Evaluation (First Draft)

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

  In my opinion, my websites uses the codes and conventions of other websites well. I have made the layout easy to look at by having my content in the centre of the page, with each article clearly divided into different sections. The space that doesn't have an article is normally the place where there is an advert for something that relates to something unexplained or is a link to the horror genre, for example a book entitled 'The Devil and His Works.'
  The colours red, black and white feature heavily throughout the website as these are the colours that I used for my logo because of the connotations for red and black being evil, danger, blood and mystery. The white is mainly used for the font and as backgrounds for the artist interpretations for the cryptid creatures. the only exception to white being used for the font is the article relating to Jack the Ripper's 'Dear Boss' letter, in which the article is written in red font to symbolise blood. I also tried to incorporate this colour scheme into the adverts placed around the website.
  This was based around the websites London Paranormal (http://www.londonparanormal.com/) and Unexplained Mysteries (http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/). I also tried to enhance it by making easier to look at by adding pictures to the articles they linked to and then only having small section of the articles shown and the user would have to click on a link to see the full article.

2) How effective is the combination of your main task and your ancillary texts?

  My website, newspaper advert and double page spread work well together because as they all share the same pictures to show they are connected. The main picture they share is of me as the character of Jack Bates (based on the real person Josh Gates, host of 'Destination Truth' on the channel 'SyFy'). This was done when I went out to film the shots needed to create the opening for 'Identify the Unknown', which itself is a reference to 'Destination Truth', which is what I based the whole idea on in the first place.
  They all follow the same colour scheme, each using  predominately red and black, with white occasionally being used. The obvious exceptions to this is the double page spread where the only colours used are Red and black (plus whatever colours are in the photos used on the spread) and the sign post representing the sign outside Area 51 in Nevada, which stands out because of its blueish background. I chose this colour because it stands out from the black background as well as helping the red text to stand out.
  All these aspects help in attracting the target audience, which is anyone interested in the paranormal, cryptozoology, the supernatural or the horror genre.

3) What have I learned from my audience feedback?

  When I conducted a survey to get information for my website/channel, I found that the channels most people watch are either comedy channels or film channels, with horror channels coming joint third with sports channels. These people said that they were attracted to the channel by it programming the channel aired but three people said that exclusives drew them towards a channel. These answers helped me decide to base the channel on the horror genre with exclusive programming like 'Behind the Blood' and 'Tales of the Unexplained'. Another question showed that people's favourite television programme genre was action which aided in the creation of 'Identify the Unknown' which is a sort of adventure programme in which the host travels all over the world in search of cryptozoological creatures or supernatural entities

4) How did you use new technology in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

  In the research stage I used technologies such as iTunes podcasts to find information on a variety of topics for the website stretching from a reading of Edgar Allan Poe's 'Berenice' to America's first murder (Who was America's first murderer? By Stuff You Should Know). I also frequently visited the website Casebook.org which I had heard about on a podcast about Jack the Ripper, which helped me learn more about the Whitechapel Murderer and their five victims. I also have visited Howstuffworks.com for a lot of information including serial killers and Ripperology.
  In the construction and planning stages I used Blogger.com to log all my ideas and thoughts about what I was doing and why I doing it. To create the website, I used Kompozer to build the pages and then quickly developed my skills when I learned how create links and add videos to the pages.
  To create the videos I used both iMovie and Windows Movie Maker to edit the video clips I had taken for the final video. These were two very different editing programmes and I found Windows Movie Maker more of a challenge because nowerdays I use iMovie more to create videos. I uploaded the videos to Youtube in order to add them to the 'Entertainment' page of the website by embedding the video's code into some cells on the Kompozer page.
  I had to create or enhance some picture for adverts for newspapers and a double page spread. To do this I needed to learn how to use Photoshop and, like Kompozer, once I had learned the basics I could easily operate its tools and settings. I used this to create a poster for the new film adaptation of Berenice that I had reported o in the 'Movie Gossip' page.
All these skills together helped me to create my website, newspaper advert and the double page spread to the best of my ability.