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

Construction We incorporated various technologies such as SLR cameras, Mac computers and other software to help us create our teaser trailer, Poster and Website.  The image to the left is the 5D Canon camera we used it to take pictures and a 500D to film (right) our teaser trailer.  This ensured high quality viewing for our audience and captured the detail of the writing on the wall.  It was easy to connect the cameras to the Mac and transfer the images to edit with ‘lightroom’ adjusting the contrast for all the pictures.   To create the time lapse we used a device which took pictures every 2 seconds.  We also looked at YouTube clips in how time lapse's work and what they are.   

 

Wix was very easy to use to make our Cause Unknown website.  Click here to see more on how we constructed the website with different features.

To gain audience feedback  we used YouTube, Facebook (using our own profiles and making a 'like' page) and SurveyMonkey this helped us on our research in improving our teaser trailer.  We also created a Twitter account due to the ever growing popularity of the social networking site.  People are able to see what we are doing with our film and can interact with us on a more personal level.  Audience feedback is most effective online because of how easy it is for people to access the internet through smart phones, Ipads and computers where ever you are.  Nearly all technology has the internet so it is quick to respond to surveys and watch videos.     

A YouTube converter allowed us get non- diagetic sounds but make it sound diagetic.  This was particularly used on our website with the sound of a girl whispering.

Garageband on the Mac computers was useful as it has been in our AS level work last year.  We can layer different sounds to make it more realistic within our teaser.

To create the typography on the website and blog we searched on the internet for 'handwriting' fonts to get the child like writing we were looking for.  Urbanfonts has thousands to choose from making our font look unique.  

For our teaser trailer we used iMovie '11 this uses up to date features and we are able to set the frame per second (fps) to our accordance which was 2fps.  We trimmed clips to bring focus on the wall and the writing itself.  

  

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

The combination of products is what entices an audience into paying to see the film. We wanted all our publications to feature a common theme, and use the same symbolism in each. We looked at the Dark Knight Rises ancilliary, as they each use minimalist symbolism to tease the audience into watching the film. The poster uses the 'Bat' logo as an instant draw, very simplistic yet instantly recognise. Although we do not have our own symbol, we can use one, such as a white dress, to represent something that will draw our audience in.

The Dark Knight Rises website uses black to represent darkness, and a broken Batman mask to represent Batman being broken. The rain and figure of Bayne represent how he has been left outside, alone and without help. It is this style and symbolism that we used for inspiration for our combination of ancilliary texts, as we used the angelic figure of the dress to symbolise a light in the darkness, and kept the same gritty theme throught out publicatuions.

Our teaser trailer shows innocence, paired with confusion and fear with the ripping white noise creating unease and discomfort. This contrasts with our poster, as our poster only shows the innocence we are trying to convey. The absence of writing on the wall is also a choice we made, to separate the trailer from the poster and website. We have also hidden her identity in both the poster and website, which conveys innocence.

Creating a balance between similarity and contrast to create a consistant and visually distinct style was our biggest challenge when creating our ancillary texts. All pieces convey a dark feel, with the white dress and blonde hair representing an angelic feel, with a sense of lighting up the darkness. The trailer also plays on this symbolism with the match lighting up the surroundings with a luminous glow.

Our website uses similar imagery as the other two publications, however we opted for a darker theme. Using a photograph of the drawn-on wall, we have created a dark scene,with our trailer at the center. Using the trailer in the center, Eva (our main character) is mostly covered up, removing some innocence from the scene, whilst drawing more attention to our trailer.




The poster is our most 'innocent' publication, as it doesn't give much away to the audience and shows Eva is a dim but fair light. Attention is drawn to the centre of the poster, which shows a souble shadow of Eva. this double shadow is representative of her mind, fragmented into two - the innocent little girl, and the angry and seemingly endoctrinated tortured soul. The title is also split in two, which is also a symbol of this.

Our trailer is a combination of both innocence and darkness, and is the most revealing of all our pieces, as we reveal Eva's face. The time lapse shows how this is happening over a long period of time, and expresses her frustration and confusion. The trailer compliments our poster and website by keeping with the same angelic feel of Eva, however when we see her face at the end of the trailer the image is black and white with her in darkness, looking angry. This contrasts with our poster, but also shows the two sides of Eva - the angelic figure, and the angry tortured soul.

The idea of our ancillary texts are to draw our target audience to our trailer, which is more revealing than the website and poster. All our pieces are good advertisement, as each piece leads the audience to ask questions - The poster and website leave her without an identity, whereas the trailer reveals her face, however that leaves the audience asking why she is angry.

Idenity Deconstruction

This is a deconstruction of the film poster Identity, this is very useful to our research because this film like ours is to do with Schizophrenia.

High Tension

High tension, It stars Cécile de France as Marie. The protagonist, a college student who attempts to save her friend from a brutal killer before the ending reveals that she is really the murderer. Her motive seems to be her desire to be alone with Alex. Marie has created a separate persona (the psychopathic killer) in her mind who murders the victims.

This is a deconstruction of 'A Beautiful Mind,' there will be more deconstructions of posters, this will give us more thoughts and ideas for how our own film poster will look like.