Evaluation: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Throughout my coursework I have discovered that the audience feedback was a vital factor within my process as it allowed me to share my vision with my peers ad allowed my peers to evaluate my work and gain their opinions. The most important thing about getting feedback from your peers and teachers is the absolute truth about the production work and criticisms, as well as praises, are needed that the steps being taken in improving work is forward and not back. I found that audience feedback was one of the determining factors that helped me produce a high quality piece of work. The audience feedback that I received helped me adapt my work to the target audience by making certain attributes of my work more effective so that it complies with a closer accuracy to the industry codes and conventions of film and print production. I asked for audience feedback constantly throughout my process, especially after sampling my first drafts of my poster, magazine cover and teaser trailer.

After my first draft of my film poster I surveyed my poster around my common room and found the feedback very useful as it allowed my attention to be brought to be detail that I did not notice myself and this was important as it helped me to improve my poster. For example, I was made to realise that to make my work more authentic I could add movie credits at the bottom of the poster, so it looked parallel to all other layouts and complied with the industry codes and conventions of film posters.  I addressed the situation by doing research about who and how people are mentioned in the movie credits of the posters and downloaded the appropriate font for movie credits and addressed the situation accordingly with my research. In addition to this I planned for audience feedback efficiently as I allow myself a healthy window if time to adapt my poster and put into place the changes suggested by my peers and teachers. On the whole, the constructive feedback that was given was very helpful in aiding me to improve my print production of my poster. However, some of the comments made about the certain placement and sizes of certain parts of my poster I was able to justify as certain things I intended as I believe that it is a mix of vision and aid that helps a piece of work to be unique.

Once my first ancillary task was complete I was then able to move on to my second ancillary task, which was my magazine cover. Is was key that I had to perfect my magazine cover and it showed a cross over of my AS coursework, as part of the production of my AS coursework was to create the front cover of a music magazine.  After creating an initial draft of magazine front cover I conducted an audience feedback session amongst my peers and teachers just like I did for my first ancillary task of the film poster. As with the feedback I got for the poster, the feedback for my first draft of the magazine cover was crucial to me trying to achieve the standard that I wanted. One of the main problems I found that was commented on was that the magazine didn't real meet that standard of professionally that I was trying to achieve and was something I needed to address. The attention of a distorted layout was brought to my attention by my audience feedback. The positioning and house style of my initial draft of my magazine cover showed signs of not actually working together properly to bring everything together so all the elements of my magazine cover could work each other and come together to work holistically with my other elements. This production piece also crossed over with my AS coursework and I had to make sure I gave myself enough time after audience feedback to make another draft. After constructing another draft of my magazine cover I decided to have a another audience feedback session in order to see if I have taken steps forward in the quality of my magazine cover and addressing the details pointed out in my first feedback session. After getting my second batch of feedback I found that there were still some things that I needed tweaking, like font size and including a tag line and website for my magazine. This feedback was again very important as it helped me round off my work. As I was working on perfecting parts mentioned in the first part of audience feedback I missed other parts out which thanks to the audience feedback I was able to fix. Thanks to the audience feedback received for this particular ancillary task I was able to achieve what I set out to achieve and produce a product of a high quality and fits into the industry codes and conventions of a magazine cover. Along with the actually getting audience feedback, the timing of the audience feedback is important to allow time to edit the piece of work in relation to the feedback given and I believe that I managed to pull these two components together effectively.

With both ancillary tasks complete all that was left The final piece of my production which was the teaser trailer. The editing process of the teaser trailer was a lengthy one and after having a complete first draft of an edited piece of work I organised a screening of the teaser trailer to my fellow peers. It was important that I got audience feedback for my teaser trailer as it was the main task of my project and i needed audience feedback especially for this task as I needed the teasRt trailer to reach out to the target audience I was intending to reach out and my fellow peers fits into my target audience. After then screening I asked for both positive and constructive feedback. Another question that I put out for discussion was: would you watch this film? Do you think it is appropriate for your age? And would you be excited by watching this teaser trailer? With all these things to think about I found that there were a lot of positive comments about my teaser trailer, such as the positioning of the clips and the choice of sound effects chosen. It was commented that the style of editing was a bit choppy and it was mostly straight forward cuts, but I justified that it was the type of editing I wanted to achieve as most of the trailer has that handheld video recorder feel to it and the straight cuts provides continuity and time within the narrative of my teaser trailer. I also noted that my sound effects, although good, had a very start/stop feel to it so it seemed like they were just cut together without any smoothness. I realised that this was something I need to address. Another element that was constructively criticised but I was able to justify was the simplicity of the title card at the end of the teaser trailer as all it had was the title of the film and nothing else. For this, I explained that I used, as inspiration,  the style of Cloverfield, which had a lot of secrecy in it's title cards, with some having hardly any information at all and my trailer for my film being a teaser trailer I thought it was appropriate to have secrecy of things such as a release date etc. I thought that those types of things could be exposed later in other elements such as movie poster. With certain points justified I then went to go and change the problem of the choppy editing of the sound effects and found that I ended up replacing certain sound effects for better effect and overlaid the sound effects to get rid of the choppy start/stop problem I had encountered. With this done I had completed my main task and with that my project.

 Though out the entire project I found that audience feedback is crucial to any project, whether it be AS or A2, as it allows you to show off you work, as well as getting feedback to improve your work and produce the standard required. I believe that I organised my feedback sessions well as it allowed me with a time to edit the work that was being exhibited to my peers and teachers. If there was one thing that I think I could of done looking back at my process it would be to get audience feedback for not just my production pieces, but all the work I did behind scenes such as my idea and storyboard. By doing this I think I could have added a but more of a professional touch to my work and certain risks might have no needed to be taken.

Evaluation: How did you use new media technologies in the Construction & Research, Planning and Evaluation stages?

Throughout all the stages of my project I used a mixture of new media technologies, theory and own ideologies to aid me to create the product that I wanted to create. The use of new media technologies was important in all my process as I used them as guidelines to help me create a product that would fit into the industry and comply with the industry codes and conventions. The use of new media technologies played a big role in all my stages and shaped the way into me determining my choices and conducting audience feedback session.

Throughout the construction stage of my process I used new media technologies to build and interpret my ideas onto a screen where I could manipulate my ideas and do whatever I wanted with it. I used a computer with the latest programmes in editing software to produce all three pieces of my work. As a matter of fact, computers was a new media technology I found myself heavily dependent on a computer in order in constructing and editing of the my poster and magazine cover. I used the programme photoshop in order to recreate my idea to a professional standard and with this programme I was able to as I was using the industry standard software. Similarly, I did this with my magazine cover using the same programme. In addition to editing my print production on the computer I was also able to edit the footage I took in order to create my teaser trailer. For my teaser trailer I used a used the program final cut pro, which I found very useful as it was one of the industry's leading editing software. However, at the expense of using new media technologies there is also the price to pay of learning how to use them and like any programme that is used by an entire industry it was complicated to use at first, but through using the internet I was able find tutorials and learn through the new media technology medium of the Internet. The Internet was heavily depended on throughout my construction stage as it is were I got inspiration, learnt tutorials to be able to use the programs I had and most importantly it kept me up to date wit recent media events following my chosen industry that I had to pay attention to, which was the film industry.

The research stage of my project was probably the one stage that required e most use of the new media technology as I has to use an array of mediums in order to get sufficient research so I could produce products that corresponded and were suitable with the industry codes and conventions. One of the main things I used for this stage was the Internet and thanks to the whole evolution of the Internet and the new theory of web 2.0 by David Gauntlet where he expresses that the internet has evolved from having your own private garden to being an allotment where many people can interact and share information. Thanks to this evolution I was able to do most of my research on the Internet. Through websites like YouTube I was able to view and study teaser trailers by both big film companies and projects such as mine from different schools in order to aid me in decision making and looking at styles of editing, camera shots and overall house styles of the products. through the Internet I was also able to research different promotional packages, film posters and film magazine covers, this really helped in the construction and planning for my print productions as I had to construct both a film poster and a magazine cover. I also used the medium of tv to see how the genre I chose was presented of television and also films are shown on tv, so I was able research what I needed on almost anything: my computer, my iPod, tv and even my phone. New media technologies has really opened the opportunity gate for my research and I felt like I did sufficient research as I was always being exposed to technology that allows me to research. I strongly feel that I was not hindered in any way and feel that I fulfilled what I set out to achieve in my research stage the fullest of my potential. However, I argue that with the new media technologies that are out at the moment there is no stop to the amount of the research I can do, so as a trial If I was to do this project again I would of kept track of all the information I found and constantly of done research till the very end.

The planning stage of my work was important and found that to keep track of and show my planning work effectively was through a blog. By showing evidence on a blog it was an effective way of using new media technology to plan, research, exhibit and evaluate my work. Word processing programs was also a necessity as it aided me into creating plans and shot lists for my production stage and also. Other work that I was able to evidence into my blog was scanning my storyboard to I could show it digitally. The planning stage of my process I feel like it required not too much use of new media technology and I feel that basic usage of it was what I needed in order to fulfil my intent with the planning stage. Saying this, if I was to redo my project I would look into developing my planning stage a bit further by including some more digital material, maybe such as a vlog, where I can back up each blog post with a video explaining. This could be very helpful as it could my blog easier to understand and would show that I am using new media technology more effectively.

Finally, new media technology helped me to complete my evaluation of my work and again it came form the aid of a blog as it allowed me to express my work and critically evaluate my work as I went along. Overall, new media technology is ever changing and the technology I have to hand now has changed so much since that of when I was doing my AS coursework and I acknowledge that it will continue to change as everyday there is something new and the globalisation of the world means that things will became faster and inevitably better. If I was to do this project again in 10 years, there's a 100 percent guarantee that I could probably do so much more with my product, but if I was to do 10 years ago I would have been very limited of what I could do. This shows this continuing change in media technology.

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

One of the main goals of this project was to make sure it both my ancillary tasks and my main task worked holistically in order to create a product that was professional and fitted the industry codes and conventions. I feel that all my production pieces for this project tie in with each other and I have full confidence that they worked together to produce, holistically, a good piece of work that ticks all the boxes and fits the criteria of the codes and conventions of the film industry.

One of the first things I had to work out was choosing and fitting together a colour scheme for my work so that they looked similar to each other, but not at all the same as I wanted create three pieces of worked that linked with each other but not look like clones of each other. The predominant colours in my ancillary tasks are  black, red and white. The colour scheme was something that ad to be in both of my print productions. My film poster mixed these three colours to create an eerie feel to it and with the poster being the first of my production pieces I felt that I had use it as a stepping stone in order to create my magazine cover. For the construction of my magazine cover I made sure that I used my three chosen colours and planned out what colour would be for what particular element of the magazine cover. For example, I decided to have all the sub titles of the magazine cover red with the context of each sub heading being white. I constructed layouts and colours for certain things before I actually constructed my two pieces of work and found it was much easier to link these two pieces of work together by making a plan and working out what works well with what. For both my ancillary tasks I made sure that holistically they looked like they were promoting the same thing and I believe that I did this well. Just like my AS coursework where my front page, contents page and double page spread had to look like they belonged to the same magazine I made the my production pieces of the poster and magazine cover look like they belonged in the sane promotional package, and that was one of the most important things that I had to bare in mind throughout this project. I could have easily produced to completely different products that were good in there own individuality but by making products link together it fulfils the objective of the task.

After creating my two ancillary tasks in the poster and magazine cover I had to make sure that my teaser trailer followed in making my project work holistically and I believe I achieved this. Although the predominant colours in my trailer are not the ones chosen for my ancillary tasks (red, black and white) I did try to incorporate the feeling of eerie in my trailer so that it linked to my other two production pieces. I feel that things can fit together perfectly if they are shadowed by an over arching theme. By incorporating the eerie factor into my teaser trailer I believe that all my products link together and work very well holistically to produce a very nice, professional standard of work that I am happy with.

If I was to reconsider and do this project again I wouldn't change much on this particular area. However, I was to carry this project out again I might of tested different things out in order to make my work holistic in a different way. For example, I would have tested out a different house style and I would of underwent some trial and error with the colour scheme of my work. In addition to this I would of probably tried to link the teaser trailer to the film poster by including some more of my colours of my initial colour scheme. In conclusion I still have strong faith in my work working holistically and fitting the codes and conventions of the industry standards.

Evaluation: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenges of real life media products?

I feel that my media product is a number of things and fits into the industry following its codes and conventions. At the same time I also believe that my media product does all of the above in using, developing and challenging the forms and conventions of real life media products and it's this quality that makes me believe that It will be the next step forward in the film industry. Something that uses current forms and conventions, but at the same time develops it and takes it one step further and also challenges existing forms and conventions, creating some new and vibrant and testing out a new formula. It's all about taking risks.

My media product uses real life forms and conventions as through my research and planning looked into real life products and implemented their forms and conventions. Throughout my research I looked throughly into the layouts of posters and magazine cover for my two print productions. In addition to this I looked at the key features of film posters from popular films and popular film magazine covers. By doing this I would be complying to the current codes and conventions of the film industry and would show evidence of research and accuracy of construction. For my main task, the teaser trailer, I also researched popular viral films to see the types of things they showed in teaser trailer and the limitation of the content. I found that if I was to make my teaser trailer look slightly low quality, as it was being shot with a video camera, I would have to justifying it, just like Cloverfield. I was able to plan this out through using current forms of media and tailoring them to my own needs. Another example of this in my main task would be the style of editing. Through looking at the trailer of paranormal activity 2 where the cuts are very simple and easy, but at the same create a great effect as it jumps from video camera to video camera. Similarly, in my teaser trailer there are diary entries and I thought that the most effective way to let the narrative of my story evolve in my teaser trailer would be to have similar simple cuts. By using current forms and conventions I was able to suit my idea and see where it could fit into in a current era and the style of teaser trailer very much illustrates that it fits into the type of viral category, like Cloverfield and Paranormal Activity.

My media product also develops current forms and conventions of the film industry as my media product begins with a unique idea that doesn't follow any narrative and style that I know of. In addition to this, by developing a fresh, new idea, it also develops the forms and conventions of my products a little further. Since media technology is constantly evolving I believe that any piece of work done in this current time shows signs of developing the current forms and conventions of real media products. A strong example of this would be my teaser trailer, although it uses current forms of real media products it also contributes to the slow development into the new type of style that will become more popular as time goes on.

In addition to using and developing real life forms and conventions, I believe that my product also challenges these current forms and conventions. I say this because it challenges the modern day box office hits that come out week in week out and I feel that my product belongs to that of a niche but vastly expanding focus that has been very successful. The intentional amateurish look of my teaser trailer goes against the formula of a glamorous mainstream film and contains more of a narrative. I felt it was very important to have a narrative in my teaser trailer as it really helps evolution of modern day trailers. Overall, my product is a mix of all three things and that in itself is something that definitely contributes to the developing side of film trailers and promotions. My two ancillary tasks very much so uses current forms and conventions and testing forms is a lot more unconventional as there is a very set, successful method. I used current forms and based my poster and magazine covers around these current forms for the best possible product.

In my AS coursework I found that I was very much using real life forms and conventions, but in A2 I found that I was able to experiment with all three and this shows the more depth I had to cover throughout my A2 coursework. If I was to undertake my chosen project again I feel that I would have probably experimented a bit more with my product in terms of trying out different styles and not being scared of taking risks. Additionally, I would of hoped to of gone into more depth of the combination of using, developing and challenging current forms and conventions.

Main task Complete...

  

                                  PARADOX TEASER TRAILER from Luis Valtierra on Vimeo.

CLICK ON PARADOX TEASER TRAILER LINK TO SEE ON VIMEO

The setting of my film is an Asylum for the worlds mystery patients and there's one patient who is the biggest mystery of them all, Patient 13. Apart from the obvious white hospital clothing he wears a distinctive bandage around his eyes, as he is blind.  Patient 13 is a quiet and obedient character, but after the staff discover weird drawings in his cell and the head of the hospital gets a specialist doctor, Dr. Jones, who sets out to investigate the mind of Patient 13. Patient 13 is told by Dr Jones to draw what he thinks he looks like and what he thinks Dr Jones looks like. Patient 13 draws himself as an angel and draws Dr Jones as a demon. This leads to a number of weird deaths of the staff of hospital and No one knows what has happened. Dr Jones eventually finds more drawing of plans of the deaths of the staff members in the cell of patient 13 and finds out, through a letter in his cell,  that Patient 13 has been possessed by the devil to believe he is an angel and everybody else is evil and it is Patient 13's duty to rid the world of evil, ending in a mass killing spree which Dr Jones needs to sort out.  In this teaser trailer you also see a female doctor who previously looked into the case of patient 13 but failed... 

Focus group

                                                 PARADOX from Luis Valtierra on Vimeo.

After completing the fist draft of my teaser trailer, I managed to oragnise a focus group to show them what i have done and to get feedback off them in order to make my work better. I managed to find an empty classroom one lunchtime and got the trailer up on the white board. All together I had around 10 of my peers which I showed the trailer to and I received some more feedback.

FEEDBACK

on the whole the feedback I received was generically good, with people saying it was already at a high standard. With this said, I asked them what they would do if they were doing this teaser trailer. After asking them a though provoking question I found that I received some useful constructive criticism. I found that sometimes the trailer seems to start and stop in laces creating the impression that the trailer is being disrupted. Even though the disruption is for a split second I have to address the problem as if it's tied up the trailer will run a lot smoother and look a bit more professional. When questioned about the way i edited I explained that I was approaching it in a rough jumpy sort of way as it is a teaser trailer and I wanted to convey the mystery of this trailer and so forth. When it came to the soundtrack of the dialogue and sound FX I found that I had to adjust the volume of 1 or 2 of the FX as it made the trailer sound a bit weird as their were many different volume levels which sort of distorted the trailer. 

With all this feedback i will be editing the video again and my next post will be the final product.

The start of the editing process

Before I began the editing process of my I needed to have an idea of what style of editing I wanted to approach and decided to look for some inspiration. Amongst my findings I found a current example that I could use in order to help me figure out the type of style of editing I want for my teaser trailer. The teaser trailer to Paranormal Activity 2 is a perfect aid in what I want to figure out and by analysing this trailer I should be able to get the inspiration to make my teaser trailer the best I can. from analysing this teaser trailer I found that the editing included a lot of eerie sound effects but at the same time it worked brilliantly in working with the diegetic sound of the actual film. A lot of static is used to create an eerie effect, which is an attribute that I want trailer to have.

One thing that is crucial is that i remember that the time limit on my trailer cannot be more than 1 minute and 40 seconds as the conventional length for a teaser trailer is not long at all. Although the Paranormal Activity2 trailer is 1 minute and 9 seconds i have more content to fit in than just CCTV footage. What I am hoping to re create is something that is concise and that teases the audience into wanting more. In addition to this, I must keep in mind my target audience at all times and make sure I steer what I produce towards them.

The program that i used was Final cut pro as it is the best editing software on the market. however, it being the best means that it is also very complicated for a beginner like myself to use it. Before I began to use it I looked and some tutorials on YouTube to figure out how to do the basics on Final Cut. After teaching myself the basics Tried to import the footage from my camera onto my computer and found that there was a slight problem, my computer couldn't read the files. With this problem in place I did some research and found that I had to simply convert my files to a more generic, readable one. After this minor glitch I realised that before i actually edited anything i had to find out what footage I wanted to use.
After choosing the footage that I wanted I was then able to begin editing my footage together in an to make a teaser trailer

 Firstly, I imported my footage onto final cut pro and it was only then i could begin to choose parts of the clip that I wanted. For each piece of footage I imported, I chose a IN and OUT point so that i used only the bit of the footage I wanted to use. I found this very helpful as this erased the unnecessary parts of a piece of footage that I did not exactly need. After doing this for all the clips and began experimenting with final cut and added some cool effects onto some of my videos and at the beginning of my trailer such as a text card. One thing i found difficult was the getting a piece of footage in between another piece of footage whilst deleting the soundtrack as I did not want to include some of the background noises in the scenes that o wanted to be silent or have dialogue running over it. I found that, through a tutorial, by using keys on the keyboard I was able to separate audio and video tracks on the timeline and could move them freely to my heart's content. In addition to this, I discovered the chopper tool which allowed me to split up tracks, whether it be video or audio. By learning how to do these two things I was able to edit more effectively and managed to do what I wanted. Once i edited the footage together I added my title card at the end which read PARADOX. Now that my raw footage has been tamed and cut together i can begin to include some sound FX and edit more effectively by using transitions.

Next I was able to find some cool Sound FX on the web that tailored for the eerie effect I was going for and I downloaded the ones that I thought would be the best and imported them into Final Cut pro. Using the chopper tool and sound tools on Final cut Pro I was able place sound effects effectively and adjust the volume levels of each so that it wouldn't make the initial dialogue unclear. I also Cross faded some of the audio so that the sound didn't stop and start at the end of each track, so instead it would fad out of one track and fade into the next smoothly and didn't make my work sound distorted. I listened to all the Sound FX's before I chose the appropriate ones for my work and I also experimented with different sounds in different places and at different volumes. This helped me get an idea of what sound would work best with what part of the video. Another key thing I kept in mind whilst I was editing the sound and that was that it was in time with certain parts of my video. For example, The thud sound FX I used whilst Patient 13 was drawing was timed so that a thud would sound after every cut. This lead me on to editing the video effectively with video transitions so that I used different styles of cuts, fades etc. The majority of my video has straight forward cuts as I wanted a rough editing approach to this work to compliment the video footage aspect of my footage. Furthermore, I neatened up bits that I thought looked a bit odd and edited in the transitions accordingly. An example of this is where Dr Jones says 'Patient 13', I put a transition so that it fades to footage of patient 13 as soon as he says it. All these little things are things that i learnt through my research and with my editing concluded for now, I hope people notice it. The working together of Non-Diegetic and Diegetic sound was a difficult to accomplish, especially with video chucked in aswell, but I think I have managed to pull it off to the best of my ability.

After editing I found that my teaser trailer stood at a perfect 1 minute and 36 seconds in length, which means is it not too long and is enough to fit the teaser category, which is key if I want to fulfil the set brief and ticking all the boxes. It also follows the industry conventions of this.

My next step is to show my work to a focus group at school and acquiring feedback so that i can enhance my work and make it to the best of my ability. I believe the editing process went well for the fact that i have never used Final Cut Pro and for the simple fact that i taught myself well through tutorials. In addition tot his, I believe I have captured my visualisation of what I wanted my teaser trailer to look like from the get go.