Our trailer was nominated for the 'Best Trailer' category of 'Young Filmakers of the Year Awards, by Zoom Cymru, which is sponsored by the BAFTA's. It was a great experience to go along to the evening and we were so grateful to have been nominated.
Here is my finished poster, I didn't have to edit the picture of Zak at all. It was an original photo with the gray background that I liked and decided to keep. I added in my edited E4 logo and created the BOYS' VILLAGE with a simple Photo Shop font and under laid an image of a rave/party.
Here is my final front cover for a magazine promoting the new soap opera Boys' Village. I have decided to put Karl as the central character to promote the soap as he features as one of the main characters through our trailer. Karl is the drug dealer and is the only character who speaks during the trailer, adding importance to his character.
Here is my magazine cover, I have used a gray background and creams and a dark turquoise for the writing as these colours are not considered the custom colours of a magazine but these different colours would attract a new, young teen audience that we are hoping to target. By putting this promotion in a Teen magazine 'Teen Times' it directly talks to the target audience. I used photoshop to create this piece and edited the E4 logo so I didn't breach any copyrights.
I took the inspiration from the Radio Times Robbie Williams edition
Here is a video of what we learned from our audience feedback. To get the best form of audience feedback we decided to put on a media showcase for the staff and upper years of our school. We asked them different questions like;
What did you enjoy about Boys' Village?
Did you enjoy being part of the making of the film process? (to a cast member)
Would you watch Boys' Village if it was on television?
If theres anything you would change about Boys' Village what would you do?
Would you be able to follow the story lines?
Who was your favourite character in the trailer?
For the Media coursework we had to create a one - two minute soap opera trailer introducing a new soap.
We decided to aim our soap opera at teenagers as we ourselves found the audience relatable and understand what others would like as we have a similar perspective of entertainment.
As big fans of E4's teen drama Skins, we thought it would be appropriate to create a soap opera similar to this. We wanted to be fearless and be able to tackle any issue appropriately in our own soap. This is why we decided to look at homosexuality and drug abuse. Two common, but tender subjects that a lot of teens are familiar with, if not directly involved in.
E4 logo
Skins cast
Thus, Boys' Village was created, the title coming from its filming location, it connoted a sense of child like fun and although predominately a male title 'boys'' our tag line let us appeal to both sexes. 'Boys' Village, where the girls come to play.'
So our main task was to create a soap opera trailer. After we had done this, we had to create a Front Cover of a magazine promoting our new soap and a Poster as the ancillary tasks.
Photoshop
We got to explore and gain new skills whilst using Photoshop we made our front covers and posters. The whole experience was fun as we got to do a photo shoot and use professional cameras. However, in our heavily computerate generation today we didn't think posters and front covers had the best place to gain a wider audience, unless they were digital posters and front covers.
Here is one of the main characters, Paige. In the film she has blonde hair but in our photo shoot, poster and front cover she has brown hair.
Between creating our film and our poster one of our main characters, who we based one of our posters and front covers on dyed her hair. However this was not a problem as it just shows how teens like to change their appearances and ideas about themselves a lot, and we were able to show this from our trailer to the poster.
I got my inspiration from a Radio Times magazine featuring Robbie Williams. I changed the football for a party blower and have had them pulling a similar pose but have decided to use different, brighter colours to intrigue a younger, wider audience.
I decided to base my front cover on the drug dealing character Karl. We got to take over 1000 photo's on our photo shoot so I had plenty of choice to look through and choose from. I decided to do take a photo of Karl with a party popper in his hand like a cigarette. During the photo shoot we had lots of balloons, party poppers, hats and blowers to create a party like feel to fit in with the 'parties, pills and puberty' feel we wanted to show.
Here are an array of photos taken from the photo shoot, there were over 1000 photos taken on two professional cameras, one camera belonged to my friend Nia who was also in the film and the other camera belonged to the schools ICT technician.
Here is the original picture of Zak. We used party hats and blowers to play on the 'parties, pills and puberty' feel we wanted to create.
The second ancillary text we had to do was produce a poster to promote our new Soap Opera. After I had chosen the picture I didn't want to change it much. I felt adding text on top would be enough, I wanted it to be simple but not boring. To get a colourful background on the word 'BOYS VILLAGE' I used a simple text font on photo shop and made the writing transparent. Then I included a picture of a rave/party to get this effect. To make my poster appeal to a younger teen audience that I wanted I included a code for them to scan, this would then take them to the e4 website which was linked on the side of the picture.
On the left is a close up of the font I used and the image I put under it. On the right I put the image that I used.
code used
Both my ancillary texts complemented my trailer for my soap opera in different ways. During the trailer we do not use any party hats, balloons, etc. But we show the teenagers having fun and drinking, suggesting at a party like feel. Especially as we were using 'parties, pills and puberty' to explain our soap opera. The alliterative tripled phrase excites our teenage audience and shows three different area's of life that they will be familiar with.
When putting on a media showcase for the staff and upper years of the school I got to use my poster to promote the event. I added some information about the event so people knew what was happening. Here is the poster;
now both my poster and front cover have been completed, and our trailer is on youtube our final task is to complete the evaluation.
To complete the evaluation I have to complete and answer the following four questions:
1. In what way doesyour media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluatuion stages?
On the day of our photoshoot we did a lot of planning. We had to close off the resources area in the English block as this was going to be where we were shooting at lunch time.
In the morning, Stevie, Stephen and myself went off to buy props to create a party feel for our cast while we photographed them. We bought party hats and balloons and then filled one of the balloons with helium so someone could hold it on a piece of string. Between the three of us we blew up the balloons and asked Zak, Brandon, Ben, Karl, Nia, Paige and myself to get into costume. During the lunch time we took lots of photos of Zak and Brandon as they were unable to stay after school. We took over a thousand photos of one of the casts cameras, therefore we had a great variety of photos to choose from. Below are just a few of the thousand photos we ended up taking!
It was a very successful day and left us with some great material to create the best posters and front covers ever.
As our Boys' Village trailer follows a British grungy skins feel, we felt the best poster to base our own poster on was a skins poster.
The first skins poster features three main character girls from the 3rd and 4th series, although this is not an official poster the way they have masked an image onto the text was really inspiring to put in my own poster.
The second skins poster then features another three main characters, both male and female, from the 1st and 2nd series, this is an official poster and I like the way they are looking at the camera and breaking the 4th wall, including the audience.
The film is now on youtube! To complete our coursework this week I am finishing my front cover for a magazine and creating a series of posters. I will post them here when I am happy with the end product.
As the schools networks were still down at the end of term we were unable to finish our editing to our deadline. Over the Christmas holidays the three members of our group, Stevie, Stephen and myself are going to concentrate our skills on the research, planning and making of a tv listing front cover and poster.
We have edited together 1.21 minutes of footage so far. We have a strong and easy to follow trailer so far, however when editing together Bens story line, it did not flow as well and the story line we wanted to portray was no as easy to follow. The final scene that we have edited so far is of the group of teenagers sitting in a circle, they are chatting, drinking and exchanging drugs. Karl, our drug dealer character takes out some drugs, Ben stands up as if to walk away from the group and takes the drugs off Karl.
Our next scene is going to be easy to film and fit better into the teenage mise en scene we have already created.
We will use a fade to black to establish a new setting, and have a close up of someone using drugs. The next shot is someone putting a pill in their mouth, it is Ben. We will use the camera and pan around his head to an over the shoulder shot, showing Bens location, a sixth form common room. From this over the shoulder shot we see Karl walk in an towards Ben.
Tomorrow is our photoshoot. We have created a facebook group to keep in touch with everyone, tomorrow in our media lesson we will create a list of what shots we need to get at lunch time and then shots for after school. Then we can start our front covers and posters.
We have now finished all of the editing for the trailer. Below is the first cut of our trailer. We have changed the scenes including Ben and the drugs. The final cut looks much more professional this way. Also, we have tried to change the last image. I am determined to get a still image on the final moving image. However it is incredibly hard to fit the words 'Boys Village' on to our final scene. For some reason iMovie editor keeps cropping part of the title I want to add. I have been looking at this issue for the past week. And have some final ideas that I want to try tomorrow.
Today we were getting to re-film a school scene that involved Ben Hunter. However last night we had heavy snow and our school was closed. Hopefully we will be able to return to school on Monday, refill and edit by Wednesday ready to send our film off for the competition.
Here is an image on the snow which stopped filming today.
We have entered a media competition for the 'best trailer' category. We had to fill out an application where we had to explain our trailer in 30 words. Here is what we came up with:
"Boys Village, where the girls come to play. A controversial new soap that follows the lives of seven young adults through parties, pills and puberty."
As we have to create posters separately in our group, we have decided to create a series of posters that follow all of our story lines. We will have one of ben on his own, one of Paige, Zak and Brandon and another poster of the whole cast.
Glee is an American TV programme that follows the lives of teenage
misfits who find acceptance through song. You can tell this poster is American
as it uses bright, harsh colours and harsh edges on the characters giving the poster a
cheesy glow.
Here is the cast from the British e4 programme. You can tell it's a British poster
as it uses dark colours. Even the orange on their suits is a dull orange.
This poster is from the first series of Skins, these are two of
Now we have completed all of our editing, we have to play around with titles and a voice over for the last shot of our trailer. We have an English teacher who has an English accent who we would like to say 'Boy's Village, brand new british drama, coming soon to E4.' We have chosen him as he doesn't have a welsh accent, and will make the trailer applicable to all teenage audiences and not just a welsh one. we want to include the E4 logo, 'new british drama, coming soon to E4,' our title 'Boys Village' and our tag line 'where the girls come to play.'
Here is a quick shot list of what we hope to film in the next two days;
Shot one: close up some one popping pills on a sheet of paper - piece of paper is an essay that has been marked 'F'
Shot two: close up of mouth, person puts pills in his mouth
Shot three: medium close up of Bens face he closes his eyes and we fade to black
Shot four: close up of his eyes - he opens his eyes, we see his eye dilating.
