evaluation for a2 media advanced portfolio part 2

1. EVALUATION- PART2Tony Mutombo

2. WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM
YOUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK
Evaluation Part 2

3. FILM IDEAS
• Throughout the project we did various
questionnaires. We started the task
trying to fish a target audience, ones
that would like our original ideas. This
didn’t work out very well, and despite
having an audience, my partner and I
had to create many questionnaires in
order to expand our target audience,
which also forced us to change/drop
some original ideas.
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4. • My partner and I decided that our movie was to
belong to the horror genre, mainly because it was
our favourite genre.

5. • The first questionnaire created
was for the choice of what
subgenre our movie was to belong
to. We asked 20 people in our
audience what they’re favourite
subgenre was and it resulted to
the slasher subgenre; concluding
that our film was to be from a
slasher. Other questionnaires
featured questions asking the
audience what they would like to
see in the antagonist.
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6. • Would they like to see a clever and sly killer like the Dark Knights Joker?
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7. • or a tall, masculine slayer like Friday 13th Jason Voorhees.
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8. • We also tried to connect more with our audience,
and we asked five members to give us in brief notes,
their ideal horror movie and looked out for the
similarities in all. Then for the final questionnaire
we wanted to find out what our original respondents
thought of the final project. I did this by creating
more questionnaires asking them what they had
thought about my magazine front cover and movie
poster mock ups.
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9. • We also filmed the reaction of the audience that viewed the package via focus groups and
presentations. Thanks to this we found out their true opinions; we received constructive
criticism and they helped us think of ways of improving our promotional packages. One idea
that my audience pointed out was “drilling the movie into the mind of the audience”. Here they
pointed out that an effective way to advertise is to make the product we are advertising stuck
into the brains of our audience, which we found as really helpful feedback. My partner and I
also wanted to focus on the links in the movie. We believed that in order to persuade the
audience into doing something, whether it being to watch a film or to buy an item, they need to
continuously be reminded. Here we created an emblem or logo to our movie with the upside
down crucifix. This relates to the movie because Jack strongly believes that he is 'ridding the
world of sin' and that his actions are for the greater good, he also believes that he is pleasing
his God when doing so. The upside down cross, currently (in this day and age) is perceived as
the symbol of anti-Catholics. Jack's victims are those that do not follow Christ and his beliefs.
We hope to use this as a symbol in order to remind our target audience of the movie "GRIM"
just the same way as the big yellow 'M' is recognized by the audience as the sign for
McDonalds. We also tried to think of other ways to make the movie stick in the brain of our
target audience. Below we brainstormed different magazine front covers and movie posters
that purposely look similar so the target audience are automatically met and are familiar with
the movie.
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10. TARGET AUDIENCE
•My Target Audience within the pitch
complemented our film idea, they said that
the film itself was original and they
complemented how my partner and I wanted
the audience to empathise with the
protagonist. They liked how we took the
conventions of many horror films, and
adapted and creatively added on to it. For
example, we used two pieces of existing
media texts as inspiration:
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11. • One was Nightmare on Elm Street which was
about Freddy Krueger. A man that had been
accused of sexually abusing children attending
a pre-school and was hunted down by the
angry parents of those who he abused and was
burnt alive. His tale was a tale of revenge as he
then hunted down the children he allegedly
abused as a scheme for revenge.

12. • The other existing piece of media would be
the Da Vinci Code as Silas, a troubled devout
Christian who dons a metal cilice on his thigh
and proceeds to flagellate himself with a
whip for the sins of murder.

13. • They liked how we took both characters and
took each of their wrong doings and created
his (Jack’s) backstory. A common convention
within horror movies is that the audience
aren’t too aware of the protagonist, and
normally don’t side with him, my partner and
I wanted to make our audience realise that
our protagonist genuinely believes that he is
doing right and serving God as he is
disgusted by the vile sinful behaviour
happening in one of his catholic schools. A
productive criticism that we did receive from
our target audience was that our protagonist
did lean too closely to Silas of Da Vinci Code.

14. • They recognised that both characters killed
their victim’s whist wearing the maroon monk
cloak and were both indulged in self-harm and
self-punishment. My partner and I begged to
differ, but if the issue was of a concern to our
target audience, we decided to act upon it and
tweak some changes. My partner and I
decided to regulate Jack's self-punishment
and self-harming rituals, and did our best in
order to make the audience sympathise him
whilst also fearing him and his capabilities. We
also wanted to keep it realistic. That there
was a chance that a normal teenage boy like
Jack could be lurking around their school.

15. TRAILER
• I showed my movie trailer to a group of people all within my
target audience, and then asked them to give me their
feedback on what they thought was good about the video,
and what they thought could have been improved on.
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16. POSITIVE FEEDBACK
• “Editing was very good, the shots were very clever and I can see your
vision”
• “I like this, your villain looks interesting, I like how you didn’t want to
show his face, really made me wonder who he was”
• “The lip-syncing and instrument syncing was perfectly in time with the
music”
• “The clip opens up like a real movie trailer, and the killer is different to
the others In the slasher horror industry, I really like this”
• “The non-diegetic mixes in very well with the trailer, the heartbeat was
a good effect”

17. NEGATIVE FEEDBACK
• “I couldn’t really get the narrative, why did he just start
targeting people?”
• This person failed to realise that in the first shot, my
antagonist was being released from his therapist’s office. Id
like to think that my antagonist wasn’t just targeting people
but that he was present in every shot to see their flaws, and
just like God he judged them to be sinners and that they
should pay for their sins with their life.

18. • “Maybe would have been good to see just a few more shots of the
antagonist, show the lunatic that the protagonist is concerned he may
be”
• I wanted my audience to decide on who to believe. For example, in the
beginning of the trailer, my protagonist and antagonist lock eyes whilst
they walked past each other in the corridor, this was the first time they
meet and my protagonist gets an unshakable vibe. She believes that
Jack Grimshaw (antagonist) is crazy, judging him on absolutely nothing,
and when calling out to the supporting characters they don’t believe
her. I wanted to project Jack as misled teenage boy, so that the
audience could side with him as they realise that he just doesn’t realise
that what he is doing is wrong. Showing more shots of Jack being a
lunatic, I believe, would lose this element.

19. • “At times the lighting was poor”
• This is a fair comment. As I went through the effort of
working out how to position the camera properly in order to
get the perfect shot, I had realise that in almost every shot I
had taken, it was ambient lighting. There’s only one shot
were I used lighting and that was the close up shot of one of
my characters face in the trailers montage. I wanted to
include ambient lighting in my movie trailer as I felt it would
be one of the ways to make my video seem natural.

20. OVERALL FEEDBACK
• Overall, I am really pleased with the feedback i received from the group of
people within my target audience who i showed my video to, as the majority of
the comments were all really positive. The few negative comments i did receive
I feel were either due to things which i could not control (inconsistent lighting),
which I believe to be a good thing as it means the actual core of the video was
well made and most definitely a success.
• I feel that through the process of receiving feedback on my film trailer I have
learned a lot about how to make effective trailers in the future. The main thing
that I have learned is that when planning for the video, in your head you know
what you want your video to look like and what kind of techniques you will use
to achieve this look, but what you need to think about is how the audience will
read the media text and how will they understand it. What I mean by this is that
the audience will interpret the video differently as audience interpretation of
texts is affected and influenced by outside factors.

21. HOW DID YOU USE MEDIA
TECHNOLOGIES IN THE
CONSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH,
PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGES?
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22. RESEARCH AND PLANNING
• While planning and research I used
lots of different programmes. One
programme I used regularly was
YouTube. I got most of my help
from the internet and websites such
as YouTube and Trailer Addict with
the latter as one way of
researching horror movies and
trailers.
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23. • Google was another useful search engine that I used while undergoing my
research, I used Google images to search for photos of actors, those that
played either the supporting role or protagonists in horror movies when
thinking of characters for the narrative of our movie. I used it to also look at
horror movie posters and magazine front covers as well as the antagonist and
used it to study their characteristics as I tried to emulate what made them so
frightening.
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24. • I used Google to find out information about movie producers and even stumbled upon
online movie reviews, which took me to different websites that appeared on the
search engine and even the discovery of YouTube online film critics group
CinemaSins. I read comments left by members on YouTube to find out the personal
thoughts that the audience had about the film or franchise in total. I believed this
was necessary because as the audience could see what the movie lacked, and I took
advantage of this as I used their criticisms of the films to make sure our movie would
have solutions, avoiding the same criticism and therefore benefitting, making a much
better more enjoyable movie.
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25. • CinemaSins is a movie-related comedy YouTube
channel created by Jeremy Scott and Chris
Atkinson. The channel's most famous and frequent
videos are its Everything Wrong With... series that
offers humorous but true, critique and commentary
on movies. Exposing the huge and pinpointing the
missable mistakes made by producers and
directors within the films they look at, their style
and judgement of films helped me understand what
is necessary to put in and leave out of my movie
trailer. The group have critiqued a few slasher
movies and I studied these videos and looked at
the comments left by their viewers to further
understand what should be in my film. I watched
their “How To Make A Slasher movie” video, as
they gave a sarcastic tutorial on how to make a
typical slasher movie of this generation.
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26. • Movie channels such as Sky Sci-Fi/Horror and Film4 were also
available for research as I settled down and watched several slasher
films to further my knowledge in codes and conventions, be familiar to
the narratives and therefore when coming to producing my movie
trailer, become imaginative and differ my movie from the others. This
helped me as I saw the different types of locations and settings being
used in the movies, the different types of narrative that would often
come to the same conclusion, and even helped me distinguish the
different camera angles being used in these movies as I studied how
editing and different camera shots could have an effect on the
audiences understanding of what’s happening.
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27. • We also used Blogger a lot in our project to write about our work as we
went along with it. Blogger was good and easy way to keep track of our
progress while working; we blogged every step that we took during the
course of the project, from the introduction to our project to the
evaluation. Blogger was useful as we could embed pictures and videos
onto our blog, from different websites to show where we were getting
our ideas and inspiration from. We could also embed all of our planning
documents, such as our target audience profile, questionnaires and call
sheets as well as our analytical documents such as overviews and
analysis. I used and treated my Blogger as if it was a diary/journal as I
was constantly updating it with ideas and progress. Microsoft Office was
also used for research & planning. It was the greatest platform that I
used in order to complete my work on, with my analysis and overviews as
well as planning being written on all different Microsoft platforms. I used
Microsoft Word when constructing my questionnaire and multiple other
work documents, even a script for a few scenes in my trailer.
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28. • Mobile phones, the Bluetooth embedded within them, Laptops and
personal IPads all contributed in our research and planning. My phone
helped me during the planning stage as it was great for organisation
and meeting up with my partner and making plans on when was best to
film our movie trailer, to find out more information about the research
and planning and to even contact one another whether there was a
problem with our project that needed addressing.
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29. • During the filming stage, we took lots of pictures of the
possible settings on our phones and we sent them to one
another, discussing whether if they were good locations to
film. We also would use the images and show a small group
of our target audience to see what they would think, helping
us as their contribution would help make our final production
more effective, and it would also help us get to know our
target audience better as we continuously communicate with
them. Mobile phones were very reliable and were in use
more than we were first expecting.
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30. CONSTRUCTION AND EDITING
• My partner and I used a Sony camera and tripod to film our movie trailer and
take the shots of our magazine front cover and movie magazine. The tripod
helped hold our camera steady to get perfect still footage. After filming, we
uploaded our footage onto an iMac with a fire wire and uploaded it to Adobe
PremierePro. From here, out of all the shots and clips we had taken on our
camera we would choose the best footage, ones that we wanted to include in
the trailer, and edit them, putting them along a timeline and including effects
to produce a two minute long, effective movie trailer. We also used Adobe
Photoshop to make our movie magazine front cover and movie poster for our
movie franchise. Photoshop helped us turn a still raw shot of our antagonist
and turn it into a chilling movie poster with great editing and effects. The
final production of our work after improvements and feedback was then
uploaded to the blog.
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31. CONCLUSION
• For the most part i used each of these pieces of technology and kit
individually in order to complete the process of making the ancillary
texts and piecing together my film trailer. However, it is how these
products worked together and made the process much more simple
than it could be. If I wanted to change anything from a blog post on
Blogger to a section in the video, i could be online in seconds and
would always have our footage or products with me due to the
portability of the memory sticks and SD memory cards. It would not
have been a hardship to have to carry the cameras at all times either.
To summarise, the whole process was enhanced for me and my
partner thanks to the advancements in technology.
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