Avenue: Final Draft

A2 Advanced Portfolio Conclusion

This is the conclusion of my A2 Advanced Portfolio. I feel that my overall media ability has improved vastly over this process, I have learnt many editing, filming and production techniques. I feel that all my skills I have learnt will benefit me in my future careers and life ambitions.  

How effective is the link between your main production and ancillary texts?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oT-nzLZIvs4&feature=g-all-u&context=G2271f00FAAAAAAAAAAA

In this video, me and Edward discuss how our ancillary texts (Billboard Poster and Magazine Poster) link and synergise with our trailer. We discuss the synergy of images, font styles, character links and our inspirations from other soap trailers, below is the script of our voiceover for reference if there is any clarity issues:

Key:

1.       On black screen

2.       Posters

3.       Footage

1 .J:  this is our commentary for our media product (the soap trailer Avenue)

1. E: We will be explaining our direction for the product synergy along with our ancillary texts (the tv-listings magazine and poster).

2. J: We had a unanimous decision from the beginning to use the name ‘Avenue’, and the tagline ‘There are two sides to every story’ and we have focused upon this with our ancillary texts.

2. E: for example, we used the same synergy for our ‘soap posters’ having the same tagline and title.

2. J: The poster’s main image was also a screen shot from the last scene in our soap which shows all the cast standing together.

2. E:  This lets the audience know who the main characters are and again shows synergy.

J: This is the beginning of our trailer, it showcases a stereotypical drunken character who is missing his daughter and drowning his sorrows, he is down on his luck and the local thug as is shown in the next scene.

E: Originally we planned to use him as the central character but felt it wasn’t the right move as the other characters wouldn’t get so much attention.

E: We used a homosexual couple as it is a contemporary aspect of today’s society

J: We showed one of these characters in our poster displaying his feminine side to establish his persona in the soap.

E: Now in this scene we used an adult figure, we did this to show a range of age groups, disappointingly he could not make it to the final group shot so consequently does not appear in either of our ancillary texts.  

J: We used a Dutch tilt in this scene to show shot variation

J: In this scene, we highlighted another contemporary issue, this being drug dealing.

E: Here we see two rebellious characters which show the darker side of society, in our TV-poster the hooded character is sitting down showing his place in the social hierarchy.

J: This shot relates to our tag line ‘there are two sides to every story’ as the characters both go their separate ways, with both stories having different consequences

E: These are our TV-listing magazine ancillary texts. I used typical conventions and used some central characters from this scene, detailing a love triangle. I hoped to use the photo to establish their feelings towards each other, I also used a dramatic title to establish the conflict of the situation.

J: The TV listings magazine also shows Emily and Mark together, with the boy in the love triangle standing on his own, this synergies their current relationship situation in the soap. 

E: The bouquet in this scene is important and acts as a catalyst for a range of stories in the soap, it represents one character’s lust for a woman and then emphasises our ‘nerd’ characters behaviour.

J: The final scene of our trailer synergises all of our ancillary texts as this shot will be a iconic part of the soap, it will change as new characters come and go, this was inspired by Hollyoaks’ openings

E: The outro was made to be conventional of a BBC trailer

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

With my soap trailer this year, I have used a much wider range of technology than I used in my foundation portfolio, the screenshot above shows the flower scene being edited on Final Cut Pro X. The top left of the screenshot shows all the .wav audio files I used in my trailer, this included the voiceovers and sound effects. On the top bar, the .mp3 file of our song is highlighted as it had just been dragged and included in the project, this had to be exported via a memory stick from a standard windows XP PC, this required some file conversion from .wmv , by extracting the black screen and just using the audio file.      

This image shows the most complex use of the functionality available in Final Cut Pro, you can see 3 ovals on the preview box, the outside oval is used to change the lighting effects, the second circle effects the hue/ saturation levels and the inside circle is for the brightness. With some adjustments and some video effects such as the hard lighting colour preset,I was able to choose and customise my final colour correction for the final render and the completed copy. It also shows footage recorded from the Sony HD camera, this allowed us to have full 1080p footage to record and edit with, this made post-production much easier and allowed a more professional final piece.

The above clip showcases the use of title creation in Final Cut Pro X. I had some prior experience at using titles and transitions from both last years coursework in the foundation portfolio by using Adobe Premier Pro, I also have a large amount of experience using the editing programme Pinnacle Studios 14. With this knowledge, I was able to manipulate the title to insert my own texts and fonts. With my understanding of colour correction, I was also able to change the saturation and gives the title more of an edgy and modern feel, as opposed to the standard red, I went for a contrasted yellow with a red hue. I also used some time manipulation on this title sequence to ensure it was in synchronisation with the audio overlay.

The above image shows the Sony HD camera we used to film our production. This used an SD card which made capturing and adding the clips to the time line very simple, as oppose to the Canon standard definition camera which used tapes last year, the footage had to be extracted from the tapes and converted into a.WMV file, this lowered the quality of the clips which in turn, lowered the overall quality of the final production. With the HD Sony camera, I was able to record in 1080p, I was then able to directly extract these files onto a memory stick, which let me edit the clips in full quality and also render them with good colour correction, which allowed for a more professional and authentic final piece.

For the planning of the production, I used Youtube to watch and analyse previous soap trailers from previous the BBC youtube channel, this allowed me to take conventions from the trailers which I could then use as inspiration for my soap, I have some previous posts on this blog with evidence of this, I also used Youtube to upload my final productions, this allowed me to get another medium of feedback and evaluation from the web 2.0. Getting the full advantage of Web 2.0 has allowed me to produce an authentic and realistic products. It has most greatly benefited the evaluation and planning, as mentioned in the Audience Feedback evaluation task.

I also used Microsoft Office to an extent for my panning and evaluating. I used Microsoft Word to create a list of aims for my films, as well as a time scale with the planned finish times for each stage of the production, I also use Word to write scripts for my evaluation tasks and have also used it to spell-check and grammar check my blog posts. 

The digital camera we used for location photos and concepts was the Fujifilm finepix S5800. This was an 8 Megapixel camera with a 10x optical zoom, this allowed for high quality location photos and gave us a good concept of our filming location.


Excel was used for my questionnaire feedback, I produced an excel spreadsheet displaying my results, this allowed me to see what aspects of the trailer needed to be changed in the form of a graph, it made the results more coherent and easier to indicate the weaker areas of the trailer, I go into more detail with this in my Audience Feedback post. 

 

Finally, I used photoshop to produce both of my ancillary texts. I explored the use of blending options and partial glows on texts and images with my TV Listings magazine. Photoshop was very useful in the construction stage as it has a wide array of tools and editing effects such as crops, glows, shadowing, tiling etc which allow a wider range and more diverse design for the ancillary texts as opposed to using a simpler programme such as Publisher. My skills in Photoshop have greatly developed over this advanced portfolio as I had to be more creative with my poster and TV listings magazine, this is because all my own images had to be used, in the foundation portfolio, we were allowed to use third party images for posters, taking our own photos on the HD canon cam allowed for more freedom with the storylines and images as we could plan what is in the camera shot, as we used our own pictures they would have a direct link as they were taken purely for the purpose of the magazine front cover. With my poster, I used a screengrab from youtube of my production and added text layers and some shadowing to the image, this created synergy as the final production and the ancillary texts all had similar construction components and a running theme. 

Tv Weekly

What Have you learnt from your audience feedback?

I have collected some more audience feedback from other year groups, as well as friends and subscribers on facebook and YouTube respectively, from this I have gathered some issues with the trailer which could be changed, these being: 
- Some scenes are too slow 
- Non-diagetic voiceovers are difficult to hear over non-diagetic music 
- Trailer is too long
- More editing on first and second scene
- Andrew Williamson: 'I think that's good, nice use of shots, nice editing, nice music. One suggestion I have for you is, if grunge is what you're going for (which it seems to be), perhaps rather than a voiceover you could do a direct address shot with the same dialogue in a similar style to a scene in Fight Club where Tyler is talking to the audience and the camera shakes from side to side. I don't know if the software you've got will allow you to recreate that perfectly, but it's something that you could perhaps take the concept from...'


I have already begun work on this feedback, however, we did have some very positive feedback. Some examples being: 

Facebook:

Amelia: 'Literally love it Spolly, so so good. Edited so well to the music, the characters are each introduced just enough so you understand who is who but want to find out more about them... I would go as far to say that I'm jel of your skill :( seriously though, it's awesomely done xxxx'


Laura: 'Is it for teens? if so, great!! you can get away with the transitions like hollyoaks if it's for teens.. and the music... great!'

Emily: 'that was AWEESOME. Although, if they guy wants her to like him. he should've taken the price tag of the flowers ;)'

Richard: ' Loving Ant's and Ed's gay romance.'

 Youtube:

omgItsPeter: 'That was amazing, looks like Skins or something!' 

This audience feedback was unanimous, especially from our target audience of teenagers aged 16-19 as well as some 20+ who also commented saying they thought it was very well done and that they'd watch it, I feel that using social networking and web 2.0 to promote a production such as this is very effective as this gives a captive audience of our main target audience. Nevertheless, I still want to improve the trailer and have stopped several things I feel I could improve on from an editors aspect, such as fast cuts which synchronise to the drum beats and overall improvement to the audio synchronisation. 

We also conducted a questionnaire with a small focus group of the lower scale of our demographic, these are the results:

From this feedback, we saw that the younger scale of our demographic would be interested in watching the soap, with 100% of the audience stating a desire to watch it.

1.       After watching the trailer, would you say the trailer is advertising the soap genre?

2.       Would you watch the soap after watching the trailer

3.       Is the music appropriate?

4.       Should there be texts with the voiceover?

5.       Is the trailer the right length?

6.       Are there enough stereotypical characters?

7.       Is there a variety of shot types?

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

 I have selected nine screen shots from my film which I feel justify the ways in which my soap trailer uses, develops and challenges the conventions of a real soap trailer.

- In the first image, we used a long shot to showcase a summary of the key characters in the cast, this shot also showed the name of the soap on the street sign for authenticity and realism. Paired with this shot was a stereotypical non-diagetic voiceover saying the name of the soap 'Avenue' as well as the tagline 'There's two sides to every story'. This image was also used for the billboard poster for synergy of the product and for instant recognition of this shot in a similar way that Eastenders use London from a birds eye view. I felt this shot could also be used within the soaps title sequence with the next shot being the first scene of the episode, when key characters leave/ join, this shot can be re-filmed and can be a continual aspect of the soap and can develop and the cast progresses.
- The second image shows a young man in a pub looking at a picture of his daughter, the text on screen quotes 'Drink away your sorrows' this storyline is one of the key plotlines for the soap, we only hinted upon certain aspects such as who the mother was and why he was drinking in the first place, I felt this would bring intrigue from the audience and encourage them to watch the soap to discover the story behind his sorrow. This challenges current soap trailers as they already have backstories implemented for the characters and have established plots/ families, with a new soap, having a back story for the characters is not possible so we had to film shots which highlighted the key aspects of their characters persona's. 
- The third image shows a mid shot of two of the soaps younger characters; these characters are engaged in an illegal act, this is a conventional characteristic of young soap characters who are usually 'anti-social' or 'rebellious', I emphasised this by adding the text 'Rebellious' at the beginning of their scene. We wanted to meet the conventional stereotype in Soaps that most young men and 'Jack The Lad' Esq characters are mischievous, I feel this was showcased in the trailer.
- The fourth image shows the introduction of the gay couple, we wanted to make this storyline controversial where the gay couple are excluded and made to feel like outsiders, we conducted some research and saw that must gay couples are treated equally, but in reality (especially amongst youngsters) homosexuality it not as easily accepted, we wanted to make gay couples relate to this, later in the show we would eventually resolve the issue in a realistic way to act as guidance to homosexuals. So with this scene we are meeting, challenging and developing the convention as we are highlighting a contemporary issue, showing the darker side (Exodus from peers) and developing their relationship as a key storyline. Another soap which has had a similar storyline recently is Eastenders, with a gay couple, this also links ethnicity as being homosexual is not allowed in Sayeed's religion. Image 9 also shows the gay couple, this time it's paired with the text 'never accepted' and Edward (Left) crying onto Anthony (Right) this shows that both of the characters are in touch with their emotions and care for each other, the Never Accepted highlights the points I made earlier in this post.
- The fifth image shows a contrast of our soap and highlights our tag line 'there's two sides to every story'. It showcases one of the older characters in the soap leaving the dry cleaners with a suit, which shows he is a man working in the business world, he is then confronted and nudged by a hooded teen, who knocks his jacket to the ground. We then see the reaction of the adult to the hooded boys action. We used the conventional mid shots and long shots to establish this scene and a mid shot, dutch tilt when he picks up the suit, this shot is uncommon in soaps, especially in trailers, we felt that variety in shot types on one of the slower paced scenes would add more interest and appeal to the trailer, so we used a tilted shot as opposed to a standard low angle.  
- The sixth shot shows a stereotypical and conventional storyline a 'love traingle' between one girl and two men. The shot in the image is an over the shoulder from the character who is trying to woo the female, but his heart is broken when he sees her kissing another man, he throws the flowers to the ground whilst looking over at them, the love triangle is a common storyline for soaps, especially amongst youngsters, this storyline has many possibilities to develop, with the introduction of new love interests and characters to keep the story flowing, however, in the trailer we wanted to meet the stereotypical convention of this storyline. This scene is also shown in the eight shot where the male character is shown doing his hair in a car reflection window, showing he cares about his appearence and wants to impress the girl, we used this shot to identify the character and show his personality (confident, romantic) we also highlighted that he doesn't have much money as he has purchased £ flowers.
- The seventh image shows one of the stranger aspects of our soap, we wanted to have a character who met the 'geek' stereotype. We met this with his attire (white shirt, pocket protector, black trousers and big glasses) but we wanted him to be more unusual and abstract, so we gave him an obsession with flowers, he sees the love triangle character drop the flowers and this is shown through cross cuts, he then runs over to the flowers and picks them up, a close-up shows a big smile on his face as he walks away with the flowers in his hand, this scene ends with him kicking his feet together in a comical fashion. This leads to the final shot of the trailer.



Avenue: Second Draft