodes with the effects of it lasting for the episodes to come. This will allow the audience to possibly connect to the characters that are having similar life events to them and may possible use the way the characters react to it to influence the way they deal with their own problems.

The characters in our soap are going to be mainly teenagers of both genders. We also hope to include the families of the teenagers and some of the teachers working at the school. The characters we are hoping to focus on include a “gossip”, a “dodgy geezer” who supplies drugs to others, a group who have parties and do not focus on school, “geeks” who focus on school work, “lower class” people who may be considered “chavs”, good-looking males who all the girls fancy and a mysterious new character who is known as an outcast to the others as they are new to the setting. They will be new only at the start but will not completely fit in as all the groups have already been formed between the characters that have been together for a longer period of time. This “new” character will be picked on and included into groups for particular reasons and then will be shut out.

Our soap opera will be based in a school setting, including the classrooms, library, staff room and the playground. We will also include the homes of the characters and their local areas. The homes will be used so the audience can get an insight into the lives of the characters and the homes may also be used to hold parties. We will have a meeting place where all the characters go; this may possibly be a café. We may also include the park as many teenagers hang around in the park.

Our target audience is going to be teenagers and young adults of both genders as our characters are mainly of this age group too. By having teenagers as our target audience and as the main characters, we hope the audience will be able to connect with the characters and possibly relate their own lives to the characters.

As our soap is aimed at teenagers and we will have moral and educational content.

Our media product will follow the expected and unexpected elements of a soap opera. It will include all the necessary conventions of a soap opera such as narrative enigmas, a sense of realism, concurrent storylines, social representations, and a central meeting point and will deal with real life issues. Each episode will end with a big cliff-hanger and the storylines can sometimes end with smaller cliff-hangers. We will also challenge everyday conventions of soaps by having events such as a lesbian wedding, a teacher getting in trouble instead of a student and a person not fitting into a tight community.

filming day 3

Today my group got together to film the remaining shots and editing neeeded for our trailer. We also took the opportunity to take advantage of the extras that we have provided for our audience on our website. My evaluation of our third and final day of filming is as follows (also on group blog)

On Sunday 31st January was our final day of filming. When we met up the first thing we did was to go through our plan of the day and establish what the outcomes of the day were to be. Firstly we set up the camera on its tripod, and position the microphone. We also had to adjusted the lighting for our first shot as we had too much natural light coming through the window, which created the wrong atmosphere for our scene. Whilst experimenting with the camera angles and shots we decided to frame the shot with the leaves of a plant positioned next to the camera, this allowed us to play around with focus within the shot, which will also benefit us when we come to edit as we would have a selection of shots to choose from.

The filming of our first shot was the finding of our fist note coming through the post box with the mail. This shot allowed us to play freely with the camera angles and shot, for example, we experimented with low shots of the floor just showing Theglas' feet walking into shot picking up the mail finding the note and then walking back out of shot. We also experimented with extreme close up shots focusing just on the note. Another shot we tried was filming the post as it was coming through the postbox and allowing the note fall to the floor to the rest of the mail. Wide shots were also an option for us in this scene as we brainstormed around the idea of getting all that was happening in the scene to establish a comfortable home atmosphere for the audience.

The next note we filmed was the note found in Theglas' pocket. The scene is of the character returning from shopping, and as she arrives at her door reaches into her pocket to get her keys but finds a note in her pocket too. Again, here we decided to film a number of different angled shots in order to have a selection to choos from when editing. For example, we filmed a variation of over the shoulder shots which allowed us to show the note as the character finds it. We also experimented with wide shots showing Thegla walking up the driveway past the camera and a few shots where the camera follows behind her.

Our next shot follows on from our last shot of the character walking through the door. Here we see Thegla walking straight into the kitchen once she has come through the door and rests her bags on the table. Here we used a wide shot to show her walk into the room, mimicking an establishing shot to inform the audience of where we are. For the rest of the shot we used a variation of different zoomed up shots and panning shots of the character emptying her bag and finding the note in the clothes.

Our next shot was of the character sitting at the table doing homework, and she finds a note in her folder. For this shot we panned the camera around Thegla as she was looking through the folder, this allowed us to view the scene from different points of views, allowing us to manipulate what the audience sees.

Our final note is found by text message. In this shot we had to re-film a number of times due to technological issues as the text message that the character receives was not in time for the scene so we had to do a few re shoots to get it right. The shots that we used here were were mainly establishing/ wide shots of the character watching television and receiving the text message. Once the messaged was received we used a close up shot of the characters face to show her emotion/expression.

Finally our last footage of the day was the shooting of the dead body. This involved Natalie Michael having to play dead in the bushes, here we experimented with long shots, panning shots, close ups and establishing shots. The darkness of the alley and the diagetic sound of birds and twigs breaking adding to the tense, awkward atmosphere of the scene.

Elena C and Natalie M filming thegla

Natalie M and Elena C operating the camera and sound

practicing angles with the camera in between filming

Elena C and Natalie M adjusting the lighting for our scene

the area we chose for our ally scene

Establishing shot of Natalie M playing dead

The first shot of Natalie M playing dead, however we moved location as we felt it didn't look realistic enough.

Second day of filming

For our second day of filming my group were more organised compared to our first day of filming. We had made sure that we were fully prepared with scripts, equipment and the types of shots that we wanted.

Because this was our second experience of filming our in depth planning and organisation of the day benefited us greatly as we had an objectives of what we wanted to achieve by the end of the day was to film the section of the trailer where our protagonist was crying on her bed piecing the notes together to form the sentence 'WE KNOW WHAT YOU DID'

For the crying scene we wanted to create the right atmosphere of tension and suspense so we adjusted the lighting using both artificial and natural lighting to do so. For our characters' costume we wanted to emphasise her sadness so we dressed her in a variation of black and grey shades instead of bright bold colours to show happiness.

In this scene we used a variety of different over the shoulder shots, close ups, zoom in/outs, wide shots and also panning shots. The advantage of filming a variety of different types of shots allows us to have a selection to choose from when editing and give us the option of creating different view points for the audience. With filming some of these shots we found difficulty with the continuity as we had to make sure objects in the shot where not misplaced in-between takes.

To make filming for us easier we connected the camera to a screen (using a scrat lead) in order to easily see what we were shooting, and see what angles were most effective for the scene. Viewing the shots from different angles and position allowed us to become aware of smaller details, for example, when watching one of the shots we filmed Thegla noticed the microphone was in the shot - we then had to re do the shot.

Our most effective technique of making the actress took distressed and crying was to apply Olbus oil around her eyes and smudge her make up. Through out the day we had to do this a number of times so the effect didn't wear off as we needed to re shoot some scenes.

Some props that we needed to shoot the day included were:

- scrunched up tissues (to imply the characters crying) and,

-a mobile phone (in order to receive the last text)

The only obstacle of the day we uncounted was a technical issue, where the text on the mobile was to small for the camera to pick up. We then decided to use the mobiles camera to take a picture of word from a newspaper and display it with a wide screen option so that it was visible on camera.

Whilst filming, we decided to create more of an air of suspense for our audience, so we changed the order of the notes being found: firstly the character will create the sentence 'DID YOU KNOW WHAT' then remembering the note received by text she arranges them to sat 'YOU KNOW WHAT WE DID' and finally the correct sentence of 'WE KNOW WHAT YOU DID'

Overall our day was successful as our pre planning and organisation allowed both cast and crew to know exactly what we they doing and how. Our mistake of not fully planning for our first filming day allowed us to learn from our mistake and know what to expect this time round.

Here are some pictures taken over the period of the day: