Evaluation Task 4

I have learnt alot of methods and different types of technology which helped me to progress and improve my skills in producing a creative project. The Thriller opening and Soap Opera trailer are two projects which i have.

These are the different software/websites and social networking I have used:

Windows Movie Maker helped editing the trailer. It is a helpful editing software which was different to what i used for the Thriller opening which i used iMovie for on the imacs.

Blogger is a blogging website, blogger.com helps me to track my progress and update different things i need for the pre- production and post-production. By having all the posts saved electronically on the internet has a high reliability of not being able to lose work and it is easy accessible for anyone to see.

Youtube is a video streaming website in which people can upload videos for anyone to see. Youtube was extremely helpful because i was able to do research on soap opera trailers and other A2 students in the UK's trailers. Youtube also features different annotation tools which helps with evaluation and also audience feedback.

I used Microsoft Word to produce my TV Listings poster. I decided to use Word because i am very experienced in using the different tools. I would have used Microsoft Publisher or Adobe photoshop if i didn't use Word.

I used Adobe Photoshop to make the heading for 'The Street' website. We used London's city scape and the E4 logo to add a sense of realism.

This is the heading in which we used on the website.

Facebook is a popular social networking site where I used to receive audience feedback on electronically and also to boost our views on youtube.

Twitter is another popular social networking site where I used to receive audience feedback from.

Evaluation Task 3

What is your target audience?

 

This is Gemma Wenman. She is 17 years and 6 months old, and lives in the urban area of Southgate. She primarily focuses on maintaining a good aethstetic appeal which is typical of his age consisting of designer jeans, shirts and cardigans which are all expensive. She enjoys going out with friends on the weekend to shopping malls to purchase the new designer accessories and clothing, going out cinema every Saturday to watch the new releases, in particular romantic comedies or ‘chick flicks’. The shops she purchases clothes from are Topshop, River Island, Next, Littlewoods, Blue Inc and other online stores. Mature teenagers negotiating their pathway into adulthood are usually into soap opera with certain issues within them that relate to their lives and everyday occurrences. Soap operas such as Hollyoaks, Home and Away and Neighbours are targeted towards teenagers and broadly speaking youth. Therefore it consists of themes and issues such as teenage pregnancy which attract these audiences to watch these in a form of entertainment. Based on her preferred soap operas, ‘The Street’ will be ideal for this particular target audience as it deals with current issues within their lives and is primarily set in the location many of the audience members will be living and experiencing at the time, university. Other TV programs she watches often reflect her age thus consisting of programs such as Friends, Scrubs and The Event consequently the most prominent channels within their viewing habits comprise of Channel 4, Comedy Central and E4. Two of the previously stated channels primarily focus on TV entertainment particularly for her age thus making them appropriate choices for airing ‘The Street' as they have a following within the age the soap opera is targeted to resulting in optimal views and ratings. The social class of Gemma is very critical in terms of being able to relate to the soap opera as it will not seem particularly realistic if it is a working class slum lifestyle which is not relatable to Gemma’s middle class background. 'The Street' features middle class students attending a middle class fictional university in the rural countryside, therefore the show will primarily focus on middle class lifestyles than working class issues but still appeal to a broad young audience, especially teenagers. Ethnicity will not play an important role within the target audience decision as The Street features a multicultural road, due to the fact we live in a culturally diverse society in the contemporary UK, although it will deal with controversial cultural issues such as Eastenders homosexuality storyline with a Indian male which was considered controversial but is realistic and entertaining. Gender is crucial as Gemma is female and therefore much more in tune with her emotions at that particular age during the youth or teenage period in their lives. However males, especially adolescent boys feel it is not the norm to watch soap operas as it has a feminine stigmatism associated with it. Therefore priority is provided to the female audience in particular young girls similar to Gemma although there will be storylines taken into consideration to appeal to a broader audience for boys as it is a audience that lacks a soap opera.

I had to use YouTube's annotation tools to to add notes, speech bubbles and links to my trailer using the following link for help:

www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=92710

These annotations will highlight the ways in which my trailer links to other similar products in order to attract the particular audience I have previously identified.

I was instructed to write a summary of audience feedback I have received at different stages of production and how this influenced your production choices.

The feedback gathered from the questionnaire was extremely beneficial as it help me acquire a target audience that want a new soap opera. For example the most prominent age category within our research was the 15 to 19 years of age category, meaning our soap will have significant competition from other soaps such as Hollyoaks (coincidentally the most popular soap amongst the people who filled in the questionnaire) which appeal to a similar audience. Therefore in order to avoid competing with Hollyoaks due to its strong established fan base, the most logical way to solve this problem is schedule our soap opera after Hollyoaks, possibly on the same channel E4 which received joint equal votes with BBC1. However this could be an opportunity to bring a contemporary soap opera aimed towards a younger audience to a very established and widely syndicated channel such as the BBC, although this may become a problem due to Eastenders audiences overlooking our soap due to the overwhelming popularity of Eastenders.  The ratio between men and women is significantly more lenient towards female audience members thus meaning the soap must deal with certain issues such as teenage pregnancy in order to appeal and educate the audience with real life issues which are relatable. Overall this questionairre was very helpful indeed and could potentially determine the outcome of our creative project.

The feedback given by the audience was very limited due to the minimal exposure of the video on YouTube, thus only recieving one comment. Despite the very small turnout of people watching the soap opera trailer (a total of 13 views) made our group use other means to gain feedback such as a questionnaire. Here is the example of the feedback from the public:

The response was very brief and only touched on the editing which prevented the narrative from flowing. We took this on board and edited the trailer again cutting it down only by 3.3 seconds however this extremely minute number makes a signficant difference to the overall outcome  of the production as shots do not drag on too long. The shots/scenes push the narrative foward smoothly thus benefitting the audiences experience watching the trailer as it is much more pleasent and interesting.

The feedback gathered from the interview was excellent, nothing but good feedback from the viewers of the trailer. Therefore ensuring our media production adhered to the conventions of the genre and also met the expectations of the target audience hence the age of the two participants in the interview. Although the sample frame was extremely small, only consisting of two people thus making it difficult to generalise these opinions to individuals of similar social characteristics. Overall the production was well recieved by viewers.

Evaluation Task 2

For the second evaluation task I had to write about some of the strengths and weaknesses of each of the individual products. 

Webpage; 

When it came to completing the website, Janki and I decided that we wanted it to be fun to navigate around and not only explained the soap in detail but was also somewhere where fans of the show could come and learn more about the characters and the actors that play them. We also had the right technology we needed in the form of iWeb; a program on the mac's that allowed us to create out own pages, add podcasts and videos along with the correct placing of text and photos. In completing research into other soap websites I payed close attention to the Hollyoks website and how they had different pages in which you could browse around photos which included 'set photo's' and 'behind the scenes' which I thought would be a good idea to have on our own website. On doing this something else that worked well was the idea I had for me and Janki (as actors) to have our own blog on the website in which we posted pictures of our day on 'set' and what went on 'behind the scenes' once everyone had finished a 'long day of filming'. 

The only weakness I found when it came to doing the website that it was a new program that i'd never come across before and it was the process of teaching myself how to use it while trying to make our website to the highest standard it could be. Also we was only able to add information for the airing episode of the soap, once it went on air full time the website would have to be maintained and updated on a regular basis. 

T.V listing magazine cover;

When it came to creating a T.V listing magazine cover, I didn't want to create the typical chaotic covers we usually see. Instead I really liked the way the front cover on the radio times looked. It had the header that displayed the name of the magazine which in this case was the 'Radio Times' there was only one picture and that filled up the whole of the page. It then had a sub-heading with a tagline underneath (see individual blog for example) it then has subsequent story lines from other soaps in a formation around the main article. 

However when it came to creating my own version of the radio times with our soap as the main article it proved difficult as it didn't really look much like a T.V listing's magazine cover but more like a poster. 

Trailer; 

The main thing that worked out well for our trailer was that it specifically followed the typical conventions of the soap genre. Soap opera's tend to be as realistic as they possibly can without being over dramatic and unrealistic. When it came to filming our trailer the location was crucial, it not only needed to fit in with the name of the soap 'the street' but it also needed to show of a sense of community. So we wanted one predominant story line for the trailer but at the same time showing that it didn't revolve around one family but everyone that lived on that road, resulting in subsequent story lines. For example we achieved this by showing Michelle's return to the street and adding in other characters and their growing curiosity to see who's arriving in the car. The different characters presented to the audience that make up the community in the trailer are Benjamin, Michelle, Hayley, Dwayne, Cameron, Sally. The main/primary storyline is the return of Michelle to the street however each character has his/her own story line that run parallel to this one, unfortunately these are not as clear as we would like them to be. The trailer establishes the relationship between Hayley and Benjamin, clearly stating their married as there are seen to be arguing over 'their daughter'. The trailer also hints at the relationship between Dwayne and Cameron as their seen together in the same shot within close proximity of one another. 

Unfortunately our trailer doesn't succeed in establishing the beginnings of other characters story-lines which we see in all soaps and it becomes clear our main focus was more on the one story-line. However it could be argued that although there's only one main story line evident in the trailer we managed to show a sense of community and reassure audiences that there is more drama to come as we showed everyone who lives on 'the street's reaction to the arrival of the car, for example what were the two women discussing on the end of the road before they were distracted by the new comers arrival?

Despite a few reshooting issues that we managed to sort out I think our group managed to portray a great realistic representation of community and narrative in our soap trailer. 

How successfully do the 3 media texts link together as whole product?

Personally I think that our 3 media tasks link together very well. In all 3 the same focus was of course the soap itself 'the street' the 3 main characters who feature in the premier episode were used in the trailer, featured on the blog and Michelle and Hayley featured on my radio times magazine cover along with a tagline detailing they were mother and daughter which links into what we see in the trailer, all names were kept the same along with their appearance. I think if we could go back and change anything it would be to film on a better quality camera, we had to use the school's Flip camera's which aren't a great quality and make the trailer look amateur compared to that of an Eastenders trailer so to speak which looks professionally filmed. Another issue that occurred was creating the TV listing's magazine cover, with the very limited knowledge of how to use photoshop it was hard to create a decent looking cover, however you could argue that alot of TV listings magazine look cheap and a bit mish mashed so this worked out in our favor. The only main thing I would change would probably spend more time working on a better magazine cover that would appeal to a wider audience and bring in a bigger fan base for our new soap. 

Evaluation Task 1

I was tasked to choose 9 images to represent 9 areas of forms and conventions and briefly write about each one:

1. Title

The titile we created is a very simple title and is used to formally and clearly present the name of our soap opera trailer. The basic font, complimented by the boldness of the text makes it clear to the audience to the name of soap opera without giving anything away as the next extreme long shot establishes the setting/location.

2. Setting

This establishing shot from our trailer immediately establishes the setting of our soap opera The Street which is located within a small fictional street in the heart of North London. The road itself consists of a single side of terraced houses which gives the sense of a working class community; which is typical within soap operas. The main road to the right also gives the idea that this soap is set in an urban enviroment, also a convention of many soaps is to be set in these kind of enviroments.

3. Costume

The costume worn by actor Ashley Loblack (Left) represents the image of a black youth shown specifically with the bandana/balaclava around his neck and also the wolly hat; sometimes black youths are portrayed in the media as being somewhat hell raisers, however in our soap we aim to challenge this and one of the ways we did this was by placing Ashley with his friend in the soap, actor Phillip Constantinou (right), who is wearing a polo shirt and jumper. This all helps show the diversity of the community within our soap opera trailer of The Street.

4. Props

We used automobiles within the soap opera trailer as the most significant and important props, the van helps represent a working class community and blue collar jobs within The Street and the car is very important in the trailer; transporting the suprise member of the cast and taking part in many of the shots withihn our trailer.

5. Cinematography

The medium shot shown here of the character Benjamin (played by myself, Jack Fairbank) helps show the media technique of rule of thirds. We can clearly see Benjamin's face only on the left hand side (first third) of the frame which helps gain the audiences attention and communicate the idea of a converstaion. The shot also shows enough of the character to establish his body language but most importantly his facial expressions which are key in communitcating emotion to the audience within soap opears.

6. Narrative

This is a key shot from our trailer, as it establishes all three main characters into the same narrative through a medium over the shoulder shot. This is the scene in which the character Michelle returns to her family, we use this as a cliffhanger for our trailer, which is typically used in soap and could even be said to be a convention of soap operas as its key in keeping the audience hooked and wanting more.

7. Introduction of Characters

The introduction of the character Michelle is a lengthy and longed out proess within the trailer to add a real sense of mystery and antcipation to The Street; shown in these long shots, of the car she is in and from behind her which are two of many shots within the trailer which do not give away her identity. We hope this echoes throughout our audience too as it is key in giving an importance to our characters.

8. Genre

Conventions of the soap opera genre include using issues within other media text such as newspaper and portray them within a narrative. For example Benjamin is on the verge of hitting Hayley, domestic abuse is a prevalent issue within the media and is also very controversial thus appropriate and typical for the soap opera genre.

The Street Website

During the lesson on Friday while looking at other websites, paying close attention to the Hollyoaks website, http://www.e4.com/hollyoaks/index.html I noticed that they had Character profiles accompanied by photographs of the cast, there was also a whole tab dedicated to 'picture's which consisted of things such as 'Episode Pictures' 'Picture Specials' 'Behind the scenes' and 'Photoshoot' pictures which gave me inspiration to take a whole load of pictures to make our website fun and entertaining. Interviews for website On seeing that alot of the soap websites had interview pages with different cast members we thought it would be nice to complete something like that for our website. So sitting in a group of Just me, Jack and Janki, Chris did the recording and asked us questions as if they'd been asked by a fan, questions such as "Are you excited for tonights episode?" and "what was it like working together on set?" we tried to answer these questions in a fun/joking manour but was serious when needed to be.

This is the home page of our soap opera website, it features an image of the street, or location that the soap opera will take place in. The banner at the top of the website informs newcomers on the name of the soap opera, clearly stating "The Street" and the E4 to tell them what channel the soap opera will be airing on.

This page features a brief paragraph introducing new visitors to our soap opera, informing them what The Street is and when it will be airing thus becoming one of the most important pages on our website.

The character profile pages sole purpose is the get the visitors familiar with the characters featured within the soap opera and give a little background information.

The cast interview section allows visitors who are much more intrigued with the soap opera to become familiar with not only the characters but the cast, a common feature found on the Eastenders website.

Behind the scene images gives visitors an insight into the work put into creating the soap opera.

The blog feature added to The Street website is unconventional and not common amongst any other websites we have studied, although it is a unique touch to the website.

Pictures were provided by Janki, the captions were added by Christopher and the opening paragraph to this blog was typed up by Gemma.

Still Images w/Annotation

This camera shot is a shot-reverse-shot over the shoulder of Benjamin which is a high angle shot that empowers him and makes Hayley seem significantly inferior based on her lower position within the frame.

This shot is a low angle shot which empores Benjamin, in addition the medium shot displays both his body langauge and facial expressions which are both calm and collective.

This medium shot of both characters displays their interaction within one shot thus showing their responses to eachothers dialogue and bodylanguage immediately within the frame. 

This is a medium close up of Michelle's face which shows her facial expressions which are critical as she has no dialogue within the trailer, thus having to push the narrative foward through facial expression.

Janki's TV Listings Magazine

Tv listing magazines are another form of text from the media which helps to promote tv shows, soap operas, films and celebrities. They usually issue magazines either every week,every two weeks or every fortnight.
The front cover of a tv listing magazine is the most important part of the maagzine as it has to attract audiences from other tv listing magazines, They usually feature a storyline from a soap opera (Eastenders). The use of having an upcoming storylines from a soap opera on the front cover give the audience a realistic effect on the audience as they  make it so realistic.

In addition to TV listings, the publication features television-related news, celebrity interviews, gossip and film reviews and crossword puzzles. Some issues have also featured horoscope listings.
This is an example of a current TV Listing magazine

 

Here is my TV Listings Magazine

 

Gemma's TV Listings Magazine

When it came to completing my own individual TV Listings poster i wanted to do alot of research into already existing TV/ Satelitte listing magazine covers.

The TV listings magazine the 'Radio Times' usually has one main focus picture with a main headline underneath with small txt detailing what else the magazine will feature. For example the picture above has 'The Radio Times' in big lettering in the background but is still visiable behind the Tardis, BBC's Doctor who with David Tennant as the main focus with the headline 'Death of a doctor' Exclusive preview of David Tennant's extrardinary finale'. It also features the date in which the issue was released and the price of the magazine.

Another example of the Radio Times focusing on one specific tv show is this one featuring BBC's hit show Robin Hood.

It features actors Richard Armitage (Guy of Gisborne) and Jonas Armstron (Robin Hood) the title underneath says 'Robin Hood, still feared by the bad, loved by the good?' just like the Doctor who cover above the Radio Times title is positioned in background but is still visiable, along with the date the magazine was released and the price, it also has two smaller txts detailing what the magazine will include.

Just like the first two Radio times magazine covers I really liked the idea that the front cover was only one picture feature to one specific programe. Like these and the one featured below...
I liked the idea of one main focus image with the title of the show a small descripton underneath, then two smaller peices of txt that detail what else is featured in that issue, looking at this specif tv listings magazine I was able to come up with some good ideas for my own magazine.

Jack's TV Listings Magazine

 

Chris's TV Listings Magazine

In order to create the TV listing magazine I used Microsoft Publisher as it was the most efficient program at my disposal as I had prior knowledge of the software.

Despite not being as professional and advanced as Photoshop, it allowed me to create a simple design using various different shapes, fonts, colours, etc. I used a copy of TV Guide as a template to prevent deviating from the conventions of a TV listings magazine.

I used images from the internet to such as www.google.com and www.photobucket.com to copy and paste into publisher where I applied them appropriately on the cover. I then used a camera and took a picture of the three main characters within our soap opera, which include: Benjamin, Michelle and Hayley.

It was vital to ensure the picture had significant lighting in order to the picture to seem professional thus using a torch and projecting it onto the characters. Once finished I took a screenshot of the cover and dragged it into paint where I cropped it and then saved it as a .jpeg.

In order satisfy the conventions of TV listings magazine i must achieve the house style which includes:

• Colour
• Images
• Typography
• Language
• Layout

The colour used within the TV listings magazine are very vibrant in order to attract the attention of potential buyers whilst on sale, also the colours are attractive to the eye thus making the headlines, coverlines and pictures stand out significantly more. The main image on the TV listing magazine includes the characters features within our soap opera thus advertising it significantly more than the other cover lines. Also the characters within the image are looking directly into the lens of the camera thus addressing the reader. The typography/font is extremely bold as the text (masthead) has to be clear in order to convey potential narrative, advertise a new soap, etc. In our case the main coverline introduces the new soap opera, otherwise known as 'The Street'. In addition the text above the picture stating 'She's Back' partially introduces the narrative for the opening episode which attracts potential viewers. The language used on the TV listings magazine cover is very colloquial in order to address all readers in a user friendly way. The layout of the TV listings magazine is asymmetrical, possibly messy, although this is a convention of these particular types of magazines as they are cheap yet presentable presentable in a contradictory way.

The Street Trailer

Copyright Free Music

Finding copyright free music was extremely difficult due to the fact the majority, if not all of mainstream music is copyrighted thus unable to use as we could risk copyright claim. Initially we used http://www.lgfl.net/Pages/index.aspx as it had a few copyright free songs that were available to students, however the music seemed to lack the pace and tone we were looking for within our soap opera ‘The Street’. Instead I researched further into copyright free music in order to find the most appropriate soundtrack for our advanced production. Therefore I utilized popular search engine such as www.google.com to find various sites offering copyright free symphonies and instrumentals.

Eventually I found http://incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/index.html?feels%5B%5D=Suspenseful&Search=Search which contains copyright free music.

The advanced search engine within the website allows the user to filter the music in significant depth, for example I searched for ‘suspenseful’ as this was the type of emotion I wanted to evoke from the viewer watching the trailer.

Therefore the copyright free music was found after researching into several websites, I found one song from www.incompletech.com called ‘Constancy Part One’. This soundtrack is a very basic song which primarily features violins in a suspenseful tone, which builds anticipation for the arrival of Michelle Michael returning to her family in ‘The Street’.

Storyboard Re-Draft

 

Shooting Script Re-Draft

Shot	Timing	Description
1	2 seconds	“Welcome Too”
2	2 seconds	“The Street”
3	3 seconds	Benjamin arguing
4	4 seconds	Car pulling into the road
5	2 seconds	Hayley arguing
6	4 seconds	Jerome and Dwayne looking at car
7	4 seconds	Jerome and Dwayne watch car drive past
8	5 seconds	Benjamin arguing again
9	3 seconds	Car driving down road extreme long shot
10	3 seconds	Two shot of Benjamin and Hayley arguing
Q	3 seconds	Newspaper hitting the floor
12	3 seconds	Benjamin walking off
13	4 seconds	Couple kissing watching car driving  past
14	3 seconds	Car driving past
15	4 seconds	Benjamin pointing at Hayley
16	5 seconds	Car pulling up outside a house
17	4 seconds	Opening door and Michelle exits
18	4 seconds	Dog barking at Michelle
19	3 seconds	Michelle opening gate
20	3 seconds	Michelle walking towards front door
21	3 seconds	Michelle drops her bag on the floor
22	4 seconds	Benjamin and Hayley open the door to Michelle
23	2 seconds	Michelle looks into camera
24	3 seconds	“Welcome Back”