Target Audience

As a group we decided on the genre of romantic comedy. After studying this genre we came to the conclusion that our product would be best suuited for 14-18 year olds. Our trailer relates with this audience as it shows teenage life and problems that they would face, especially girls. For example, a group of friends and girls falling for boys.

Storyboard & Analysis

To start our trailer, in the first two shots we established the companies of our film as this is typical in many of the trailers i have watched. We then get a medium shot of the two 'popular girls' walking together showing the stereotypical 'popular girls' in the highschool environement. This the continues with the caption reading 'They were the girls' spoke by a conventional male voice. following this the shot will go back to the girls sitting at school benches, again typical girls but also familiarising the audience with the social status of the girls, next with the caption reading '...who always got what they wanted...'. There will then be a longshot of a guy at an office desk with someone saying 'I'm sure you'll be very welcome here'. He will then walk out of the office changing the shot so he is now facing the camera. With this he ignores the two 'popular girls' and we see thier reaction. To vary our shots we then see a close up of the guy followed by another caption reading '...untill now...'. There is then a long shot of a 'geeky girl' gtting noticed by the guy, leading onto a close up of one of the 'popular girls' not happy that the guy noticed the 'geeky girl'. After watching a considerable amount of film trailers we realised that half way into the trailer there is a faster sequence of shots. Gathering  this we decided to include this in our trailer. Throughout this there are a range of shots still keeping the variety in the trailer. This is followed by another caption 'From the makers of....'. Finally we end the trailer with the title 'He's mine' and also the time the film comes out going with the conventions. Throughout all of the trailer we have included a variety of effects, music and transitions.

New Development Ideas (plot)

As a group and due to research we decided to modify our final piece. Through research we realised that our piece had an unclear storyline which an audience would find confusing to understand. With this is mind we looked again at trailers of this genre we have chosen and then altered our storyboard. For convienience we stuck with the actors used however just simplifying the storyline.

Mean Girls Trailer - Focused Analysis

Focused Analysis - Characters

Regina George : This character is made to look like a typical 'blonde popular' teen. She is percieved as very vain, idolised and 'mean' as it is said in the trailer 'evil takes a human form in Regina George'. She wears short skirts, little tops and is seen as the most popular girl until Cady Harris comes along where there is then sabotage between them both. Cady makes her eat special bars that make her gain weight 'but this was girl world all the fighting needs to be sneeky'. Regina tells Cady that she will get the boy for her but then gets him for herself. With this jealousy is built between the major characters. At the start of the film it is as though Regina has all the power and control, however by following the conventions the 'bady' always gets whats coming to them. Also Regeina has her 'Army of skanks' following her everywhere and will do anything for her as she is 'Teen royalty'. They are also the ones that will get inbetween the characters causing the gossip in the film.

'The Army Of Skanks' - These are minor yet important characters. They show a typical group of girls that hang around togetherat school. This then relates to their target audience. They are all different, for example, Karen Smith 'one of the dumbest girls you will ever meet' and Grechen Weeners ''Knows everything about everyone'. Together they show the comic side to the stereotypical group.

Cady Harris - Cady is the typical new girl. In this case she has come from a home schooled background in Africa. This shows her innocence and how this whole senario is completly out of her comfort zone, for example, she is always refering to them as animals and the fact that she had 'entered girl world' . She wears plain and ordianry clothes with her hair pulled back with nothing that stands out. At the beggining it shows how she is protected by her parents, again showing her innocence and also her shock to a typical school. Eventually she is corrupted by the 'plastics' and forgets about the friends she made at the start and tries to become 'Queen Bee' and get revenge on Regeina George untill she finally realises and tries to put everything back in its former place. She then wins for the 'Mathleats' and eventually gets the boy and her friends back.

Aaron Samuals - The boy that everyone fancies who is 'so hot' and obviously previously going out with Regina George. There is questioning as the why they split up which is showing typical gossiping. It is told how he is 'off limits' to Cady when she tells the 'army of skanks' she likes him. However because its typical gossip, Regina finds out and this leads to sneeky fighting to get him. Having watched the film i know that he then doesn't like what Cady becomes. Aaron is styled in average clothing - jeans and shirts. Fianlly kisses Cady at the end of the film - conventional happy ending.

Cady's Friends - These are the peopel that guide Cady into doing what she does along with the adult characters in the film, untill she gets to the extreme. They introduce her to 'the schools nervous system - the caffateria'. They show her the typical groups in a highschool for example, 'cool asians, burnouts, jocks, greatest people you will ever meet (them) and the worst (the plastics)'. They have there own personnal hatred towards the 'Plastics' and let Cady know about them. Here there is definate irony. They hate the 'Plastics' for the gossiping and sabatage they do yet they do it themselves throughout this film. They wear very different clothes, just hang out with eachother and are made to look like losers.

Focused Analyses - Locations

Again, looking at mean girls, the first location shown is in the school classroom since this is based in a highschool. It shows a typical classroom, allowing the audience to establish where the main action of this film will take place. It moves from different shots showing more of the classroom, halls, the caffeteria, and the school field typical school locations. The shots continue through at least half of the trailer again showing that the majority of action takes place here.
It them moves on to showing 'the plastics' and Cady says 'Your house is really nice' with the reply 'i know right'. This shows a stereotypical popular girl, very priveledged, has a car and big house. However it still always goes back to the school shots to keep the establishment there. It then shows locations such as parties, shopping malls, typical locations for teens. This shows the variety throughout the trailer. Having all these locations is very conventional and also allows the target audience to relate to the story.

Focused Analysis - Sound and Music

This trailer starts with a snipet of bubbly music until we get the introductory dialogue 'Welcome' which goes along with the establishing shot. This then shows that this is a school based film, highlighting and drawing attention to their traget audience. The shot changes, showing a film strip of names of actors and pictures, there is then the sound of a camera shot for each change. The previous music is still played in the background, untill the 'Plastics' are introduced and the music changes to 'Naughty Girl' by Beyonce. This is popular music which represent the 'Plastics'.
As the trailer continues, dialogue between characters are played over the top of the ambient sound. This results in a more interesting trailer and tells just enough of the narrative to draw the target audience in. The music then changes again to 'Milkshake' by Kelis when Regina's house is shown. In this song there is the phrase 'My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard', this again relates to the popularity of the characters. Adding even more variety to this trailer more popular music is played as the tension is built.There is also a tamborine sound as the tension builds and as a character say 'Animal', animal noises are played prominate of all is the lion, highighting the 'catty' and bitchyness of the film.
Towards the end of the trailer girly music plays showing a calmer feel to the trailer. Also at (1:31) there is a sound of the phone ringing relating to the target audience who would be teenage girls.
During each shot there always seems to include dialogue, combining different sound effects like the phone ringing, animal noises, certain lyrics of songs in relation to the characters and cars screeching. This gives variety to the shots and gives the impression of typical school and teen lives.

Evaluation

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

Throughout our media product there is a wide use of various forms and conventions of real media products known in the present day. To start with our media product uses captions. Captions are used to help the audience understand whats going on or what the film is about. They also give the film a general narration and to be used in a film trailer would be one of the techniques to draw the target audience in.

As a group we researched typical Romantic Comedy trailers and noted what made a typical Romantic Comedy so we could then incorperate these aspects into our final production piece. This then meant we were using and developing conventions of real media products. For example, in the opening sequence to Ella Enchanted, a fairytale book is used to indicate that this is a typical fairytale and help to explain the beggining of the story along with a voiceover reading out the storyline throughout the book.

To keep our original ideas and complete our goal of a modern fairytale story, instead of using classic fairytale images we used our own pictures and developed them, keeping them within the fairytale theme but with a modern edge, challenging these conventions even making our piece postmodern. Even though we only used a few specific locations mainly based around school, this could be seen as a disadvantage, however we felt this kept out story simple and understandable, again drawing in our target audience who can relate to a school environment. Again, after researching common Romantic Comedies we felt that within these the locations used were, schools, the characters homes and places such as cafes, parks and parties.

Having the trailer begin with 'Once upon a time' not only shows the stereotypical conventions of a fairytale but also states the genre of the trailer we are trying to establish. This connects with the fairytale book in which we also mounted the captions upon the storybook. With this and the use of our own pictures we created a defiante contrast between a fairytale and modern theme.

We also followed a typical Romantic Comedy genre of film with our plot. Together we analysed different Romantic Comedy films such a 'A Cinderella Story' and 'Mean Girls' to find out the common elements of this genre. This elements linked with Propp's Theory as well as the typical types of charcters we have used such as the 'popular' or 'geeky' girls and the 'popular, desirable' boy.

How effective is the combination of your media product and ancillary text?

Our final products all have obvious links with eachother. All of our final productions pieces embody the title of our product and include images of the main characters involved. By keeping a coherent theme thoughout our three pieces our piece would then the recognized to out target audience. All three pieces contain the title 'He's Mine' in the same text font and colour. Also our pieces show images of the main characters which also targets our particular audience who will find certain simularities between them and the characters. Having the characters relate to the audience will gain the viewing. To again link all three of our pieces, as a group we came up with a logo. This logo was a heart shape and was used in all three of our final pieces. I believe we were successful in creating alot of consistancy between our three products.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

As a group, we posted our final production pieces on Youtube in the understanding that we would recieve some critical and benificial feedback. Our audience felt we had a very interesting storyline and were compelled to find out the ending. Even though there were some crtitcs that felt that some of the narrative didn't make sense it was easier to understand due to the captions making this piece succesful. Narrative appears to attract the consumers to want to go and see this film. Other critics commented on the modern twist to a fairytale and the wide variety of footage and quick changing shots. This then made the final outcome more interesting. Even though the main purpose of all our shot was the location of the school some people felt a wider range of locations were needed and that it may have been useful to have carried out different surveys for this, asking our target audience which locations we could have incorperated in our trailer.

How did you use the technologies in the constuction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

In order to research various aspects for our trailer we used a number of media technologies. For example by using Youtube this allowed me to analyse, understand and look at the different conventions used within different videos. By doing this we could then take ideas that we liked, take certain aspects from them and make them our own. Then taking particular videos that have the same genre as to what we are doing, we could then post them on our blogs and show and in depth analysis, showing our understanding of the different conventions within them.

To help concentrate on costume, setting, narrative and Mis En Scene and to help analyse different trailers, i posted all my research ideas and theories on my blog, work that related to our own piece, so i then had a clear list of these things.

To create our pieces and experiment with different ideas we used the macs variety of programmes and used the ones which suited each of our products. These programmes consisted of Photoshop and Premier Pro. To edit our captions and edit and complete the majority of out poster and magazine cover we used Photoshop. With the photographs we had taken, Photoshop allowed us to experiment with the photos with things such as colour and backgrounds. With the use of layers on Photoshop we were able to edit our products much easier and experimenting with different effects to get our final products. Photoshop enabled us to find the consistant logo in all our three pieces via the 'Shapes tool'.

For the actual editing towards our teaser trailer, we used Premier Pro. With Premier Pro we edited all our footage. Firstly we filmed alot of different shots which would be useful for our trailer, then with the use of Premier Pro we were able to load the footage onto it , allowing us to edit, cut and take out any of the footage we had. With Premier Pro we were also able to add in different effects. For example, with the storybook, we could then have the effects of the pages turning in coherent to the shots changing. Premier Pro also lets us have a choice as to weather the transactions of shots were fast or slow.

With the use of these technologies, we were able to plan, research, evaluate, edit and carry out in depth analysisof our products to our full potential.

First Attempt At Final Product

Analysing a Magazine Cover

This film magazine poster has a very dark, myserious feel to it and having seen the film portrayed on the front cover i understand that it is showing what feel the film has to it. They are three of the major characters is a pose that give the audience a defiante idea of the storyline within the film. The colour scheme within the cover is black, grey and white addig to that dark feel. The title of the magazine 'Total Film' and the main story 'New Moon' have a glowing feel to them agai empasising the mysterious and magical feel the the magazine and the story within it. The whole cover is very plain as we can see from the play white print writing and the limited amount of pugs this adding to the feel that wants to be potrayed to the reader.

Locations

We decided for our teaser trailer to base it around a school as it would be a familiar setting to our target audience and one in which they can relate to. We did use other locations such as the 'princess' houses and stereotypical locations such as parks and shopping centres but our shots are largly around school. Our main establishing shot was a school corridor, with this we filmed in different corridors around school as we had to make sure the lighting was as we required it to be.

Analysing a Film Poster

This is a poster for the film Mean Girls which is a typical modern rom com. I chose to analyse this poster because it was a definate insperation to our piece. One the poster there are the 3 girls in a group dressed as typical teenage girls that 'every girls want to be'. They are in poses that relate to teenage girls that this film will relate to showing off their glamour, attitude and status which is a main element within this film. However the main actress is to the side but bigger than the rest of the girls showing a defiante isolation between her and the girls not only that but her costume also represent the isolation as it is a completly different style completly. The main actor is Lindsey Lonhan and is a very popular figure to teenage girls and so her name is placed at the top of the poster which will ultimatly draw the intended audience in.
    The title of the film 'Mean Girls run up the side/middle of the poster but also up the side of the main actress. The title highlights the word 'Mean' catching the audiences attention as to the concept of this film. It also creates a break between the group and the main actress showing the isolation and difference between them giving a hint to what the film may be about leaving the audience to wonder and want to know more.
   There is then a quote underneth the 3 girls which say 'Watch your back'. This is a catchy quote again implying the storyline for this film. Its also shows revengful ways of these girls and that they are prepared to do whatever it takes to get what they want. Underneath this and the title are the important and essential features of a film poster like the release date and other actors within the film. The background of this poster is plain grey/purple colour very simple but going well with the colour scheme of the whole poster.

I chose this poster to analyse aswell because it is also a typical rom com and again gave us ideas for our final piece and also has the idea of a modern fairytale. The backgroud of this poster is plain white and contasts well with the main character, sam's dress. The dress shows typical fairytale but also shows her innocence and contrasts with the bright pink converses showing the audience the modern edge. 'The Prince' is also dressed in a way that contrasts with Sam's outfit completly but also show a modern prince compared to a traditional one again emphasising that modern twist.

    The 'Princess' is being carried on the 'princes' back which is very unconventional again shows the modern take to the original fairytale Cinderella. The Title stand out against the rest of the poster so grabs the readers attention aswell as compliamenting the background. The names of the actors are then postioned at the top the the poster in a bold black font again standing out to the audience and showing that there are popular actors within the film attracting their target audience.
   The quote for the film is 'This film is what dreams are made of'. Having seen the film and familiar with Hilary Duff's music i know that this is a take on one on Hilary Duff's songs 'what dreams are made of' which is also music to the film. This quote and the lyric in the actual song link nicely to the film and storyline of it.