A2 Media Product EvaluationThe Recluse

Jamie Branston, Lyle Petts, Will Turner

Main Production TaskOur main production task has come a long way from our first rough cut. Our audience feedback has helped our group develop our main task to a more professional standard, one particular example of this is when a member of the class suggested shortening a shot as it brought the pace of the piece right down and broke the entire flow of the production. We changed this one particular long shot into two smaller shots in order to keep the pace. Aside from keeping a consistent pace we also needed to build a tense atmosphere which I believe we managed by using eerie music accompanied by cold dimly lit establishing shots of scary and derelict sites and wooded areas. The weakest areas of our production include our lack in variety of different shot and this made the length of the trailer feel as though it dragged on as it appears very much as more of the same throughout.

Collecting FeedbackWhen we showed our rough cut of our main task to the class there where mixed reviews; we had many positive aspects pointed out to take away from it, however the class did emphasise a few mistakes and areas that have room for improvement. the good points that the class highlighted to us were encouraging, the bad points we made note of in order to straighten out for our final cut. By showing our rough cut to the class at this point we were able to make good use of the feedback as the age of the class is the age of our target audience and is likely to be the age group our film trailer will most appeal to.

Aside from collecting feedback from the class we also carried out independent research and feedback on individuals and compiled our findings to gain a wider perspective on our media product. This proved most effective for the best part of our production as it allowed each of us to remain objective and not get distracted by one single point raised and risk missing out on other valid points, as we were working alone we were all individually responsible for the data we brought back to share with the group and this meant that we were more likely to come back with different responses or show clearly which issues were most important/had the biggest affect on the audience.

Main Production-Feedback(title)When we believed we had finally finished our trailer, we watched the trailer over and over again. Whilst we were doing this we noticed that there was something that we all clearly didn’t like. This was the title of the film, however it is not our opinion that matters and we wanted to ask our intended audience (Teenagers) what they thought of it. Some people where very positive and upbeat about it but the majority said they found it cheesy and irrelevant to the type of film we aim to promote by the horror trailer. We asked the people we asked to name a film trailer title font that really stuck in their mind and one which is instantly recognizable when they see it again. For example when they see the DVD we want our consumers to know straight away that it’s ‘The Recluse’. Eight of the twelve people we asked immediately said ‘Saw’ and the second most popular was 'Nightmare on Elm Street'. After a bit of brainstorming with the group we managed to produce a new title that gave a much more mature feel to the whole product, our new title had a black and greyish background with a kind of sepia effect and the title "The Recluse" appeared in black and lit up into a white in flash like approach and then returned to a backlit black, the change made the trailer appear much more professional

Main Production-Class Feedback

After a class feedback session it became clear that certain shots needed to be re-filmed and that we need a wider variety of shots we set off to our filming locations the next weekend. luckily for us the weather was very dry but not too sunny giving the abandoned church a dim lit effect which we would have otherwise had to edit into the final cut as this was the desired effect we wanted in our production. secondly we needed to re-film a lot of footage that was damaged by the tape as the filming was overlaying footage we had filmed over and sounds and lines of previous footage was permanently imprinted on to our work during playback which was a shame and a real step back for our group, especially in terms of morale. Once we began re-filming we encountered no real problems and was satisfied with the improvements made on the original footage.

First Ancillary Task- Film Poster

Our film poster had a rocky start due to other exams and deadlines but once we got our selves sorted we manage to combine research into our British horror genre in order to create a mind map for our own poster. We also referred to our original mood board created when developing our main task in order to remember what feelings and emotions we wanted our production and ancillary tasks to impose on the target audience. After several drafts of our poster, research into our target audience and class feedback sessions regarding our poster we had managed to polish our poster to presentable level however we still felt that something was lacking.

Film Poster FeedbackOur poster was effective as a single element but we soon realised that although it portrayed a horror film well its convention were not quite appropriate towards our film trailer, to see if this was true we compared our audience response notes from the poster compared to the audience feedback noted from our production and found that most people felt our poster was that of a slasher horror and less of a more sophisticated horror thriller. In order to correct this we used decided to go for a more mature looking font and then presented our second draft to the class for more feedback; as expected the typography had a great effect on increasing the audience expectation of a film that was more complicated then a conventional slasher film. I do wish we had enough time do a photo shoot for the poster as the image on the front is a print screen of a shot from our footage which of course is not of the best quality and is definitively an area I would have like to improve.

Second Ancillary Task- Film Magazine Front Cover

Our poster was effective as a single element but we soon realised that although it portrayed a horror film well its convention were not quite appropriate towards our film trailer, to see if this was true we compared our audience response notes from the poster compared to the audience feedback noted from our production and found that most people felt our poster was that of a slasher horror and less of a more sophisticated horror thriller. In order to correct this we used decided to go for a more mature looking font and then presented our second draft to the class for more feedback; as expected the typography had a great effect on increasing the audience expectation of a film that was more complicated then a conventional slasher film. I do wish we had enough time do a photo shoot for the poster as the image on the front is a print screen of a shot from our footage which of course is not of the best quality and is definitively an area I would have like to improve.

Film Magazine Front Cover-Feedback

The majority of people said that they like how the images and title of the magazine overlay (bleeding in), the different locations of texts promoting other film etc (composition of design elements) and finally the different colours of fonts spread around the page.

People agreed that our front cover followed the conventions of a typical film magazine such as Empire or Total Film and contained relevant side notes and sub titles that would be expected on a magazine.

Our class feedback showed us that people believed our magazine front cover tied in nicely with our other tasks and kept up the consistent theme and emotions that was portrayed in them

OverviewOf the three tasks I believe that our most professional looking product was the magazine front cover as we had used a photo shoot session in order to get a high resolution image in good quality for the front cover with a equally good Total Film font to bleed into and the general composition of the design elements appeared very neat. My favourite part of the magazine cover was the angle of the killer in the picture, kind of a high angle off set image with the knife in hand gave the impression that he could come at you from any angle, also the colour scheme of the magazine was very effective as we stuck to bold colours such as black, white, red and yellow for some of the sub titles.