Media A2 Evaluation Question 1. Use, Develop and Challenge.

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

3. • I have used a very similar font to Total Film, called
Mouse Deco, and I used the same positioning and sizing
that is a typical convention for a cover, for the masthead
to be the biggest font on the page. The only difference is
that the thickness of my text is a lot slimmer than Total
Film.
• I also used the same idea of having a banner in red thick
large text above the masthead to promote something
from the magazine and I used this to put my positioning
statement.
• The positioning of the coverlines is something that I also
used on the right hand side, so I used a bolder font for
the title and a thinner font for the little bit of information
underneath, and it kept the balance of text equal on both
sides of the magazine and prevented it from looking to
cluttered.
• I used a similar font to the title for the film name on the
cover, I used impact to create the big bold title and catch
the audiences eye, and the same as the other magazine it
was in-keeping with the style of the magazine.

5. • I wanted to use a similar image so by placing it in black and
white and close up on the cover because I thought that it
would really capture the audience’s attention but I thought
that the very bright image wouldn’t be suitable for my
genre, so I decided to set my image back a bit so it wasn’t as
close up and then used the layer adjustments and made the
image a lot darker by using settings such as darken and
multiply layered over each other so create the darker sinister
vibe which the other did not have.
• I used the same idea of placement for the coverlines by
keeping them quite slim against the edge but I developed it
slightly by adding the big plus sign in red behind the text, I
did alter the opacity slightly so that it wasn’t as bold. But it
was still inkeeping with the style of the magazine but it was
developed from the magazine I looked at.
• The magazine I looked at had the banner down the left hand
side of the page but I thought that it caused the page to look
slightly lob sided so I still wanted to use the banner of film
titles on my page so I placed it across the bottom instead.

7. • I challenged in only one aspect of this magazine which is my
image, I developed the idea from the other magazine I
looked at but I wanted the image to really fit in with my film
to I decided to edit a layer over the top of a TV Static image
because in my trailer we used a TV Static at the end and it
also fits in well with the CCTV vibe that we had with our
trailer. I added the TV Static over the top and then edited the
opacity and faded out the edges and it just adds the
anonymity to the character that we have kept up through
our trailer and poster. I haven’t actually seen any image like
this on a magazine before so I am challenging real media
conventions as a whole here through this little bit of image
manipulation but I still think that it fits in well with the
magazine and doesn’t stand out as being odd, it just attracts
the audience with a unique factor and links well to our film.

9. • I have used the same idea of the iris being the
main focus of the poster.
• I have used the same steel tongs format, the
real media conventions are that the steel
tongs goes in backwards order of importance
so the director will go last and maybe parts
that might not be of massive importance will
go at the beginning but it also includes the
rating which I put at the side of mine.

11. • I have used the iris idea from the existing film poster but I have just
used that alone then feathered out the edges and reduced the opacity
to create an eerie atmosphere on the poster to attract the audience and
slightly play on the watching aspect of our trailer.
• Another place where I have developed my poster is where they have
the name of the main actress above the film title, I have used this space
to put my slogan ‘It’s not just a game’ and I decided to do this so that
my slogan could draw the audience in.
• I developed the font I used from the font I saw on this poster in a small
way because I liked the bold compact text so I decided to use a font I
thought was similar Impact and then added my own touches to it like
the text over the top and the vibrant green to keep with the CCTV
nightvision colour scheme.
• The last development is probably the biggest and the most
interesting, I used the old big brother logo as the main inspiration for
my poster, I developed the idea of the eye shape being in all little
squares and then placed my film stills into the squares to create the eye
shape I wanted.

13. • The place where I mainly challenged my real media
product is the centre of my poster, where I have
manipulated around 4 images together using opacity levels
and layer adjustments. I haven’t seen this on any real
media products before and it was something that I just
created by myself through trial and error.

15. • The first thing I used from previous media texts is the embedding of film reviews
into the trailer at effective moments and to draw the audience in for example we
used it just before a bang came on so it really caught the attention of the audience.
• Another thing I used was the idea of the handheld camera footage of the teenagers
filming themselves having a REC box around the edge so that we can tell it is them
filming and it distinguishes between them and the stalker footage.
• The next thing was something that we saw used in all of the horror/thriller trailers
we looked at, that was a montage of various shot types throughout your film to
create suspense and give a vary vague outline to your film, which is exactly what
we did and we added our own sound of a human heartbeat (beat on every shot)
over the top as we had seen in real media products.
• The last two things go hand in hand really and it was something we noticed more
from recent film trailers and that was the use of coming soon which had been used
before but the use of the film website and twitter feed so the audience kept in
touch with the film.

17. • The first thing we developed in our trailer is our distribution and production logos, these are
something we saw in most trailers we looked at but obviously we had to create and develop
our own ideas which is what we did but we used similar timing to real media ones in our
trailer.
• The next thing we developed is captions in our trailer, because we had seen the use of
captions in quite a few real media products so we decided to use them but obviously do it to
fit our trailer so we did and we used a typewriter font and typed them on screen.
• The last thing we developed was something that we saw in a few trailers such as Strangers
were it ended on a very distinctive shot, so we wanted to do this with our trailer so we used
this over the shoulder shot and added a bang as soon as the light flickered on to create that
impact.

19. • The first thing we challenged with our trailer, is that for the disruption we used the
teenagers having nose bleeds which is something that we hadn’t seen on any real media
texts and it was something that was unique and would fit with our trailer.
• The next thing is probably the biggest part of our trailer is the fact that we changed all our
footage from the CCTV/Stalker POV to a nightvision green effect, which is something we
hadn’t seen before but thought that it would be an interesting idea to try out and we stuck
with it and I think it really helps to distinguish between the two.
• The next thing was the static screen we put right at the end of our trailer, which is
something we thought would fit nicely with our trailer style and it really adds an impact
to the end of our trailer.
• We also added a bit of sound over our montage in our trailer that we hadn’t heard
before, it is the human heartbeat sound and it works really well because the shot changes
on each beat and it really grabs the audience attention.
• The very last thing we challenged was with our film title, we made it very vibrant and
actually added an animation with it to make it move about quickly which adds an impact
and grabs the attention of the audience.