Final Print Products / Trailers

Film Poster

Billboard Poster

Magazine Front Cover

DVD Cover:

Trailer

Teaser Trailer

Question 4 - How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Link to my Prezi: 

https://prezi.com/tdnepomcy9xz/question-4/

Audience Comment 3

Audience Comment 2

Audience Comment 1

Question 3 - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

When interviewing my audience for feedback, I made note of whether they were male or female, and their age. I then put into a graph some of their responses to my trailer.

Could you describe my narrative?
I asked all of my audience members after they watched my trailer if they could describe what they think the narrative of the film was and this is 3 of their responses:

[See above 3 posts - Use of Voki]

 As well as asking my audience what they liked about my trailers I asked them what they didn't. Some of their responses were:

1) The inter-titles / font of the inter-titles
2) Maybe a more climatic ending

3) Too many establishing shots 

4) At the start of the trailer you couldn't hear the voice over

This is an interview I did with a member of my audience to find out her initial thoughts on my trailer:

Responding to the feedback:

1) I changed the font of the inter-titles, and changed the plain black background to the brick wall, so it links to my print products and their backgrounds.

2) I added more shots and shortened the length of them to build up the pace even more.

3) I added more shots of Terry by himself replacing a few establishing shots.

4) I lowered the volume of the non-diegetic music and increased the volume of Terry's narration.

All the feedback I received on my products was positive. From the feedback I received I found that the narrative of my trailer/s was strong easy to follow. The soundtrack I chose really helped to build the pace for my trailer. 

As well as feedback on my trailer, I've been receiving feedback from them throughout the course. For example, when I created my pitches at the beginning, I interviewed 4 members of my target audience: 

The audience feedback I received gave me a range of opinions.

My results were: 

What do you look for / enjoy in these specific genres?
1) Humor
2)Perfect mix of Comedy & romance
3)Comedy more than romance side of these films
4)Make up / Good effects
What could I include to make it appeal more to my audience?
1)Include a unique soundtrack
2)A good soundtrack
3)don't make it as serious as the pitch, make it more lighthearted
4)more action / more gory / modern flick
What could I include that would make you not want to see my film?
1) N/A
2)Cheesy / Cliche story-line
3)a lack of originality
4)when films take themselves too seriously.

The feedback I received from the I applied to my trailer. For example, I included two songs that are by niche audience. I feel I don't have a cliche story line, and the idea behind the kidnapping of Jennifer is original, as from my research I haven't found a film about a kidnapper with dissociative identity disorder.

After I had decided on a name for my film, I created variety of different logo designs. 

I then asked narrowed down which designs I personally liked, and then asked my 5 members of my target audience which designs they liked. 

These were the results:

From the audience feedback I received, I found that they liked my first design the best, with my third design being their second favourite. Despite them choosing my first design, I ultimately went with design 3, as to the positioning of the text was better and it suited the Teen Drama  genre well. Plus when it came to constructing my print products the third design fitted better than the first. 

Whilst in the making of my print products, I was asking my audience for constant feedback on them.

This was my first Magazine Front Cover: 

I asked for feedback from two of my target audience members and they said to make these changes:

- Make the headline the same as the one used in my trailer and on my poster as that is a main convention of a film magazine

- Incorporate the colour scheme in my films title into the magazine

- Change the alignments of the corner cover-line so it matches the others

- Edit all spelling errors

This then led me to develop my design. 

I used the blue and white colour's in my film title on the other text on my page, as it was a convention of film magazine's to do this. 

In my previous design, I only incorporated the colour blue from my film title and not the orange which had a strong presence in my other print products. It also contrasts well with the blue colour I chose.

I then received feedback from another member of my target audience, and he said I should create more emphasis on the names of "Christian Blundell" and "Peter Jackson". So to make them stand out I changed the font size and colour of the text, and also making the text italicised. 

The audience feedback I received when creating my products as their feedback strongly developed my products, as I made the changes they suggested. It also gives me wider decisions; they decisions I receive are coming straight from my audience who I am making my products for. This process is something that would also happen in real lie such as "test screenings" to gage what the audience will think. All of this has developed my products dramatically, as, if I didn't receive any feedback, I would have created products that don't have a consistent brand identity and they wouldn't look like they link together. 

When I first created my Theatrical Poster, I was very happy with it: 

As it followed every key convention of a Theatrical poster and I managed to convey Teen Drama conventions (such as the bright colours and teenage cast) With the Thriller genre, as I added a dark filter to the background creating an eerie atmosphere. But when I received feedback from my audience it was clear this was the product that didn't carry my films brand identity and the image I used wasn't the same as the rest, and I didn't include of the actors from my cast in the photo. 

With this knowledge in mind, I decided to ask an audience member what they think I could do to improve and what they suggested is that I change the image to the one I have used on my other products and bring down the actors names and reviews. 

Ultimately I feel this is a much better design from my first as it links to my other products, keeping my brand identity and challenges the conventions of a Theatrical poster as the actors names are not along the top of the page. 

I felt the design of my first billboard poster was very effective. 

I felt the image was strong, and the visual syntax worked nicely, but looking back on it, the design is basic and it doesn't make as good of use of the space as it could. So to get a wider view on this poster, I asked another audience member for their feedback. 

She thought it would be a nice touch if I brought the actors names down to sit along the top of the brick wall, making the layout look neat and shorten the Facebook link, which I agreed with, as when I first design the poster I felt it looked too long and threw off the symmetry. I could also make the actors names light blue to make use of the colour in my film title as I hadn't used it and had already used a lot of white. 

Even with this feedback I still felt my poster was lacking, as so I added two images of my other two characters and added "James Wale" as I had included his name on my Theatrical poster and DVD cover. So I then replaced the review from "Premiere Magazine" with the actors names and brought down the review. I felt the positioning of the review now wasn't quite right as it was placed along the top of the heads of the 3 actors. I also wasn't sure if the transparency of my two background actors was enough. 

Because of my uncertainty, I asked another audience member for his thoughts on my poster.

He said I could: 

• Make the background faces more translucent, this is so the audience would have to double take when looking at my poster. 
• Make the background faces smaller, as they take up quite a lot of room and in order to be more subtle that would be necessary.  

He then told me what he liked about the trailer: 

• The layout - it flowed continually.
• The visual syntax was clear, making the information easy to absorb.
• The contrast of the image to the text, as the image has a slightly green hue and that contrasts well with the blue and orange text.

After taking this on board, I made a final edit of my poster: 

I thought it better suited to bring the "Premiere Magazine" review down to the top of the film title, and place the names of the actors by their faces. I asked another member of my audience for feedback and he said that it has a strong image, the text fits well, there's good visual balance, the page design is strong, the layout works well with effective visual syntax, and there is a range of fonts which are appropriate.

This was my original design for my DVD cover. I included all the other features from my other print products such as the image and the reviews and combined them into this. I didn't feel like this was a strong enough design for my DVD cover and so I asked some audience members for their feedback. 

They said that they couldn't read the DVD description because the text contrasts badly with the background and so to improve that, I added a transparency behind it. 

After re-editing it I think the layout on the back cover works a lot better as you can read the text more easily and the positioning of the text and small photos works better. 

I asked a member of my target audience for their feedback on my teaser trailer, and he said that I should remove the rapping from the track playing as it distracts from the speech in the trailer. 

In response to this I looked for another track to use instead that suited the mood. The track I chose was Thom Yorke's "Hearing Damage". Because I was changing the track I had to ask permission to use the new one.

I firstly emailed Thom Yorke's record label to as permission to use the track. 

"Hello, My name is Eden Parke and I am an A-Level student completing my A2 Media Studies course. I am conducting a project in which I have to

produce a film trailer to learn about the different skills that I need

to apply for film production. I feel that the song "Hearing Damage" by

Thom Yorke would suit my trailer well and I am asking for permission

to use it. The trailer is not-for-profit and will be used for

educational purposes only, but will be published on my YouTube account

and blog http://edenparkea2.blogspot.co.uk.

Many Thanks for your time, I hope to hear back from you soon.

Kind Regards, 

Eden. "

I almost immediately received a response. 

Emma Lomas <emmalomas@beggars.com>
to me

Hi Eden,

Thank you for your email

We don't have the sync rights for Thom Yorke, you'll need to contact Warner Chappell - try Angus Fulton <Angus.Fulton@warnerchappell.com>

Best,

Emma

I then emailed Angus Fulton and received this response. 

Ultimately, Christine sent me a form I should complete. After I completed the form, she gave me full permission to use the track.

Leading me to my final product:

Question 2 - How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?