Evaluation Continuing

Our complete package

Our complete promotional package includes a Film Poster, Magazine Front Cover, DVD Case and an Official Trailer. The promotional package we have creating is for a Niche Audience this is because our target audience is for a small group of selected people. We have chosen a Niche Audience people we are targeting females in the age group of around 15-24 as we believe men will not be particularly interested in our romance trailer. The reason we didn’t create our package for a main stream audience is because our film will not interest the majority of people from age above 30 or the gender of men because our characters are based around the aged of 18 and the genre of romance doesn’t commonly appeal to most men.

All the products in our package complement each other and work together. In the film poster we have the main central image of the two main characters that star in our trailer and we then use the female character also for our magazine cover to grab the attention to the female audience who will buy this magazine. The text on the film poster is also used again at the end of our trailer for the main title of the film, we thought it would be a good idea to use the same text and font so that it is easily recognisable and will link the two products together. Within the process of making these products we come across many difficulties such as selecting the music for the trailer, quality of the camera, continuity errors, creating our titles and many more. All of these elements were hard to create and was a big challenge for everyone in my group. However we also have our specialties in parts, for example Sarah and I have more advanced knowledge of Photoshop so we found it slightly easy to use for the creating of the film poster. Whereas Jade has better English language skills so she was able to create the words and sayings for the voice over in the trailer. In the end we worked well together as a group to overcome these challenging difficulties while in the process of making each product.  We also gained extra time to produce a DVD cover for our film which we were overly pleased about.

In each product that we have created there is only a small weakness about it for example the magazine cover I think could have a different colour font for the text to make it stand out even more than it does but the colours we have used work well with the colour scheme of the magazine cover and fits the conventions of the “Interview” Magazine that we got our inspiration from. With the film poster I don’t think it has any weakness’s as I believe we have produced a high stand film poster. It could maybe have bigger text of the actor and actress’s name so the audience notice that before anything else. The trailer is another product that will only have little weaknesses such as the quality of the camera changes. As some shots are clearer and focused than others, this is down to use filming on two different cameras which will create continuity in our trailer. However it isn’t too noticeable and our trailer is still very good.

Overall the combination of our promotional package is very good and we have included every product to create this package. I think we have worked well together to produce each element and have each put in our own ideas and knowledge to create the best pieces of work. As a group we are all overly pleased with the outcome of our package.

In conclusion this task was very challenging and it was difficult for everyone in my group. Creating this package took a lot of dedication and extra time, instead of just using the lesson we all stayed behind many days after school in order to carry on creating each product in order for us to finish in time and produce a high standard product. While in the process we did come across many problems but as we worked well together we were able to over come these issues and improve the mistakes that we had made. I found this task very stressful as there was a lot to do in such little time, but as the products all came together i was overly pleased with the outcome that was produced.

Media Technologies

When filming and editing our trailer there was a lot of equipment involved to help us produce and achieve the task of creating a two-minute trailer.

We used my Panasonic camera to record most of the footage on for our trailer and we were pleased with the quality of the footage at first, as it was very clear. The only problem that we overcome while using this camera was getting the footage onto Final Cut as it would not import, but with the help of a technician we managed to sort the problem out and all our footage imported.

Another camera we used was a HD Flip Camera as the Panasonic ran out when we were filming so we used the school flip camera. This camera was extremely good and the quality was very high standard as it was a flip camera. After editing our camera we noticed that some of the footage was clearer than the others as we used two different types of camera to film on. But it wasn’t too noticeable and there was nothing we could do. The flip camera was very good and next time I would use it to film all of the footage on as the quality was much more advanced.

A tripod was very useful when filming the scenes as we used it to hold up the cameras so that there was no shaky footage and by using the tripod it will be completely still.  However the camera did not fit on the tripod properly so we had to balance it on which did cause some of our footage to be shaky so we did film again to make sure it was steady.  The tripod was useful for filming angles as you can adjust the height of the tripod to low and high.

For the voice over scene in our trailer we used the technology called an Edi-Role. This is a piece of equipment that is used to record sound; it’s similar to a flip but just doesn’t have a camera. With an Edi-Role it is very sensitive to sound so when you record the sound you want the background noise has to be completely silent. When recording Georgia talking it took a few times to get it perfect but I thought the Edi-Role was defiantly worth using.

To create our trailer we had the Apple Macs to use, on these computers they have software called Final Cut Express and this is the software we used to edit and create our trailer. This is a basic editing programme that allows you to import your footage and place each shot on the timeline.  Final Cut had many different things that you can do to help create your trailer such as use of transitions, text, Zoom, Lighting effects and many more. At first we found it hard to use as last year we used laptops and the software called pinnacle, that was very simple. I preferred using Final Cut Express as it had more of a variety to do and it is much more advanced that Pinnacle. Without this technology we would have not been able to create our trailer.

Another software we used on the Apple Macs was Live Type and this was to create our titles. At first we did not have a clue how to use it but someone we knew had previous experiencing working on live type and they showed us the basics of it. We then managed to type in our titles and change the font and colour to what we wanted. We then used it to add a transition on so that text faded in slowly which allowed more time to read the titles.  

While in the process of creating our complete package we used all the techonology that i have listed above and we have also used more programmes and websites to help us for our research and to help create our trailer. We used YouTube to research trailers to help with our inspiration and we also used it to find a background for our titles, and this is where we found the Bohek Background that we decided to use. YouTube also came in handy for watching music videos when we were researching music for the background in our trailer.

Photoshop was also used for creating our film poster and magazine cover, without photoshop these products would have not been as successful as they are now. We used Photoshop to change the lighting, hue/saturation, text, creating our title "Intimate" and also for the processing of each product.

All of these media technologies have help us produce each product in our package and they have become very useful. My knowlege and understandment of Final Cut has improved since we have been using it a lot more and each lesson i have learnt more. When it comes to media technologies i believe i have more advanced skills now as each of these equipments have helped me extend my skills and become more improved with using them.

Evalution Beginning

For our film trailer is was very important that we used common conventions that all Romance Genre Trailers use. The aspects that we have included within our trailer are setting/location, costume, camera work, release date/title and elements to tease the audience.

Here are the nine frames that I have selected from our trailer as I believe they are the most distinctive shots and fit the conventions of most trailers.

Shot number one is within the opening 15 seconds of the trailer and it is a shot of the institution we chose. This institution is called Paramount Vantage and is commonly used in Romance Trailers, so we thought we would commit to the usual conventions and use it for the opening of our own romance trailer. By using an institution it makes the beginning complete and an official trailer as every trailer that is made contains one at the start.

The next shot I selected is a long shot of Lilly and Chase which are the main characters in our film. The reason I chose this shot is because it instantly shows that they are together and good friends/in a relationship due to the positioning of the characters. Chase is being a gentleman and has put his arm around the girl which makes the trailer instantly recognisable that it is a Romance Genre. In this frame you can see houses in the background which suggests it’s a local location and a common setting for other trailers.

Number three is showing the two characters kissing which automatically teases the audience and grabs there attention to the trailer. From this shot it is evident that the genre is romance due to the characters reactions to each other. The reason this is a mid-shot and not a long shot is because we wanted the focus to be on them and not the setting around/behind the two people, by creating a mid-shot it allows the tension of the kiss to rise within the audience and will intrigue them to see the whole film. Even though not much of the characters bodies are shown you can still notice their costumes. As you can see they are both very plain and casual as we wanted them to look like normal typical teenagers. They are both wearing jackets as the weather it not took warm so they are wearing suitable clothing for the season we were filming in. There costumes relate to other romance films for example "Like Crazy" as they also wear casual clothing and nothing to over the top.

Number four is a shot taken from above the characters and it’s another shot that relates to the romance genre as they are sleeping together. We used this shot and various other similar ones to speed up the length of the shots so that the trailer flicks through each bed shot quickly. I though this image stood out as the angle is different to the others that we have used. The only disadvantage about this shot is the focus and quality as it’s quite poor and not as clear as we wanted it to be, this is because of the lack of daylight and natural lighting that we used.

The next frame I selected is the footage of the mobile phone. The reason that this image is so effective is because it is an extreme close up of the phone and not the person using it. On the phone the girl is texting the words “I miss you” to her boyfriend, this shows that something has gone wrong with the relationship of the two characters. This then creates a tenser atmosphere and will get the audience interested to know what happens next. Most Romance films have a plot of a good beginning then in the middle there will be a catch and then at the end will usually be a happy ending and the problem will be resolved. This shot of the phone resembles the middle stage of the plot, which means we have used the common conventions of a romance film which we intended to do.

As you can see number 6 is an establishing shot as you can see out over the river and can instantly tell that is a river. This fame is one I chose because it is very different to the others; the character is not looking into the camera and is placed away and to the side. This shot was used for the voice over of the girl. We thought by producing this shot it will create a more relaxed feeling to the audience as she is just looking out into the distance while she is thinking. The shot relates to the voice over and it compliments it well. Even though you can’t see the emotion on the characters face in this shot, you don’t need to as you hear the emotion through the voice over and this is what makes this shot so interesting and effective.

Number 7 is one of our titles that we created using Live Type. As you can see the colour theme is gold and black. We chose this background as we thought it looks very relaxing and will relate to the romance theme, we got the idea of this title from the trailer “Like Crazy” as that is a very popular trailer and we used it a lot for inspiration. We then chose black font as it will stand out against the bright background and it will be very clear and easy for the audience to read. All of our titles use the same background, font, text and colour except for the name of our trailer. I believe that our titles are very effective and look professional especially with the moving Bohek background. There is also a fade added in to bring the text/titles in slowly so that the audience have time to read the titles.

The second to last frame that I selected it one of my favourites and it is located towards the end of the film when the plot gets interesting and the so called “Lover Boy” turns back and the situation is to be found out later in the film. This is an extreme close up shot of just the boy’s hands and the first thing that you instantly notice is the red blood stains on his hands. This is then evident that he has done something wrong. I thought this fame was very interesting as you can only see his hands and the darkness of the background compliments the tense atmosphere. I believe this shot will get the audience interested in the rest of the film as they will want to know what happens next to the two lovers in this film.

The last fame I chose is the title of our film and the release date. All films especially Romance have a title and release date come up at the end of the trailer to let the audience know when they can go see it. As you can see we have used the same title text from our film poster as we wanted the same effect of the pun (Intimate) with the prison bars. It was hard to put this on final cut but we managed to move it from Photoshop onto our trailer. We were very pleased that we managed to get this effective title made and put onto our trailer as it look very good. I think that the title is very clever with the prison bars over the two letters as it will get the audience thinking, which is the effect we want to create. As this is only a teaser trailer we didn’t put the exact date of the release and only put the month and year as we watched most other romance trailers and they did the same, so we wanted to fit the conventions of other professional trailer in order for ours to be good.

Audience Feedback

  Now that we have completed our trailer we thought it would be a good idea to show people and allow them to give us feedback on our trailer, as it is very important what the audience think. The first people we will show our trailer to is other students in our class as they will tell us truthful feedback and will let us know if any changes need to be applied. Facebook is another place that we can put our trailer up for people to see, Facebook is a good place to show people our trailer as most of our friends on Facebook are a similar age and are the same age group as our target audience so this will be an ideal place to get feedback from.

Firstly we advertised our trailer on Jade's and Sarah's Facebook pages so that all their friends can "Like" the trailer and also comment on it if they wish. We chose Facebook as its a very popular social network website that people the age of our target audience will use.

These print screens are evidence that we uploaded our trailer to facebook in order to recieve audience feedback. As you can see 12 people clicked "Like"  on our trailer which shows they enjoyed watching it. We also recieved two comments to say that it was very good and the ending was also very good the way we contrusted it. We were pleased with the feedback we got but we were hoping for more comments so we could get a variety of different thoughts.

As we didn't get as much feedback as we were hoping, so we decided to create a questionairre so that we can ask a wide range of people within our targert audience age group and see their view and opinion of our trailer.

Here is the questionairre that we created in order to find out audience feedback. We asked ten people to complete our questionairre and then i put the answers into a pie chart using powerpoint.

Here are the results of our questionairre. For question one, seven of the ten people said yes and three said no. The reasons for the people that said no were because
 they didn't understand the ending when the male character went crazy with a baseball bat and they wasn't sure what the narrative of the film was going to be about from watching our trailer. Question number two, nine of the ten people said yes and only one person selected no. For the next question all of the ten people said yes that they thought we chose a suitable target audience for our trailer. For question number four, eight people said that our trailer does appeal to them and only two said no. The reason for the two people that said no was because they thought they were too old to watch a Romance when the characters were a lot younger than them. The people that said this were age 24 so maybe our target audience was not accurate. Question number five, the results were even five said yes and five said no. The people that said yes thought our best variety of angles was the mobile phone shot, the bed scenes and the ending with the baseball hat. For the last selected we recieve a variety of answers one person rated our trailer 10, two people rated 9, four rated 8 and 3 rated 6.

From this questionairre we have gained a variety of different answers some that we are very pleased with and others we wanted to use to help improve our trailer. Now that we have more opinions we can use the bad point about our trailer and improve them in order for our trailer to become a better standard that appeals to more people within our target audience range.

DVD Cover

For our trailer we created a film DVD Cover in our spare time, this is to show that we are capable of doing extra work and to help represent our trailer.

As you can see we used the same image as our film poster due to it being a suitable image that represents our Genre of Romance straight away. We kept the same title but moved it to the top of the image to change it around from the film poster. We then added in the actress and actor's name to the top as most DVD covers will show the main characters real names. Once we had done that we chose to rate our film 4 stars and wrote and short quote underneath this is to make our film cover look real and match the conventions of others. We then had to add on the film age certificate and we chose to rate ours a 15 due to kissing being in our film that may not be suitable for younger children to see. There was one last think that we had to have to make our DVD cover complete and that was the tagline/quote for our film. We decided on the saying "When you find it, don’t let go" as this is very interesting and does not give the storyline away, it is also used in the voice over in our trailer. I believe that we have done well to make our DVD cover look real and I’m pleased with the outcome.

Choosing The Music

When choosing the music we each chose to do some research on YouTube of various Romance trailers so we could get an idea of the song choice. As we are not allowed to use copyright music we found it particularly hard to find songs that we could use and suited our trailer. Our teacher then told us we could use copyright music if we changed the pitch of the song on Final Cut or if we emailed the company/person asking for their permission to use their song in our trailer.  We had many songs that we had tried to see whether they fit our trailer well or not. Some of the songs that we chose were “The Magician” by Josie Vander’s and “Set fire to the third bar” by Snow patrol. Even though these are copyright songs we decided to change the pitch of the songs from 0 to 60 and also emailed the artist asking for permission.

Here is the permission email we sent to Josie Vanders.

 After a while of editing our trailer we realised that the songs weren’t working well and they didn’t flow with the trailer how we expected them to. As the songs were two completely different tunes and beats we found it hard to fade them into each other this is a problem we did not want to overcome so we made a decision of changing our song.

The song we chose for our final choice was “ Give me love” by Ed Sheeran. Once again this is another copyright song but we thought it would work well with our trailer especially the lyrics as they complement our storyline. So we wrote a letter to Ed Sheeran’s record label asking for their permission. We also changed the pitch of the song to be on the safe side. Once we put this song onto our trailer we were very pleased with the outcome and it complimented our trailer very well. Especially the end of the trailer as the song builds up to create a tense atmosphere.

Below is evidence of our letter/email to the record label.

Here is also the proof that we changed the pitch of his song from 0 to 63.

Editing Our Trailer

Editing- first part

Once we had filmed all our footage we began to edit our film in school on the Apple Mac's. Firstly we needed to transfer our footage from the video camera to the Final Cut programme, we struggled with this and had many problems mainly because we filmed on our own camera and not the schools. For some reason our footage would not import to final cut as simple as we thought, so therefore we had to call the schools technician for help. The technician managed to import it onto another programme and then transfer it to final cut. After we had overcome this trouble we began to select scenes to add to our trailer.

We began by downloading the Institution that we chose, which was Paramount Vantage and then we used Focus Features. This is for the first few seconds of our film so that it fits the conventions of every trailer created. We then began to watch some of our filming and started to cut bits out and place them on the timeline. It took us a while to select certain parts, as there was a lot of filming and many parts that went wrong or had continuity. Once we had chose our first few clips we decided to add in transitions between each clip so that when we play our trailer the scenes will flow more smoothly into each other. We chose to use dissolve and Fade in and Out as these were the most common ones that we found in our trailer research. We used a lot of lessons to edit our trailer and each lesson would add in more clips to our timeline. The next stage we needed to complete within editing was the music.

 Editing- second part

The next stage of editing was to add in the titles to our trailer. We decided to put the titles nearer the end of the trailer as we thought it would look more effective. To create our titles we used Live Type, at first this was very complex as we had not used this programme before to create titles, but eventually we got to know it better and managed to create titles. We needed to make 4 titles one for the actress's name, one for the Actors name, one for the title and one extra that we added in that we have previously seen used in other trailers such as "Like Crazy". We chose a curly but sharp font and chose the colour of pink/dark red so that it would stand out again the background we have chose for the titles. The background we decided to use was a short clip of YouTube, it is called Bokeh and its lights that have been blurred and move around. We thought this background looked very effective and that our titles would look interesting and engaging against it. For each title we used the same font, colour and background to kept the colour scheme the same. The colour we used also represents our genre of Romance. Once we had created our titles we inserted the clips onto the timeline to view them, they were very good but we wanted the words to fade in and out on the background. To do this we went back onto the Title programme and managed to find effects and changed the titles to fade in and out. This then looked more improved and we were happy with the way they looked.

Now that we have recorded the voice over for our trailer we can insert it onto our timeline. This was fairly easy as we didn’t need to cut it or change the recording. Once we inserted it we had to change the volume of “Give me love” and decrease it so that the voice over was on top and louder than the other song. After we had put the voice over in when she finishes speaking we had to fade in the chorus of the background song so that it flowed smoothly with no sudden jerks.

Editing – Third part

As Sarah and I had free periods in the week we decided to use our time to edit our trailer and put on the new footage that we had from the last filming session. So far in our trailer we have many gaps that need to be completed in order for our trailer to be finished, so we added in all the new footage we had. Once again we found it slightly hard importing the footage but we managed to do it once we had found the lead we needed. It took a lot of time and patience to edit this trailer as there was a lot to do in such little time. When editing the new footage we had to increase the brightness on some shots especially the night ones as they were too dark to see what was actually happening. By changing the brightness it allowed us to see the footage more clearly but it gave it a slight blur. Even though the footage had a slight blur we were pleased because it gave it a misty effect which compliments the creepiness of the actor in the filming. The next part of editing our film was to add in the Attachment production clip,we created the Attachment Production our self using the software iMovie.

Our film is now complete and we just needed to perfect it, as we watched our trailer several times we were not happy with the titles we had created as the text was not very clear and the quality was fairly bad. So we decided with the time we had left to re- create the titles again on Live Type. We used the same font and text but changed the colour to a dark grey/black and the background to a slightly darker Bohek. Once we had completed these our film was now perfected and we are extremely pleased with the outcome and hope to get a good grade for the work we have accomplished. 


Below is our new titles

At the end of our film we added in a billing block to fit the common conventions of film trailers. We used the same billing block as the one of our film poster so that it was same and matched.
Below is our billing block in our trailer. 

As you can see at the bottom we added in our production company and the institutions that we used in our trailer, this is to represent the companies we used for our trailer. By adding these to our billing block it makes it look more effective and professional. 

We then added in an extra clip to the end of our trailer which said for more info go to, and then it has many links to websites that people can gain more information about our trailer and film. 

In conclusion editing was the most challenging part of creating a Film Trailer. The software Final Cut was also very hard to get used to as the previous year we used Pinnacle which was very simple. However we soon got the hang of it and managed to produce excellent work. We worked well together and each put in our own time and effort to get this trailer perfect.