Evaluation 1

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

My finished media product is very similar to other films of the same genre, notably the British films “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels,” “Snatch”, and “Layer Cake”. Playing with Fire, the fake film for which we made the trailer, borrows ideas from a variety of different films, building on some whilst mirroring or dismissing others. It also shares more than a passing resemblance to films such as Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, essentially American versions of the films previously mentioned.

The crime setting is a core theme, with illegal card games, bank heists, murder, drugs, and mugging playing crucial roles in the story and the trailer. Ideas such as the illegal poker game stems from the film “Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels,” as a way of introducing the main character to the world of crime and also trapping the main character, forcing him to raise funds in increasingly dangerous and illegal ways in order to pay off his debt with his criminal contact.

The film does challenge the typical conventions of some crime films, however – often, there will be one crime boss in control of the whole criminal underworld, or at least the crimes going on in a certain city or country. This is challenged when a whole group of crime bosses from across the city converge in one room to play an illegal poker game. The main character is right in the middle, and loses it all. The crime bosses themselves are dressed in expensive suits, and more closely resemble businessmen than criminals. Whether or not the main character loses due to luck or due to one of the crime bosses cheating is unclear – what is important is that he loses, and is basically screwed from that point on.

In Pulp Fiction, Bret and Butch are the two different characters that screw over the main crime boss in the film (Marsellus Wallace). Of the two characters, Bret is murdered, and Butch is forced to flee the city and to never return – and that’s his reward for saving the crime boss from a horrible fate. The general idea behind all crime films is that if you mess with a criminal, you’ll probably get yourself killed unless you either make it up to them in some way, or kill them. This convention is displayed in Playing with Fire, where the main character owes one of the crime bosses a considerable amount of money, and is forced to commit crimes of varying degrees in order to pay back the debt they owe. The trailer shows off what could possibly be the character failing to pay back this debt, as they are confronted by the crime boss, tied to a chair, and held at gunpoint.

In terms of the form – a film trailer – it borrows from many different examples, mostly from action films where there are a few short scenes where the characters talk in order to inform the audience of what the plot is, followed by short, quick-cut shots of the action sections in order to pique the interest of potential viewers and excite those who are into action / crime films. Interlaced with these quick shots are titles and names of those involved, including the names of the actors and the director. Commentary over the top explains more of the plot as the action continues, and the title is left until the end. Establishing shots of urban environments are used in order to give some sense of location for the trailer, so the audience knows where the action is set. Basic shot transitions and few visual effects are also used; something small-time action films and crime-based movies are notorious for.


However, the trailer does challenge a few conventions of famous theorists - Vladimir Propp's Character theory, for example, is not followed in the trailer. While there is a hero, the hero is not aided by any kind of donor or helper. The only person who could be considered a donor or a helper changes to fit the role of the villain halfway through the trailer, being the main antagonist the main character has to defeat. There is no "princess" to be "saved". This subversion of conventions makes the characters more streamlined towards specific roles, taking on more than one role in the story. 

In conclusion, the film trailer borrows several different ideas from similar films, using conventions in order to give meaning to the events and allow the audience to understand the events occurring without giving an unusual amount of detain through commentary, dialogue or text. Some aspects of these conventions are challenged, mostly in the narrative and the plot of the trailer, but most of the trailer is relatively standard stuff.

Final Edited Trailer

I kind of forgot to post the final version of the trailer. It's been edited down, taking into account advice from viewers and criticisms we ourselves had about our work. You can find it here;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOhMPjeYd1Q&feature=plcp

It was edited down a little to fit within the time constraints, and in such a way that it didn't feel like it was dragging on or too much like a short film rather than a trailer. It was also edited by someone else this time, not me, so the general tone and feel of the trailer was different to the original.

Finished film magazine cover thing

For the second part of the task, we were required to create the front cover for a magazine featuring our film. Since I'd spent so much time on the film poster, I decided to simply use a variant on the music magazine that I'd created last year. If anything this meant that a) a great deal of research and design was skipped, as I'd already done all the work, and b) my A2 work linked back to my AS work, meaning that the two portfolios, instead of being completely separate, were now linked through one piece of work.

Anyway, here's the magazine cover;

As you can see by heading over to my AS level blog ( http://www.evlbzltyr.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/basically-finished.html )  the magazine cover shares a variety of similarities with the original music magazine. The general aesthetics are very similar, the fonts, the colours, and the style are all essentially the same. Even the titles are relatively similar - whereas the music magazine was called "Amplifier", I decided to call the film-centric edition "Amplifilm". This magazine, although from the same publishing company, was centred on films rather than music. It also meant that I was able to choose a relatively original sounding name for my magazine, something that couldn't have been done if I'd tried to come up with a new style.

The only real changes to the aesthetic style are to do with the film it's supposed to be featuring within its imaginary pages. The photo I chose to use for the front cover was originally going to be in the centre, but a combination of the text being hard to read when over the character's suit and the character looking to the left of the magazine meant that it looked better to move the photo over to the right. The text was a little hard to read at the bottom, so I used a "drop shadow" effect to add some 3d elements to the text and make it easier to read, essentially giving it a dark outline. There's a little bit of blank space at the top, but that can't be avoided. I tried making the gradient in the background darker to make it seem like there was more to the cover than there really was, but this didn't do much.

The text at the very bottom of the cover (the "playing with fire" text) I decided to type in the same font style as that of the film poster, to link the two pieces together and imply that the font used (Rockwell bold, or something like that. Don't worry Future Tim, I've got your back) was the one that the film was going to use throughout the entire marketing campaign, probably in the opening or closing credits for the film itself, and possibly eventually on the DVD case after it came out on DVD. The reason for the change in the colour scheme, however, was simple - wheras on the poster, the text for the film title was yellow, to match the warm reds and other colours on the poster, as well as fitting in with the Pulp Fiction conventions, the text on the magazine cover had to fit in with the rest of the aesthetics, and making the text yellow would have simply ruined the aesthetic look of the magazine.

While not as technically advanced as some of my peers, I was hoping to go for a more aesthetically pleasing design, rather than a technically brilliant yet ugly mess, which I knew would be the outcome if I tried some of the more advanced editing techniques I had previously planned. In order to keep the simplistic look and ensure that the text wasn't too hard to read or see against a cluttered background, I had to sacrifice a perhaps more technically advanced look and instead focus on making sure the basics were there and looked good, resultng in a simple, yet striking and original look.

If I had more time, I probably would've gone and done some further research on film magazines, but the fact is that I was running out of time and had to make some sacrifices in order to meet the deadline. At least it looks remarkably different to the film poster, giving two completely different designs based around the same subject.