Wednesday, 6 May 2015
Thursday, 16 April 2015
Things I need to change and amend
- Add a storyboard
- Take new photos
- Take more footage
- Upload all of my finished print products
Wednesday, 15 April 2015
Tuesday, 14 April 2015
2. How effective is the combination of your main products and ancillary texts?
Script for video:
Before creating my print products I looked at how other films in the same genre have chose to portray their narrative. I found that many of the crime-thrillers had very simple print products that focused on the main character, with a prop, such as a gun, to indicate that it was a crime thriller. Many of them were fairly dark and had most emphasis on the main character themselves, so I know I would need to take thought and consideration into how I was going to potray the hitman character and get this accross to the audience. I also found that all of the professional print products I studied had similiarities, which meant I could clearly tell they belonged to the film. I knew I needed to incorporate what I had from my trailer, into my print products in order for it to be successful and create an indentity for the film.
Looking back, I think I could of included more photos of perhaps the wife, gang members or boss to give people more of a clue of what the film was going to be about. I did however, chose to include the names of the actors - which I know is something many films do to attract an audience. The photos I intially took of Ishaan were moderately easy to work with, I editted much of the background and swapped it for black to give the illusion that this is a dark film and to remain emphasis on the hitman himself. I chose to include the name of all of the actors on each of my print products and made sure I included when the film was coming out as this is the main reason for print products existing.
The house style, font and general graphics of my print products were carried through into my film trailer. I have included the same font for the title, so people will recognise the name itself. I have also tried to make my trailer seem dark and thrilling, with the use of simple black and white intertitles. This gives the audience a serious impression of the film, as oppose to colourful intertitles with an informal font (which would give off an inserious impression)
The props and mise-en-scene were also something that I incorporated into both my print and film products, the gun itself was a key prop in the film because it shown the audience exactly what this film revolved around. The gun has been used in my print products to show the audience it is a crime-based film and at this point in the film you see the moment the hitman takes the gun out of the briefcase. I included this in the middle of the film because this is where the disequlibrium occurs and it is a key turning point in the narrative itself. I wanted the audience to focus in on this gun which is why I chose to include so many shots and build up the tension with the phone call prior to this event.
I chose to put him in dark clothing that would often be worn by teenagers of that age, to give the audience the impression he is a somewhat normal boy but also to foreshadow the forthcoming events that occur. The mise-en-scene and costume of the hitman also links with the costume he wears in the print products. The use of this dark clothing in both the print and film products shows the link between them both well, as you get a clear indication of what this boy is like from the way he dresses and it becomes more apparent as you watch the trailer and see the narrative progress.
All of my print products all follow the same house-style and theme, I chose to include the colours orange black and white as I found this worked well with the images once I had manipulated them. By creating a consistent house style I was able to create professional looking print products that my audience liked. The feedback I received on these were heavily positive, however upon reflection I think I could have used more photos rather than just the one. The font that I used was also incoporated into each of the print products to give the film a solid identity and was carefully chosen to give connotations of crime.
In conclusion, I think each of my print products and both trailers work well and the effectiveness of the combination is good. If I were to do it again, I would have considered more about other characters, however I made this decision based upon research and wanted my products to be simple. I think this has worked well and you can get a real sense of what type of a film this is. I chose to include smaller images, taken directly from the trailer in my DVD cover to link these two together which I think has worked well too.
3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
Audience feedback has helped to influence my decisions throughout the planning and construction stages. From the intial ideas, I usd my audience feedback to help get a sense of what my target audience wanted to see in a crime-thriller. Once I found my target audience and my target market, I incorporated what they would like to see along side the things I had seen were included in other crime-thriller films and what I thought worked well. I used a range of technological platforms to access my target audience and also did some face to face.
Here is the a link to my most recent survey:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/P5RMKSK
Examples of my audience feeback in the planning stages:
I found my audience feedback particularly helpful when joining with my group, Claire and Megan, to create Insignia productions. We all had different ideas that we wanted to take forward and we found it difficult to decide amongst ourselves what we thought would work best so we asked members of our class and used social media to publish our survey that included a brief summary of each of our ideas. This helped us massively as we were then able to narrow down our ideas and focus on one idea.
SurveyMonkey was a great way to distribute my survey and collect and organise the answers we received as it was almost instant and could be easily accessed and used by my target market, that have experience in using computers. However, I also chose to do some research with older members of my audience and recorded this with soundcloud.
After using my target audience feedback to help me plan the narrative alongside theory and my own research, I referred to it constantly in my construction stages. It taught me exactly what my audience wanted to see and I cast my characters, prepared my locations and mise-en-scene based on this. It also had a big influence on the type of music, fonts and colours I used as I wanted to create this 'crime' but 'real' feel that I knew my audience were looking for. I also thought it was important to ask my audience what they thought of my final products when they were finally finished as these were the people I wanted to appeal to. Having a key audience in mind made it much easier in a sense, as I knew I was constantly needing to please others. However, I also had to make decisions that were influenced by their opinions rather than my own. An example of this is when I wanted to cast a male for the role of the gang member that died, but my audience suggested having a girl would make it much more unique. I grow to love this about my trailer.
When collecting my audience feedback on my final products I used SurveyMonkey and distrubuted it to 12 members of my target audience. I shown them all my trailer and then gave them the link to my survey itself. All of the target audience said that they would go and see my film and thought my products looked proffessional but they also gave me some feedback regarding what they would change. Most of this was what I picked up on myself and would improve on looking back, however they also bought my attention to other things I would never thought to improve such as the positioning of my title in the trailer itself.
I chose to give this survey to 6 females and 6 males that had interest in crime-thrillers, this was to ensure that my results were non-bias and I was given as accurate results as possible. If I had more time and money, as a film director and producer I would ask more people to get a greater concensus of what people thought. The questions I asked were fairly open apart from the two questions that required an either 'yes' or 'no' response, but the audience responded to the open questions well when they had an opinion to share and this helped me when reviewing my work.
The question asking if I thought it represented the genre well was one I was keen to hear the responses from as this was the first time I showcased my final trailer to a group of people that had interest and previous experience of watching crime-thrillers. I was pleased with their response to this question as a whole and it seems that I managed to create a trailer that was full of both suspense but drama.
Here is the a link to my most recent survey:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/P5RMKSK
Examples of my audience feeback in the planning stages:
I found my audience feedback particularly helpful when joining with my group, Claire and Megan, to create Insignia productions. We all had different ideas that we wanted to take forward and we found it difficult to decide amongst ourselves what we thought would work best so we asked members of our class and used social media to publish our survey that included a brief summary of each of our ideas. This helped us massively as we were then able to narrow down our ideas and focus on one idea.
SurveyMonkey was a great way to distribute my survey and collect and organise the answers we received as it was almost instant and could be easily accessed and used by my target market, that have experience in using computers. However, I also chose to do some research with older members of my audience and recorded this with soundcloud.
After using my target audience feedback to help me plan the narrative alongside theory and my own research, I referred to it constantly in my construction stages. It taught me exactly what my audience wanted to see and I cast my characters, prepared my locations and mise-en-scene based on this. It also had a big influence on the type of music, fonts and colours I used as I wanted to create this 'crime' but 'real' feel that I knew my audience were looking for. I also thought it was important to ask my audience what they thought of my final products when they were finally finished as these were the people I wanted to appeal to. Having a key audience in mind made it much easier in a sense, as I knew I was constantly needing to please others. However, I also had to make decisions that were influenced by their opinions rather than my own. An example of this is when I wanted to cast a male for the role of the gang member that died, but my audience suggested having a girl would make it much more unique. I grow to love this about my trailer.
When collecting my audience feedback on my final products I used SurveyMonkey and distrubuted it to 12 members of my target audience. I shown them all my trailer and then gave them the link to my survey itself. All of the target audience said that they would go and see my film and thought my products looked proffessional but they also gave me some feedback regarding what they would change. Most of this was what I picked up on myself and would improve on looking back, however they also bought my attention to other things I would never thought to improve such as the positioning of my title in the trailer itself.
I chose to give this survey to 6 females and 6 males that had interest in crime-thrillers, this was to ensure that my results were non-bias and I was given as accurate results as possible. If I had more time and money, as a film director and producer I would ask more people to get a greater concensus of what people thought. The questions I asked were fairly open apart from the two questions that required an either 'yes' or 'no' response, but the audience responded to the open questions well when they had an opinion to share and this helped me when reviewing my work.
The question asking if I thought it represented the genre well was one I was keen to hear the responses from as this was the first time I showcased my final trailer to a group of people that had interest and previous experience of watching crime-thrillers. I was pleased with their response to this question as a whole and it seems that I managed to create a trailer that was full of both suspense but drama.
4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Write a short paragraph on each image saying how you used it and highlighting what you would have needed to do had the technology not been available. Make sure you explain what you have learnt from using these technologies and why they are effective in helping your communication.
New media technology is any application that transfers information via digital networks or techniques. Whilst creating and planning my trailer I took full advantage of the range of technologies and programs, which enabled me to create a successful final trailer. As my confidence grew I was able to use these to the best of my ability and used the best one to suit purpose and form.
My primary research in the planning stage was heavily conducted on 'Survey Monkey' which gave me the opportunity to interact with my target audience over the internet and compare the results I received in an organised and effective way. This was especially useful when deciding between our ideas for our narrative and we received good feedback regarding parts of the narrative that were unclear, which helped us to formulate a narrative that appealed to the audience. This was less time-consuming than writing out a survey by hand as we were able to receive results instantly along with specific data on what people were responding. We were also able to reach out to a wider audience, as we shared this link via Facebook and Twitter - meaning it could be seen by people we wouldn't normally come into contact with. The only problem that we encountered with this method was that we found it hard to make sure it was only our target audience that saw this, as it was an open link that was shared on a social network website. We tried our best to minimise this problem by filtering our twitter accounts to only have followers that would this trailer would be intended towards, which helped massively.
Whilst in the planning stage, I also made use of Soundcloud and Youtube. I used these platforms to showcase my audience feedback on my initial ideas and they worked great. After filming using my iPhone 6 Camera, I chose to use YouTube as it was fairly easy to upload and gave me the option of editing. You Tube itself is a well established and recognised video company so I knew it would be reliable and it was also something I was familiar with using. YouTube allowed me to share my videos and embed them to my blog for constant referral, which was important when I was making decisions in the construction process. Soundcloud worked similarly to this in that it also gave me the option of embedding to my blog, which was helpful. I used the mobile app specifically to record my responses and it worked well. It meant that I could record straight from my phone and upload straight onto the web and this benefited me hugely as it was pretty much instant. I have learnt how to use these platforms for my own purposes, as previously I was using Soundcloud to listen to music that had been uploaded by artists but had yet to upload something myself. I also learnt how to upload onto YouTube and share this via social networking websites.
As I moved forward into the construction of my trailer, we began to use the JVC cameras provided to us by our school which were used first in our key scenes. I had little experience with filming on a handheld camera before so my skills developed a lot as I used them more and more. The tripod also enabled us to create steady shots when we found difficulty with holding it steadily. This was the only issue that we came across when using the cameras, however it did take some time to get good shots on each of our scenes. This was partly because it was our first time using a handheld camera but we found that the quality was much better than those on our phones. We also needed to keep in mind lighting and sound, which would alter the quality of the overall film. I learnt many things regarding how to shoot effectively and make use of the shot types that I have learnt in the past two years of this course. The camera helped to create the whole trailer and ultimately made the trailer itself.
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