Presentation task 1 media evaluation
- 1. IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?
- 2. TEASER TRAILER DURATION • When researching teaser trailers for our genre of film, we chose to follow 'brOTHERHOOD' as it links well with our film as it has a similar story line. Brotherhood's teaser trailer is exactly 1 minute long, which in comparison to some other trailers from different genres was very short. The reason their teaser trailer is so short is due to the pace of the trailer/film. The fast upbeat action scenes mean they can fit a lot in in a small amount of time a as its a teaser trailer, they don't give too much away. • Our teaser trailer is 1:28 minutes long, which is fairly longer than brotherhood's. The reason being is that when editing, our trailer needed more narrative to give the audience an idea what the film is about, as our shots didn’t tell exactly what was going on. So the longer our trailer, the more narrative we could give the audience. • Our teaser trailer challenges brotherhoods duration as it doesn’t have enough narrative content to be as short. Most teaser trailers are between 30-90 seconds long. This depends on the genre of the film. Most action films have shorter teaser trailers as they have quicker shots and a faster pace. Whereas, more dramatic/romance films usually have more content to include, with a slower pace so their teaser trailers are mainly around 70- 90 seconds.
- 3. TEXT/GRAPHICS Whilst researching and using brotherhood as our films main guide, we also researched other films such as 'Straight outta Compton' for ideas when it came to looking at text ideas. Both brotherhood and straight outta Compton used very simple fonts, bold and big where mainly what they used, unlike other genres, which tend to use more creative fonts, the style of film we were following tended to use more simple fonts.
- 4. BROTHERHOOD FINAL DECISION TEXT AND GRAPHICS COMPARISON • Our teaser trailer, upon research includes similar fonts to 'Straight Outta Compton' and 'brOTHERHOOD'. We decided to follow these two films font styles as we wanted to be able to link our film with other films from the same genre and follow the conventions of the crime- drama genre. • When editing our trailer, we placed our title at the end as this is what had been done in brotherhood, and other films we had researched such as 'straight outta Compton'. It also helped build the suspense when watching the trailer. • Brotherhood tended to use big fonts to engage the audience, yet the bold titles stood out without any creative font. It title was presented towards the end of the film, with the main character placed center of the shot. This gave the audience a clear visual on what the film was about as the film is one of 3. • The font they use stays the same all the way through the trailer as each other set of titles is displayed. This is a good way to keep the audience's attention on the trailer as the bold font stands out, giving clear information to the viewers.
- 5. BROTHERHOOD • Brotherhood places it release date at the end of the teaser trailer. This is because it keeps the viewers watching and keeps their attention on the trailer so that they have to wait until the end to see the release date. • Also, the font used is the same as the font used for the previous titles in the trailer, this is to keep the familiarity and continuity of the films conventions in the trailer. • We followed Brotherhood's release date placement, and place our release date as the last clip in our trailer. This is to engage the audience and keep their attention till the end of the trailer. • We also kept the font the same, to match brotherhood continuity of conventions and make sure the viewers see the link between the fonts and don’t feel as though the fonts ruin the trailers continuity. This could happen if we were to use different fonts throughout our teaser trailer. FINAL DECISION TITLES- RELEASE DATE
- 6. BROTHERHOOD • Brotherhoods ident is placed about a quarter into the teaser trailer at 0:13 seconds. It last for a very short time of just under a second. This is so it fits with the fast pace of the trailer. • The second ident then appears straight after at 0:13 as well, as the first ident last under a second. This second ident then last for the same amount of time as the first. The same reason as it fits with the fast pace of the trailer • Our ident challenges brotherhoods. We placed ours at the beginning of the trailer, as we wanted to introduce the production company before so it didn’t interrupt the continuity of the trailer. • The ident last for 9 seconds long, which upon reflection, last too long for the genre and trailer pace we were trying to achieve however the black and white colours of our ident contrast well with the genres theme of crime and drama as they don’t make the trailer seem anything but serious. FINAL DECISION IDENT COMPARISON
- 7. USE OF SOUND • Our trailer consist of various sounds, such as voiceovers, sound effects and music. Our trailer begins with a wide shot of the first scene (the skate park) the music in the back ground is faded as the main character is listening to his music. Then as he takes of his headphones, the music becomes louder. We chose to do this to make it seem as though we are listening to the music he is, making it sound like we are listening through his headphones. Then as he walks away and the shot changes, the music takes a heavier turn with a fast pace and a louder beat. We did this to match the conventions of a crime drama. Upon research of films such as 'brotherhood' and 'straight outta Compton', we found that the music was very similar to the one we had decided to use. • The sound effects we used were ones such as the text message notification we used at the beginning of the trailer. As well as this, when creating the music for our trailer, We added sound effects such as glass shattering to create an edgy effect. We did this due to research that showed that other films in our genre. • The voice overs we included in our trailer were due to the fact that we needed something to help add narrative to the trailer, as upon first draft feedback, ,any people said they couldn’t grasp the storyline of the film. We noticed that films like 'brotherhood' used voice overs, to explain the narrative of what is happening, as the fast paced clips would be hard to understand without the voice overs. So to create a better idea of narrative, we added a few voice overs such as "I didn’t choose this" "rap is who I am" and "no this is who you are". Then when we got feedback from our final trailer and they were more positive than the last. Our research shows that films from our genre use upbeat, fast paced music with loud sound effect to match the crime conventions and editing style. The fast pace helps keep the audience engaged in the action and also keeps the trailer to a shorter duration.
- 8. NARRATIVE INFORMATION AND GENRE • The narrative of our teaser trailer was told mainly through the use of genre and characters. We relied a lot on the way we portrayed our characters and used the voiceovers to do this. The quick shots we used to keep a fast pace, but also fits in as much narrative about the film as possible, without giving too much away. We did struggle at first to fully show the narrative and give the audience a clear idea of what the film id about, but after looking at our first draft feedback, we added the voice overs to help identify the character roles. • To engage the audience in the crime drama genre, we used the stereotypes of our characters to exaggerate the actions taking place. For example, one of our scenes was of a drug deal, both characters wearing dark clothing such as hoodies and sweatpants. This matches our genre as the stereotypes of crime drama usually initiate from gangs in an urban environment. The fast pace matches our genre as it creates an action packed trailer, that keeps the audience engaged in the activities displayed in the trailer.
- 9. MAGAZINE LAYOUT CONVENTIONS Our poster cover was based off the film magazine 'empire". We chose this magazine because most of the films they cover are action/ crime based. When researching other magazine covers created by empire, we realised that our groups magazine cover could use darker colours, however make our character stand out in the center of the page by keeping their posture strong and portray the character well. Also, we could use a bold headline/ Title. The colours on Empire and Total Film are bold and bright, catching the eye of any viewer. As well as this, our cover should also include, a single character. The two main Magazines rarely use group shots as a cover page, and tend to focus on a single figure. We added the films tag line, just above the title of the film, so that it makes the reader want to know more about the film such as "who's time is up". The magazine title "empire" displayed at the top of the magazine cover stretches right across the top of the page, this is what is displayed on all the other empire covers, as it catches the eyes of consumers. Then, when adding extra text to the covers such as "world exclusive" which is also used in many other empire magazine covers, and the small text that runs down the side of the page, we made sure they were all in line with the title. This was a repetitive thing we saw in all of the empire magazine covers, as it makes the cover page look much neater and more structured. We added the small image and text line which promotes the new brotherhood film as we noticed this is what most empire covers use, as a way to promote other films and build up their covers. We chose brotherhood as we wanted to use a film that linked with ours.
- 10. POSTER LAYOUT CONVENTIONS When designing our poster, we looked at films such as brotherhood, which has been our main film we have followed as it links well with our films storyline. Upon poster research, we noticed that the brotherhood posters title was right at the front of the cover, on top of the main charters. We decided to challenge this as we thought that because our background is quite busy, layering the title over this would make everything seems to crowded. So we took the opportunity to use the large gape at the top of our poster to place the tile, clear and bold for the viewers. We used the background as our layout, using it to place our text. For example, the film ratings down the skate ramp, we decided to do this as we though it may be a creative way to catch a viewers eye.