Evaluation Question 2

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

The first way that our products work together is through the genre. Throughout each product the one genre that is highlighted throughout is Romance. This is something that we decided to focus on more with the poster rather than the magazine as it would have a greater impact on our target audience of 18-25. It is because of this we chose to aim our poster at females, as women are easier to attract and the themes in our film is something that women would relate to more. Women tend to enjoy Romance films quite a lot, so we made sure that it was something we wanted to highlight in our poster. With the magazine review, we chose not to focus on it as much as it was something that we did not want to highlight. We did slightly although our article focuses more on the company who created the film, we felt that it was something that we wanted to highlight because it felt best with what we wanted to put across to our audience. This was due to the convention that we followed from Prevue magazine. Our film, however, is the product that does not highlight the genre as much as people expected. The main theme throughout the film is loss rather than Romance. Both the test shoot and the final film both highlight the genre quitye well. By adding them with the magazine and poster, our genre is clearly highlighted between all products, the magazine does briefly mention the genre to our film and the poster highlights it greatly. So in terms they all do work quite well.

In terms of narrative our products, the poster works the best. With the poster, we wanted to immediately show that barrier between thw two characters. Which is why we chose to place our actresses on both sides of the poster and have the card a poster in the middle. It creates that barrier between them yet it shows they are united but in some way.

 

Film Poster



The magazine was something that did not focus on the narrative as much. This was because we did not want to give too much of the story away. Also, we had decided that our main focus would be on promoting the newly created film company. We decided that this was best as it challenged a convention of most magazine reviews. We tried to leave our audience on a cliffhanger with the article, so that it would entice the audience to watch our film and maybe take a peek at the poster. With the film, we used the shots and non-digetic sound such as the voice-over and score to relay the story's narrative. This was because with the parts that was happening between the scenes the audience may have got a different view from our film. Before viewing our film, our audience would proabaly have to at least see the poster first to get some idea of what our film would be about. The article is a little background information to our film in terms of the crew. So it does not portray the narrtive as much.

We wanted the audience of our film, poster and magazine to be around a simliar age. This is why our film is targeted at 16-25 year olds while our poster and magazine focuses on 18-25 year olds. We chose to do this as it would help to attract a wider audience. We approached this by creating the poster that advertised the romance side of our poster, where the review focuses slightly more on the film company. This helped in terms of distribution as it shows the audience our film in a more wider variety and a postive light. With the film, it was easier to take a more feminine approach which was shown through the use of the non-digetic sound and the genre as women would most probably relate more to the themes within the film and our products.

The film poster and magazine are important to the marketing as it attracts our audience. It would also begin to spread a word of mouth about our film, which would help to increase our audience. They help to tell your audience to a certain exent, what the film's about. Without them, the number of people who would watch the film would be seriously reduced.

Evaluation Question 1

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

The first way our media products challenege forms and conventions is by creating a poster to advertise our film, as it not something that is usually produced by independant film makers due to the reason they are made. Which, after reasearch, we found is mainly for competition entries, self promotion and/or experimental purposes. Our poster shows to our audience that our film falls under the mainstream line than it actually is. Although the time length and content of our film contradicts that. Another reason is the focus of our poster when compared to mainstream posters. The main convention being the advertisment of the film's main actor or actors, we challenged this by using the card and roses to create a motif which the film's main genre. Where the majority of the poster is taken with an image of the main star in the film's costume, we decided to place our actors at the sides of the poster as it also showed that the card and motif was something that we wanted to highlight serves as a barrier between the two actors.

Challenging conventions of leaving out cast

Four Weddings and a Funeral Poster

In terms of our film, the lack of budget restricted us from using a studio to film scenes, therefore most of our filming was done on-set. This, in some respects, made it easier in terms of planning as we did not have to plan how we were going to replicate certain sets and the majority of our film was outside as it was. This was also limtied by the technology we were using during filming as the cameras could not pick up on-set dialogue very well due the quality of the camera.

For example, there image above is during the end scene when Claire (Payal Jaiprakash) says the line: 'It's not easy, you know. But you learn to get by'. However, as previously mentioned the camera's restricted sound could not pick up what had just been said. We had to counter that by lowering the volume of the non-digetic sound over the scene during post-production. Althought it did not help a great deal, it did at a point help to hear Claire's voice.

With our magazine, there we not many conventions that could be challenged. We researched magazine such as Total Film, Prevue and Empire and decided that we wanted a light review that focused on the film's theme's and more the different side of the production company we had created.

Empire Magazine Review

Sight and Sound Magazine Review

This was because after reading an article in another film magazine called Sight and Sound, we felt that it was best to avoid the way those articles were written as they approached film as an art and it was not the approach we wanted. We decided to the followed the conventions of using two columns and Sans Serif font for the heading and the Serif font for the main text as they are the two most commonly used fonts for magazine reviews.

Our film poster

Also the Serif font that we used fit in well with the design of the magazine and does, in a sense, highlight our genre. With out breakout boxes, we had trouble with what were first going to have in them. But again we decided to follow a convention that is commonly used in Total Film as it was the magazine that we felt best suited what we wanted to show within our film.