Over the course of our project, I feel that my knowledge of new media technologies has grown from basic the understanding of editing software and that I now am capable of using appropriate, specific programs such as Photoshop to create professional and high quality media work. It is because of this development that I believe we were able to produce our final project at a high standard.
In regards to the construction of our project, we used a 'Cisco Flip video Ultra HD' to film our trailer. As we had used a more traditional camera in our preliminary and 1st year projects, we had to learn how to use the camera as quickly and thoroughly as possible in order to start filming. Fortunately the flip camera has a simple format in which video files can be directly transferred to a computer through the in-built USB, so uploading clips in order to edit them posed no problem for us.
To edit our film we used the program 'Coral video studio Pro' which we had easy access to as it was installed on the school computers. We used this media technology to 'cut' our film clips and re-order them, input sound files and sound effects (such as the door opening), distort the colours of particular clips and adding titles (fading to black for the introductions) and distorting the speed of clips (slow-motion for the car slide scene). We also used the 'fade to black' effect multiple times to ensure the transition of one clip to another was smooth.
The four music tracks that feature in our trailer were all downloaded from 'www.audionetworkplc.com'. We had prior experience with this website as we had utilised it for both of our previous projects. The sound files were all relatively cheap (59p) which meant that they were within our monetary range and we could search the site for the exact type of music we were hoping for.
For our research, we used YouTube to search for examples of professional film trailers and analyse them. This was particularly useful as we could view any trailer repeatedly to ensure we didn't miss any details that may have helped in the construction of our own trailer.
We also used 'www.facebook.com' and 'www.blogger.com' as outlets for our questionnaire research. These websites were used as they are recent forms of media and are currently very popular, and we therefore decided these sites were the best way to distribute our questionnaire to the most amount of people.
To plan our project we used a series of email conversations (as shown earlier in this blog). We did this on order to ensure that we agreed on project decisions (such as which clips would be used) and to determine the time and location of each film clip.
We also used 'Microsoft Excel' to construct a filming schedule so that we could distribute it to each actor and confirm that each required person could be available on the necessary day and time.
To evaluate our trailer we used a combination of 'www.facebook.com', 'www.blogger.com' and 'www.youtube.com', specifically enabling the ability to leave comments anonymously. This therefore allowed us to analyse these comments and use them as feedback for our evaluation.
Tuesday 12 April 2011
Monday 4 April 2011
Evaluation - What have you learned from your audience feedback?
From our questionnaire we learned that the most popular genre was comedy (58%), with the three following most popular genres being related to high tension films (Horror, thriller, and action). We learnt from this that our audience values entertainment highly, and that the combination of action and comedy genres could be the best solution to attract the widest audience. We also learned that the audience regards the narrative as an important aspect in a film, as under 'favourite film and reasons why', 5 votes for the reason why were due to an excellent storyline. We therefore considered focusing upon narrative over humour, but as we were developing a trailer rather than a feature-length film, we decided that the narrative required less attention as we could expose the audience to enigmas and leave them unanswered.
It is important to remember, however, that the results of our questionnaire are likely to be biased. 71% of our participants were male, meaning that our results can generally be applied to males with a good degree of validity, but not to females. We therefore learned that we needed to take greater time considering both genders during the development of our trailer, to ensure our product was not male-orientated and to expand our target audience to everyone.
The age range of our participants could also be a cause for bias, as over half (51%) of those who took part were within the 15-20 age range. As this was also mine and Gareth's age range, we learnt that with this added information we were best equipped to target this age range as our audience.
As we displayed our trailer in front of family and in class, we received some feedback personally. One person told us that were slightly confused as the indoor scene started (36 seconds in), as there was no build-up to that scene and the audience is just 'thrown' straight into the scene. We could understand this point as the thief does just enter into the room with no prior explanation as to how he got there. However, we did have such a scene which showed the thief breaking into the house, using the 'swoop shot' technique that we had practiced beforehand. Unfortunately we had to cut this scene from the finished production, as when we reviewed the shot we decided that the camera movement was too unstable (due to having to avoid mise-en-scene such as wall hangings and a bookcase) and did not look professional when compared with the rest of our scenes. We therefore learned that if we were to repeat the process we should try to use a raised track, to keep the camera stable and at the height that we wanted. We would however need to ensure that the enigmas displayed were not solved within the trailer, just clearly defined, to provide the audience with a greater understanding as to why they might want to see the full film.
It is important to remember, however, that the results of our questionnaire are likely to be biased. 71% of our participants were male, meaning that our results can generally be applied to males with a good degree of validity, but not to females. We therefore learned that we needed to take greater time considering both genders during the development of our trailer, to ensure our product was not male-orientated and to expand our target audience to everyone.
The age range of our participants could also be a cause for bias, as over half (51%) of those who took part were within the 15-20 age range. As this was also mine and Gareth's age range, we learnt that with this added information we were best equipped to target this age range as our audience.
As we displayed our trailer in front of family and in class, we received some feedback personally. One person told us that were slightly confused as the indoor scene started (36 seconds in), as there was no build-up to that scene and the audience is just 'thrown' straight into the scene. We could understand this point as the thief does just enter into the room with no prior explanation as to how he got there. However, we did have such a scene which showed the thief breaking into the house, using the 'swoop shot' technique that we had practiced beforehand. Unfortunately we had to cut this scene from the finished production, as when we reviewed the shot we decided that the camera movement was too unstable (due to having to avoid mise-en-scene such as wall hangings and a bookcase) and did not look professional when compared with the rest of our scenes. We therefore learned that if we were to repeat the process we should try to use a raised track, to keep the camera stable and at the height that we wanted. We would however need to ensure that the enigmas displayed were not solved within the trailer, just clearly defined, to provide the audience with a greater understanding as to why they might want to see the full film.
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