Ancillary Task 1

What is the purpose of magazines?

How does the industry use magazines to sell their products and media text?

This task reminded me of my AS course whereby we designed and created a music magazine. My ancillary product is somewhat similar to what I had to create in AS. I progressed to research further into the use of magazines especially music magazine, my research from the Internet and media books helps me with the generic conventions of film magazines and the purpose of music magazines.

My research would be based on the cost of a standard film magazine, the target audience, what conventions do film magazine follow and how does this entice the audience to buy the product, I aim to predict how my film magazine cover might challenge the

Magazines are usually financed by advertisement companies and are distributed in a consecutive cycle e.g. every week, every day etc… films magazines are usually distributed monthly due to the fact that films are not produced on a daily bases, so a film magazine being distrusted monthly gives the media institution more time to gather information

 I found that magazines have different use in the media world; it can be used as a form of advertisement for a variety of media products, it promotes a media text and gives the audience an insight into how critics rate the media product.  Large collections of audience often collect magazines in order to be updated in the latest news, events or situation and I found that film magazines often feature actors, directors, editors and other fields in the media industry gives the reader an insight into the production of media text.

Film magazines are not only available in hard copies, they have recently been designed and published via the web, e.g. the well know ‘Empire’ film magazine can also be found on the website www.emipreonline.com, although I am not working on creating an online film magazine, we can notice the progression of technologies and how the distribution of magazines have evolved into becoming more widely accessible to the general public. Online magazines do not follow the generic conventions of hard copy magazines, so to follow their conventions would be wrong as I am planning to design and create a paperback magazine. 

Empire magazine

Publishing Company: Bauer Consumer           Source: Wikipedia

Sell Date: Monthly magazine                           Source: Wikipedia

Price: £3.00                                                   Source: AnswerBag

Target audience: it is hard to distinguish what the target audience is for one of the most popular film magazine in the media industry. Empire is compacted with various contents; however from the front cover the audience can see that Empire magazine has a trend of promoting films. The front cover acts as a form of advertisement and also to lure their target audience. One of the most common target audiences for the magazine is for the YUPPIE groups, ‘Young Urban Professional, because the types of films promoted are mostly adult genre. However there are masses of audience, such as film collectors, or DINKY ‘dual income no kids yet’ a group of people who have a hobby of reading film magazines or establish a career in films.

What conventions do empire magazines follow?

An example of an Empire film magazine, almost instantly the reader consumes the main image that is centred on the magazine. Despite the image being paced behind the text, the image still defines the facial features intended to draw the audience. The props used on the main character, Keria Knightley, informs us that the film is based during the Victorian era, we can argue that it is a stereotypical perspective of upper-class Victorians to be pale, clustered with expensive jewellery, have an up-do hairstyle and fit the ‘British’ features as Kiera Knightley so perfectly portrays.  Empire magazine follows the convention of using a plain background, it seems to follow suite of many other magazines. However I plan to challenge this convention by placing a setting on the background of my magazine. I want to use an image that has not been shown in my film trailer but still follows the storyline.

What conventions does the image follow, how would I challenge it?

The image works well with the masthead, the bold fonts and ‘masculine’ bulkiness can give a description to the main character, her cold-blooded glare into the camera and emotionless feature compliments the red- coded masthead. From here I learnt that the image of the magazine needs to link with the mast head in order to target the audience, the connotations surrounding the colour of font, or the ideas surrounding the image must make the consumer intrigue to know more about the magazine. 

The masthead is bold and distinctive. The consumer doesn’t need to strain their vision to read the masthead. In every magazine, it is a tradition to ensure that the masthead stands out-either through colour, size, font, style or appearance. The Mastheads, like the Empire masthead on the left, must be eye-catching.  The font used for the Empire magazine masthead appeals to their target audience. It does not intimidate some target audience as serious or business-like instead it looks quite comical, it makes the audience aware that the magazine suits people with an interest in films or people who studies films as a hobby. Empire magazine masthead also makes it clear that it is for collection purposes as well.     

A British institution owns total Film magazine, it is distributed once every month. It is targeted at specific audiences who have an interest in the filming world. Most of the films publicised are sourced from Hollywood or A-list directors. The films have the tendency to by high budgeted.  They seek a large number of subscribers and offer deal to win customers over; these are one of the many selling strategies that the magazine does to promote its name to possible consumers. 

Price:   £2.90

Institution: future publishing

Founded 1997

Global: although it is a British magazine, the magazine is distributed globally to other countries, it has an inter-relation with America, India, Germany however unlike ‘Empire’ it does not print in different languages instead it sticks with its English manuscript. The lack of a range of languages such as Chinese, French, and Spanish can contribute to them not reaching their possible percentage of consumers. 

One of Total Film front cover, retrieved from the internet through Google search, web address below: http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://filmonic.com/wp content/uploads/2008/08/max_payne_total_film.jpg&imgrefurl=http://filmonic.com/total-film-max-payne-cover&usg=__xPqiKWX2EO46lwa8b7at08kc8-Q=&h=655&w=500&sz=87&hl=en&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=HqEl_qoz87hj1M:&tbnh=140&tbnw=107&ei=ttuJTZO2J9SIhQewufHLDQ&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dtotal%2Bfilm%2Bmagazine%2Bcover%2Bmax%2Bpayne%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D1419%26bih%3D699%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=122&vpy=47&dur=687&hovh=257&hovw=196&tx=144&ty=109&oei=ttuJTZO2J9SIhQewufHLDQ&page=1&ndsp=36&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0. 

Magazine conventions

The structure of the magazine follows the existing products, it is necessary for film magazine to follow a convention because the consumer can easily identify the product; making it easer for the institution to sell their goods to their target audience. In Total Film magazine, the main picture is centred causing the consumer to be drawn to the image – it even over laps the masthead creating a dramatic impact and domineering feature. The product (main image) is placed in a location, the audience can identify that the location of the film. Most Film magazines do not place the character on a setting instead they place them on a plain background, I planned to challenge this convention by using a background setting in my magazine cover.  

(include more research)

Continue with Shooting Production

After our short delays in filming, my partner and I arranged to film on weekend, we arranged our props and location. My friend, Greta, allowed us to film in a spare room in her house. We wanted to shot the scene in a room to show portray a private and exclusive area only opened to the girl and her companion. The room symbolizes (connotes) a sense of individuality, privacy and a protection of walls (which can either be in a positive way or negative way) I also included a poster (mise-en-scene) use to display a sign of rebellion, on the poster it included ‘Love Is a Drug”Paracetamol and talcum powder to portray drug-use, giving the audience false imagery in order to make the actions realistic the props brought corresponded with mise-en-scene (the visual theme) to our film trailer.  We researched into drug-users behaviour and we found that they commonly use, and we found that stereotypical roll-ups of paper are used to snort the cocaine, mirrors are used as the surface for the cocaine and credit cards are used to break up the substance. For our trailer we wanted to get a high-angle shot of the girl using the cocaine, as depicted in our storyboard. 

Tara taking drugs

This is so it gives a sense of realism to our story-line. Referencing to our research we found that it is usually conventional and stereotypical for institution to involve drugs when portraying young teenagers and also as a technique to establish a relationship with the young audiences.  We wanted our readers to engage by using short cuts of the film shown to compose a trailer, and through our research we found that interesting and dramatic scenes often made the audience passive to the transmitted message. 

We decided to include an extra scene, even though it was not written down in our film plan, we thought that we would go for the most recent convention ‘sex sells’ many films or adverts portray sex as a natural norm and it has been very popular for audiences to come across overexposed and most controversial subject. My partner and I planned to use a shoot a long shot of the two couples (Tara, main girl and Ben, influential boy) engaging in a intimate scene, we felt that since our target audience is teenagers, we wanted to relate it to how teenagers behave in the contemporary society. Compared to the more traditional days teenagers having sex would be seen as an abomination and unheard in contrast with today society sexual intercourse amongst teenagers are widely acceptable and often mediated- films such as Kidulthood, display sexually active teenagers as an identity or statement- scenes also referred to the importance of sex and the status you receive if you have engaged in the act. 

Figure 2 shot of the passionate scene

However, on the filming day I decided to challenge the motion of sex amongst teenagers as something that has been accepted by the western cultures (society) but it seen as a taboo in other cultures, such as the Middle East. So the theory of teenagers cannot be referred to everyone, as it is exclusive to one culture and society.       I decided, on the day of filming, that the focus would be on the audience perception of sex, I didn’t want to make the audience passive by being biased and objectifying sex as positive or negative but the audience can respond to it actively, making their own decision.  For the shot I decided to film a long shot of the couples to distance the audience from them and also to make the lighting darker

On the day of filming, Michelle, my partner was unable to attend for the week, so I had to work independently on the filming, I found it quite strenuous because operating the camera and directing single handling takes a lot of adjustment, especially if you are not familiar with filming.  However it was a success because I learnt how to independently direct and film and also how make decision based on my independent thoughts. I also noted the importance of planning because I did not have to think on the spot I could refer to the plan drawn up. However the size of room restricted some shots to be established, such as the high angle shot of the girl snorting cocaine resulted to a, medium long shot instead. Although this was a minor issue, the intention was that the audience can see that the girl has become powerless to the issues surrounding her, her mothers death, the bad influence an the drugs has made her into an inferior and ‘looked-down upon’ by society. It was meant to follow the theory that people result to crime as the last option, Matza, a sociologist, stated that crime occurred when individuals go through an ordeal in their life. For my character her ordeal or ‘demons’ that she was facing was the loss of her mother. 

Figure 3: Drug-use scene

However I was advised my peers to change my shot to a medium close up, because of complications with the room. The positioning was like this the boy who influences her sits behind the main character, this showed that she was persuaded and encouraged to carry out these deviant acts. It follows conventions to the point that the ‘bad’ characters always stands behind the damsel in distress in this case and utter wrongful advices. It also relates to individuals being wary with their peers, as it is common for adolescences to be pressurised into wrongful doings. 

                                                                   Shots taken for the drug and gun scene 

This is arranged in no particular order because additional scenes would be placed but they have not been recorded yet. 

 A side shot of Tara drinking, form this point the audience would interpret this action as deviant, following on from her mother death we see a sense of change. The death was a disruption to the equilibrium creating an unequal balance to the society. Stereotypically, teenagers would be deemed as alcohol and drug abusers but what i wanted to convey was that, when something effects us we automatically turn to something that would give us a temporary gratification. The side shot gives the audience an objective view of Tara, so they can make their own judgement of the situation, is this an action that they dispute? do they understand? do they find it normal? My aim was to allow the audience to make up their mind on the story, I didn't want them to be passively sitting there injecting the messages but instead think more actively in regard to it. The props used made the scene more realistic and the change of color from the character from black (which resembled sorrow) to grey (which resembled a bleak and less vibrant persona) 

A close-up shot of one of the manipulators into Tara life, his name is James. The first thing i wanted to capture was the attitude which instantly sends out a message that he is a 'bad boy' 'ghetto' 'bad influence' all these labels attached to someone. However what makes him bad or evil? The circulating stereotype that black or mixed race boys are manipulators and are a bad influence on middle-class white girls, i often say this imagery or message being passed through films. I wanted to challenge existing media products by showing that situations can make people fall they are not influenced by black or mixed race boys. I wanted to challenge this motion. 

I did a long shot (objective). The consumer can see the two characters engaging in drug-use, we can see the mise-en-scene of levels, Tara is kneeling down to symbolize submission of drugs and lust and James is sitting down on the bed to show a sense of experience and influence. Ben is obvious the  love interest in this shot,  although both characters are not physically engaging with each other we see that they are together because of the lack of personal space. The both evade each others spaces. Tara is taken class A drugs whilst Ben is taking class B, normally we would expect it to be the other way round because of the lack of experience Tara has, however, we can argue that she chose to do this action in her own accord. As stated before I didn't want to follow normal stereotypes of black males i wanted the attention to be focused on class. It is a well-known fact that upper-class people are most likely to possess class A drugs. Class A drugs is seen as more dangerous and more restrictive than Class B, which the working-class usually possess. In this shot Tara who is of a middle class is possessing class A whilst James is not.
We can see the element of red in the shot, this becomes my common theme as the teaser trailer continues it foreshadows the future and represented the present. Red connotes lust-which is clear in the scene and also death which is a theme that comes up later. 

Close-up shot of Tara taking drugs, we did a close to dramatize the scenes and make it more realistic. A close up shot provides the consumer with details of the action. The action of rubbing the nose is a common gesture that represents snorting cocaine.
With the music in the background it groups this image with the other images.

An extreme close-up of James smoking 'weed' as explained before weed is seen as a working-class phenomenon. Weed is a drug that is popular amongst youth- they can relate to this shot and decide if this is deviant or not? Although is looks appealing to the eye and might be argued to be passively telling the audience to engage in such activities. This shot was inspired by Kidulthood, I wanted to create a similar imagery to it because it is captivating to the audience. However, i didn't want to glorify it but instead make the consumer think if this action is acceptable or not.

The shot of the gun becomes the symbolized item, it becomes part of the stage because it connotes various of things. It is stigmatized as dangerous, the source of trouble, criminal, fearful, intimidating, power. What was interesting to me was that crime often held the gun as 'bad', in contemporary society an individual holding a gun (especially is lower class) would be deemed as a criminal, dangerous and in need to repressive social order however gun is used in wars created by politics and countries. The context of which the gun is used in makes the audience automatically think of death. We view Tara and James as potential criminals and dangerous however, the blame would be pinned more on James because he of a lower class, and many sociologist such as Robert Merton perceive crime as a lower-class phenomenon. However i wanted it to be directed at Middle-class Tara because I wanted to project a message explaning that the upper-claas society do commit the most vile crimes. e.g.. Civil war is often stirred by the upper-class. What justifies the upper-class from murdering but not the lower-class    

A shot of Tara looking at the gun in shock horror shows that this has amazed her but not to the point that she would leave, we note that she would accept this gesture of the gun. 

Learning about Abode and Problems

The following week I showed our first recorded clip to our supervisor, Dokun, he praised us for our good shots; we then uploaded our first clip onto the computer that we were going to use to edit and produce our film trailer.

Uploading clips

In order to upload clips you need a camcorder with a cable, the camcorder we used, canon XM2, which enabled us to connect an USB cable to the computer device and transfer (or import) our recorded clip from the cassette to the software. The software we used was Abode Premier software, software that allows users to edit their clips. When transferred the formation of the clip has to be adjusted to a more compatible formation and size for the computer.

Using an adapter and camera we recorded our taped recording to the computer by exporting it onto the device .We then watched our clip from the computer device, our peers were impressed with the established shots but advised that their needed to be more close-ups, obviously at first they were confused as to what the clip was meant to be, until we told them that it was a film trailer; they soon understood why the storyline was not as straight forward as other clips. In viewing my clip I compared it to other film trailer, mainly bullet boy where I got my inspiration from, from the bullet boy they used a lot of cuts, and shot different scenes to engage the audience the music was very important so I started to think about dialogue.

My partner and I then discussed our next meeting with the actors to film our next scene, we planned to film on the following weekend, but due to complications of our actors and actress it was postponed.  I quickly soon realised that filming take a lot of preparation and as the director you have to grace yourself for lets-down.  However during this week we learnt the bases of using Abode premier Pro.  

Abode premiere enables users to edit clips other software’s would limit users to this, .i.e Photoshop, Indesign deals with still images not .VID (video) Dokun, taught us the basic functions for Adobe Premier.

This is the standard layout of the Abode premier, it looks confusing at first glance but it is in fact relatively self-explanatory. I would assess the uses of each window that are in the software. 

The fact that we couldn't film this week meant that we lot out on a weeks worth of work, and this would have to be compensated next work. However i planned our next filming by buying essential props such as Police uniform, paintings and graffiti for the background and substances that represent drugs i.e Paracetamol, Roll-up cigarettes.

Production week

This was our first week in production, and my partner and I had to prepare our actors, we needed to choose actors who fit the stereotype of our characters. After asking friends volunteer we had finally got our characters on the go!  We planned the essential props that would be considered and had to bear in mind the stereotypes of teenagers.

My partner and I chose actors who fit the ‘cultural theory.’  Cultural theory is an integral part of human existence (ref. wikipedia, cultural theory) this means that humans act according to their environment, we are socialised to behave in a certain way, and this leads to a culture. However the media interprets the culture in a way that creates an archetype of the culture. For instance, the working-class or lad’s culture is seen as deviant and rebellious, sociologist such as Albert Cohen, observed that lads create sub-cultures, a culture that stems away from mainstream cultures. Lads create cub-cultures because they feel that the middle-class culture alienates them, they are culturally deprived. The typical stereotype of ‘lads’ would be underclass white males or black males, who fit the stereotype by their appearance, accent and actions.

Although in my storyline, my main focus is on a middle-class white female, she fits the hyper-reality theory be Jean Baudrillard, the view that the media presents the middle-class living in a ‘fantasy’ ‘inspirational’ lifestyle.  The media text such as ‘The Hills’ as analysed before, portrays middle-class white females in a rich, glamorous and in a wealthy state. However I challenged this popular convention with the media industry with my storyline. I showed that middle-class white females do not live a life of luxury; circumstances can make anyone turn to crime regardless of your social class. We question, how does the media text enable the audience to view the characters or situation in this manner? According to Stuart Hall, the media industry encodes a text and the audience decodes the text. The encoding is created through connotations and denotations, mise-en-scene, the type of character created, the light and camera angle. The composition of the media text influences how the audience decodes the text.

The audience can either be negotiable, meaning that they decide how they view the media text, the audience can be passive- they accept the message that the product is trying to convey or the audience can be oppositional- they reject the message that the product is conveying.  Film trailers such as ‘bullet boy’ is centred on crime amongst the black community, the trailer composition makes the audience negotiable, this is because they centralise their clips on crime and the urban lifestyle, the main characters are black however each viewer have their own viewpoint on the case. Some audience might see the trailer (bullet boy) as exaggerating the crime rate in the black community, some people who are not aware of how the urban lifestyle is would be passive towards the trailer, believing that the urban-state of living is violent, troublesome and dangerous and filled with ‘working-class’ individuals. In my trailer, I am hoping to challenge this conception; by displaying that crime does not emerge only from working-class crime is an act that can be committed by anyone. 

After bearing in mind, the theories surrounding moving images and cultures, I decided to progress in choosing my characters.  I wanted characters that portray this stereotype based around media conventions. It is evident that young black males are used as criminals in films, although I am challenging media conventions, I am also following some common stereotypes in order to portray my point.  On the left hand side are images of people that I am planning to use for my teaser trailer.

we linked our planned main character to other important characters, the red arrow indicates the cause of effect to our main character (Tara behavior) whilst the black arrow indicates the manipulators of the effect caused. 

                                                                        Brief on the Camera 

Using a canon camcorder XM2 that I rented from my college premises, my partner and I decided to do most of our recording at the weekend because our characters were accessible and this time.

Canon XM2

The camera used contained 470k pixels, which meant that the moving images would be well defined. Enabling us to capture good quality images; as opposed to mobile phones, which can only handle the standard 3.2 pixels.  I found that most films or teaser trailers use Red camera, this camera is for professional use only and has a high price tag attached to it, the pixels are 28,000!! (Sourced: wikipedia, ‘Red Digital Cinema Camera Company’) This is a giant compared to my bog-standard canon camcorder. However since I am just an amateur I know that I would face problems using the camera that I was provided with.

The canon camera has a 20x optical zoom, the zoom is very important for my filming because I would need it to do close-up shots and mid-shots.  I would also need it for the mise-en-scene and for the frame of the settings.

The camcorder also came with a direct accurate stereo microphone built-in with the camcorder; this was effective, as we would be using this for dialogues, monologues, ambience and sound effects.  The camcorder can be recorded using a cassette or a memory card, for our project we used a cassette because it was easier to import the text to my college’s computer. 

Figure 1Canon XM2

I disclaim any ownership on this picture of the camcorder Canon XM2

We then progressed to film for our teaser trailer. Our first scene was the mother and daughter scene, we went to my characters house to shoot our first scene.  We set up the required atmosphere and ambience. Our aim was create a ‘homely’ yet daunting to feel. This scene is where our main character finds her mother dead, in the kitchen.  Since it is a film trailer we did not need the whole story of her entering the house, we needed only shots. Short shots to establish a story, my partner and I tried to keep our mind frame on the shots we needed and not to get carried away with trying to produce a film. We constantly had to reassure ourself that it was only a teaser trailer and not a 5 minute film. We referred back to our plans several of times so we can capture the exact shots that were originally planned out. 

                                  

                                                         The love and death scene 

Objective shot 

Affection shot between our main character (damsel in distress later on) and the cause of her distress. The equilibrium theory applies to our teaser trailer. In the beginning we see two characters display affection to each other. The audience can automatically read that this is a mother-daughter relationship, agape love. 100% of the people i asked stated that the shot showed a loving relationship between a mother and daughter. 

The audience can clearly identify the two characters visually, even if the name is not stated. Kissing on the forehead is the most obvious sign for love and care, we made this our first shot to show a balance of equilibrium. 

A side shot,:

This is side view shot of our main character, this is so the audience can identify and is aware of the main character in the film, having targeted the main character in the scene we can now trace her story line. We decided to build up tension as opposed to shooting directly where Tara is going to see the cause of her new behavior. The music should start from this point

A shot of hand speaks a thousand words, whose hand? what does it represent? is what we want our consumers to think about. The lack of identity would just heighten our teaser trailer. We found during our research that existing media products failed to create suspense for crime genre especially for teenagers .i.e Kitdulthood went straight into the crime area, they failed to show how and why their characters behaved like this in the first place. fruits surrounding the hand allows the reader to be active, they would interpret the meaning according to the context that it is placed. Theory formed by Aschwtz, readers interpret the context of meanings, the hand with fruits surrounding it can interpret an accident, robbery, murder, attack etc... 

 Character dropping the keys, a switch from the unidentified character to Tara, she is wearing the same clothes as her first shot so the audience can still identify her, there is no confusion into who this character is because it has been established in the first shot. There is an action match with the previous shot as we only captured the hands. Here, we symbolized hands, our hands helps us do things, it lacks identity because almost every hands is similar however it does hold important DNA. 

Showing Tara drop the keys is a profane action, however the audience have figured it out that she would meet something terrifying. Building up tension by not allowing Tara to identify the body lures the audience        into consuming the clip more. Tara wearing black connotes the typical clothing of youths but also makes her stand-out from the background. 

A high shot of Tara, at this point there is a dialogue. During my research, I found that dialogues are not consistent in teaser trailers as it would be in films. What teaser trailers focus on is sfx and backing sounds-minimal dialogue can create an effect. In this shot Tara has called for her mum. The audience being quite active can calculate that the hand might be that of her mums-however we can't be so sure... 

the high angle shot was to represent the direction that Tara was facing, the consumers can establish  that Tara was calling from upstairs. 

The high angle shot also represent the feeling of littleness, the audience is somewhat looking down at Tara because they have figured something that she is about to discover. 

A shot of an older woman, looking directly at the camera, neck twisted, blood falling down the side of her mouth. The impact of a dead person looking at the camera creates an expressive reaction towards our target audience. identified in the beginning as Tara mum, majority of the audience would feel a automatic sympathy for her. lying down sprawled on the floor creates a realistic image of a dead person. At this point, it is not clear to the audience if Tara has seen her mother yet but they know that she will eventually. 

Showing pieces of Tara mum in the beginning heightens the dramatic effects that we tried to convey the audience can now note that this is tara mum because of the shot displayed in the beginning of the trailer.  

In this shot it is clear to see that Tara as not seen the dead body, we shot a low angle of her foot, again to heighten the atmosphere which is changing dramatically. Wearing the same clothing as before helps the audience identify that this is the main character. It is also clear that there are only two people in the house-hold and no-one else. 

Shots of her foot shows her walking towards her fate, walking towards something that she thought he would never see, just as we showed pieces of the mums dead body, it is the same as showing pieces of Tara. This is because the two characters have not meet it each other so its like a mystery for the characters to see the reactions that would take place- reaction mainly from Tara obviously. 

This shot shows that it is clear that Tara has identified the body, we did not switch to the mother so it breaks the pattern that was been constructed before. The reason being is because the audience at this point would have actively constructed the mystery.  We cut to Tara seeing the body because she backs off and her facial expression becomes terrified. The consumer sense fear and a change of atmosphere dramatically. 

We then cut to the body of the mums, now we can see what has killed her and from here the audience can interpret that this was in fact murder. The fruits on the floor and position of the knife shows that there was a scuffle  before the mother got stabbed. From the small shots and little props the audience can convey a story of what happened. There is no scirpts but as researched, teaser trailers focuses mainly on images to tell a story. 

A short of Tara sliding down symbolizes her word collapsing before here, and her physical body which is unable to take in what has happened. The shot of Tara coming in and asking for her mother shows that she is innocent in this crime and has not part-taken in the crime at all. The red behind her follows the theme of crime which becomes part of her life, the fact that it is behind Tara symbolizes the route of life she decides to take. Crime and Lust. 

At this point, i had a clear idea of what title graphics i would be using and what music i would use but i decided to put my ideas on hold until i have researched into the components that make up a successful teaser trailer. 

Audience Feedback

Michelle and I then revisited our storyline, after taking pictures for our storyboard. We realised that we could develop a better storyline to fit a theory on race. Using the theory and ethnicity, after reading ‘Abstract race and race theory’ by Howard Winant we found that during the 19^th century, different sociological perspectives have developed shifted and changed. We related this to our view on black youths- in the 21^stcentury; black youths are viewed as disruptive, aggressive, intimating and commonly materially and culturally deprived especially those who are from the working-class background. The Chicago sociologist department found that, neighbourhoods inflicts youth’s behaviour; they stated that criminal transmits their skills to young apprenticeships, although race is not really our main focus, we thought that we could refer to it during our film trailer.

WEBSITE: which was used for secondary research and theory  

{AUDIO TO BE INSERTED HERE!  DISCUSSION ABOUT STORYLINE}

[USE OF CAMERA FOR INTERVIEW TO INSERRT HERE]

We then decided to conduct a survey to gather people’s opinion on film trailers, Michelle and I, created a questionnaire using Microsoft Word our questions was based on public opinions on film trailers and how media represents working class and youths. We used quantitative and qualitative data; quantitative data was used for our statistical results, it is faster and more accurate for set results. We can conclude our findings faster and teenage crimes. My partner and I this is because it would be easier to convert into statistics to help us with the project.

This is my questionnaire that. We used a camcorder to interview members of our taget audience,  youths, working-class. The people asked, represents our mainstream audience which are students in urban areas and also middle-class area.

In the questionnaire we used closed questions, the respondent only required to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ however we did require that they also gave a reason, however some respondents did not have a reason for their answer.

  Below is a copy of our questionnaire, we asked this because, we wanted to take into conisderation the general public opinion on teaser trailers and what they portray.

Questionnaire for media

1.      Do you enjoy watching teenage films?

Yes                                          

No

2.      Do you think the working-class are portrayed negatively in films?

Yes

No

3.      Do you think there is a positive review on teenagers?

Yes

No

4.      Do you feel that film trailers make you want to watch the film?

Yes

No

5.      On average how often do you watch film trailers on your own accord?

(Independently not when there is an advert)

0-5

6-10

11-15

16-20

6.      Camera work, is the key feature in teaser trailers

Yes

No

7.      Please select your preferred film trailer

Donkey punch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6kxswnHn3c

Bullet Boy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9HmGBQ9LK8

Baby Boy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhe9MZi-lHk

Leon http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ns4vh_xAn98

Girl, interrupted http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQlftCpGzUg

 

	1	2	3	4	6
Yes	11	10	5	9	12
No	2	3	8	4	1

Question 5
0-5	10
6-10	2
11-15
16-20
Above 20	1

    

Question 7
Donkey Punch
Bullet Boy
Baby Boy
Leon
Girl, interrupted

1.       Do you enjoy watching teenage films?

2. Do you think the working-class are portrayed negatively in films?

3. Do you think there is a positive review on teenagers?

4.  Do you feel that film trailers make you want to watch the film?

5.  On average how often do you watch film trailers on your own accord?

 

6. Camera work is the key feature in film trailers, do you agree?

7.      Please select your preferred film trailer

We found that people were not very keen with film trailers as they were with watching the film. Apart from the film being promoted through advertisement on television, rarely did individuals take time out to research into the film. From the audience I noted that a trailer is a combination of sound, narration, lighting, camera shots and title graphics, all this is too lure and ‘seduce’ the audience to watch the film.  The sample of people selected to watch the teaser trailers often reacted to the lighting, atmosphere that is created and fast cuts that takes place.

We then exported our recorded interview to a format that would enable us to upload unto our blog. This is how we did this:

After editing the blooper scenes i then exported the clip, by going on file then export then video.

Seeing that the file is quite big i had to

Teaser trailer acts as a stimulation, like an advert is constructed to urge the audience to watch it, teaser trailer ensures that the target audience is passive, meaning that they can not make a decision based on the media text, instead they are made to believe a certain situation. For my teaser trailer I intend to make the audience passive, this is because want then to watch the film produced, we want them to understand the message that we are trying to convey as stated before I aimed to make the audience aware of cultural theory, the belief of working-class being violent or dangerous.

The trailer composition of the trailer is aimed to drive the audience to watch the film. In my planning I thought of lighting, cutting and music effects used in every teaser trailer. It is a convention that cannot be challenged; teaser trailer has a essential structure that needs to be followed by all media institution.

My partner and i then produced a more detailed plan, displaying the intended shots that we wanted to take, as shown above, we included how we were going to construct our teaser trailer-the components of title graphic, sfx, types of shots etc... although we had this in hand we knew that it would change because we hadn't researched into what makes a successful teaser trailer. However we thought that we would still stick with our a plan until we have properly researched into what we were going to do.