Filmed evaluation

main project final post

I almost can't believe I'm posting a finished main product myself. yep, the following is a quick timed version of my final product in its, to date, final version. enjoy x2!!! :

side projects final post

The below are the final versions of my poster and magazine cover, the first being the magazine cover while the latter being the film poster. enjoy!!!

UPDATE: uploaded v2 of my magazine cover.

final thoughts

basically this post is my last chance to add anything else that has to be added or to note down any other changes. at the time of writing this (sitting in a boiling class room...) there isn't anything really to put into this post. not because I'm perfect. no no no, far from it. its just that very recently I had a post that chronicled all the recent changes i had made to my products and so at this point in time i have nothing to write about because all changes have all ready been talked about. that doesn't mean this post is pointless, just as yet unfilled. but, and this is a very strange but, i have a feeling that sometime on the future i'll end up back on this post, talking about the final final final versions of my products after making changes recommended by people who have just seen this post. yeah, well, nothing much more to say. enjoy the my final products!

see, i new this post would come in handy...:

UPDATE 1: i changed the post 'side quests...' to include an analysis of actual magazine covers and thus established a set of codes and conventions to further refine my magazine cover side project.

UPDATE 2: I changed the post 'construction 3: adding sound'. after teacher feedback i changed the details of the post to more accuratly portray what i did to find the right piece of music, removing that blathering feel the post previously had.

audience feedback

Once I completed the teaser and side projects I then showed my products to the select target audience, which is to say my fellow class mates. I did this because it would allow me to further fine tune my products to my target audience and would basically make my project better all round. I basically got together a mixture of my class mates, friends and an all flavoured assortment of adults, and then showed them a screening of my finished teaser. They liked it, but as with all initial drafts of future masterpieces, questions were asked and interesting points were raised. In a quick no nonsense summary, they said overall it was great but that there were a number of things that can be improved, which were:



Smoother editing between shots,

More (!) epic opening music

A different, better version of titles

Better placement of the voice over



So, with the audience advising, I went about carrying out the changes and then showed the new final, final product to my eager audience. They said they were very pleased with how it turned out and said that for what it is it was very good and that, in their opinion, there wasn’t much more that could be done to it or changed.

UPDATE: unfortunatly, i do not have the original. I simply modified it to my current version. sorry!!

side quests...

Ok, now I have to be very clever in a very short amount of time. Therefore the majority of this post shall remain the same but in order for me to be the best I can be (or get the best marks I can) there’s stuff I need to add. Firstly, the stuff that I have done:

For the poster side project:

The codes and conventions I’ve developed from my analyst of posters are as follows:

1. Use a strong central image, either of a character or recognisable story event.
2. Place the title in a standard recognisable place.
3. Use an assortment of eye catching colours and specific lighting effects
4. Include titles that are eye catching and memorable

Both use the same image, a prominent screen capture of the lead immortal from the teaser. For the poster I increased the contrast between the immortal and the grass while darkening the surrounding edges of the poster which conforms to what I know about movie posters in general. I then used the same font type of the teaser to do all the writing of the poster in order to closer tie it into the teaser, also using the same tag line from the teaser. Lastly I added the usual credit stuff at the bottom of the poster to make it look official, than I increased the light on the centre to finish it off. I designed my poster with those you see in a cinema in mind. I wanted it to be like the ones that are placed next to the popcorn stand or sweet shop that everyone passes while entering or exiting the cinema. These are often done in portrait so that’s what I did mine in.

For the magazine front cover side project:

For this I had to go back and analyse some actual magazine covers, in order to establish a set of codes and conventions so that I can better create my own cover. The covers I looked at can be seen below. Something immediately noticed by all three was they all shared the use of prominent picture of a film star that almost leaped of the page. The all placed the title at the top of the page and kept the magazine’s tag line and price close by to this. They kept their price tags/bar codes either at the bottom right or right hand side. All three used big bold font with catchy headlines that linked to the main picture. Many of them advertised free gifts of posters and what not. The colour pallets were very restricted and based around those of the main picture. Lastly, and most importantly, is the way these attributes link together on the page. Put simply, each is designed to blend with the others and improve the flow of the page, working towards the goal of making it more attractive to its target audience, which in turn influences what is on the page in the first place. And so from this I have developed the following codes and conventions for use when constructing my own magazine cover:

1. Use a strong central image that grabs the reader’s attention
2. Separate text into convenient fragments
3. Place title, cost and tagline at top
4. Have more the one story with extra pictures
5. Have some sort of free gift

With my codes and conventions in hand, I used an already established and well known film magazine as a base so I had many online examples to source from whilst also making it look more official and real. I kept the basic layout of that magazine and simply just added my own stuff, like the picture and titles. I chose a mixed colour background rather than a solid colour because it breaks it up more and catches the eye better. I took examples of text already used by the magazine to come up with my titles. Lastly I added a small shadow around my character in order to make him stand out more and in continuation of one of the main themes of my film it makes him look my mystical, as does the shadow around the character in my poster. And that’s pretty much everything I can think of about my side projects, which will be uploaded at a later date.

construction part 3 - adding sound

With the completed edited teaser, my next step was to add sound. Namely, the narrative driving voice over and the epic music that corresponds with the shown footage, in accordance with the established codes and conventions. This was perhaps the hardest of the construction tasks for me, as due to the rules of the project we had a very restricted range of ways to get our hands on music. Suffice to say, we were not allowed to use any ‘copyrighted’ music (even though EVERYONE on near enough any site does already) without written permission from the artist or composer, which realistically isn’t going to happen for a school project. Therefore, any music we did use had to be either in the imovie music clip library or created by ourselves through an external program such as garageband. Now, not being very knowledgeable in musical creation methods, this was a real problem for me. For my trailer to be as effective as possible its was of the utmost importance that the sound matched and fitted in with the kind of image i was trying to convey with me teaser. So, after hours and hours of tedious searching, I settled on an imovie sound clip entitled ‘Shetlands’, a stereotypical Scottish track with loads of strings and wind instruments and annoyingly, bag pipes. Don’t get me wrong, I love bag pipes, but for my teaser it just wouldn’t fit. Hence a lot of editing and rapid learning whilst going through roughly 2 minutes of music to find parts that both blend together well and are bag pipe free. I had to identify portions of the music that would not only go with the footage but with each other. I settled with a stern opening piece from the beginning of the song because it naturally had no bagpipes. then i used a segemnt from the end that was set between the rest of the song and a final bout of bag piping, which was very mysterious and fitted well with both the footage and the beginning segment. I then lastly editited the two segments, moulding them to a point were they blended seamlessly together and worked together with my footage.

The voice over was also hard, mainly because I had no confidence with my own voice. I sought many alternatives, including that of a teacher’s, but in the end I settled on a gruffer (?) version of my own voice. I designed the script to reflect the kind of mystical overtones of my teaser, whilst throwing in a quote from ‘braveheart’ for a number of reasons, which are: it implies that this is the scene of a battlefield and that this is a one of the fighters, and as it’s a reference to a well known and popular movie it carries with it the connotation that this is a similar movie and just as good. Once my music and narrative voice over was done, I decided not to add anymore, to say random, sound effects. Why? Because firstly I believe that as an entire construct, the teaser works very well as is and that no further sounds are required (really, where could I add anymore? You’ll see what I mean in the final product), and secondly the sound effects on imovie and even garageband to some extent rubbish. Despite this however i feel that the music and voice over that i did achieve turned out great.