Showing posts with label Evaluation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Evaluation. Show all posts
Wednesday, 26 March 2014
Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Gaining feedback from my audiences was incredibly useful. It gave me an insight into the opinions of my target market. In addition to this, by interacting with people I was able to find ways of improving my media that I would have otherwise missed. Overall, the feedback that I received allowed me to create better media products.
I primarily asked feedback from people in my target audience, but was also able to gain feedback from a selection of other people as well. Fortunately since the film was an action/crime/thriller with an age rating of 15, the target audience was around the same sort of age that my group members and I are. This made it easier to gain audience feedback since with all had a large range of contacts which fitted the specifications of our intended target market.
I was able to get the feedback via the use of a number of different people including:
My Media Studies Teacher – The teacher that I had for the subject had a vast amount of experience in media and was therefore able to give me a fantastic amount of feedback. His feedback included telling me which areas of my products I had done well on and identifying the weaker areas of the practical pieces. However since he was the teacher the majority of his answers were vague in the sense that he never told me exactly what to do and would therefore not have a large impact on the project.
Media Studies Students – Discussing my ideas and displaying my creative pieces of work to the other students in my class was very useful. Since they were studying the same course and therefore doing similar tasks to me, I was able to gain more detailed feedback from these students than most other people. In addition to this, they could identify problematic areas and give me guidance on how to better fit the codes and conventions as well as producing a nicer looking piece of work. I was able to give these people feedback on their own work as well as simply getting feedback from them for my work thus making the task beneficial to both sides.
Friends – Friends were one of the major sources of audience feedback that I used. They were who I was in contact with the most and therefore were the most convenient people to use for the task. The only negative factor about asking my friends for feedback was that they had a limited amount of knowledge in the subject and were therefore unable to give as valuable feedback as the teacher of the media studies class and the media studies students. However they were still able to provide important feedback and give interesting new opinions on certain products.
Assorted Others – Throughout the course I gained feedback from a number of other people as well. These primarily included family members and random students from my school (not studying media studies). I was able to get useful feedback from these people, but it wasn't as convenient or as insightful as the feedback I was able to get from other people.
I collected the data via a number of different sources including:
Verbal contact – This was my primary source of feedback in this project. All that this method involved was me asking somebody for feedback and then simply writing down their responses. Since I am still attending school at the moment, I had a large amount of contact with people and was therefore able to get a lot of feedback.
Social networking – Another of the methods I used was messaging people via social networks (mostly Facebook). This was convenient as it allowed me to contact a large amount of people instantly and gave me people’s responses in a written format that I could simply copy into a Microsoft Word document and save, thus cutting out the need for me to personally write anything down.
Video recording – One of the methods that I attempted was interviewing people and recording their responses. It was a good idea and was easy to carry out for the most part. Unfortunately though, many people were reluctant to be filmed and therefore I ended up with a limited amount of feedback in video format.
Surveys – A different method of capturing information was using surveys. I primarily used the website Surveymonkey.com to do this. It was highly useful as it automatically totaled the scores that were received, I was then able to go on and create a number of graphs using this information. The only setback was that setting up the survey and sending it out to people took a fair amount of time and effort.
Overall the audience feedback taught me a lot as it allowed me to identify errors, make improvements and tailor my products to better suit the targeted audiences thus making my work significantly better. I used audience feedback significantly more so than I had done last year in my media studies coursework since I had more tasks to complete and I was now more aware of the advantages of collecting feedback from people.
I primarily asked feedback from people in my target audience, but was also able to gain feedback from a selection of other people as well. Fortunately since the film was an action/crime/thriller with an age rating of 15, the target audience was around the same sort of age that my group members and I are. This made it easier to gain audience feedback since with all had a large range of contacts which fitted the specifications of our intended target market.
I was able to get the feedback via the use of a number of different people including:
My Media Studies Teacher – The teacher that I had for the subject had a vast amount of experience in media and was therefore able to give me a fantastic amount of feedback. His feedback included telling me which areas of my products I had done well on and identifying the weaker areas of the practical pieces. However since he was the teacher the majority of his answers were vague in the sense that he never told me exactly what to do and would therefore not have a large impact on the project.
Media Studies Students – Discussing my ideas and displaying my creative pieces of work to the other students in my class was very useful. Since they were studying the same course and therefore doing similar tasks to me, I was able to gain more detailed feedback from these students than most other people. In addition to this, they could identify problematic areas and give me guidance on how to better fit the codes and conventions as well as producing a nicer looking piece of work. I was able to give these people feedback on their own work as well as simply getting feedback from them for my work thus making the task beneficial to both sides.
Friends – Friends were one of the major sources of audience feedback that I used. They were who I was in contact with the most and therefore were the most convenient people to use for the task. The only negative factor about asking my friends for feedback was that they had a limited amount of knowledge in the subject and were therefore unable to give as valuable feedback as the teacher of the media studies class and the media studies students. However they were still able to provide important feedback and give interesting new opinions on certain products.
Assorted Others – Throughout the course I gained feedback from a number of other people as well. These primarily included family members and random students from my school (not studying media studies). I was able to get useful feedback from these people, but it wasn't as convenient or as insightful as the feedback I was able to get from other people.
I collected the data via a number of different sources including:
Verbal contact – This was my primary source of feedback in this project. All that this method involved was me asking somebody for feedback and then simply writing down their responses. Since I am still attending school at the moment, I had a large amount of contact with people and was therefore able to get a lot of feedback.
Social networking – Another of the methods I used was messaging people via social networks (mostly Facebook). This was convenient as it allowed me to contact a large amount of people instantly and gave me people’s responses in a written format that I could simply copy into a Microsoft Word document and save, thus cutting out the need for me to personally write anything down.
Video recording – One of the methods that I attempted was interviewing people and recording their responses. It was a good idea and was easy to carry out for the most part. Unfortunately though, many people were reluctant to be filmed and therefore I ended up with a limited amount of feedback in video format.
Surveys – A different method of capturing information was using surveys. I primarily used the website Surveymonkey.com to do this. It was highly useful as it automatically totaled the scores that were received, I was then able to go on and create a number of graphs using this information. The only setback was that setting up the survey and sending it out to people took a fair amount of time and effort.
Overall the audience feedback taught me a lot as it allowed me to identify errors, make improvements and tailor my products to better suit the targeted audiences thus making my work significantly better. I used audience feedback significantly more so than I had done last year in my media studies coursework since I had more tasks to complete and I was now more aware of the advantages of collecting feedback from people.
Question 2: How Effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Overall I feel that the combination of my main product (the movie trailer) and ancillary texts was very effective. The teaser film poster that I created would have created an initial interest in the film, which would have then been reinforced by the magazine cover. Out of the two ancillary texts I believe that the magazine cover was the strongest. However both the film poster and the magazine cover share a number of common features as well as strongly linking to the main product. I believe that it is obvious that the magazine cover and film poster are being used to successfully advertise the same film as the one that the main task is about, therefore I would consider them to be a success. There are a number of ways in which each task is combined to the main product. To fully understand this, one must consider both ancillary texts separately.
Film Poster:
The film poster shares a number of common features with the film trailer. The most obvious of these shared elements is the heavy focus of the main character, Jason Dyer. Both the main task and the poster display him as a violent character that is not to be messed with. In the trailer this is shown through the violent actions of the character, however since the poster is a static image it had to use another method to show this. The poster displays the characters violent tendencies via the menacing, serious expression on the main characters face. In addition to this, the violence is symbolized by the blood splatters that can be seen both on the title and in the background of the poster. Other elements of the trailer are also present in the poster including the names of the actors, the production studio’s name, the film’s website and distribution studio (Lionsgate). The most obvious linkage to the trailer is the name of the movie ‘Dyers List’ and that it uses the same font as the trailer did.
Magazine Cover:
Since the magazine cover was for a ‘Little White Lies’ magazine I had to give it a unique visual style. However there is still a major link between the magazine cover, film poster and film trailer. The magazine cover takes the same approach as the poster by using an image of only the main character from the film. This is a massively effective way of combing the tasks together as the character is recognizable and is the main focus in each different product. The magazine cover also links to the other tasks by displaying the title ‘Dyers List’. It is the same title as the other two products use, but uses a different font. The different font was used to make it fit the conventions of the ‘Little White Lies’ magazine. However the different font has a sinister feel to it and can easily be linked to the film’s genre (crime/action/thriller). The dark and violent nature of the film is also displayed via the use of a grey background and splatters behind the main character.
Film Poster:
The film poster shares a number of common features with the film trailer. The most obvious of these shared elements is the heavy focus of the main character, Jason Dyer. Both the main task and the poster display him as a violent character that is not to be messed with. In the trailer this is shown through the violent actions of the character, however since the poster is a static image it had to use another method to show this. The poster displays the characters violent tendencies via the menacing, serious expression on the main characters face. In addition to this, the violence is symbolized by the blood splatters that can be seen both on the title and in the background of the poster. Other elements of the trailer are also present in the poster including the names of the actors, the production studio’s name, the film’s website and distribution studio (Lionsgate). The most obvious linkage to the trailer is the name of the movie ‘Dyers List’ and that it uses the same font as the trailer did.
Magazine Cover:
Since the magazine cover was for a ‘Little White Lies’ magazine I had to give it a unique visual style. However there is still a major link between the magazine cover, film poster and film trailer. The magazine cover takes the same approach as the poster by using an image of only the main character from the film. This is a massively effective way of combing the tasks together as the character is recognizable and is the main focus in each different product. The magazine cover also links to the other tasks by displaying the title ‘Dyers List’. It is the same title as the other two products use, but uses a different font. The different font was used to make it fit the conventions of the ‘Little White Lies’ magazine. However the different font has a sinister feel to it and can easily be linked to the film’s genre (crime/action/thriller). The dark and violent nature of the film is also displayed via the use of a grey background and splatters behind the main character.
Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop and challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
My three media products use, develop and challenge forms and conventions of real media products in a number of different ways. To understand how each of the media products does this, they must be looked at separately.
Film Trailer:
My group’s film trailer had a crime/action/thriller genre. We were therefore able to use the conventions from three different genres of film. We used a professional quality camera (Canon SLR) to record the footage for the film, thus providing us with a crisp and professional looking product. In addition to this we decided to use narration, which is present in a vast amount of film trailers, to explain key elements of the story and allow us to use more montage and non-linear scenes. We also added a selection of sound effects to our film thus making various scenes such as the battle sequences more believable than they would have been without the additional sound effects. Our final trailer lasted 1 minute and 44 seconds. A typical teaser trailer is between 30 seconds and 1 minute, however we decided to do a full length trailer. Full length trailers are generally between 1 minute 30 seconds and 2 minutes 30 seconds therefore our film trailer managed to fit the convention. In addition to this, we displayed footage of the key characters in the film and used two separate songs, thus fitting the conventions of a standard trailer. The violent scenes, montages and gravelly tone of the narrator for Jason Dyer indicate the genre of the film and are therefore are of high importance since they help people decide whether or not they wish to see the film.
Film Poster:
I decided to create a teaser poster for my film poster. Since the focus of teaser posters is primarily on a single character or object I decided to have a simple shot of Jason Dyer (the main character) as my primary image. To pull off such an image I realised that I would need to use some studio standard photography so as to avoid having a background in my image. Therefore my group and I created a basic studio ourselves with a white sheet, a flashbulb and a CANON SLR camera. We were able to replicate the standard of a photography studio surprising well. This was important since the majority of professional film companies use studios for taking pictures for use in posters and other promotional materials. Another way in which I used conventions from film posters was by using a font for the addition text (e.g. coming soon) that is used as a standard font for film posters. This made the poster more believable as it was able to directly replicate the text style of other such posters. The majority of teaser posters use the star theory to attract audiences; therefore I included the names of the three major actors (Tom Nelson, Joe Inns and Alex Fox) at the top of the poster. The positioning of the names was inspired by both the ‘Grown Ups 2’ poster and the ‘The Wolverine’ poster, both of which display the names of the most popular actors at the top of the page. Many professional posters (e.g. the teaser posters for Disney’s recent Alice in Wonderland movie) also display the studio name directly above the title of the film; therefore I included ‘Anarchy Productions’ above ‘Dyers List’. The positioning of the ‘coming soon’, website address and linked companies was also inspired by teaser posters for other professional films.
Magazine Cover:
The magazine cover that I selected to do was a cover for ‘Little White Lies’. This magazine is very unique and breaks a lot of the standard conventions of a film magazine. The magazine does not include a number of the standard convention including cover lines, straplines and plugs. However whilst they break the majority of the standard conventions, they have their own conventions for their magazine. The convention of a ‘Little White Lies’ magazine is to have a highly stylised artistic representation of a movie as their main image, with their masthead which is located in the centre of the magazine and at the top of the page and having the main cover line being the title of the featured movie. They include the majority of the vital conventions of a film magazine within their masthead itself. The sections displayed within their masthead are the barcode, magazine title (‘Little White Lies’), puff, cover price, issue number and publish date. I chose to use this magazine due to these unique conventions. It gave me a large amount of creative freedom and allowed me to focus primarily on making the central image as nice as possible since I did not need to worry about including many features such as cover lines, straplines and plugs.
Film Trailer:
My group’s film trailer had a crime/action/thriller genre. We were therefore able to use the conventions from three different genres of film. We used a professional quality camera (Canon SLR) to record the footage for the film, thus providing us with a crisp and professional looking product. In addition to this we decided to use narration, which is present in a vast amount of film trailers, to explain key elements of the story and allow us to use more montage and non-linear scenes. We also added a selection of sound effects to our film thus making various scenes such as the battle sequences more believable than they would have been without the additional sound effects. Our final trailer lasted 1 minute and 44 seconds. A typical teaser trailer is between 30 seconds and 1 minute, however we decided to do a full length trailer. Full length trailers are generally between 1 minute 30 seconds and 2 minutes 30 seconds therefore our film trailer managed to fit the convention. In addition to this, we displayed footage of the key characters in the film and used two separate songs, thus fitting the conventions of a standard trailer. The violent scenes, montages and gravelly tone of the narrator for Jason Dyer indicate the genre of the film and are therefore are of high importance since they help people decide whether or not they wish to see the film.
Film Poster:
I decided to create a teaser poster for my film poster. Since the focus of teaser posters is primarily on a single character or object I decided to have a simple shot of Jason Dyer (the main character) as my primary image. To pull off such an image I realised that I would need to use some studio standard photography so as to avoid having a background in my image. Therefore my group and I created a basic studio ourselves with a white sheet, a flashbulb and a CANON SLR camera. We were able to replicate the standard of a photography studio surprising well. This was important since the majority of professional film companies use studios for taking pictures for use in posters and other promotional materials. Another way in which I used conventions from film posters was by using a font for the addition text (e.g. coming soon) that is used as a standard font for film posters. This made the poster more believable as it was able to directly replicate the text style of other such posters. The majority of teaser posters use the star theory to attract audiences; therefore I included the names of the three major actors (Tom Nelson, Joe Inns and Alex Fox) at the top of the poster. The positioning of the names was inspired by both the ‘Grown Ups 2’ poster and the ‘The Wolverine’ poster, both of which display the names of the most popular actors at the top of the page. Many professional posters (e.g. the teaser posters for Disney’s recent Alice in Wonderland movie) also display the studio name directly above the title of the film; therefore I included ‘Anarchy Productions’ above ‘Dyers List’. The positioning of the ‘coming soon’, website address and linked companies was also inspired by teaser posters for other professional films.
Magazine Cover:
The magazine cover that I selected to do was a cover for ‘Little White Lies’. This magazine is very unique and breaks a lot of the standard conventions of a film magazine. The magazine does not include a number of the standard convention including cover lines, straplines and plugs. However whilst they break the majority of the standard conventions, they have their own conventions for their magazine. The convention of a ‘Little White Lies’ magazine is to have a highly stylised artistic representation of a movie as their main image, with their masthead which is located in the centre of the magazine and at the top of the page and having the main cover line being the title of the featured movie. They include the majority of the vital conventions of a film magazine within their masthead itself. The sections displayed within their masthead are the barcode, magazine title (‘Little White Lies’), puff, cover price, issue number and publish date. I chose to use this magazine due to these unique conventions. It gave me a large amount of creative freedom and allowed me to focus primarily on making the central image as nice as possible since I did not need to worry about including many features such as cover lines, straplines and plugs.
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