Evaluation

Evaluation.

Using a tripod was essential to make sure the shots were steady, even for stills they where important as they meant I could concentrate on composition of the shot and not the steadiness of my hand. 

The tripod was also also good when I needed  to pan around for a panoramic view of the surrounding area. It once again ensured a smooth shot and meant I could concentrate on shot composition. 

Taking a long shot of the house.

Long panning horizontal shot using the tripod for stabilisation.

Getting a mid shot of the pool using the tripod for a steady and clear shot.

However, there are some limitations with a tripod. For the tracking shots it was difficult to move the tripod and the camera at the same time. For all of the tracking shots the camera had to be taken off the tripod.

My Survey.

The choice of music was very important. The music defines the trailer and it sets the tone. A director will often choose a set type of music depending on how they want their trailer to come across. I first showed my focus group a selection of music without the trailer to accompany it. Straight away it was clear that "Mind Heist" was the most popular. I asked one person why this was and this was their response:

"Mind Heist is an incredible composition. This is because of the slow almost classical music at the beginning of the song. The sudden change of tempo after the first loud base drop then continues to build up in speed and the melody after takes on many different forms. It is a great composition."

This showed that "Mind Heist was a good song on its own but would it still be popular when accompanied by my trailer. 

This once again showed Mind Heist was very popular. The positive feed back meant that there was only one real option for music in my trailer. 

After deciding on my trailer I had to ask permission from the artist as it is not royalty free. I emailed the artist and asked for permission to his song. I explained that I was using the music for educational purposes and not making money from it.

After a few days I got an email saying that I could use it as-long as no money was made and it was just for educational purposes. 

With permission to use it I incorporated it into my trailer.

The choice of actors was also important as it would determine the feel of my trailer. The choice of actors appeared to go down well with my focus group and this saved having to re-shoot and possibly re-cast my actors. 

 

The name of my film was vital because it is often the name of a film that puts it into a distinct genre. However, for my film I wanted to have a strong enigma surrounding it. Despite wanting a strong enigma I had to choose a name that would be popular and memorable. To ensure this I once again used the focus group to determine a name. 

The main props in my trailer were the gun and the axe. Whilst these were easy to get hold of' making them look realistic was more difficult. The gun had to be re-sprayed black and this was challenging to do as the paint underneath made it difficult for the new paint to set on top. The axe had to have the rust removed and doing this was hard as it was very old. These changes were necessary to make sure the trailer looked professional.

The combination of shots was also important. I wanted to to give the audience a feel for the setting but not make it the focus of the trailer. To achieve this I used mid-shots with the house in the background.

Plot Development.

The idea of a film trailer is to entice the audience into wanting to see a film by showing small sections of the plot but not enough to ruin the film. However, in recent years there have been films that have been ruined by the trailers. The most iconic one is possibly Terminator Salvation. This film should have been a roaring success as it was the follow up to the Terminator Trilogy. The directors knew they would have to do something impressive to live up to the reputation  of the other Terminator films. The idea for the film was an unsuspecting narrative "U-Turn". It was meant to be one of the most dramatic plot devises ever seen in a film. Despite this, the director actually revealed the plot turn in the trailer. Now audiences knew what the whole film was building up to. What should have been a phenomenal film was just another Hollywood flick due to the revealing trailer and scored 

This was something I had to be careful of. If I showed the masked killer being "un-masked" or one of the main characters being killed: potentially ruining the film by giving the narrative away. This is why much of the action between the axe maniac and the main protagonist is not seen, as I didn't want to give too much away. While not wanting to give much away I still needed to build up an effective story within the trailer without making it too linear. Choosing what information to reveal and what information with withhold is vital to creating a successful trailer. My original idea was to have the masked man revealed at the end. However, after many focus group and research I decided to withhold this information. If I had revealed it the enigma would have shattered and my trailer would have been unsuccessful. There must always be a mystery to a trailer. The audience cannot be allowed to work out the whole story simply from a small trailer. It would defeat the objective of the trailer.

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

My media product does challenge forms and conventions in many ways. One way that it challenges conventions is to almost mix two genres of film. Horror and Action. This challenges conventions because these two genres do not normally go together because they are so different. Action normally consists of clear plot lines with maybe a twist half way through and of course lots of explosions and fight scenes. Horror conventionally has an partially unclear plot, characters who are hunted down one by one, something is stolen or the balance has been disturbed and of course a psychopath who is hunting his victims. These differences are why these two never come together to form a hybrid genre.

I wanted to challenge this convention and mix the two together. I took the fight scenes from the action genre; the psychopath and the suspense from the horror genre and merged them together. With these planned and filmed, I put them into a set sequence. Creating a hybrid genre is risky because it may make a film feel isolated and random. Despite this, I felt it would appeal to both audiences because neither of the conventions are extremely dominant in this film. It doesn't have an overhanging sense of horror or action. My film develops the idea of a hybrid genre and it shows that it is possible and can to both audiences. To make sure I didn't isolate any of the audience I held regular focus groups with fans of both Horror and Action. As my trailer developed I was able to get the opinions of both audiences and tailor it to both. This ensured my trailer would appeal to as many people as possible.

Maybe more production companies should start to do this as I have discovered that it is possible to combine genres and still create an effective film. 

In recent times the film industry has been losing money due to piracy and various other reasons. To cope this not many daring or indi films are being made as investors are cutting back on the amount of money they invest in these media products. They are now investing even more money into huge Hollywood films in the hope to attract a large audience. It is due to his hybrid genres are even less common than they used to be. However, there is a market for this genre of film, it is just a question of are investors willing to take that risk.  

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

The combination of my main product and ancillary texts was effective because they all reflected a distinctive style of film. While they hybrid genre was imported into all of them they where clearly identifiable with each-other and had a strong style. I was careful to make sure that none of the prints where to different to the trailer. For example when my poster was in black and white it looked very effective. While it looked good it failed to reflect the style of my trailer as it made it look very film Noir. This would isolated from the other two products. This is why it was important to not go too outlandish with any of the products. I had to stick to my style and not stray into another genre. 

The poster for my film strongly reflects the style of a horror action hybrid. By having the characters darkened and almost black it presents a horror aspect and the location also strongly connotes horror. To give it an action feel I didn't put in the axe murdering maniac, and the lack of other props and the tag line "Secrets Lie Within" surrounds the film in mystery. I wanted there to be mystery surrounding my film as it would entice my target audience into going to see it. I felt this is how many film have made audiences go and see their films. A good example is the film Inception which revealed almost nothing in the trailer yet still went on to become one of the most successful films of 2010. This use of the enigma code creates "hype" around the film draw the audiences in.

When I finished the poster and magazine front cover I asked my focus group whether they thought the combination worked well. They said it did and liked how it was clear who the main protagonist was and how they were related to each-other. In each of the texts the setting is clearly visible and this makes the texts clearly related and the style of film comes across very strongly.
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What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Throughout my trailer development I regularly held focus groups to ensure that I made a trailer that audiences wanted. At my focus groups I screened any footage that I had and talked about any ideas I had come up with. By listening to their feed back and opinions I was able to make the necessary changes to my ideas and also my filming. While coming up with an idea I made several decisions based on what my audiences told me. By making graphs my feed back was easy to view and analyse. Using Ipads as a way to get people to do surveys was an effective tool as the questions are easy to set up and fill in and they can be sent to multiple devices. This allowed people to respond in their own time and this makes the survey more reliable because people don't feel pressured into giving a response.

For my trailer I learned that audiences where willing to accept the concepts of a hybrid genre. Their feedback finalised my decision to do a hybrid film. 

In terms of how audiences attitudes to watching film is changing my surveys on my focus group clearly show how attitudes are changing. This clear because most of my focus group has watch films online and not always legally. This shows that real media products need to find ways to either make money off online distribution or find more effective ways to make audiences keep going to the cinema. When designing my prints for my film I knew I would have to make them look attractive so people would want to go and see them in the cinema. If they looked amateurish people would not want to go and see the film. It also showed 

The audience feed back showed my how important it was to get a professional finish to all of my media products and the importance of them being able to be seen on a wide range of media platforms. 

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

Media technologies played a key part in the construction of my trailer. Once again Apples MacPro and the software Final Cut Pro. This was important in the editing of my video and audio. To see more on the technical stats see my planing page. Without the GUI (Graphical User Interface) provided by the Mac in 1080p the editing would have been almost impossible.

For my research media technologies where invaluable. Without the internet I would not have been able to access YouTube and this would have limited my access to real media products. The ability to create surveys using programs like excel and distribute them by email and the internet made sure as many people as possible were able to answer my questions. The larger the data sample the more reliable my finding where. As more people could answer my questions I was able to gain a better understand the way in which people consume media product and also their tastes and preferences. This was useful data because when it came to determining what genre to do this data allowed me to make sure it would be well received by audiences.    

For the evaluation I once again used media technologies to approach a wide audience of people. Media technologies also allowed me to broadcast my trailer across the social media sphere. As people could see my product on sites like FaceBook, YouTube and Twitter and this allowed a wide and diverse range of people could comment on the video and give feedback.  

The use of media technology throughout this project has made it easier to produce a final product and also made it more accessible to people. 

Sticking to conventions of films was important for my project. I knew that going with a hybrid genre I would have to break some convention rule of the two genres but it was by breaking these rules that I was able to create an effective trailer. 

Choice of Location

The choice of location is important as it can define a film. Their are certain conventions for films that almost dictate where the film will be set. For example it is expected that a Western will be set in a dusty village in the desert, a Film Noir will be set in the back streets of a large city, etc. A horror will classically be set in a remote location. I had permission to film in this house and because of its condition it worked really well in my products. If I had not had this location my products would not have been as successful as they are. 

Production 

While filming my trailer I had to take into account the weather. The cloud coverage was important because in my trailer it is very overcast putting it on the colder end of the colour spectrum. On reflection I should have timed the shoots so they where early in the morning in Winter so there would have been mist and this would have added to the enigma code of my trailer. While the location was strong I felt that I didn't make use of the interior of the house as much as I could have done. This was partly due to the lack of light. However, if I had had more time I would have been able to organise the use of portable battery powered lights. While there are not as many shots of the interior as I wanted, I don't feel this is strongly reflected in the trailer. 

Blog

Using blogger was easier this year as last year I learned from the mistakes I made last year. I decided to go with a basic template as I had tried a more adventurous colour scheme and layout last year and it did not work. 

However, while my blogs layout may be more basic than others, it has had views from allover the world. 

This shows that my blog is having regular viewings from all across the globe. This shows that blogs can be simple and informative while still attracting a large audience. 

Photo shoot.

While creating my ancillary texts I had to take a wide range of photos so I had plenty of material to work with. It also meant that I would be able to experiment with a different camera angles and compositions.