Evaluation - Question 4

Evaluation - Question 4

-Emma 

Evaluation - Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback, this year we felt was something that we both wanted to improve on and gain throughout the process as opposed to only after we had finished our products. Leaving time to gather feedback, allowed us to improve our work multiple times and be notified of flaws and improvements that we did not recognize ourselves.

We have gathered and used audience feedback at multiple times throughout the course. The most prominent way was after each draft, we presented our work to the class and asked for their ideas of what they felt went well and what could be improved, this feedback either Emma or I wrote down and then typed up underneath the uploaded product so we could refer back to it when working on the next draft. Other useful ways of gathering feedback was individually asking people to fill out a questionnaire or presenting our work to a group who were free to give any opinion they felt would help us. These many different ways of gathering feedback allowed for a range of feedback and honest opinions that would genuinely helped improve our work.

Even for simple tasks such as choosing the name for the production company or which cover image we would use for the magazine, audience feedback, gave us an insight into what appeals to our target audience. From the earlier feedback, we learnt a lot about making things very clear and obvious, such as character relationships, as just because we were encoding messages and ideas into a text doesn't mean that every audience member would get a preferred reading. If we hadn't asked our target audience to speak to us about what they felt the story line of our text was and the relationship between the characters was, then the genre would not be entirely clear. A lot of the feedback reminded us of 'Genre is an intertextual concept' we noticed that our audience understood our genre because of what they already knew about films they had previously watched, placing generic codes and conventions made it easier for our audience to understand the genre. The feedback we gained was key to reminding us to stay focused on elements that the audience would be aware of and would expect to see.

Using different platforms such as survey monkey, verbal feedback and written feedback or asking people through social messaging such as WhatsApp, meant that we could quickly and easily gather feedback which we then discussed together. It was interesting to see what the audience responded to well and what people didn't like as much. By the end of the process, we had gathered plenty of feedback and we were comparing to our last year projects and realised the impact that this has had on the quality and suitability of our final product.

What have you learned from your audience feedback from samasmedia

Please listen to this clip as the example in slide 2 'The Trailer'  

After completing our final drafts for each text, we decided to ask our audience how effective they felt that each of the products were to establish how much the audience feedback improved our work, these we have uploaded to our blog.


-Sam

Evaluation - Question 2

-Sam

Evaluation - Question 1

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

Final poster

Here is the final poster as one of our ancillary texts, from the beginning of the process, we both feel that the poster has greatly improved.  Creating the poster took a lot of drafts and improvements, but from the help of audience feedback and working together we are proud of the finished product.
I think that it reflects and alludes to many themes present in the film and works effectively alongside the trailer and magazine cover in promoting the film.

Final Magazine cover

Here is the final magazine cover as one of our ancillary texts. It took us many drafts to finally complete as we were constantly looking for feedback to improve our work, As the final product, we are pleased about the way it has turned out and works well with our other products.

Final Trailer

Audience feedback

After completing our final drafts for each text, we decided to ask our audience how effective they felt that each of the products were to establish how much the audience feedback improved our work and here are a few of the responses:


Interview with Rasharn, I used Whatsapp to gain a feedback in the form of a voice note and then saved the file to upload. -

Check this out on Chirbit



Interview with Lucy aged 17-



Interview with Brieani aged 17

Draft poster

Draft Magazine cover

After some further feedback from people of our target audience, I decided to go back and make a few amendments to the poster. For this updated version, I made the outline around the sticker to make it stand out more. I changed the font of the cover lines to a more bolder font that stands out more and looks more like a real text. I also changed the font 'Mia King' as because I changed the fonts for the cover lines, I needed to draw attention to the protagonist.

Updated poster

Creating the poster

Editing the film poster from emmalouise01

-Emma

This is Emma's explanation for how she edited and created the film poster.

Audience feedback

Since creating drafts for each of our products, we wanted to get some open feedback from audience members. As a group, we asked four people aged around 16-18 to look at each of our products and then told them to write any comment they felt would help us improve our work, here are some of the comments. We also discussed some ideas in depth and had some suggestions on how to change certain elements. From this, we both feel that this will enable us to improve our texts as getting 'a fresh pair of eyes' to look at your works allows us to pick up mistakes and weaknesses we would not have seen ourselves.

Fourth cut of trailer

Audience feedback

I asked two members of my target audience, one female and one male and got them to watch our trailer and then look at the trailer and poster. I then asked them to fill out a questionnaire I had created in order to see where we could improve our work. Here are the responses:

Questionnaire for Audience feedback from samasmedia

Third cut of trailer

Here is the fourth cut of the trailer. This is the first cut that has included sound. We had recorded a voice over for the beginning. We achieved a very muffled and gritty effect by sending a voicemail to Emma's phone and then recording it off there. After looking for a long time, Emma had finally settled on the soundtracks that she wanted to combine to achieve our intended effects

Creating the magazine

Creating the magazine cover from samasmedia

Editing the trailer

Feedback for drafts of Poster and Magazine

After completing my third draft of the magazine and Emma's first draft of the poster, we wanted to find out from our media class what they felt would be helpful to improve. We particularly wanted to focus on how to make the text look polished and professional, this is why we specifically wanted to ask for feedback from our media class. We will then work on this feedback for the next draft.

Draft Film Poster

- Emma

The film poster was created by Emma. Before creating both of the ancillary texts, we decided on a colour scheme which we felt we both wanted to reflect our film and our protagonist, therefore we wanted to have similarities between our poster and magazine with the cool tones,using grey, pink and overlays of whites. Emma used Serif Drawplus X6 in creating the film poster.

-Sam

Draft magazine cover

This is the Poster as one of our ancillary texts using audience feedback to constantly improve the drafts until it was perceived to look similar to a real life media text.

Draft of Magazine Cover

Editing the Trailer

Here I have created a video explaining my role in the editing process of the trailer.



~Script that I referenced when speaking ~

Harry Potter Film Poster Analysis

As one of the most popular global franchises, I wanted to analyse the final Harry Potter movie poster as it depicts the typical codes and conventions of a film poster. This was the official movie poster for the final film however it is also notable the amount of teaser posters that were also created. This is a common promotional technique to keep up the hype about the film and as this was so popular it acts as a constant reminder for the audience as to the films release soon. For big franchises or blockbuster films, this is probably a beneficial advertising technique, however I won't be doing this for our trailer because it is a much smaller scale film and as it is a low budget film, companies who create similar ones like this tend to stick to social media to promote their product due to insufficient funds.

From the film posters to the left, these were just a few from the masses of film posters created for the final film. Many teaser posters were created with different characters on the poster but all had the same vital inforamtion: the release date and available in IMAX and 3D with the same tag line 'It All Ends'. Although my partner and I won't be creating teaser posters we found this is becoming a much more common technique to advertise a film and create an ongoing interest with the audience.

The official poster follows the typical conventions of a film poster for
 example the main image. The protagonist is placed in the centre of the poster making it clear what film is being advertised. Either side of the protagonist are his two main friends and important characters in the film whom are also easily recognisable. In the background of the poster is the outline of Hogwarts castle indicating the recurring setting for all of the films and other students although these aren't distinguishable facially, it creates the idea of chaos combined with the rubble in which they are standing on and giving the sense of a big battle at the end of this film. The main colours in the poster tend to be quite dark; there is a mixture of blue and green creating an idea of fantasy linking to the genre however these are tinted with black and grey darkening the poster. Contrastingly, there is a tint of yellow and white in the background by the castle as if the sun were rising suggesting an element of hope. The characters clothing are fairly neutral colours however muddied and stained reinforcing the chaotic atmosphere and idea of a battle. One of the characters is also wearing a muted red which could connote danger.

The title of the film is included in the bottom centre of the page and is written across the main protagonist linking the character with the name of the film. The typography of this is the same font as all of the other films have used with the jagged edged writing making it clearly identifiable. Underneath 'Harry Potter' is the name of what film it is in smaller writing conforming to the layout of all the other movies and reminding the audience of the franchise. Underneath the title is the billing information. This is in a much smaller font and a darker colour making it harder to see therefore showing it isn't of much relevance in this instance in order to promote the film. However, underneath this, the tag line used in the teaser posters is also repeated 'It All Ends' followed by the released date. The tag line has already been seen numerous times on the teaser posters so audiences are familiar with this already and the release date being repeated acts as a constant reminder for audiences to not miss out. The text is in a bold font, place in the bottom centre of the poster and a slightly different font to the title making it stand out showing this is important information for audiences. Also on the poster, the fact that the film will be available at IMAX and in 3D is also stated in a small font as it isn't the most essential information but it may create more hype for the film as audiences can now experience the movie in more immerse ways.

At the bottom of the poster, red dots seem to accumulate. This has also been used on the teaser posters therefore coincides with this theme. The red could connote danger and the red seems to resemble fire, as if the sparks are flying off an explosion. This reinforces the idea of chaos and destruction creating more anticipation for the film by evoking a sense of lack of safety and fast paced thrill that will be present in the film. This also hints to the genre of the film, showing it will be dramatic and there will be a lot of action included in the film.

- Emma

Film poster research

Movie poster research from emmalouise01
-Emma

Looking at Film posters

Magazine Survey results

Before creating my magazine, I created a survey to decide what style of magazine I was going to create and which cover image to choose. I used answers from people in my target audience (my sixth form) and here are the results:

Survey results from samasmedia

The survey results show that although there is a varied interest in magazines, the most popular genre choice for my interview is Film and the Fashion/Beauty. The most popular image by far is Image B. These resultrs will help me make informed decisions when creating my magazine cover.

-Sam

Second cut of the trailer and feedback

Here is the second cut of the trailer:

Here is the second cut of our trailer, however it still does not contain sound, as we are still adding in the voice over and finding time to record and edit the layers of sound for dialogue, along with the music. This time we had decided that rather tan using Serif MoviePlus, we would use Adobe after effects, this way there were more tools and editing techniques available that would contribute to making out trailer look smooth and professional.


 We asked our target audience for feedback on this improved version of the trailer. The feedback we had received was;

• There is good use of cinematography in regards to angels, framing and mise en scene.
• There are varied shot transitions that work well with the trailer and the genre.
• A strength of our piece is the varied use of locations.
• For the text on screen, the audience like the editing and glint of the title as well as the font that we had used, however thought that the title could be slightly larger to make it stand out from other text on screen.
• We need to add in our production company logo and the billing information at the end.
• Some of the title lengths could be shortened and faded off instead of being cut.
• Some of the fades looked a bit jerky so needed to go back and make them smoother

Mock up of magazine cover

Before beginning to create my magazine cover, I have drafted a template for the structure I will follow whilst creating the magazine. I plan to follow this mock up as a basis for structure, however this may change depending on if it looks professional.

Magazine research findings

Create your own infographics

First cut of trailer and feedback

This is the first cut of our trailer that we showed to a few of our target audience and gathered

feedback in ways to improve our trailer as we continue to edit.

Feedback from our audience was:

• Good camera work, our audience said there was a variety of shots that suited the genre and the action taking place.
• Contrast in lighting - especially in the tunnel the lighting and colours was nice and the high-key and low-key lighting created a juxtaposition.
• The purple glow on the text looked really nice but was still soft enough not to be overpowering.
• From the first cut it was clear to understand the genre that the film was going to be and this was supported by the text on screen.
• Good use of many locations that looked interesting.

However what could be improved was:

• The lighting in some places was quite bright and could perhaps be edited slightly
• The opening shot was quite long and could be shortened especially if more clips were going to be added later on.
• It was suggested that we could add a zoom when Arby and Alexia are dancing.
• Could add some effects throughout to make it look more like a trailer.
• Need to add some sound

We both felt that at this time our trailer is nowhere near complete and still we haven't had enough time to film a couple of scenes due to our actors having other commitments. This means that we have had to rethink about our filming for some of our scenes  and change around 

- Sam

Day Two of filming

On the second day of filming we planned to get the shots from the forest and on the viewpoint. We were able to meet later in the day than we had when we had previously as were filming locally.

First of all we went  to the woods beside school to film the scenes of Alexia and Arby together. The only challenges for these scenes was wanting our characters to be without their coats and it was a pretty cold day so we wanted to get the shots done as quickly as possible. The cold weather made it hard to retake certain shots such as Alexia running past the forest as Mia would run towards me and I would quickly cover her with her coat to avoid her getting too cold.

The second location we went to was the viewpoint to film the discussion between Alexia and Kaya, we had originally thought that we would film this meeting on the swings in the local park. But there were loads of children running around this location so we decided to think back to our location planning for an alternative location. We then went to a viewpoint near us, overall I think that this turned out to be a better location that what we had originally planned because the lighting was a lot better and we avoided the backdrop of the shot looking chaotic and messy.

The second day of filming was a lot easier to plan and carry out than the first day of filming due to deciding to use nearby locations and not travel too far, because all of the actor were rehearsing already for a performance, we all met afterwards ensuring that everyone was free and no one needed to leave due to other commitments. The only problem that we did have was that it was really cold and we didn't want to take too long filming as our actors were starting to get cold, it was a fun day as all of us are friends so we managed to look on the positives of the situations and have fun, although at some points it was hard to maintain quiet on set because of people giggling, but I managed to get everyone to concentrate when we needed silence.

- Sam