Evaluation Question 4

Evaluation Question 4

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Construction of the Teaser Trailer

Josh made this document for the construction of the Teaser Trailer on Premiere Pro, as he spent the most time editing the footage out of the three of us.

Constructing the Teaser Trailer

Red Moon pictures Construction

I made this document for the construction of the Red Moon Pictures as I was solely the one who produced this part of the footage for the trailer.

Construction of Red Moon Pictures

Vacancy on VioletHill Poster

Magazine Front Cover

Vacancy on VioletHill Teaser Trailer: Final Cut

Evaluation Question 3

What have you learned from your Audience Feedback?

An essential element towards producing our film teaser trailer was the audience feedback. This aid towards the development of our project was important because it improves the overall quality of our trailer after reflection. This occurred after feedback, and leads on to help us with our other print based products and identify whether our entire package relates to the target audience intended for our promotion pack.

Our audience feedback consisted of two types of responses, being formal and informal. Our formal feedback consisted of everything that was recorded in writing or through technology assisted responses (e.g. comments on our posts through BlogSpot). This includes questionnaires and surveys that we made that received both qualitative and quantitative answers. Some of the comments we got on our rough cut trailer uploaded onto YouTube and blogged also counted towards the formal feedback, which would have been mainly qualitative. Informal feedback was generally anything that wasn’t recorded, and this was received throughout most of our construction, being both our trailer and our print productions. For example, occasionally through stages of our construction, our tutor Mrs.Mcluckie and other students would approach us or we would approach them regarding opinions on the current quality of our work. Upon receiving different opinions we would try to improve our work accordingly, though unfortunately these sorts of responses were not recorded and cannot be accurately quoted.

The earliest form of formal feedback that we received was feedback on the rough cut of our teaser trailer. We did this by giving a formal questionnaire to 10 different people who apply to our range of target audience, being aged 15-24. We intentionally included a mixture of quantitative questions as well as questions that required a qualitative response, to get a well rounded set of feedback that could be both measured and analysed. The quantitative data allowed us to identify what trends there were in terms of reactions to our product, which helps to form statistics. The qualitative data looks more closely at their views on the product, and realise the ways in which they felt it could be improved. We also got to see what expectations were met and which of them were satisfied. This proved very effective as we discovered that the tension levels in our rough cut only amounted to an average of 3.8 out of 10 possible points, 10 being the most tension. We also discovered from our rough cut that most of our audience would not have been interested enough to see the full feature length film after experiencing the trailer, since 75% of our participants rated their interest level as 4 or below. Additionally, by looking at what was written by some of the respondents, we realised why there was such little interest in the product. For example, the response from Jamie Overland demonstrates why it didn’t leave a lasting impression as “the scare at the end was predictable and not scary” and “the music and editing need to be used more effectively to create a tense atmosphere”. This is example of how a person’s personal opinion helped as constructive criticism to improve our work.

Audience Feedback Rough Cut

After collecting all the valuable feedback from our target audience we went on to improve our teaser trailer accordingly. For example, we altered the editing style around the moment of the scare, favouring to a quicker cut when viewers saw the demon to increase the chances of a scare. We also invested money in a copyright free CD which let us create sinister tones for a tenser atmosphere, adhering to the audience’s wishes. These sounds were simply unachievable with our own methods of manufacture, as we didn’t have access to the technology needed to create certain tones. We also re-filmed a couple of shots, one being the demon face where we preferred a close-up instead of a medium shot to create an experience that thrusts the audience more into the scene.

We realised how useful audience feedback was when showing our finished product again to a group of 10 people, all of which in our target audience. Regarding tension levels, there was an average of 8.9 achieved, doubling our first rating. Furthermore, we found that our trailer was an effective advertising tool as only one respondent was indifferent to the product, though this individual horror fan. This session of audience feedback also confirmed to us what our audience expected of a horror film – being thrilled and inquisitive. For instance, one participant, Sam Avery, concluded that after watching the trailer he was ‘uncomfortable and wanting to know the whole story’.

Audience Feedback Final Cut

We also managed to attain a greater connection with our target audience by asking them to fill questionnaires and comment on the magazine cover and poster. We received positive responses on both our poster and our magazine with some people commenting, “the poster looks professional and as a horror fan I’d be interested in the film if it were real” – Jamie Overland. The one negative comment we tend to receive for the magazine is the expression on the face of the father, being described as ‘bland’ and ‘out of place’. However, the most helpful feedback we received one our poster and magazine was most likely all of the informal feedback that occurred through construction. After hearing several opinions and suggesting we could move around text and change certain colours we managed to pull off a well-rounded product.

In conclusion, the importance of audience feedback is paramount, as it allowed to us to meet the requirements our task brief and produce a promotion pack of near professional quality that pealed to the target audience specified at the start of our project.

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 2

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Evaluation Question 1

These are the video responses to the question: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Film Poster Audience Feedback

Audience Feedback Poster

Above are the results of the questionnaires made to assess the success of our film poster for Vacancy on VioletHill.

From these answers we found that:

• The average rating of the poster's effectiveness was approximately 8 out of 10
• The average rating of interest levels in the film promoted by the poster was 8.3 out of 10
• All of the respondents replied 'Yes' to the question "Did the poster leave a lasting impression on you?"

Like the magazine audience feedback, the feedback was generally positive, probably more so that the magazine. There was still some constructive criticism regarding the poster, for instance the carving on the wall is very hard to read as its feint and partially covered. However, people commented that it looked very professional and that the picture was very powerful, and that the image of a man with an axe was also very effectual.

Audience Feedback 2

We asked ten people from our target audience to fill out a questionnaire after watching the final cut of our trailer. We did this so that we could established if we achieved the effect we were looking for after reconsidering our initial plan and adjusting our teaser trailer to work with the suggestions that were given after the presentation of the rough cut.

Audience Feedback Final Cut

Poster Construction

Tom made this document for the construction of the film poster as he was there for every stage of the construction and spent the most time on it.Construction (Poster)

Audience Feedback 1

We made a survey of 5 people and got them to fill out a questionnaire made by Tom Bowman, which included qualitative and quantitative questions to get a mixture of stats and opinions to help us improve our work.

Audience Feedback Rough Cut

Construction of Reflective Media

Josh made this video on the construction of the Reflective Media production titles as he was solely the one who produced this footage for use in the trailer.

Construction of the Demon Face

Josh made this document on the construction of the demon face as he was the one who spent the most time creating the demon face and saw every stage of construction.

Construction of Demon Face

Magazine Cover Construction

I made this document for the construction of the magazine front cover featuring our film as I spent the most time on it and say it through every stage of the construction. Scribd felt it necessary to move some things about...Magazine Front Cover Construction

Essay on Horror Movie Target Audience

This is a website with an essay written Adam Groves, which though appears to be a long rant, raises some good points on today's audience with Horror films, and how they are (or are not) communicated with effectively. This is part of the entire page:

'2003 could almost be termed the year of the horror movie, as there were so many of them. Unfortunately, as I’ve made clear in previous essays, not many of last year’s horror films were Oscar worthy. The big problem with ‘03’s movies, aside from bad acting, writing, etc., was a widespread lack of originality.

The horror genre is by nature a poor man’s art, not unlike what rock and roll is to the music world: a down ‘n dirty art form that works by appealing to peoples’ baser emotions. One doesn’t need a college degree to understand a good horror movie, which at heart seeks to stimulate one of mankind’s core emotions: fear. If other equally disreputable subjects are breached along the way, such as (gasp!) sexuality and violence, all the better. A movie like, say, the 1941 CAT PEOPLE had those things in abundance, which made it quite subversive in its day (thus, pundits who single that film out as an example of “refined,” “tasteful” horror are missing the point).'

http://www.fright.com/edge/annoyingtrends.html

Magazine Front Cover Audience Feedback

Audience Feedback Magazine

Above are the filled in questionnaires made to assess the success of the magazine front cover featuring our film 'Vacancy on Violethill' on the front.

We found that:

• Everyone in this smaller scaled survey rated the magazine front cover's effectiveness as 7 or above.
• The Average rating of interest levels in the film which was promoted by the magazine was 8 out of a possible 10.
• One a thid of the all the respondents responded 'No' to the question 'Would you buy this edition of this film magazine?' though their reason was that they did not read film magazines in general, not putting them directly in our target audience

In general we received relatively good feedback for our magazine front cover, though the unanimous agreement made was that the expression of the father didn't suit the rest of the image and so brought down its overall quality. The image itself could have possibly had more depth but many people thought that the graphics surrounding it seemed fairly professional. Many agreed that it would appeal to the target audience, but not many people who commented on the magazine were fans of horror films.

Original Photographs for Ancillary Tasks

These are the original photos used for the construction of our ancillary tasks

Original Image for Poster:

Original Image for Poster:

Original Image for the Magazine:

Test for Poster Idea

One of our ideas for our poster is to use an axe in shot reflecting an image of our main character. In order to see if this would work we've mocked up a version using images off of the internet and using Photoshop to merge them to create the effect we're looking for.

We took the picture of an axe, and then copied the image of a metal texture onto the axe, added a layer mask to blend it into the original axe picture. By pen tooling the shape of the axe head it merges into the original picture, and then we lowered the opacity to make it look more natural.

Then we got the picture of a man shot low angle and pen tooled around his portrait and placed him on the area of the axe head. By selecting the area of the texture layer and then after inverting the selection we deleted the unneeded parts of the man's portrait. We made the layer style for the portrait 'soft light' and lowered the opacity slightly before gaussian blurring the man's face by around 2.7 pixels radius. Lastly we lowered the saturation of the portrait.

This was the result:

Vacancy on VioletHill Trailer (Rough Cut)

Audience Expectations

We made a questionnaire to be filled out by members of our target audience, asking them about what hey expect to see from a horror film and a horror teaser trailer.

Horror Audience Expectations

Roles and Responsibilities

Group Member	Roles and Responsibility
Thomas Bowman	Assistant director Video editor Camera operator Magazine editor Poster editor Chief researcher
Jacob Wolf	Assistant director Video editor Camera operator Chief magazine editor Poster editor Researcher
Joshua Reeves	Director Chief video editor Camera operator Chief poster editor Researcher

In this table we have given the roles and responsibilities appropriate for each members of the group, according to what parts of the project they were most attentive towards. This proved effective for the production of our trailer and two ancillary tasks, as by dividing the workload between us we could get more tasks done simultaneously. We haven't listed all of the minor roles in this table, such a work on smaller task towards the final production of our promotion pack. For instance, Josh wrote the screenplay for the scene and made the schedule, whilst I drew and composed the animatic and wrote the synopsis, whilst Tom designed all of the questionnaires and made the prop list. Instead we have listed most of the main roles, and as you can see we have all edited parts of every product in the promotion pack, whilst some of us are listed as 'Chief' in that field as its more practical to have a main editor for one job. Here you can see that Josh did most of the editing in the teaser trailer and a large proportion of the poster as well while I did the majority of work on the magazine. Tom did the majority of research work and other tasks that helped improve the pace and quality of production.