Production - Logo

This is my production logo for my teaser trailer. The whole image was made in photoshop CS3 and is mainly comprised of using the pen tool, making of custom shapes and some effects such as bevel and embossing, and gradients. I chose to make our logo look different but at the same time not so unique it wouldn't fit into the film genre we are really making for the teaser trailer (Horror/Thriller).

It is made up of 18 layers, and i really tried to emphasise the aesthetic look to the logo, and in trying to do so made the logo symmetrical as possible. I thought the font of the logo also went very well with the shapes of the custom shapes made, for example below you can see the aesthetics to the image is quite flush and pleasing.

I also tried to make the logo look "classy" and professionally made as possible, and by doing this added effects as you can see in the above image, the gold 'spades' have a dark gold gradient though them from bottom to top, to give it that again more aesthetically pleasing look to them. They also are bigger as most symmetrical logos have a big to small pattern to them, examples are down below:

Although this isnt always the case i do think that the large to small from outside the logo to the inside is more aesthetically pleasing.

Research - Moral Panic

A moral panic is the intensity of feeling expressed in a population about an issue that appears to threaten the social order.

An example of this was the moral panic over the role playing game of Dungeons and Dragons. In this game you played a person who became a witch, and then revolted and turned to christianity to revert from the afterlife of hell. This brought great controversy with the issues of Satanism, witchcraft, sorcery, pornography and violence. Characters could tie and torture people, whilst also using spells to inflict pain and "damage" to creatures in the mythical world.

In game screenshot of one of many of the demonised creatures within the game.

Religious groups were in uproar about this, and claimed it was "demonising" the social order of people who were immensely influenced by the role playing game. This negative media led TSR the makers of the game to remove all references to demons and satanism in which they replaced characters with names other than "Lucifer" and "Mephistopheles"

My teaser trailer contains religious connotations of a demon or devil which is present in one of my characters in the movie. To not upset too many people, I will not challenge any ethical or religious views in my film or begin a 'Moral Panic' with the intensity of the teaser trailer. The trailer will not contain any mythical creatures, and we only intend to have one scene were you can clearly see the demon or devil is present. The scene begins at 0.50 and ends at 0.53

Example with still image:

The scene can be seen from 0.50 - 0.53 here:

Research - Media Theories

Media analysts have developed theories and explanations of how humans take in the media texts and how it may influence or our behaviour in everyday life.

The Hypodermic Needle or Hypodermic Syringe

Dating from the 1920's, this theory was the first attempt to explain how mass audiences might react to mass media. It is a crude model, as it implies that audiences receive media texts through a forceful means of injection of the mind, hence 'hypodermic needle' without any challenge or attempt at processing the data. The most famous incident of this model being in use, was the wide spread panic of the American public from the film "War of the Worlds" in which a number of people were so influenced by the film, they believed and thought the film as becoming a reality around them.

Paul Lazersfeld and Herta Herzog challenged this and based a lot of their research from this incident, and found it was in fact quite a small majority of viewers of the film that were in panic, and Hadley Cantril showed that it diverse in reaction, and were largely determined by situational and attitudinal attributes of the viewer.

Uses and Gratification

During the 1960's, as the first generation to grow up with television became grown ups, it became increasingly apparent to media theorists that audiences made choices about what they did when consuming texts. Far from being a passive mass, audiences were made up of individuals who actively consumed texts for different reasons and in different ways. In 1948 Lasswell suggested that media texts had the following functions for individuals in society:

• Surveillance
• Correlation
• Entertainment
• Cultural Transmission

The Peoples Choice

Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet analysed the voters decision making processes during a 1940 presidential election campaign and published their results in a paper called The Peoples Choice. Their findings suggested that the information unmediated but its filtered through "opinion leaders" who then communicate it to their less active associates, over whom they influence.

The audience then mediate the information received directly from the media with the ideas and thoughts expressed by the opinion leaders, thus being influenced not by a direct process, but by a two step flow. This diminished the power of the media in the eyes of researchers, and caused them to conclude that social factors were also important in the way in which audiences interpreted texts. This is sometimes referred to as the limited effects paradigm.

Reception Theory

Extending the concept of an active audience still further, in the 1980s and 1990s a lot of work has been done on the way individuals received and interpreted a text, and how their individual circumstances (Gender, class, age, ethnicity) affected their reading. This work was based on Stuart Hall's encoding/decoding model of the relationship between text and audience - the text is encoded by the producer, and decoded by the reader, and there may be major difference between two different readings of the same code.

Production, Evaluation and Research - Magazine Front Cover Mock Up

My task here was to create a magazine front cover involving the theme of film. I chose the title 'MovieShot' because i felt it was simple, but gave the movie a straight forward but still quite 'classic' name. I used a conventional font, which didn't stick out to, but gave the title a finesse to it whilst still getting the message across - The magazine was about cinema and film.

My first draft is below and was submitted to a focus group of potential audience members. The focus group evaluated the magazine giving me feedback on what they found good and bad, what drew attention and what needed altering. The following was said:

Positive Points:

• Colour scheme was good
• Picture and background well blended (two separate layers)
• Good use of the Z-Pattern
• Good use of the rule of thirds
• Good innovated idea of brightening the eyes and chest.

Negatives Points:

• Colour scheme is a bit to saturated in colour in certain parts, mainly "Iron Man"
• Background is blended in, but maybe introduce a little more colour by playing with the levels, saturations, hue and colour scheme.
• It was also suggested that the background was too sharp, so adding a texture to it would break the shapes up, and not draw too much attention to the background rather than the main image of "iron man'.
• Enlarge the 'Iron Man' title.

I used these focus group comments and with them set about to improve my magazine cover. I tried to pinpoint all the negative comments and change them to improve my magazine and satisfy the focus group.

Below is the finished preliminary magazine. I tried to implement all the points given to me by the focus group, but I found some didn't work with other points that were given. I increased the saturation of the poster and the title and seen a massive improvement to the monochromatic colour scheme which gives the poster its eye catching visage to audiences.

I also broke down the background image quite a bit by using the mosaic effect on it. It made it less 'square' and made the iron man image stand out much more off the background. The Iron Man logo was enlarged to make it stand out even more, and the colours more vibrant through playing around with the brightness/hue/saturation settings of the text layer which i rasterized to play around with the layer properties. The title was also given a drop shadow effect to make it stand out even more as it is the title of the magazine. Some members of the focus group said that the title didn't stand out as much as the 'Iron Man' logo which wasn't conventional. So this is why I changed this.

I am happy with the final product and think that the feedback from the focus groups were very helpful. Due to the majority thinking the same, it is in my interest to listen to them, as they would be the ones who would be buying my magazine. For my final product I will also use a focus group, to improve my final magazine.

Research - Propps 7 Character Roles

Propp believed that there are seven roles which any character may assume in the story:

1. Villian - Struggles with hero
2. Donor - Prepares and/or provides hero with magical agent
3. Helper - Assists, rescues, solves and/or transfigures the hero
4. Princess - A sought for person (and/or her father) who exists as goal and often recognises and marries hero and/or punishes villain.
5. Dispatcher - Sends hero off
6. Hero - Departs on a epic search (seeker-hero), reacts to donor and weds at the end.
7. False Hero - Claims to be the hero, often seeking and reacting like a real hero.

Putting this into the context of a trilogy of my favourite films (The Matrix Films) certain characters fall into these roles quite neatly. Keanu Reeves who plays the character "Neo" can be clearly defined as the hero, but his only difference is that he dies at the end of the series as well as his "Princess" dying in the finale to the last film Matrix Revolutions. "The False Hero" can be seen as the commander of the sci fi city "Zion" as he tries to save the city through the use of brute force, but is overwhelmed by the opposition - the machines. "The Helper" can be seen as captain Morpheus in the trilogy as he helps Neo through his journey into saving "Zion" from ultimate destruction. The character Captain Naomi can be seen as the "Helper", as in the last film she gives Neo her most prized possession in terms of the narrative - her ship to travel the machine city to fight the "villain" the character Agent Smith, who is a program investing the matrix, which in the narrative is the world we are currently in but, not the real world but an illusion. The "Dispatcher" can also be seen as Captain Morpheus as he sends Neo on his way through the Oracle and deciphering Neo's dreams.

Propps 7 Narrative roles show a clear pattern even in modern films in contemporary times. Characters fall into the roles describes quite identically, some with slight differences but the general narrative roles are filled showing that Propps 7 Narrative theory is quite accurate. Even though only one trilogy has been analysed it shows that Propps 7 Narrative roles show some meaning to them and coincide with modern narratives as well as old.

I will try to incorporate these roles into my media product, with a slight twist, as many modern theorists say Propps character roles are outdated, but still show some definition into modern films and the characters in the film.