Final Products

Evaluation 4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Evaluation 3: What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

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

Evaluation 2 from sophiecainmedia

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

Overall Risk Assessment for the Project

Risk Assessment for poster photo shoot

Possible Risk	Prevention	Problems?
Tripping/falling hazards	Ensure that there is no equipment lying around which may cause trips and falls for example wires on the floor, chairs out of place and props on the floor.	None
Low lighting / No lighting	Ensure that if the photos are not being taken at that time a light is turned on to prevent injury to people around. When in low lighting ensure people around are aware of equipment around the area so they know where they are walking to prevent other dangers such as risks.	None
Bright lights	Ensure people are aware of the bright lights and warn not to look directly into the light to prevent headaches.	None

Risk Assessment for magazine photo shoot 

Possible Risk	Prevention	Problems?
Tripping/falling hazards	Ensure that there is no equipment lying around which may cause trips and falls for example wires on the floor, chairs out of place and props on the floor. Ensuring that doors were closed and warning people about the shoot, as the photo was taken behind a door against a white wall, this would prevent anyone opening the door onto the character getting their photo taken.	None
Low lighting / No lighting	Ensure that if the photos are not being taken at that time a light is turned on to prevent injury to people around. When in low lighting ensure people around are aware of equipment around the area so they know where they are walking to prevent other dangers such as risks.	None
Bright lights	Ensure people are aware of the bright lights and warn not to look directly into the light to prevent headaches.	None

Risk Assessment for the teaser trailer

Possible Risk	Prevention	Problems?
Tripping/falling hazards	Ensure that there is no equipment lying around which may cause trips and falls for example wires on the floor, chairs out of place and props on the floor.	None
Low lighting / No lighting	Ensure that if the photos are not being taken at that time a light is turned on to prevent injury to people around. When in low lighting ensure people around are aware of equipment around the area so they know where they are walking to prevent other dangers such as risks.	None
Bright lights	Ensure people are aware of the bright lights and warn not to look directly into the light to prevent headaches.	None
Car accident	Ensure the driver is careful, taking into consideration speed limits, laws and weather conditions. Ensure the filming is done by someone who is not driving the car.	None

Feedback on the magazine

After creating the magazine, I collected some feedback from my target audience about what they thought about our promotional product. 

Some of the positive feedback that we received was..

- The layering of the images and the text is well presented and creates good depth to the magazine

- The layout of the 'The Recollection' title at the bottom of the page is well structured and stands out well on the page

- The side bar on the left creates a professional feel to the magazine and is creative, also its good how it includes the website for the magazine and what is included inside the issue.

- The cracked effect which is over the characters face is effective as it helps an audience assume that the character has a background, this is also shown through the facial expression, mysterious.

Some of the constructive criticism we received was...

- The background image is dull it may look better brightened up.

> In response to this we brightened up the background image and this is shown on the magazine above. 

- You could make the cracked effect across the characters face more prominent as it is quite faint.

> In response to this we decided to leave the faint cracked effect as the bolder cracks were not effective and not what we had planned.

Feedback on our Film's Teaser Trailer

Sophie and I received some feedback from our target audience on the positives and negatives about our film's teaser trailer. Here is a summary of some of the comments we were given;-

• The teaser trailer looks very professional with it's credits and production labels.
• The crash is effective as the trigger event as it grabs the audience's attention in the first 25 seconds 
• All of the festivals shown at the beginning must mean that the film has had a positive response from its peers and successful if asked to be listed on all of the sets.
• The synchronisation of the trailer is very easy flowing.
• The POV shot of the mystery object getting buried is different to other stereotypical trailer traits and there is a visceral and intellectual tease to it.
• All of the camera angles and movements are relevant and effective to the story telling for the audience.
• The use of shadows reflects on the film noir genre and keeps the recurring theme throughout all of our products.
• The continuity of all of the credits with the smashed glass means that there is no confusion.
• The black out screen shot is too long and loses the attention of the audience watching.
• There is a mix of shots using both the characters and props which keeps the audience interested.
• There are several gaps for information were there could be some voice over from a character layered on clips.
• The scene of Anna looking for the file on Daniel is too long and withdraws the audience.
• The use of street/neon lights is unique and not seen in many other films and also links with film noir.

From this point I will now go on to edit/improve on the negative comments that were given about out trailer.


After I had the time to adjust the project a little, I finally have the overall finished teaser trailer for our film.

Feedback on our Film Poster

The poster below was my finished product before we received all of our feedback.

I received a mixed response of positives and negatives comments towards the apperence and the function of the poster. The negative points allowed me too change or improve on the weakness of my product. The aim is for more people to be interested in the trailer so that more people are attrcted to our film and the rest of our promotional package.

The following points list the strengths of my product;

• All the pictures included in the poster are very high resolution which means it look professional and can be made larger if sized correctly.

• All of the conventions for a poster are displayed clear on the product.

• The structure of the poster is well thought through and everything is aligned.

• The headlights on the car really attract the audience.

• All of the information on the poster is relevant to do the function it was given.

• Everything fits together softly without any harsh areas to look at.

The following points list the negatives of my product;

• One of the conventions that is missing to my products is the cast names that are in the film.

• The colouring of the two photographs is too different to put together smoothly.

• The shadow effect on the two characters needs to be more highlighted.

Using all of the feedback that Sophie and I gained from our audience on the products that we produced, we decided to alternate the poster to improve upon the weaknesses.

Stating the simplest task first, I went on to add the cast names of the characters so that the audience would know the people who play the characters in the production.

Next I moved on to adding a separate layer which had red and blue surrounding the areas of the characters faces then screened the layer so that they had a mood filter. Giving Daniel a red colour with connotations of danger/conflict and blue to Anna with connotations of being a cold person with no compassion anymore. This solves the problem of both the colouring of the images and the shadowing because afterwards I added a curves layer which slightly adjusted the colour tone and made the shadowing more predominant.

Finished products before feedback

Editing the trailer

Once all of the footage was taken it was ready to upload onto iMovie...

You will see highlighted in the red box, where all of the shots are stored on iMovie. As I gave Sophie all of the shots to take, she came back with several to chose from and my next job was to course through all of them and chose the best ones for our trailer out of the ones that I was given.





The next step was to start organising the shots in a timeline that we had arranged...

The red box shows where the clips have been organised in the order of our transcript, cut to the length of time that was said in our planning.








Once that was finished it was then time to add in transitions...

You will see that once I had opened all of the transition choices, I had to look for the ones that we had planned during the revised storyboard. Once chosen I had to drag and drop the transition in between the two desired clips.






The only thing left to do now was arrange the audio to suit the storyline of the trailer...

At the bottom of the timeline is the music for the trailer which is played all throughout the trailer. So when I dragged and dropped the sound clip below the footage, it was then time to softened/quiet down the parts when a character was speaking.

I detached most of the audio from the clips to place them were I wanted and made most of them soft towards the beginning and the end of the clips so that the trailer flowed smoothly all together.

Finished Poster and it's Development Stages

This is our finished film's movie poster below and also how I achieved it using photoshop.

Our Film's Teaser Trailer

This is our completed film trailer with the shots that Sophie filmed that I have edited together. As this is now finished we should ask people about what they think and what would improve it also.

Sourcing the Sound for our Trailer

As I was the one in charge of editing the trailer, it followed that I be the one to look up the sound for it to see what best fit the mood of the trailer's theme. Before going ahead I already had an idea of what we were looking for as the revised transcript we went over had the audio we were looking for. I need a soft quiet backing track with an edge to go with the trailers suspense. I also needed a car crash sound and an ambulance siren for the scene of Anna's sudden accident which would tell the story of what happened to the audience.

Backing track to the trailer (Soft instrumental music)

I am fully aware that this music is copyright and that if the trailer I was releasing to the general public as a professional product then we would have to buy the rights for the track so that we could have it on out trailer. The reason that I chose this track was because I like the soft build up and how it had a jump in the middle which would synchronise with the crash part of the trailer. Everything after that jump scene was full of suspense and fast pace which was the atmosphere we wanted to create for the audience until the end of the trailer.

Crash scene

The crash sound was also important as it told the story of the crash and what was happening when there was a black screen on our trailer. We made it a black screen as we could not film a car crash because of obvious reasons, so we had to come up with an idea of how to set the scene and the sound delivered that message to the audience very easily. The sound that I recovered here was short and simple and it wasn't copyrighted either so it was the perfect fit for our trailer.

Ambulance siren for after the crash scene

As we could not reconstruct the sound of an ambulance siren for after the crash when Anna is lying in the ground, we had to source one from the internet and as this was public to download it was even better which also meant it wasn't copy written so we could use it in the publication of our trailer. This was to let the audience know that Anna was in more that just trouble but she was seriously hurt after the accident and needed medical care urgently so that is why we wanted the siren as part of our trailer.

Filming Schedule

I laid this filming schedule out of Sophie so that she could set the time out in the day, to film these certain shots. As a lot of our scenes happen in the afternoon it was helpful as Sophie and I, as we noted down the times when we would have the spare time to do certain tasks. All of the shots that are on this schedule are the ones I require to put the trailer together when I complete the editing stage.

Revised Storyboard

In order for Sophie to go out and film I thought it would be good to go back on the story board and point out exactly what shots I need to put the trailer together, considering she was in charge of filming and I was in charge of editing.

Below I have constructed an animated storyboard of the still images I have in order to show you what our teaser trailer should look like overall.

Titles Development and Making

At first as I was the one to do the majority of the editing as I had the advanced experience with iMovie and Final Cut. We set out all of the titles that we needed for the trailer and then decided how it was best to create them. All of the frames below are the ones we need, one is the production logo which I have already posted the still frame for the poster, also the title quotes from the films story, and lastly the film title and it's release. I am going to explain how I made all of the titles as this is one of the main parts of the editing and as part of the criteria I thought it was best to include it.

The S and S Production logo was made using Adobe After Effects CS5. I imported the smoke footage as a background layer, then simply layered the production logo on top of the clip and changed the blending option of that layer to screen so it took out all of the black and all that was left was the production graphic logo. At the end I cut the clip and exported it as a mov document and used it on our trailer.
Another thing to add was the reason why we designed the production clip this way. Taking into consideration that we were producing a film noir piece and that it was an independent production, the ideas that we had were that it couldn't be too elite and we had to incorporate something in relation to that topic and this case it was smoke because this was one of the most significant iconography towards film noir.

These titles where made simply by overlapping the video clip of smashed glass representing the car crash in the trailer with the titles that we wanted to sell the story. I did this using iMovie by importing the crash clip and then using the titles option to import the selected text, this was easy but effective to our trailer and meant that we could spend time on the footage. For example the camera angles and the colouring of the shots which could be different to make our trailer stand out, becuase as long as the titles have a connotation to the trailer and the story it's representing then it will have an impact on the audience that we are trying to target those who like film noir but also love the action/thriller genre too.




The film title was made using Adobe After Effects CS5. This was one of the most important titles that we had to design as it represents the film and it's the iconography to which everyone will link this film too until is comes out. As we had already done research on film titles and created what ours was going to look like we already had the font set out and could not change it. However we did not just want to put a simple title font on the trailer we wanted to add a little something extra which would grab the audience but also create something new and show off more of our skills in the editing process. So as we watched several different trailers with their title as the end we realised that the majority were similar there was a glare, a shine, enlargement of the text etc. Watching all of these gave us an idea we didn't just want an effect we wanted an effect with the colour red which connotes several things about this trailer, firstly danger, the anger of the two characters between each other, the conflict of interest, but also the fact that at the beginning of our research on film noir we established that the only bold colour that was set apart from black and white was red. Giving the trailer a link to film noir meant that there would be a link and people would see that on a DVD case as on Sin City or The Maltese Falcon, like below;

For our last title we had to include al of the important information for example the release time/date, what platform it is showing on, the ways of accessing more information and the production company. By adding all of this it gives the audience all they really need to know about the film until it's release and by adding an effect on Adobe After Effects CS5 it meant it could end the trailer with the smash of broken piece and that leaves the mark in the audience's mind that the trailer/film is all about the car crash and what it brings in it's aftermath.

Magazine Development Choices

All of these ideas have different editing on them, I created them all so I could see what looked better. I consulted Sophie and we came to a conclusion by eliminating one by one which one we weren't going to use and reasons for each. we finally came to a conclusion and you can see from the final product which one we chose and why.

Production Company Logos

At first, we liked this font to use for our production logo which would feature on our tailer and the poster. Once we had set on a layout I then tried several different filters and colours to see which one looked the best. We tested them on a group of 20 and they all give their different opinions, not one person thought that the font went with the film. They characterised the font as being "too comic/graphic novel" so that was one of the main issues that I had to resolve. People had plenty to say about the colouring, although the choice of electric purple was a bold choice, everyone liked the idea of the recurring theme having red, white and black. These colours were sticking with the film noir element of which the genre of our trailer is. When all of this feedback was given to us, I then went back to have another go at it and see what I could change so it would link with our trailer and all of our other work that we have done.

Keeping with the colour and the style but changing the font, people liked the logo much more and were torn between choosing. However the ones that were people's favourite, Sophie and I chose which one was the most noiresque and we came to a conclusion which everyone loved.