Comparison of horror movie posters

Magazine cover comparison

Production schedule

Recces, talent releases and location releases

Question 3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

When creating a media product such as a movie it is highly important to create a well built up idea of the audience you intend on targeting, this is important throughout the whole process of the film distribution, at the start because you need to think of a target audience to appeal to because everyone has varied taste and the film wont appeal to everyone, and its often important to think of new original ideas to spark peoples interest in something new. This audience focus will remain throughout the whole process, even after the product is made, the distributor will ask for audience feedback, this is to find out what people liked and disliked and if it succeeded to reach the requirements for the intended target audience. This close audience focus is clearly shown in film distributions, and millions of pounds goes into a good marketing scheme, for example The woman in Black had a very broad marketing process, with numerous sources to promote, such as; interviews with Daniel Radcliffe (the main actor in the film), getting all his fans on board with the film because he is very well known with a passionate fan base, posters, movie trailers, magazine and newspaper features, and radio article, all this audience promotion and feedback will help provide an in depth understanding of what the audience want making the overall product more successful. With our product, we created a film trailer, and also tired to keep the audience focused throughout.

With my products I realised it was important to keep the target audience as the main focus and the feedback was an important function to keep referring to, so I collected audience feedback in many different ways. One of which was Youtube. Youtube is an online social platform where anyone can post content for others to view. I posted a preview trailer, to give the audience a feel for what is expected to come with the final trailer, and with this platform, anyone can leave comments and like or dislike the video meaning I was able to change or readjust key elements in the trailer to satisfy the audience to the best standard.

I also used class feedback to get a more accurate response to what the target audience want as the target audience for Red Balloons is primarily older teens who have an interest in horror movies, and we found out that most people in the class do have an interest in horror movies. We showed a screening of the preview trailer to the class and then went around and got a variety of god points and bad points to get an even balance of what's sparked n interest with people and what needed to be changed.

I also took a small sample of written reviews, from people around college. I printed off my magazine cover and movie poster and asked for feedback on the products. I made sure I selected a sample that suited my target audience, which is older teens, who have an interest in horror movies, this is to ensure that it is he intended target audience who is being drawn in by the product and gives valid feedback, as if I showed my products to a young child for example that hates horror films, then the feedback is going to be remotely negative making the results of the feedback invalid and unreliable as they're not the intended audience my product is trying to appeal to.

The class feedback we received there was a varied view on certain aspects of the trailer. A common positive point that was repeated throughout the feedback from numerous people was the music and sound affects corresponding with the footage. There was also comments on pace and the idea being original, which is a positive as it means the target audience are happy with the product and the trailer is of a professional feel and the target audience has been reached to a certain standard despite the product not being completely finished.

As well as positive feedback there were lots of areas to improve to make the final trailer more effects and appealing to the target audience. A common theme was the dialogue being lost at times and the boarder around the edge being to harsh making the vision more unclear, we improved on most of the negative points to make the trailer as effective as possible. We make the boarder round the edge less harsh, we adjusted the sound quality to ensure all audio is understandable throughout and then we edited the least scene to make the ending clear and effective to avoid confusion.

With the feedback on my magazine poster, I also constructed some changes to ensure its as effective as possible. The font used for the title seemed effective on its own and suited the name Red Balloons, however when coordinating with the background and imagine it didn't seem to have such a big impact as I had hoped, I tried to used a red font to coordinate with the title, however the feedback
suggested I changed this, so I did and opted for a white title to make it clearer for the audience to clearly read and understand the title of the film, making it more effective. The image also didn't appeal to my target audience and was changed, instead of an imagine of the singular girl on the front, I decided to add the clown in the background to make it more effective and recognisable about what the film is all about.

When gaining feedback for my magazine there were minor changes that were suggested I make in order to make the product more effective. An example of this would be with the billing block on my first draft of my magazine cover the spacing between the lines and the font size look inappropriate compared to real professional media products, so to fit the criteria to make it seem more professional and to create a better impact I minimised the gap between the lines and made the depth of the text smaller, to ensure that it doesn't take up too much of the page,loosing focus from the main image and the dark background. Another change that was suggested I make was the text under the billing block in my first draft of my poster I had the release date, but this was found to be ineffective, so I changed this to "coming soon" which is a common convention on a movie poster so the audience pay and interest and research the release date themselves while looking for the trailer or on websites to get the information they need about the film.

In terms of the magazine cover I constructed there were also both negative and positive feedback which helps ensure that the product can be as effective as possible. Some of the positive feedback
was regarding the picture saying it was effective with the use of the villain in the background with the main focus being the main character being in the foreground. However the areas to improve regarded the masthead and some of the cover lines. Due to the main image being the main focus of the page I decided to make it fill the page, in doing this the masthead overlapped the image of the clown, making the focus less precise losing the full effect of the image. To improve this I decided to bring the image over to the right and make the masthead shorter but more stretched out virtually allowing it to be clear and precise which attracts the reader making the magazine easily identifiable as well as not loosing the focus of the main image. In regards to the cover lines the test was all in white as it corresponds well with the darker background, however some of the image is brighter meaning the text is lost slightly among the bright colours, making the text less viable, to fix this problem I moved some of the cover lines around to be displayed on the darker areas of the background as well as making some of the text darker using black to stand out, one of the conventions of a magazine cover is that there is a limited colour scheme to avoid the page looking too crowded and messy, however due to my front cover not having a vast majority of colour I felt it was necessary to add another, it also pulls the audiences focus on the specific cover line as its in a different colour text which is necessary as its the main cover line.

I found the audience feedback very useful to tie all the loose ends together and make my products as effective as possible making sure they are professional looking and suitable for my intended target audience, to ensure they do the job they are made to do, in this case promote the film Red Balloons. With the audience feedback it makes you look at things from a different perspective as everyone had a different eye for creativity allowing people to spot faults that you have missed, as well as getting reassurance for all the positive points of the media products.

Final trailer

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

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

When creating our trailer, we had to think about the fact that our budget was low. This meant that being able to access Web 2.0 worked highly to our advantage. Web 2.0 is the second stage of internet development, and allows users to be producers as well as consumers. Being able to use the internet as a way of creating our own, individual products to share worldwide worked well to our advantage. This is because the internet helps to provide a large variety of products which are free of charge to use – therefore allowing me to create products whilst being offline. I was able to use websites such as Youtube and Blogger, meaning I was able to share my products with others.

One of the first pieces of technology I used was YouTube.  YouTube played a large part when researching which horror trailers already existed.  YouTube provides users with an endless amount videos, it is free to use and this is why it was beneficial to my research.  I watched many existing trailers and movie clips in order to help me gain a better understanding of the codes and conventions which horror trailers follow. I think YouTube has been a very beneficial source as it provides high quality videos that cover a great variety of video clips.  It is very simple to use as it has an easy search bar that contains accurate results as well as being quick to use.  One negative aspect of using YouTube is that there are adverts which often appear when watching videos, however these are easy to work around.  As well as looking at other people’s content on YouTube, we were also able to post our own trailer online which has allowed us to gain our own feedback.  This helps any small budget film company to gain publicity, an audience and possible success.

The second piece of technology I’ve used when creating my coursework is Blogger. Blogger is another website that is online and free to use. It has allowed me to put all my work together that is accessible for anyone who may want to access it.  Using blogger regularly has been beneficial to me as it has allowed me to keep a clear understanding of the work I have completed as well as being able to look back as well as edit the work I have completed to ensure it is at a high standard.  Blogger is easily accessible as it is online, it has an easy to use layout as well as being very user friendly regarding its features.  If I was to carry out this project again, I would continue to use blogger because it is a very good website to use as it helped me to store all of my work in one place, and all in a chronological order.

The third piece of technology I used was Adobe Photoshop.  Unlike the previous two pieces of technology, Adobe Photoshop is not online and a programme that the consumer has to download and install on to their device.  I used Adobe Photoshop to create my magazine cover as well as my poster.  I have used Photoshop before which helped to the speed up the process of designing and creating my poster because I was able to use all of the tools effectively.

The forth piece of technology I used was Microsoft PowerPoint with Scribd.  Microsoft PowerPoint is a piece of software that users are able to download on to their devices and then create their own slideshows.  Scribd then allows the user to upload their PowerPoint to their website in order to post online and share with others.  Using Microsoft PowerPoint was very easy for me as I have a lot of past experience with the technology as well as it being very simply laid out and accessible.  Scribd allowed posting my PowerPoint on my blog easy as it has a simple embed tool that allows this to be straight forward.

The fifth piece of technology I used was FlipSnack.  FlipSnack is a website that allows its users to upload a series of images and paste them in to a document that formats them in to, what looks like, a book.  When carrying out my course work, FlipSnack helped me to upload some of my documents in a unique way.  I found using FlipSnack fairly easy as it is accessible anywhere due to it being online as well having straight forward features.  In particular, I found it easy to change the image orders which was very helpful when making finish touches to my product.  Although I did find it hard to navigate at first, after a short while of exploring the website, I would recommend it to others as well as using it again myself.

The sixth piece of technology I used was Prezi.  Prezi is a website that helps its users create a Slide Show in a creative way.  I previously spoke about PowerPoint which does the same thing as Prezi however, I find Prezi more effective as I believe it comes across as more creative and therefore more professional.  Although I like the overall look and effective of Prezi, I did find some of its features difficult to use.  In particular, I didn’t like the way it allowed me to upload images as it seems a very long process and the image did not appear where, as a user, you would think it would.  Saying this, I would still recommend it as I feel it is an effective way to share information and it has helped me to present my coursework in a unique way.

The final piece of technology we used was Adobe Premiere Pro.  This is the piece of technology we used to actually create the trailer, and piece it all together.  It is a piece of software which allows the user to edit sound and film footage in an effective way.  The tools on the trailer allowed us to make normal footage fit the product we wanted to make in an easy way.  While using Adobe Premiere Pro, I found it difficult at first as I had no previous experience with the programme however, common sense allowed me to work around the technology as it is very straight forward to use as it is similar to their other products- regarding layout and tools.  If I was to make another movie trailer in the future, I would continue to use Adobe Premiere Pro as I found it effective as the tools allowed me to edit footage to a high quality.

Throughout the process of making our media product we used SD cards allowing us to store and save all of our footage and images taken for all three products. As well as using the camera to take the footage and images. For the filming for the trailer we used a video camera as well as the boom mic and tripod allowing us to catch high quality footage to them be able to edit on the Mac's as well as getting good quality sound to avoid audio being lost due to the wind and background noise, while the tripod helped keep the camera steady to avoid shakiness making the shot look disoriented, making the footage more professional.