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.

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.

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.

Trailer Audio

In the end my group decided to use different music to songs that we had originally intended to use. The two songs that made it into the final production were ‘Genesis’ by ‘Justice’ and ‘Tick of the clock’ by ‘The Chromatics’. We decided to change the music after receiving some negative feedback about the previous selection of songs. The criticism was that the songs used were too repetitive and that they did not fit well with the video footage. After watching the previous version of the trailer again, I could see that their points were valid and that the audio did need to change. I feel that our new selection of songs works far better in the trailer and that overall the decision to change the music was positive.

Justice – Genesis

The Chromatics – Tick of the clock

The other audio used in the production was a selection of different sound effects. These sound effects were found on a variety of different websites including soundbible.com, soundjay.com and Youtube. The only issue with using these sound effects would be that we could have got into trouble for possibly breaching copyright laws if our trailer was to have been created for an actual film that was to be sold.

Planning Methods

Mood Boards:

A mood board is a collage of text, images and other objects. Mood boards help people to visualise the general feel and direction in which they are wishing to take their product. In addition to this they can be used to communicate people’s ideas to other project members. One of the purposes of a mood board is to map out the ideas which they have had and aid them with deciding what to do. In the pre-production process, mood boards generally come before even the storyboard. In terms of usefulness they are rather useful but I would consider the other methods of pre-production to be far more effective, as mood boards are essentially just a collage of assorted images and text made simply to convey the general themes, ideas and flow of the product. The mood board I created was of relatively little use as my group and I already had a strong idea of what we wanted to achieve with the product and the ideas, themes and direction were largely decided in conversation.

Software which can be used to make mood boards includes: Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Word, Photoshop, Pintrest and more.

Mind Maps:

Mind maps are a type of diagram used to display a set of information. They usually start with one word in the centre (generally the theme or name of project) and have words branching out from it (generally divided into themed clusters), connected to other relevant words with lines. Mind maps can include a range of other things as well such as different images and colours. They are one of the most popular forms of pre-production and are taught to students in many schools. In addition to this they are also able to be created either digitally or by hand. In the pre-production process they are used to map out the ideas, themes and a variety of other information (e.g. characters, props and locations). They can be used to easily communicate the ideas to other project members as well as giving the creator a stronger idea of what they wish to create. They are generally used before creating the storyboard or script.

Software which can be used to make mind maps includes: Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Word, Photoshop, Prezi and more.

Visualization Diagrams:

Visualization diagrams are diagrams which use visual imagery to communicate their ideas. They are used in a range of things such as engineering, science, education, animation and more. The term visualization is extremely broad as it simply means visual imagery, therefore visualization diagrams can be any images which aid in communicating ideas. In the preproduction process, visualization diagrams can be used in many different ways and at a range of different stages. For example a visualization diagram could be created to show what the stage is supposed to look like and what props should be included. Another use for example could be to display the technical elements of a prop (e.g. a robotic model such as Yoda from the early Star Wars movies).

 The range of software which can be used to create visualisation diagrams is extremely broad. I used adobe flash (for the drawing) and adobe Photoshop (to label the image) to create the visualization diagram for my project.

Storyboards:

Storyboards are sequences of images and text which display the key moments of a story. The storyboarding process in the form which it is known today was originally invented by Walt Disney Studios (a large company which specialised in animation) in the early 1930s. Storyboards can be created either digitally or by hand and can contain either drawn images or photographs. The purpose of storyboards is to display what is actually going to happen to happen in the film or advert. They can show a range of things such as the stage directions, expressions of actors, peoples positions, props, camera shots and the location which is being filmed. In the preproduction process they generally are made after the creation of mood boards and mind maps and can come either before or after the script.

Software which can be used to make mind maps includes: Photoshop, StoryboardThat, Toon Boom, Storyboard Pro and more.

Legal and Ethical Issues

There are legal and ethical issues about being photographed or filmed on private/public property or capturing people in backgrounds without permission.

When taking film or photographs most people assume that they automatically have the right to use them (e.g. for causes such as selling them as stock photographs or videos). However that is not always the case. In order to publish photographs professionally or sell them people must first get permission to use all of the buildings and people which they have captured in their photographs. In order to achieve this they must either get verbal permission or a release form. There are three sorts of release forms which are vital in photography. These release forms are property release forms, minor (children) release forms and adult release forms. Without obtaining the proper documentation, photographers can find themselves facing a range of legal and ethical issues. If a person finds that they have been photographed without their permission then they are able to take legal action against them or request that their image is removed. For example, the photographer Philip Lorca Dicorcia took a range of photographs of unaware people for one of his projects. One man who was unaware of this occurrence and had been photographed decided to take legal action against him as he believed that the photograph portrait him in an undesirable fashion (as a stereotypical Jewish man). Although the photograph had simply been of him walking through an area being unaware that photos had been taken of him, his offence to such images caused a range of problems for the photographer as he had been using the image commercially. It is therefore always better to obtain the proper documentation before taking a photograph or afterwards if it intended to be used either professionally or commercially.

In the media sector for photography it is always important to obey the laws set by people. To obtain permission to use people or buildings in their photographs, photographers must use release form with their models (even if they are unaware that the photograph was taken) otherwise they risk facing both legal and ethical issues after publishing their work. The release forms which are available are property release forms, minor (children) release forms and adult release forms. Although people are often unaware, buildings can have copyright on them. An example of a building with copyright on it is the Bluewater shopping centre in England. The reason for this copyright is that the architect believes that the building itself is an art piece. Due to this, photography is banned within the area and any photos taken of it must have proper permission from the copyright holders before publishing their photographs. Copyright (displayed via the © symbol) is a legal form of protection for people’s intellectual property (intellectual property is a unique thing created by somebody). Copyright can be used to protect:

·         original literary and written work, like novels or content on websites

·         original dramatic, musical and artistic works

·         television, film, sound and music recordings

·         computer software

·         illustration and photography

·         typographical arrangement of published editions

However the item must physically exist in order to be copyrighted and therefore people are unable to obtain copyright for only an idea. Copyright is not meant to restrict people’s creativity but to protect people’s original work. Another important thing is trademarking. Trademarks are things which make your brand recognisable (most commonly a logo or set of words) and registering a trademark allows you to stop people from using it without your permission first. Unfortunately trademarks have been abused in some cases. For example the company ‘King’ which is responsible for developing mobile apps such as the massively popular ‘Candy Crush Saga’ trademarked the word ‘Candy’. This caused massive controversy as candy is a common word and should not have even been able to be trademarked. They have since used this trademark to bully smaller developers and stop them making anything even related to the subject. Cases such as this show flaws in the legal system and if people are able to trademark common words like this then there shall soon be no words left in the dictionary to use.

First Version of A2 Film Trailer

This is the first version of my group’s film trailer. I believe that so far our trailer is looking good. However I feel that there are a selection of improvements that we could add to it to get a better trailer overall. The issues I identified in this first version are as follows:

• The music is repetitive and does not properly convey the intended message of the film. To improve this we should replace the song with a more suitable one.

• The narrative of the movie is not fully clear. To solve this issue we will need to add more text to the scenes and addition narration from our voice actors.

• The sound effects used are poor at times. This can be solved by replacing or removing the sound effects that don’t fit in well with the movie or rearranging them on the video’s timeline.

I also intend to ask a selection of people for their feedback on this copy of the trailer. Their insight may provide us with new ideas and allow us identify any areas that may be weak.