1. How did you use media
Technologies in the construction
and research, planning and
evaluation stages?
Vicky Hunt - CAGED

2. The Blog
One way in showing the process from the product and
audience research to the planning of our advanced
portfolio. I did this on the website www.blogger.com.
This blog shows the creation of my trailer, from the
initial idea to the actual finished product. The blog
different pages, product research, audience research,
planning and a final evaluation of my product.
Each process stage was shown in chronological order,
this was the easiest way to demonstrate my research,
and doing it in such way helped me when planning set
up different essential documents, such as shooting logs
and the storyboard; Also doing this showed me what I
have planned and how much I have left to do. I added in
different use of other programmes such as
presentations on PowerPoint, slide share and YouTube.

3. How did it impact on our research
of our characters?
• When researching our characters we used various different techniques, I would say
the most successful was through second hand research such as watching trailers like
Bullet boy and Fish Tank and what appealed to audiences before and now using them
in our trailer, for example Kyle shows characteristics of Tyler from Bullet Boy. In doing
this research websites such as YouTube were helpful looking into how Bullet Boy
showed their characters in the trailer and how as the audience we perceived them. In
our film we show different classes from middle to working class with automatically
through self fulfilling prophecy can appeal to wider audiences. As our film challenges
the norms of boy chasing girl it shows most of the power is in the girls hands and she
is the one who makes the decision out of the two males challenging the normal view
of Social Realism films. In doing this the film Fish Tank was good evidence to look at as
it showed us how previous directors shown strong female characters.
• Another method I found helped me throughout this process was social media
networking with asking people on FaceBook and Twitter ideas and improvements on
our characters, as our film is targeted to young people as the target audience people
on these sites were perfect to get opinions from to modify how our character is shown
in the trailer. This is a productive way to gain insight into young peoples, not only did
it help our film I learnt a lot more about my peers in a social able enjoyable way of
young people in British Society, but also giving our audience input into our film.

4. As the main aim of Social realism is to show the true reality of those living in a
British Society, with realistic problems and focus on real life relatable
characters. Therefore when coming up with the initial idea and the creation
process of our trailer we had to research Social issues that would not only
appeal to a British audience but also hit the zeitgeist at the time it will be
released. We found that still a major issue was the riots the summer before
and how it has impacted Britain, we also found that not enough media
coverage of the families affected by the riots had been shown this is where we
came up with our idea. Then we had to start looking over newspaper articles,
reports on the riots to help us gain information to start planning our trailer.
Therefore in doing this we knew it would be a hard hitting contemporary issue.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englan

5. When looking into who our target audience would be we knew how British Social
Realism appeals to a niche audience, we found evidence of this when asking young
people from various ages and backgrounds what social realism films they watched
and out of 5 90% had only watched one some were none at all. Therefore to be
able to make our film a success we had to make sure it appealed to the widest
audience possible.
Therefore when researching our target audience we asked young people over social
networking sites such as twitter and Facebook asking for their opinions on whether
they would or not watch the film and their opinions on how we can modify. As our
film is especially targeted to young people we put our trailer up on YouTube asking
people’s opinions on how we can improve this and make the trailer more appealing,
as we have found through research word of mouth is one of the main method of
marketing and getting people to come watch a film therefore we had a marketing
group of youth people asking their inputs on what we should put in our trailer to
attract young people, this is where the input of violence (Alex in the boot) and
romance helped us understand the key aspects of things we need to put in our
trailer to help it stand out.
As successful films have done in the past we put on a preview at ‘Birmingham’s
Electric cinema’ for sixth formers in Park Hall, although there was a limited number
of us it still was a huge experience and opportunity to get our target audience of
young peoples opinions, therefore taking back their feedback we could reshoot
scenes and add footage and modifying certain editing aspects to attract more to the

7. What did we film with?
When filming the trailer we used a hand held camera and a tripod, the hand held
camera was definitely important when doing our filming as it gave the affect of
realism, which through research we understand how the hand held camera affect
is getting more and more popular (Paranormal activity). Having the tripod was also
a huge advantage as it gave a more professional affect of the footage as it was not
wobbly unlike certain parts of my footage last year. Although the filming
equipment used was not of the standard of professional films I believe certain
aspects of having it amateur helped us show the realistic approach of the film
fitting in with the social realism genre. Having a small hand held camera made it
easier for me and my partner to access it and carry it around to the different
locations. I definitely found the USB on the camera to be a safe and secure way of
importing our work onto the computer to begin power director. Although I found
filming with these hand held camera at times challenging, for example when our
actors had to speak and they were outside the wind came as a challenge as it
automatically made our films look unprofessional as could hear the wind
interference, although this was time consuming we had to re-do footage it was
essential to make our film to the best quality. Choosing locations which were
windy were essential as it was part of our narrative but getting rid of the wind was
done by using small microphones which we then synced the voices to the footage.

8. Software used when editing
In editing our film we used Power Director 10 which we used for both of our productions in
AS and now A2, this software is easy to use and understand. Within the software there are
various different editing techniques from fading in shots and adding transitions within the
shots, we your own titles being able to add.
I found this software to also be reliable when saving the work and producing the film I had
no difficulties which made it less stressful when filming, editing and finally producing my
trailer.
Being able to have the transitions makes the continuity of the trailer easier for an audience
to watch as it provides interest throughout, as Power Director 10 has different transitions it
didn’t make each shot the same but also allowed us as directors to add more professional
approaches to our films making the audience more engaged to the trailer.
Within the narrative of our trailer there is love mixed with violence, therefore being able to
have all these transitions in our film it was easy to show contrast between the love fade in
shots and the harsh quick shots of violence, therefore being able to show the tense
atmosphere and mood.