I've tried to create a Blog which guides the reader through the process of creating my main and ancillary tasks.
Through the course of the project, I believe my skills have developed dramatically in a number of key areas. These areas are my experience in using Photoshop and Blogger. Examples of these skills developing can be seen in my film poster and my magazine. I feel my skills have improved over practice in the last two years.
The Blog highlights some of the main tasks I've carried out through the course of the Blog.
I feel my strengths are my Photoshop skills and other technology I have used throughout the course and some of my favourite posts are my finished products because I feel they reflect these skills.
Finally, I would like to thank you for taking the time to read through my Blog. I hope you find my work enjoyable.
I used Google as my main search engine because by using Google, your search will cover more than 8 billion URLs.
Google search also uses likelihood of relevant results to determine the quality of results.
Compared to other search engines Google produces results that only match your search terms. Without this method of matching, your search will produce results that have nothing to do with your search terms.
Google shows a snippet of the text that matches your query which gives you a preview if a page is going to be relevant before you click to visit it.
You can access cached pages even when the original page is gone although the information on cached pages is not the most recent information about the site but it still contains useful information.
This is indeed an advantage for beginners. Since you do not possess the expertise to create great photos, you can use actions. It is easy to learn using actions. You do not need coaching in order to do it. Aside from that, you’ll be glad to see how appealing your photos will look like despite your lack of Photoshop skills.
This is more advantageous for beginners for as you see each action work, you’ll learn more about how Photoshop works. You can even explore and combine the different steps in an action. For sure, your knowledge and skills will be sharpened with what you will discover. If you use actions made by others, do not merely use it but also try to look into the steps and study what he used in creating it. This way, you will know which tool and effect is used to give a good result. This could also help you to make your own Photoshop Action.
Of course, a simplified job will certainly help you save a lot of time. You can have more time in doing other tasks and you’ll surely save a lot of time with actions. This will even save you from staring long time at your computer screens doing the thing over and over again.
Feedback is very important because it will help me make minor changes to my products, to see what my audience want to create more products, to hit the target audience 'criteria' and to spot any mistakes I may have missed.
The methods of feedback I decided to take were Youtube, Social Networking and Sample audience where I filmed people's responses to my products.
As you can see from the image, I posted my video onto Facebook for people to see and comment. I got a minimum amount of feedback as people weren't interested in giving me feedback unfortunately. But here is some of the comments I did get:
'Looks pretty cool, I would go and see it. Only thing is the ending of the trailer seems like its missing something. . .'
'I like the editing on the slow-mo parts. Not a bad trailer'
'I don't think the storyline is clear, but it got my attention, its not quite enough to make me go and see the movie'
'I could tell the genre of the movie was horror, I like horrors'
As you can see from my feedback, I still have a bit of work to do on my trailer. Overall I think my audience found it attention-grabbing which was my aim in the first place. However, this feedback is not totally reliable as these people are 'friends' and probably didn't want to criticise it too much (although this is what I wanted).
These are the screen shots I have from twitter from a follower. She said it would have been more effective if I had filmed the opening scene at night time, and the camera angle change in the running scene was good. This was a better response for me as it was more critical and she picked up on more specific things from the trailer so I know what to change next time.
Magazine
Poster
Trailer
These are some video's on my audience feedback. I will use these to make small changes and improvements on my three media texts.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
An audience is informed about a new movie through technological convergence. For example, a song used in movies often has a music video which consists of scenes from that same movie. The audience is also made aware of a new movie by the use of you tube, posters on busses and billboards, social networking sites, websites and magazines.
For our project I had to create a trailer, a magazine and a poster. The purpose of this is to promote a horror film. We chose the genre of horror because as a group, we decided it would be more feasible than any other genre as we didn’t have a budget at all and had to make the most of our surroundings and equipment. We looked at other posters and magazines from other genres (comedy, romance etc.) and last year we had also learnt a lot about magazines as our project last year was to create three of the main pages of a music magazine. From this, we also learnt a lot about technology which made it easier to jump into a more difficult project like filming a trailer.
We also analysed a lot of trailers, magazines and posters from the horror genre to understand the conventions. For example, on my blog I analysed a poster for the film ‘The ring’ and I also analysed the trailer for ‘The Shining’ film. I also looked at movie magazines such as empire where it helped me to create my own magazine following the main conventions.
The major forms and conventions of film posters could include: A large title which attracts the eye, bold colours which stand out from the background, intriguing picture which would attract viewers to the film, persuasive language which might persuade the viewers to go and see the film, using the main character's name for promotion, and the certification will either to ensure that the right type of people are watching the film. An example of how different types of film (e.g. comedy, horror) poster use these forms and conventions to attract a certain type of person (e.g. teenagers, horror fans) would be a really scary horror film, which will use eerie images in order to appeal to horror fans. A successful film poster will accomplish attracting the target audience and persuade them to come and watch the film.
This is an example of my target audience. She is an 18 year old student who enjoys parties, joining her friends at the cinema (to see horror movies) and likes to invite her friends to her house for 'film days'. She enjoys a good film and studies media so she has a lot to say on her views after watching a film.
She reads magazines so she would see my product in a shop or a library whilst studying for her exams (as she is a student). She also goes to the cinema a lot with her friends so she is likely to see my poster advertised around. Living in London, she would also see my poster advertised on buses and billboards around the city.
She is the perfect target audience for my products as she fits the age group, the products appeal to both male and females and she enjoys horror films.
