Thursday 26 April 2012

Evaluation Question Four

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and reasearch, planning and evaluation stages?

Sunday 22 April 2012

Evaluation Question Three

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
Audience feedback

Evaluation Question Two

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

Below is the script for my director's commentary and the actual director's commentary.

Director's Commentary


Script

1.      Hi, my name is Charlotte Southam and this is the trailer I created with my partner, Hannah George for our A2 coursework. The main inspiration for our story comes from the old children’s rhyme ‘The Teddy Bear’s Picnic’; this is also where the music, title and tagline came from.
2.      The main shots at the beginning of our trailer are mostly normal medium shots that track the characters as they enter the woods. These shots show the main setting of the woods, introduce the main three characters and emphasis that it began as a normal picnic. Later we used more dramatic camera shots with much faster editing to show the panic and desperation of the characters and also to increase the tension and generate more interest in our film.
3.      We used quite a few special effects in our trailer such as the sepia toned close up of the body lying on the pentagram. This help to demonstrate that this scene was of something in the past and directly related to what Claire was saying at the time. The pentagram is a very important symbol in our trailer as it represents the idea of the forbidden ritual and emphasises the supernatural themes.
4.      Another of the prominent effects we used was with a pentagram. We used the negative pentagram to represent the point in the trailer (and ultimately the film) when everything changes.
5.      In my poster I wanted to put a lot of emphasis on the pentagram because of its importance in our trailer and it also reinforces the horror genre. This is why I included a red pentagram directly behind the main protagonist’s head; I purposely made the pentagram the colour of blood as this directly links to the blood pentagram on the tree. The trees behind her are also very important as they illustrate the forest setting and also link to the idea of the characters being lost, away from civilisation and away from help. The shock and fear on her face emphasise the horror/thriller genre and it also raises questions about what she is scared of as the audience can’t see what she is looking at.
6.      The editing of the voice over was one of the most time consuming parts of creating our trailer as we had filmed a lengthy speech that described a lot of the story of the woods. When it came to editing the trailer we decided that there was too much speech, so we had to cut it down while still keeping the most important parts of the story such as the part about the dead body being found underneath the tree.
7.      This is where a lot of our more dramatic shots are used such as the close up of feet running and the clip of Roxie being dragged off screen. We used these shots to emphasise the danger around the characters and to increase the tension.
8.      The ‘HCS Horror’ clip is animated to make it look like the words are writing themselves in blood. We chose to do this as we felt that it emphasised the idea of us being a horror film production company and was more interesting than having just the words, stationary on screen.
9.      My magazine cover links directly to the one of the final scenes in the trailer when Lizzie, the main protagonist, is running away from something and pauses before running off screen. The long shot emphasises her helplessness and isolation and I wanted to recreate this in my magazine cover. This is why she is I chose to have her pictured alone with the forest stretching out behind her. The big tree to the right helps to show her insignificance as it is much bigger than her. I tried to incorporate most of the conventions of a film magazine advert so I created a magazine title which is in big letters at the top of the magazine. It is also why I included information about other stories in the magazine about recent or upcoming films.

Evaluation Question One

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Trailer screen shots (part two)
View more presentations from Charlie Southam.

I had to upload the powerpoints seperately as the file was too large to be uploaded as a single powerpoint.

Tuesday 20 March 2012

Final Poster, Magazine Cover and Trailer



Final Magazine Cover

Overall I am pleased with my magazine cover as I think that it advertises our film really well and it fits the conventions of a magazine cover. I also think that it fits in well with both our trailer and my poster and that they all work together to represent our film. I used a full body shot of the main character for the cover as I didn't want to make it too similar to the poster and it left more room around the edges for the text. The only thing I don't like about my magazine is that the image of the main character is very similar to the picture I used on my poster, even though they were originally taken at different times.

How I made My Magazine Cover