Development of Magazine Cover

- Donjeta Salihi and Jack Breckell

Evaluation

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

Within out A2 media trailer Breaking Faith we have challenged conventional aspects of social realism due to our accessibility. Typically, social realist trailers are set in gritty flats - this can be seen in the 2009 film Fish Tank. However, because none of us had access to a working class environment and we wanted to film indoors, we decided to portray social realism in middle class families and areas. Our aim being that we would inform the audience that these situations can happen to anyone. Therefore, we chose our main theme of cyber bullying because this is a common social realist topic; before deciding this would be our main theme we researched relevant films such as the TV film Cyberbully this gave us an idea of how to approach our trailer and influenced some shots of our trailer such as being online on a social networking site with a close-up of the message received.

We also included some experimental film making such as the steam from the coffee cup, this can be interpreted as a metaphor emphasizing the blackness of the situation and her depressed state.

How did you use media technologies in construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

As the editor, I had to consider many aspects of the trailer - not just the cinematography. To edit the trailer I used Move Studio Platinum, this is a software we used last year during AS and therefore I knew this programme was reliable. Movie Studio helped me perform the basics such as cutting footage and adding transitions between the shots. However, I felt the text offered on this software was weak; therefore I developed my skills by using After Effects to add the graphics. This proved to work well as it enabled me to add effects such as typing to the typography on screen. Alongside this, the sound engineer and I used Adobe Audicity to edit the sound for the trailer; this software allowed us to add snippets of sound that correlated to the trailer such as the sound of typing at a keyboard whilst seeing the letters individually appear as if it were being typed at this time. For the ancillary tasks such as the magazine cover, we have used Photoshop, this is software we are all familiar with from previous experience and so we knew this was the best option to complete our magazine covers and posters. Photoshop allowed us to enhance the aesthetics by applying effects to the main image.

How effective is the combination of the main product and the ancillary tasks?

For our A2 media coursework we decided to create a social realist trailer along with a poster design and magazine cover as our ancillary tasks. It was important that the trailer and ancillary tasks work together and related to each other as they would work as a marketing campaign for the trailer. They had to link and relate to the main product by including the same information, promote Breaking Faith and emphasising the main genre we were representing in our trailer which was social realism. Many products that we looked at at had a flowing colour scheme between the trailer, magazine and the poster clearly linking them together. However, it was decided that the ancillary tasks did not require the exact same font or colour scheme as this would allow us to present the trailer to different audiences and the font would indicate the type of audience the product was aimed at. For example, younger adults would respond more positively to a more urban, rougher typeface whereas older, middle class audiences would respond better to a cleaner, more stylish modern typeface. This is often a common practice in the distribution of films, particularly in international markets. When creating the magazine, we took the same approach, this is because when looking at mainstream and independent magazines they don't link to each type of film/trailer so we used different typefaces. However, there is a clear link between the magazine and the poster as we used the same picture, making it recognisable as it shows the same actress.

What have you learned from audience feedback?

Interview 1: (Girl, 17) I think this is a good trailer and I would want to go and see this film in cinema because it is relatable to my age group and it contrasts to many other social realist films because it doesn't look gritty. Instead, it just portrays real life situation that could happen to anyone.

Interview 2: (boy, 18) In the film trailer, I think the graphics work well because it looks more professional. The subject matter throughout the trailer appeal to my age group because I can see it's partly set in a school environment and the theme of the film relates. 

From Audience feedback we have learnt that most people expected our target audience to be teenage girls varying between 15 years old and 20 years old. This is something we had anticipated and therefore we feel we have achieved this aspect by reaching the target audience due to the relatable themes. We learnt that males and the older audience were not enticed by our trailer because of the subject matter within the genre, boys in general prefer social realism films such as Shifty where the main focus area is on drugs and the film looks much more gritty; however, because as a group, we challenged the conventions of social realism by including middle class we have lost the majority of our male audience. We were informed of this by one of our male candidates from the feedback questionnaire who knew what the social realist genre involved but did not consider our trailer to explicitly represent typical elements of social realism. Furthermore, from our questionnaire we found that males in general would not watch nor recommend this film trailer to anyone else. Alongside this, in our interviews we have discovered that our trailer does not appeal to an older audience because they are not interested in the main theme of our trailer this contradicts our goal to strike the audience and present narrative enigmas which would entice them to watch the film, however, this has not had the desired effect.

- Lauren Abbott and Darcia Kopycka-Wright