Coursework Evaluation Presentation

After completing our whole promotional package, my group and I then had to produce a powerpoint that answered particular questions about our product and evaluated the whole process to the rest of the media class. The Powerpoint included nine screen grabs from our teaser trailer that showed how we had approached conventional elements of real media texts, three slides on each piece of our promotional package and other slides discussing how audience feedback had helped in the forming and overall success of appealing to our target audience. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

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  We showed that a black background and white font was conventional for a drama film.


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  We also expressed our reason for adding a red flower design to show delicacy and hint at the danger and violence in the film, successfully represnting our drama genre.

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  We explained that a generalised date is conventional of teaser trailers.


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  We also explained that the particualr date 'Autumn 2012' would enable us around a year to successfully build on our promotional package and consequently suspense.

• It was expalined that we had used the church and bathroom to make the mise-en-scene as realistic as possible.

• We said that we used the wedding dress trail to make our audience focus on the main character throughout the trailer whilst we tracked their movement up the aisle.


• There was also the use of dark make-up to present bruising and represent the domestic violence and therefire the genre and possible narrative.

• We showed the class that we used extreme zooms and close-ups to focus on the brutality of the bruises and therefore shock the audience.

• We made it clear that the extreme zooms and close-ups also successfully teased the audience, because they were unable to see the main character at full view until the very end, therefore creating tension and suspense.

• We chose the Warner Bros. distributors as they had managed to produce the BAFTA Award winning drama film 'Slumdog Millionaire' and because of it's success, we thought this would be the perfect instituation to promote our film. We were also hoping that FILM4 would promote our film, however, we were unable to find the FILM4 opening credit.

How effective is the combination of your main product an ancillary texts?

• We compared our teaser trailer with the drama film 'Social Network' as there were many similarites including white fonts and black backgrounds and a slow revealing of the main character whilst a voiceover that hints at a specific narrative is playing.

• We presented our intial inspiration of the domestic abuse poster along with the Sleeping with the enemy poster to present similar conventions of a film poster, like the central image and black font for the title.

• We showed the class how we had chosen Total Film for our publisher and therefore we had to find a font that was similalr to the actual magazine font. We explained that we wanted to maintain our red and monochrome colour scheme in order to maintain contunity and so our audience would be able to successfully identify themselves with the film.

What have we learnt from our audience feedback?

• It was important that we explained why we had produced a questionnaire during the presentation. We explained that it was vital to understand our target audience and feel confident that we were successfully appealing to our target audience.

• We talked about how our first audience feedback highlighted and pinpointed certain problems and improvements that could be made to our first attempt. The main problem was the make-up and effetively expressing our concept in the way that we wanted.

• We talked about the changes that we made after our feedback in order to make our entire concept clear. For instance, we deleted all of the orignal shots that showed the main character without any scarring and replaced the opening of the tap running with just the bride to make things more simpler and to shcok and draw in the viewer instantly.

• The second audience feedback was also used noted so that we were able to see where and if we had managed to imporve the presentation of our whole concept when it came to a drama genre dealing with domestic abuse. We disuessed the more positive feedback, especially concerning the clarity of our film.

• We notified what we had learnt from our audience as well as our own performance and product. It was also very important to note down the imporvements we would make if we had to complete this project again.

• We also discussed the amount of technology and computer programmes we had used and also presented the benefits and drawbacks that were apparent with each one.

Our Final Teaser Trailer

Final Teaser Trailer



What makes this Teaser Trailer so successful?

• We've been able to incorporate midshots, extreme close ups, zooms (in and out), tracking, voiceovers, music and fade transitions.
• We've added a 'dream' effect on the wedding shots in order to make the wedding scene appear as if it is a flashback. This sucessfully presented elements of a narrative to the audience and took them on a journey.
• We successfully kept our trailer immensely conventional by using distributors and typical black and white titles to make our film look professional and to show that our trailer was of a usual drama genre.
• We tried our best to stick to the conventional running time of one minute and although we may have gone slightly over the minute, we believe this was only because of the length of time of the Warner Bros distributor at the beginning of the trailer.
• Our trailer was very straight and to the point, which we all feel presented the concept very well, because our target audience was able to understand what was happening and were therefore able to gain an idea of what the plot genre and narrative was.

How have my skills developed from AS?

I would definitely say that I have developed my skills greatly since the AS piece. I'm definitely much more confident with using movie making and editing programme Pinnacle as this year I was given the opportunity to edit the footage and video clips, which now means that I can use technology with much more ease.
I have also become much more independent in my own study, especially when it came to genre and audience research. I had a great deal of input when it came to forming and creating a questionnaire and thinking of questions to ask our target audience.
I'm now able to talk more and discuss more with my group even if there were times where we did have disagreements. We also became much more critical when it came to viewing our footage because we wanted things to be as good as they could possibly be. This meant that we filmed some of the shots a number of times.
Because I have also developed a wider knowledge of media and the influence they have on the sucess of films, I have become much more analytical when it comes to posters and film magazines. I also have a greater knowledge about the difference between normal trailers and teaser trailers, and I know that at AS level, I would have known nothing about trailer and teaser trailer conventions.
One of the main things that the group and I have learnt, is that audience feedback is extremely important, as you are much more confident in your decisions when you know exactly what your audience want. The group and I were also able to use my skills from knowledge of Photoshop when it came to the poster and magazine. I thought that it was good that many people in the group used their knowledge of Photoshop to create something professional looking.
Overall, I would say that the co-operation of a group is one of the most important things to remember, and I was definitely say that this year, the group had been able to converse much better with each other when it comes to creating and sharing imaginative ideas. Preparation is extremely vital and there was a great deal of planning that we had to do in order to ensure that our filming was a success. I would say that we are certainly much more prouder of this piece, because we took the time to organise each step in the forming process and despite having to film certain bits numerous times, I feel that we managed to maintain our determination to produce a promotional package that was extremely successful.

Teaser Trailer Decisions

Throughout the last week, it soon became apparent that we in actual fact had two teaser trailers that were both good enough to be used as our final product. This caused the group to discuess which trailer we should use, as both had particular elements that made them successful. Both presented a great variety of shots, including tracking, extreme zooms and midshots, which consequently made our decision all the more difficult.

What did we like about the First Trailer?

• We were able to show a range of different shots and these were shots that showed a great amount of action.
  
• We thought that unveiling the marks gradually mean that our target audience would be successfully shocked.

What did we like about the Second Trailer?

• The second trailer may not have had as various and interesting shots, however, we all agreed that the 'meaning' of our film was conveyed much clearer, mainly because the make up was more prominent (presenting brutal domestic violence)


• It also excluded the 'normal' behaviour of the woman. There was no drying of hair with a towel and no application of mascara which meant that the audience was more aware that the main victimised character was unable to go about her 'day to day life' and therefore symbolise the power and control of domestic abuse.

Audience Feedback/Opinions

The Facebook Feedback of the Second Trailer

The main purpose was to convey the meaning clearly and as a result, we decided as a group to ask our own target audience for their opinions of which one was better. Most people agreed that they understood events and the desired meaning in the second teaser trailer (as shown above), which therefore led us to have the second teaser trailer as our final trailer and the one that we would present as our final product.

Teaser Trailer: First Audience Feedback

For Better For Worse - The First Trailer

What did people say and what did we learn?

Here is the feedback that we gathered from various people on the sicial networking site Facebook. Despite displaying our video to people of a younger age group, we felt that gaining a general view from a variety of age groups would be ideal, because the more feedback and opinions that were expressed, the more it would make us think about what to improve. However, even though we managed to gain feedback from a younger audience, we also managed to show people of our target audience, just by simply playing them the video.

Some of the Audience Feedback from Facebook

• Try to make the make up more obvious and much darker
• Make sure the voiceover is clear enough for people to hear what is going on
• The music is very suitable for the genre
• The church shots looked very professional but were a tad shakey at the end.
• Perhaps the desired concept isn't that clear, so we should attempt to rethink how we present the marks and the domestic abuse.

Feeback from our Target Audience

"I really like the concept of the film, but I still think that you need to emphasise the make up so that people know what is going on."

"The wedding scenes look really professional and the music really suits the drama genre."

Improvements and Group Decisions

We decided that after looking at the feedback we were given, it would be best to refilm the bathroom shots and focus more on showing the marks through shots rather than a gradual unveiling of the abuse to keep things more simple and avoid confusion of the sudden appearance and disappearance of the marks. We also though that by making the make up look more realistic, our film would look much more professional and successfully achieve our aim of shocking the audience. We didn't think that the shake of the church shot seen at the end of the trailer was too much of a problem and we were pleased that everyone thought the music suited the mood and genre.

Our Final Poster

The Final Poster

Our Poster Research and Influence
We decided to analyse the Slumdog Millionaire film poster in order to see the specific elements of a conventional film poster. We chose to analyse this particular film poster because it is also a Film4 and Warner Bros film and we therefore thought it would be suitable and accurate when it came to presenting distributors and the information that is usually displayed, like the directors and actors names.


Feedback
People seemed to like the fact that we kept our poster simple. They liked that the image was in the centre and that there were two halves, one showing the normal face and the other the real, beaten side as this shocked and consequently drew them to the poster, knowing instantly that it was a drama film dealing with issues of domestic abuse. They really liked the slogan because it also told them alot about the plot and said that it was so catchy that they would be able to remember it.

Our Opinions
As a group, we were extremely pleased that the font and colours came out very clearly and boldly.We also managed to find the distributors logos and signs which made the overall poster look extremely professional just like Slumdog Millionaire.
We particularly liked the fact that, in this case, less was more effective and that the image and title were the aspects that mostly stood out, because these were the aspects that were most important when it came to rememberence of our film.

Our Final Magazine Cover

Our Final Magazine Cover

What makes it successful?

• We are proud of the professional looking colour schemes and we feel that with the monochrome and red colour theme, it was effectively stylized.
• We have a central image that intrigues the audience. The amin character is looking directly at the potential buyer which sucessfully helps our aim of attracting our target audience.
• We liked the fact that our cover was clear and allowed the relevant information to be displayed wthout being overcrowded by other infromation.
• It is extremely conventional with the elements we included and our research of the 'Total Film' magazines meant that our cover looked realistic.
• Our questionnaire also helped us in making the magazine cover accurate. e.g. the price we displayed was a cost that was said to be acceptable in our questionnaire.
• We were pleased with the fact that we managed to get the 'Total Film' font and style relatively accurate.
• We included the other group's films so that we advertised without copyright and helped promote their films.

Comparing Our Trailer to Media Theories

Feminist Theory/Theorists

Initial attempts in the United States in the early 1970s were generally based on sociological theory and focused on the function of women characters in particular film narratvies or genres and of stereotypes as a reflection of a society's view of women. Works such as Marjorie Rosen’s Popcorn Venus: Women, Movies, and the American Dream (1973) and Molly Haskell's From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in Movies (1974) analyze how the women portrayed in film related to the broader historical context, the stereotypes depicted, the extent to which the women were shown as active or passive, and the amount of screen time given to women. - Information courtesy of Wikipedia.org

Laura Mulvey - The 'Male Gaze'

The Male Gaze is a theory that argues that alot of films are usually viewed and presented from and by a male perspective.

In cinema theory, Laura Mulvey identifies the male gaze, in sympathy with the Lacanian statement that "Woman is a symptom of man." This means that femininity is a social construct, and that the feminine object the object petit, or the object of desire, is what constitutes the male lack, and thus his positive identity.

In film, the male gaze occurs when the audience is put into the perspective of a heterosexual man. A scene may linger on the curves of a woman's body, for instance. Mulvey argues that in mainstream cimena, the male gaze typically takes precedence over the female gaze.- Information courtesy of Wikipedia.org

How does this relate to our own film? There are often a few shots in our teaser trailer that show the woman on the floor with a high angles shot successfully dominating the woman. This implies that she is a victim and is inferior and therefore hints at the narrative.

Carol .J. Clover - The 'Final Girl' The 'final girl' is a horror film trope that specifically refers to the last woman or girl alive to confront the killer, ostensibly the one left to tell the story. Althought our film is not a horror, we are able to relate to the particular ideology of having the woman being victimised in a film. Clover argues that for a film to be successful, although the Final Girl is masculinized, it is necessary for this surviving character to be female, because she must experience abject terror, and many viewers would reject a film that showed abject terror on the part of a male. - Information courtesy of Wikipedia.org

How does this relate to our own film? This shows that audiences can in some ways, relate to a stereotypical way of viewing males to be more superior and stronger than women. If our piece was in actual fact a real film, we would most likely show a scene that had our main character portrayed as a 'final girl', because she would be threatened and would have to come up against her violent husband.