Evaluation 1- In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms of conventions from real media products?

The 9 pictures above are from my media product, film poster and film magazine front cover. There are 3 from each, with the media product being the top 3, poster the middle 3 and magazine front cover the bottom 3. During the research of other thriller films and their trailers, there were several conventions that I identified were popular in this genre.

The first image is a close up of the character Owen as he is taking a bottle of whiskey from the fridge. This shot is a interesting shot and develops conventions of the thriller genre as it shows that the character is having a challenging time and has many problems, turning to drink in order to resolve this. Since he is underage it shows that he is extremely troubled but also reflects everyday life and underage drinking does exist. This is an example of British social realism which is a USP for our film and many British thriller films, however it challenges the conventions of American thriller films which often glamorise violence and issues.

The second image is from my film poster and it is the tagline that can be found at the bottom. Having it at the bottom is a convention as it does not take away from the impact of the masthead and the images. However it is still an important part of posters as it gives the audience something to think about and to remember the poster and film. It does this since it is a rhetorical question and doesn't give the audience an answer until the watch this film which is a convention of the thriller trailer. Again, it is in red connoting the danger and violence which is a stereotypical convention of  the thriller trailer. The font that I used was called "Chiller" and it looks like a conventional serif font used in the thriller genre as it reminds people of the supernatural since it looks 'creepy'.

The third image shows the ratings that I used on my poster. They are stars since these are the conventional shape for positive feedback. Stars are used in childhood as a reward symbol for good behaviour and so people often associate them with a positive image. When people see stars on texts such as magazine front cover or film poster, they associate them with rating even before seeing the writing. These are all reasons i used stars for my reviews of the film instead of number ratings. Also having the stars in a black font connoted the unknown aspect of the film trailer. The font looks fancy and is white to show that it is from a respected source and also connotes class and elegance.

The fourth image is an extreme close up from our thriller film trailer that shows text messages between the two characters Owen and Chloe. They show the audience that he is controlling towards her and this is often a convention in thrillers, where the male is dominant over the female character and shows that in modern life technology makes it easier for relationships to be interfered with or become controlling and complicated. This shot was repeated more than once in our trailer, further establishing to the audience the character of Owen.

The fifth image above is again taken from our thriller film trailer and it shows the two characters Katie and Chloe comforting each other. This is a use of conventions from the thriller genre as a female 'damsel in distress' is stereotypical. It also develops this convention since there are two females and one is comforting the other, showing that two damsels in distress can stick together and overcome the threat of the dominant male. Also the high key lighting challenges conventions since the lighting in thriller films is usually low key connoting the threat and fear of the unknown. This high key lighting emphasises the point about the two females combining to be more dominant than the male

The sixth image is an example of one of the title's we used, "How will she escape". The title was in a white, sans serif font with a white glow outside and it had one red word which was 'Escape'. Each title we used had one red word which helped to highlight it and connote the danger that the character was in. The ellipsis at the end of the sentence shows that it is left on a cliff hanger so the audience do not know how or if she will escape. As a trailer this works effectively as it keeps the audience anticipating and guessing what will happen, and they will want to go and see the film. All of the above reasons show that the titles are similar and develop conventions of real thriller products.

The seventh image shows the title of my thriller film, on my film poster. The font is again 'Chiller' which connotes a spooky feeling, which is a convention of the thriller genre and found on film posters, mainly to do with the supernatural. The white font supports this and also connotes the innocence of the characters and also the audience as they don't know what dangers they characters will get in. The title name itself 'Under Control' is threatening to the audience and so tells them briefly what the plot will be about. The date underneath  is a convention of film posters in general since this is important institutional information. It tells the audience when the film will be released so they know when they can see it in cinemas.

The eight image is an over the shoulder shot from the film trailer that shows the character Owen walking up to the house that Katie and Chloe are in. Thrillers use this shot as it shows the person who is threatening and also the object they are targeting, making it clearer and more tense for them. Also in this shot you can see that there is low key lighting, another feature of thrillers. The dark clothes that Owen is wearing shows that he is threatening and again creates tension and shows that he should be viewed in a negative light.

The ninth and final image is from my film magazine front cover and are the pictures of two of the main characters from the film trailer. These characters were Owen and Chloe. Real magazine front covers often use one or two characters on them, one if it is a single character narrative and doesn't involve much conflict and tension between characters. However two characters are often seen on magazine front covers if the conflict between them is important to the narrative. The pose and facial expression are often important in showing the audience how the characters feel about each other and so make the audience feel like they want to see how their relationship works out.

Evaluation 3- What Have You Learnt From Your Audience Feedback?

Our main audience feedback came in the form of our classmates and our teachers. Asking our classmates for feedback on the main products and the ancillary texts was useful since they are the target audience age and social category. The feedback was useful as it enabled us to see where we could improve since when working on something you often get too involved and can't see where improvements are needed. The following are some of the improvements that were suggested for our main product, the thriller trailer;

 - It looked a bit too much like a film opening
In order to fix this we added more titles and sped the trailer up to make sure the pace matched that of conventional trailers instead of film openings. Doing this was successful since more inter titles broke it up a bit more and made the trailer look more conventional.

- More diegetic sound to help narrate it a bit more
Before we had no diegetic sound and so it was unclear about some of the narratives. By adding diegetic sound over the scene where Owen gets exams results and scrunches them up before storming off, was unclear. However we aded diegetic speech of Owen's parents and it became clearer that he was stressed and under pressure from them. 

- Make the main character Owen look  more controlling and aggressive
We did this by speeding up the last shot of Owen putting his foot in the door. Before it was slow and he did not look aggressive like he is supposed to, however speeding up the footage made it look more demanding and aggressive and so shows the audience what they are supposed to think about him.

- Add colour to the intertitles
At first we had intertitles that were just white, however after seeing this many people thought they were too plain and did not connote the genre. To improve this we added one red word on each intertitle. This connotes danger and violence that is assoiciated with the thriller genre and also shows the audience that there is a threat in the narrative.

- Come back to the shot of the phone more than once
Our class mates thought that the shot of the phone was effective in displaying that Owen was a agressive, controlling boyfriend so they suggested it be on the screen longer. We didn't want the shot on the screen for too long since we felt it slowed the pace of the trailer so we decided to use the shot more than once allowing the audience to read the texts and see how controlling and threatening Owen is, This improves how easy the trailer and narrative of the film is to understand. 

I also received feedback for my ancillary texts which were the film poster and film magazine front cover. Some of the feedback was as follows;

-On the Magazine front cover, the images were too small
This was a suggestion made towards the end of the production of my magazine front cover. People thought that the images should be bigger as they are often tell people what is inside the magazine and a lot about the film. For example, the images on my front cover are of two of my main characters showing the conflict in the narrative, so making the images bigger than anything else on the front cover was an important idea as it shows the audience the conflict.

-On the magazine front cover, the subtitles of articles inside the magazine were too small
These were the titles on the left of my magazine and were one words that try to sell the article to the audience. At first these were similar size to the descriptions below them, which people said didn't make them stand out as much. I made these one word titles bigger so they would be clearly different from the descriptions below as they are USPs for the magazine.

-On the poster; Have more than one image
I was planning on having just an image of one character on the poster however after showing a few people they suggested trying it out with two images of different main characters, similar to the magazine front cover. By doing this it made it look more detailed and again, showed the conflict between them. This makes the poster more interesting and so the audience will pay more attention to it and may be willing to research more and go and see the film

-On the poster; The layout doesn't make sense, the question doesn't seem to link to the title
At first, on the poster i had "how will you escape..." and "when you are..." followed by the title "Under Control" however they were spaced out so a few people couldn't understand or follow the question. To make it clearer and also not cover the image, i decided to just get rid of these texts and just put one question " How will you escape?" at the bottom of the poster. This made the poster clearer and also had more of an effect with the question in a red font.