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

Closed Questionnaire

Results of closed questionnaires from reece131

Open Questionnaire

Promotion

This a print screen of the event which was made on a social networking site in order to gain an audience for our media screening.

 We felt this would be a good advertising method because it was a good way to contact a wide range of people who would be interested in media. Other people which were in attendance were media students from lower years so they can gather an understanding what is required from them if they choose to do A Levels.

Evaluation - Questionnaires

In order to gain audience feedback, we produced open and closed questionnaire. I distributed these to a viewing audience in the media classroom.

 

I thought it would be appropriate to produce both quantitative and qualitative data.

Closed Questionnaire

Open Questionnaire

 

Figment - Horror Trailer FINISHED

Figment - Horror Trailer from Reece Beveridge on Vimeo.

Evaluation

Evaluation

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

Our media product which is a horror trailer uses many typical horror conventions. As a group, we believed that using typical conventions was as important as breaking them. One film we used as inspiration was Sinister and we ended up using some conventions which were found in this film. We used two main characters, one the protagonist and the other was a masked character who was the villain. 

The face of the figure is never revealed during the trailer, so that it creates more tension and suspense for the audience therefore making more scarier for

 them. 

Vladimir Propp suggested that each narrative includes many characters. This convention has been broken in our trailer as we only have three characters -  the other being the protagonist's mother. By using mainly the girl and villain, it almost adds a personal element as the audience could put themselves into the protagonists shoes and could personally think of the experience.

Todorov's theory that every narrative can be split into five categories has, by a degree, used in our trailer. He believes that it can be split down into;

• A state of equilibrium (all is as it should be)
• A disruption of that order by an event
• A recognition that the disorder has occurred
• An attempt to repair the damage of the disruption
• A return or restoration of a NEW equilibrium

We use equilibrium; where the main character is sitting in her bedroom, by herself looking at old family photographs. Then there is disequilibrium; where the protagonist is walking alone at night and the villain is in the behind her in the background following her.

Another extremely typical convention used in our trailer is the lack of lighting. We filmed a big proportion outdoors at night and those filmed in other locations feature dark, disconcert lighting which creates a more chilling effect. 

When editing the trailer together it was key that we made the trailer appear as realistic as we included a production screen at the start which appears in every film trailer and used text cards which appear in many horror trailers. 

As a group we felt that sound was a key part of our project and getting the right sound to accompany the trailer was vital to get a good mark. We felt that adding a lyric song would create an unprofessional feel to it. 

We used different sound clips which were all downloaded from SoundSnap which is a website which allows users to download soundtracks. This non-diegetic sound added suspense and creates a sense of horror for the viewing audience. One feature which was lacking in our trailer was the use of dialogue. We only had one clip of dialogue which was the protagonists mother speaking to the camera about her daughter. The reason we didn't have the main characters speaking is because of the accent – having a Geordie accent could make the trailer sound less professional. 

Our genre is horror and we tried to ensure that we used typical horror conventions.

Tom Ryall states; “Genre provides a framework of structuring rules, in the shape of patterns/forms/styles/structures”

This enabled us to use certain characteristics that would abide with the horror genre we set out to create. Throughout the creation of the trailer, we have conformed to using many typical convention which appear in horror movies but have also broke some conventions by the lack of characters. 

Locations

One location we used was the 'underpass' which is a walkway underneath a motorway close to our school. We chose to shoot here because at night it creates an eerie atmosphere and looks really effective, - another good factor is it does not regularly get used so we don't need to stop recording a lot to let people pass through.

A Viewing of Our Work

On the 9th May we are going to be presenting our horror trailer to a theatre of students for feedback on what they liked what they believed we could have done better.

I have decided to create a horror poster which could be distributed around school or shown in the hall to give the students a preview of what the trailer is going to be like. 

Timeline

Nightmare

Waking up scared

Underpass, walking alone

Mother Dialogue

Looking at photographs

Killer is following her and as soon as she turns he had disappeared

Mother dialogue

Opens door to reveal mask on the door step

Protagonist kneels down and picks up the mask

Mother dialogue

Girl being chased down the alley

Walking down tunnel

Looks at camera

Girl strangles mother and then is restrained

Running through the woods

Title

Girl walks towards camera wearing mask

Credits

Finished Ancillary Tasks

Magazine

Poster

Progress

Before Easter Half Term:

Ancilliary Tasks 100%
Filming/Construction 75%

Me, Ryan and Sarah plan to mainly focus on filming over the 2 weeks Easter holiday so when we return afterwards our main construction will be completed and will be able to be shown infront of an audience to receive critical feedback which will help with our evaluation section of this course.

Important Narrative Conventions

The main convetion are;

Genre

Character

Form

Time

Character Choices

Jamie (Sarah Watson) is reflecting on her childhood to her therapist. She talks about the times her grandfather would tell her stories about how he was a medic in the war, and the story of how he was attending to a man who was bleeding to death, but had to leave him and deal with a group of men dying on the field – so the man bled to death. Before she was institutionalised, she researched and discovered that the man’s body was never found. These are what led to the night terrors that made her hallucinate and drove her insane.

Now she still has to be tied to the bed because these dreams of the man coming back for her are causing her to have violent fits in her sleep. She eventually begins to believe that the man (Ryan Willis) is coming back for her because she is finding it difficult to differentiate between her dreams and reality.

iMovie

To edit our project, we are using iMovie. The reasons for this choice are

You can:

• Edit video footage.
• Create your own footage to edit.
• Create an interactive and fun learning environment.
• Create individuality among an assignment using all the effects that iMovie holds.

Narrative Theory

Equilibrium’ Theory

This theory says that all stories are about the fight to return to normality.An event happens, and everything after the event is about the attempt to return to normal – or ‘equilibrium.’

Levi Strauss, An anthopologist.

He studies how ‘primitive’ societies functioned. He argued that primitive societies and so-called ‘advanced’ societies shared similar elements.

Subject Deadlines

Deadlines

Ancillary tasks to be completed for the end of half term.

Not allowing us to get less than 8 out of 10 marks. Show teachers on a regular basis.   15^th February

Filming and editing every Tuesday morning for the rest of term.

WEEK ONE THURSDAY PERIOD 4 - British films
WEEK TWO THURSDAY PERIOD 4 – Skills and Concepts
WEEK TWO TUESDAY PERIOD 1 - British films

All of your rushes (raw footage) completed and filmed by the end of the term.

Should be regularly putting on a relatively short blog entry about ancillary tasks!

Production sheets every Monday.  Production Schedule week beginning…

Narrative Theory - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_L%C3%A9vi-Strauss

Every Tuesday 2^nd Period (Week 2) Skills and Concepts

Blog entry about class constructive criticism on ancillary task. Upload image and say what you’re going to improve on.

Continued

Another main feature used during my course was Blogger - a free website which allows people to post blog posts and images. This is a key part of our course as all students have to use this website and post their work electronically so the moderators can view them. Blogger was a helpful website in the creation of my magazine as it allowed us to view each other’s blogs for inspiration and also to view the school blog which is managed by the teachers. On the departmental blog, information about the course, our homework, different power points showing information and links to different peoples blogs are all easily accessible which creates a simpler method to retrieve information – also adding past students blogs allows us to see what marks they got for the standard of work so we knew what to work towards.

This can be accredited by the theorist David Gauntlet who brought the introduction to interactive media (such as online blogs) so that it would help media users and most importantly media students become more creative – “recognition that internet and digital media have fundamentally changed the ways in which we engage with all media”. This helped my creative decision making as I was able to use more imaginative decisions based on the feedback I received from my subject teachers and other students in the class. I received critical feedback on my contents page and front cover, as people thought it lacked the conventional features of current music magazines. 

On the whole, this production allowed me carry out creative decisions and to create a piece of work which was on the whole a well-produced piece of work. I also came to the decision that the best publication software is Photoshop – which has a wide range of professional features, which Microsoft Publisher lacks and has a much easier user-interface which has easy to use features.       

Digital Technology Skills

I am going to discuss how my digital technology skills contributed to the process of creative decision making whilst creating my AS Level magazine cover. Firstly, in my AS level media course, I created a music magazine. This required me to research and annotates different genres of music magazine and talk about the features and advantages which they had over other magazines. After this part, I chose ‘Rolling Stones’ magazine as my style model and came to the decision that I was going to base my design on this magazine.

Throughout the whole process of designing and making my music magazine covers and article, I used my skills of Photoshop to create a professional and quality looking piece of work. I knew that my skills of Photoshop were somewhat lacking – but I persevered and after the course, I have learnt many skills which will help me in the ancillary tasks I need to carry out in my A Level course. In my spare time, I asked my friend who is a skilled Photoshop user, to teach me some different features and design skills which would benefit me whilst creating the magazine. From my production. I have acquired many different creative skills which I can use in future on Photoshop. Prior to my production, I have only used Photoshop a few times, so when it came to the creative production of the music magazine, I had to get really involved and learn new features. 

Ancillary Task 1 - Second Draft

This is my final draft for my first ancillary task. I have taking on board the feedback I recieved from the class and added the actors names so people looking at the poster could see who would be portraying the characters in the film.

Ancillary Task 1 - First Draft

This is the first draft of my ancillary task. To make the poster look effective, I tried to keep it minimalistic and use dark colours to create a sense of horror. The main image is of the evildoer in our trailer. I have edited this image so in the left eye is a faint image of the victim which suggests that the villain is always looking for the martyr. I followed the usual conventions of horror posters and added the institutional logos and added the casting and producers names as well as the films certificate.

After creating the poster, I showed it to the class to get some critical feedback which would help me improve it. The classes feedback was on the whole positive but some students thought the poster needed the actors names as most posters include this convention.

Roles

Main Role – Camera Man
The main role I have for our group project is to be camera man. For this role I will need to watch different horror films and use different camera angles which are used in popular film.I will also have to pick out horror conventions which will help up make our trailer look more professional. 
Sub Role – Editor
For my sub role of being an editor I will need to watch different films and look at the different edits used to create different effects which are key in the genre horror. I have already had experience using editing software.

Production Schedule - Week 1

Monday: Intention was to film, but unfortunately the weather has ruined our opportunity because the location was an outside scene, therefore this has to be re-scheduled.

Tuesday: If possible, we would like to be able to edit the footage that we have so far.

Wednesday: Ryan and Reece have an ICT exam, whereas I will be trying to edit more footage during my morning free periods.

Thursday: There will nothing that can be done today as we are all in lessons.

Friday: Ryan and Reece have an ICT exam and I have an English exam but more editing will be done afterwards until home study.

Deadlines

Ancillary tasks to be completed for the end of half term.

Not allowing us to get less than 8 out of 10 marks. Show teachers on a regular basis.   15^th February

Filming and editing every Tuesday morning for the rest of term.

WEEK ONE THURSDAY PERIOD 4 - British films
WEEK TWO THURSDAY PERIOD 4 – Skills and Concepts
WEEK TWO TUESDAY PERIOD 1 - British films

All of your rushes (raw footage) completed and filmed by the end of the term.

Should be regularly putting on a relatively short blog entry about ancillary tasks!

Production sheets every Monday.  Production Schedule week beginning…

Narrative Theory - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_L%C3%A9vi-Strauss

Every Tuesday 2^nd Period (Week 2) Skills and Concepts

Blog entry about class constructive criticism on ancillary task. Upload image and say what you’re going to improve on.

Ancillary Task

AS Work

Changes to my AS Magazine

This year, I was given the task to improve my AS work as my previous work wasn't to a good standard. After speaking to Mrs Hopkinson about my work, we agreed that I needed to create a new contents page as my old one wasn't good enough. I found a style model for a contents page which was from Rolling Stone magazine - From viewing this style model, I decided to create a simple, but effective contents page with the usual conventions, but to keep the page clear and understandable. I used two images of different people, one large picture which is the main piece of the page. I chose to make this image the largest as my article page is based upon this fictional band 'Suicidal Unison'. My other picture is of a female girl - who is located at the top of the contents page. I kept this picture quite small to not take the centre focus away from the main image.I kept the colour scheme similar to my front cover, I have used red and black throughout as they are the colours of my magazine logo.

After taking the new photos, I colour adjusted them on Photoshop and made sure the contrast was editing making the photo look more professional.I have published the contents to the left of the main photo, in a vertical list making more room for the contents to have a stand out photo. I have also made some minor tweaks to my front cover. I have made the main image larger, and again colour adjusted the photo so it looks more professional, and is much better than contested than before. I removed band names down the left side, and added sub-headings to articles inside the magazine, following typical conventions of music magazines. I positioned the name of the artist below centre in the picture in a stand out font so the viewer would be directed to the text and the quotation underneath it. Overall, I believe I have made a huge difference to my magazine by making it look more professional and having improved my contents page, I feel I have made the whole magazine better than the previous one.

Style Model - The Rolling Stone contents page uses one main image ,and a smaller image shadowing the larger one to the left ,ensuring all attention goes to the larger black and white long shot of the two men dancing .Underneath the image, it has a main headline and information about what the article is about.The text for the main headline saying 'Johnny be good' is in a black bold font therefore making it stand out more ,it is also the same font used on all the larger fonts .

Clicking these links will take you to the rest of my evaluation.

http://reecebeveridgemedia.blogspot.co.uk/search?updated-max=2012-11-20T01:20:00-08:00&max-results=7&reverse-paginate=true

http://reecebeveridgemedia.blogspot.co.uk/search?updated-max=2012-05-04T04:10:00-07:00&max-results=7&reverse-paginate=true&start=7&by-date=false