2. Research Stage:
Questionnaires and surveys – Survey Monkey
Audience feedback open forum – Padlet
Audience interviews
Planning Stage:
Questionnaires and surveys – Survey monkey
Focus group interview
Audience feedback open forum – Padlet
Online Survey
Production Stage:
Audience feedback open forum – Padlet
Questionnaires and surveys – Survey monkey
Focus group questionnaires
Audience interviews
3. Strengths Weaknesses
Trailer – feature added to make
the clips look like real footage
Magazine cover image – poor quality
and too dark
Trailer – soundtrack is “effective
at building tension.”
Trailer – scenes are too long.
Trailer – costume and mise-en-
scene is conventional and
relatable to the target audience.
Trailer – lighting should be
considered in some scenes to ensure
that the quality of the shot is shown.
Poster – conventional image and
colour scheme, shot type and
layout.
Poster – font styles and colour could
be more conventional and bold.
Poster/Magazine – film title font
is very conventional and
appropriate for audience &
genre.
Magazine – blend the image in to the
background more by removing blank
spaces e.g. add more coverlines.
4. Magazine Cover: The main improvement for my magazine cover was
to replace the cover image that was blurry and too dark with a
completely new image that would meet the high quality outlook that
is necessary for a professional product. The new image still needed to
be a mid-shot of James’ character and to portray his character in a
negative light as the antagonist in the storyline that brings harm to
the other characters. As you can see on the blog when comparing the
first draft to the last draft of the poster, I have taken a new photo
that is more conventional and appropriate which is reciprocal of the
audience feedback and therefore makes my product more successful
in appealing to the target audience.
Other minor improvements that were created because of the changed
cover image was the layout and structure of the magazine cover. After
holding an audience focus group I was told that more coverlines were
needed to be included to fill some of the blank spaces that now
surrounded the new image. By adding more coverlines this would
meet the suggested improvement from the audience feedback and
would make the cover appear more conventional and relatable to
other previous and currently successful horror magazine covers.
6. Poster: The main improvements of my poster were the typography of
the tagline and the editing of the photo. The tagline was commented
as being too “repetitive” with the films title being used in the tagline.
Variation was needed between the film title and tagline to offer more
of the storyline and genre whilst still ensuring that the tagline was
conventional and relevant to the films sub-genre. I changed the
tagline from “Investigate the unknown,” to “Life will never be the
same again” keeping the language choices vague and ambiguous which
connotes that something bad will occur.
The second change for the poster was the amount of editing for the
main image. From the outset I blurred the pale coloured background
of the image making Lauren’s character stand out more and the fake
blood become more of a feature on the image. However, it was
suggested that I go further when editing the background and make the
background of the image black so that it is more in line with other
ancillary products. From this I have tested a darker background but
have found that it does not suit the outlook that I had hoped to
achieve for my poster, with the pit black background appearing too
harsh against Lauren’s character image and the necessary information
that is being displayed.
8. Trailer: One main weakness and area for improvement that was
highlighted by the audience was that the scenes in the film trailer were
too long. To address this I have re-edited my trailer using adobe premier
elements software, ensuring that the scenes towards the end are shorter
and fast paced to build tension and a climax to the end. The set of scenes
at the beginning that were also too long, have been cut removing a large
amount of dialogue, preferring now to set the scene and outline the story
with images and actions rather than dialogue between the characters – a
feature favoured by other professional film trailers.
Another suggestion for considered improvement was the lighting in some
of the shots. The audience noticed that in some of the scenes where the
lighting was poor that the quality was also lost and the trailers
professional outlook suffered because of it. To improve the quality and
lighting in some of the scenes I re-filmed parts of the trailer, focusing
more this time on the smaller elements of the scenes such as the lighting;
making sure it was conventionally low-key but still enough to allow the
audience to see the necessary features of the scene as structured by the
shot composition that was also addressed when re-filming took place. This
change ensured that my final product was more professional looking and
clear for the audience to identify key features of the genre from.
10. After receiving feedback on all of my final products, I was able to
ensure that my products were the most conventional, professional
and stereotypical for the target audience and the genre. Conventions
of form for the poster and magazine cover were important to uphold
whilst still ensuring that the colour scheme, images and layout
appealed to the audience and the improvements made were in line
with the feedback I received.
Improvements such as changing the tagline on the poster and
changing the magazine cover image from the audience allowed me to
improve my final piece and guarantee that this made my ancillary
pieces the most conventional and appealing to the target audience.
In reflection, consistently receiving feedback was very influential in
the development of my final products and receiving specific areas of
improvement meant that I was able to adapt other aspects such as
the layout after I changed the cover image to uphold conventions and
create brand identity between the final products that was also
relative to the genre of horror and themes of danger, suffering and
death.
