Evaluation

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

We chose to put our film name and tag line in the same shot so people would instantly correlate our teaser trailer with the film poster. However we chose to have a more blocked font for our film name as we felt this should be bold and clear to our audience so that they remember it and a fancier, artistic font for our tag line to still suggest the romantic comedy genre. We stuck with our colour theme of pink and orange and made one pink and one orange so the audience could easily differentiate and not get confused and think that the tag line is part of the title. At first we were unsure as to whether or not we should use two separate colours but after playing around with the fonts and the colours we felt it was better to have two different colours.

As it is a teaser trailer compared to a trailer we decided to be more generic with the release date of the film and just put “Coming soon”. However we have chosen to release our film in the summer as after we researched ROM Com's this is when they are most likely to be released and this has been advertised on the poster. Again we chose a more blocked font, the same we used for our film name as we felt it was important that people had the date in mind so they could look out for it nearer the time. We used pink for the release date as this was brighter and appealed to our target audience better. We also included the website in this shot as we wanted people to go and look up our film once they had seen the trailer. Again we put this orange so our audience we able to differentiate. We felt this worked well as its simplicity makes it stand out to the audience and stick in their minds.

Although we filmed in school we wanted our settings to look more realistic and outside of school as possible so we chose carefully where we picked to film. Most of our filming was done outside in the school grounds as it was much easier for us to get away from the natural school setting. A typical location we did use though was a shot of our two main characters supposedly in a coffee shop. This is very conventional of the ROM-com genre and can be seen in many films such as Valentine’s Day and 500 days of Summer.

Seeing that we did nearly all our filming on one day it was important we made sure our character’s had at least one change of clothes so it looked as if the different shots of the couple had been filmed over a period of time. We were conscious of the fact that in ROM-Com's, usually the female protagonist is very good looking and normally looks quite girly. This is a convention we kept and although we didn’t make her look overly girly by wearing dresses and skirts as per usual she still had a pink cardigan on and her hair down.  We didn’t want our male protagonist to be dressed overly perfect as per usual in ROM-Com's so we kept him in casual attire to suggest the young and fun element of our teaser trailer. By doing this we also felt it would appeal to our target audience much better.

Here we deliberately chose to film close up to get the expressions on each of the characters faces and suggest the idea of them falling in love. Also the way their heads are positioned almost makes a love heart shape so we didn’t want to get too close up and lose this element to it.

We wanted to include a shot where the character’s are physically moving as many of our shots are too quick to capture any real movement so we decided to include this one at the end and slow the pace down a bit to suggest the romantic element of our film.

When we watched our film back we notice that some of the shots were off centre and this was one of them. We looked through the settings on Pinnacle studio and found a device that would help us move the shot around and centre our character so our filming did not look clumsy.

 One thing we do to tease the audience is put a few quick shots of “imperfect” guys at the beginning of our teaser trailer and we do not reference them at all we just have music in the background. This makes the audience think “who are they?” and “what is their purpose?”

Also we never reveal why Mr Imperfect is imperfect during the teaser trailer we just have footage of the male and female character together therefore the audience has to go and watch if they want to find out.

Our voice over is very important in explaining what is happening and giving the audience clues as to what could happen in the actual film and this is much like the 500 days of Summer teaser trailer which has no dialogue from the actual characters in it what so ever.

Originally we were not going to have a voice over on the shots of the film name and the release date as we wanted to challenge the conventions of a ROM-com in this way, after watching it all the way through we felt it would be more effective if we did have a voice over as the teaser trailer seemed empty without out and suggested more of a horror or thriller genre than a romantic comedy.



Original magazine cover



Final magazine cover


Originally we were going to use the colour scheme of red as it is what we saw on many film magazines. However we felt it didn't really suggest the idea of a romantic comedy so changed our colours to white, pink and grey. We also changed the font of "Imperfect Mr Perfect" for the same reason. On our original poster the image of our character looks very posed and not fun and youthful as we wanted her to look. By changing the image to her in her character I feel we have made the magazine more appealing to our target audience. Also before the magazine looked quite plain and dull due to the white background. Now we have a background the magazine seems to have a bit more life to it. From our research of film magazine we found that the cover lines used a selection of fonts so we tried our best to mimic this convention.

Our film poster

Poster from research

For our poster we felt the image had to be the focal point so decided to make this stand out. Also we decided to use an image that would suggest the ROM com genre to the audience. From our research we found that very often the stars of the film where clothes that match the colours of the fonts on the poster so we made sure that our female character had pink on and that our male character had white on. This is evident in film posters such as "failure to launch". We felt this worked well as it tied the whole poster together and makes it more eye catching, however I feel it would have maybe looked better with a coloured background as I feel there is a lot of white space on ours but we kept it white to stick to ROM com conventions. We used the contrasting colours of pink and orange for the stars names as it made them stand out and from our initial audience research we found that 16-24 year olds are more likely to go and see a film if it has an actor or actress they like starring in it. On our poster we decided to put "Summer 2011" rather than just coming soon as we had in the teaser trailer this is because the poster would be released not long before the film comes out. Also as our target audience are 16-24 year olds it would be sensible to release the film in the summer because a lot of our target audience will be off school, college or university   We used quite a blocked font for our film name and release date as we wanted it to be easily readable from a long distance so people are able to remember what it's called and when it's coming out. However for our tag line we used quite an artistic font to suggest the ROM com genre. This works well as it not only suggests the genre but it breaks up the blocked font that is on the rest of the poster.

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

We wanted to create a promotional package that was able to reach out to a mainstream audience and with the target audience we chose we felt this would be easy as 16-24 year olds are generally the easiest people to advertise to. For example they are the people who go to the cinema most so they would be able to see our trailer and poster. They are the people who go on social networking sites the most so we could advertise through them to get to advertise to our target audience and with the majority of 16-24 year olds on social networking sites they are the easiest people to advertise to. For example they are the people who go to the cinema most so they would be able to see our trailer and poster. They are the people who go social networking sites the most so we could advertise through them to get 16-24 year old attention. Also they are the people who generally do not have as much responsibility as other age groups so are able to go the cinema to see our film. However targeting the magazine at this age range was a little harder as film magazines tend to be very specific at who they target and often it is the same people who buy them each week or each month and these people are generally film fanatics. Despite this we tried our best by using a range of fonts and colours to grab their attention. Our three products work well together as we were able to base them around our tag line “love makes the imperfect perfect” which we thought of very early on in the process. I feel this is the main way our products are linked together and it helps our audience effectively link all three products together and maybe get them to explore a media which they haven't before such a film magazines.  One thing we decided we would keep the same on each of the products was the colour. We kept orange and pink running through each of our products so it was easy for our audience to see that all three products link together.

In each product there are successful elements. In the poster I feel the image works really well for what we are trying to promote about our film and suggests the romantic comedy genre very well. Also as they are smiling and laughing which connotes the fun and young side of our film that we have tried to promote to appeal to our target audience. On our magazine cover the variety of fonts and colour are what best appeal to our target audience and would successfully sell the magazine. Within the teaser trailer I feel the most successful parts are the last two scenes as it clearly shows the romantic comedy genre and goes from a close up to a long shot which I think works really well.

We did have some difficulties which each of our products but they were all problems we were able to overcome. In the teaser trailer we had some shots that were off centre and some that had been filmed in HD and some that had not. We were able to fix these quickly in Pinnacle using some of the editing devices available to us. We also had a shot of our two main characters in the “coffee shop” and our female character looked as if she talked and this made the film look unprofessional so we decided to take it out and go back through the footage we had to find a more suitable shot. On the magazine front cover we had to change the image as when we first got feedback people felt it was too posed for a film magazine. We also changed the colour of our cover lines from red to pink to suggest the romantic comedy genre and appeal to our target audience. Originally on our poster we wanted the film name on the bench with our characters but when we took the photo we didn’t feel this looked right but we then had to decide where else it could go and this involved moving some items that were already on the poster.

The weakness I feel our teaser trailer has is that we filmed all of the “imperfect” guys in the same place with the same background so it looks quite boring and also the camera is shaky at the beginning which is something we could have looked into sorting out. On our poster I feel that there is a lot of white space and we maybe could have had a background despite a white background being conventional for ROM com posters. Our magazine front cover works well but there are a few issues with the background for example there is a bin in the background and although this is not clearly visible it would have looked more professional if we had edited it out.

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

To get our audience feedback we used questionnaires and Facebook. Before we started the process of actually creating our promotional package we produced a questionnaire to see what our target audience would want from a ROM com promotional package. The most important things we gained from this were that:

·         In a film poster people firstly looked for an image

·         Rom-com was the most popular genre

·         Teaser trailer was the most popular way to advertise a film

After taking these into consideration we started to create our promotional package. Once we had finished our magazine we asked our class for feedback to see if it would appeal to our target audience, they said they felt our image was too posed so therefore we changed it to an image of our actress in character.

 

Once we had finished our teaser trailer we uploaded it to Facebook to get people’s feedback. The main feedback we got was that:

·         The camera was to shaky at the start- Although we had discussed changing this, we decided we wanted to keep it to give the film a more “home video” type film and try and relax our audience into watching it.

·         The end shot of the film name wasn’t long enough- This was something we looked at and decided it did go quite fast so people may not catch the film name, we therefore elongated the shot so it gave our audience plenty of time to read it.

·         The voice over was too serious for a rom-com- This was another thing we looked at when it was brought to our attention but we felt that the voice over is appropriate as we don’t want our audience to think our film is just comedy so having a more serious voice over suggests the romantic element to our film. Also we wanted a British voice over as the majority of our audience are going to be British and we felt this would appeal to them much more.

We then created and handed out questionnaires to our class for them to evaluate all three products and give us their opinions. From 8 questions we found out that:

·         Our promotional package does serve its purpose

·         Our target audience preferred the teaser trailer compared to the magazine and poster

·         They felt we needed a wider variety of shots

·         They felt we needed more emphasis on the prejudice against the male protagonist that makes him imperfect.

We agreed with the wider variety of shots and understand that we do have a range of shots included in the whole teaser trailer however sometimes certain shots are too long especially for a teaser trailer and just by adding in a different shot we could have made our teaser trailer a little more exciting. The suggestion that we needed more emphasis on the prejudice against the male protagonist was an element of the film that was discussed a lot during the process but we came to the conclusion that we wanted to leave it so that people came to see the film to find out why he is imperfect and why her parents are prejudice against him.

4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

During this process we have used a range of new media technologies in order to create our promotional package. To do our initial research we mainly used YouTube especially to find examples of teaser trailers. Software such as Pinnacle and Photoshop have aided us in the creative side of the promotional package. In Pinnacle we have uploaded and edited our teaser trailer and used a range of editing devices available to us to make our teaser trailer the best it can be. To edit our images we used Photoshop, this was a program I had heard of but never really used before so I was able to learn some new skills from other members of my group. As mentioned before, we felt Facebook was one of the best ways to advertise to our target audience and used this as a way to get feedback on our work. To get the music for our teaser trailer we found out about a copyright free music site, where artists post their music and sound effects for people to use copyright free. I used Blogger to update my groups progress, I found this a quick and easy way to show what we have been doing and evaluate our progress.

Examples

Facebook



YouTube





Audience Feedback

For our audience feedback we decided to use the social networking site Facebook and questionnaires to find out what we could improve upon and see how our target audience were reacting to our products. We decided to use Facebook as we felt it was a quick and easy way to reach our target audience of 16-24 year olds. We then decided to create a questionnaire so that we could ask a range of 16-24 year olds to look at our products and then gives us feedback accordingly.

Facebook feedback

From our Facebook feedback we found that the voice over was a bit too serious and took away romantic comedy element of the teaser trailer. However we decided to keep the voice over as it was as we wanted a male British voice over to attract our dominantly British audience and we didn't want to lose the Romantic side of the teaser trailer to the comedy. Other feedback we got was to elongate the scene which has our film name on it to give it more impact and give our audience more of a chance to take it in. We have taken this advice on board as after we watched it we felt it would benefit our audience. The other main criticism that came out of our Facebook feedback was the shaky camera to begin with. However we decided to keep this feature in so it looked more like a "home video" and appealed to our target audience.

   

Questionnaire feedback

We asked the following questions to nine people within our target audience age range of 16-24 year olds:

1. How old are you?
2. Do you feel all 3 products suggest the romantic comedy genre?
3. Are the images on the magazine and poster appropriate for our film?
4. Do you feel the font works on each of these products?
5. Does the colour scheme of orange and pink suggest the rom-com genre?
6. Would you go and see the film after seeing these three products?
7. Which product do you feel appeals to you most?
8. Are there any improvements you would suggest?

For questions 1-6 we found we had the same answers on each of the questionnaires, this was that all of the products served their purpose and the products had made people want to go and see the film.

Question 7 gave us a variety of answers as this was mainly down to personal preference, however it is clear from the pie chart below that the teaser trailer was more appealing than the other two products to our target audience.

                                                                                           

For question 8 we also got a variety of responses mainly due to the fact it was and open ended question meaning no options were available for people to fill out, because of this we were unable to show the response in a chart format but the feedback we gained was as follows: 

• Needed a wider variety of shots
• There wasn't enough emphasis on the prejudice of the male protagonist and it was difficult to understand why he was imperfect 

The under emphasis on the male protagonist imperfection was a concern of ours however we decided that it would have been difficult to portray he was not imperfect to her but her parents in a teaser trailer which have the average time of under a minute.We did consider including a scene which could imply this but after discussion came to the conclusion that the "mystery" of why he is imperfect could be a reason as to why people go and watch the film.

We are generally pleased with our audience feedback as much as it was positive or helpful to us in making our film of a higher standard. There were also small comments which we were able to justify our reasoning for rather than physically changing. We are pleased with all three products overall and are glad that each product serves its purpose.  

Skills developed from AS to A2

From AS to A2 we have a acquired many skills and used a variety of new technologies and techniques to help us make our final products. At the beginning of our film we have close ups of supposedly "imperfect" guys. Last year I feel we may have used a mid-shot rather than a close up as this would have been easier to centralise the actors however at A2 we felt more comfortable to do this and understood that if the actors were off centre in the shot we would be able to fix this by editing rather than re-filming.

Also we were very conscious of continuity this year. Although last year we acknowledged continuity and its importance there were still parts of our work where there were slight continuity errors for example, where we had filmed on different days the lighting was slightly different in some scenes. Knowing this made us more conscious of it this year and we made sure that our actor and actress had a variety of clothes and different styles in each shot to show that it was different day. Also we tried to get as much filming done in one day so that the lighting or weather wasn't a problem.

At A2 we have played around a lot with the writing fonts for our teaser trailer, magazine and poster. At AS we were set on a font for our film opening and never really looked around to see if a different one would have worked better. Therefore this year we researched this in more detail and looked at what was typical for a Rom-Com and what would appeal most to our target audience before deciding on a definite font for our products.  

Our familiarity with the editing software Pinnacle also helped us a lot this year. At AS a small problem with the filming could sometimes cause us big problems when we were trying to edit and make our product the best it could be. However this year we found that we could resolve small filming issues on our own and quickly as we had learnt them from AS. Subsequently at AS when we found something wrong with our filming we were very quick to just go and re-film to try and resolve the problem rather than try and work with it on Pinnacle and see if we could resolve it through the editing devices available to us. Whereas this year we were more confident in exploring the software and trying to find solutions to our filming problems that way. Also by exploring the program we were able to find devices that would improve our film and give it variety.

Use of new media technology in the research and planning stages

Media technology is advancing at a rapid rate and it is important that we keep up to date with these products to make our promotional package look as contemporary as possible. Also the more contemporary it looks the more appealing it becomes to our target audience of 16-24 year olds as they are the dominant users of these advancing technologies.During the research and planning stages we have used a range of new media technology including:

• Edirol- We used this to record the voice over for our film. We found this useful as it is small and portable so we were able to use it wherever we wished. Our only problem was that to listen to our recording back we needed headphones or someone where we could plug in a USB cable meaning we had to record many times to ensure we got our voice over how we wanted it.
• Laptop- Used to edit teaser trailer and create film poster and magazine. The laptop was easy for us to edit on and like the edirol it was portable so we were able to work in our own time on our editing.
• Video camera- Used to film our teaser trailer. As we had used these video cameras for our AS work we were familiar with how they worked which made the process easier for us.
• Flip camera- Used this to film our storyboard animatics as it is easier to steadily hold these to film a smaller space. As the flip camera has the USB attached to it we were able to take videos very quickly and then upload them quickly too.
• Still camera- Used to take pictures for our film poster and magazine as well as some shots from filming to show our progress.
• Pinnacle Studios- Used to edit our teaser trailer. As we used Pinnacle to edit our AS coursework we were quite familiar with the program. However this year we took more time to explore the range of editing tools that were available to us and were able to use them to better effect.
• Photoshop- Used to edit our images for our film poster and magazine. We found photoshop was the best software to edit our pictures and it was a software that as a group we were quite familiar with so were able to get the best results.
• Excel- Used to create a questionnaire and then graphs about audience research to help us understand what our target audience want.
• YouTube- Used as research for our teaser trailers. YouTube is a quick way to find videos and teaser trailers to help us with our research and understanding of what goes into a teaser trailer. 
• Facebook- Used to get audience feedback on our teaser trailer. We decided to use Facebook as a way to get audience feedback as we felt it was an easy way to access our target audience. It was also a very quick way to get feedback on our teaser trailer.

Media Theories

Generally the media base their narratives around contemporary world issues. For example when war is prominent in the news many films about war come out in the cinema e.g The Hurt Locker and Dear John. This also links with our post modern society. Post modern society revolves highly around a "must have" consumerist concept, this is the idea that we want everything and we want it as quickly as possible and this idea is commonly reflected in many romantic comedies such as "Confessions of a Shopaholic" where the protagonist spends and spends her money and this stops her achieving what she wants in life.

Feminism is most definitely a theory that can be linked to our film as our main character is female and she doesn't want to settle for any less than perfect. However she does want a relationship and marriage that are typically seen as traditional values in today's society. Therefore our narrative and teaser trailer probably link more the liberal feminist ideology compared to the radical feminists.

The message we tried to portray in our film was that everyones idea of "perfection" is different and what you think may be perfect for you could be wrong, this is also known as the hypodermic syringe theory where by messages are immediately are passed to the audience through various media forms. As we based much of our narrative around our tag line "love makes the imperfect perfect" it was easy to try and suggest this idea of different people have different perceptions of perfection to our audience. To see whether we had successfully passed this message to our audience we asked them complete a questionnaire after seeing our products which asked a range of questions which when answered would help us to see if what we had actually intended to portray had been successfully taken in by our target audience.

Editing

During the editing process we have encountered a few problems but none that we haven’t been able to resolve. Once we had uploaded our film to Pinnacle we realised that some had been filmed in HD and others hadn’t which meant that there was two black strips either side of the shot on the scenes which hadn’t been filmed in HD. To resolve this we just had to change the settings on Pinnacle by right clicking and selecting fit to screen, this removed the black strips and all of the shots then looked the same.

We also cut out a whole scene we had filmed of our main female character and her friend as we felt that the dialogue included in that shot was unconventional of teaser trailers and that it didn’t fit with the rest of our teaser trailer.

The colour of the fonts on our teaser trailer also caused us some problems as we didn’t know whether to use to separate colours of pink and orange for the fonts or whether to use one block colour so it didn’t look confusing to our audience. After changing it in a variety of ways to see which is best we decided to use two colours as it links to our magazine front cover and film poster.

After we had finished the majority of our editing we watched our teaser trailer through and found that some of the shots were off centre. Rather than just re-filming we adjusted the shots on Pinnacle by zooming in a little bit closer and moving them to ensure they were on centre.

We had to change the image on our magazine front cover as after audience feedback they felt it was too posed for a magazine front cover. As it was our lead female character we had on the front of the magazine we decided to make her look more in character and add a background to imply the idea of fun and youth which is typical for a romantic comedy.

On our film poster we have used an image of our two lead characters on a bench. During the editing process we noticed that on one side the edge of the bench had been slightly cut off and we were unable to get it back. To resolve this we cropped the picture so the other side of the bench was slightly cut off so that the image then looked symmetrical.

Although we have experienced a few problems we were much more at ease with Pinnacle compared to AS at experienced fewer problems with the program this year. However we experienced editing problems regarding images and fonts on our magazine front cover and film poster as this was new to us.

Title and font analysis

For our titles we haven’t kept the same fonts throughout all three of our products as we felt that as they are all different Medias that certain fonts may work on one but may not work on the others. Despite the use of different fonts we have always kept the tag line, “love makes the imperfect perfect” in italics as we believe that this connotes the idea of love and romance. On the magazine front cover we used a variety of fonts as this is typical of magazine front covers. We tended to put cover lines or singular words that we thought would grab our audience’s attention in a bolder or bigger font so that they would pick up the magazine and buy it. On both the film poster and teaser trailer we used a large bold easily readable font for the film name so it would stand out and people would remember it when the film come out at a later date.

Evaluation of filming

We filmed our teaser trailer in stages mainly because we were reliant on other people and this meant we had to work with them and when they were available to film. Firstly we filmed a few shots of the boys we have at the beginning of our teaser trailer as they were quick and easy for us to find and film. We then filmed the scenes with our main female character in as she is played by a member of our group. We also filmed a scene between our main female character and her friend to try and explain our narrative to the audience, however when we actually put it into the teaser trailer we felt it didn’t work in the way we wanted it to. Also when we referred back to our teaser trailer research we found that there is not very often any dialogue or explanation of the narrative, this is more conventional of an actual trailer compared to a teaser trailer.  Later on that week our main male character was available to film so we were able to go to the locations where we wished to film the scenes between the two of them. Although we filmed all of the scenes of them together on one day they had a change of clothes so we were able to make our film look more realistic and as if it had been filmed over several days or weeks. Once we had uploaded all the footage to the laptop we found that we didn’t have enough shots of different boys at the beginning of the teaser trailer so we had to go out and film some more to get our idea across.

For our film we have kept a lot of the conventions of a ROM-COM within a modern society. For example our female character is independent and won’t just settle for anything despite wanting a traditional relationship. We also kept our main characters young and good looking as this is what is generally seen in a ROM-COM and it is what audiences expect. Another convention is that of a voice over in the teaser trailer which is expected in ROM-COM teaser trailers more than any other genre. The music in the background of the teaser trailer is another way of maintaining the ROM-COM conventions. Typically pop music or upbeat music is used as background music to suggest the fun and happy narrative that is linked to romantic comedies and we have used such music so our audience automatically know the genre of our film.

Final film poster

This is our final film poster. It doesn't differ greatly from our initial film poster idea but we did make a few changes. We decided to move the title underneath the image rather than having it on the bench next to our stars as it would have looked squashed and not easily readable. Also we felt it would stand out and grab the audience's attention more if it was on its own underneath the image. 

We kept with our colour scheme of orange and pink so that people can easily link all three of our items together and because these are typical colours for a ROM-COM. Another typical ROM-COM poster convention is the white background and we decided to keep this to make our writing and image stand out.We also made the conscious decision to have both our stars wearing pink and white so that the poster fitted together well and nothing clashed. For our image we decided to have them sitting on the bench looking at each other to suggest the ROM-COM genre and imply a little bit about our narrative.

After looking at our billing block font we decided to change this slightly from the original as beforehand it was very clear and a dominant part of our poster and after looking into this a bit more we found that generally billing blocks were almost unreadable. Therefore we changed the font to a slimmer and smaller font to fit in better. We also re sized our production company images as we felt they were too over powering on the poster.

Overall there is not a huge amount of writing on the poster and we decided this is best as in our audience research we found that our target audience of 16-24 year olds initially look for the image, stars names and date of release.

Improved storyline

After looking at the idea of our story we decided that it was a bit typical. So, we decided to change it slightly. We wanted to make our story more interesting and dynamic so we decided to make our male protagonist black. This altered the storyline as we also made it a conflict between the main girls parents as they don't agree with it.

This will make our story more diverse and breaks away from the most typical convention. We think this will work as there isn't many films that produce this kind of story so it will make our film unique and exciting.

The concept behind our promotional package

The concept behind our promotional package is basically our tag line and our film name "love makes the imperfect perfect" and "Imperfect Mr Perfect these have helped us in a variety ways to come up with ideas such as: the narrative of our story, the images on the poster and magazine the colour scheme, the release date, characters clothing and fonts for all three promotional items.

The narrative for our story came after we had decided on a film name and tag line and these made it easier for us to think about what we wanted to portray and how it was best to do so. Although we have changed our narrative a couple of times as we have felt that it wasn't working.

The image on the poster was an idea we had right from the beginning and have stuck with as we felt it best fits our film name and what we are trying to suggest to the audience. The poster image changed slightly as after getting audience feedback they felt the image was too posed so we decided to change this. After researching film magazines we found that it is usually only one character on the front page so after looking at our narrative and deciding what we wanted to suggest we decided it was best for our female character to be on the front of the magazine.

Our film name and tag line have also helped us with the colour scheme as it was clear from both of these things that our film was of the ROM-COM genre which meant we were able to research into colours generally used within the ROM-COM theme. We found that this was generally bright colours and made the decision of having pink and orange as our colour scheme in the very early stages of production.

After deciding our film was a ROM-COM we researched the general release date for these films and found it was more of a spring/summer genre and we therefore decided to release our film in the Summer of 2011.

Character clothing was important especially on the poster and magazine as we wanted to keep the theme of fun, romantic and young running through all of our work. Therefore we came to the conclusion that on the poster image they should wear white and pink and on the magazine just white to stand out from the background. This also kept in line with our colour scheme.

The fonts for each product was a difficult thing to decide on. We knew that we wanted romantic, swirly writing for the tag line but felt that this would not be a good idea with the film name or release date as it could become unreadable and not sell our products.

All of these link our products together and help us promote "Imperfect Mr Perfect", the tag line "love makes the imperfect perfect" is our main theme and what we are trying to convey through our products which is why we have it on both the film poster and the teaser trailer so people remember it and want to go and watch the film or read the magazine.

Magazine Front Cover 2nd draft

This is the changed version of our initial magazine front cover, we made many of the improvements suggested to us from our audience feedback such as:

• The image- we now have our main girl character in a much more natural pose to appeal to our target audience and suggest the ROM-COM genre.
• The colour scheme- we changed our colour scheme from red to pink and white to suggest the ROM-COM genre.
• The layout- now we have the typical "U" shape layout adopted by many magazine as it allows us to get a lot more information and cover lines on our magazine and makes it look fuller than before.
• The background- we now have a natural background that fits the ROM-COM genre and suggests this to the target audience. Originally we had a plain white background that lacked character and made our magazine look posed like a fashion magazine which is what we didn't want.

Although we have made all of these changes there are still a few improvements to be made so that our magazine is up to the standard we want it, these are:

• Taking off the underline on cover lines as we realised after looking at existing magazines that this is not conventional.
• We also need to move the bar code as it is slightly slanted and leaves a gap between the edge of the magazine cover.
• We also need to adjust the "all you need to know about film" to the right hand side as this also looks slanted and unprofessional.

Once we have made these slight changes our magazine front cover will be completed giving us ample time to concentrate on filming and editing our teaser trailer as well as getting the image for our film poster.

Magazine Cover- 1st draft

This is our first magazine front cover draft, we decided to use an image of our main female character as the feature within the magazine is going to be an interview with her discussing the film. However we are not going to use this particular image as after we got feedback from our peers they felt that the image was too posed and would work better if the girl was in character for the picture. Another suggestion that came from peer feedback was the idea of having an actual background rather than just a plain white background as this is typical of many film magazines.

After researching film magazines we noticed that there was a range of fonts used so we decided to mirror this in our own magazine cover. Although we felt with this particular layout we couldn't get enough cover lines on our magazine and felt it looked empty so decided we would change it to the typical "U" shape layout seen on many magazines with the image placed more in a more central position.

We originally decided on red as a colour scheme so it corresponded with the colour of the masthead, this is something we wish to change as this colour doesn't suggest the ROM-COM genre of our film, thus we changed our colour scheme to pink and white. With this change came the decision to use our own magazine name (Film Today) rather than "Total Film" which already exists.

We have decided to keep the "PLUS" circle as it is commonly seen on film magazines and breaks up the constant text from cover lines. Also, we have decided to keep the "free Harry Potter film posters inside" as this a device conventionally used to catch the target audience's attention. The reason we chose "Harry Potter" film posters is because it is a film that is popular with our target audience.

We are now in the process of making these changes to our magazine front cover to get it to a higher standard and make it look as if it could be an actual film magazine.

Storyboard Animatics

-Our finished storyboard is what we want our teaser trailer to end up as. Our first scene is of the institution that is producing and distributing our film as we found that it is a common theme within teaser trailers. We then have quick cut scenes of a number of imperfect guys with a voice over saying "when you can't find Mr Perfect, you have to settle for less". Here, as well as the voice over we are going to have music on low in the background. Then there is a close up of our female character who looks straight down the camera and says "NO". We then see a short clip of our female character talking to her best friend on the phone explaining what she wants in a boyfriend. It then cuts to a range of shots accompanied by music to insinuate to the audience that our female character falls in love with an unconventional Mr Perfect. On our penultimate shot is of the film name with the tag line "love makes the imperfect, perfect" and our last shot states that the film is coming soon with the films website on for the target audience's future reference.

-When we filmed our storyboard we had to ensure that we were in a quiet room as we didn't want any noise in the background. Also a steady camera helps to make our storyboard look effective.

-The location we have chosen to film our teaser trailer in is at school this is suitable for our target audience as we plan to aim it at a young audience who are still in education. Although we may film the shots of the guys outside of school so we have a variety of locations and shots.

1st poster

We are currently creating our film poster on Microsoft Publisher, we chose Microsoft Publisher as we felt that it would be the program best suited for this purpose. After researching a variety of Rom-com film posters we found that they generally use bright colours to suggest the genre and attract their target audience. From this we decided to use orange and pink as our colour scheme to have the same effect. One problem we faced was that our stars names didn't fit very well with the format of our poster so we decided to change them to give the poster a better look. Although this was a lengthy process it was worth it as our poster is now more effective and appealing to our target audience. Another convention commonly used in film posters that we decided to keep is the enlarging of the stars last names to make them stand out. We chose to stick with this convention as often, people recognise the last names of stars so by making them larger than the rest of the writing it will make them eye catching and attract our audience. An aspect of our poster that is not always featured on mainstream film posters is the use of a tag line. Our films tag line is "love makes the imperfect, perfect". We decided to put this towards the bottom of the poster so it doesn't distract the audience from the stars names or film name. Another common feature of film posters is a billing block. To see what information is generally on a billing block we zoomed into a billing block before making our own. We wanted to name an established ROM-com director in our billing block and found that Nancy Meyers had directed a range of ROM-com films and decided to use her. At present we are debating the font for the billing block as we understand that a billing block is usually unreadable and are finding it difficult to find a font that is appropriate for this. Instead of naming an actual date for release we just chose to put the season Summer as this is when ROM-Com's are generally released. Underneath the date we have put the film website so that people who are interested in the film are able to find out more about it. We are planning to have a picture of the main couple sitting on a bench and try to make the title look like it's sitting on the bench with them.