Evaluation Question 3 audience (mariama)

                       WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM YOUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?

We have posted our our teaser trailer on Youtube, were to date have resieved over 110 views.

 

Our views came from mostly males between the age of 13-17 which is roughly around our target audienec.To date we have about 10 comments from viewers giving us positive and negative feedback, of what they think of our teaser tralier,

We posted our horror teaser trailer on youtube because it will allow us to to view which part of the world our feedback is coming from, unfortunatly our views is mainly coming from the uk.

However we felt that was not enough so we  also posted our teaser trailer on facebook along wih our anicallry texts, this was done so that we could get a wide range of audience feed back

We also did a recorded interview feedback , we wanted to engage with audienec and encourage them to give us more feed back by asking them questions that we felt will ensure both positive and negative feedback .

The questions we asked our audienece below, allowed us to dig deeper on what they really thought of our teaser trailer, poster and magzine.

Questions:

Teaser trailer questions
we asked these questions, because we wanted to get both some positive and negavitive feed back even if it is just one from each , this makes our feed back more realistic, and it was important for to find out if our teaer trailer fits the horror genre.
what do you think of our horror teaser trailer the unknown?
What could we improve?
what did you like about our teaser trailer?
 do you think our teaser trailer worked well as a horror teaser trailer?

Poster questions
What do you think of our posters?
which one of the 3 posters you have seen is your favourite?
why and what do you not like about the others?

Magazine questions
what do you think about our magazine?
what do you like?
what could we improve?

Important question
 Do you think that our magazine our teaser trailer and our posters all corrospond with each other?


In conclucion we have learned form our audienec feed back we could shown more continutiy between the poster, teaser trailer and the magazine, most people did not understand who the charcter was on our magaziene front cover , as they had not seen him in the teaser trailer niether the poster.

the coclusive feed back for the trailer is that we could have explored more with camera angles, maybe made it more horror , it seems that most of our audienec did not understand the concept of our trailer, maybe we should have made it more clear in our teaser trailer by either adding more text or a voice over.

Q3.What have you learned from your feedback? Part 2

We learned from this feedback that our stern production logo could have been alot bigger so that it would take up a bigger proportion of the screen this would contribute towards the trailer looking more professional. Once again we gained similar feedback on the ending of the trailer concerning our 'shock factor. Issues raised concerning the magazine were the size of the masthead and that we could have used more coverlid sot fill up the magazine. There was also positive criticism aimed at our model because he didn't look 'natural.' This meant that the model didn't look comfortable and his facial expression did not look 'scary' enough. Not for the for the first time this feedback expressed their favouritism towards poster no.2. It was liked for it's originality and its strong link between the teaser trailer.

Q3.What have you learned from your feedback? (Joel &Josiah)

pace

text

sound combine suspense

ending could be improved more dramatic

poster link to trailer

use of colour most eye catching

title camera shot

coverlines positioned diffeently more proffessional

blood effects to make mory terryfying

Whilst we were in the middle of completing our storyboard the group came to an agreement that the duration of most shots will be kept short with some obviously shorter than others. We learnt from this feedback above that the pace of the trailer built suspense. However we also learnt how this also became a negative with some of the audience because the quick pace didnt allow them to understand the trailer to the full effect that we intented for the audience to do so therefore we came to an conclusion that we could have slightly decreased the actual pace on the trailer by using the speed tool using final cut pro. Towards the left are screenshots of how we could have corrected this. 

I felt that our use of text looked quite simple and ineffective however according to some audiences we learnt that the text was effective because it was a convention used by many horror trailers this complimented the horror genre and make it look more professional. At first i believed that our soundtrack was attractive because in our audience research we asked 'what musical instrument would you expect to hear in a horror film?'  A majority said a piano or a volin but we decided to use a piano since it was more feasable for our producer of the soundtrack. However we recieved mixed feedback from our audiences. Some proclaimed that it was effective and added to a terryifying atmosphere whereas others explained how the soundtrack did not allow the trailer to reach its peak in terror that it could have created. Also alot of feedback suggestedthat it was too 'conventional' meaning that it was not original.  The closest the trailer got to heightening in suspense was the bloody hand banging against the window, according to some feedback we could have made this scene more 'dramatic' by increasing the volume by making it more of a 'shock-factor.' Although i think that this was our most effective shot in terms of horror because it shocked our audience, an person from an audience said "i want to know what happens next?" therefore we learnt that this acted as a cliff hanger and engaged our audiennce the most.

Alot of comments from the audience soon after watching the teaser trailer  was that 'its too vague' we learnt from these responses that not alot of people knew the difference between a teaser trailer and trailer. Our intention was to actually make the trailer a bit vague especially since the title of our film is called 'The Unknown.' Although i believe that being vague was a success to our teaser trailer  i learnt it was not good to be too vague because you dont want to disinterest the viewers. With our trailer i think that we may have made it a bit too hard to understand the concept of our storyline which is a mistake we definately learned from.

We posted our final teaser trailer on youtube and Facebook but found we received more valid comments  back from our youtube posting rather than our Facebook posting. We believe this is because people on social networking sites are most likely to be your friends and are less likely to give honest and constructive criticism, and instead harbour a biased viewpoint.  

Magazine Cover

The feedback indicates that our magazine was a good product, although it was brought to our attention from our audience feedback that the cover lines could have been positioned more effectively - perhaps on the right as appose to the left. Apparently this would have made it look more like a proffessional magazine. The interviewee comments on how the titling 'EPIC' is an effective name for a movie magazine, but maybe not so much for a horror magazine. This caused us as a group to reflect on this and decided that this was true because 'Epic' created connotations of an action movie. In the top right hand corner of the magazine we have an image of an skull which we modified on photoshop with inverted colour. I was convinced that this added  elements of horror to the magazine but a response from someone with a background of media experience said that this spoilt the magazine. I was quite upset with this feedback but it helped me evaluate why this was said. My conclusion was that the background of the image did not match the background. One other critcism was that the blood effects could have been more realistic rather than animated. Our use of colour was praised because our dark colour helped create a dark mood.

Our group had 3 movie posters which were of the same image but different effects were applied using CS4 Photoshop. The poster towards the left was voted the favourite by a majority of our feedback. I learnt that the parralels between the poster and the trailer made it memorable. It helped the audience familiarise the audience with our products which helped create contiuity. Although it was not intentionable we learnt from feedback that the lines in the glass looked like wire which supposingly gives a sense of imprisonement.

                                                                    

Q2. How effective is the combination of your main products and ancillary texts?(Joel)

The group felt that it was essential that continuity was vital from the the trailer to the ancillary texts. We achieved this by using an actor from from our trailer in our teaser poster. This effective because it establishes that he is one of our protagonists with our audience. This will hopefully create some 'hype' around the trailer because the audience may anticipate the actors involvement in the film. Although it is not very clear that combination is being shown most audiences should recognise the continuity expressed in the teaser trailer to the teaser poster.








Continuity is almost used in all media products to link the various products with the main product e.g a film. It   



















      


      
Towards the end of our tailer we included footage that we intended to shock our audience. We hoped that this would be our most effective part of the trailer and according to our feedback this was successful. Therefore we thought that it would be the most effective of our ancillary texts because the image is similar but a more defined and quality image. This is effective because it allows the audience to familiarise with different areas of our products this is useful because it alerts the audience that these images will play an important part in the film. This incites the audience and causes them to try and fit together the significance of the image on the storyline.
                  

Our soundtrack instrumenatl conisist mainly of a piano which quite well into our horror genre. We thought that this very important because during our research I noticed that many of the worlds most remembered horror or thriller films have a unique soundtrack with their film, to the extent that if the soundtrack is heard by itself the listener will subconsciously link it back to the film. This makes it a brand of its own due to the code and conventions that the genre holds.

The Dark Knight (2008) created a huge portfolio of posters that had a repetition of a blue filter either in their backgrounds or over their models. To this date the Dark Knight's viral marketing campaign is regarded as the most succcesful and remorable due to the catchy slogan, "why so serious" This slogan was used by the 'Joker' character. I think if we had used a similar technique to this then we would have been able tro create more a buzz around the media classes over our trailer. This slogan then led to more synergy being used which the introduction of Batman toys and video games to try and inluence the children to become 'Batman crazy.' Unfortunately we would be unable to do because our film is not targeted at a younger audience.

Q1. In what ways does you media production use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?(ljosiah+joel)

(Josiah)
Our whole media product consists of three separate products; The main teaser trailer, movie poster and movie magazine. We decided to keep the poster simple but effective, the black background is employed to connote fear, darkness generally fits and develops the horror theme we are attempting to create. Black is commonly used in horror products to gain an uneasy feeling and a sense of suspense. The use of the bright red text for the text seen on the poster was done to allow it to stand out from the black background and the image of the bloody hand. The colour decision was again fueled by the connotations the inclusion of passionate red implies, in our case danger, blood, fire, aggression which we felt was useful to our media product. The image of a bloody hand up against a window pane gives the impression the person is desparatley trying to get out and the blood obviously suggests he/she has been hurt by something or something creating ambiguity, tension and suspense in the viewer not knowning who the protaginist is. 

We developed a similar idea from the movie poster from 2007's 'Amercian Zombie' as an inspiration for our poster as we felt this poster was very effective in how it is set out. However we thougt it was necessary to develop on this poster by creating an more mysterious atmosphere. The group felt that the white background did not initiate as much mystery into the audience as we set out to do therefore, we chose a dark background that would compliment our title. The dark background implies something dangerous is lurking in the dark which should create a good buzz around our poster.


























JOEL

The group enjoyed the idea of following Gorezones convention of using blood on their artist. Rather than using fake blood on our actor we decided that we would add the blood effect on Photoshop. This proved to be difficult because a majority of actors in horror films are white, which makes it easier for blood to standout whereas, our actor is black which made it extrememly difficult to find the right settings for the blood to look real. The spray of blood across the page is a convention we decided to challenge but thought it was unique because it added to the psychotic killer's messy character. We also took a risk with the skull in the top right hand corner but we thought that it was something that stood out in the magazine which contributed towards giving our magazine a 'cutting edge.'

Firstly, we followed the conventions of text in trailers that alert readers  of when the film will be released. This adds to the suspense that we intend to create. We decided not to put too much text so that the audiences attention will not drift away from the footage. However we thought that we would try something unique which was to allow a slow transition of the text to run onto the footage. We also used no dialogue because we did not want our trailer to become too narrative because we wanted our audience to be unaware of what the plot is which corresponds with the title of the film.

Graeme Burton, a media theorist, suggest we can learn alot from film genre by looking at a number of key concepts such as the the protagonist, stock characters, stock situations and icons. Blood, gore and violence are all identifiable as horror conventions. Considering that there is a strong connection between blood and violence we used blood alot to convey actions of violence by our antagonist. This screen shot is POV shot of our antagonist character crossing the names of his victims name in blood. This implies that all the names crossed out is a result of deceased victims

this also alerts the audience that our horror theme is based around survival. The effect of a POV shot also puts the audience in the antagonists' position and makes the audience feel that they are the killer of several people. Media theorist have argued in the past that camera shots such as these can trigger psychological problems with some audiences due to the thrill of being a killer.

This screen shot is a technique used in many horror films and trailers. This is called dramatic irony because our protagonist in the storyline that a demented killer has his eyes on him, however the audience does. This is a stock situation in the horror genre which usually leads to the audience screaming 'look behind you' audiences expect to see these situations to believe the narrative of the genre.

We used a very common convention which was introducing our teaser trailer with an image of our production name"Stern Productions" This is an key feature to a trailer as the audience will be able to recognize our production company which has produced similar products of the same genre. This is effective because the audience will already have a created a familiarisation with what genre our production compny is associated with. what to expect from them.

Our teaser trailer uses, develops and challenges the forms of conventions of real media products in many different ways. During our research of mainstream teaser trailers we asserted that the length of other teaser trailers was between 35-55 secs.We analyzed that there was a correlation that a majority of teaser tarilers duration was under a minute. We felt that it was imortant to do so so that we did not give too much of our storyline away so that the audience will be more curious and find it more appealing if they didnt know the outcome of our story.There is also no dialogue in our teaser trailer which adds to the element of suprise. This creates an tense atmosphere which is overlayed by a piano soundtrack, this suits the storyline anticipated and helps create a nail biting experience.We also thought it was necessary to hide the identity of characters, the audience is unaware of which character is the killer, this should help contribute towards the buzz surrounding the title 'The Unknown' This is a convention of a horror teaser trailer. I think the trailer is successful in following the conventions of a teaser trailer as the genre and a brief glimpse of the storyline is shown but nothing else is shown and it is made to make the viewer curious about the upcoming film.

In some scenarios it is a useful convention for some scences to have low key lighting. It accenuates the contours of an object by throwing areas into an shade. The predominance of shadowy areas heightens the sense of alienation felt by the viewer. We also challenged the conventions of race in the horror genre. We hoped to get rid of stereotypes such as the 'black guy always dies first' we done this by the majority of our actor being black. Inevitably some black characters will eventually die but with the majority of the cast being black it will be an oppurtunity for more black actors to act more in horror films which is mainly influened by white actors in hollywood.

At the end of the trailer we provide the audience with enigma adding to the element of suprise. This technique is similar to a cliffhanger at the end of a chapter in a story. The bloody hand on the glass door leaves the audience guessing the outcome of the hand which entices the audience and may influence whether they decide to watch the film.

 

magazine research (mariama)

                                                          FANGORIA

Fangoria is an American horror magazine were, an horror audience can, find he best source for horror films, horror film news, horror film reviews and horror comics.As they have been since their inception Fangoria is currently the most widely-read horror-themed publication in the world.[citation needed] Their center of operations, as of 2009, is based just north of New York City'sTimes Square.

 Fangoria was first planned in 1978 under the name Fantastica as a companion to the science fiction media magazine Starlog .Fantastica was intended to cover fantasy films for a 

science fiction films for a primarily teenaged audiuience.

                                                                                      

                                                                                                               

 

The first issue was assembled under the editorship of "Joe Bonham". 

Shortly after the publishing trade press announced the coming launch of Fantastica, the publishers of a Starlog competitor, Fantastic Films magazine, brought suit on the basis of "unfair trade," contending that its young audience would be confused by the magazine's similar title.

The launch of the magazine was delayed by several months as the court  worked out the issue.  In early 1979, the decision was made in favor of the plaintiff, the publishers of Fantastica had to change the name of the magazine.There was a pressing need to get the long-delayed issue to the printers. Some quick brainstorming sessions resulted in the name Fangoria .

By the time that issue number four was on the stand and number six was in preparation, Fangoria magazine was losing approximately $20,000 per issue, not an amount that the small publisher could continue to sustain for long.

Fangoria was reshaped and brought  back from the abyss of debt. There was an immensely positive audience response to one of the articles that appeared in the first issue of Fangoria, an article that celebrated the craft of special makeup effects artist Tom Savini, and his very wet-looking special effects for the 1978 film Dawn of the Dead.

Issue seven, with a cover story on Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Stephen King's The Shining, was the first issue of any national magazine to wholly concern itself with horror film as produced in the closing quarter of the 20th Century, with no trace of daintiness about its subject matter. It also was the first issue of Fangoria to achieve a profit.

In the late 1980s and early 90s, Fangoria tested numerous international horror markets, releasing issues of the magazine modified for various foreign languages. These publishings (released in Italy, Japan, Czechoslovakia, and elsewhere)  however it only lasted only a handful of editions before being discontinued. 

In 1990 Fangoria even had a website in which they regularly update .

Creative Group purchased Fangoria (and its parent publication Starlog) in the early 2000s, hoping to branch out the brand identity of the magazine to radio, television, and comics. In the summer of 2008, Fangoria and all of its related brands were purchased by The Brooklyn Company, Inc., led by longtime Fangoria president Thomas DeFeo.[3] Under DeFeo's ownership, Fangorias brand identity was radically modified in early 2009. The most notable of his changes were the transformation of the company's long-standing logo and a drastic overhaul to the magazine's cover. Starting with Issue 281, Fangorias cover no longer carried its original logo, trademark film strip, tagline, or additional embedded photos.