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

JT+TS

What can you learn from your audience feedback?

Trailer


We carried out a test screening to establish what an audience thought of our trailer. Participants filled our a questionnaire having viewed the trailer.

From the data above we can clearly learn that the trailer is effective in its purpose, that is to sell the film to the audience. 100% of participants stated that they would see the film our trailer is advertising at the cinema and the entire sample identified the genre of the film from the trailer alone.

However we can also learn that there are faults with our product. A minority of the participants did not feel that graphics and sound were used as effectively as they could be. From qualitative data we learnt that they felt that they did not have time to read the information presented in the graphics and that they would prefer to have had more dialogue.

However despite indications that there are faults participants would still see the film at the cinema and therefore we can conclude that our trailer serves its purpose well.








Magazine

We carried out interviews to find out what people thought of our magazine cover:



From this qualitative data we can learn that our magazine cover is comparable to a real product and that it would stand out on a shelf effectively enough to catch the eye of a potential buyer.

Almost all the participants said that font and colour was used effectively as well as eye catching images. They also expressed the view that our product was similar to a real product (such as Empire) and that they would pick it up off the shelf if they saw it. It is clear from these comments that our product follows the conventions of real media products.

However participants also said that the product could gain from minor improvements. One participant stated that he wouldn't buy the product straight away based on the cover but he would have a look at the content first. Others commented that the RRP of the magazine was a little steep, however this is around the standard price for a mainstream film magazine such as total film or empire.



Poster

For the poster feedback we interviewed a member of our media class and created a Facebook page to collect feedback from a larger sample.



From this interview we can learn that the poster is effective in making the genre of our product clear. As well as this we learn that the layout of the poster is effective in catching the viewers eye and that it is similar to a real product. We can also learn that the poster tells the viewer enough about the narrative of the film to encourage them to see the movie.

However we also learn that the poster could be even better. The participant states that the background image could have more texture to it.

The main thing we can learn from the Facebook comments is that the use of the main image is very effective as is the use of graphics and colour. Participants also commented that our poster was like that of a real film.

JT + TS

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

please click the image to go to Flickr in order to view the annotations

please click the image to go to Flickr in order to view the annotations

We used the updated version of Final Cut, Final |Cut Pro X, as opposed to Final Cut Express. This gave us greater creative freedom as the technology simply allowed us to do more, especially in terms of graphics.  The update also allowed us to add more visual effects, such as day to night filming. We also used Photoshop to create our poster and magazine cover. This allowed us to easily manipulate images to create an overall effect. The HD card cameras that we used allowed us to shoot in stunning high definition and upload our images quickly and easily to the Apple Macs that we would be editing on.

TS + JT

Magazine:- Corporate Structure and Audience

The magazine we would create would be a very mainstream high end magazine. It could be categorized with publications such as Empire and Total Film and would be aimed at a similar audience. To Compete with such publications we will need to create a product that is comparable in terms of quality and competitively priced.

Our target audience would be the same as empire and total film, young to middle aged, affluent males and will therefore need to display, on the front cover features and articles that would be attractive to such an audience. Whilst this is our target audience we would not discriminate against other demographics that may also be interested in mainstream cinema, for example we would also feature articles about films targeted at older people, younger people and females.

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Poster Planning

From the beginning we were keen to use the image of the shadow in the door as we considered it to be bold and therefore eye catching. We also wanted to incorporate a shot from the trailer, which would also be from the actual film. We took film poster conventions into account when we designed our original poster.

Below are our original rough sketch plans for the poster. We did not fully intend to use these designs but through them we came up with the basic plans for the layout of our poster. 

We created a series of 6 drafts before going back and developing our 3rd draft to create the final product.

Draft 1

In the creating our first draft we chose the font ('Typewriter 1942') that would play a key part in all our drafts and the final product. we also created the billing block (font: 'Universal Accreditation) that would be copied and pasted into our other drafts. At this stage we also decided to have the actors name in the 'Universal Accreditation' font.  We also came up with a catchline that was later developed. However we did not consider this draft to be strong enough to be our final draft as the grey text used and the positioning was not correct. The effects put on the main image were also not effective enough.

Draft 1

In draft 2 we made the transition from grey to red for the text and white for the billing block and websites.we moved the title down and put the cast at the top. We also moved the release date down to the bottom to make it more prominent. At this stage we were still deciding whether the tagline (as seen in draft 1) was appropriate for the genre. We eventually decided that a similar tagline was fine as horror films are often fairly 'tongue and cheek' in their taglines. we also took some of the filters off the main image.

Draft 2

Draft 3 was the draft that would later become the final product. the layout is similar. We used the smudge tool on photoshop to distort the figure in the main image in order to 'dehumanize' it. by this stage it was 2012 so we changed the release date to 'autumn 2012' and raised and enlarged it to make it even more prominent.   At this stage we had another potential tagline, that was similar to the previous one. We also made the billing block slightly larger, the websites in particular. The certification and the facebook page address were added at a later stage during the transition to the final product.

Draft 3

We decided to make draft 4 a landscape image. We did this with the view to add more to the poster which could in turn show off more selling points of the film the the poster thus making it more effective. We added another image from the film as well as the certification of the film. We used the original doorway image as it may have looked better without the smudging but with blurred lines instead. we attempted to use a shadow effect to blend the secondary image in. We added a vertical red line to create a divide between the door way image and the rest of the poster. a

Draft 4

Draft five is similar to draft 4, except we decided that the smudged version of the doorway image was much more effective as it stood out more and as mentioned above it's slightly dehumanized. we also added the tagline. The secondary image was taken as a still and is not a shot from the movie. We wanted to feature the doll but not explain its meaning, whereas a shot of the character finding it may have given too much away. we found the the image did not blend well into the rest of the poster and decided to change it in draft 6.

Draft 5



Again draft 6 i very similar to 4 and 5. It has the same layout, being landscape rather than portrait. We changed the secondary image again to just the doll and added filters to drain the colour and lower the level of opaqueness to make it blend in more effectively and and with subtlety. We also added the orginal tagline but later decided to use the shorter, snappier version. However we then came to the decision that a portrait poster was more suitable as we felt the secondary image distracted from the strengths of the doorway image. There was also a fair amount of unessary free space.

Draft 6



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Shooting Schedule

As our trailer involved four actors it was difficult to organise a time when they were all available to film. It was also the case that our actors had work commitments that limited our available filming slots to weekends. We also had filming sessions that had to be cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances.

This also lead to a relatively last minute change in casting of our actress as our original actress was not available at times that suited the rest of our cast and as we were running out of available weekends before our deadline a change of actress was necessary.

On our second day of filming we did not have a boom pole which made recording sound slightly more difficult as we were unable to get the microphone as close to the sound source as we would have liked to.  However because there were two of us the problem was relatively easily over come.

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Front Cover Analysis

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