ACA Media: January 2014

Friday, 31 January 2014

Final Trailer

Clare: Here is the completed and final version of our trailer 'Through My Eyes.' We made sure to make any final adjustments with sound and other elements before exporting our piece. We are really pleased with our end outcome since the 'drama genre' was not the easiest route to go down as opposed to horror which we did last year, so it was an interesting challenge for us. Feedback from the class and our teacher was also a success as they gave all positive comments and didn't request that we changed anything within our trailer.

Amanda: We wanted to really challenge ourselves to portray one strong emotion, and make the audience feel this too. Showing several school peers and teachers, some of the feedback was:

'I want to cry! I feel so bad for Anna.' - Iram Qureshi, 17
'Wow, poor girl. I would hate that if it were me.' - Emma Williams, 17
'Good job. I love the shots, they really flow, especially the first two' - Liz Thompson, 52

It was comments like these that reassured us into knowing we successfully created what we wanted.

Adeola: What was most prominent in this film trailer was the subtle, but articulate alteration in music. The different sounds effectively reflected the scenes, the 'SEGAL' music was used for the montage to portray a sort of memory before we later change to the 'Birdy' soundtrack which effectively evoked emotion. The credits were also good, there was a continuity in font type to reflect the genre.

Wednesday, 15 January 2014

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

How did you use new media technologies to in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Clare: Unfortunately my Prezi won't attach to this blog post, however, the link to my Prezi can be found here: http://prezi.com/oxxupsvmhhyq/research-and-planning/

Ade: Below, is the link to my prezi.
http://prezi.com/srbrodikbv16/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Amanda: My link to the evaluation prezi.
http://prezi.com/lpykhdat7-po/use-of-media-technologies-in-our-evaluation/

Evaluation Question 3- What have you learned from your audience feedback?

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Clare: For this question, we decided to interview our school peers, asking them questions about our poster and magazine cover in relation to audience. From our interviews, we found that the best element of our film poster was the general design, with the words scattered on our protagonist's face, as it "portrays what everyone else thinks of her" (Tarina). We also found that it would appeal to our target audience of 12-16 year old girls, due to the colours and fonts that we used. Adding to this, we also found it is relevant to the teen drama genre since we "get a sense of drama from the fonts/colours used" (Emma). To improve our poster, our peers suggested we reduce the amount of writing or maybe change the colour of the background. For the magazine cover, we found that the best feature was the design and editing with the eyes layered over the hands, also many of them commented on the fact it looked quite realistic due to the layout with the various story lines and magazine features. Next, we found all of them believed it was suitable for our target audience because it had taglines such as "UK's best teen magazine" and it included a Hunger Games poster, which is quite a popular teen film/book. Following from this, we found it was relevant to the teen drama genre as we didn't aim too high and portrayed drama through the style of the font we used, which was appropriate and eye-catching. Finally, to improve our magazine cover, many peers suggested that we change the name of our magazine from 'filmNOW' as it didn't immediately appear as a teen magazine, and may encourage parents to watch it more than teens. However, if a mum were to buy our magazine, it may mean that the younger ages within our target audience (i.e. 12-13 who don't have much independence to go to the cinema alone) would be taken to see our film by their parent and would therefore get to see it. Another aspect that we could have improved on our magazine were the colours, since our target audience is aimed at teens we could have included some more interesting, brighter colours, and maybe changed the background colour. The reason we didn't add a background colour before was because the fonts on the front were already many different bright colours, therefore we didn't want them to clash and appear unprofessional.

Clare: We then decided to use the green screen to demonstrate our audience feedback for our actual trailer, received from a survey we had previously placed onto our blog. The video above explains what we have gained from our survey and also includes some interesting bloopers at the end ;)

Year 8 Questionnaire

Clare: Since our media teacher has a year 8 form, we created a survey for her to give to them and fill out. This survey was beneficial to us, as it meant we had feedback from our targeted audience (12-13 year olds).

Clare: Our feedback informed us that a higher majority (31 students) enjoyed this trailer, and according to feedback from our actual teacher she said that they were amazed at the quality and wondered if we had "made the whole film yet?!" Also, a large majority of them said that they would go to see this film in the cinema and would therefore pay money towards the exhibition. Many of them said that they would watch the film with their friends, however some year 8s said they would watch it with a parent, sibling, or just by themselves. Only one said that the music wasn't appropriate, and they gave reasoning by commenting on the loudness of it. Finally, many of the students said that the editing was the best aspect, followed by the camerawork, music, and then the props. This makes sense to us, as we put much more time and effort into the post-production than elements such as props or costume.