Evaluation question 4 - How did you use media technologies in the construction, research and planning and evaluation stages?

Evaluation question 3 - What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Pre - production audience research:

Pre-production Audience Research from KimberleyEspinosa1

For question 3, I and my group decided that the best suitable way to gain a true picture of audience opinions was to conduct focus groups and interviews for feedback. The focus groups and  interviews consisted of both females and males, this was because our trailer was not aimed at a specific gender, furthermore, the age range of the interviews were between 17-19, they were conducted with this age range as our trailer was aimed at the youth or young adults as youth tend to be up to date with new films and hybrid genres, so we believed that this target age was suitable for our trailer.

Due to the variety of questions asked, the first thing I realised is that our genre was easily understood and identified by the majority of the feedback we got, however, we also realised that to possibly make the trailer identify as a psychological thriller to be specific, that a few more effects such as low-key lighting could have made a slight difference.

One of the aims of our trailer was to create tension by building suspense, this was done by cross-cutting, as well as fast pace editing along with suitable music, from the interviews conducted, I found that this aim was reached as the audience found it scary due to a few jumps scares and suspense building up, furthermore this demonstrates how the trailers editing allowed the trailer to be appealing to the target audience and the genre to be understood.
Furthermore, we also found that the audience had a good understanding the narrative, as they described it as "students trying to escape""the protagonist being possessed", etc. This showed us how the narrative was quite clear and easy to understand, I believe that one of the reasons it was easily understandable is because of the intertitles used "who will escape first", which allowed the audience to gain a better idea of the narrative.
Additionally, From conducting focus groups, it allowed us to see audiences first-hand reactions and facial expressions which gave us an idea of what they thought, after analysing this I realised that our trailer was effective and appealing to the target audience.

In conclusion, through conducting focus groups and interviews it demonstrated how effective our editing was due to the suspense built and positive feedback, however, I also realised that there could have been improvements with some of the mise-en-scene could have been improved such as lighting to compliment the genre further.

Evaluation question 2 - How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

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

To conclude, After  completing all 3 products, it was evident that both the ancillary text and the trailer were jointly related showing its importance to the audience, furthermore, by creating a promotional package it also allowed my final ancillary texts and trailer to identify as a more realistic real media product, upon completing all the products it also added a more professional look as promotional packages already exist within real media products. Additionally, pre-production also allowed me to have time to plan how I would relate each product with each other, for example through iconography or mise-en-scene e.g. characters clothing being the same within all my final products. 

Evaluation question 1

Evaluation question 1b - In what ways do your media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Trailer: ELECTUS

Trailer progression

Pre-production and planning:

Our first task that related to our trailer was to begin our sketches and storyboards, which was produced by me as me and my group decided to all have different roles assigned and work as a team to the best extent possible, not only did this allow us all to deeply focus on the specific role, but ti also improved our organisation and teamwork skills as we all communicated and made sure we came up with a compromise when making decisions. In this storyboard, I briefly drew the main scenes I and my group believed would work best and would be the main most important situation in the trailer. For example, I drew a scene in which the main characters are signing the school agreement, and all characters being trapped in different areas, and whilst producing the storyboard I made sure I also added a small caption as well as specific cinematography that will be done whilst filming that specific scene. This worked as a useful tool when we first started doing our filming as I had already previously written vague instructions or suggestions below the storyboard images.

Furthermore, part of my pre-production also consisted of planning what our trailer consisted off, this includes the genre and its conventions, the narrative/plot,  and how certain characters will be represented etc. In order to do this one of my team members briefly completed a film promo treatment which was one of the first stages before beginning our production of the trailer. Within this film promo sheet, the main conclusions me and my group came up with was the final title, the key cast members, and a brief plot in which Talisa(the protagonist) is playing a psychopath and targets three innocent students to murder, however, due to the plot being slightly brief, I decided to add more in-depth information to make it slightly easier when creating the trailer such as the filming.

These are the main storyboards which I thought would be the most useful when producing the final trailer. I also realised that by doing the main scenes it also simplifies our planning and future production.

The beginning of filming trailer:
Throughout AS to A2, I developed my software editing skills due to experience and practice, which I did through the use of the internet, for example, I watched a variety of youtube tutorials in order to gain more information and knowledge on software platforms such as photoshop. This, therefore, benefitted my ancillary tasks(at A2) as I previously also created preliminary tasks in AS, this then led me to have a standardized level of skill using photoshop. 

However, in order to complete the main task at A2 which was to create a film trailer of our chosen genre, which is a psychological thriller, in this case, me and my group had to practice editing using the software which was assigned( Premier Pro), for example, I edited some drafts, and bloopers just to become much more familiar with the software and gain experience. This was also done by my other team members so we were all able to develop and build our software editing skills. Furthermore, through the use of digital technology such as the internet, I watched a variety of premier pro tutorials for beginners and then began to watch intermediate tutorials which allowed me to then begin to apply my knowledge and skills using the actual footage of the trailer. Below are some of the tutorials I watched to gain skills on premiere pro.

First drafts:

As me and my group had much more practice and experience using premiere pro, I began to insert some of the first footage into the software and i only used simple techniques, for example I mostly only used the "cut" tool, and  edited some of the sound effects in. At the start of the year my skills were not as intense therefore this resulted in me and my groups first drafts not being as complex or intense.