Journal

Just the planning and pre-production stages in particular, I decided to keep a journal in a notebook of what we had done. I tried this in my AS year and it worked to my advantage very well, allowing me to keep all my notes together in one place, no matter how big or small, important or insignificant. I therefore carried on this usefull technique from last year, into this years coursework.

Evaluation

We began our A2 coursework very early on in the academic year. We came up with some initial ideas for a film that we would be expected to make a trailer, magazine cover and website homepage for (as well as a radio advertisement, as an additional piece). During this time we were also given lessons in how to use the programmes we would be needing to create out magazine covers and homepage’s: Adobe Photoshop and Macromedia Dreamweaver, as practice for when it came to creating the real things.
Some months later, when it came to developing these initial ideas and putting our skills into use, we were prepared and had a fairly clear idea of what we needed to do. We began the long filmmaking process by developing our ideas for the film. We had decided that we wanted to make a thriller genred film, and had come up with several ideas and names previously that we could develop. We soon decided upon the idea of a troubled young man who goes to escape to his uncle’s home in the Dorset countryside. After a few days at his uncles secluded home on the beach, he decides to take the dog out for a walk, upon this walk however, he comes across a dead body washed up on the shore. As the story develops a hidden crime-ring is discovered, revealing the deaths and cover ups of dozens of foreign immigrants. We decided to call it: Castle Cove. We developed Castle Cove into a more fully realised idea, created the scripts and storyboards and began our research, getting all of the necessary paperwork sorted ready for production. During this time however we found some problems with our idea, noticing details that weren’t very realistic for us to film. We changed and developed the initial idea for so long that time was getting short, and so we were forced to change out idea for the last time. Our final idea became an interview session: one half on the trailer would be our lead protagonist –who we named Ethan- being interview about the traumatic events he went through, -talking in the past tense to the camera, while the other half –which would we cut and edited in between the interview shots, as Ethan explained the events- were of the events he is describing, such as seeing the dead body, being chased, seeing his home being broken into, etc. The effect that we were after was that of Ethan explaining the events in the past tense, then there being flash backs to the said event. Although the idea wasn’t our initial one, it still worked really well with our genre of thriller and what we had in mind.

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

Trailer

This is my finished trailer.

The trailer was the main, and most important task of the coursework, and took the most time to create as expected. From the initial ideas stage all those months ago, throught to the planing and pre-production, and then the filming and finally the editing, the whole process took a good couple of months. From what we sent out to do and the initial ideas we originally had, I think our end product has changed a lot. Despite this I am still really please with what we have managed to achieve, through out all the up's and down's our group faced. I think our trailer for fills it's genre requirements and we applied the codes and conventions we needed too and I think our trailer is as convincing as a real advertising product for a film.

Radio Advertisment

We had planned to do the radio advertisment, along with the rest of the groups, however because of the problems we faced earlier on in the coursework we barely had enough time to complete our film trailer and individual work (the magazine cover and the homepage), so had no choice but to leave the radio ad.

Website Homepage

Below is my final homepage design, which I designed in Photoshop. I am quite happy with it, however if my skills on Photoshop were more developed I could have done better. Non the less I think it is a good advertisment for our film.

Below is my final design opened up onto a web browser (simply click it and it becomes a full sized image, as if it were a real website homepage). Once I had created my design on Photoshop I went through Macromedia Dreamweaver to open the page up as if it were broadcasted live on the internet.

Creating the Website Homepage

After I had created the magazine front cover, I needed to make the films own homepage. I was more nervous about creating the homepage than I was the magazine cover, simply because it seemed like a much more complicated task and because, towards the beginning of the year when we had been given some preliminary practice on Photoshop and Macromedia Dreamweaver, I found creating the homepage much more difficult.

I began by setting the canvas to 600 x 800 and opening up the image I wanted to use as my background. I chose to use the same photograph for my homepage as I used for my magazine cover because I wanted them to be the same as both are part of the same advertising campaign and in my opinion should be as similar as possible so that this is obvious. On top of this background I added the text 'Castle Cove' in the same font as I had used for the title on the magazine cover; 'DuerTWOo' by www.dafont.com. These two elements; the background image and the title, were the only two things I took from the magazine cover. After this I wanted to add the actors name, Lloyd Naerger, above the title of the film. After this I decided to add a 'fish eye' effect frame, I wanted to give the effect that the darkness was creeping in, upon Ethan. The line around the circle was very clear and obvious, however I wanted it to be blurred, the black getting less dense at it reaches the image, almost fading in. I therefore had to use the 'outer glow' feature in the 'blending options' to blend the sharp line so that it faded into the image. This is what my homepage looked like:

(Homepage so far: showing main image and background, title of the film and main cast).

I then decided to make the links that would direct the viewer to other features of the website. After researching I found which links were compulsory on film websites, such as the: 'home' link, 'about the film' link, 'trailer' link, 'cast and crew' link, etc and which ones weren't completely necessary: 'photos', 'press', 'downloads' and more. I there for chose the ones that were most important and that would benefit my website more. However I left out the synopsis link and a link to the trailer because I wanted to add those to my homepage. I also decided to add the date of release onto my homepage so that the viewer would know when to book their tickets to see this absolutely amazing film. Right at the bottom of the page beneath the links, I added the credit information, which is one of the compulsory features on a film homepage. These credits included: institutions who produced and presented the film, actors featured, who the film is directed by, edited by, produced by, etc. And either side of these credits I added an age certificate, and on the other links to pages on Facebook and Twitter, as a 'follow us on' feature. By this time this is what my homepage looked like:(Homepage: showing a date of release, several relevent links, credits, an age certificate and links to pages on Facebook and Twitter).

All that was left to do to complete my homepage was add the video of our trailer to the page and a tagline.

My finished Magazine Cover

This is my final magazine cover. I am really happy with what I have achieved and thing it is a good advertisment for our film Castle Cove.