Evaluation

Audience Feedback

This is the audience feedback video, featuring people from the target audience answering questions about our production, and my two personal ancillary tasks. This video is a combination of a face-to-face interview with the camera, and an indirect interview via a Skype call. I will be referring to this video and its content regularly at question 2 and 3.

Question 1

Transcript

Introduction

It is important that in our production we follow and challenge conventions for our chosen media type and genre. Arguably on top of that, we wanted to make sure we don’t swing too far towards one way or another. For example, if we were too conventional the audience would potentially find our production boring and familiar, whereas if it was too challenging the audience may not understand what’s going on. We wanted to be able to follow Neale’s theory of repetition and difference with good effect. For this question, I am going to look over the conventions we followed, the conventions we challenged, and the conventions we may have developed, and then give my reasons as to why we made those decisions.

Convention followed

Because the genre we produced was a drama, the fact that this teaser trailer revolves around people and their morals and emotions made this a conventional media product. Through my research, I found out that drama movies tend to have their narratives purely focused around the characters only, often with moral and social issues bringing the content for the structure. We felt that this was the most important aspect when it comes to the drama genre, and therefore it had to stay in. In our case, we had the main character facing his own moral decisions, and our trailer was shot and edited in such a way where the audience gets to know the character in a more personal aspect.

Convention followed

Another aspect of our teaser trailer which we felt we should of kept conventional are the locations at where this trailer was shot. We wanted to keep the locations recognisable and domestic, to create the effect that the characters in the trailer are relatable and recognisable to the audience – a strong characteristic of the drama genre. Therefore, this trailer was mostly shot inside a normal house, and the exterior locations were seen to be normal sub-urbs. We could’ve challenged some conventions and gone for a more abstract location, but my research found that drama productions consistently stick with domestic locations, and therefore we would risk confusing the audience if we went for something different.

Convention followed

A final convention that we followed was the structure of the teaser trailer. More specifically, we chose to follow the Enigma Code. This means that our production leaves the audience with many questions that are left open, thanks to intentional gaps left in the narrative of the video. Whilst it may not be seen as a necessity in a full feature film, our group agreed it was a vital ingredient on what makes a teaser trailer appealing to the audience, and it ultimately leads them wanting to watch the main film as they are left with questions. Without using this convention, we were worried that the audience would not recognise our production as a teaser trailer.

Convention Challenged

One thing we did challenge in our production in regards to a drama genre teaser trailer would be our inclusion of abstract concepts within the narrative. As previously mentioned, dramas tend to stick to something that is recognisable to the audience, and therefore create verisimilitude. Although we didn’t want to confuse the audience, our narrative gave us a good opportunity to challenge the convention by including the abstract idea of lives being added or taken away depending on how good you were. This is something that is not normally seen in dramas, since they tend to focus on the human issues. However, we managed to craft the narrative so that this abstract idea creates its own human issue (that is to be good and lose lifespan or be bad and live longer). We therefore feel we successfully managed to challenge this convention without alienating our audience base.

Convention Developed

Something we decided to develop in our production were the characters themselves, and their nature. In many ways, our production follows Propp’s character theory, because we have a villain, a sidekick and a moral hero. However, we decided to develop this by not actually making our hero that heroic. In our production, he is seen to be performing bad deeds as he makes the choice to prioritise his life before other people around him. We chose to do this because although we wanted to make the characters clear and distinguishable to the audience, we also on the other hand didn’t want things to be too stale and recognisable. We felt this development was a good compromise between the two.

Conclusion

Overall then, it’s very clear to see that we stuck to more conventions compared to how many we decided to challenge or develop. The main reason we made this active choice was because our research found that drama genre productions kept to a fairly similar and arguably safe formula. They are meant to be representing real life, so there are many important aspects that we had to keep conventional if we wanted to keep this part of the drama genre. However, I feel that the changes and developments we did make helps to enhance the production, and doesn’t alienate the viewer.

Question 2

Transcript

It’s vitally important that I created an effective and consistent style between all pieces of my work for the coursework. By having a poster, magazine cover and main product complement each other, they effectively come together and create an overall stronger package for the trailer itself. In the industry, certain stylistic choices such as images or fonts etc will remain consistent throughout other types of media. For this video, I will be going over several aspects that allow me to judge just how well my products work with each other. I may also be referring to my audience feedback where it becomes necessary, and at the end of each point I will be making a mini evaluation; there’s always something that could be improved.

One of the biggest aspects to consider if you were to judge how effective your products are grouped together would be to look at how consistent the styling is between all three of them. This is to ensure the audience gets a solid understanding of what your product is trying to convey to them. If for example you had a very dark product, and then a very bright product, this could have the potential to confuse the audience. Since our trailer has distinctively dark themes running through it with the devil, I decided to follow that through with the magazine cover and the poster. As a result, the poster is predominantly black with creepy darkness surrounding the main character, as a form of mysteriousness to the whole situation. The magazine cover is similarly dark and simple with its colour choices, but I felt I couldn’t make it as dark because this was a media product that had to sit on a store shelf and catch the eye of passing people. Therefore, some brightness and blues have been retained to make it slightly more eye catching. The font used for the name of the movie is exactly the same on the teaser trailer and the poster, creating strong links, but it’s differentiates on the magazine cover, since my research found that magazine producers tend to have their own artistic style when it comes to fonts. The main character boldly features on all three products, which is probably the strongest link created. My target audience research showed that the poster was a lot better at keeping a consistent style to the trailer than the magazine cover was. Overall, my magazine cover does not quite stay as consistent with the styling as it perhaps could if I decided to completely redo the production of it, but the style was consistent enough to give most people a solid understanding of at least the gist of the movie. It’s clear to see however that my poster is a much stronger product in this regard.

Something else to look for in the products I created was how well each media text I created suggests the genre of my main teaser trailer production. To suggest the genre effectively, it’s best to keep themes, colours, and images that strongly relate to our genre on my ancillary tasks, to create as little confusion between people as possible. Since we were doing a hybrid of drama-thriller, the lines are a little more blurred than for someone who was just sticking to one genre, but when you think of the two genres I just listed, most people think of darkness as the overall theme. With that in mind, I believe my poster has done a very good job at suggesting those two genres. The thriller side of things is strongly represented by the darkness – creating a sense of mystery - and the drama aspect is shown with the more human edge to the poster – the fact that there are multiple characters in the main character’s eyes, showing that the dilemma itself is human-based. The magazine cover is arguably a little vaguer when it comes to suggesting the genre of the teaser trailer. A quote directly from the trailer about being offered immortality links to the dilemma side of things and therefore the drama genre part of the production. The magazine cover is weaker than the poster when it comes to representing the thriller side of the trailer. The only thing to suggest that this Dilemma movie has a dark horrific side to it is that the whole cover has been purposely darkened a little bit in order not to look too bright and happy. This would almost certainly not quite be enough for general audiences to pick out a genre though, just from looking at how the cover has been tinted. The trailer itself mainl y focusses on the dramatic side of things (since that is our main genre), showing how the dilemma our main character faces impacts the relationships of others in his life, including two of his friends and his girlfriend. It also portrays the thriller side of things with the intense music, and a quick cut of the evil spirits escaping from the main character’s mouth at the end of the trailer, on top of the hill. Overall, I believe that my main production and poster do a good job of suggesting the genre and look very clear with their intentions, but the magazine cover is a little more open to interpretation from the audience.

The mise en scene that was created with my three productions actually vary somewhat to create a suitable amount of distinction between them, and to allow them to suggest the suitable genre. The idea was that when you put the three media texts together, you got a very complete picture about Dilemma as a whole. However, that’s not to say that these products are polar opposites, because as I’ve just shown, they do fit with each other appropriately. The magazine cover and the poster especially convey the genre of thriller by having a very mysterious setting. There is nothing in the background, so the audience are left with questions that need to be answered. This fits in with the spooky, unknown territories of the thriller genre. On the other hand, the trailer itself focusses more of the drama side of things. To do this, its setting is realistic and relatable to pretty much the entire target audience, because it’s mainly set in a normal suburban house and its surrounding neighbourhood. In this instance, one can see how my products focus on a different genre aspect of my main production, but when you put them together, they create the complete drama-thriller genre that Dilemma is. The use of the same costume can also be seen throughout all of my products. The main character in my trailer, poster, and magazine cover is always wearing a normal everyday shirt (though this cannot be seen in the poster), and the Devil when he appears is wearing his trademark jacket and typically pulling a stern face in both the trailer and the poster. The everyday costume gives the impression that this is a normal everyday young male, and this fits in perfectly for appealing to our target audience. The devil’s stern face and dark costume is there simply to create a link between the different media texts. Overall then, the mise en scene that is linked between my products such as the setting and the costume serves a dual purpose of creating the necessary links for each other, and also to appeal to our target audience. For this particular case, I believe that all three of my products do a good job with this.

The last thing I’ll look at is also one of the most important, alongside the consistency. How do my ancillary tasks build up the interest and hype for my main production? Both my poster and my ancillary tasks have been engineered with the promotion of the main product in mind. The biggest aspect I had in my mind when I was creating these media texts was the word ‘mystery’. Mystery allows for me to tease the audience with some mini internal cliffhanger, and therefore it gives them the urge to see the main production itself. The teaser trailer idea follows exactly the same concept. I bought this into reality by making the poster incredibly minimal on purpose. By only showing the main character and some darkness, on first glance there doesn’t seem to be anything to take away from it. But if the audience were to look a little closer at the poster, they would notice the two other characters with contrasting expressions sitting in each eye. This gives a little bit of context to the Dilemma name, but nowhere near enough to spoil things. In a similar fashion, the magazine cover simply features the main character with the quote ‘If you were offered immortality, would you take it?’ It gives a slight idea to the audience of what they should expect, but there is nowhere near enough information for it to become a spoiler. Therefore, by using a method of mystery and a slight drip feed of information, the two ancillary texts build up a lot of potential interest for my main production. I asked a question on whether the poster and magazine cover create more interest for the film, and while the poster was the clear favourite, they also agreed that the magazine cover did a good job as well.

Overall, I am happy with how effective the combination has turned out to be between the three products. However, there is no denying that the poster is significantly stronger than the magazine cover when it comes to effectively linking to the main production, and just general aesthetic looks. To improve my magazine cover and overall make it an even stronger bond between the other two products, I would perhaps ditch the blue colour for just black and white, and I would also include another character alongside the main anchorage in order for it to be a lot clearer on what it’s trying to sell to the audience. With those changes applied, I believe the connection will be even stronger.



Question 3

Transcript

Introduction

Audience feedback is a vital process of a media production, because it clearly allows me to see where my strong points were, and what could be improved should I do any future productions. In this video, I shall be going over what my audience thought of the trailer and the two ancillary tasks, and then coming to a final conclusion, which will include key areas where I should improve in the future.

Main Production

To start with, I asked everyone to state what kind of media product the clip was. All identified it as a teaser trailer, which I deem to be important. <clip> Though some conventions should be challenged in a teaser trailer, I believe the overall format should stay conventional and therefore recognisable to the audience; my group’s trailer has succeeded with that. This means that I’m following Neale’s theory of repetition and difference, by repeating the format, but also challenging some other aspects.

My audience weren’t as confident with pinning down what the genre of the trailer was. <clip> This was somewhat expected, as the genre was something we decided to challenge in accordance of Neale’s theory. Our trailer is a hybrid of drama and thriller, but we also had action, fantasy and sci-fi mentioned. We intended to bring a refreshingly new hybrid genre to the audience, but my audience feedback shows me that next time I may want to consider being slightly more conservative and make the genre less mixed and more obvious, so as to not confuse the audience.

We wanted to make sure our narrative was exciting and appealing to the audience, but at the same time we wanted to make sure it had recognisable elements in order to attract them into something they already know and therefore are comfortable with. Therefore we decided to follow Todorov’s theory of equilibriums and disequilibriums, though as is the nature of a teaser trailer, we only showed the disequilibrium. <clip> All of the people I interviewed managed to explain the narrative of the production very well, which suggests that the story we have is clear and conventional. I believe that because we have followed the start of Todorov’s theory for our trailer, it has made it all a lot clearer and instantly recognisable to the audience.

Characters was something we intentionally wanted to blur and move away from Propp’s character theory. In our production, the main character isn’t much of a protagonist (thanks mainly to the bad deeds). However, we didn’t completely move away from the theory, and that’s why there’s a villain (creating the binary opposite), and a stereotypical sidekick girlfriend for the main character. We wanted to see how well the audience picked up on this. <clip> Some of my audience picked up well on the fact that the main character isn’t much of a protagonist, whereas others focussed on the fact that there’s more conventional characters featured, such as the villain and girlfriend. This mix is what we wanted, as it shows we’ve hit a good spot of venturing away from Propp’s theory but not completely ignoring it.

Lastly, we wanted to know what could be improved for our production. Information received here is vital to carry forward to future projects. <clip> As you can see from the clip shown, the main issue people had with our main production was the audio and the colours of the video. We did experience issues with the audio during recording (thanks to a faulty boom microphone), and they were referring mainly about the colour correction in the video looking ‘washed out’. This is very valuable information that will be carried forward to any future productions. We will now be sure to rigorously test the microphone before use, and to not so heavily colour correct next time.

Ancillary tasks

The most important role of my ancillary tasks was for them to compliment my main production and get the audience intrigued enough to want to see the trailer and movie itself. I asked them a question regarding whether the ancillary tasks make you more interested in the film. <clip> My audience agreed that both ancillary tasks increased interest for the film, but there was a definitive unwritten agreement that the poster was better at doing so than the magazine cover. This suggests that the poster was the stronger and more conventional product out of my two ancillary tasks, and that my magazine cover had some areas to improve on.

It was also important that my ancillary tasks were conventional to the genre of our teaser trailer, otherwise the audience may have difficulty making the link between the poster or magazine cover and the trailer itself. So I asked a question regarding whether the poster and magazine cover helps them with the genre. <clip> Overall, my audience feedback showed that my poster was a lot more recognisable to the genre when compared to my magazine cover, which suggests that the poster has a lot more conventional elements to it regarding the drama-thriller genre. Examples of this could be the fact that my poster is dark and mysterious, but my magazine cover is relatively light and could almost be described as cheery to some degree. Therefore, I may want to consider designing a darker poster to fit the genre more elegantly for any future production.

Lastly, I wanted to know what could be improved with my ancillary products. I asked a question regarding what they would improve on my ancillary products. <clip> From the responses gathered from my audience feedback, I can clearly see that they believe there is very little improvements to be made to the poster. Whilst I don’t believe it’s perfect, it does show that my poster has done a good job of appealing to the audience and conveying the genre with significant effect. On the other hand, my audience feedback showed that there were some improvements to be made to my magazine cover; namely that it doesn’t convey the genre very well, and could therefore have alterations to it in order for it to be more appealing and conventional. One specifically mentioned that the magazine cover should have less text in the future. This is something I should seriously consider if I were to produce a magazine cover in the future.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the audience feedback was largely positive about the products I displayed to them. They recognised that my main production purposefully followed and flouted some conventions and theories, in order to keep in line with Neale’s theory of repetition and difference. There were things that were pointed out to me to improve on though; namely the audio and colour correction. This is valuable information, and will allow me to make a higher quality production in the future.

When it comes to my ancillary tasks, there is a clear favourite between my two products. My poster was considered to be far more conventional and appealing to the eye by all who were questioned, which meant there are significant improvements to be made to the magazine cover. Without the audience feedback, I may not have realised this and therefore would not have been able to improve my quality for next time so effectively. 

Question 4

Transcript

Q4 script

It would not be possible to carry out my media coursework without the extensive use of new media technologies. In this video, I will be going over some of the key pieces of software and hardware that I used that I believe played an integral part on making a successful teaser trailer.

Section 1 – Planning and Research – The Internet

The most integral part for both my research and my planning was using the internet for ideas and material. After using various websites to gather data and figures in order to achieve a more solid understanding of a drama genre, I needed a platform to present these findings. One of these choices was Slideshare, an online embedding platform where users can upload an unlimited amount of PowerPoint documents and then place them on their website with no fuss. I used this service on a number of occasions, to display my work in a clean and easy to read fashion. I really liked using this piece of online software because of how easy it was to use; this proved to be a key aspect when it came to the tight deadlines of the coursework. However, the software did not allow for much customisation to the documents, meaning after a while some of the work of mine could blend in together and look a little bit plain. It’s worth mentioning that I did use other platforms for sharing my work such as Emaze and Prezi, but my blog predominantly consists of Slideshare, and therefore it could feature more diversity in terms of what new media technology I endorse, should I improve my blog further for the future. With all that being said, it allowed me to clearly and concisely present my work – I should just participate in more customisation options next time.

Section 2 – Shooting – Nikon DSLR

In order for any successful media production to shine, they need to have the suitable hardware that compliments their hard work. Whilst last year a compact camera was used, we felt the quality it offered wasn’t quite up to our standards, so this time we went with a Nikon D3200, which is owned by Connor. This camera was used for all the footage you see in the finished teaser trailer. Its lens had the ability to do smooth manual focus shots <show example> whilst at the same time provided a great depth of field. This enabled us to do more creative shots such as the focus pull, whilst maintaining professional-looking footage in order for it to look more authentic to a real drama teaser trailer. However, the camera didn’t come without its downsides. For instance, the battery life was fairly poor. We faced several instances where it cut out early on us, and production had to come to a halt earlier than we anticipated. This, as one could perhaps imagine, wasted a vast amount of time and meant we faced going over our deadline. One of the shots we planned to do was a dolly zoom, but the rough ground meant the camera’s optical image stabilisation couldn’t iron out all the bumps and create a clean and tidy shot. Therefore in the future, we may want to use more hardware that will complement the Nikon further. Overall though, the Nikon did a good job at creating professional-looking footage; we just had to be aware of its shortfalls and work around them.

Section 3 – Editing process – Premiere Pro

Now that we had all the footage we wanted, it was time to put it together in something that followed Neale’s theory of repetition and difference. In other words, we wanted the audience to feel comfortable with what they’re watching, but at the same time we wanted to show them something new and exciting. One of the conventions we felt me must follow in our trailer is the structure of a teaser trailer; that is to have a build-up and leave the audience on a cliff hanger. Without this, not only do we risk the situation of not building up enough excitement for the feature film, but the audience may not even recognise our production as a teaser trailer.

Another use we had for Premiere was to add the music and titles in the right area (another cutaway). It’s vitally important that we put these aspects of our teaser trailer in the right places in order to create the dramatic effect we desired – to follow the convention from the drama genre. A good thing our group found out about using Premiere is that it offered a wide range of tools for us to fine-tune our video to exactly how we wanted it. Additionally, even if Premiere didn’t have the tools we wanted, it communicated well with other Adobe programs such as After Effects and Speedgrade in order to make things like the graphical title and colour correction easy to transfer. On the other hand though, I also found I had a big learning curve with Premiere, which did interrupt how quickly and efficiently we produced our content. My personal issue was that I have already mastered one piece of editing software, so it took a fair amount of time to remap in my mind where the shortcut keys are, and where some of the tools are within the drop down menus. Therefore, I believe I would’ve been more productive if I had my software of choice to use at school. With all that being said, Premiere was a very capable piece of software, and would be very ideal for future projects once I gathered more experience with it.

Section 4 – Ancillary – Photoshop CS6

To create both the magazine cover and the movie poster that complements our teaser trailer, I made full use of Adobe InDesign. But before I could use that application effectively, it was vital that I used Photoshop. <Show example of camera raw, quick selection etc> As you can see, this program has several powerful tools used to make a yellow picture with shadows into a high quality image, ready to be on a large movie poster or on the front cover of a magazine. The great thing about using Photoshop was the vast amount of power and flexibility it gave me when it came to manipulating images and their surrounds. Things like the lighting effects gave me an accurate and professional-looking image that no other software could give me. Since it’s the default picture editing software used throughout many industries, I had gained a solid prior grip with this software, and therefore it was fairly simple to operate. On the other hand, I found that this wasn’t a fully reliable program, with frequent crashes that caught me out on a couple of occasions when I hadn’t saved beforehand. I also initially had trouble with the lighting effects. This was fixed, but it didn’t help my productivity. Overall though, I am very happy with how using Photoshop enhanced my images to a whole new level, and I believe there is no other software out there that would achieve what I desired. Without Photoshop, I believe my end products for the ancillary wouldn’t have looked professional, appealing, or complimentary.

Overall, it is clear to see that the new media technology that was used throughout my coursework significantly enhanced our visions. No piece of software or hardware was perfect, but they yielded far more positives than negatives.