Evaluation

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

product? Because we were making a zombie trailer we were

already given a set of rules to follow, such as take of the head kill the zombie, etc. In addition, all though we do not acknowledge the rule there are shots that show that we are, such as the baseball bat being flung at the camera. And then there’s the baseball bat, it is almost a tradition to use a piece of sports equipment for a zombie film, therefore following the conventions. The trailer also follows the usual Todorov format of equilibrium, which is then broken by a specific moment, our being the second the main character sees the zombie behind him.

• The magazine cover includes the large empire logo, the not so big title of the film and the smaller subheadings on the front, as you would see on any magazine. I also has the character holding there gimmicks (the camera being the main one) and the baseball bat to follow the conventions. On all covers, I have seen the character will be holding something or they will add an effect to the foreground.

I looked at zombie posters a lot of them will show a outline or silhouette but most will not show a photograph of a zombie, as it takes away the fear in the film as it would if you put the monster on the front of a poster, your able to build suspense in the film. This was the reasoning for not showing a close up of the zombie in the trailer, in that way I think we have broken tradition, as most zombie film will show one in the trailer. I also put all of the usual credits, heading, and actors above. The heading was originally going to be a font straight from Photoshop but in the feedback I was told it look to much like inception [which I accidentally took as a compliment] so I change it to one that continued the idea of splattered blood or grimy skin. The font had a yellowish outline which worked well on the

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

The film could be seen as post modern in the way that it includes the view from the camera, the zombies as well as the directors, this would remind the audience that they are watching a movie, which would be opposite from ‘Cloverfield’ and ‘[REC]’

The use of the font links most of them together, but it is not used in the trailer its self because the colour did not work with how the trailer plays out. But in all of them there is the idea of entrapment, whether it’s the baseball bat motif or the use of signs that show it.

Then there is also the camera prop, as the protagonist (played by me) films what he sees, and all though this is not directly translated to the poster, the idea of being watched, the shadow and the information is displayed means someone has put all that there. The implication is that the character is a conspiracy theorist, research has shown that is has actually come across.

The recurring motif of image (and its not a strong one) is the broken signs, whether it is an actual sign, a sub heading, the title or a tone card. The tone card follows the structure less. We see the broken style a bit more in the others. Aswell as this we have the overlapping yellow on blue, this has the warm colour being overtaken by the cold, much like a zombie. And on the magazine the subheadings have the yellow being scratched off the blue.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Using the website Zoomerang I was able to acquire the information for the horror movie the problem I found with the website was that you cannot find out who posted what. In the way that you cant, find out if the people who said they like to go to the cinema are the ones who liked the Zombie movie or the slasher movie. This makes the research slightly redundant. But I was able to come up with 3 ideas that I could pitch to an audience.

I came up with the idea of a zombie comedy, where a group have to fight to get to the ‘safe zone’ as the research showed that ‘Shaun of the dead’ was the most popular horror. This idea was shot down since the quality of Shaun of the dead was so high people felt it would just be coping it. The second was a slasher were a teacher get revenge, this was shot down nearly instantly. Finally the last was a group fight zombies and the government. In the end we took the last and improved it from what people said

The most common response was that it needed to have a new idea to remove it from the rest of the zombie films, so we came up with including the mixed perspectives. Another was that the trailer needed gore of some kind

How did you use media technologies in the Construction and research, planning and evaluation stage?

On the web-

Slide-share -to post slide shows on to the web and assessable anywhere with the internet. The best usage of this website was the pitch. And all though we were not actually pitching the pitch we were able to see an insight in to the world of media presentations. Also I am doing the evaluation on slideshare which I will either present from or read the slides off to the camera (not to the letter though, as if presenting to the camera. If I am, hello.)

- this was a easy way to get people to get feedback, but I’ve already told you about that one

On the Apple MacI used to make the trailer, poster and magazine cover

using these two programmes:Final cut express- mostly I found the editing process

easy, but what I found more difficult was applying tone cards into the timeline from Photoshop, as there was problems with tone card size, the background and fading in and out. The problem of the background was solved by deleting the background of the tone card on Photoshop, so it was just floating letters and them creating my own using a photograph of the back of my hand, which was then edited, on Photoshop. The two were then put together, allowing the text to fade into the background.

The slide looked naked

Photoshop- It was weird to use Photoshop again, but I could remember most of the qualities of it. I used it for the magazine cover and the poster, some of the pieces from the poster were made on paint, and I know this is frowned upon. But it was for the area that was not meant to look like it was done on professional equipment, it was the section of signs and news ‘clippings’

-Then there was the problem of size (this also applied to the static that flowed though out the trailer). For this I decreased the size using the wire frame. It had to be done, because when rendered, the screen size had to be reduced. So I had to reduce the screen to the same size using the wire frame on the image, all the time checking to see if it was an identical size to the rest of the trailer.

THE END