Evaluation question

1. In what way does your media product use,
develop or challenge conventions of real media
products?

2. Media products
Our coursework insisted of producing 3 types of media products.
1. A teaser trailer that was no longer than 2 minutes, it would based around the
horror genre and would have a specific theme, for example our theme was
poltergeists and ghosts.
2. A poster, that linked in with the trailer, we produced a theatrical poster and a
teaser poster both with strong images on the front.
3. A magazine cover, that also linked in with our trailer and posters, we produced a
special subscribers addition magazine cover and a normal public magazine cover.

3. Trailer
As a group the first thing we focused on was a trailer, to do this we had to research into
other trailers in the same sub genre to insure that we were able to correctly pull this
together. We needed to see how other poltergeist movie trailers were made and shot
so we could take aspects of there work and make it into our own.
The three trailers we looked at were The woman in black, Dark Water and The Apparition
these trailers all were in the horror genre and under the ghost/poltergeist sub genre.
We really researched in depth into these trailers and picked out a few things we could
use in our trailer.
Through out our trailer we use conventions of a real horror trailer from using similar
shots to producing our own ‘coming soon’ sign/logo.
ahC

4. Continued..
Making our media product look
professional was important as we wanted
the audience to feel like it was a proper
trailer, therefore at the beginning of our
trailer we inserted a ‘Restricted
audiences only’ shot, this let the audience
know that our movie trailer was age
restricted because of the level of
scariness. The woman in black trailer had
a ‘appropriate audiences’ shot at the
beginning of there trailer to also let the
public know what they were watching
was only appropriate for a certain age
group.

5. Continued..
While watching The Woman in Black
trailer a really effective shot stood our for
us, while actor Daniel Radcliffe was stood
at the window, a ghostly figure appears
behind him. We took this shot and
tweaked it making it fit into our media
product; 30 seconds into our trailer and
Character Grace is lighting a cigarette
while doing this a ghostly figure appears
behind her, turns left and walks sharply
away.
This is a popular shot in ghostly horror
films so when our audience sees this we
hope they link this shot to other
successful movie trailers. This shows that
we have taken into account the type of
shots used in other movie trailers and
interpreted that into our own work.

6. Continued..
At the beginning of most movie trailers they have location shots to show the audience where the
story is being set. In The Woman in Black there is a long shot of the house where the story is
set, therefore we shot the castle where Charlotte was set to again show the audience where the
story is being set. In Dark Water there is an establishing shot of the city where the film is set, so
we shot an establishing shot of the area around the castle to show the audience the solitude
around the building. These shots a great for the beginning of a trailer because it really gives the
audience and idea of what's going on and keeps them in suspense for the rest of the film.

7. Continued..
At the very end of trailers there is usually a
cut from the footage to a slide saying
‘coming soon’. We made our own coming
soon sing to make it look similar to the
Woman in Blacks coming soon sign, the
letters have various lines coming off them
to make them look spooky, however the
producers of The Woman in Black have a
lot more effects and there ‘coming soon’
was written onto a window that was fogged
up; we didn’t have many effects so added a
simple glow to it making it come off the
screen.

8. Poster
The second media product we focused on making were some posters to go along with our
trailer. We really needed to make sure we were using the same conventions as a real
film poster as we wanted the poster to look as real as possible. We produced two
posters on Photoshop, one was a theatrical poster which would be on billboards, bus
stops and on the wall outside cinemas, the other poster was a teaser poster; it would
be situated in magazines, newspapers and on social networking sites. The two posters
are closely linked together using the same font and colour palette. We looked at
various other film posters from movies such as The woman in Black, The Grudge and
dark water, these helped us produced our final outcomes and inspired us to create a
strong image.

9. Continued..
These were the posters we looked at for inspiration,
we took elements from each poster and added them
into the theatrical poster to make it as scary as
possible. We chose these posters because they all
have strong images on the front, the title and font
stand out immensely and they all are professional .
The main elements we took the close up image of the
main characters face, the actors names, colour
schemes and credits at the bottom of the poster

10. At the top of the Woman in Black
poster there was The Actors name in
capital letters to show the importance Continued..
of their role, we have done the same.
We have put the names of our main
actors at the top of the poster to show
how important they are.
The close up pale face of
Daniel Radcliffe inspired the
picture on our poster, I
edited the picture so our
character looked more
ghostly. We made sure our
character was looking in to
the camera just like Daniel
was to make it seam like Our character is
she’s looking at you, the made to look like
audience. she has come from
the sea with her
hair covering her
face and her eye
popping through,
abit like the image
from the Grudge
poster.
We put credits at the bottom of our Charlotte
poster like the credits on the bottom of the
Dark water poster, this make sour poster
look more professional.
[Theatrical Poster]

11. Continued..
This is our teaser poster which would be released a
few months before our theatrical poster, we have
colour coordinated posters so they go together
using the colour palette of Grey, Black, White and
Red.
In both posters we took the images and made the
‘Charlotte’ and ‘Coming soon’ logos on a
programme called in design. We edited the images
on Photoshop making the image for a theatrical
poster duller and the image on our teaser poster
greyscale. The image on the teaser poster was take
while filming our location shots, we think it’s a
strong picture because it mainly shows the castle
which was the main idea as it is the main location
and over to the right it shoes you the wood where
some of our trailer was shot, then at the front of the
image there is a tree which has no leaves, just
branches. It creates a creepy feel to the poster and
gives it an extra edge. This challenges the
conventions of a poltergeist/horror poster because
they don’t usually use a location image for a poster,
it would make our poster stand out more from
others and maybe raise a few questions with the
audience.

12. Continued..
Similar to the conventions of a real film poster we
have colour coordinated our posters and made them
link together. ‘Charlotte’ is in white and the ‘coming
soon’ and the date are both in red. This is so the
reader/audience can see that even though the poster
images are completely different, the posters are in
fact linked together and are promoting the same
film.

13. Magazine Cover
The third media product we produced was a magazine front cover. We had to research into
other film magazines and find out what went on and in a film magazine. We did this so we
could get a real feel for movie magazines so our front cover could portray a real one. We
based out magazine around a well know film magazine ‘Empire’ this lead us to produce two
magazine covers one special edition cover for subscribers and one normal cover for any
consumer to buy.
The two posters are linked together using the same image, font and colour theme, The only
difference is that the special edition issue does not have an tag lines on it purely so the
reader will be able to see the main image more.

14. Continued…
The masthead of Empire is in
bold red capital letters, we have
We have used and developed done the same because capitals
the same conventions stands out more and the colour
featured on Empires cover, red links in well with our posters.
for example our tag lines are
similar but we have slightly
changed ours to suit our Empire put the title of the
magazine. movie and a tag line
underneath in the middle of
the cover so we have done
the same, this is so it stands
out and draws in the reader.
At the bottom of
Empire they
advertised that
there was two
covers to collect.
Similar to theres
we have
advertised that
All magazines there are two
have barcodes we posters to
added one on to collect. This
ours to make it persuades the
look like a real reader to buy the
media product. magazine.

15. Continued..
MASTHEAD
DATE
MOVIE TA
GLIN E
MAIN IMAGE
This is our subscribers edition, like empire
This is a subscribers addition to empire magazine, we have featured the masthead in capitals
it features the masthead, the main image, with the date directly under it, we have
barcode, date and a small tag line on the right removed the majority of our tag lines and
hand side This is really effective because you can placed the name of the magazine in the
see the image more and it makes the magazine middle. Also like empire you can see more
look more strong. of the main image.

16. Continued..
This is a comparison of Empires front cover and our front cover, as you can see some things
are the same, the barcode, movie title, masthead. However some things are different as we
challenged and developed the conventions of this media product to make ours individual.

17. Summery
We have used, developed and challenged the conventions of a media magazine. We have
looked closely at Empire magazine and used the conventions they have used, however we
have slightly developed some to put our own twist on our magazine.
We have used, developed and challenged the conventions of a film poster. Our theatrical
poster is very similar to any film poster, and that shows how we have used the same
conventions, however we developed this by creating a second teaser poster that was different
to any other film posters.
We have used, developed and challenged the conventions of a teaser trailer, we have made it
professions and used the same conventions by adding in a parental clip before the movie and
ending it with a ‘coming soon’ sign. We have challenged and developed the conventions of a
teaser trailer by using similar shots that other trailers have used but changing them to make
it our own.

18. Fleur Gascoigne
Shauni Brown
Rosie Bridle