Final teaser trailer

This is the link to youtube for our final teaser trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTWHvOCS6eg

Evaluation

Evaluation

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

Trailer

At the beginning of our trailer we decided to put the Universal studios logo at the beginning as this institution is recognised as a company for ROM-COM’s such as, ‘It’s Complicated’. By having this as the opening we are sticking to traditional conventions as all trailers have the production company in them. I think by sticking to this convention we were able to make the trailer look more professional and get a better effect. Also when seeing it the audience will hopefully recognise the logo and think because of this that the trailer looks more real.

At the very end of the trailer the caption ‘coming soon’ appears. This is another convention of a teaser trailer we stuck to as lots of teaser trailers have this to show the audience it will be coming out sometime in the future. We did this as it finished the trailer off nicely and gave it a more professional feel to it. Other films that have followed this convention in there teaser trailers are ROM-COMs like ‘Knocked UP’, ‘Intolerable Cruelty’ and ‘Couples Retreat’.  I really like the fact that we stuck to this convention as it makes the trailer look more complete.

At the very end of the trailer the caption ‘coming soon’ appears. This is another convention of a teaser trailer we stuck to as lots of teaser trailers have this to show the audience it will be coming out sometime in the future. We did this as it finished the trailer off nicely and gave it a more professional feel to it. Other films that have followed this convention in there teaser trailers are ROM-COMs like ‘Knocked UP’, ‘Intolerable Cruelty’ and ‘Couples Retreat’.  I also felt that it finished the trailer of nicely and professionally.

Our teaser trailer is one minute long. At first it was about one minute fifteen seconds long, looking back we decided that it was just a bit too long for a teaser trailer and decided to cut certain scenes down so it was shorter. By doing this we were able to follow the conventions of real media teaser trailers that normally last one minute or shorter like ‘Twilight’, Alice in Wonderland’, and ‘Life As We Know It’. I think this was the right thing to do as i felt it aimed at the audience more, as where certain scenes were shorter it teased the audience more and made it feel more like a real trailer when watching it, as it was short and t the point.

In this scene we had the girls dressed in clothes which typical school girls would be expected wear, as well as using props such as make-up, IPod’s and a hairbrush which are also things the audience might expect school girls to be using in their free time. We did this as it gives the audience a clear vision of what type of girls they are and   a rough idea of how old they are supposed to be. this would appeal to the audience as they are all doing what they should be to represent a certain age and type of group. however one convention we did break on their costumes is that on the left the character is wearing glasses, this did kind of break tradition as in most films such as 'Mean Girls' the 'poula' people do not wear glasses, as it is a type of costume that people associate with the geekier students. I like this as it shows a change in time as people are more accepting of wearing glasses in school now a days. Also I like the way the girls costumes and props target the audience precisely so they know who they are supposed to be, and look like professional characters.

Poster

In our teaser poster we decided to put in a billing block which is not a normal convention for a poster as they don’t normally have one. However we decided to add one in as it made it look more like a film poster and made it more effective. I felt this really worked as it made the poster look more complete, and like a typical film poster.

 In the poster we decided to put the stars names at the top, as well as this we made them slightly slanted and made the top of their names coloured and the bottom part black. This is a convention of other rom-com posters that we followed. This type of style for the stars names can be found on posters for films like ‘The Proposal’ and ‘How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days’. I really like the fact that we followed this convention as i feel it make the poster look nicer and more edgyier, by making it look this was I think that it will apeal to the target audience more and peek their interest.

 Magazine Cover

In our magazine cover we used the colour scheme of pink and blue; this was so that it matched our poster and trailer.  It also followed the convention of other film magazines where the cover of the magazine continues the theme of whatever film is on the cover such as the magazine Empire when ‘Sherlock homes’ or ‘Spiderman’ was on the cover. By doing this I feel it looks more poffestional and complete, because of this I really liked the finished result and was proud of the work me and my group did.

We also stuck to the convention of offering a free poster inside of the magazine. This was so that it looked more like a real film magazine such as ‘Total Film’ where they have posters inside of different actors or actresses that have a film out and people like. This I feel would really appeal to the target audience, as I know from experiance that people buy magazines specificully for free posters and gifts, making this on of my faverite features of the magazine cover.

In conclusion throughout all our work we have kept the same theme as well as sticking to most conventions. This is because we thought it was more effective, and targeted the right kind of audience. As an end result of this me and my group really liked the finished products and was proud of how they had turned out.

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

For our product we wanted to create a traditional theme of a ROM-COM, to do this we wanted the trailer itself and both the poster and magazine cover to match and be linked to each other which most films do. To do this we stuck to traditional conventions of ROM-COMs and kept the theme exactly the same through all three parts of our course work so that the audience can clearly see that they are all part of different methods of promoting the same film. By doing this we created both a mainstream and niche promotional package. I feel all three elements work together in an effective way to target the audience and peek the interest of them.

In the trailer the element I think works the best and is most effective is the captions and voice over. This is because it made it more effective and makes the trailer look and sound more like other professional trailers. It also helps move the story of the trailer along, and helps the audience understand what is going on more.  The element I like most in the poster is the two different pictures of different times. This is because it shows the audience that two different times occur with in the film making the trailer easier to understand. It also makes the poster look more interesting as well as keeping to the convention of a poster for a ROM-COM where there is always a picture of the couple at the front such as ‘The Ugly Truth’ and ‘Intolerable Cruelty’. In the magazine cover the element I like the most and think is most effective is the banner at the top with names of other films coming out. This is because looking at other film magazines such as Empire and Total film as well as others they all had a banner at the top naming coming films. So for me this was a convention that I was pleased to follow, so that it looked like a professional magazine cover and had more of an effect for the audience.

A difficulty my group had to overcome was that the first time we had finished our trailer and saved it, the next time we went to open it, and it wouldn’t open. Because of this we had to start from scratch with editing it together. Fortunately after that it has worked fine, and as we had a rough idea of what we wanted it to look like we was able to edit it more quickly than the previous time. However this did teach us a lesson and we are a bit paranoid, and constantly save our work after every little change we make. In the long run I was happy to keep saving as it gave me peace of mind that our work was safe.

A weakness the trailer has is that it doesn’t have a certificate indication what age group it is for. This is not really that bad as looking at other teaser trailers they do not have age certificates on them, however personally I just notice that it doesn’t have them.However personally i would have prefered to have seen this featured even if it was a TCB certificate. The element I feel is a weakness in the poster is the look of the characters in the pictures. I like the pictures but the weakness we couldn’t overcome is making the characters look younger in their faces, which is the only thing I feel the poster lacks, but it was a problem we couldn’t overcome as it was physically impossiable to change the way the actors looked completely. The element I found the magazine  cover had as a weakness was at the bottom of the page was that it could use a block with other offers on our information on to fill it up more, but then doing this would make the rest of it look a bit squashed. So although this could make the cover look better, it can also ruin the effect of the rest of it. This i felt was a problem thatcould have been over come, but being part of a group means you have to listen to everyones ideas.

3.       What have you learned from your audience feedback?

After showing our trailer on ‘Facebook’ and ‘Youtube’ we could some really positive comments, we even got an email from the editing director from ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ saying it was effective and good. However we also got comments that suggested some changes as well, from our target audience which helped us to make our trailer even better for our chosen targeted audience. The changes we did were quite small but made a lot of difference. The first change we did was to cut down the clips of the boy being clumsy so that it was snappier and faster paced like a conventional trailer. Doing this helped move the trailer along and when we loaded it on the internet again the comments agreed with our changes and thought it looked better. Another change we made due to audience feedback was we cut a certain scene slightly shorter, so we could avoid the shaky camera at the very end of the scene. This made the trailer move along more smoothly and made it look more professional. The only comment we didn’t really act on was someone said they didn’t really get what the trailer was trying to say. However the reason we didn’t really pay much attention to this comment was as it was from someone older who was not the target audience so we felt it was a mute comment.These comments I felt where able to help us improve our trailer so it targeted the right audience better, and because of this I like the finished result of the trailer it self, as well as the poster and magazine cover. In the end however the main points the feedback come back with were:

1. Need to show more bits of the girl and boy together, him falling for her.
2. Clips need to be shorter and snappier.
3. Actor looks at the camera in first clip.
4. The voice over seems to dramatic 'As though his going to kill her' was quoted.
5. Use more tracking instead of panning.
6. Simple but good.

Using these points my group tried to change the trailer when we could however as I have already explained certain changes couldnt be made due the the fact as it didnt work, or there was a reason it was there in the first place. Doing thios made me feel that the trailer looked more perfestional and was created to the audiences tasts more.

4.       How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation.

For different parts of the construction of our work we used different technology programs. The program we used the most was ‘Pinicole’ which was for editing the footage in to a teaser trailer. This was very useful and allowed us to make an effective trailer. From using this program I learnt that it is important to save your work regularly, and that the little bits of editing are what take the most time. Another useful program we used was ‘Blogger.com’ this is where we have kept track of the research for our work and updates of how it is going and changes we have made. This has made it easier to make changes to the trailer, poster and magazine cover in order to improve it and make it more compatible to our target audience. Other technology we have used to help us with changes and audience feedback is ‘Youtube’ and ‘Facebook’. Using these three programs has taught me that although they are not really invented for film promoting they are effective ways of getting films and other media out to a wider audience in order to promote it and get people aware of it. We also used a camera in order to film our footage. Using this we were able to experiment with close ups, tracking and long shots to try and create different fills and atmospheres in different scenes, to try and make a better trailer. This taught me that just by changing slight settings on a camera or distance can change the whole feel of a scene.  All together whilst making the trailer there were a lot of different technologies that we used to make all three bits of work fit together in order to create an affective theme for the target audience. Personally I feel that these programs as helped us a lot in creating an effective trailer. Also I learnt how to use programs i have never used before such as 'Photoshop' were my group member Mercedes helped by photoshoping the photos to fit in the poster and magazines, as through this i was able to help change and suggest changes to the photos, which i feel shows really good team work and compramise.

In conclusion I am very proud of my groups final products. I feel I have made a vast improvement on last year’s film opening and that I was more skilled when using the different types of technology in order to make the final product.

Caption and Soundtrack

For the trailer we have added in a soundtrack and a voiceover as well. We have three captions throughout our teaser trailer, and the title at the end. We laid out our teaser trailer in this way, as all our research into teaser trailers suggested that this is a typical way for a teaser trailer to be constructed. The captions that we decided to use were:

1. The years have gone by: This is the first caption you see which is in between the first adult scenes, and him falling over in front of the girl. We wanted to use a caption that would show that time has passed and it had moved back to when they were younger. We used a white background with pink and blue writing as this fits in with the theme of our poster and magazine cover, as well as representing the genre of a rom-com.
2. He loves her, she loves him not: This is the second caption which also was featured in our poster as well and links them all together. This caption is to illustrate how he loved her and she didn’t love him. It is also a play on words, and adds to the comedy part of the trailer.
3. What goes around comes around: This is the last caption that tells you something about the trailer.  We decided to use this phrase in the teaser trailer as it is a popular phrase used in rom-coms. We wanted it to show, that he doesn’t really like her and that now she likes him.

To go along with the captions we decided to have a voice over in the background playing over the soundtrack. We decided to use this as in many other teaser trailers that we looked at there was both a soundtrack and a voice over. We decided this was a convention that fitted well with our genre and target audience. Once we edited it and added it to our teaser trailer, we gained feedback from our target audience in which they suggested that the voice over made the teaser trailer more conventional. It also illustrated what the trailer was trying to portray.

Final Magazine

On our final magazine cover we decided to stick to blue and pink which we have used as our colour scheme in our poster as they suggest romance and are typical colours used in rom-coms such as ‘Valentines Day’. We wanted our characters to be dressed smartly as we wanted to suggest them as adults, and also would make them look more glamorous and follow usual conventions of magazines. We also used trial and error with the range of colours we used, as we thought that by just using one shade of each colour made the cover look dull and at times it didn’t really stand out from the picture, because of this we decided to use a range of different shades of pink and blue. We then showed it to our target audience who agreed they liked the new version better. When I researched into other film magazines covers such as Empire, I could see that they were using an 'Exclusive' border above the main headline of the magazine which made it stand out more and gain in the audience’s attention. The font for the title was chosen early on in the process of making the magazine cover as we liked how it is different, distinctive and bold enough too reel in the audience.



Final Poster

Our final poster uses the colour scheme pink and blue, we wanted this to show the romance of the film, but we also wanted the pictures to put forward the comedy aspect of the film as well. When researching other rom-com posters aimed at the same target audience as ours we found that bright colours were used, along with attractive title fonts. Taglines were also used to represent the main message of the film. We decided on the keeping faith font, as it comes across as romantic and is compatible with our older teen audience. Although it is black and white, we used pink in the heart to suggest romance as well as adding some colour to the poster. The photos the important part of the poster as we wanted them to illustrate both the younger and older parts of the film. The first showing them younger at school with him liking her, but her having an attitude and not being interested in him, then the second picture showing them older and more mature, but as he has become very successful she has become interested in him despite what her friends think, but then he doesn't like her. We thought that using the tagline 'She loves him...He loves her not' was a good simple way of suggesting our storyline, as well as a clever play on the original saying ‘She loves him....she loves him not', and as the main plot of the story is how the tables have turned and it is now the girl trying to win the guy. This is different from other rom-coms as most of the time it is normally the boy trying to win the girl over such as ‘The Ugly Truth’. We also added in some pink hearts to contribute to the romance, and also add a fun element to the poster; it also matched the pink heart in the word faith. After showing our target audience we got feedback suggesting that the 'coming soon' needed to be bigger and that the actor’s names needed to be bolder so that they were more noticeable like their posters. We were also told that they liked the poster better without a background, as the white makes the characters and colours stand out more. We took this feedback on board and changed specific parts to suit our target audience more. When doing this we decided to make half the names black and the other half pink and blue to match the colour scheme, as well as making them slightly slanted, this was the same in other rom-com posters we looked at such as ‘How to lose a guy in 10 days’, ‘The Proposal’ and ‘Failure to launch’.

Film Name.

For the film we have decided to defiantly keep it as ‘keeping Faith’. This is because with our trailer it is a pun on words as it has two meanings. One is as in the saying keeping the faith, because the girl Faith likes him but doesn’t go with him because of her friends. The saying comes in as she believes she needs to keep the faith when she is older that he will still like her. The other meaning is that Faith is actually her name and that he liked her when they were younger.  This shows that the name of the film goes with the theme of the film, as well as sounding like a typical Rom-Com.

Plans

Nearly finishing our poster and magazine cover, our group just has to concentrate mostly on filming on editing. this we will be doing Friday morning so we can start editing Friday afternoon.also i will be going to my teacher who has agreed to do the voice over for our trailer, which will help as we can then include it in whilst editing.