Evaluation

Media Evaluation

The brief I was set for my main task of the media advanced was to make a promotion package for a new film, to include a teaser trailer and two ancillary texts. I had three choices for my ancillary texts, these where a film magazine front cover a film poster or a website homepage for the respective film. I selected a film poster and Magazine front cover for my ancillary texts. I picked these two as in my previous year I had done these before and was driven to try and improve and use different skills than what I had done in before in my original AS work.

When researching into my chosen genre of film I conducted a series of questionnaires to procure as much reliable information I could about my target audience, both quantitative and qualitative. As well as this I analysed existing media texts relating to my genre using the LIIAR method. This research when gathered helped inform my planning in the way that it had given me the data to make choices based on what the target audience wanted, and not have a bias view of what I thought they wanted, a focus group also helped somewhat when researching and drafting up ideas based on my genre.
As I planned out my project I asked focus groups to constantly critique my current stage of work to meet there expectations of a Film Trailer. I feel it is worth noting that my original film trailer was going to be pure match on action, using various camera shots to tell a story. This changed in the early to mid stages as audience feedback of my current revision of the film trailer stated that it didn’t have the feel of a film trailer and needed to be “mixed up”. I acknowledged this and proceeded to cut the linear footage into an interesting composition that, when shown to the same focus group they announced it was an improvement. Also for the poster I altered it slightly as a trial audience stated that it lacked a film rating and production information, because of this I went back to my project and added these conventions, which gave it a distinct improved look.
My target audience was young people around the age range of 16- 25, although if it had been a real film it would of changed it to 18-25. The reasoning behind selecting a younger age group is that they are already heavily influenced by the media in public places, and so could give insightful feedback when participating in my research. The target audience appears to be mainly young males, as this is a stereotypical interest of that target audience, however to not be bias and to reveal if females have similar interests and tastes as males I planned to include an amount of females as balanced as possible. For my media products I researched deeply into what my target audiences wanted, this started off with questionnaires, to get my data, both qualitive and quantitative I decided to make a questionnaire that could be mass produced to reach a large spectrum of people, I opted out of doing an on line poll as the main audience would be bias towards the media related work I was doing, as it is a high probability they would of found the blogger due to its content. This then gave me a sizeable chunk of data that I used to create graphs using the website http:// nces.ed.gov /nceskids/ creategraph/default.aspx These graphs made it clear to see the trends for each quantitive question and give a clear idea of what the audience wanted for the majority. Other ways a delved into finding out what the audience wanted was to use focus groups of the target age group and test screen my products and have them tell me what they liked and disliked about it, this allowed me to get firsthand feedback that could be acted upon and changed/improved straight away. Finally I looked at successful media texts that was similar to my chosen medium, by making a textual analysis and the use of LIIAR for each of these I could come to grips and pick out the conventions that I would then use for my own work, insuring that if it was similar to the real thing, and thus up to the audiences expectations.

The media products that I created are a film trailer, film poster and a film magazine front cover. For both my main task and my two ancillary texts I tried to make use of the conventional forms that create a successful piece of media for my chosen medium. Ways in which I did this was to analyze existing media texts and incorporate there conventions into my work. Styles of the genre also played a factor in the creation of my pieces, for example in my film the choice of cuts and editing was done in such a way to mimic the action/apocalyptic genre of film trailers. Another example is taking the notable styles of the posters I looked at which featured the colour red and sepia tones which connotes danger/ vitality/ violence/anger and a death/out of time feel to the audience. I made use of the sepia tones and the colour red within my film trailer, this was done on purpose to connote the symbolic meaning of the colour, you can see specific red cargo crates that the character runs to in the trailer, also at the start there is a slight sepia tone to enforce the effect of things being out of focus with reality. The Magazine I feel challenged the conventions of media products the least as I tried to make it conform exactly like a current film magazine so the ideology would be perceived how I intended for the audience. As I carried out my project I looked at many media texts relating to my genre and by following the conventions shown within them, my products can be stylistically compared.
In the creative process, I had taken inspiration and conventions from a different form of the media, this was digital games. I had noticed in my research that the way game advertisements and trailers where done, differed slightly compared to film trailers, posters and magazine front covers. I wondered why this would be the case, as whereas most trailers had some form of narrative in the form of a narrator many game trailers didn’t have any and still appeared very effective. The same went for advertisements in posters for games; many would be more of a teaser relying on iconic images for the audience to be expected to relate to. After some research into media related to games, I decided that some of the conventions used in making a game which is not real seem realistic to immerse the player in, could perhaps be transferred over in the film medium.
The combination of my main product and ancillary texts I feel has a sense of intertextuality. I have carried running themes and styles through each, using similar text and colours for both my main product and ancillary texts. My custom logo was used in the poster and the film, I made it very simplistic and iconic so people would recall it when it appeared again in an alternate media text to the one they saw. Combining my media products as a package as would be used for a real film I think would be successful, the conventions used in each I have included for the best effect and to the best of my ability.
The feedback I have received has been instrumental in the design process of my media texts, as it has highlighted flaws in my work and helped shape it into what I feel is a conventional piece for all three of my texts, below I will highlight what I have learnt from my audience feedback for each of my media texts.
I have learned a lot from the feedback the audience has given me throughout the project. During the research stage, from a statistical side of things from my film trailer research/questionnaires, a higher percentage of males preferred the action/violence genre compared to females, with the majority overall having been to the cinema at least once in the past three months. Also my research has found that the majority of the target audience does go to the cinema at least once in 3 months.
On a qualitative side I also incorporated Qualitive questions into my questionnaire such as “What do you like about Action films?””What do you dislike Action films?” And “What would make you want to see Action films at the cinema? I had feedback such as “the setting gives it a good feel” and “special effects” for “what do you like about action films” question. Some examples of feedback for the dislike question was “the mindless violence” and “the story plots”. I kept this feedback as a reference when creating my own project so I wouldn’t stumble into too many pitfalls and produce something my target audience wanted. I also repeated this process for my film poster and magazine to pool all the data together with the same reasoning.
After I had finished my main project and two ancillary texts I conducted a questionnaire/ rating sheet for each to gather feedback. The people who participated in my feedback methods were random.
The feedback I had got once I had finished my film trailer was for the most part positive, many people commented on the setting I had used such as the snow, which to the general trend of the feedback was “what made the film trailer”. Another successful, convention that I challenged was my choice of scrapping verbal narrative for my film trailer in favour of a piece of music by Gary Jules, the song was Mad World. I did this to enhance the ambience of the film trailer and give it a distinct feel, indeed; many people commented on that choice in which they stated similar things such like it gave the trailer a mysterious almost melancholy feel that suited the content. On the other hand the short version of the trailer was much faster paced and used quick cuts in time with the music which was an orchestral piece called lacrimosa. Criticism that I did get from the audience though was the lighting of the indoor lab scenes, the scenes appeared to have a flat feel to them, and when looking back I agree, this could be improved.
Please refer to my audience feedback post for more details on the statistics.
When it came to getting audience feedback for my poster there was mixed reactions, many of the males that participated in the questionnaire/ ratings gave it a positive answer or rating. But the females I had in my questionnaire had a varied outlook on it. Going by the quantitive comments I received I achieved the effect I wanted to communicate to the audience. Namely the choice of colour and text affect which, when asked about it reminded them of danger or blood. This outcome supports my research into the target audience for my genre.

The feedback for the film magazine I found quite exciting to see what convention would be the most popular out the people who had taken my questionnaire. Once I had my results it became clear that the image was what drew the attention of the audience the most, followed by the title. Out of the qualitive data, the response from the people who had participated was that the magazine front cover looked like a real mainstream piece of work. This was the same view from both Male and Female.
Please refer to my audience feedback post for more details on the statistics.
Regarding the action genre of film trailers, the effects of digitalization is evident, the traditional conventions are being broken as CGI and other assorted effects are making the production something more than it is, this could be classed as postmodern. With my products I tried to replicate what a real institution would do, and that is of media convergence. This can be classed as vertical integration as from my first main media text, my other media products came about. Real Institutions often diversify into other media avenues from the existing text, such as selling the sound track to a film for example.
I used Photoshop CS3 and Adobe Premier Pro 1.5 to create my final products, my skills with Photoshop have improved greatly from my AS project, I know how to manipulate images, use an increased array of tools and filters at a much more professional standard then the previous year’s work. Adobe Premier Pro 1.5 I used for the first time this year, it took a little while to get used to, but was quite similar to Photoshop and Windows Movie maker, which I had experience with before. I had used Windows Movie maker to produce my Animatic.File types I used for my images where Jpeg (Joint Photographic Experts Group) and PNG (Portable Network Graphics) the jpeg images where used as they was small enough to be used on most sites at a decent quality, namely for use in my film poster, film magazine cover and for general blog use. The PNG images however I used for the logo of my film and partly blogger. This made it a slightly larger image but allowed for me to have a better quality image that could be overlaid onto any digital background without cutting off the object it was on. I also used a video camera and a digital camera for my work, for the video camera the file format was AVI (Audio Video Interleave) and the digital camera used BMP(bitmap) file format for its pictures, this gave my pictures taken with it a very high quality, although the file size would be large and in need of converting to a jpeg image. When converting and compressing my film I changed it from AVI to .WMV (Windows Movie Video).
I used the websites blogger and YouTube respectively to host my coursework on the internet, with the use of HTML code scripting to integrate (embed videos) to be viewed as one piece on the blogger. nces.ed.gov/nceskids/createagraph/ was the site I used to make graphs. Other technical equipment I used was the scanner to scan drafts and hand written/drawn works onto my computer for use on the blog. A printer was also used for reference sheets, questionnaires and storyboard sheets. Blogger also had the ability to add gadgets to the blog which would allow me to do an online poll, but as stated previously in my blog, I made the decision to go about it in a more traditional way to prevent bias.
When it came to converting my project to be used on YouTube, I noticed that the videos has a combing effect, I de-interlaced it so that the video would run smooth and be clearer.



To look at improvements I could have made if I was to do the project again are as follows:
Cast
The planning and logistical organizing I found I was un prepared for and could of handled it better if I had been aware of what was needed to make it work, I think I would of created a detailed schedule and been in closer contact with the film actors.
Lighting
As mentioned above, the lighting in some scenes wasn’t the best, it was workable however, but it had the positional to be a lot better. I would have made arrangements to get hold of professional equipment for this area if I was to do it again.
Weather
The weather played a big part in this film trailer, but it could be quite temperamental when filming, if I was to do it again in similar conditions, or for most conditions outdoors I would have brought extra equipment in case of malfunctions.
Feedback
I was quite linear in my approach to gathering audience feedback, if i was to do it again I would of broadened the ways in which I gathered my information.
Poster
I would have created a higher amount of mock posters to give me a varied pool of designs compared to drawing up rough drafts then sticking to a limited amount of ideas.
Magazine
Same as above.