Report

AS Media Studies – Coursework

Evaluative Report

My main tasks were to create a DVD cover, a teaser poster and main campaign poster. Besides, I had a lot of pre-production and research done. My genre was supernatural (paranormal), and so before starting I had to research films within this genre. I had to conduct a lot of research about this genre to discover typical conventions of a supernatural film DVD covers, teaser posters and main campaign posters and also to understand how to intrigue audience with my posters. The supernatural subgenre was always interesting for me, in my opinion it is the most terrifying, thrilling and in the same way very cryptic. After conducted research, I understood that nowadays this subgenre is the most popular one in our society because it is more controversial than other ones (e.g. zombies, gorno etc.).

The first task we have done was pre-production, it consisted of textual and content analysis, carrying out a questionnaire and interviews, planning and carrying out a focus group, audience profile etc. and 4 main objectives were typography – font choices, photo ideas, layout ideas and photo manipulation ideas. In terms of pre-production, I was analysing two different texts – ‘The Last Exorcism’ and ‘Quarantine’, both of them are quite controversial and presented like recovered footage. Also, I have carried out a questionnaire which helped me to understand audience’s thoughts and opinions. It really helped me to choose a subgenre for my film and a style for my future posters.  I have learnt a lot about the financial main campaign of paranormal activity, it is the most interesting example to look at, because their box office is just incredible – $193,355,800 when budget is – $15,000.

The second part of pre-production was – your preproduction product, it consisted of typography mock ups – font choices, photo ideas, layout ideas and photo manipulation ideas. In my opinion, it was the most interesting part of pre-production because we have had to make our own products for the first time. I used to use some video editing programs in my own time, but I have never used ‘Photoshop’ or any photo manipulation programs, I was really excited about that because I always have some creative ideas in my mind. I have done three different fonts and two pictures, one of the pictures was my own and another was from the Internet.

I have targeted my target audience through ‘Facebook’, ‘Formspring’ and also I have used my friends in college