Evaluation Question 4

Evaluation Question 4

What I had used:

Adobe Premier: This was the software I had used in order to create my filming production. I used adobe premier because of its compatibility with creating a filming production. For example, it had a ‘bin’ in order to store and apply chosen clips at any time without any hassle. This way I could combine a series of shots and see which ones were right for the production, at a very quick rate, with straightforward directions to make such and such happen. Adobe premiere also had many functions that had allowed me to add a series of effects towards my production. For example, the ability to change the filter to ‘black and white’ allowed me to convey a theme of sadness within the production, allowing me to add an emotional effect to engage the audience with all their suspense and wonder about the events of the production. Also, the ability to zoom in and out and position my clips allowed me to clean and tidy up scaling during my production. This made all my clips in proportion and had allowed me to overall make my production look much more professional – like an actual product of media. This is very useful in achieving my goal of adding a strong sense of legitimacy towards my product. Other useful features include ‘fade ins’, where at the end of each clip comes a fading transitioning feature that improves the quality of my production because it works on the aesthetically pleasing side of the production.

Adobe Photoshop: This is the software I had used in order to create both my poster and my magazine front cover. I found Photoshop to be highly compatible in order to create both products because Photoshop is software designed to be very focused on the editing of images. For example, the ability to adjust the brightness to make the main image in proportion with the background. Features like this enabled me to make it look the main character was really in the situation of approaching the Olympics, (Main image and background) and hence helped form a dramatic and enticing image within the production. Websites such as dafont.com allowed me to download a series of fonts of various styles. The advantage of this was that it allowed me to find a font that really ‘went with’ my design and was very coherent with my style of appearing ‘urban’ and ‘old school’. The typography alone allowed to form my own voice and really formulate a youthful feel towards my production.

What I had used: I had used a camera with a tripod in order to fully construct most of my video shots and all of my pictures. It was a reliable source in order to capture high quality shots as well as fully utilise the ability to use cinematography, such as high angle shots, low angle shots, close-ups and long shots. Finally, an SD card was used in order to upload all the files safely onto my documents. Admittedly, I had to sometimes rely on the quality of an IPhone 5S. However, this did have its plus sides, as it was convenient to use in terms of portability and space usage. Moreover, it was not a borrowed item, therefore I had no issue of uploading any videos or pictures to the IMac. The only tool needed to put it onto my data was an IPhone 5/6 charger wire.

Lastly, my data was presented on the following:

Photoshop – Always had the right size to fit the product, was very fitting for a poster, design-friendly features such as rasterise which helped blend in placed images to create an overall picture.

Adobe Premiere – The best software to use in terms of placing various scenes together. Very easy and straightforward once the basics are learned, has features that allow you to input voice-overs and music alike, and to place still images, being convenient for using text to convey the story and plot in-between scenes.

YouTube. Keeps the quality of the production, does not compress or have any technical malfunctions towards the product itself, uploads safely and reliably. Also allows you to attract an audience through adding ‘tags’ to categorise your video.

Evaluation Question 1

Conventions of my product

In my media production, I had used several conventions to achieve various effects.

Audience: My target audience is going more towards those who enjoy genres such as sport, action and drama, but more specifically, appeals more to the youth. This is because my product contains many conventions that would be suited to those categories. For example, in my film trailer, I had included various scenes that were sympathy and wonder-arousing. These scenes include the ones with the black and white filter, where the character is employing the following conventions to reach out to the target audience. Throughout all of my productions, the character is using body language to convey seriousness and the severity of his mental state. For example, in one scene he is sitting his head down on a table, on his own, and in another, he is in school, headphones in, sitting lazily on the stairs. This is to convey his loneliness and sadness to the audience, and has an effect of moving the watcher emotionally because of his isolating solitude. Furthermore, this captures the target audience of those who like drama because it arouses suspense of how the individual will deal with such a miserable issue. Also, in context, as studies from bbc.co.uk show, children in England are “among unhappiest in the world”, for various reasons such as exam factories and being bullied. With my character seeming to be an embodiment of the testimony to this study, many youths will find this product relatable, and therefore will be drawn further to it. In addition, the black and white filter helps indefinitely define hardship and stress, and really shows the gloomy imagery to match the character’s emotion. This all adds the effect appealing to those who enjoy the genre of drama. It provides a certain relating and levelling to daily situations of their own.

My productions attract those who enjoy the sport genre because I was able to choose my locations wisely and correctly. Location is crucial in attracting this sort of audience because it drastically helps give a realistic edge towards the production – this meaning the scenes making sense and easy to understand and picture just what is happening. In my production, I did my best to ensure that the location was appropriate towards the ambition and the purpose of the plot.  During the second half of my film production, the character is training in order to achieve his goals. I had used locations that many athletes would in fact be familiar with, such as high terrain hills, the Peterborough Athletics Track, and two gyms, which does not only give a certain taste of intensity into the production, but also shows the character’s maniac determination to become a world champion. So I used the quantity of locations in order to really convey themes of ambition, hope, hard work and glory within the production. Typically, athletes in general are kept motivated by these themes themselves. Therefore, I draw a massive sporting audience as this production with an inspirational figure of an athlete, would serve as a motivational device for those enjoy both sport and the genre of sport.

I had used mise-en-scene in order to convey a heavy sense of action within the production. Within the training scenes, various props are used to give a ‘hard-core feel’ in the product that those who enjoy the action genre enjoy. For example, the explosive movements with heavy weights and jumping over mini hurdles. This is achieved through fast paced movements and aggressive performance. Using these props also allowed variety in actions that could be executed, and since they were ‘out-of-the-ordinary’ exercises, it has an extended effect of enticing the audience with shock and wonder, ultimately impressing those who like that genre. It conveys imagery that the story is about a superhuman who is about to go and challenge the world, which is very suitable for attracting an audience who enjoys action.

Finally, sound has come into massive play into the quality of my production. I used a musical piece called “The Perfect Battle” which starts off with the music very low, gloomy and sad, which was paired up with the scenes of the character seeming like a misfit, an outcast. Then, the music switches to an uplifting, ‘action-needs-to-be-taken’ kind of beat. The sound here is paired up with the intensive training scenes. The effect of this specific soundtrack being used is that it strongly differentiates the two situations within the production. One of idle, sad behaviour, then one of determination-possessed behaviour. This is done to show the characteristics of the main protagonist, as a boy who grows up into a man, and who has the mentality to take on the world and achieve all that he can. It also shows the sense of duty within the production and arouses suspense in the way that it gets the audience wondering how the protagonist will do in his plight.

Evaluation Question 3

Evaluation Question – What have I learned from audience feedback?

Social Class and age: When viewing my media product to various people, one response among questions that I got that stood out amongst all others was that the social class was aimed more towards the working class youth. As sociological studies show, students who are typically viewed as the ‘underachiever’ and ‘troublemaker’, are typically the working class because studies show that a large percentage of them are materially and culturally deprived, and thus are labelled these things and more because they are put under a self-fulfilling prophecy, in a negative aspect. This has a strong relation to the protagonist in my production. He is portrayed as a student who has an extremely rough and unfavourable time in his academic side of life, and my feedback tells me that this is an extremely positive representation in society (because he goes for an extraordinary goal and becomes something nobody expects). What I have learned from this feedback is that counter-type characters have great power in terms of motivational aspects and influence in changing the portraying of different stereotypes. For example, in modern times, the youth is portrayed negatively, across different forms of media (newspaper articles, television). In other words, youths are portrayed as degenerating by the years. By producing a character who can show characteristics that completely defy the lowered expectations of youth (passion, determination, drive, vision), I would inspire more working class youths to find their hidden talents with my production, instead of succumbing to a self-fulfilling prophecy of underestimation they may be cursed with in their school life. Age-wise, my production shines especially towards 14-18 year olds, as this is range is where the UK has its highest sporting individual population. An individual who gave me feedback said the production is ‘strongly coherent’ with the sporting population, meaning it reaches out to children and young adults across all social classes, as the production encourages sporting success to its viewers’. What I have learned from this is that since the protagonist is young, and he goes for something extraordinary, this pushes the boundaries and portrayed expectations for youths, that they have the capability of achieving advanced and high performance – not due to aging into it, but through hard work and dedication. I learned that a model of a production reaches it to many age groups, obviously depending on the age of the model, and can give a strong and vibrant message through however the model is portrayed. I learned that my message could actually inspire other athletes to go for greater heights rather than just being satisfied with a participation medal. What improvements did I make: To really differentiate my ability to send off a message from my production from last year’s AS production, I decided to have participants look at my production in the editing stages. For example, the magazine and the film poster. I had been told that the Olympic logo placed on both of them was the main aspect of graphology in the magazine that really would draw attention above all else from my audience. In context, the Olympics is one of world’s foremost and renowned events, and applying it to the plot would definitely and the visuals would certainly be a very good selling point for the production. What I have learned from this is how attractive much more attractive something I can make future productions with a good logo, making genre obvious, and more promising to explore. 

Further feedback: (Greg McLeod)

“Nice work! That was really a pleasure to watch. It’s fun to see the placement of each scene throughout the music – it’s a neat progression and visually shows how each phase fit into the mood you wanted to evoke in your vision.”

Through this piece of feedback, I learned that the soundtrack that I had used had heavily been a massive influence in conveying the situation and basic details of my production. I had learned the specific effects of a soundtrack within a media production. For example, a soundtrack can convey the level of seriousness in a situation as well as give key details about a character. It shows what sort of film it will be and has the power to get the audience at either the edge of their seats, or in fact challenge them emotionally, or to just simply build up key moments within a trailer.

“In your production, your character has really challenged the negative black stereotype” (Form tutor/media teacher)

From various films, such as “Boyz n da hood”, and “Anuva hood”, black people are always portrayed as thugs, proper-ghetto type kind of characters. Their character is formed by speech that is accompanied with obvious sociolect. Meaning their dialogue is teaming with vulgar colloquial language, a very low level of standard English, and having grammatically incorrect sentence structures. Not to forget orthography, where certain words are pronounced partially. Their rough ways are further shown with an angry tone of voice that makes them appear to be more ‘gangster’. This makes them appear uneducated, irrational, rogue and violent. This is very negative because it portrays to the masses that black people are dangerous and have no place in a truly successful position of life – and that does not mean being the king of the streets, but actually working for something that matters. Also, there is their exterior, as they are typically dressed in tracksuits and casual clothing – and they seem to have an overwhelming amount of concern towards fashion). In conclusion, they are portrayed as unsophisticated, culturally deprived and unable to go into a life with a bright future, because their vision is severed by society.  I learned that my production changed that. Instead of going in a life of ‘retreatism’ (giving up on life goals and going into a shell that encourages a lifestyle of laziness and an erratic uncaring nature), my character would search for a talent, and go on a journey with it. I learned that many clips in a production can carry great symbolism and is a key way of portraying a specific message. (For example, the character throwing chocolate in the bin, giving away a comfortable lifestyle for the love of the sport.) As well as the poses in the magazine production, which makes hard work among black people look more realistic and attractive.

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question

HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE COMBINATION OF YOUR MAIN PRODUCT AND ANCILLARY TEXTS?

Outline what products you created and the general theme that you were aiming for.

I had created a magazine front cover for sport, a teaser poster and lastly a film trailer production. They all consisted of a theme of action, made to excite the audience and give the impression that the contents of the film teased would be full of intensity, hardship and glory. For example, an attempt to achieve this was done in the magazine front cover, where it shows the fatigued athlete in his uniform of sport, looking as if he is at the end of his rope, burned out and drained. The effect of this is to emotionally provoke the viewer through the method of showing a clear representation of physical challenge. Also, I tried to convey a more realistic theme too, by including conventions of actual media products. This means appropriate text font and placing, including mastheads, sky lines, selling lines, main images. This has an effect of adding standard legitimacy to my products, allowing them to be represented as a truly respectable item of the media.

Why do artists use social media? How have you used social media? Does the use of social media link all of your products together?

Artists use the media to further bolster the product of their production, meaning calling out for a huger audience, therefore more profit, marketing and promotion. For example, artists such as 50 Cent use social media platforms such as Instagram. In 50 Cent’s case, he uses his enormous follower count to his advantage by constantly posting self-promoting pictures with a teaser quote in order to build suspense, excitement and wonder, all to combine and create a wealth of fame for his productions.

does the website allow you to download the song or buy the album? Can you purchase merchandise from the website? Is the music video evident on the website? Did you use synergy?

-I was in fact able to ask personally the creator of the soundtrack I had used to use his musical piece, called ‘The Perfect Battle’. Ideally, the creator happened to be a very widely known game developer across a portion of the gaming community. So in theory, I was very much so able to draw attention to my media product simply by giving credit towards his work. I, in turn end up drawing attention from his huge following alike. His legitimacy is proved by the fact he has his own merchandise, and his music can be downloaded for free. This gives my production an edge as having a huge source for my music gives my productions a good impression.