A2 Media Studies evaluation for OCR Specification G324

1. Evaluation!
Emma Hughes, Sam Gapes, Regdeep Bassi & Aimie Carey

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

3. We have followed the majority of the typical forms and conventions for empire magazine, however we have challenged the
forms and conventions by making our magazine cover horror thriller themed like a ‘special edition’ cover. We have
accomplished this by making minor changes.
We challenged the forms
and conventions by
making a minor alteration
to the Empire masthead
and making it blend in
with our background as
well as having it’s own
horrific look to it to go
We have stuck to the forms with our horror thriller
and conventions of the empire theme.
magazine by having a pug that To create the lines on
is in a colour that stands out Empire, we dragged an
from our themed magazine. It eraser over it on Paint
states that we are giving away Shop Pro 7.
a Woman in Black poster
which is a horror therefore
relating to our horror thriller
theme. Our banner has stuck to our
horror thriller theme as we have
first added three images,
advertising recent horror films.
We have then made the banner
red and white because it not
only represents blood and
bandages but also goes with our
movie campaign.

4. Our image follows the typical
forms and conventions of an
Empire magazine. We have
followed the rule of thirds
making the image central and
covering the P in Empire.
The image we have used is
visually strong as it lures in an
audience. The ripped clothes
For the film title, we have used a
and dark face shows that the
typical horror red and white
film is a horror thriller.
colour. We also used the font ‘FF
Confidential’ from PicNik which To create this image we took
gave it a crooked, eery effect. two separate images, one of
the forest and one of the
Regdeep. We then used Paint
Shop Pro 7 and cropped her
out. After, we placed her onto
the forest image and placed it
on PicNik to make it brighter.
We also made the edge of the
magazine lighter to create a
misty effect.

5. The image we have used is visually strong as it lures in an audience. The ripped clothes and dark face shows that
the film is a horror thriller. It’s the same image as the magazine cover but blended in with another image of the
path.
The rounded edge on the image is made to look like a headlight from our broken down car. It is also illustrating
the highlight of the main character.
On the poster, we used
the same font as the
magazine.
We have used a typical Our tag line is ‘Four
horror red and white girls, one
colour. We also used nightmare’. We
the font ‘FF have used a
Confidential’ from consistent look by
PicNik which gave it a using the same font
crooked, eery effect. as the film title.
We also tilted the
‘Unknown’ so its
appears broken which
connotes the girls
situation.
Our poster is shy of becoming a full theatrical poster as it is missing a At the bottom of the poster we have
complete release date of the movie and a billing block added the film title. This has made
the poster more professional.

6. The Last House On The Left is the inspiration we used to create our poster.
We used this image as
inspiration for our poster.
Here, she looks like she has
been dragged through hell
and back. The image in the
background looks like a dark
forest where their lake house
When putting our poster is. This shows that safety is
together we chose to use similar only slightly out of reach.
font and colour as this poster. In our poster, we have gone
We used these colours as they for the drag through hell and
represent blood, bones and back effect and also used an
bandages. isolated area.

7. Themes/Narrative
 In our trailer, we was able to develop and challenge the typical forms and
conventions of a typical thriller genre trailer.
 Four friends are taking a road trip. They end up taking a wrong turn down
an abandoned road and suddenly the car breaks down. They see a figure
in the distance so one the of the girls decides to get out. She pauses half
way and slowly starts to back away and runs away screaming. In time the
girls get split up and a bad situation occurs.
 Our plot is not a typical thriller theme as it is part horror. We have also got
all female characters when usually it’s all males. However, the female
characters are seen as weaker and more as an easy target which our
trailer gives out

8. Iconography
 The iconography we have used were typical horror thriller elements.
 The characters all wore casual clothing. The white clothing represents their youth
and innocence. Whereas the red trousers worn by one of the characters suggests
that danger is lurking around along side the black outfit represents darkness,
doom and death.
 Other props that we used were rope, fake blood and shredded clothing.

9. Setting/Audio-Visual Style
 For our setting we used a secluded pathway within a forest like
area. We used this as it was not only fitted to our film title ‘The
Unknown Path’ but also followed the conventions of isolation of
characters in the horror thriller genre.
 Our trailer was visually interesting as it had good use of
iconography, camera shots, music which built up suspense and an
eery feeling within the audience.
 Through the use of camera shots, we created a
personal/documentary feel to our movie through the use of hand
held camera creating panic amongst the audience. We also use a
canted angle shot of one the characters looking tortured leaving the
audience wondering what has happened and if she is good or evil.

10. 2) How effective is the combination of your main
product and ancillary texts?

11.  The combination of our main product and ancillary texts is
very effective as an overall campaign. This is due to our
consistent use of the same font ‘FF Confidential’, black and
red colour scheme along with the one image being re-
invented in the ancillary products as well as in the main
product. This combination of our main product alongside our
ancillary products show the consistency and the link between
the three making them work every effectively as an overall
campaign.

12. We used the same image which is reoccurring in our main
product however, we re-invented it making it work every
effectively in showing that it belongs with our main product.
For our main
product we
stuck with using
the same font
‘FF Confidential’
and also stuck
with a black and
red colour
scheme.

13. These stills from
our main product
use the same colour
and font as our
ancillary products,
showing
consistency in our
products creating
an effective
campaign.

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

15.  For our audience feedback we showed our trailer to a group of mixed males and females
aged 12 – 19. We chose these ages to get an idea of what certificate it would be by how it
affected people. We also asked a few member of staff for their opinion expanding our target
audience and seeing if our movie would appeal an older age group.
 Amy, 12 – “I couldn’t really understand what was happening. I think it was too old for me.”
 Charlotte, 15 – “I really liked the idea of the film and I can’t wait to see the actual film. It was
really interesting!”
 Scott, 18 – “I enjoyed it however I could predict what would happen in the actual film. It may
be too young for me.”
 Mr Todd – “It was exhilarating”
 Mr Farnsworth – “It was fantastic. Absolutely superb.”

16. We gave out this questionnaire to 16 students, male and female of ages 12 – 19.
1. Did you enjoy the trailer?
2. What would you rate it on a scale of 1-10? 1 being bad & 10 being excellent
3. Did you understand what the storyline was about?
4. Could you tell who the main character was?
5. What certificate would you classify this film as?
6. Would you go to see this film after watching the trailer?

17. After we received the questionnaires back, we counted up the results.
1. 13 out of 16 students agreed that they enjoyed the trailer.
2. Most of the students answered they would rate the trailer between 6 – 9.
3. Most students said that they had a clear understanding of the storyline.
4. Majority of the students knew who the main character was.
5. The certificate of the film would be a 15.
6. It was more of the female students who wanted to carry on watching the film.

18.  From our feedback, we have learnt that the majority of the students that
viewed our trailer and wished to watch the movie were mostly female.
They were mostly in the age category of 15 – 23.
 Upon reviewing our feedback, we decided that our main target audience
would be females age between 15 – 23, however, our movie also has an
appeal to an older male audience.
 As we used the typical horror forms and conventions for a horror thriller
movie, this already allowed us to have a set target audience. For example,
the sinister look given by the use of blacks, reds and whites in our fonts
along with the use of black and blood in our movie alongside the tortured
character sets our trailer at a 15 rating.

19. 4) How did you use media technologies in the
construction and research, planning and
evaluation stages?

20. Research!
 Before planning our poster, magazine and trailer we had to do some research. We did most
of research based on the horror thriller genre. We looked into a variety of movies, posters
and magazine covers such as Sorority Row, The A-Team, Sucker Punch, Mission Impossible 4,
Four Brothers to become aware of the conventions of these.
 For the trailer, we mainly used the Internet. We spent many lessons looking over horror and
thriller trailers on YouTube. YouTube helped us as it enabled us to pause and go back and
forth between shots which we were then able to analyse and use in our work. These trailers
were horror thrillers such as Orphan, The Strangers, Scream and The Last House On The Left.
We looked at the music and how it was effective to each shot and built up a suspenseful
atmosphere, the type of shots, how the characters were portrayed and how the overall
trailer successfully achieved creating a exhilarating atmosphere.
 For the magazine and poster we used the school’s Intranet to access past students work via
www.warrencomprehensivemedia.blogspot.com, the Internet to search for inspiration along
with a variety of magazines and poster. We used websites such as www.comingsoon.net
www.idmb.com , to look up previous Empire and Sight & Sound covers along with movie
teaser posters and theatrical posters. Here, we looked at the layout, images and fonts that
were used and the effect they created. These websites were effective as they allowed us to
look into a variety of campaigns at once for previous and upcoming movies.

21. Planning!
 After research was collected, we began to think about several ideas we could produce an
idea of what we wanted to do.
 We then decided on a final idea of what we wanted to do.
 We first wrote out a shooting script where we planned out what would be said in the trailer,
what the captions would say and iconography. We also drew up a story board.
 Once we had finalised our idea’s and had a clear idea of which direction we wanted to take
our campaign, we uploaded our work onto www.warrena2sear.blogspot.co.uk and continued
to do so throughout our entire project.
 Our final trailer however did not however go as we had planned but we improvised and
created an even better trailer than we had originally anticipated.
 After planning our synopsis we then looked into our magazine and poster ideas then, drew
up what our poster and magazine cover would look like.
 Our poster and magazine cover however also did not go as we had planned and we adapted
our magazine and poster cover to match our new trailer.

22. Construction!
 When constructing our trailer, we used the software Adobe Premiere 6.5 to edit and create
the trailer. We had also used this software for our AS work so luckily we were all familiar with
it making it easier four us to construct our trailer. We came across a few complication, such
as the group coming to a decision on what type of music best suited the trailer. We were
able to agree on which music to use by testing out all the types of music we all thought were
best suited and then came on a joint decision as to which we all agreed best suited our
trailer.
 Before we could do any of this we first had to re-shoot some of our footage and add some
more. This is because when we were looking back at our original footage we saw that we
needed some improved shots as our original shots were not adapted to our new script.

23. Construction!
 When making our trailer we used the software Adobe Premiere 6.5. The first few shots of our
trailer are in order so it starts to make sense however when it hits the peak, we mixed up all
our shots. The pace of shots was also important to consider in the production of our trailer.
During the start, the pace was slow after each shot is paused, which looked like a picture was
being taken which made it aware to the viewers that we’re the main characters. Captions
then appeared and as there was four of us it worked well with the four words, ‘four girls, one
nightmare’. After the word ‘nightmare’, the music kicks in and the pace speeds up showing
many shots of the different scenes that took place. ‘The Unknown Path’ appears and pauses
for a few seconds and then changes to a shot of Regdeep at the window. This shot is quick
which should make the audience jump.

24. Magazine editing!
 To start off we had to come up with an idea of what our magazine image
would be. Our original image include all four members of the group
standing united, holding a mask. We did this as it was visually strong as
an image and suggested that the girls had been a lot together but had a
secret to hide. We got inspiration for this from the Sorority Row and A-
Team cover. However, after deciding it was not as strong as an image as
we hoped, we then took out the mask as it gave away too much and look
amateur. But due to the changes in our trailer, we chose a different
image all together that was more suited to our new trailer. Our new
image was of only one of the girls looking like she had been dragged
through hell which should make the audience wonder what happened.
 To edit our image, we placed it onto Paint Shop Pro 7 and Adobe
Photoshop CS3. We played around with the tools, such as the ‘lasso
tool’ and eraser, in attempt to make the central image stand out against
the background and the rest of the Empire cover but not too much as we
wanted it to look professional.

25. Magazine editing!
 After collecting a group of Empire magazines, we then played around with the
layout to see what fitted our image best. We then settled for a similar layout as
the Empire cover for the Mission Impossible 4 campaign. However we gave our
magazine cover a horror thriller movie theme and changed the colours around.
We ended up using the colours red, which and black. The font we used, we got
from www.picnik.com. It is called ‘FF Confidential’ which gave our text a crooked
and eerie effect. We were consistent with the type of font we used with our
campaign effectiveness and it helped establish our trailer as a horror thriller. We
placed our text in the centre of the page as it followed the typical conventions of
an Empire magazine and this is what we was trying to achieve.
 To keep with our horror thriller themed magazine cover, all articles and images
were all horror related. For our banner we included images of The Woman in
Black, The Devil Inside and Chronicle. These were fitted to our cover as it gave it
sinister and drew more attention to our central image.
 In the end we were able to successfully achieved a special edition empire cover
by following all the typical forms and conventions for an empire magazine.

28. Poster editing!
 For our poster, we first drew up an image of the back of the four girls looking down a long
pathway however, as we changed our magazine cover to fit our new trailer, we had to adjust
our poster image to fit them to have a successful campaign. We then looked at images on the
Internet and found inspiration from a The Last House on the Left poster. We then based our
poster on this.
 Our new poster image became a blend of the pathway, an image of Regdeep crawling in the
distant for help looking like she’s getting away from hell and a medium shot of her which is
the same picture that we used in the magazine. On Adobe Photoshop CS3, we took all three
images, cropped them and then made them look ghostly. We blended the edge to make it
look like a car head light coming across this tragedy which occurred which relates to the
trailer where the car broke down.
 The images were placed on a black background to the right so on the left we filled up it up
with text. We used the same font, ‘FF Confidential’ for the film title, date and website and
the same colours as the magazine cover. This left our overall poster with a strong effect as it
lures in an audience and makes them wonder what could have possibly have happened.

31. Evaluation!
 To create our evaluation we started it up on Microsoft Office PowerPoint
2003. We looked back at all of our work from when we started the
project. After looking back on our campaign, we had to answer four
questions. These questions are; “in what ways does your media product
use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media
products?”, “how effective is the combination of your main product and
ancillary texts?”, “what have you learned from your audience feedback?”
and “how did you use media technologies in the construction and
research, planning and evaluation stages?”. In these we explained our use
of various technologies such as the Internet, Intranet, Paint Shop Pro 7
and Adobe Premiere 6.5. We looked in detail how these were helpful and
effective in making our successful campaign.