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

My media products follow most of the conventions that are standard in the film industry. The use of particular techniques and layouts are known to be successful because they are familiar to the audience. By following these techniques in my piece of work I am making it easier for the audience to fully engage with it. My piece doesn't completely conform with all the conventions because I wanted to make it slightly more individual. To explain my point I have Uploaded sections of my work and compared them to existing media products...

The Magazine Cover.

The image above compares my magazine cover to two existing Empire magazine covers. Most magazines have a standard look and layout to them, it varies depending on the genre but never really varies too much. After studying various Empire covers I decided that I would loosely base my look around it. The main article is of the biggest/most popular film for the month of the magazine issue (I used my film for this). The main article is emphasised by having a large photo of it taking up most of the front cover along with the films logo. I noticed this on all of the covers of all the film magazines that I looked at so I knew that it was a good idea to do it like this. The main picture is usually of the main character or an important scene from the movie. I used a striking image of one of my main characters as a zombie because it is quite attention grabbing and fits well. When compared to the two Empire covers next to it the similarities in the main image and layout style are quite noticeable.

The title of my magazine is very similar to that of Empire. It is one word and is in a simple striking font. Mine differs however because I decided to add a coloured stoke around the edge of my title just to lift it from the image slightly.

The title usually has a message accross the top of it that may attract the customers attention. The Empire one has the offer of free posters over the top, however I had already decided that I was going to use that space to explain what this months issue was about.

The sections on my front cover that refer to other articles in the magazine are also laid out in similar way to the other magazines. The red and white writing matched up in colour to my magazine logo in the same way that the red and white writing on the Clash of The Titans Empire cover does. They are also laid out to one side so they don't overlap or obstruct the main focus points of the background image. I also incorporated some other photos into my cover by using the bottom of the Terminator Empire cover and taking it a step further by developing it into a film reel which I think suited a movie magazine.

The Films Poster.

The point of a film poster is to give an impression of what the film will be like just by glancing at it. It is extremely important that the image is eye catching because otherwise it won't grab the audiences attention which it needs to do so that it can advertise the film. The poster also needs to make the genre of the film quite obvious so that people can make their mind up whether it is the type of film they want to watch. (A rom-com is far from being a zombie horror movie)

A very important aspect of a film poster is the films logo which is quite often a title but is sometimes an image. Like on the other posters the title of my film is in a very prominent place and stands out. CLASS 1B is in a big bloody font across the top which I created myself, it makes the viewer immediately aware of the films name and identity.

Another section of my poster is the films tagline or slogan. It tries to draw interest by creating suspense by giving the audience a snippet of the story. Although not all films use tag lines, it is typical of a lot of films (particularly in the horror or thriller genre). I decided to go for a bit of a cheesy approach by having the tagline 'It was supposed to be a normal college day...' mainly due to my film being set in a college and then having all weird zombie based stuff going on after what would have seemed to be a normal day.

Rather than having the tagline as just text though, I incorporated it into my design by using Photoshop to give the impression of it being carved into the door.

I also thought about using some reviews from maybe a newspaper or a film magazine, this was mainly because lower budget films generally tend to have less advertising than the Hollywood blockbusters so rely on public opinions to get people to watch the film. 28 days later used a review from The Sun as a main focus point on its poster. I went for a more subtle approach and just had two small snippets of reviews on either side of the page, one of which was just a star rating.

One final convention that I have followed on my poster is the credits which are featured at the bottom. Although this feature is not one of the features that particularly stands out I felt that it is a necessary one because it gives publicity to some of the important people involved in creating the film. Although I did pretty much all of the filming, editing, special effects etc. myself I decided to use names of people who were involved in the making of my film. (the majority of which were actors and extras) I decided on a font to use by looking at existing posters and I realised that most of them use the same clear font so I decided to do the same and pick a simple font from off the computer. I noticed that the way the text is laid out makes the names stand out more by having them in a bigger font to the other words.

Another important factor was also including the production companies logos in there too. I had created my own two fake companies called 'Real Time Productions' and 'Win Media'

The Teaser Trailer.

The point of a teaser trailer is to portray as much of the storyline across to the viewer using lots of short clips so as not to give away too much of the storyline. This will hopefully interest the viewer enough to want to find out more by watching the film when it is released. Here is my teaser trailer along with some others of different films.

Unlike a lot of teaser trailers, my trailer doesn't contain a voice over instead it has titles throughout it in a similar style to the trailer for the 1998 remake of 'Psycho'. Ideally I would have had a very similar effect of having the video tape burning and melting however due to having a low budget and not a lot of time I had to settle for sections of TV static before cutting to the writing in white on a black background. These sections not only help split up the trailer but also get the viewers attention by asking questions. It also ends with the films title shortly followed by the phrase "coming soon" so that the viewer will wait for it to come out.

My trailer also doesn't contain credits throughout other than the indentation at the start and the list of credits featured underneath the films logo towards the end of the trailer. My indent was for the fictional film company that I created called 'Realtime Productions' I decided on a simple style font with a metallic style texture to make it look professional and official looking. All the trailers shown have an indent for a couple of seconds at the start with the 'April Showers' ones being the most similar to mine due to it being a lower budget film.

The way that my trailer is laid out is also vary similar to the 'Dawn of the Dead' and the 'April Showers' ones. It uses the contrast between the start and the beginning to build up tension quite well. The professional trailers all used non digetic music to build up tension and suspense too. Unfortunately I was not able to make my own music for this trailer however I found a track that I believe fits the genre quite well. I used particular points in the song where it changes to fit with the cuts between my shots so that it all fits together quite well. I think that it works well how it is calm when everything is normal and goes louder and changes for when the zombies are attacking, particularly seeing as it is fast paced like when everyone is running along the corridors panicking.