Final Teaser Trailer

Final Poster

Final Magazine Cover

Evaluation Q1

Question 1.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products.

• Rather than challenging conventions of real media products, my products used and developed the conventions.
• In my previous blog post I identified several conventions of romantic comedy; http://anniesa2.blogspot.com/2009_09_01_archive.html
  Teaser Trailer:
  
  
  In the clip above which is from my teaser trailer, I used many pushes to show the conflict between both the girls. This uses the conventions of a teaser trailer by speeding up the action. In this way it is more like a teaser rather than a full length trailer. This creates more interest for the audience, as the action happens quicker and reveals less narrative, making the audience more curious.
  
  
  Between the main guy (Jay) and the female lead (Sara) I used fades to show that they are complete opposites. This is typical of a romantic comedy because it usually allows the audience to gather that the man and the female are likely to be very different.



• I used Saras character and challenged the stereotypical view of Pakistani's who come to London. I did this through satorial coding; in the first few shots, Sara is shown as the 'innocent naive Pakistani girl' wearing a fuscia shalwar kamees. However as the teaser develops her change in clothing exposes her true character, and thus chellenges the way that Pakistani's have previously been represented in films such as 'East is East' or 'My Beautiful Launderette'.

One of the conventions of a romantic comedy I used was the fact that most romantic comedies tend to have a love triangle. The love triangle narrative was useful in allowing me to explore the clash between different cultures.

Another convention that I used and developed was the fact that romantic comedies tend to have an obstacle between the two protagonist characters. I used Jasmine's character as a device to help build up the plot. The image below shows the obstacle:



I also at the beginning of the trailer added a certification slate to indicate which audience it is appropriate for. As it is a romantic comedy and needs to reach a wide audienec, I have used a slate that indicates it is appropriate for "all audiences." I also included the logos of the two distributors, as is conventional of all trailers. This indicates the production values to the audience.

Poster:

Magazine Cover:

Audience theories:

• Cultivation theory- This theory is concerned with stereotypes, the more people see something the more they begin believing in it. British Asian's have previously been represented as traditional. Films like 'East is East', demonstrate the significance of satorical code. This was shown through the characterisation of Meena (the daughter in East is East).  Therefore I used the satorical code in my teaser trailer and tried to use it as an icon to show the stereotype that British Asian's do like to hang on to their roots from back home.
• Desensitisation theory- According to this theory, the more the audience see something the more we accept it. Therefore in romantic comedies the more love triangle narratives the audience sees, the more the accept it as a convention of romantic comedies. Therefore I used the motif of the 'push' transition to illustrate the conflict between the two girls. This showed that the convention of some sort of problem in a romantic comedy was obvious in my teaser trailer.

Evaluation Q2

2.)How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
(If this image does not largen please click the html link) http://anniesa2.blogspot.com/2009/12/media-day.html
Below I put both my magazine covers, however the one right below is my final magazine cover. I think having added more content to the page allowed my magazine cover to look more professional. I added more articles that would appeal to the target audience more. I also altered the font sizes in order to make it suit a magazine like 'Vogue'.
For my final magazine cover I had a choice of two magazine covers, the one above is my final one, however I changed the dates on the above one to sepetember 2010. I thought that if I changed the date to September 2010, I done this because I thought that if I changed the date than the ancillary products will be more effective. This would mean that the magazine cover would be coming out at near the same time as the film and the teaser. Therefore I made sure that on my poster the date would be December 31st so that it would compliment the teaser trailer and the magazine cover.

For my teaser the soundtrack was one of the most important features. I had to use a certain soundtrack that would give it a more Indian feel, however the soundtrack that I originally was going to use was copyrighted. Therefore I had to write to the PRS to ask. The email is in my previous post.

http://anniesa2.blogspot.com/2009/11/licensing.html

The soundtrack in the end went quite well with the clips and did hint at the narrative. Therefore I was pleased that I was allowed to use the soundtrack.

Iconography- In my poster I used a 'wooden spoon' and an 'Ipod' to show the contrasting range of culture. I used the motif of satorical code in my poster and my teaser trailer to show the link between the 'British/Asian' culture. Again in my poster I made the male protagonist wear a jumper and made the female protagonist wear a traditional 'shalwar kameez' to allow the audience to assume what their characters are going to be like in the film.

Distribution-

• Poster-My poster is going to be distributed in billboards, cinema's, T.V and ofcourse the internet. The fact that it is a mainstream film would mean that it's distribution would be quite expensive. In addition to this British Asian films are becoming more mainstream in itself, for example recently 'The Infidel' and 'It's a wonderful afterlife' have been distributed quite highly across most channels. This shows that the gap between British and British Asian films have decreased, therefore the distribution is likely to be high profile. Whereas previously the distribution would have been quite minimal as seen in 'Bend it like Beckham's' distribution.

• Magazine Cover-I wanted a women's fashion magazine to be the distributors of my magazine cover because females of all ages tend to buy magazines and romantic comedies are usually aimed at a female audience. Therefore if the women find the female protagonist intriguing they would want to watch the film. Therefore I used Huma only to be in the front cover, looking classy so that the younger female audience can aspire to be like her whereas the older female audience can connect with her. I also used very light colours like cream and brown to engage the audience and used her lipstick's colour (pink) for some font so that it stands out.

• Teaser Trailer- As shown in the teaser trailer, I was going to have 'Miramax' and 'Fox Searchlight' distribute my teaser trailer. Although traditionally they have been classified as distributors of independant films, recently Fox Searchlight has begun distributing Bollywood films (My name is Khan), therefore I thought that both would be able to distribute well to a British Asian audience as they are one of the only British distributors who have distributed a Bollywood film.

Evaluation- Q3

3.)What have you learned from your audience feedback?

I did two ways of researching, one through facebook as more people could access it and they could just give their general views and the other being a questionnaire. I surveyed 30 people between the ages of 15-24; 15 girls and 15 boys. I used a focus group because it allowed me to make my questions more precise and also people were more comfortable in answer in the questions because they were in a group. Below are the results I gained:

Do you think ‘East Meets West’ fulfils the criteria of a romantic comedy?
Do you think the teaser trailer hints at the narrative too much?
Do you think ‘East Meets West’ is aimed at the right target audience?
Do you think that the music and the voice over’s work well within the teaser trailer?
For my magazine cover do you think I should have promoted a film through a film magazine or do you think a women’s magazine was a better choice?
Do you think I should have had two men fighting over one girl or do you two girls fighting for one guy is better?
What was good about my poster?
What was bad about my poster?
What was good about the teaser trailer?
What was bad about the teaser trailer?
What was good about the magazine cover?
What was bad about the magazine cover?
Through my facebook results the feedback I got was:
I think that my audience on facebook gave much more general comments whereas the stratified sampling allowed me to gain a more media view of my product, however Facebook was very useful as it allowed more people to access the product much more easily.
Although I did put my teaser on youtube, it was much more harder for people to access it because not many people had accounts, and only the ones with the accounts can have access to comment on videos.

Evaluation-Q4

Q4.)How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
I used the blog quite effectively and I think it gave me a chance to be more creative. I think it was useful that because of the blog we made our projects more visual because it meant that we had to limit our writing. One of the programmes I used and that came in very handy was Adobe Photoshop CS3.

For the main product the programme I used was Imovie HD which had many functions I had to get used to. Although I used Imovie last year for AS level I was working alone this year therefore many tools were new to me.


The image below illustrates why I think that Final cut pro would have been a better software to use.Below I have written down somethings that I think could have been better at with techonology.

Below I have demonstrated how internet helped me throughout my coursework;

I used a Digital SLR camera to take my picture. I used it in an action mode, this meant that the model could move around and you would still get a still image. The studio lights that I used was a soft box. This meant that there was a greater choice of poses. However if the camera had a still setting than the model would have to hold the pose for longer, it wouldn't look as professional.

I also used the tripod for many things, and one of the shots that I used it for was the longshot of Jay walking. This allowed me to have a straight angle where the audience are able to see his posture. The tripod gave me a chance to have a more still shot which gave the teaser a more proffesional look.  It was also easy to pivot with the tripod and I could have had a wide shot which was straight. Therefore the tripod helped me in many shots because most my shots were either long shots or wide shots.

Finally I used social networking sites such as Facebook and Youtube to get audience feedback.  I think due to the development of web2.0, this was useful because it wasn't as time consuming as asking individuals and secondly many people felt more comfortable whilst responding because it was on a social networking site, thus they were more honest about my products.