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

Trailer:

I believe that my group's trailer is a success. We made sure it appealed to or target audience, we are confident the music and scenes merged together successfully to build up suspense and mystery. In the editing we made sure we had no jump cuts and that the shots flowed from one to the next. We done this with fades and dissolves in between scenes. I feel that the content of our trailer is what keeps our audience interested. There are notes being found everywhere and the audience are determined to find out what they mean. The main strength of our soap is that the audience are interested and involved in what is happening within the trailer. My audience feedback (from facebook) has shown me that the use of the notes was mysterious to them, but when the meaning was revealed, "we know what you did" became a tag line which stuck.
Although all this is good, there are some weaknesses for our trailer. For one, it is too long. Most trailers only last around 30-40 seconds, whilst ours is over 2 minutes. Another is that some of our audience did not understand the meaning of the trailer straight away because the notes were found in a different order. If we could do it again, I would change the order in which the notes are received and try cut down the trailer, without missing out important information.

Website:

Last year we didn't need to make a website for our Thriller opening, so when we were asked to make a soap website, we didn't know where to start. We were taken to the CLC where we were taught how to use a programme called 'iWeb' on the Macs. I picked up how to use this quickly and was able to go back to school and help to produce a group website. The research we had completed on already established soap's websites helped us alot in what we needed to include. We made sure that it appealed to our target audience. We done this by using neutral colours so it would neither appeal to one sex or one age. During the process of making this website, we encountered some problems that we couldn't eliminate. When we added a new page, the name of the page appeared in the navigation at the top. For example, we wanted to add and external page called 'Andrea's Diary' but we did not want this to appear on our main page, but a link from the characters page. We had to rename the pages like dots (.. or ...) so the names didn't appear on the main page. This was a weakness that we couldn't overcome.

Magazine Cover:

At first, me and my group decided to make a magazine cover which looked like 'Radio Times' so it looked better. In the end, after some trouble, we all converted back to the original conventional soap magazine cover. I managed to make this on a programme called 'PhotoImpact'. It looks very professional and conventional, but the weakness of this task was that I took too long to find a suitable programme to make my final piece. I used another 3 programmes before I found this programme which suited me best.


I believe my three products link together well because the main concepts of them are all based on the same storyline. The main page of the website is based on the content of the trailer, and my magazine cover also has the soap's storyline as the main picture. We made sure all our tasks were pretty much the same by working together and making our work thorough.
If I were to complete this whole coursework task again, I would not have tried to film an extract from an episode, as this took up a whole day of filming which we did not actually use. Also I would have stuck to a programme I knew how to use for my magazine cover, and I would change the main picture from three characters to one of just the murdered character. For the website, I would have liked to add more pages and have more time to experiment with the features to try and make our website look as good and authentic as possible.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

This is Rosie and Anthony. They are both part of a group of friends who share similar interests and hobbies. The group's age ranges from 16-19. These two both live in North London.
They dress fairly casual in jeans and tops/jumpers. They enjoy parties, hanging out with their friends and going to the cinema. Their favourite genres of films are horror, adventure and comedy. The channels they watch on television are mainly; Comedy Central, Channel4, E4, BBC and ITV. Their favourite programmes consist of; Skins, Hollyoaks, Eastenders, The Inbetweeners, King of Queens, X-Factor and True Blood. Their taste in music varies from Hip Hop and R&B to Indie.
I think our soap will appeal to these two people because they are typical teenagers that like to watch something that is interesting and more centered around their own age range. Our soap could be likened to Skins and Hollyoaks which features in their favourites.








From our audience feedback, we found that they commented most on:

• The good use of soundtrack, fitting with the genre of the trailer
• The approach and use of the notes was successful
• the scary, eerie vibe we were aiming for was achieved
• The message in the notes was catchy with the audience
  

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

1. Final Cut Pro - We used this to edit all our footage. I learned how to fade in and out, transitions and how to build up our editing skills. We also learned how to add sound, import and arrange clips .

2. iWeb - This enabled us to create a website for our soap.

3. Photoshop - I was unable to figure out how to use Photoshop so i switched programmes.

4. Picasa - This was the programme i switched to after the failure of Photoshop. Because of the picture I was trying to edit was landscape, my cover made with this programme was unusable.

5. Photoimpact10 - This was the final picture editing programme I used. This worked the best and I created my final piece.

6. Google - I used this to get all my picture and research from.

7. Blogger - This is where all mine and my groups work is situated.

8. Vimeo - This is where our final trailer was uploaded onto.

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

1. Title: I.V

The title was made on Final Cut Pro. The font, 'Neon' was downloaded under Video Generator effects. When in play, the title is 3D and spins on it's axis.
The title 'I.V' itself was chosen because of it's meaning, which is displayed in our trailer title, independent variable. An independent variable is a thing or object that is changed or manipulated over time. We chose this because it relates to our soap because over time the characters will change or be changed by things such as surroundings, life events ect.
The font gives the sense of drama and the unknown. Because it is a continuous line, it moves to form the title so it shows the audience that the soap has continuity and will not skip a story from one day to another. It also shows the soap itself will be long and continuous.

2. Setting (of trailer): Alleyway/Park

The picture I have chosen is the alleyway in which the character is found during our trailer. I chose this because it is the finale to our trailer and what the audience will most remember. Death and other big events are very popular with soaps, and I believe that these kind of storylines are what keep and audience attracted to a soap.

3. Props: Make-up

I chose to use make-up for my props picture because all characters require make-up at all times. It can be used from just touching up someones face to creating the look of someone being ill, cold, upset and more.

4. Editing: Final Cut Pro

This frame shows a print screen of Final Cut Pro, the programme we used to edit. In this particular screen we were editing our interviews. There was various parts we had to cut out due to loss of concentration or long periods of silence. We also made an out-takes video from this footage so we were able to make two videos from one tape of film.

5. Font/Style: iWeb

This frame was taken from our work on iWeb. We were able to experiment with this programme to find fonts and styles for our trailer and website. The same font is used on all the pages of the website, but the font used for the title is different.

6. Storyline: Dead Body

I used this picture of the dead character because it is a big storyline which opens up our soap. It is the part of the trailer I feel would grab the audiences attention most. The character is found in an alley way in her coat, gloves and scarf, just dumped in a ditch.

7. Genre: Drama Soap

I feel that soaps vary in genres because the storyline change every week. For my picture I have shown a picture of the group of girls who are all friends and the other character, who appears an outsider to the group and the audience. The genre for this picture is mystery, which turns into drama and a thriller. Our website and trailer explain how this works.

8. Characters/Introduction: Girl group already established

This picture shows the first "girly group" introduced in the soap. This sends out the stereotype of what the other all girl groups should look and act like. They like material things, like the flashy car behind them, and they do not associate with 'outsiders', hence the emptiness behind them. They all expected to match with fashion, style and hobbies.

9. Soundtrack: LGFL

For this frame i print screened the website we got our music from; London Grid For Learning. We were given this site on a list of places to obtain music without breaking copyright laws. When our music was chosen and added, it was edited around the scenes so that certain parts fitted in with the movements and surroundings of the filming.

IV trailer

We uploaded the video to Elena's brothers Vimeo account, Vimeo is an easy video sharing site giving us the opportunity to upload videos wherever and whenever .

IV Trailer from Louis Christodoulou on Vimeo.

Interviews

We set up the camera so we could record a few members of the class watching our trailer and their reactions. After they watched, we took 3 students and asked them their opinion about the soap trailer and if they would watch it.
Our questions were;
1. Our target audience are people aged between 16-25, do you think this trailer would attract
our target audience, if so how?
2. What is your opinion of our trailer and what worked well/didn't work well?
3. The soap will be aired on Tuesdays at 8pm, would you be willing to watch it?
4. Does the timing of the soap affect anything else you usually watch?

We edited this to make it look like an interview that you would see after you had watched a movie premier. This was in different quality to our trailer itself, but this was due to the use of a different camera. We edited the footage with iMovie HD on the Macs. We put this interview onto our website to make it look more professional.

From this task, I found that our audience did like our trailer as a whole, they found the mystery of the notes and what the character may or may not have done intrigued them and made them keep watching. The feedback recorded showed that the audience we were trying to target were reached and they believe others their age would watch the soap.

Website Development & Completion

After the problems we encountered previously to trying to edit the website we made at the CLC, circumstances led to us making a new blog. We were unaware about the saving process because when we chose to save on the Macs, there was no "save as" option. After a while we discovered that when we saved, it was saved onto the programme of the account that was logged in.
We chose bright, vibrant colours to attract a certain age range of audience. We were in fact armatures whilst using this programme but picked up certain skills along the way. Firstly, we added all the pages we would be needing for our layout and our navigation pages. With this programme we are unable to hide these navigation pages so we had to call the pages a new name, such as "...." to have at the top to hide the name "Andrea's Diary". We could not overcome this problem so we dealt with it by using the "dot's system". The hyperlinks we used were all successful and linked to the right pages using the 'inspector' tool.
We took many pictures of our friends to add onto the characters page to fill it up and add so-called cast. Many of the pictures used were of the main characters of the trailer/1st episode because the website would appear new and to focus on recent events.
At some point during the production, we added in some shapes and we were unaware of how to change the colour from white. I, however, after much exploration managed to find the correct tool and changed the stars from white to gradient pink and yellow.
My research into other soap websites helped me generously because it gave me a foreground of what I would need to include, what kind of colour scheme I would be needing, the amount of navigation's I would and wouldn't be needing, and the amount of external links. I applied this to the group's idea of who we were aiming to grab and what we wanted to achieve for our website, and we have finally finished our website.

Filming - Day 3.

Day 3: Group members present were; Thegla Savvides, Natalie Michael, Elena Christodoulou & Natalie Nicolaides.

By the end of the day we aimed to finish off the shots for the trailer.

We started off by filming the ways in which the character finds the notes. The first was through the post. We shot the post coming through the letter box and the actress picking it up and taking it away. We took many shots for this scene so we could pick from a variety during editing. One of the favoured shots included the shot from behind a plant pot. The scene starts with the leaves in focus and the door/post box unfocused. It then faded focus from the leaves to the post box as the letters and note comes through. We ten shot numerous clips of the note on the floor in and out of focus to show that the note has been acknowledged.

The next shot was finding the note in the folder. This shot included props such as a fruit bowl, a laptop, pens and paper. The Mise-en-Scene enabled the scene to look casual and realistic.

The 3rd consisted of me walking up the path with shopping bags, looking for my keys to open the door and finding another note in my pocket, I look around in suspicion and finally entering the house. This shows that the actress was not aware that she had the note previous to leaving the house, adding to the mystery. We also took around 10 different shots of each part of this scene, including the walking up the path, the bags swinging over the camera, a tracking shot, and also a close-up of me taking the note out of my pocket.

The 4th was found inside my shopping bag with the top I just bought, it falls out the top when I get it out of my bag, but on one occasion the note falls to the floor. This was shot many times due to the note falling at different angles and positions, it was unpredictable where it would land so our camera-man had to be on guard.

The final note is received via text message while my character is watching television. This gave us difficulties because we aimed to capture the sound and vibration of the phone. This was hard because the microphone could only get so close without getting in view. We also had to play the television in the background but without interfering with the sound of the phone. We hid the microphone on the sofa behind a pillow but still pointing towards the phone. Also the sending of the message was difficult. The time during sending was unpredictable and could take from 3-10 seconds to send. This was a difficult scene and was not used during editing for reasons already mentioned, but also because of the length of our trailer.

The last scene we filmed was the finale of our trailer, the dead body. We went to an alleyway and Natalie M lay on the floor in mud and dirt to show that she had been thrown in a ditch. We experimented with many different shots including; long shots, panning shots, and close-ups. The darkness surrounding the alley and the sound of birds, twigs breaking, and other natural sounds added a tense and awkward atmosphere.

This whole process took 5 hours. This was a very successful day, much planning and consideration was used and it helped us finish our filming quickly and efficiently. Many different shots and effects were used for each scene and editing this should be a great experience with a wide variety of material to chose from.

Filming - Day 2.

The second day of filming was done at Natalie Michael's house. The members of the group present were; Thegla Savvides, Natalie Michael and Elena Christodoulou.

What we aimed to achieve by the end of the day was half of the trailer completed which included the actress (Me) sitting, crying on the bed and trying to organise the notes in an order to make sense. I had dressed down in plain black and grey clothing with unwashed hair to give the sense that I have been isolating myself at home, not taking care of my appearance.

We had all the equipment previously used present, with and added wire so we could film and watch it on a television screen at the same time. Although the screen only showed us black and white feed, the set-up was successful. It also helped us eliminate faults, for example, during the play-back I noticed that the microphone had come into shot from the corner.

We used many shots such as over the shoulder, mid-shot and close up shots. We filmed the same scene with different shots to add variety to our choice during editing.

The over-the-shoulder shots were the hardest to film because the camera was placed behind the bed without a tripod, so it was harder to get a clear steady shot.

To make my character cry, I used olbas oil which I rubbed under my eyes to make my eyes water and make my make-up run.

Natalie and Elena both took it in turns to use the microphone and camera. The microphone was connected to a pole so it could be extended enough to pick up sound without being detected by the camera.

The notes we used were from paper, a sticky note, and one received via text message. The note from the phone was the hardest to achieve. The text message came up small, so eliminate this we re-thought our idea and turned the text message into a picture message so the 'note' came up big enough for the camera to see.

The whole process took around 4 hours to film. Overall, the day was successful and did not run as long as the previous filming day. We learned that the more organised we were the easier our schedule became. The extra concentration put into the organisation of the script enabled both actress and behind-the-scene's individuals to easily work together quickly and efficiently. We did, however, encounter some problems which we were able to sort out without issue.

Magazine Cover - Revisited

Due to the size of the photo for my previous magazine cover, the idea of using a "Radio Times" type of cover was unable to be created without severe difficulty and an odd-sized magazine being formed. So I have been forced to reconsider my options and I've returned to the traditional looking soap magazine, such as the one you would get free with 'The Sun' or 'The Mirror'.

For this I didn't use 'Picasa' which I had used for my previous idea, but I used 'PhotoImpact 10' which I am familiar with. I added my desired picture and cut around the image and placed it in the centre and decided to place everything around this picture. Unlike the other picture I did not have to add in a banner to fill space because the size of the page I had chosen was A4. This program was much easier to use than 'Picasa' or 'Photoshop' and I am quietly confident that my Magazine cover looks near-professional. The only problem I encountered was the size of the main picture compared to other already-existing covers' pictures. I was unable to make it big enough to fill the height of the page because by doing so, my picture would prove too wide to fit on the A4 page with a margin for advertisements.

I used tools to rotate simple images and add shadows to text and pictures to add to the authenticity of my magazine. The part of my cover that took the longest was defiantly my main picture because I had to cut around the edges of the characters without cutting off parts of hair that would be noticeable and make my picture look odd. Also the bubbles around the additional pictures took a long time because I had to use precise measurements and disable the merge tools so I could do the precise measurements accurately. The part of the cover I dislike is the top right with the 'Dancing on Ice' image. I would have prefered a long banner-like image to be placed there but I could not find one that would fit precisely and not look odd or squashed. I also used 'Microsoft Publisher' to help get my pugs/puffs on to the cover.


After showing my final piece to the people/audience around me, I found that everyone who looked at it thought that I had actually brought in a real soap magazine. This boosted my confidence that the research I had used to complete this task had helped me in all the right ways and that my magazine cover was a success.

09/03/2010

After finding out some of the pictures on my previous magazine would be breaching copyright laws, I was forced to make a new one. I took this as an opportunity to change my main picture to the murdered character in my soap. I used the same programme as before (PhotoImpact) and used the same effects (shadows) but i changed the contents of the page. Instead of using already existing soap and drama pictures, I looked through my own files and found pictures of family and friends and added them to a random storyline. I'm not as happy with this final piece as I was for the previous piece, but I am unable to make the cover look more professional without breaching some copyright laws.