Candidate Number: 5158 Centre Number: 27258

Links to website and trailer

www.wix.com/EllieSlough/LoveDrug http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3x_xxNJ6Bs

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

Technology has enabled me to create 3 pieces of advertising media text that I am happy with. I have learnt a lot from these technologies and without them, I wouldn’t have been able to create any where near as good texts. During my research and planning, I used the internet a lot to get audience feedback (through my blog on blogspot.com) and to research teaser trailers, film posters and websites that already exist from a romance genre film. I also used word a lot to create questionnaires to hand out to people for research. I also used ‘Windows Excel’ to create graphs for my analysis of this research. These programmes have helped me to clearly understand my research and for there not to be huge amount of writing for me to read when making decisions because I can look at the graphs which is quicker for me to find answers to what my target audience have made. In other words, it has enables me to visually interpret and resent my findings. I also used ‘Powerpoint’ when creating my presentations to show to my classmates and focus groups for audience feedback. This was really useful as I am extremely familiar with ‘Powerpoint’ and I didn’t have any problems when creating my presentations. To create our teaser trailer, we used a JVC camera and in places, a tripod to make sure each shot was steady where we wanted it to be. After shooting our footage we uploaded it onto a CD and then to the computer. We had some difficulties changing the format of the clips as the editing programme we used wouldn’t recognise the clips in the format they came in. However we managed to figure this out then we could move onto editing! We used Windows Movie Maker as our editing programme but this restricted what we could do and we were made to use some editing stiles that we weren’t really pleased with (like a wipe cut) and didn’t think looked professional because they aren’t the typical edits uses in romance teaser trailers and it also makes it look ‘cartoony’ and childish. However, we had to add different edits in to show a range of different ones so it makes the trailer a bit more interesting that if we had just used straight cuts. I feel that if we had had more time then we could have done more research into editing programmes and downloaded and learnt how to use a better one before editing. However we learnt a lot from Windows Movie Maker and we are happy with our final result. I used a Nikon camera when taking my images for my poster and website. I wanted a professional camera so my pictures were good quality and made the media text look more professional. When editing these pictures I used Photo Shop because I had previously learnt how to use this when doing my AS coursework and I found the results were pleasing. I changed the saturation and brightness to make some of the images black and white. To merge the two images for my poster, I used the ‘blur tool’ so the line wasn’t so harsh which made the images look like one instead of two images put together. I also used the ‘colour tool’ to fix some of the blemishes so the faces looked more 3D and professional. I also changed the contrast as the lighting was different when I took each image so I knew that changing the contrast would help make the two images look like one when they were joined together. This was difficult to remove and I feel that if I new more about editing images then I would have been able to do a better job. However, I am really pleased with how much I have learnt from using Photo Shop for editing my images.

EVALUATION!! - How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

I feel that I have successfully managed to make my ancillary tasks and the main product one advertising campaign. The reason for doing this is that when my target audience watch the teaser trailer they will then see the poster and website elsewhere at a different time and remember the trailer because of the many links that I have made throughout all of my media texts; this will hopefully encourage them to go and see the film. One of the ways in which I have made all three texts link is I have used the same font for the title of the film. This creates the identity of the film and when the target audience see this font saying ‘Love Drug’ on the poster and website they will recognise and remember the teaser trailer making them want to watch the film. The colour scheme is also important to be kept the same throughout all three media texts so that it doesn’t confuse the audience and it again, helps them remember the trailer. We decided the colour scheme should be red black and white. The red connotes love and passion and fits with the Romance genre; this should help the audience recognise the genre of our film even if they haven’t seen the teaser trailer yet. The white connotes trust and purity whereas the black connotes evil and betrayal. This suggests to the audience that there are two sides to our storyline. I have made sure this colour scheme is used in all of my media texts, on my poster I have used the red for the name of the film and a black and white image as the background. I have also used white text so the audience knows they can trust what is written. On my website I have used lots of black and white images for the drugs scene pictures, this shows the audience that the drug scene’s have two sides to it. I have also used black text on my website which is the same as the text in our teaser trailer so it will link nicely in the target audiences’ heads. Another way in which I have made my three media texts link to one another is I have added in lots of links on my website. For example, there are links to the ‘Facebook page’ etc. There is also a link to ‘Amazon’ so it is easy and accessible for the target audience to purchase the ‘Love Drug’ Soundtrack. My website also shows the trailer so my target audience can watch it not only at the cinema but on the internet too. However, I didn’t put my poster on my website as I found (during my research) that none of the Romance genre websites that I looked at had their film poster on their website. I think this is because a poster is supposed to be eye catching and if someone has seen the poster many times, it would no longer be eye catching if they were to see it in the street for example. I have also put the same actors and their names on my poster as well as my website so that when the audience see’s one or the other they instantly know who is starring in the film and will then want to go and watch it or the teaser trailer. There are also many ways in which I represented the characters consistently throughout all three of my products, for example, I used the same enigma codes for each character so for the main protagonist I have shown images of her looking sad and depressed etc on my website because this is how she is portrayed in the trailer. I also managed to keep this rule when taking the images for my poster because I purposely told the model not to smile as I wanted her to have a blank expression which will leave the audience wondering why she isn’t smiling. Using the same enigma codes means that the same questions are left in the audiences head; e.g. ‘why is the main protagonist sad?’, ‘who has died?’, ‘does she take the drugs?’ etc. This is why I have images on my website of drugs but not the Chloe with them. So they audience still don’t know if she takes them or not. Another link that I have made is I have put the same song on my website (on the ‘Soundtrack’ page) as in the teaser trailer. This suggests that when my target audience hear this song it immediately reminds them of the film and makes them want to go and watch it. Also if the audience hear the soundtrack and see the trailer many times then the repetition of this will make the trailer more memorable hopefully making the maximum amount of my target audience wanting to watch the film. I have put the institutional information across all three platforms so that the audience recognise the institution and this then gives them another link to where they can watch the trailer again and remember the film. Doing this also links the products together because the audience can recognise they all come from the same institution and will connect the three products together. There is also a prop used throughout these media texts which are the drugs. They are shown on a couple of my website pages which will remind the audience that this film has a ‘twist’ to it. It also helps them link my website to the trailer as our teaser trailer has a lot of drugs scenes in it.

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

For my media coursework, I decided to create a package that would advertise a romance film; this includes a teaser trailer, a poster and a website. The teaser trailer that my group have produced includes a number of typical codes and conventions from a real romance film. However we also felt it was important to develop and challenge some of these conventions as this would keep our target audience interested and not make them think our storyline is predictable. We decided to use the same length for our teaser trailer as all of the other typical romance teaser trailers as this is important so the audience knows it’s a teaser trailer not the main trailer. The main reason for a teaser trailer is to tease the audience into them wanting to watch the film. This is done by showing little bits of the storyline but not enough to give everything away; for example, using Todorov’s theory, we usually see some of the equilibrium, disruption and reconciliation to keep the suspense and the attempt to repair and reinstatement of equilibrium are left out of the teaser trailer as this will make the audience want to watch the film to find out what happens. I feel we have successfully done this because we haven’t shown how anything ends, however, I would have liked to show a little more so the teaser trailer is a bit clearer but we would be making our teaser trailer too long for it to be a teaser and we would also be in danger of giving too much away. Our storyline develops and challenges the typical conventions of a romance teaser trailer as we have added in a lot of distressing clips of drugs etc. and it has death (of Chloe’s father) in the plot. You wouldn’t usually find these things in a romance film as they are normally all focussed around love and relationships but we decided to add a twist to our storyline to make it different and unpredictable from other romance films. This will also help persuade our target audience to watch the main film as they will want to find out what happens. A romance film is usually set in a town or city where there are lots of people. However we wanted to challenge this convention and set our film in the countryside because we felt that this is what we had more access to and it also look more romantic (when they are walking in the park etc.) Having a female protagonist is conventional for a romance genre film and we used this to make our trailer and storyline more appealing to our target audience. We also felt that having a female protagonist meant that our target audience will be able to relate to the main character in the story. We have also used the same convention of having a setting in the female protagonists’ bedroom because we felt that this was important to make the storyline make sense and it is a typical setting for the friends to be getting ready to go out. We developed this setting to make it look more romantic by having low lighting in the bedroom. Again we challenged the typical conventions of a romance film by filming some scenes in a grave yard. This will shock the audience because they will not be used to seeing a grave yard scene in a romance genre film. However it will still make them want to watch it to find out why this grave yard scene is necessary in the storyline. I felt that it was important to develop this setting to make the grave yard look less scary because then the target audience might get confused with the genre as a dark grave yard would typically be seen in a horror film! This is why we decided to shoot the scene in day light. The dark side of Chloe’s life subverts from a stereotypical romance film as you would usually see all happy scene’s with maybe a couple of break ups in the middle of the film as the disruption; not as dark as we have made our storyline! We wanted to develop and challenge this convention as we thought it would make our film stand out from the others and would made it more exciting and less predictable. We used the same conventions with the lighting as I found that the typical romance genre films are set in the day time because this portrays a happy and joyful film. We decided that this is a good idea for our film as we didn’t want it to be too depressing with the drugs in the storyline etc. This is why most of our scenes are set in day light and we used natural lighting for this. However as I have mentioned before, we developed this typical convention as we used low lighting in the bedroom to create a romantic feel. The main props that are used in our teaser trailer are drugs; this is to fit in with the storyline and to suggest that Chloe is going to take them. We decided to challenge the typical props that are usually seen in a romance film because we felt that our plot isn’t like the typical romance genre. Usually the audience would see a necklace or something to resemble the couple’s love but in our storyline, the couple is having problems and the male doesn’t love the female so we decided not to add this kind of prop into our storyline because it would confuse the audience. Hair and make-up is kept natural throughout our teaser trailer as this challenges the typical conventions of a romance film because you would usually have parties where people get dressed up. However we felt that it was important to show our characters natural faces because of the events that are happening, you wouldn’t dress up to go on a walk or to take drugs. Keeping things natural also shows that the characters are comfortable around each other suggesting that the couple have been together for along time. The soundtrack that we used for the teaser trailer follows the same typical conventions of a real romance soundtrack however we have developed this because our song has some sad lyrics where as you would usually find happy lyrics throughout a romance song. I think it was necessary for us to pick this song because it clearly shows that the film has some happy bits in but also some sad bits too. The song is a very powerful and emotional song and it helps to connect the audience with the trailer. We challenged the typical convention of a voice over on our teaser trailer as we felt that having text come up within the shots was more dramatic than having a voice over. We also felt, as a group, that if we had a voice over then it would make our trailer sound and look unprofessional as we couldn’t get the typical low voice that is used in so many trailers for all the different genres. We decided to use the same typical convention of having the production company flash up at the start of our teaser trailer as this introduces the company and the film before anything happens. It also lets the audience know what company made this film and in a real film, if it was a well known company this would draw the audience into watching the film right from the start. However as ours is a made up company this wouldn’t happen but if we were going to make it we would use a well known production company. We were limited to what edits we could put into our teaser trailer due to the limitations of the software. This means that our editing is very plain however, during my research I found that a teaser trailer typically uses a lot of straight cuts or jump cuts throughout. This means that we used the same conventions for editing as a real romance teaser trailer, but we would have liked to experiment with different editing techniques such as jump cuts etc. The speed of the edits are also extremely quick as this is what the typical conventions are for a romance teaser trailer. We decided to use this convention as it helps to build up suspense and makes the audience want to watch the film. There are many ways in which my website follows the same typical conventions as a real romance film website, however there are also some ways in which it challenges and develops these codes and conventions. The colour scheme throughout my website is the same as my poster and our trailer. I decided to use this typical convention as it helps the audience make a textual link between all three I created an ‘enter page’ for my website because during my research I found that a lot of the romance websites I looked at had an ‘enter page’ to make the audience interact with the site and it introduces the film as well as the website. I also created several ‘mini pages’ onto my home page because again, this is what I found most of the romance websites did. This helps the pages link onto one another and is easier for the audience to navigate around the site. However, I have developed some of these mini pages by adding in links to other websites like ‘Amazon’ so my target audience can easily purchase some of the merchandise. The images that I chose to use for my website show the different emotions in the film. This shows that I have developed the typical codes for images on a real romance site because you would normally see all of the characters smiling etc. However I felt it was important to show the different emotions as our storyline isn’t all happy and cheerful. I developed this idea further by having the drug images in black and white to make a textual link to the trailer where each of the drug scenes are in black and white. I have used the same font for the name of the film ‘Love Drug’ to create a textual link between all three media texts. However I have not used this same font for the rest of my website. I decided to choose a plain font for the names of the pages etc. because this is what I found most real romance genre websites had. It makes it clear and easy for the audience to read the website and navigate their way around. I managed to develop this text because some of the text I wanted to stand out more than the names of the pages so I added a ‘glow’ to the text that I wanted to stand out. The background of the ‘enter page’ challenges the typical conventions of a romance website because you would usually find an image of the main protagonists from the film but I felt that I had a lot of images from the film on the ‘mini pages’ so I felt that I didn’t want to give any more of the storyline away; also this way, it leaves the audience wanting to enter into the website to find out more about the film. I have created the same questions being asked for my target audience as this creates the same enigma codes across all three texts and again doesn’t give too much of the storyline away. My poster follows a lot of typical conventions of a real media text. I thought it was important to follow these as my target audience will immediately recognise that it is a poster for a romance genre film. I found, (through my secondary research) that a lot of romance film posters use 1 main image as the background. This is so the audience can focus on the main protagonists and it prevents the poster from looking too busy and confusing. I decided to use this convention as I didn’t want my poster looking ‘tacky’ or complicated. I have made it clear who are the main protagonists in all three of my media texts because they are the only characters shown on the poster and on the website, they are in the majority of the images; also in the teaser trailer they are shown the most and the lighting and camera angles are focussed around the two main protagonists (especially Chloe.) I chose to have my characters looking directly into the camera (direct mode of address) to draw the audience’s attention into the poster and to make them feel part of it. Becky has a blank face to show that her emotions in the film are up and down and she doesn’t know how to feel. However I wanted Giuls to smile to suggest to the audience that he is happy in the film, this will then create questions in the audience’s head asking why is he smiling and she isn’t? This should make the audience want to watch the film to find out. I also developed the idea of having the two main protagonists as the background by merging the two faces together to suggest that there is a different side to both of the characters. I think this is an effective idea as it is unusual and not what my target audience will be expecting to see on a romance poster; this should make them want to watch the film to find out what the other side to their personality is. The text is mainly at the bottom of the page as this is where I found most of the text during my research. This is so the audience see the image first before anything, even though the image is a background I still wanted it to stand out more than anything else. The title of the film is in red to create a textual link to all of my media texts. Red also connotes love and romance which suggests the genre straight away to my target audience. I chose to put the ‘Coming Soon’ in red to catch the audience’s eye and I made sure that this was the only colour on the poster so that my colour scheme of red, black and white runs throughout all of my advertising pieces. This challenges the typical conventions of a real media poster as you would expect to see a lot of colour and emotion etc on a poster but I wanted the film to remain a mystery making the audience want to watch it. I also chose to put the names of who is starring in the film at the top of the page so the audience can clearly see who they are. If they were real, famous actors that had starred in lots of other romance films then this would attract my target audience even more as they would link the actors to other films they they’ve liked, however, because this isn’t a real media poster I couldn’t do that.

EVALUATION!! - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Throughout my research and planning and also the production of my media products, I found that having feedback from our target audience was extremely important and useful because this reassured me that our teaser trailer and my ancillary tasks would be successful when released. If I didn’t get feedback from the target audience then all of my media products would be a waste of time as they wouldn’t sell because they won’t appeal to anyone. I have made sure that everything I have done, I’ve got regular feedback from focus groups etc. The 'Triangle of Dependency' is suggesting that the institution, audience and text are all interlinked with each other. Research is done to find out what the audience want from the text, the text is then created to fit the audiences needs from the research that has been done. For example, if something changes in society to make the text not popular anymore then more research will be needed to find out what is popular again and to make the text fit the audiences desires. Also the audience influences the institution used because like our film, we chose to have an independent company make our film because our audience don't want any special effects etc so it wont be an expensive film to make. However, if we were making a Horror film then the audience would want to see special effects and would probably want to see famous actors so they know it is going to be a good horror film; meaning it would be best to have a well known institution to give the audience that trust they need to watch the film. The institution influences the text because if you have a large institution like 'Warner Bros.' then you are limited in what guidelines the film has to follow. There is more freedom in an independent institution. The 'Triangle of Dependency' will influence my film teaser trailer because all my decisions are based on the research i have done and have come from my target audience and their feedback. This way i know that our film will appeal to the right people that we want it to appeal to. In this case, the institution has not influenced our film because we made it up for out teaser trailer but i have done research into existing institutions and independent institutions to show that if we were to make this film, our institution would fit in well and would be recognisable as a film company because we have stuck to the codes and conventions of the existing independent institutions. Before our group made any decisions on what genre our teaser trailer would be, we undertook some primary research (questionnaire) to find out what the most popular film genre is today. We already knew we wanted our target audience to be of a fairly young age so we didn’t ask anyone over 40. However we hadn’t decided on male of female yet so we asked both and we knew that we may want to make our age range a lot smaller but we still wanted to ask outside the box to find the most popular genre. Our questionnaire results showed that the most popular genres of people aged 15-40 are Thriller and Romance. We then had a decision to make as to which genre we felt most comfortable with. I felt that I knew most of the typical conventions of the Romance genre as this is my favourite; having discussed it with the rest of the group, it turned out that this was their opinion too. The questionnaire also enabled us to form a target audience of women aged 15-25 as this was the age that the majority of people go to the cinema and watch a romance film. I also undertook secondary research (searching on the internet at other existing Teaser Trailers) in order to find out the typical conventions of a Romance teaser trailer. Following these decisions, we decided that we needed to undertake some more primary research from our target audience when we were creating our storyline and synopsis. We created our storyline from the ideas that the previous questionnaire showed our target audience typically found in a Romance genre. As a group we then decided on a ‘twist’ for the storyline. This will help keep our target audience ‘on the edge of their seat’ when watching our teaser trailer. I also thought of other Romance films that had a twist to make sure that we weren’t in danger of diverting away from the genre. If we hadn’t have asked our target audience what they thought of our initial synopsis then we could have been creating a storyline that no-one would be interested in. This shows that the audience had a big influence on our storyline. Throughout the making of our teaser trailer and the making of my website and poster, I have realised that audience feedback is vital to have when producing a piece of media text. For example, when we were creating our synopsis, we did several drafts and kept on showing them to a focus group of people from our target audience and they then gave us feedback on how to improve the storyline to make it more enjoyable for their age and gender. Without it, it would be possible to create something that wouldn’t interest anyone making your product not successful. To ensure that our group got plenty of audience feedback we made several questionnaires and used focus groups and class discussions to help us stick to the typical conventions of a Romance genre film. This research helped us with the editing, what clips to put in and take out (e.g. taking out the ‘standing up’ scene and adding in more happy clips at the start), mise en scene and also made sure that our teaser trailer made sense, (because our first synopsis was too confusing for the focus group.) I have realised that in order to create a successful media text, audience feedback is vital; it makes sure that the text meets the correct codes and conventions of your genre and it also makes sure that your products fit the needs of your target audience. The approach that we used was the ‘Spiral Effect’. This means that when you have an idea, you undertake audience research, then change the product to fit the needs of your audience and then get some more audience feedback to make sure your product is the best it can be. For example, there are many ways in which audience feedback allowed us to improve my products like the synopsis (as I’ve mentioned before) and the editing (taking in and out clips), making sure my website fitted with the romance genre e.g. colours (red – connotes love and romance, white connotes purity and black connotes darkness and evil, relating to the drugs), text, images (creating the right messages).

Poster - final draft

This is my final draft for my poster! i really like the background image now and i think the connotations of it fit in with the romance codes and conventions because it is direct mode of address which alot of romance posters are and they are both smiling again which most of romance films are. However, I didn't want Becky smiling too much as her character isn't always happy in the film! I'm pleased with my decision to have half of their faces to suggest there is another side to find out. I tried to change the small print font at the bottom of the poster to the real 'Movie Poster SF' font that is used for romance posters but i couldn't get the font to show up in Word.