{Evaluation

By Alice Robbins

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

Trailers in the film industries today are very strong and eye-catching as the show strong camera angles and show enough of the storyline to make you want to go and see the film. My trailer has to show these thing if it is to complete with the standards of today’s film trailers.

My storyline is set around a schoolgirl called Eva who, because she feels like no one cares or listens she cuts herself to deal with the stresses of school and her home life, then her teacher starts to realize that something is wrong and she then goes after her and tries to help her realise that she isn’t alone and people can help.

The Inspiration I took was from what I saw of other films like this out there and I wanted to show people what goes on inside someone’s head who self-harms. Shots and angles I used are all at eye level to try and show Eva’s perspective and try and put the audience in her shoes.

My trailer incorporate Todorvs Equilibrium theory as it starts with Eva’ life looking quite normal and everything goes into disequilibrium with her self-harm. Music plays a big role in my trailer, I use only one song and that is Breathe Me by Sia, this song is about self-harm and links into the theme of my trailer. My Poster is quite simple and minimalistic because I want to make sure I just get the main message across there aren’t many posters on these subjects so I don’t have many posters to go by so I base my poster on what I think the poster should be like. Magazine covers I looked at show all the photos looking directly into the camera to show an eye-catching cover to make people want to read about the movie.

Sia Breathe Me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFGvmrJ5rjM

My Poster is quite simple and minimalistic because I want to make sure I just get the main message across there aren’t many posters on these subjects so I don’t have many posters to go by so I base my poster on what I think the poster should be like. Posters I looked at show all the photos looking directly into the camera to show an eye-catching cover to make people want to read about the movie.

Here we can see the title of my trailer in bold white on the black background of the characters clothing.

Here I follow convention by having the main character on the front cover as many film posters do.

But the two characters aren’t looking at the looking at the audience they are looking at each other which breaks the convention that all film posters have their main character looking down the camera to the audience

Here it shows us that this is a movie and it is a movie magazine, this can be seen by the masthead.

The main image here is of the main character in the trailer but, like the poster it breaks convention by having her looking away from the audience and the camera.

But it sticks to conventions by having writing around the image, the content of this writing is what is inside the magazine.

How Effective is the combination of your main product and the ancilly texts?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhViyYoEBms

My trailer is my main informant of the message I am trying to get across to my target audience, this shows self-harm and how it isn’t just people who have mental health issues but ordinary teenagers who are stressed about school and personal issues, also that it is not the main problem but that it stems from somewhere else and to help stop the self-harm you have to work out what the root of the problem is.

Poster: Links to my trailer because it shows my trailer because it shows my character alone with no-one, also it shows the help she gets from her teacher, also it shows an inside into what will happen also it leaves out enough for the audience to keep them guessing with the trailer.

Film Poster

My Magazine cover shows my main character on her own covering her wrists. This links into my overall campaign because it shows my main character alone and to make my main audience members understand self-harm and make it more of an open subject to talk about.

Magazine Cover

What Have you learnt from your audience feedback?

My Audience feed back was the most important area of my production because I needed to make sure my trailer was suitable and sensitive enough for my audience but also to show and convey the message I wanted to get across. I started by making a simple survey asking people what they think about mental health in teenagers and what there views are on self-harm.

Here is one respondents answers to my questions about mental health and self-harm in teenagers.

I then asked people about the relationships between teachers and students and if that has an impact on the recovery of the student and if they open up to them. After I created my first edit of my trailer I took a group of people who fit into my target audience and I got them to watch my edit and give me feedback on how it can be changed and how it can be improved. All the feed back I got from the audience was positive but it gave me an insight into how I can change my trailer into a more successful trailer.

Then I took on the feedback and improved on my trailer and then brought them back in as a ‘focus group’ to watch my final trailer and answer questions like: did they feel uncomfortable watching the trailer, did it convey the right messages they wanted and did it make them think twice about self-harm and did it make them understand it a little better.

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

4.To start with the main technologies I used when It came to my media product was WordPress because this is where I uploaded everything and was very useful because it allowed the people I needed to see it to see it and also because it was an easy place to upload everything, most of my written work I created has been uploaded here along with all my surveys deconstructions and my main trailer and posters and also my magazine cover.

Wordpress

The next most important piece of technology I used was during the research stages of my production this was Survey Monkey I used this to set up a preliminary survey to get peoples opinion on what types of genres they like to watch and why and different types of films within that genre. I then went on to use it for my second survey, this was my target audience research, within this I asked my target audience what their views on mental health in teenagers and what their views opinions on Self-harm as a ‘taboo’ subject and also the relationships between student and teachers and if that has an effect on if the student gets better.

SurveyMokey

Within the editing process of my production I used iMovie to create my trailer, within iMovie I used different types of transition for the transitions into each of my shots, I also used title cards for the beginning and end of my trailer to set the scene and inform the viewer of what the film was called, I also used title cards within the middle of my trailer to give the audience one lines to think about the subject my trailer is on.

IMovie

For making my poster and film magazine I used Photoshop to manipulate photos and use them in each of the artefacts I used the blurring tool to blur round the edges of my photos to give them a mysterious effect around the main character. I also used the paint brush tool to change the colour of the background around the two main actors to show that they are important to the scene and that the main character isn’t alone and that the teacher in scene with her is there to help her. Throughout this process the technologies I used were effective in helping me create a successful product

Photoshop