Evaluation: What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback has been a great tool throughout my coursework. I first began using it on my magazine covers to find out what they thought so that I could gather their opinions and produce a piece of work that would want them to choose my film or read my magazine. The audience feedback even though sometimes rather harsh is usually very constructive, and they explain what points would make it more desirable. One thing that is hard though is to be able to accommodate for everyone's wants, everyone has different opinions, so I have to go with the majority as this means more viewers. Audience Feedback became incredibly helpful during the editing and making of my teaser trailer. As can be seen in my blog, I made two teaser trailers, the first being shorter. After putting this up on YouTube I very quickly got responses as to how it could be improved. As I found out, they believed it was too short and too confusing. There is guessing, and then there is GUESSING was the feeling I got from it. The swap between settings was too much and bored the viewers.
Audience Feedback is probably the most important tool available to any producer, yes you need the editing software, the equipment to film and light, BUT, who are you making this for, your target audience, if they do not like it, you have no viewers so all the money spent, all the time you take on making this product is wasted, so without their feedback from the start, you are pretty much stuck. So, audience feedback, VITAL!

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

As well as a teaser trailer, we were asked to make a magazine front cover and a poster to promote the film. The magazine cover I feel promotes the main actor very well. He is large and takes up a lot of the front cover, making it very hard to miss and his name also follows this. The poster is the more effective of the two. It does not give too much away and once again keeps and audience intrigued and wanting to find out more. The two actors on my posters looking at the same point makes you feel that they are either concentrating on a similar target, are eyeing each other up as opponents, or are on the same team are just working out a strategy. But there is no definite answer. The background image of the orange globe, rather modernised as it is implies an action film which is further backed up by the use of the guns in the poster. Lastly the fact that one actor is in front of the other may imply one is more important than the other, but this whole guessing game that is witnessed through the trailer is continued into the poster.

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

Throughout this teaser trailer, I do not stray from the forms and conventions of an action genre or a teaser trailer. Names of the characters in my film are never revealed and it is just left as '2 men" which keeps the audience guessing as to who they are, which is the whole point of a teaser trailer, to 'tease' the audience to get them more intrigued. I have you a stereotypical Caucasian male, young to play the role of my main actor and fairly well built implying he is strong and powerful which is what men in most action films are nowadays, for example Greenzone, Matt Damon is young and Casino Royale, Daniel Craig is young but has a muscular build. The other actor used at the beginning is also following the conventions of an action film, we get a sense that he is the 'boss man' and stereotypically, they are either bald or have a skinhead, and have a large figure, they are at the top and no one gives them orders. Everyone answers to him. Where is do challenge the conventions of a real media product in this particular genre is the setting. Generally, it would be at an army base, with loads of other soldiers, located in a desert or fancy hotel, or somewhere in Asia where terrorism is associated. But in mine, one scene is in the snow and another in the woods, not exactly the most exciting places, and there are no helicopters, big guns, cars, it is a simple, one man job with no gadgets. Lastly, I feel i have developed some conventions slightly by constantly changing the audiences opinions on characters and the movie as a whole, generally a teaser trailer would show the character winning throughout, defeating everyone that gets in his way and not once letting the audience doubt their superiority. I do this twice in my trailer, the first being when the title '2 rules' is revealed. The audience feels that he has some morals and has some rules to follows, limitations to his job. But this idea is quickly shot out the sky when we find out their two rules are to kill and survive. The second time is at the end where we assume he has been shot down on a mission, he is lying on the floor struggling and a title comes up saying 'some you lose'. This once again is proven to be wrong as soon after he is seen alive, with an angered face and the heartbeat starting back up again.

Evaluation: Problems

We have encountered a fair few problems during the coursework stage of our media. The main problem we have being technical issues. Camera's do not always connect to the Mac's that the schools have and many of these have broken. This has slowed us down somewhat as we had to find a way to overcome this, in the end, we just used our own cameras. Another problem has been the weather. This first problem was the huge snow storm that hit us earlier this year. We had no intentions to film in the snow as our idea never covered it, but after some consideration we thought, if we are doing a film about 2 mercenaries would they not be taking jobs in other countries? So from this we decided to film during the snow period.

Evaluation: Modern Technology Used for 7.62

-Mac Computer, This was used as the main piece of technology as it contained all the software and memory space needed to complete my project.
-iMovie-WHen it came to the editing of my trailer I felt this was by far the best piece of software to use. After having experience of it during my AS year, I felt comfortable with all the aspects that it had to offer and was confident with how to use them to my advantage. The simple yet clear layout of this software makes editing quicker and easier for me. One problem that I did encounter was the limited amount of timelines for sound. At first I felt that I would just be using a soundtrack, but after audience feedback, I discovered that this was not the case, and I needed more and more sound effects. Luckily they all squeezed in but any more and I many have been stuck.
-YouTube-Youtube was a very helpful tool for two things. Firstly, it helped when putting my work up so that I could connect it to my blog. Secondly, for audience feedback, after putting my video up, people began commenting and gave their opinions on how they thought I should improve, and from this I was able to produce a better trailer.
-Final Cut-Final Cut was always going to be there as a back-up in case I needed more sound time lines, luckily this was not the case, but for some transitions, I felt that Final Cut offered a larger array of effects for my use.
-Livetype- Livetype is a piece of software used by many professionals in the movie business. This aided me in producing a better title sequence for my film as it contains many effects such as the heart monitor, and secondly made it easier to input the bullet hole after hearing the gun shot.
-Music sites-Even though they were not used too often, when it came to heartbeats and gunshots, these sites were very useful as it made the trailer seem more like an action genre.
-iTunes-When I was searching for my soundtrack iTunes really helped out. I could input a CD and select individual tracks that I felt could be useful and then i could make a shortlist which would be used to finally decide on my soundtrack.
-Video Camera-A vital part of my coursework, needed to film everything for the trailer itself.
-Digital Camera-Needed for photos taken for magazine and poster.
-Adobe Photoshop-I have used this piece of software for the last 3 years now, GCSE, AS and now A2. I felt comfortable with using this and know the ins and out of it. With this knowledge it made it easier to cut out pictures and place it on templates of my magazines and posters.
-USB Stick/CD'S- Used to move work from computer to computer making it easier for transport, and making it easier to complete work in various places.