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

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Evaluation Question 3: What have you learned from your Audience Feedback?

This audience feedback has allowed me to understand the strengths of my tasks and the weaknesses. In my opinion, we need to improve the quality of our shots alongside the thought-processes we undertake to create them. This is due to the fact that the trailer feels as if it does not have enough suspense built up which makes it feel as if there wasn't much thought put into the creation. Our magazine cover and poster however are replications of real media texts. My group excelled in the ancillary tasks as we produced high quality images along with professional features which has allowed for a product which looks like real media text. In addition to this, the next time a task like this is handed to me, I will most likely choose a different genre as I felt as if my hands were tied in the creative aspect as we could not add much of the supernatural or even blood and gore. 

Evaluation Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

How effective os the combination of your main product and ancillary texts by Khurram Bukhari

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

Individual Contribution

During the period of this task, I have developed many skills. The main skills I have been training are those of editing. I created the first plan of the magazine and poster while my team were editing the trailer. Completing this task has allowed me to understand what a real horror poster, magazine and trailer look like. I also took part in the shooting of the photos for the front cover and poster by giving ideas on different ways we could place the lighting on Kwamina to create shadows for effects of darkness. Also, we used many slightly transparent materials such as red and blue tissue paper in order to generate a different colour of light which was aided by the use of a tints on Photoshop, allowing for a deep red and blue for the cover and magazine.

After this, I asked my peers within my class on advice as to how to improve this. It was found that the layout chosen did not work well for the type of magazine and poster we were going for. Also, there was too much text on one page which meant that the main focus was lost among everything else. After obtaining this advice, myself and my team switched roles so Sophia and Nidhi worked on the magazine while I was editing. I placed the clock into Adobe Premiere and helped with the creation of our logo for our trailer.

Sophia and Nidhi came up with the current magazine on my blog and I created the poster. The poster in my opinion was the easiest task, the most difficult part of it was the picture but after that was done, I had completed this poster within a day. The magazine however was slightly more difficult. Due to having to think of relevant text to place on the magazine cover, the issue became more of what needs to be removed rather than what should we keep as again, there was too much text flooding the page.

The Enigma Ticket

 Front

Back

We kept our ticket design rather simple. The reason we chose to give out our tickets by hand as opposed to going online and sending it around was that we wanted to create a sense of intimacy and this way it seemed that only an exclusive handful of people were chosen to uncover the enigma in the premiere. This meant that it was slightly more difficult trying to get the word out because we had to speak to a lot of people but we managed and the turnout was great. I tried to keep the ticket as professional as possible and kept accurate dates, timings and ratings.

Poster linked to research - Poster and magazine linked to trailer

Target Audience Feedback (Poster)

Poster layout

Font decisions over all tasks

On both the poster and front cover of the magazine, the fonts are exactly the same. This was to ensure a strong link between the two as they had different colours thus making it less obvious. 

The font used for the masthead is known as 'Nervous' and found on 'DaFont'. We attempted to find a font with distortion so it would go with our company name and this was the closest we could find to a distorted font. The reason we went for this font so specifically is due to the lines on the boarder of the text. Upon showing my class this font, they said that as they focused more on the text, it would start to make their vision spin as if a hallucination. This perfectly links with 'The Enigma' trailer as Elijah experiences distortions from reality due to his several mental health issues. The text other than the masthead was kept the same among the poster and magazine, again allowing for easy identification, however we did make the mistake of not changing the font within the trailer to make it the same. The image for the magazine was the easiest to take as we took this first. It was a simple close up of Kwamina with half of his face in the shadows the create a mysterious persona. The poster however, was more difficult in the sense that we attempted to take a close up but it looked too similar to the front cover and so we decided to change the colour scheme, flipping it. Also, we paid close attention to the use of different features such as eye contact and his hair. His hair hanging forward gives a crazy look about him and we as the audience understand that he is a patient of many psychological issues. 'Empire' was kept in the same font as due to copyright restrictions, we were informed to not alter the logo. There wasn't much text on the trailer other than at the beginning, for the masthead, and at the end but as said before, we made a minor mistake of not editing the right font into the trailer but this was not a criticism which was vitally noted by the audience.

The font we used mainly for the magazine cover and poster was 'Source Sans Pro' as it was bold and clear. It also allowed for us to use many variations of the same font but with different sizes and thickness, etc. In addition to this, we used 'Myriad' on the poster for the tag line 'Uncover The Truth' to ensure a link was created between our ancillary tasks and main project and the audience understand that they are all from the same trailer.

Front Cover features (Magazine Video)

Image
We kept half of Kwamina's face in the dark to create a mystery as to what is behind the shadow. This however represents his calm side as blue is a representation of tranquility. The covering of his face also adds on to 'The Enigma' which is a mystery.

Pull Quote:
The Pull quote we used was the title of the trailer which made strong connection with the poster and trailer so the audience knew what it belongs to. In addition to this, we utilised ratings which we saw quite frequently within magazine covers published by Empire used to persuade the audience to watch the movie.

Masthead:
We stuck with the general house style of all magazines, with the white masthead and distinctive font. This meant that the product looked like a real media text as we were planning to distort the masthead but this made it seem as if there was too much going on, on the page.

Cover lines:
Placing cover lines was vital for our poster as again, the common house style used by Empire is with the use of text with the hope that the target audience identify the important issues from a distance without noticing others as much. This also contains content which is related through genre such as reviews and interviews with people from other films and opportunities people may get.

Target Audience Feedback (Magazine)

We asked our target audience, people over the age of 15 to write on a sticky note, their thoughts of the final magazine cover.

Magazine Cover Layout

The only edit which we made on this image was reducing the brightness to increase the intensity of the darkness over Kwamina's face.

Test Shots and mise-en-scene(Magazine)

Using Sound Effects

Controlled use of camera

This shot required controlled use of the camera as we had to ensure that there wasn't a shadow while we were recording, also, we were not able to use the tripod from this angle as it was an overhead.

This also required controlled use of the camera as again, we had to prevent the shadow from appearing on the sink and we had to make sure we were not caught in the shot while looking at the mirror.

The Enigma - Poster Production + Image Manipulation

Test shots and mise-en-scene (Poster)

Test shots for Poster on Biteable.