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

Audience Feedback For Products

When asking students in my school what the thought of my film poster these are some of the comments I have received:

·         I like the simplicity of the colour scheme as it allows the characters to stand out more.

·         The black eyes on the male looks really scary and it really draws my attention to the poster and makes me want to watch the movie.

·         The poster looks quite professional and really good.

·         I don’t really know who’s the villain in the movie, as there is a ghostly guy in the background but he is , kind of hard to see in but the guy in front has black eyes? But it is still really scary.

·         I like the demonic symbol on the poster as it really relates to horror.  

The comments I received were overall quite good and showed me that my poster did fit some conventions and overall achieved its aim of enticing my audience and creating a scary horror poster. One of the comments I received was that they found it hard to see who the villain in the movie was due to the fact the male in the background is really hard to see and the male in the foreground has black eyes. I chose to have the poster this way as I wanted the male in the background to be seen as the ghostly figure and wanted the male in the foreground to be seen as possessed. This I hope would entice the audience and possibly cause confusion, which may entice them more. However I went back to the poster and changed the male’s eyes and made the male in the background more prominent. I then asked the same person again what they thought of the poster and they said it ‘it didn’t look as scary and the male in the background no longer looked like a ghost and made it harder to see the other characters’.

By asking my target audience what they thought I was able to get a clear idea of what I could improve on and what was good already.

When asking students in my school what they thought of my horror magazine these are some of the comments I received:

·         I think the magazine looks really good and professional.

·         I like the fact you can’t see the villain yet you can see someone getting dragged away it makes it more appealing.

·         There isn’t too much writing which means the picture is still the most important aspect of the cover.

·         The colour scheme is a little boring the black and the white looks good but could have looked better if there was more red to relate more to your genre.

The comments I received were overall good and showed that my target audience liked the magazine front cover even though the magazine may be seen as somewhat unconventional. For example my magazine front cover showed one of my characters instead of the villain this is somewhat unconventional of Horror Magazines. One of the comments was that there wasn’t any red on my front cover. However I chose not to have too much red as the red has connotations of blood and in my trailer there is little blood due to the fact it’s based on demonic possession.

When asking students in my school what they thought of my trailer these are some comments I received:

·         Trailer looks really good, suits the genre nicely.

·         I like the demonic symbols that pop up, it looks good with the poster.

·         The editing wasn’t great and the quality of the actors could have been better but I still like the trailer.

·         The dragging scene at the end was good as it made me want to know what happened after. 

·         I like the summoning bit, I think it looks good and the editing of it works really well.  

·         I like the fact it’s in a school.

As you can see overall the feedback I got was really good and showed that the research and planning I did paid off. As you can see from some of the responses from my trailer fit certain conventions of other trailers such as the idea it leaves the audience in suspense and wanting more. Although all the comments I received weren’t as good as I hoped but these comments are useful as they will allow me to edit my product to fit the audience needs and wants.

The audience feedback I received was extremely useful and allowed me to understand what features of my products my target audience liked and what I could improve on to make my products more conventional of the horror genre or what I could improve on to suit my audience needs and wants.

In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

One convention I used in my media product was Todorov’s narrative theory. I chose to do this as I believe his theory is conventional of most if not all films and therefore should be a key feature in my trailer. The equilibrium in my trailer is the scene where the students are entering the school and searching around the school as at that moment in time everything is as it should be (normal). The disruption is caused by the students using an Ouija board to try summoning a spirit. I believe choosing to use this theory made the future scenes of the spirit scarier as they were being compared to the equilibrium scenes. Due to the fact my product is a trailer there is no attempt to repair or restore a new equilibrium, again following the convention of a typical trailer. Another theorist is Propp. I think the characters in my trailers show little resemblance to Propps character functions although in my poster it seems as if the females are cowering behind the male, although this is not a function of Propps theory it is somewhat conventional of other horror movies, following the idea that the females are scared and the male has to protect them. Although the eyes of the male are black possibly suggesting he is possessed therefore making it somewhat unconventional of other media products as he is meant to be protecting them.   

Another convention I chose to adhere to was the age rating at the beginning of the trailer. As I believed it may my product look more professional and also due to the fact I choose a horror, I chose a rating that was “Restricted” to make it as realistic as possible.

Another convention was fact that I mentioned my production company at the start of the trailer.

Another convention I have used was having a flashing image being shown during my trailer. I got this Idea when watching the sinister trailer and they had a very fast image appears, relating to the movie. I have chosen to do this as I feel it breaks up certain scenes and can be quite eerie when watching.

Another convention I have is that just after the credits role for the trailer, I have tried to make a scene which scares and surprises the audience. This has become more and more conventional in recent years.

One way my poster challenges the conventions of a real media product is that on most posters they only show the villain or possibly one of the characters looking scared or afraid. However on my poster it shows all the characters who are seen in the movie as well as the villain although the villain visibility is quite poor due to the way I edited the poster. This is unconventional as it seems as if the villain is being overlooked and is showing the characters to be more important. Furthermore as I stated before the male character eyes are black, possibly showing connotations of evil and therefore making it seem as if there are numerous plot twists. I chose to have my character staring at the audience (direct address) as I believe it makes the image more intimidating and makes the poster in general seem scarier.  Another convention on my poster is the billing block at the bottom of the poster, this is important as it makes my poster seem more professional, one problem I faced was that due to the fact I had a small cast and crew the billing block was rather small and I believed due to this it look amateur. Another convention I followed was the….just above the title of the movie.