Feedback

these are the feedback sheets we got from the other groups, overall they are all pretty accurate yet still a good response - this is very good for our groups confidence and now we are willing to go back and make the necessary changes to show that we have listened to audience feedback and taken it onboard.

Evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?


In researching to make our title sequence as promising as possible, we looked into the typical codes and conventions of what we were looking to produce - a thriller. The codes and conventions of a thriller are somewhat more complicated than that of a romance or comedy as it involves so much more. You not only need to keep the audience entertained with a tense, interesting storyline but also almost confuse them along the way for affect, you want to mislead the audience with a thriller or in the very least give them a number of possibilities to suspect within the film - making it less straightforward than other genres. We needed to portray this in our title sequence to make it as believable as possible as a thriller, the idea was not to give too much away at all while still creating a sense of tension (even if the audience do not quite understand what is happening it still works to create a certain mood).


It was important that we followed the codes and conventions of fast cuts and shaky POV shots as it not only followed the genre but also the idea of our film. With the audience in the eyes of such a challenging character, it really would disorientate them in a way that we were really hoping for. It keeps an exciting pace as the music is not necessarily upbeat and fast, the audience would not lose interest because everything is being caught by their eye. We used extremely tense music throughout our piece to keep the audience on the edge of their seats. The music plus using black and white really creates an eery feel to our title sequence and the contrast between black and white and normal colour really includes the disorientation of place and time - another important part of the codes and conventions. We really worked hard into looking into every little detail that should be included in a thriller, the missing girl poster is an example of this, though it wasn't necessarily needed it definitely added a lot to our piece as pictures are a part of the codes and conventions.


In looking into the codes and conventions we really had the chance to make this title sequence as interesting as possible. While including all of the codes and conventions we wanted to take one to an extreme to add something more to our piece -this was the idea of setting up an enigma, which just so happens to be the name of our piece. The whole idea of our film is that so many questions will be raised by the actors in the film and the audience about the disappearance and that was really portrayed in our final piece. The typography disappearing in such an interesting way during the title sequence also supports the idea of missing people and even the idea we had of having the audience constantly raise questions. We really included as many of the codes and conventions of a thriller that we could without making anything too complicated. 


How does your media product represent particular social groups?


We decided to target our film towards 16-24 year olds, however the certificate had to be aged 15 to make sure we could cover as much of the targeted audience as possible. We knew that considering what our film was about it could be hard to aim it at such a younger audience but the ending of the film has a morale to it - not to judge people for their past - and the idea of there never having been a sex offender is soon eliminated and the whole film means something quite different. This is why we had to show the man in the title sequence upset - we knew we would have to portray what he was accused of doing in a very bad light. We wanted to aim this film at this age because we feel that this age group is young enough to appreciate such a tense, risky storyline while still being mature enough to watch it. We felt that any older generations (parents and grandparents) would not like the idea as it suggest the harm of children and so a younger audience would have been our priority as they are not as easily offended or worried by such films. This is not to say that the film would not have an impact on them, it would do exactly what it was meant to do - scare, grip and keep them completely glued to the screen. The film would be more aimed at men than women because through research it is clear that they enjoy thrillers more, though this is not to say that women are not being targeted at all as we still know a lot of women will enjoy this film, though the minority may prefer a softer film and so more money would be made from the male audience than female.




What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?


When it came to who was to distribute our film our group were very much challenged for a while, we took time to research into what distributors took on what kinds of films and just how successful they usually are. While we acknowledged Lionsgate had had some successful thrillers we eventually went with Sony Pictures, knowing they would fit our film better. They too had had some very good thrillers and they produced films such as 'the exorcism of emily rose' and 'the girl with the dragon tattoo' this was more the kind of eery, scary feel we were looking for and knowing that they had worked with these kinds of films before was very reassuring and we knew that as our film would take little money to make they were good as they often work with lower budget films. 


How did you attract/address your audience?


We attracted our audience with the very idea of setting up an enigma, once the audience has seen the title sequence they will instantly want to know more because one of the many natural parts of being human is curiosity. The audience are gripped with the music and storyline but they are only shown enough to make them want to see more. Also, the religious aspect is very successful in the thriller genre, so from the success of other thrillers involving religion those that enjoy thrillers would come and see it for that reason also. 


What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?


Final Cut Pro was what we were using to make our title sequence and it was really interesting to use, I learnt a lot from it. It was the first year I had the chance to use this program and it was really straightforward, while still offering so many interesting things to do to our video. We also used Motion to make out titles, which was very useful because while other groups stuck to final cuts text we had the chance to broaden our title sequence and try something new. All of this will be extremely helpful when it comes to next year as I'll be able to quickly get back into it and try new things that I didn't necessarily have the opportunity to try this year. Also, using the macs in general has become a lot easier this year as I've learn a lot about how they work and what they can offer when it comes to my editing. 
I learnt how to use effects such as slowmotion and cutting shots to make them seem jumpy and fast paced. There were other things we tried such as blurring parts of the video and making parts of it shaky, whilst we didn't use them they were still useful and taught me a lot.
Motion was very useful as I can now use different types of typography, widening my experience for next year and any othe future times I may need to use these programs. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?


I have learnt a lot in the process of making this title sequence, I understand not only the programs to use in editing but also the ideas behind making title sequences and films. I know a lot more about distributors from the research done and also the importance of small things such as story boarding and planning locations to shoot and arranging what to edit and when. We were faced with some issues when it came to storyboarding and where we were shooting. We had to change a lot of what we originally storyboarded, to get the best possible outcome for our video, as the location unfortunately had uneven flooring and made it virtually impossible to shoot some of the shots we wanted to - we simply had to change angles and the type of shots though we still followed the general idea of flashing between church and forest. This really has taught me to think of everything that could possibly go wrong. We also learnt that just because we really liked something about our work doesn't necessarily mean the audience will (from audience feedback) we had to change music and some shots that we thought worked really well as people suggested it and the outcome really worked a lot better. I've learnt that every part of making a title sequence is important from using the tripod and dolly, to planning correctly, to using the right programs, to research, to audience feedback. 


Overall, I feel that our title sequence has been quite successful thanks to not only the work and time put in but also the response and feedback from the audience and the research taken beforehand. 

Journal 21/2/12

We got feedback from the rest of the class after they watched our title sequence. Some of the feedback was:

• generally positive - mostly three stars and some two stars
• They liked a lot about the video such as typography, storyline, music, quick cuts
• We could improve it by trying out some slow motion on parts and speeding other parts up
• making some of the quick cuts slightly longer so as not to confuse the audience too much

we have taken all of these into consideration and have tried out slow motion and made the fast cuts a little bit slower - though not too slow.

My Journal

After feedback we realised some of the aspects of our title sequence were not quite right, for example the beginning credit was 'Directed By Maddie Carragher' and the first credit was supposed to be 'A film by Maddie Carragher' we changed this and made the beginning part with the distributor slightly shorter as before it was 12 seconds long. We moved the voice over from right at the end of the sequence to just before the music ends - this makes it sound more professional.

Journal 9/2/12

We've just been adding to the finishing touches of our project recently, for the first time since it had all been  put together we let shaun see it, he advised us to change the music and add some bits.

Journal - audience feedback 2

We have put the video up on facebook to be given feedback from and so far we have had some likes but no responses, we will repost at a later date if no comments are made and I will be uploading it to tumblr and vimeo for more audience feedback.

Ideas for Distributor

sony are quite an interesting choice of distributor that we are looking into. Films they have produced that could be seen as slightly similar to ours are:

a film that very much relates to our idea.