After the feedback has been done, what we have learnt?

Through the feedback we gained from our audience watching our trailer, we have now redone the voice over as 5 people found that a major weakness within the viewing of our trailer, this also was an issue because 3 of the viewers did not feel that the story was being portrayed in a strong enough way. By changing the voiceover completely and cutting down some of the shots slightly it completely changed our trailer and immensely improved it, so it is now making more sense and should not confuse our target audience like before. We also found that by adding more of the Flashes effect it enabled to help put across our genre in a more obvious sense and created a more scary and horrifying feel to the film.

From this feedback we learnt how important it is to gain the intentional target audiences feedback to ensure that you are satisfying them as they are the ones that would be watching the film if it were to be screened in Cinema's. As these were the most important peoples views that we valued we were able to recognise our own mistakes and understand why they thought the comments they gave us. It also allowed us to re-vamp our stimulation and project across ways in which we could improve the minor problems our audience found when viewing our trailer after we confronted them and noticed them ourselves. Another thing we learnt was that without the feedback our trailer may not be as strong as it is now and that we may not have completely acquired the needs of our target audience as we thought we had before gaining the feedback.

Feedback is good as it helped us as Directors and Producers to realise our own faults and notice things we hadn't perhaps noticed before the viewing. It also enabled us to re-think over improving the parts that ourselves and our audience didn't find worked the first time and I think it helped us improve and made our trailer stronger and more thought provoking. As we had stuck with the same idea's for a while it allowed us as a group come up with new ideas that would work to improve our trailer yet again and was refreshing to think of new ideas as we had stuck with the same ones for quite a while before so it enabled us to bring back the energy with new exciting ideas.

what have we learnt through the stages of Feedback

First set of feedback

Through the first set of feedback testings we found out the film needed to be changed, this allowed us to make changes for the film which would be mor eliked by the audience who would be watching it.
We learnt about who to test for feedback as we needed our intended audience to talk about our film.
Finding out what they thought we allow us to compare what they said when we test them for the final cut of the film, allowing us to see if we have improved, helping us to learn about what the audience wanted from our film.

Final Set of feedback

Through the final set of testings it was obvious that we had changed our film for the better, this was through the general approval of the film. The final testings would generally not help the film itself, through re-shooting and general improvements, but the feedback would help for us because we would know what the audience thinks about the film. This would allow us to see, if the film were to be made, the audience which we are trying to attract would enjoy the film.

Through the final stages of feedback such comments as "Build up of events was good, the film story was progressing well", "Made me want to watch the full film" and "The music very tense, which made the whole trailer very atmospheric, scarey!" allowed us to take the film as a success. These quotes allow us to know that the general acceptance was met and would be liked, making them want to see the full film more.

Although improvements had been made to the trailer since the first testings did not go as well as they could have, some aspects were still not liked, as similar comments where made, from the first feedback session comments of "Voice over maybe a bit quiet and unclear" and "Voice over could have been louder" were made. These were very similar to the comments made in the 2nd set of testings such as, "Make the voice over louder, was kinda quite" and "Voice over was quiet".

This aspect of the voice over having the same reception even though the voice over had changed allowed us to learn, that although changing aspects of the trailer it could still be seen as a hinderance as the voice over was still not the best showing room for improvement.

What have you learnt?

Through the feedback process we have learnt several different things;
Organising a get together of people to watch the film, this would be people from our target audience, learning what they want from the film allowed us to change the from for the better, then testing them again allowed us to see what they thought of the final cut.

Learning how to actually think about the changes which we would make, fromt he first set of feedback tests we needed to learn about the audience and the way that feedback worked, looking at the "Improvements and Weakness" sections allowed us to learn the most about the trailer, allowing us to create and add a more successful section of shots and souns.

How to fit re-shooting into our contingency plan, allowing the testings to not be the final stage of our practical production allowed us to re film and re test the audience to see what they thought, this learning process allowed us not to speed up in the different taks we needed to do, and the time which we had.

Learning that the audience is key, after all they would be the ones who would pay and watch the film/trailer, we would want to make the best impression possible so we could make the most theoretical money.


Why would we want final cut feedback?

Wanting to know what the intended audience thought about our production would allow us to know if it would be liked and accepted, in the real media, this process would tell the producers and distributors if the trailer and movie would be liked and accepted, to make sure they do not need to have do some last minute shooting.
We wanted to replicate this because knowing the final acceptance would put our minds at ease and let us know that the trailer would be liked by our markers.

Since the creation of our rough cut we have had viewing of the trailer by others outside the group so that we could receive unbiased feedback or for points to be picked up on that we may of over looked.

The First rough cut viewing was very eye opening with many of our audience picking up the same points as each other which made the editing process more straight forward but no less complexing on how we had been so blind.

The original voice over was the character of Chace narrating and adding emphasis to words and phrases appearing on screen, the general consensus was that the voice over was far to quiet and didn't add much depth to the plot which many found hard to follow. (being a trailer this isn't always a bad thing as it may intrigue people to see the full feature) So we went back to the drawing board and wrote a new script consisting of a conversation between Chace and the Doctor showing the evil nature of the Doctor and his fear of Gabriel.

It was only due to the feedback of our teachers and peers that lead us to this hopefully grade increasing change.

So this shows why feedback is greatly important to budding producers as some can be left in a wonderland where every aspect of their product is gold and so it maybe to them but as it would be the public paying for the pleasure to see sed product it would wise too 'give the people what they want'. We showed both the rough cut and final piece to a selection of our sixth form peers as they are the criteria of our target audience meaning that if the trailer appealed to them we had hit our mark meaning that the trailer was on genre and hopefully the feedback we gathered would be agreed upon and with the corrections made the trailer should be the best it could be and along with ancillary tasks our grade heading for greener side of the mark boundaries.

(Feedback posts are within the "March" blog post set!)

By Jo, Joel and Matt

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Trailer:

When researching other film trailers we used the internet to check some out on the IMDb website and Youtube. These were quick, easily accessible websites and the easiest websites to check them out on as they both contain multiple links to basically every film trailer thats been made. By looking at trailers with similar genre's to ours enabled us to pick up features such as camera angles, genre idea's, pace and time for each shot which helped influence us with some of our final decisions. We also used google to help us research the film 'Fight Club' to find more information about it's narrative as we found many similarities in our intentional genre along side this film, so it's influence helped us to structure our own narrative and key things we needed to consider in the narrative to ensure it made complete sense.

To film all the trailer shots we used a Camera Corder which was fairly accessible and easy enough to use. We firstly used one to test out camera shots and angles in different environments so that we could plan places to film the shots and answer any questions through the planning stages that we were unsure about when we would be filming the actual shots for our trailer. Once sorting out our storyboard we fairly quickly managed to film the shots we needed with the use of a Camera Corder and plugged it into an Apple Mac to upload and edit what we had filmed. With the use of a Tripod we were able to film high and low shots and created some interesting camera angles and shots with and without the use of the Tripod to enable a better interest for our target audience.

When constructing the trailer we used iMovie software on the Apple Macs as it is fairly easy to quickly get to grips with, with some guidance. It allowed us to cut up and move around the shots we filmed so precisely that we had the advantage to make it as good as possible and stereotypically film trailer style. iMovie also allowed us to add in effects such as the flashes to move from scene to scene which helped to portray our genre along side the narrative of our film. Another feature we could do was add in music in the background of the trailer to stereotype it as a film trailer, by importing music and sounds we put on iTunes allowed us to cut up and move around different songs/sounds on iMovie to fit in the areas with suitable clips in the trailer.

Whilst researching and constructing the trailer we made this blog to document everything we did so that we could refer back to things we did earlier in the project when working on it later in the year. It has also allowed us to collect every thing we have done so that we don't forget any of the most important and valid ideas and points that have been said and discussed. We also used the blog to write about things we did for the Poster and Magazine Front Cover too for the same reasons stated.

Poster:

To capture the original photo for the poster of Chace we used a Digital Camera as it enabled us to get a clear image of the character and also allowed us to then upload it on the Apple Mac to edit it on Photoshop Elements. It took hardly any time to capture a good enough photo that we could work with on Photoshop elements and was also a quick process to upload on to the Apple mac.

We used Photoshop Elements programme on Apple Macs to edit the photo of Chace's character and change it to the way we wanted it. By using many of the icons on the programme we were able to create the image of Chace pulling his skin down to reveal his alter evil ego. This helped to create a painfully memorable image that we thought would make our target audience remember our film through our poster. We also added text to allow the audience to identify the film name, our tagline and other important information other film posters tend to include on them.

When researching current film posters we used the internet, mainly Google, to check out similar genre films to ours so that we could get a vague idea of the layout we should be going for to ensure that our poster would fit in with a film poster you'd find in a magazine or on a billboard. Google is an extremely user friendly site and found exactly what we were looking for quickly each time which meant it didn't take too long to gather research before we were able to sketch our own ideas for our poster.

Magazine:

Through the research process we looked at Film magazines like Empire to gain knowledge of what the normal conventions of a Film magazine front cover are so that we would know what the audience would expect to see and read. Being the Title of the magazine, the foreground and background picture and other interesting bits about films and winning posters were elements we chose to encounter and use as influence on our cover to what would be our magazines normal front cover conventions.

To get the images of all the main characters of our film we used a digital camera to capture them. This allowed us to upload them on to an Apple Mac to edit them and compile them to make our finishing front cover. We used the tripod to get the right angles and height for the pictures which allowed a steady photo and refrained from the photo's being blurry or show slight movement of the camera. By using the Digital Camera it allowed us to capture the clear close up photo of the clock which is extremely empowering as you can see the tiny details of the mechanism and really puts across our intentions behind the positioning of the clock.

The editing software we used to construct the magazine was Photoshop Elements as we had fairly good knowledge of how to use the programme by the time we were composing the magazine. It enabled us to use different layers to include each step on the front cover and allowed us to work with one layer at a time. It was quite time consuming putting the magazine cover together with all the different parts however we managed to create a magazine cover that works and portrays our film across in a thought provoking way.

Jo

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

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

By Joel Hall

Film

Real media conventions

Throughout the trailer industry ever trailer has a "chopped" approach, allowing specifically placed clips of the film to be shown to the audience, showing them key plot points and characters. This has been set up through film trailers as these aspects are what the audience would actually want to know, this allows the audience to know if they want to see the film or not, because these plot points would allow them to see what the film was about.

Trying to emulate this as much as possible would allow us to create a well worked trailer, allowing the key plot points and characters be be obvious to the audience.

Developing conventions

Through the trailer we have developed the convention of voice overs, this was by having a conversation take place over the trailer. We chose to do this because we wanted to give the doctor(Heard in the voice over) a higher role in the film because he would be a theoretical backbone allowing the character of Chace to take reffuge and support from him. Although this cannot really be taken as a direct referrence from the voice over, a conversation is generally not heard as the voice over would normally describe or tell, for example a voice over may say "This is Timmy, He is no average boy because he found batman" or something allong those lines, which would allow the audience to know the main plot line, but no twists or turns.

This aspect allowed the film to have 2 different plot lines running adjacent to each other, the Doctor and Chace talking and the actual trailer and main plot lines. This allows the audience to listen to the voice over and gain different knowledge of the plot, but also watch the trailer and learn those key points which would be for the main film.

Challenging conventions

Looking through the narrative through our film, we jump straight into the trailer, this challenges the conventions of film trailers as a generally a majority of trailers follow an introduction from the producers and distributors. We have skipped this because of limitations at the time, we were not 100% sure on how to make introductions using Imovie because it lacks aspects of introduction animations.
Although this may not be an advantage because we lacked in animations, showing skill and knowledge of software, it is not a disadvantage aswel because the animation is is not 100% needed within the trailer as the audience does not need to know this as if they see the final full film the producer and distributor would be shown, which is a higher needed convention.

Magazine

Through the creation of the magazine key concepts and style models where kept in mind, we needed to keep the head lining words clear for the reader to view, this would allow them to actually read what we had wrote. The magazine would also need to be about the film and the surrounding media which all film magazines would cover as we still needed to meet the conventions of media magazines.

Real media conventions

Within magazines manipulated photos are prominent as making the person or image seem the best looking they can be, although appealing to audiences, making the brand or place seem a lot better as you can actually see the visual effects and detail within the picture. This convention would need to be catered to too get the best results from the pictures, allowing us to get the best looking picture the magazine will be better looking and we would have complied with the convention.

Real magazines allow the different aspects of the inside information to be shown on the front cover, this gives the reader the ability to understand what is going to be inside the magazine without actually reading it. This means the front cover would be laid out according to the information which would need to be shown; Key articles, main features, competitions, new writers or anything context based (in this case film, directors, actors movies). A real magazine will have to have key information which will be based on the main articles placed around the side of the cover.

A main picture is also a main convention, allowing the main feature of the magazine or new release to be shown on the front cover, getting people interested at a glance. This would be a main feature of which we would need to emulate because a magazine needs to be eye catching.

Developing conventions


We needed to fit the conventions of a normal magazine which would allow the reader to know that it is a magazine which they are looking at. These conventions would be a big center image, article titles, special features and a head line. We kept these conventions and put them within the cover page, allowing the them to merge together allowing the magazine cover to be recognisable for the reader who would only see it at a glance. We developed the layout convention by having the diffferent features more spread otu within the cover, usually seen from our Style model magazine brand, Empire, the tag lines and features are kept close together, we have kept the same aspects but have had them more spread out, allowing the background images to be seen and focused on.
This is a strength to our cover as the aspecst of the writing and pictures can be read and focused on individually with ease, making the cover easily read which would allow the reader to read it easily and quickly, which is a plus in todays society as people want instant gratifaction in reading magazines.


Our head line was"Director's Cut" This was chosen from other names such as "Final Edit", "Take 1", "Tracking Shots".
Since we were creating a film based magazine we needed to the title to be relating to film, this would be most appropriate for the magazine which would allow us to seem like a film magazine. the title would also allow the reader to know it was a film magazine because we would be using jargon which is related to the media which most people know about.

Challenging conventions

Clapper board

Around our title we have placed a clapper board striped line, this image realtes to the media which our magazine is realting too. This style of image is generally not seen by the magazine industry, this aspect also allows the reader to tell its a film based magazine because they would reognise the stripes as a recogniseable icon from the film industry.

Poster

With each film which is being created a poster(or more) will be created to promote the film, this convention is followed 100% by each film which is being produced, this is too give clues about the film plot, production company, actors and a clever image which would interest the audience.

Each poster needs to get the attention of anyone walking by or genuanly looking for posters, the more eye catching the poster the more people will look at it and want to go and see the movie.

Real media conventions
Film posters need to relate to the film. This statement is the biggest factor which governs film posters, if the poster does not relate then it will not work for the viewer because they will not know anymore about the film.
The poster will need to include the production companies names and brand, directors and any behind the scene guys who have helped in creating the film.
Release date is an important factor which allows the audience to know when the film actually comes out, this feature allows them to plan when to see it, and give them the key information about the film.


Developing conventions

We have kept our poster simple as we did not want to overcomplicate the poster for the viewer to read, this feature will allow them to get the key information about the film and take in the picture. This has allowed us to keep the image in the foreground of the image and not clutter it up with text for the viewer to read. This has developed the conventions because we have kept the information to the littlest, main information is the; title of the film, tag line, actors, release date and production names. This little information allows the viewer to see the main image which should interest them in the film.


Challenging conventions

Through the conventions of poster's we have generally not actually challenged or changed the style of poster, this is only because the poster is a small object which relates to the film. This view did not really allow us to change and challenge the conventions of poster creation.

The only challenge which we could have made to the convention is that of the palcement of the text, this aspect could be challenged because majorityivly the text is seen at the bottom of the poster, this allows the image to start at the top of the poster then as you read down you read the text, we have had the text at the top so they would know the name of the film before they see the image, this was they can relate the image to the name.

This although small I feel is not enough to actually challenge the poster as a whole, but does challenge the placement of the text within the poster.

- Joel.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

The first ancillary task we completed was the poster face peel of Chace our protagonist peeling away part of his face to show that there is something underneath the skin that others cannot see or if they do as the trailer shows they end up being brutally killed. The poster an the trailer work well together as they both hint towards the plot line and hit the genre on the dot but leave an air of mystery as neither make a direct statement that shows plot twists or ruin key aspects.
The tag line of the film as seen on the bottom of the poster “what he doesn’t know could kill you” also features in the last seen of the trailer to add a bit of a chill to the spine of the viewer, the two work to gather for a sense of fear but intriguing at the same time as the public would wish to find out what is meant by the statement. The font used on the title “pendulum” was done in the chosen font and the colour red to make it look as if it’s bleeding and dangerous to reflect the character of Gabriel as he is the murderer being dangerous and leaving a trail of blood in his wake.

The second of the ancillary tasks the magazine cover we revel some extra characters from that seen on the poster as the Doctor and Joel’s character now appear. Also unlike the poster Chace and Gabriel have separate photos but Gabriel is still just above with his hand stretched out to connote that he has the power and he is placed on the cover in this place has he is sat on Chace’s shoulder like the evil side of his conscious. This works with the trailer as in the last scene both Chace and Gabriel are present with Gabriel above Chace on wall and pouncing on to him much like animal and showing he has all the power over Chace
The Doctor’s photo has been darken to give a hint to a viewer that there might be something evil about him as much like Gabriel’s character darkness connotes evil and both dark irony to them as Gabriel is named after an angel and Doctors are normally seen as the healer so in the light. As heard in the voice over of the trailer the doctor brought Gabriel to the school so evil but is now frighten that he cannot control him.
Bobby Watt’s the other character on the cover has been lighten as if the entire film had been made then it would been made clearer that Bobby is a key good character in the fight against Gabriel but as shown in the trailer he ends up dead we have linked this to the cover of the magazine by the darkening the watch above his head to show his impending doom.
The pocket watch background was selected as it has the mechanics on show and also it relates to the ticking at the start of the trailer and how time is running out to stop Gabriel.

Matt