Wednesday 4 May 2011

Evaluation

Tj's final media
View more presentations from tjjones2.

Slide 1

Through posters, my media project both challenges and sticks to the convention of my chosen genre.  If I compare them to another film poster of the same genre, Hard Candy. Both images focus on one main character with a lot of empty space left around the image. I feel this is more effective than having reviews and taglines as like most psychological thriller posters, has a sense of mystery. My posters challenge the conventions of posters by only featuring  the image, the title, the billing box and coming soon text. I have not included a by line or reviews, this is because, despite challenging the conventions I feel this works better as it is very enigmatic and I feel will draw the audience in as they are unaware about what the film is about. I got this theory from The series of big brother adverts back in 2009 that were only a few seconds long with a voice over saying “it’s coming” this I felt captured an intrigued an audience as it was so mysterious. 

Slide 2 
Both Black Swan and Shutter Island are also similar to my posters as they have a billing box film title and image I’ve realised these posters have a lack of text because the image is meant to capture the audience. This is seen in my posters with the use of Photoshop which I have used to create a ghost effect in the top left image.  

 Slide 3
Upon researching for posters I found this in google images I thought this was rather amusing and for a moment I felt like a movie producer with my poster appearing in google images. 

Slide 4
Due to my lack of ICT skills and time I was unable to create my dream website featuring a java script loading page to the website, and GIF’s appearing everywhere. However I did manage to stick to some codes and conventions such as the title of the film, main image from the film, the logo of the uk film council, and the trailer.  I have also created a number of fake links to pages such as synopsis, videos and cast and crew. My gallery page works and links through to the tumblr I have used to store all the photos from my production work. I realise I have left a lot of conventions out such as ratings, facebook links and actors names, but again I did this intentionally so it would leave the audience more intrigued, and I figured it would work in my favour as the audience would then research the film to find out who the actors are and what rating the film has been given, which essentially is publicity for the film. 

Slide 5
For my teaser I have met a number of codes and conventions such as relating to the mind, Depersonalization is actually a mental health symptom so I felt by choosing this name and showing how the symptom is portrayed I am sticking to codes and conventions. Using vulnerable young women I feel is a typical convention of a psychological thriller this is seen in films such as black swan, and abandoned I have also used a green screen film rating image and a coming soon ending clip to fit with the codes and conventions of teaser trailers. I have analysed three clips from youtube that I felt were really beneficial to me. The first being Girl interrupted. This relates back to my point of vulnerable young women, as a girl played by Winona Ryder gets admitted to a mental hospital. I found this clip really useful mainly for it’s opening speech. The second being Thirteen. This I felt helped me tackle the objective of attracting a teenage audience, and tacking the issues with teenagers. I felt the use of shots and editing really beneficial The final being a fanmade skins trailer entitled loneliest girl in the world. I found this trailer really helpful as it really helped me pull together the concept of mental health and teenagers. I felt the shots and emotions inspired me when making me teaser. 

Slide6
I feel that my main product and ancillary texts are really effective as I have maintained the same type of font the whole way through, I have stuck to the codes and conventions of a psychological thriller, use of editing such as photo filters and how I create a ghost like effect on all my posters. 

Slide7
I have learnt from my feedback that not everyone can grasp the idea of mental health. On one of my feedback sheets I received a comment saying my trailer was “weird” I completely accept the criticism, and i was prepared for some stigma as it is a film to do with mental health.  
That through the use of my editing and effects, I have managed create a generic psychological thriller that an audience of teenagers are able to recognise
That I feel I am able to give the audience what they want because of my age, I feel that the younger the director the stronger the message is. I am familiar with the feeling of depersonalization and I have researched it thoroughly, and I felt this really aided me when creating the teaser
That I am able to connect with people who are aware or suffering from some sort of mental health difficulty as I received a comment saying “Your voiceover sounds like a tumblr post” Tumblr is a social networking site that is often viewed as where the alternative kids blog their feelings. So I felt that I was able to connect with my audience.

Slide8
The technologies I have used are
Blogger This site I used to post all my work that I had done over the last year in order for people to see it.
Slideshare I used this site to host my powerpoints as blogger is not able to host powerpoint files
Youtube  I used this site to research psychological thriller teasers, and host my practice teasers.
Logic pro 9  I used this program to edit and manipulate my soundtrack using a range of effects such as reverb Eq and compression
Vimeo I used this site to upload my final teaser, I felt this was more effective than youtube as I was able to edit the size of my video for when I uploaded to my website
Adobe Photoshop I used this program to edit and manipulate the images I had taken during my production. I found this really beneficial as it made my photos look  more professional
Microsoft powerpoint  I used this program to create powerpoints about my work, this saves space on my blogger, rather than writing pages about what I have done, I can write about it in a slideshow and then use slideshare to upload it
Macromedia dreamweaver  despite being the hardest program I have ever used, I managed to use this to create my website using a range of html coding and uploading
Microsoft excel  I used this program to organize my time and project plan
Adobe after effects I used after affects to add any final effects such as photo filtering and colour manipulation to my trailer
Adobe Motion  I used this to create my ending clip that says “depersonalization, coming soon”
And finally Final cut pro, the program i had used to edit my film which wasn’t as difficult as it sounded

Tuesday 19 April 2011

Tuesday 5 April 2011

Bloopers

This is my blooper reel. I decided to make it to lighten the mood of the trailer as it's quite deep and portrays a lot of different emotions. I felt a bit of comedy was needed

Monday 4 April 2011

Printscreens of my official website


This is my official website online. I have embeded my trailer onto the site using a program called Macromedia Dreamweaver. I found using this quite difficult as it involved lots of formatting and html coding. Eventually I got the hang of it after resizing and moving my video around till it was
(<)style type="text/css"(>)

#place{
Position: Absolute;
top: 125px;
left: 500px;
}
(<)/style(>)

this sizing was where I wanted it to be.

Since I had taken a lot of photos during my production I wanted to show them off, so I made a gallery page hotspot link. I had previously uploaded all my images to tjmediaimage.tumblr.com so that I wouldn't have random image posts every now and again on my blog. I linked my gallery page to this site.






Mockup

This is my mock up for a gallery page, I have used photoshop to illustrate how I would like it to be.

1/3 of the page is an image, following the rule of thirds. I will have my title on my right side to follow the eye line rule. When the audience see the website they'll see the title, then the image and then the links.

My website JPEG

This is my final website design. Using one of the images I had taken whilst filming I developed a website. I opened up my image in photoshop and then made it smaller to fit the size of 998 by 560px as this is the size the website needed to be. I then used the courier font, (the font i'd used throughout this production) and wrote the title, cast and crew, gallery, synopsis, videos, and coming soon. I then duplicated these layers and lowered the opacity to create a shadow effect to relate to my genre. I have also included my billing box from my poster, as this is a typical film website convention. I also included logos such as film4, 12A film rating, and the UK Film council. I also included an "all rights reserved" caption. I then coloured my edges in order to abide by the conventions of film websites, I learnt that the edges are meant to fade. I achieved this by using a blurry brush and colouring the sides of the image white.

Monday 28 March 2011

Feedback about teasers

Generally people liked the teasers they watched apart from one comment from someone who thought it was weird, I was prepared for negative comments like this as there is a stigma that is attached to mental health. Comments like "weird" increase stigma when there shouldn't be stigma. Having mental health problems is the same as having a physical problem. I accept the criticism, but i'm not happy with the way it was phrased.

Saturday 19 March 2011

Updated project plan

i am almost up to date with my media work as shown in my project plan, the only outstanding work at this point is my website