Evaluation Q4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning & evaluation stages?

Throughout the process of completing my coursework I used a variety of different media technologies to carry out research, plan, produce & evaluate. In this post I will be looking at how I used the technologies in the form of a Prezi presentation, which can be seen below:

Evaluation: Q4 on Prezi

Evaluation Q3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Collecting audience feedback has been a key part of our coursework as it's important to hear un-biased opinions on our work. Some of these opinions may be negative, however we take all critisisms as constructive and use them to look at ways to improve our media products. We were mostly focused on gathering feedback from our target market, as those were the poeple who we pictured watching the film and had in mind during production. In this post I will be looking at all my feedback and what I have learned from it.

After completing our media products me & my class went to channel 4 and presented our trailers to a group of media industry proffessionals, below I have made a powerpoint presentation focused on the feedback I recieved from them:

After recieving feedback from the industry proffessionals they then handed out awards. Amazingly my group - The Possession won 3 different awards. The first award we won was for having the best marketing campaign, this meant that they thought our film poster and magazine front cover was really effective. This was important to our group as trailers and posters contribute equally towards persuading people to watch the film. The second award we won was for having the most original idea, we believe that this is because our synopsis is based on the london riots, which makes our film unique. The third award we won was for the best use of makeup effects, this is something we thought we deserved as we spent a lot of time making sure we had the right makeup during production, and we also went the extra mile getting contact lenses to help express the horror genre. In the photo slideshow below you can see scans of our certificates.

To collect more feedback I asked Leah, a student who is in The Possessions target audience to watch our trailer, and then record themselves giving 2 pieces of feedback - one about the positive parts of our trailer and one about the negative parts.

Positive feedback:



The first thing Leah said was that there was a great use of different shot types and editing techniques, during production we perposly used as much shot types & editing techniques as possible in a bid to make the trailer as exciting as possible. Leah then said the storyline was clear however we are still left wondering what happens next, this is good as it means we got the balance right and gave away just enough information in our trailer. Finally, Leah went on to say that our representation of youth accuretly reflected media stereotypes. This is something we did on purpose as we wanted our trailer to be as realistic as possible and challange societies views on the people that took part in the riots.

Negative feedback:



The first negative Leah said was that some of the shots in the trailer were poor quality because they were out of focus or shot in bad lighting. If we had more time when filming for our trailer we may have been able to re-film scenes whcih were out of focus and find locations that had better lighting.
Leah then said that some of our sound effects were repeated too many times, this is true and if we had more time or were ever given the chance to improve our trailer I would spend more time trying to source different un-copy righted sounds to help make the trailer more exciting.

Below is a video of one of my Classmates Hayley giving feedback on The Possession's trailer:



Overall the feedback Hayley gave was very good and it seems as tho she enjoyed watching our trailer. The first thing she said was the horror genre was very clear due to the use of the makeup effects and contact lenses, this means our makeup effects looked realistic and corresponded with simular effects seen in other horror films. Hayley then said that the soundtrack goes well with the trailer as both the lyrics and synopsis relate to London - this is the main reason why we chose the song for our soundtrack, the lyrics talk about what its like growing up in London, and the sound of the song also represents the kind of music most of the youth that were involved in the riots listen to. The final thing Hayley talk about is how she liked it when the music kicked in and the pace of the shots increased towards the end of the trailer. We are glad Hayley noticed this and we did it because we wanted to generate as much excitment as possible towards the end of the trailer to help persuade people to go see the film.

I also used social networking sites to collect feedback on our trailer by posting it online, in the prezi below I have looked at the feedback and shown where it was collected:

Evaluation Q2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

In the presentation below I have looked at how effective the combination of our three different media products are:

Overall I believe that our main product - the trailer is very effective alongside our ancillary texts - the magazine cover and film poster, this is mainly because all three products are consistant, which allows our target audience to easily recognise our film 'The Possession' in all of the products.
Out of all the products I think that the magazine front cover is the least effective, this is because film magazines only have a small market and so not many people in our target audience will buy the magazine and read the article, however the extra publicity we gain from the feature is beneficial in regards to the marketing of our film. The most effective product in my opinion is the film trailer, this is because it reveales the most about the film synopsis and characters. The film poster is also very effective as it can be seen everywhere and helps generate mystery and curiosity amongst viewers, which then makes them ask questions which are partially awnsered by our film trailer. In conclusion I think that the combination of all three products in our film marketing campaign was successful and effective in attracting our target audience to our film The Possession.

Evaluation Q1: In whatt way does your media product use, develop or challange forms and conventions of the Horror Genre?

In this post I will be reflecting on the research I carried out on the horror genre and show where I got my inspiration from for my own horror trailer.
To begin awnsering the evaluation question I decided I would record a directors narrative on top of my film trailer and create a new video, this narrative would highlight areas where we have developed, adhered and challanged popular conventions of the horror genre.

The video of my directors narative can be seen below:



To continue awnsering the evaluation question in more detail I designed a presentation on prezi which can be seen below:

I will now look at how the 'sounds' used in our trailer relate to the conventions of the horror genre, below I have posted a recording of the soundtrack to our trailer.


During our research into the horror genre we realised many things, firstly many horror film trailers like 'Scream' included voice overs that helped explain the storyline and build excitment, at first we didn't want our trailer to have a voiceover, however during production we decided that it was needed to help viewers understand what was going on. We decided to challange the stereotypical voice over of an american man shouting over the film and instead used a soft diary like voiceover from our main character Clarissa. The sound effects we used in our trailer adhere to conventions of the horror genre as they are exactly what you would expect to hear in a horror film, for example - the howling wind sound effect is heard in almost all horror films. We decided to use these stereotypical horror sound effects as we wanted them to help express the genre of the film and build up tension.
Most films/trailers in the horror genre do not have sound tracks, we decided to challange this convention and used the non copyrighted song 'Help Me - Awate' in our trailer. This song helps generate excitment and suspence in our trailer, and also the song helps attract our target audience.
Overall the sounds used in our trailer for The Possession stereotypically express the horror genre of our film, however our trailer is given the urban edge from our use of the sondtrack, which makes it stand out as unique.

The Possession 2012 Official Trailer

Below you can watch the official trailer for The Possession 2012!

Magazine Front Cover

Above is a copy of our magazine front cover featuring The Possession.

The Possession Poster

Above is a copy of The Possession's official film poster.

Updating Our Facebook & Twitter!

Throughout the last few weeks we have been continuesly updating our twitter account and facebook page as part of our marketing campaign. So far this has been very successful and we are begining to raise awarness of our film!
Below are images of of our updated facebook page and twitter account:

Spinning Locket Effect!

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In our trailer we wanted the introduction of our title to be very dramatic, because of this we decided to add a special effect to it - our idea was that the locket would represent the letter 'o' and spin into position. Creating this effect was a long process, first we had to record our locket spinning infront of a green screen. We then uploaded the footage of the locket into a software called After Effects, using this we was able to place the spinning locket onto a black background and then input the rest of the text. After sorting out the timing we then imported the effect into our trailer and added a sound effect, this added to the effectivness of it. As you can see from the short video above the effect worked really well, and overall improved the quality of our trailer.
Below are some photos taken of us working on the effect:

Interviewing Characters - Marketing

Today we filmed interviews with 3 of the main characters from our film 'The Possession' - Mya, Ryianna & Jayden. I then edited them using iMovie and uploaded them onto youtube. The interviews are part of our marketing campaign, we hope that viewers of the interviews will gain interest in the film and begin to develop emotional connections with some of the characters. The interviews also contain hints as to what the films about. Below you can watch the 3 interviews:

Mya Interview:



Ryianna Interview:



Jayden Interview:

Film Poster Photoshoot

Today me and my partner Laressa carried out a photoshoot for our film poster and magazine front cover. The photoshoot took place using proffessional equipment and the model was our main character Clarissa. To ensure Clarissa looked resembled her character in the film we used lots of makeup effects to make her look possessed and 'unhuman', we also used the 'red eye tear' solution to help make the photographs look more dramatic.
Below is a slideshow of all the photos we took, as you can see we took a wide variety of different shots - mostly close ups, this is because we wanted to ensure we go the right shots needed for our production work.

Poster Photoshoot - making a free slideshow