Evaluation- Question One

Evaluation- Question Two

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback without a doubt is a vastly important aspect regarding media projects. After the creation of a product it is always important to know whether we have reached our intended goal in terms of whether the film is suitable or appropriate for our targeted audiences and the best way to do this is to gain an insight from the audiences themselves. Gaining this insight will allow us to learn from our mistakes and further develop our film so that it suits the audiences preferences. 

Examples of how audience feedback has affected real media products:

>While filming Johnny English (2002) with director Peter Howitt, testing led to reshoots of the beginning of the film to set up the character better, and "test scores leaped considerably.

>Edgar Wright, writer and director of Shaun of the Dead, said in an interview that in test screenings done before the film's special effects were completed, audiences remarked that the ending was "a bit abrupt" and "lame". After being given a low budget and two days to finish shooting, the filmmakers added a "15 second" ending, which followup press screening audiences liked, leading to one reviewer changing his earlier bad review, giving "an extra star"

- Cases even exist of where test screenings lead filmmakers to completely change the ending of a movie, by having a character die who would have survived, or vice versa, for instance examples include:

-Mary Poppins 

-Final Destination 

-Titanic 

Regarding the audience feedback for our media products we conducted:

-Individual screenings 

-group screenings 

-Posted our film on sites such as YouTube allowing it to be viewed by a wide range of audiences.

We received positive feedback as well as some constructive criticism from online audiences.

-Our film poster as well as magazine reviews, were distributed to our audience by hand, so that they could experience the products at first hand which we believe worked successfully.  

Film Audience Feedback:

The reason that we had decided to go through with some individual screenings was to ensure that the audience were able to articulate their own opinions about the film instead of being influenced by another member of the audience. 

C.J - "I have also been late to school, maybe not late to an exam but I have definitely been late to school, so I understand the pain the character must have been going through"

Stefano - "I could really relate to the film, especially because I am still a student, so the film is easy to understand and the character is also easy to relate to"

Segun - “there was good fast paced score for the first part of the film, however after the mugging scene, the score needs to be a lot tenser and fast paced as it came across as too romantic, however in a sense it seems to create humour as there is a sense of romance between, the main character and the empty exam table, which adds to the light hearted theme of the film”

Moses - Well done, the film certainly targets school aged audiences, going through the exam period and I also found the film very entertaining and it had an interesting narrative”

As a whole the feedback that we had received was very positive and we as a group were very pleased indeed. There were many positives that arose from our film, we were particularly pleased with the comment by Stefano who had said "I could really relate to the film, especially because I am still a student, so the film is easy to understand and the character is also easy to relate to", thus showing that our film was a success as it managed to appeal to the right sort of audiences, mainly students who could relate to the character as they have experienced what the character has gone through before as C.J expressed "I have also been late to school, maybe not late to an exam but I have definitely been late to school, so I understand the pain the character must have been going through". However during one of our film screenings there was a lot of discussion and debate about whether the scores were appropriate for a certain scene:

One viewer explained “there was good fast paced score for the first part of the film, however after the mugging scene, the score needs to be a lot tenser and fast paced as it came across as too romantic” however after some careful consideration we decided to maintain the score as the majority of the viewers were for the ‘romantic’ score as it almost created “sense of romance between, the main character and the empty exam table, which adds to the light hearted theme of the film” explained a viewer. Remaining on the subject of scores, another issue was pointed out there was no score at the beginning of the film it seemed “rather silent” therefore we amended this issue by including a score at the beginning. Moving on to the cinematography aspects of the film, this generally received positive feedback, the only issue was that both endings from the first and second part were very similar, in order to amend this we made the cuts at the end of the first part a lot shorter and in quicker succession, which helped increase the tension and keep the audience interested.

In turn we cut down some scenes from the second part ending instead of repeating the first part.

First part ending:

Second part ending:

Finally we had intentionally aimed to produce this film for audiences ranging from 15 to early 20s, however after the screening early 20s was perhaps too old as the film was said to be more “for school aged audiences, going through the exam period” despite this minor setbacks everything went well. Generally I believed that we had achieved our purpose, it was “entertaining and had an interesting narrative” the theme and genre of the film was very easily established and the right audiences were targeted. 

Magazine Review Audience Feedback:

The magazine review also gained positive feedback from audiences.

Dan -  “ The text was simple but effective making it easy to read and making the outline of the film easier to understand, if the there was just blocks of writing on the page, I don’t think we would have the patience to read through it all. Also the image worked very well, it drew us as the viewers in right away, when I first looked at the magazine the first thing that caught my eye was the main image"

Adam - "The magazine review worked really well and it linked to the film and poster well with the theme of time and stuff but the only criticism I can give is that, the clock behind the text made it a bit difficult to read, maybe it can be made lighter"

There was one slight problem which was constantly arising, the problem was that the text was hard to read due to the image of the clock placed behind being slightly too dark, the feedback allowed us to respond to the problem and amend it by making the clock more opaque, making the text easier to read.

Before audience feedback:

After audience feedback:

The conversational tone of the text was a great addition as a viewer explained “also very easy to read, making the outline of the film easier to understand, furthermore the image worked very well, it drew us as the viewers in right away, when I first looked at the magazine the first thing that caught my eye was the image” in addition it was also established that the magazine would be perfect for the commuting public as the text is at a minimal so the message can be put across a lot quicker the majority of the viewers were all agreeing with the fact that “if the there was just blocks of writing on the page, I don’t think we would have the patience to read through it all". In addition the review managed to reach our intended target audiences of mainly students as they were able to relate to the story line therefore giving the urge to want to view the film and find out the outcome of the characters miserable day, overall our magazine worked well in terms of layout, text and appealing to the right type of audiences.

Film Poster Review:

Finally similarly to the film and magazine the poster also received positive feedback from audiences.

Kyle - "The thing  I like about the film poster is that, there are elements that give little signs away about what the film could possibly be about, especially when you tie the image of the clock and the title 10 minutes together, we get an insight that the film will most likely evolve around the theme of time"

A handful of the audience expressed the fact that "the theme of the film was easily established because of the film title and the images used" the image really had a comical effect with the clock hands on the forehead, this immediately gave the audience the idea that the film will go down a less serious route and take a much more light hearted theme. Furthermore the title also gives abit away about the film, “when you tie the image of the clock and the title 10 minutes together, we get an insight that the film will most likely evolve around the theme of time”.  

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

The Research and planning of our media products was very much aided by the internet, the internet allowed us to research into the background of existing products ranging from film different film posters to film magazine reviews ect. 

With the help of sites such as YouTube we were given the opportunity to access a wide range of short films in order to analyses as well as gain some ideas to follow up on our own products. 

Furthermore with all the information that we had collected, with the addition of blogger, we were able to create blog posts and begin to document our planning and research of our products. 

Regarding the production of our short film at A2 we had been upgraded from the DV cameras we used at AS level to SD cameras. The DV cameras that we had previously used produced low quality and grainy footage and were often very unreliable and we experienced a series of frustrating problems with these cameras. 

The introduction of the SD cameras were very beneficial indeed, there were no technical difficulties that we had to go through therefore our shooting session ran very smoothly and the footage was produced at a very better quality, which was another positive aspect.

Furthermore we were also benefited from having mobile phones on scene, due to the growing technological convergence of phones we were fortunate enough to capture images of our filming sessions which we included into our production of the posters as well as magazine. The huge benefit of having a mobile phone is that it is always in our possessions, therefore we had instant access to our phones, they were always available to use at any point in time.

Furthermore, for the post production of our products, we were introduced to some new as well as upgraded versions of software that we may have previously used at AS. Firstly iMovie 11 was a software which we were introduced, as appose to iMovie HD6 we had used at AS.

Despite the fact that iMovie HD6 was basic and extremely user friendly as well as easier to use, we believed that the step forward to iMovie 11 was necessary, this version of the software allowed us to incorporate things such as new:

-Titles

-Effects 

Photoshop was one of the new software’s that we were introduced to in order to produce a film poster, allowing us to edit and manipulate images. Photoshop was however very complicated to use as a beginner, a lot of patience and training was required to produce our final outcome and due to difficulties there were restrictions as to what we could and could not do. 

Pages was one of the more basic software’s that we used to create our magazine, however some training was required but this unlike Photoshop was a lot easier to pick up and understand so therefore creating and producing our film magazine was a process that ran smoothly. Finally once again with the aid of the internet we were able to source copyright free music, to add to our short film, in addition the internet allowed us to get some stock footage, to incorporate into our film poster as well as magazine.

Without a doubt the technology that we had used had an effect on certain decisions that we had made which in turn, affected the final outcome of our products. Photoshop for example gave us the ability to layer different images as well as manipulate certain images, despite these advantages we were very much so limited with the amount of things that we could do as we didn’t have as much training required to produce professional looking posters, however in contrast we were relatively confident with iMovie as we had previously familiarised ourselves with it at AS level, this gave us the opportunity to have a more confident approach whilst planning our film as we knew what we could and couldn’t do as we knew our strengths as well as weakness, this very much contributed to the successes of our film. 

In addition the fact that iMovie was a nonlinear editing software was very useful, as we were able to experiment with different footage and change things around, this also gave us the opportunity to tweak footages to our preferences, which links in well to the audience feedback as we could easily use the advice given by audiences to change things around. 

The technology however seemed to lack in certain areas such as the camera’s, firstly having dialogue in our film would have been a problem as the SD cameras that we were using made it difficult to pick up sound, as the microphones were simply not decent enough, due to this default we opted to create a film without dialogue, we hoped to create a film which described the narrative with the use of scores and cinematography which worked successfully. 
Also the camera gave a really grainy effect:

To some extent this could be useful for a more serious film, as it creates a sense of depth and realism, however our film was a much light hearted one, therefore the flat grainy effect didn’t really do us any favors.  

Finally it is without a doubt that the internet has changed our project in terms of research, post production, evaluation and the distribution. The social network sites which are easily accessible, allowed us to reach a wide range of different audiences, especially sites such as facebook, Youtube ect.

Which attracts audiences from different corners of the world, in turn allowing them to view our film, this was extremely useful because without the internet we would have a limited range of audience, only the peers amongst us would be able to view the film. Finally the benefits of the internet and social network sites is that they a free, affordable and easy to get hold of, in addition with the grace of technological convergence, social network sites and various websites can easily be accessed from mobile phones, which is a great advantage as it allows audiences to access the products, any where and everywhere

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Our short film on the mobile version of Youtube.

10 Minutes Film

The final version of our short film '10 Minutes' :

Poster Final Outcome

Overall we were very pleased with the final outcome of our film poster we managed to re-create an almost exact copy of our previous poster design, we had made a few changes such replacing the position of the tagline and adding the clock hands, however as stated before we were extremely happy with the eventual outcome of our film poster.

Magazine Review Final Outcome

Similarly to the final outcome of our film poster, we believed that the film magazine review has been created successfully, once again corresponding very well to the initial design of the magazine.