Evaluation

Rayhana Yasmin

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

I used a female lead role as the victim of my movie as I wanted to conform to conventions, however my character does in the end break conventions by taking the role of the ‘hero’.

The villain of my teaser trailer breaks conventions, because the role was assigned to a woman. It is extremely conventional to see a man as a villain especially a kidnapper or stalker. So it is ironic to see a woman take that role.

This is what a conventional villain would look like, and I do follow some of these as my villain is predominantly dressed in black attire.

My poster was located with a dark background which is very conventional for horror movies. Also by using red writing it lead the audience to know that it was a horror movie.

I used an iconic and well known magazine masthead for my magazine front cover as I knew that if I did that then the audience would recognise it and be more likely to pay attention to something that they knew.

My teaser trailer has used many conventions of a horror trailer as it was located in a desolate place with no one around, this is frequent in horror films.

To help guide the audience to what was occurring the scenes I used short screens of writing, this could be seen as using conventions of real media products as many of them use blackout scenes of text to guide the audience.

I think that when aiming to produce a horror movie or trailer it is essential to stick to some conventions apparent in most real media products therefore I stuck to the theme of black and red.

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

I think that the combination of my main teaser trailer product and ancillary texts of the magazine front cover and the poster is very effective as it is all linked together and the audience can see that. The genre that I am using to produce my trailer has come across throughout my ancillary texts as the theme is quite obvious when first seen.

I also merged both the writing from my poster into the ending of my trailer as I wanted it to look like the same products and so then my audience would understand that they are all from the same thing.

Using red color when writing the text within my trailer also combined the ancillary texts together with my main product, as it is clear that it is linked with one another.

By using the same picture on both the magazine and poster it enabled me to link both products with each other, and so this made the audience more aware that both products were made for each other. This made the combination successful for the main product and ancillary texts.

The ancillary texts are both campaigning for my final product of teaser trailer., this in turn makes it effective as it makes the audience aware of the genre as a horror film.

Throughout my trailer and ancillary products I chose to use black screens with red text to reinforce the idea of horror. Also darkness echoes horror genre to the audience.

Who is the target audience for your media product and how did you go about attracting/addressing them? How effective do you think you have been?

My target audience would range from 15 year olds to late 20’s. I went about attracting and addressing them by using a genre that would make them want to watch as a lot of teens and early to late 20’s tend to enjoy horror movies.

Another aspect that I used to attract my target audience was the fact that I had made my own music using Garage Band this enabled me to be in the seat of the audience and asking myself what type of music I would want in a horror trailer.

I think it was very effective as when doing my audience feedback on my final product, I got a lot of positive feedback and answers about how well I had done in achieving a good result.

To attract my audience I used a couple of blacked out screens with red writing so that the audience would know that it was a horror trailer therefore would want to watch it.

I think this would attract my target audience as it would lead them to question what I have decided to incorporate into my trailer, as I had not tried to break copyright rules by using another persons music like real media products would have done.

I decided to insert a green screen which I had seen alot of trailers having in the beginning whilst doing my research . This made me think that it would attract my target audience as they would see that it is close to a real media product.

The costume that I chose to use for my actress made it aware that it was a teenage girl dressed for winter, this was very effective in attracting the audience as a lot of teenagers wear this sort of clothes and my audience feedback let me know that I had achieved the look.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

I also had to produce a focus group survey to show to six people from my target age group. This helped me gain an understanding of what they thought when I showed them my ancillary texts e.g. my film poster and magazine front cover. As well as showing them my research posters to see whether they thought it was as good as that.

I produced a questionnaire for my target audience and gave 10 out to a variety of different age groups. This enabled me to get feedback on what type of trailer I should be aiming for, as I wanted to make a product that was in my target audiences taste. Producing this enabled me to understand what my target audience wanted as I got a lot of their views on what I should do my trailer on.

In order to know what people though of my teaser trailer and ancillary products I had to do an audience showing of my finished main product with my ancillary texts. I interviewed one person to find out what they thought of the products overall, and I got some positive feedback from him as he did tell me that it was good to watch and the trailer and ancillary texts had matched therefore making him aware of what was going on.

A focus group survey was needed to be carried to ensure that I was going on the right track with my research and planning of my product as well as whether my target audience liked the look of my ancillary texts and would be willing to go see the end product in the cinema.

They gave me good feedback saying that my ancillary texts were moving in the right directions but the also told me that if I was to produce a horror I would have to think about what would make the audience jump just like my research trailers SAW 3D had done

I learnt that if I had not conducted these various forms of feedback from my audience I would not have been able to produce my final piece of work as I would not have known what my target group was looking for and would not have known what to even aim for when trying to please my target audience.

How did you use digital media technologies in the construction (filming/postproduction) and research, planning and evaluation

stages?

For my poster I had to use a digital camera to take pictures of my main actress so that it could be my main image and also for my magazine cover.

The video camera was essentially the main part of filming as if I did not have that it would have made it extremely difficult to film.

Using a tripod made the filming of my trailer much more smoother as it was a flat ground and I was able to move it around as I liked, but carrying it was hard work.

For my research and planning I had to mainly rely on the internet so I could look up film poster ideas and how I would choose to do my magazine front cover., without this source I would have really struggled on research ideas.

For my magazine front cover and film poster I had to use Photoshop. This was a new experience for me as I had never before used this application. I found it difficult to change the text font and to also edit the picture as it was completely new to me. I over came this as I continuously used it to make both my ancillary products perfect.

Word Press is the blog that we had to update everything we did concerning out media project on. This was fairly simple to use as I have used it previously.

Using final cut was a challenge for me as I was not very confident using it even from last year. I had to use this to edit my trailer, at first I found it difficult to adjust but gradually the more I used it the better it felt and made me more confident.

I also was told at first to use a PowerPoint presentation when writing up my evaluation therefore I started my evaluation on PowerPoint and was later told I could write it up in the blog, but as I had already started it on the PowerPoint I thought I might as well finish it on there, as it would be tricky for me to move all my work to the blog.

What would you do differently next time?

What I would try to do differently is I think I would attempt to not leave things to the last minute as obviously this got me more panicking and made me rush a few things, therefore I would use my time more efficiently as well as keep up with my time keeping. I think I would also try and use more of my time on the editing process of the trailer as well as filming as I do think I did not spend enough time editing.

I think I would also change the genre of horror to something different as in my initial questionnaire research some people would have preferred comedy so maybe I would have opted for that instead of horror, even though it was a success. I chose to continue to do horror as I was really short on time after my initial questionnaire so was not able to change genres in the last minute.

I would also change my target age group and try to enable a movie that was suitable for all audiences as it would get me more wide range of feedback as well as attracted a whole different age range of people.

With concern to mise en scene, I think I would have chosen to change my main actresses attire at least once or twice to show that there are different days occurring not jus that one day where she is wearing the same clothes throughout my trailer.