IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT, USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?
Through in depth research of real media text, including films such as The Warrior, The Fighter, Million Dollar Baby and Rocky as well as music videos such as Maroon 5's - One More Night, I discovered a range of different conventions that were apparent in all of the films, videos that I had researched. Some of these conventions included equilibrium, state of emotion, sporting event, success and failure. I developed the convention of a sporting event by using an extremely wide range of shots to film the main character in my film training in his local gym. By changing his outfit and using differing shots, i developed the idea of the sporting event by creating the effect that time was passing, and the character was training harder and on a frequent basis. Further more, i challenged the convention of equilibrium by using editing techniques to give the trailer a non-linear structure. In doing so, I believe that not too much information was revealed to the audience, yet a wide range of differing small clips were shown to 'wet' the audiences appetites and make them want to see the actual film.
HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE COMBINATIONS OF YOUR MAIN PRODUCT AND ANCILLARY TEXTS?
In my opinion, the combination of both my main product and my ancillary texts are very effective due to the consistency amongst all 3. In both my website home page, as well as the poster and trailer, the main 'Lucky Punch' title, remains the same creating a sense of continuity and successful representation. Further more, in my film poster, I purposely used a photograph that shows the main characters face clearly , from a low angle that also makes him appear superior to the viewer as he is higher up.
WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM YOUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?
From my audience feedback, I learnt that the editing of a trailer plays a large part in the audience understanding. In my first edit of Lucky Punch, I decided to use montage editing and lots of quick cuts in order to show a range of conventions that would represent the genre, yet ensure that I wasn't giving too much away. Due to the quick cuts and a wide range of differing shots and locations, 40% of my audience admitted that they were unsure about the narrative of my trailer and that due to the differing locations and scenes, that multiple plots could be interpreted by the viewer. In response to this, I ensured that in my final edit, a few small scenes were removed to prevent confusion and added in a few extra scenes with familiar characters from previous scenes, ensuring the viewer could follow the narrative effectively. A further thing I learnt from my audience feedback was how music plays a large part in the not only the genre but the mood and feeling of the piece. With my two song choices, one more mellow building up to a high tempo song with a strong beat. The build up of the second song choice helped heighten the equilibrium when the beat dropped and my main character punches into a phone box, glass flying everywhere and the titles appearing amongst it.
HOW DID YOU USE MEDIA TECHNOLOGY IN THE CONSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH, PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGES?
Beginning my media product with in-depth research into the genre and conventions of real sports drama films, I used the internet and YouTube to study a wide range of sports drama products such as film trailers, music videos and documentaries. Once I had gathered my research, I began to plan my film trailer and did a brainstorm of all my gathered ideas on Prezi, a cloud-based presentation software. With all my ideas gathered on one program, I was then able to evaluate and select the ideas, locations, characters and scenes that I believed would create the most successful representation of the genre. I was then able to construct a storyboard for my trailer. During these stages, Adobe Photoshop was extremely useful as i was able to express my ideas in a digital format, that I was able to easily edit and alter. I went on to use the storyboard later on during the filming stages to ensure the correct shots were used, along with lighting, costume and location. When constructing my trailer, i used a variety of technology in the form of my equipment. This included a Canon 4D digital camera to film the wide range of scenes, Adobe Premier to edit most of my trailer, and Final Cut Pro for the final scene using green screen and special effects to create the effect of glass shattering. In the evaluation stages, media technology in the form of differing websites were important in gaining audience feedback in order to see where improvements could be made and what audiences felt was effective. Overall the use of media technology in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages contributed to a successful final product and representation of a sports drama trailer.
