James Laraways evaluation

Introduction
This is my evaluation of our groups coursework which includes a soap trailer as well as ancillary tasks that were posters and a magazine cover. We seperated the work into three so that i and the other two members of my group Hannah Gilrane and Robert Maclean would all have somthing to contribute to the project. My main contribution was creating the ancillary tasks which i did straight after filming and reaserching both the trailer and the ancillary tasks were i found that soap trailers are very similar to film trailers in that they bring up a lot of enigmas and i found out how we should design our posters and magazine by looking at other soap magazines, as well as this i was apart of the filming process of the trailer both on and off screen. In this evaluation i will be talking about the type of genre that our products represent, the brand of our soap and how we pushed this brand. As well as this I will be evaluating our work seeing what we did well and what we would change to do this I will also take into account some audience feedback we have gathered. As well as this I will talk about what I have learnt by doing this project and what new media technologies I have learnt and used.


Question one: Genre
When reaserching for our soap trailer we realsied that a soap trailer does not follow the conventions of a soap opera. Knowing this we tried to make the trailer seem like a film trailer so we set the trailer to make it look like a poker game with a gangster similar to a scene in the film lock stock and two smoking barrels which shows poker scenes in the trailer.

Soap television trailers are created to advertise a particular storyline that is happening or that is going to happen in a soap. These trailers usually focus on one character that the storyline revolves around.
An example of a soap trailer that represents a soaps storyline in the same way is Corination Streets trailer about Tony (below). This trailer revolves around one character Tony but has the same theme as our trailer in that it is Tonys dark side against his light, the fight between good and evil which is what our trailer is.




Knowing this we devised our TV trailer to do the same, the genre of our soap is a dark gritty northern drama and the storyline we created represents this sort of soap. The trailer coincides with this theme because it is a typical storyline for a soap like ours. The trailer shows the storyline of a love triangle with a dark twist there is one good guy who is dressed in white and a bad guy who is a gangster who is dressed in black to show he is the evil one. The genre of our soap trailer would be apart of the gangster genre with the protagonist being a gangster and the love intrest being his girlfriend. We used the typical conventions of a gangster film in the trailer. The mise-en-scene is a dark room were the characters are playing poker and the woman is dressed up to represent the woman of a gangster this was done by having her dress up in an expensive dress and with expensive jewelry. Another convention of the gangster genre we used was to have a typical scene were the gangster is drinking whisky and on the final shot of the trailer we see him drinking it which is typical of a Hollywood gangster which is the type of character we were trying to show him as. It was important for us to use these typical elements of a gangster in the trailer because the storyline revolves around the protagonist gangster so he needed to be identified as a gangster. To do this we needed to use the typical stereotypes of a gangster like the black suit and the whisky. Although we did need to establish he was the bad guy gangster by using stereotypes we intentionally left out some typical Hollywood stereotypes of a gangster like showing he had a gun or smoking a cigar. The reason we did this was because we did not want him to seem too much of an American gangster and those things are typical of an Italian American gangster. The clip of the Godfather below shows the stereotypes of an italian american gangster who is talking about respect and about putting his family first, we did not want our gangster to be the same we needed him to seem selfish and dangerous and a man who believes that his girlfriend is his property.




Another thing we did different to the typical gangster genre was to not have the gangster up against another gangster rather we had his rival be the nice guy who his girlfriend falls in love with and to show that he was the nice guy we had him dressed in white and have a lot less chips than the gangster showing that he would struggle to compete with him. It was vital to make changes to the typical stereotype of a gangster because it would have been boring because people would look at it and think that they have seen it a hundred times before. We believed that the innovation of having a innocent good guy as the love interest and rival to the gangster would be better than two gangsters or two normal people this is because the audience know who to support and would watch the show to see the good guy succeed or fail in his attempt to win the girl. The audience showed this through there feedback were they said they could easilly recognise who the characters were. So if they could recognise them it would be easy for thge audience to know who to support.

Question 2: Branding and brand image
The brand image of our product is a dark gritty drama similar to the soap Eastenders but it is set in the North. Our logo (logo below)



fits our brand image because it is a picture of Blackburn with challenge way written accross it and Blackburn is a gritty urban northen town so fits with the type of theme we want to portray. We managed to maintain this brand image throughout all our different products. For example the posters (posters below)


(This image above has lines on it this was a fault with the indesign programme which we could not fix so we were unable to fix the problem.)









are of all the characters either together or on their own, on a black background and all the characters look intense showing that it is a dark show. In our magazine cover (below)




we try to maintain the brand image by having the characters looking intense and dressed in black and white showing a dark theme to the soap. We had to do this quite discretely because it was a typical soap magazine tv choice which has its own brand image of being a trashy soap magazine so we could not let it look too dark because it would not have gone with the brand image of the magazine. I believe that the media institution BBC would distribute our media product because it also distributes a similar product in Eastenders so i believe that they would be happy to distribute our product becasue Eastenders has proven to be a success so they would exept the same from our product. We can see that the BBC likes to distribute dark gritty products this is seen in the Eastenders advertisement below. It is the Max eastenders trailer in which it talks about his death to dark onimous music which gives the theme of a man on his walk to the gallows so obviously there is a dark theme to the storyline which our trailer also has.

Branding is very important in promoting a product as it helps give the product a reputation and build a relationship between the brand and the product. It was important to us to have a recognisable image that our audience and even people who dont watch our soap will be able to recognise. To be able for our product to be this recognisable we decided to create a brand image for our product that was similar to another very recognisable soap Eastenders. We made our brand image similar to Eastenders by making our product dark, gritty and realistic. Our trailer, posters and magazine cover all portary the image of a dark gritty drama by the characters looking intense and being in black and white through part of the film and on the posters. 

The Eastenders logo (below) is a simple birds eye view of the east end of London the connotations of this is crime, working class and controvasy which is the type of brand image that we are trying to show. We therfore created a similar logo which is an overview of Blackburn with the title of our soap, challenge way across it in a similar way to the Eastenders logo. Like the Eastenders logo our logo gives connatations that are similar to the east end of London because they are similar to Blackburn which is why we chose to set our soap in Blackburn becasue it gives the dark urban theme that the east end of London does for Eastenders.

Question 3: Audience

The outline of the audience that we are aiming our product at is explained through grass.

G – We are mainly aiming for a female audience

R – We are not really aiming for any specific race there is nothing that any races will find offensive.

A – Age range is between 16 – 35

S – c1/c2 on the socio economic scale

According to Young and Rubicams cross cultural consumer characteristics our target audience is the mainstream audience. This is a very good audience to target because the mainstream audience is the largest mass audience so if the mainstream likes it then it will be a success. The mainstream audience is just normal people with normal lives and that is what our soap revolves around, it is a dark gritty drama that throws up a lot of enigmas so will appeal to the mainstream. The socio-economic status is groups c1 and c2 which is the lower middle class and working class. We chose a female audience because that is who mainly watch soaps as well as this our storyline is a love traingle which is one that women would relate to more than men. However the characters in the storyline like the gangster and the theme of good versus evil would also entice men into watching it. Niehter the storyline or the plot is aimed at any specific race or is aimed to exclude any race the plot is somthing anyone can relate togood versus evil and a story of love. Our age range is between 16 and 35 we have aimed for this audience becasue the brand image of our soap is a gritty and real life soap drama so people between the ages of 16 and 35 will be able to relate to it easilly. The reason that we have aimed for the c1/c2 groups on the socio-economic scale is because that is what our soap revolves around working class people struggling with everyday life and therfore this audience would be able to relate to it because they would recognise the same trails and tribulations that they go through. Even though we do have a specific age range of 16-35 for our trailer the gangtser elemelnt of our trailer will be liked by the older generation who grew up watching gangster films like the Godfather films and Goodfellas. I am able to show the basic human needs that our product fulfils by using Maslows hierarchy of needs theory. Our product represents love and belonging it does this becasue it is a love triangle with a good and innocent cahracter versus an evil gangster. The audience will watch the soap because they will want to root for the good guy and hope that she will pick him rather than the gangster.
Our trailer focuses on the personal relationship catagory from Bulmer, McQuail and and Browns four catagories the stroyline of our trailer lets our audience feel a relationship between them and the characters for instance women may have been in the same situation either stuck between two men or a man who is abusive. To get the attention of our audinces we used our ancillary products to advertise the soap and the storyline. The posters are meant for bus shelters and billboards and the colors that we have chosen along with the photographs, slogan and chice of font is meant to push the brand image and to attract our target audience and to represent the type of storyline we are portraying.
Proior to decieding on our target audience we decided to do some audience reaserch, this was asking questions to all different types of people to see who would be our best target audience. The information we were looking for was gender, age, favourite storylines, if they watch adverts and if they are influenced to watch television programmes by adverts. This powerpoint shows the results from our audience feedback prior to creating our video.

Feedback From Audience

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We used both indesign and photoshop in making the magazine cover which was effective because we used a typical soap magazine that the mainstream audience reads tv choice, so the mainstream now understand what our soap is about and they will be attracted to watch it. We created our products with our audience in mind in that the products are centered around the theme of good versus evil and that is clearly represented in our products were the villain is dressed in black while the hero is in white. The reason this is important to our audience is because the mainstream audience is a typical Hollywood audience were they always root for the hero so the theme of good versus evil would appeal to them.

After we completed our product and ancillary tasks we showed the trailer to fifteen people to gather feedback and see what went down well and what we could have improved on. The majority of people said that they thought it was a good soap trailer becasue it through up a lot of enigmas. They also thought that the characters were clearly represented through stereotypes, especially the gangster. The audience thought that it could have been improved by less black and white shots so it could clearly represent the colors of the characters costumes and therfore established the characters more clearly. After getting this feedback i would make some small changes to the video but i would only make some slight changes to it like showing the love intrests costume in color more because i think the colors of the other two characters do not need to be changed because they are dressed in black and white so that shows up in black and white shots anyway. Overall our audience feedback was good with some minor concerns that could have been easilly ratified if we did the project again.
Example audience feedback sheets...

Question 4: Use of Creative technologies – skills you have learned

We used many different technologies in the construction of our main products. The video camera that we used to film our video was the first time that I had used a video camera in a project like this. Although I had never used a camera like this one before I went through training on how to use them so I was capable of shooting the video. After we filmed our video we had to edit our footage on final cut express and the only member of our group who had any experience on the programme was Rob so I was able to learn anything I needed to off what he told me. I found that final cut express was quite easy to use and there was a lot that could be done on it to improve the video like changing speed and color which was important because a large portion of our video was in black and white. Another programme that I used was InDesign which was used to create our ancillary products. I found using InDesign was very easy because I had already had used it in the previous year, so the creation of the posters and magazines were easier because I had already created something similar in the previous college year. As well as this we used a still camera in order to take images of our character for the ancillary products, take pictures of the props that we used (below)

we also used it to take pictures of our logo challenge way which is an overview of Blackburn. Again I had used this type of camera before in my media product last year so I found it easy to use again.

When doing planning for our product we used a variety of different programmes one of them would be blogger were we planned and wrote down everything that we had done this was very helpful because it allowed us to remember everything that we had done and see what we needed to do next. We also used it in the reaserch part of our product by going on the internet and finding images of different soap magazines and putting them on blogger. This helped us because we could now see what the design of our posters and magazine should look like. As well as this we used the video camera again to capture our animatic/storyboard so we could show what our original plan for the video was and see what changes and/or improvements we made to it.

To create our video we used final cut express and in that programme we put everything that we had previously filmed which was one 8 minute, one 3 minute and one 11 minute videos which we had to cut down to one video under 90 seconds. In order to cut the video and keep the parts of the video that we needed we used the razor blade tool which let us cut the video at a certain point so it allowed us to keep whay we needed and disgard what we did not. Using final cut express allowed us to edit the video in different ways by clicking on video transitions we were able to change the way we went from one scene to another the first way we did this was the fade in fade out cut which allowed to fade out of one scene and fade into another. Another benefit to using final cut express was being able to make some of the scenes black and white by pressing desaturate on image control. This allowed us to change our video to black and white in certain scenes this was important in portraying the brand image of not only the soap but the stroyline which was  dark and gritty. As well as this final cut express aloowed us to change the speed and even rewind certain  scenes that we felt needed to be sped up or reversed. An example of us changing the speed and reversing the scene was the coin flip scene were we pressed modify - speed - 50% and reverse which reversed the scene at a slow pace and looked good. There were not many drawbacks to final cut express the main but one of the main ones was it was very complicated and not very clear. The specific words and tools we needed to change the video in certain ways were not very clear and we spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to edit the video which was time we should have been using to think of ways in which we could have further improved the video.

In creating our ancillary tasks we used both indesign and photoshop this helped me in creating the layout of the magazine and posters as well as allowing me to edit the pictures of the characters. In the programme photoshop i used it to edit the photographs of the main characters i used the pen tool to cut out my pictures from there backgrounds and then i went on to desaturate the images to make them black and white, we did this so that it would go with the brand image of the soap and trailer which is also shot in some black and white shots. In the magazine the images had yellow tones so we needed to reduce the saturation in order to make them look more professional. The advantages of photoshop were it was very clear and simple to use the tools were simple which allowed me cut the images very neatly and clearly. There were some disadvantages the main one being was when we put our images onto indesign it kept a black background that we had removed in photoshop but it still showed up in indesing and when we printed them off, this was a flaw with photoshop which we could not fix as it was a problem with the programme.
 The other main technology that we used in creating our posters and magaine cover was indesign this programme we used a lot and it was very important in creating our magazine cover and posters. The reason that it was important was because it allowed us to create a proffesional looking posters and magazine cover which was important because we based our magazine cover on a real magazine. It also enabled me to take the images from photoshop and edit them even further, i was able to resize the images without loosing the deltail. I did not feel that there were any real problems i thought that it was easy to use and clearly represented in the tools so i was able to create proffesional posters and the magazine cover which stayed with the theme of our brand image.

As well as these programmes i also used different websites in creating my products and doing my reaserch.
The first of these websites was blogger, this was important to us in the reaserch, creating and evaluation of our products. Blogger allowed us to keep track of what we had done and it allowed us to store reaserch on it that we needed in creating our products. The reason that blogger helped us as a group was because it let us put everything we needed in one place, instead of each one of our group having information that another needed it was all easilly accesable in one location. I did not find any real problems with blogger it was easy and simple to use and allowed us to share with each other what we were doing when we were out of lesson.

Another important website that we used was the creative commons website jamendo although we only used it once it was important in creating our product. This website allowed us to select the song that would be on our video and it we were able to get the song for free. The website gave us a good song called house from the rising sun this was a song that not only went with our trailer it also was a song in the gangster film casino so it went with the gangster theme of our trailer.

As well as this we aslo used the search engine  google for our reaserch on posters, magazine covers and soap storylines. Google allowed us to get images of other soaps and see how they were trying to promote a storyline. We also used it in creating the layout of our magazine tv choice we looked up many different magazine covers on google in order to understand how we should lay out our own magzine cover.

Youtube was another website that we used especially in the reaserch part of our project. It allowed us to look at different soap and film trailers to see how they should be done and so this gave us a base in how a soap trailer should look and as we found out soap trailers look more like film trailers. We also put our video on Youtube in order to get some more audience feedback but this did not prove as successful as the audience feedback sheets because we did not get many views or any comments.

Conclusion
 Overall i feel that we were pariculaly effective in creating a strong brand image for our product. We were completely focused on creating a brand image that our products would be able to push and i belive that is what we created. Our trailer, storyline and ancillary tasks all pushed the brand image of a dark gritty soap opera, our focus in all of our products was to display this image. Our logo was particularly important in making our audince relate to our soap the tiltle challenge way and the set of Blackburn clearly connotates well and shows our brand image which is dark and urban. The logo also allows our audience to have a sense of familiarity with our product and therfore they will associate our logo with our different products.
 I belive i have contributed a lot to our project and completed all of my tasks to the best of ability. The things that i felt i was srongest at was both the reaserch and ancillary tasks and therfore that is were i focused most of my attention. I managed my time well and i was able to focus on the task at hand which was neccessary to make the products successful.