A2 Media Studies

•Advanced Portfolio•Research & Planning•Centre No: 1304

St. Francis Xavier College

•My name is: Karolina Krzyzostaniak

•Candidate No: 30022877

•My main portfolio project is: an opening sequence (short

film)•With two ancillary projects:1. film magazine review page

2. film poster

The genre of my main project is:

•Genre: Horror•Title: Shriek

•Target audience: Young adults + older

So I have researched as follows:

Model 1 - Scream Model 2 – The Strangers

What I learned from this was what conventions there are in horror films.

Design aspect 1• From ‘Scream’, which is my

main case study for this project, I learned what kind of shots to use to grab the audience’s attention, when to play what type of music and generally tried to see what the audience may be looking for in a horror film.

Design aspect 2• In ‘The Strangers’ the idea is

a bit similar to scream – masked killers – and I wanted to see how it may be shown differently thought keep the audience equally intrigued. This movie has many good moments which make the audience react – scream, or jump.

For my main project…•The target audience is teenagers (18-25) with the secondary audience being 25+•And here is how I arrived at this

conclusion: as I have asked around, more teenagers like horror films. To adults,

they’re not as scary, as they have more experience with them. Horror films have

more of an impact on teenagers.

Target Audience

Here is an image of how I imagine a typical

member of my target audience.

Their characteristics are:• an average teenager• likes horror movies• scares easily

What I learned from audience feedback about planning my main task

When telling people about my main task, everybody seems to agree that it’s a good idea, and that they’re looking forward to

seeing how I interpret the movie in my own way.

Here are 4 original photographs for the storyboard:

I modified each photograph; here is the original next to the final version:

Here is how I changed the photograph and why:I made it darker, so it would add effect (scary film).

Raw 1: Final 1:

And the second one:

Here is how I changed the photograph and why:I cropped the image, so the main focus of it were the feet.

Raw 2: Final 2:

And the third one:

I made this picture just a shade darker, to make It more defined.

Raw 3: Final 3:

And the last one:

Here is how I changed the photograph and why:I have cropped it, because in the original my finger could be

seen, and also to make it more mysterious.

Raw 4: Final 4:

What I learned from audience feedback about my main task:

What I learned is that people seem to think my idea for the project is good, though I should focus on making sure it’s not too much like the original.

Professional Model 1 for Ancillary 1

What I have learned:Magazine film reviews

can be detailed, without giving out the actual plot of the film.

Shows audience different sides of the

film so they know what to expect.

Model 1

Professional Model 2 for Ancillary 1

What I have learned:Looking at this, I mainly focused on the layout

and additional features of the review that keep

it interesting (the pictures and speech

bubbles to show quotes).

Model 2

This is my ancillary task 1

This is how it appeals to target audience:

This film review appeals to the

audience because of its simplicity yet

detailed information. It looks fun and easy

to read.

What I learned from audience feedback about ancillary task 1

What I learned from audience feedback for this task was that it seemed really

good and quite professional.

Professional Model 1 for Ancillary 2

Model 1 What I have learned:

What I have learned from this poster is that it doesn’t have to be complicated to be effective and that usually it is the opposite way round, just like this poster presents. It is only one simple image, yet it creates a huge impact on the audience.

Professional Model 2 for Ancillary 2

Model 2 What I have learned:

What I learned from this particular poster is how to arrange my image, the title and the small print at the bottom of the page for it to look professional, yet at the same time to not let it over take the image and for it to still have an effect.

This is my ancillary project 2

This is how it appeals to target audience:

The poster looks very professional and quite scary, giving the feel of

what genre it is. It’s very simple so the audience doesn’t need to read into it to understand

what the movie will be about.

What I learned from audience feedback about ancillary task 2

From the audience feedback from this task I learned that most people loved it, saying

it looked really professional and that they’d probably go see the film if it was

real.

Changes made in the re-draft of main task

For the main task, I didn’t do too much as I wasn’t the editor. I always included my

opinion on what I thought would work best, and we didn’t really do any re-drafts s

everything went pretty smoothly the first time.

Changes made in the re-draft of ancillary task 1

When I was first doing my ancillary task 1, I thought that the review page had to be just one

page, so when I found out it’s supposed to be two, I added a picture with a quote for the

second page.

Changes made in the re-draft of ancillary task 2

For the ancillary task two, I was pretty happy with my original design, so the only thing I had to change with it was the size of the font at the

bottom and adding the age restriction sticker to it.

How my 3 products work together to appeal to target audience• Target audience: The products appeal to the target audience as they’re not too complicated without too much text, which is what this particular

target audience prefers

•Generic characteristics: I follow the same generic characteristics of horror in all my tasks, keeping to dark colours and colour schemes, keeping it

simple and mysterious at the same time.

• Narrative structure: The narrative structure is linear in the movie and doesn’t give anything away in the poster as it’s just a picture of the killer,

as well as in the poster, not much is given away apart from a few short descriptions of a few scenes.

• Representational issues: My products mainly give representations of a female who is weak (the first person to die in the movie) and a male killer,

which is quite stereotypics.

Links back to evaluation and blog

http://karolinak3384.blogspot.co.uk/