Evaluation Question 2 - Seyi

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

Colour Scheme

The  colour scheme is mainly constant within our poster and website that we have created, due to the lack of text within our trailer the dark red isn’t used until the title appears right at the end of the trailer as we were creating an Urban Drama where the protagonist is in a lot of danger due to his involvement in drugs, we decided to use a strong dark red colour as the colour red can give off a strong sense of danger.

We avoided the red being bright as it would stick out too much in some of our media products as the backgrounds weren’t vibrant images, also, the darker shade of red makes the overall effect more menacing. This colour scheme was first incorporated within our poster, we used this dark red colour scheme for the main texts on our poster such as the title, the twitter and the website, the colour scheme is extremely effective for our poster as it is a brilliant shade of red that sticks out on the background, the rest of the text is white such as the billing block and the tagline, this ensures that you can differentiate between the importance of the text on the poster, so the text that we wish to stand out the most does exactly that.

The colour scheme within the website is also effective as the now the tagline is in the dark red colour, matching the title and the links for the home page, gallery etc, there was little text on the website as the only text needed would be the links, the title, the tagline and the reviews, so the significant text would be the title, the links and the tagline as this would allow our website to conform to our other media products as we have tried to make the colour red a stand out factor.

Layout

The layout of the poster highlights the fact that we created a character specific teaser trailer, even though it is an urban drama we made sure that we kept scenes with others to a minimum, this character specific factor has been brought over to our poster as we made sure that the protagonist was the only person pictured within the poster. We positioned him in front of a high rise block of flats and placed these block of flats in front of an image of the London skyline which was taken from an aerial angle, to give off the concrete jungle effect that we were trying to establish. The layer of images that we have put together gives an effective layout as it keeps the focus on the protagonist however, it shows the protagonists surroundings as well which is what has put the protagonist in his dire situation.

The previous pictures we took that we wanted to use for the main picture for our poster were never as effective as the chosen picture as they didn’t show an establishing shot with a significant object in the background as they only showed small items such as walls with graffiti on them or a bridge.

The layout of the website also uses an establishing shot

this time in the form of a time lapse, which is in the background and is continuously running as you are on the website. The same high rise block of flats is shown but it is shot from a different angle, allowing it to lie on the left of the screen with the protagonist in front of the block of flats, while the our teaser trailer lies in the space on the left, giving the viewer a clear space to watch the trailer without any objects distracting them or taking their attention away. At first we wished to incorporate a bridge into our image for the website and place the links onto the bridge, however there was no way we could use this idea as there was no way we could fit the bridge onto the screen while showing the protagonist on the webpage as he is a significant factor within the teaser trailer, therefore as a result we used the time lapse for the background of the website and used Photoshop to crop an image of the protagonist in front of the block of flats.

Evaluation Question 3 - Seyi

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Collecting Feedback

Our teaser trailer was aimed at teenagers to young adults, so people within the 15-24 age group as we knew that this type of production would grasp the attention of young people, so we launched our first method of acquiring audience feedback which was presented in the form of an essay. We used SurveyMonkey In our survey we gave the participants nine questions about all aspects off an Urban Drama trailer, ranging from questions about the music all the way to questions asking about the type of protagonist they would want to see. By posting the link on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook I managed to compile a total of 66 responses which were enough to compile a good amount of data telling me what aspects of Urban Dramas makes them appeal to them.

The questions that we took on more on board than others were the ones that had a direct impact into the type of trailer we were going to make, for example a question we created asked how intense they wanted the stereotypes of the characters to be, we felt this would be an extremely important question as there are many different types of Urban Dramas, some which exaggerate the stereotypes of Urban London e.g. Anuvahood, ones that stick to the reality of the situation e.g. Kidulthood and some that move away from stereotypes such as Top Boy so in order for us to fully understand what type of Urban Drama interests the viewers things like this needed to be clearly established in order for us to create it.

The audience swayed towards the concept of using an accurate use of stereotypes so we ensured that nothing within our production was too eccentric e.g. using weapons not available to young people in London. We consulted the participants of the survey about the type of music that they thought would be effective within the trailer as within Urban Dramas music is an extremely important tool which is used to set the tone and pace of the trailer. The participants chose the ‘Fast paced grime music’ option, grime which is a genre of music specific to Urban areas of the UK was a perfect choice as in order to keep the trailer centred around Urban Culture.

YouTube Comments

Our other sources of audience feedback was YouTube as we used it to get feedback on our first draft of our trailer, so we encouraged people who watched our trailer to leave comments below on the effectiveness of the trailer, what they believed the narrative was and which shots they found most effective. We received a lot of positive feedback on our first draft which was far from finished, this feedback included comments that stated how clear it was that it is an urban drama and also that some of the video effects used were effective for the genre e.g. a black and white effect that we placed when the protagonist was sitting at a bus stop. Also the viewers commented on the effectiveness of the locations we used which shows that our extensive location scouting proved to be very effective.Statements that showed us how to improve our trailer included how the ending of the trailer was extremely abrupt, which caused the trailer to appear as if it has come to an anti climax, as it builds up so fast and ends so quickly.

Improvements

When we assembled all of the comments together we began to change our teaser trailer accordingly, our ending shot was changed from a extremely low angle shot of the protagonist stomping down onto a victim to an aerial shot of the protagonist on the floor.
In the YouTube comment above we see that some of the main criticisms included the typography of the title, issues with a shot at the start where the protagonist is in a room with his mother and also issues with the aerial shot of the protagonist on the floor.


 Firstly we removed the typography from the start of the trailer completely and took the advice of the YouTube comment and changed the typography of the title completely by giving it an eroded effect. Secondly we received criticism on the aerial shot of the protagonist on the floor in pain, a comment we received stated that the shot was way too light to appear menacing, we soon went back within our editing process and altered the lighting of the shot, making it appear darker overall, using the conventions of the colour black e.g. mystery and danger to aid our teaser trailer. Finally also trimmed and sped up a few of the shots at the beginning e.g. the shot where the protagonist is in a room with his mother of. because some of the feedback indicated that these shots were too long and made those shots look too staged. 

Evaluation Question 1 - Seyi

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

Teaser Trailer

Urban Dramas have very specific conventions and in order to make the viewers know that what they are watching is an Urban Drama. The use of Urban Youths is extremely important, as this is the main way that real media products can represent the reality of Urban London as the majority of crimes committed in these areas are by young people. The mise-en-scene is also a very important as the characters need to be dressed in the type of clothes that you would see on Urban Youths in real life in e.g. tracksuits, high top trainers and hoodies. Secondly the environment that the characters are shown within is incredibly important as you need to show the hardship that the characters are facing, this holds a good foundation to build the narrative on.

I believe that our trailer conforms to real media products that have been created, especially due to the fact that Urban Dramas that have a similar narrative to us e.g. involving drug or gang related crimes, these have all been inspired by recent moral panics in society. Firstly by the use of a protagonist who is of an ethnic minority and is still a teenager which is also used by many real media products for example Kidulthood and Adulthood. Secondly the Mise-en-scene of the protagonist and other characters within the trailer all conform to real media products and even urban youths and areas within real life situations. We clothed our protagonist and any other young characters within the trailer in items of clothing more associated with teenagers within London e.g. hoodies, tracksuit bottoms etc, we did this to make our teaser trailer more believable and for it to have more of the conventions of real Urban Dramas as it would have been impossible to accurately represent Urban youths in inappropriate clothing. The surroundings of the shots taken were extremely important too, they would normally incorporate high rise flats and run down areas, without these we wouldn’t be able to show the viewers the harsh situations that our protagonist has to grow up in, this was another part of our trailer that we believed conformed to the conventions of real media products as the establishing shots of the surrounding areas had many similarities to real media products as they show poverty in surrounding areas in the same way.

Genre 

The main conventions of a film website include the use of the teaser trailer, the critics reviews, a user friendly layout and an effective image of either a member/members of the cast or where the film is set. We didn't want to stray too far from the conventions of a film website as the conventions are set in stone and they serve a purpose, so we made sure we conformed to the conventions of a film website while still sticking to our Urban Drama genre.
Our website conforms and subverts to real media products; it conforms as it has aspects of Urban Dramas within is e.g. the picture of the high rise flats in the background which has the protagonist in front of it, as a media group we believed this to be very effective because as soon as you enter the website you get a gist of what the trailer is about. As our media product is about a single character rather than a gang, placing only the protagonist on the website was needed and extremely effective as we couldn’t afford to move away from this, for example real media products such as Shank which follows a group of people incorporate the whole group of people on the website, showing that even though there is a main character, each other character has an important role, so as we are doing a trailer which revolves around one character we only placed the protagonist onto the website. This subverts real media products as the websites they use for these media products rarely revolve around one person as they cannot illustrate the narrative in the website by showing the protagonist, however, as our trailer is centred around the one character we need to. The text on our website conforms to real
media products as we tried to go for an eroded effect for any text that was going to go on our website, this eroded effect can be seen on many other Urban Drama websites as if you want to show the viewers the ‘gritty’ side of London, all aspects of the website must portray this. This text which was used for the title on the website was also used within our trailer as we knew that we needed to have a sense of continuity between all parts of our media production.

Our poster conformed to many real media products as we used ever stereotypical convention that you would find within real media products and placed them within our poster. You have the protagonist standing in front of a block of flats, with the protagonist dressed menacingly and standing in front of a building which is associated with poverty we soon began to dive into the story behind the protagonist situated in front of the block of flats. As we are setting our story within London we believed it was important to conform to the use of the London skyline or an urban skyline which showed how populated and dense the protagonist’s surroundings are. By knowing this we used a picture of an Urban London skyline in the background, in doing so we have layers of images which conform to real media products and use their conventions to strengthen it as an Urban Drama. Our storyline once again causes our media products to subvert real media products as our poster just like the other products doesn’t show anything about a gang, Shank for example shows a background image of a menacing gang behind the group of protagonists, Kidulthood also uses a group of protagonists as the image for a poster, so due to the fact that our trailer is character centred we can only portray the protagonist. We used newspapers and magazines local to London and UK to provide our star ratings to allow us to be as close to real media products as possible.

Evaluation Question 4 - Seyi

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

Filming

When constructing our media trailer our filming was the main aspect that helped create our sixty second teaser trailer. First of all we had a high definition camera at our disposal in order for us to film, the intelligent ways we used our camera was more involved with how we went about shooting certain shots, we utilised unique items such as a member of the group’s car to create a tracking shot from the side and from behind. Firstly we positioned Ella in the passenger seat of Mollie’s car and made her hang the camera slightly out of the window. As the car began driving, I began running next to the car acting as the protagonist, as a result we had a very effective tracking shot with the protagonist running away from something that is hidden from the camera. The other tracking shot we filmed from behind the protagonist with the car driving behind the protagonist to make it seem as if the protagonist was being chased by a car as you can see the headlights following the protagonist as he runs away from the car. Other ways we utilised the camera is by doing close up shots of the protagonist attacking the lens of the camera, this comes across as a point of view shot from the view of the victim that the protagonist appears to be attacking, we did this with other shots such as the low angle shot of the protagonist stomping on the lens which is another point of view shot just from a low angle.

Editing

Using Final Cut Pro X we had a wide range of effects and transitions at our disposal within the construction phase of our teaser trailer, which meant that we could utilise a lot of these factors in order to create a very good Urban Drama trailer. Planning the editing was the hardest part as this was what would shape the construction phase of our trailer so we took to researching the editing techniques used in previous Urban Dramas to see how they edited their trailers in accordance to aspects of the trailer such as the music and the shots that are shown on screen. When we found out how we would be able to edit our media product in a way that all parts of the trailer would come together to make one final piece we began to use Final Cut Pro X to its full potential. As we had decided to use a fast paced song we planned the pace of the trailer around this, with a series of shots transitioning into a montage where many jump cuts were used in order to create a disorientating effect. Some of the effects utilised were a black and white static effe
ct which was extremely effective according to our audience feedback.

Sound

As Urban Dramas sometimes use diagetic sound within the trailers we thought that this would be an option that we would consider, however, due to the camera we had available to us we knew that the sound wouldn’t be very clear, therefore within the planning phase we used YouTube to research how voice overs were used within trailers in order to create an effect. After reviewing many different trailers we came to the conclusion that we were going to use the recording studio that we had available to us in order to record someone saying our tagline, this tagline was then going to be edited into our trailer as non-diagetic sound, as a result we had an extremely clear voice recording due to the technology within the recording studio and when this had been put within our trailer it sounded extremely effective.

Photoshop

We utilised Photoshop to create our film poster, our research stage was extremely important as many tutorials from the internet were needed in order to learn how to use Photoshop effectively, when all we had all the skills needed to create a film poster we began this task. Using the photo we took within our small photo shoot in front of a high rise block of flats we had a good starting point for our Urban Drama poster, so we began to use photoshop within the construction phase to edit around this photo. We incorporated a London skyline in the background behind the block of flats using a cut out of the image that we took on the photoshoot.

Wix

Wix was the platform we used to construct our website, first of all we deconstructed past A2 media websites, to see first of all how effective wix can be used by new users.

For example we viewed this website and liked the layout as well as other aspects such as the position of the title, the position of the video and the size that the image takes up on the website allowing the viewers to clearly know who the protagonists are.







We moved onto making multiple plans of our website, ranging from making the first draft to multiple other drafts trying to give us a projection into what we wanted our website to look like, our website depended on the background image that we were going to use, therefore it was highly important that we had an effective background image, in the end we opted for the use of a time lapse, which changed the overall layout of our website completely.

By using a tripod, our SLR camera we created the time lapse by positioning the camera in an appropriate location, and letting it record the movement. By taking the footage to final cut we sped up the footage making the movement faster and much more noticeable.

As a finished product, with the different aspects of the website all put in place with the time lapse behind the final product was effective.

music for the start

Music for the start of our Trailer

• This instrumental could be effective as it uses a soft piano sound to begin with, however the piano's music is used in a minor key to give of a sinister or sad effect within it.
• The pace of the music is also rather slow, due to the shots that we are using at the beginning of the trailer this slow pace would compliment the trailer very nicely as in order for the soundtrack of the trailer to appear affective it needs to have the correct paced track at the start
• As we are only using roughly ten seconds of this, the chosen ten seconds would be at the start before any aiding sounds are used e.g. the drums.

• This instrumental uses a different instrument which is stereotypically associated with sadness, the violin, however the pitch of the violin is very high and this makes it less suitable for our trailer as even though it is in a minor key, the pitch makes it sound rather childish.
• The pace of the selected part of the is slow enough to make it suitable for the beginning of our trailer 
• The ten seconds that we wish to use will also be the first ten seconds of this, as after a certain time all the accompanying sounds take place which would ruin the sad effect we are trying to display at the start.

• This instrumental combines both piano and violin together to create a sad and melancholic effect with it, all instruments used are in a minor key which therefore makes it appropriate for the sad nature that we are trying to achieve in the beginning of our trailer.
• The pace is much more suited to our trailer than the other selected songs that could possibly be used, it is much slower which can allow the viewers to take in more of the shots on screen than the accompanying music
• The ten seconds that would be appropriate would also be the first ten seconds as the music gets better once the backing violin kicks in, which can give the starting song some variation.

• I believe that the 3rd option will be best suited for our teaser trailer as when actually put within the trailer I believe that it would accompany the first shots which include the shot of the protagonist on the floor and the shot of the protagonists mother holding the baby, as there is little action in this, only disequilibrium.

Fast Paced Montage in Adulthood 0:53-1:04

The montage within for adulthood is extremely effective as it mixes a range of violent and non violent clips together, the purpose of this is to merge the scenes of violence together with the other scenes in order to get a large number of clips together to make the montage fast and last the time that it did. The montage is also effective due to the fact that it goes along with the pace of the soundtrack, building to a climax with an aiding sound effect and also its position in the trailer is at the fastest point of the soundtrack.

0:54-0:55

• The montage begins with a shot where the protagonists younger brother is holding a knife to his brother sam who isn't shown on shot.
• The camera is shooting the younger brother from a low angle due to the position of power he has in this situation as he is wielding the weapon, leaving the victim helpless which makes him the more powerful one.

0:55-0:55

• The next shot is a prisoner being grabbed from behind by his fellow prison mates, the camera angle shifts and soon becomes a high angle shot making the victim powerless as he is evidently in a dangerous position, the speed of this shot doesn't allow the viewer to see this fully.

0:55-0:56

• This shot is a shot used to fill up the montage as it isn't trying to show any violence, no drastic camera angles are used to show any power differences or and struggle, it is simply a shot of a woman touching the protagonists back.

0:56-0:57

• This shot is showing the protagonist running away from someone but as it is in the montage it isnt specified who
• The camera is positioned far from the protagonist as they are not trying to show his  facial expression but more of his body language, as he is hastily escaping.

0:57-0.58 

• This shot is showing a female about to slap the protagonist but hesitating, an over the shoulder the shot is used to show the hesitation in the action of the female.

0:58-0:58

• This shot shows the antagonist approaching another person in a violent matter, the speed of this montage shot also doesnt allow you to take in much of the shot.

0:59-0:59

• This shot is another non violent shot to fill the time, it shows the protagonist within an establishing shot walking away from a run down block of flats.

0:59-1:00

• This shot shows a youth reaching into the car of what appears to be an average white middle class male, who isnt dressed in bad clothes to make him appear as if he is simply a targeted victim.

1:00 - 1:00 

• This shot is a close up shot of the protagonist receiving a slap, the closer this shot is the more effective it is as you can see the power of the slap as well as the reaction of the protagonist as he receives it.
• Even though the violence in this shot isnt as extreme as the other shots, as it is in the montage it still has importance due to the speed of the clips.

1:00 -1:01 

• This low angle shot is showing the protagonist stomping on a victim who isnt shown on shot, like some of the previous montage shots they use a low angle and do not show the victim to make the attacker seem totally powerful and the victim seem powerless.

1:01 - 1:02 

• This is another subtly violent shot, as it shows the protagonist covering the mouth of a female on the roadside
• Once again this shot is effective as a part of the montage as it makes the viewer wonder what will happen to the female after she is apprehended. 

1:02 - 1:03 

• This show is similar to one of the other shots above, this shot is showing a youth breaking a car window of a innocent bystander waiting in his car in the road.

Final film website layout

Final Website Layout

• The final film poster is using the photo that we are planning to take in a smart way, as we are placing the links that we wish to use on the bridge.

• Our final title which was created on photoshop which was created as an eroded type typography will be placed on the top of the website page, above the bridge in its own little space, as we wish to use the golden rule which is where the human eye begins from the top in the middle and wanders down, so we plan to make our created title the first thing that catches the viewers eye.

• The youtube trailer will preferably be placed on the left of the screen and will play automatically when the website is opened, the website will appear a bit more interactive as a whole as the trailer will be playing besides the protagonist who is within the photo placed on the website, this will incorporate all factors of the website together as one.

• The reviews from various magazines will be at the bottom of the site, featuring star ratings from other websites for example, to make it seem as if our site has been looked at and rated by distinguished people