Evaluation Question 2 - How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

For the second evaluation question I chose to make a presentation and share it on Sideshare.

Evaluation question 2 from Rory Hayden

Evaluation Question 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

For my first evaluation question I have chosen to create an Emaze presentation.

Film Poster - Badge of Dishonour

As part of the promotional package of every movie, there is a poster made which is often displayed in cinemas, billboards, magazines and online. Therefore for our film I must do the same in order to increase hype and advertise our movie. As you can see below I have continued with the grey scale theme that was published in the EMPIRE magazine. The film credits are displayed at the bottom so that bypasses can see who directed the film and see if there are any actors they recognise playing a character in the movie. The original background was a view of the scenery nearby the location that our film was filmed in. I decided to change this background because I didn't feel it was relevant to the story or theme and replaced it with a sketchy grey background that delivers a street feel. This colour scheme with the background also makes the poster stand out more to the public.

Film Poster Photoshoot

After making the magazine I did another photo shoot for the poster. In this I wanted to achieve more of a full body shot that introduced the character. I chose a location in the countryside near where the film was filmed with a nice view. This represents the character looking over the land that he cares for.

I decided to use this photo because there was no trees directly in the way and his body posture did not look too hostile as in he was the bad guy.

EMPIRE Magazine Front Cover - Badge of Dishonour

After analysing magazine covers including the magazine 'EMPIRE' I was prepared to create my own version of an 'EMPIRE' magazine cover that featured our film 'Badge of Dishonour'.  I used software on our school computers called Serif PagePlus to create the magazine and edit the photo. I cropped the photo I choose to use from my photo shoot to a close up of the detectives upper body with the gun prominent and the main focus in the shot. I choose to make the photo grey scale with an increased exposure and contrast. The cover models head overlaps the masthead which is a common convention in all magazine genres. I chose to have the tradition red EMPIRE masthead because it acts as a good secondary colour for the whole magazine as it contrasts with the grey background. The Badge of Dishonour logo is pinned across the centre and onto the cover model so that users relate it to the cover photo. The red puff in the bottom left overlaps the 'Badge of Dishonour' logo slightly so that it has a sticker effect. The rest of the text on the cover is fairly minimal because is is how the recent articles of EMPIRE have been in recent months.

Magazine PhotoShoot

After researching magazine covers it was time to start planning my own. I choose to use the main character of our film for he cover photo. I wanted a shot of him holding the gun and pointing it towards the camera as it would look as if hes pointing it at the reader and attract them. The best of the photos I took are below.

The location of the photo shoot wasn't too important as long as there was good lighting. This is because I plan to crop down to a more focused shot of the gun and top of the models body. As you can see I took a range of photos from different angles all with the same idea of the gun facing the camera.

I have chosen to use the photo below because it will fit best onto an A4 sized template after cropping it down. it fits bets because both the head and gun are near each other and do not take up much of the photo so there will be room to add text around it. As well as this the camera is just below eye level so the camera isn't looking up at the model like in the other photos. This is important for an empire magazine this is the style most of their photos follow. Furthermore, there is no shadow blocking the face in this photo unlike some of the others. Finally, the gun is upright and facing in the camera direction better than some of the others.

Magazine Front Cover Research

As part of the distribution stage of making a film, you need to advertise so that the film gets publicity. This includes magazines doing articles on your movie. In this case I am going to design a front cover for the magazine named 'EMPIRE'. Before I can do this I must do research into the conventions and typical design methods of magazine front covers. To start with I have analysed two magazines from different genres which are below.

Below is the next analysis of an EMPIRE film magazine (using Emaze) which directly relates to my magazine as I will be imitating an EMPIRE magazine.

Final Trailer Audience Feedback

To get feedback on our trailer we asked a group of three girls and three boys to watch our trailer on a large screen and then asked them a series of questions to see what they thought of it.



The feedback on a whole couldn't be much better with the trailer making the movie appealing to the right audience. We had targeted for a young male interest in the movie which is most we have achieved in most cases although there were some odd answers like the one girl who said they think it would be targeted at middle aged men. I think we can safely ignore this comment due to the other girls saying that they think the movie is targeted at young males. Two of the girls said that they would not be too interested in the movie but one did say that they would watch it which shows that it appeals to some women which was an aim of ours. By some saying they can not think of anything to improve it is a sign that our trailer has ultimately been a success.

Social media is a brilliant way to reach people far away to gain more feedback from other sources.  I sent the same message using the app 'Snapchat' to three people I know but don't see often, who are in their 20s.



















This feedback was easy to acquire through using social media and helps to show that our trailer is approved by people of many ages. The feedback is all good with even a few pointers for improvements. Milo Hughes said that he thinks there should be more blood which is a fair enough point but we can't have too much in order to keep to our age rating ....... Peter Price said they would change the font of the endorsement but this is a small issue which could be changed if we were to do it again but for now I think it looks professional.

The Editing Process

Once we gained enough footage, we made a start on making our film trailer as a group. We all had similar experience in using iMovie so we worked on the trailer together so we could all input our ideas together and learn together. We got the hang of it pretty soon because we made a short practice movie last year. below is a short video containing the footage of us editing part of the trailer. The hardware we used to edit was either a mac computer or a macbook; both had imovie software installed which allowed us to edit.

Final Film Trailer

Now that we have finished our trailer for the movie 'Badge of Dishonour' I have uploaded it to YouTube. We will continue to gain final feedback on the trailer in later posts.