What have you learned from audience feedback?

From our audience feedback we were able to develop our trailer in many ways and have learnt many things. For our audience feedback we sent a survey on surveymonkey to people within our school who were our target audience age which meant the data we collected was valuable and beneficial to us.
The audience feedback mid production showed us that our range of shots was not varied enough and that without a voice over, it made limited sense therefore for the rest of our production, we put more variation of shots within it and added a voice over. This was mentioned post production when people who study Media evaluated our production work. We learned that young people tended to like our photo clip idea within the trailer more than older people. It might be because it's more of a modern trend to have these days as it is seen in new music videos such as Olly Murs - Dance With Me Tonight and therefore older people might not be accustomed to it. Our audience feedback showed us that we needed to cut certain clips down to create more flow and continuity and that this was necessary for the trailer to look professional and create interest.
We also learned several things from our initial audience feedback about our target audiences interests such as friendship and a makeover being the most common conventions in a chick flick, mean girls being the most popular chick flick and a small cast being better than a large one. Each one of these factors influenced our choices when creating our trailer as we wanted it to appeal to our target audience as much as possible. We learned from our survey that audience feedback is a key factor for success.


BY JORDENE!

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

During the production and research of our project a lot of new products were used that made it easier and quicker to work, and also accessible in that these stations could be worked on from home and at school, almost 24/7.

eBlogger: This website was a great too to process and write up/record all the information that we had or needed, as it is free and easy to use wherever there were no problems in not being able access it and not have tasks uncompleted. It also made it easier to assess the work, as it is all in one neat chronological place and not spread around in a folder. Furthermore the fact that it's on the computer and uses the Internet allows it to be more accessible when showing our media based products.

Final Cut Pro: This is where all the editing was done, it was very powerful and perfect for our movie post-production needs. The advanced software let us manipulate the time, sound, the way to whole trailer flowed and text. It was extremely useful for it's auto save feature, so our work could never be lost or deleted as it backup our work every few minutes.

Photoshop CS4: was another huge too for the production of our poster and film magazine front cover, as from AS skills that were picked up in there helped me to create these texts to the most professional looking pieces. It enabled me to incorporate our images into the background, add texts such as titles and changing Photoshoping the photographs colours, for instance the images are all tinted pink to get that feminine feel.

Soundtrack Pro: This piece of software provides us with the elements to make music, although our final piece of music is fairly simple Soundtrack Pro allowed us to explore a variety of music tracks and sound affects. This enabled us to make a clearer decision for what we wanted as our background track for our teaser trailer.

Sony Camera: The camera we used was made by Sony, it was suitable to our needs and fitted on a tripod well to get smooth shoots and the flip out viewer to get an image of what the footage looks like.

Panasonic Camera: A DLSR was used to capture our images for the magazine front covers and teaser poster, which where then imported to photoshop so it was important that we had high quality images to work with.

Google: An extremely useful tool that helped us for the research, it allowed us to find images for our reader profile and information on previous films that helped us understand the film industry to a higher level. As well as using our own knowledge we could rely on a google search to help us find what were the most popular chick flicks. IMDB and a films own website helped us on researching individual films.

  
BY DEMELZA!

What have you learned from audience feedback?

The first and most important factor that audience feedback as taught me is that it is extremely necessary, and beneficial in making decision and changing parts of our product. A questionnaire created and put on survey monkey was sent out to the girls from our school via email, as they were the age of our target audience their opinions and likes/dislikes was crucial. 

Audience feedback during the making of our trailer told us that they didn't think our trailer flowed enough but our starting was always strong. The sudden flash of static images was liked by some and disliked by others and after evaluation we found that younger people tended to like it. As our trailer is intended for a younger audience this piece of information was key on whether to keep it. Although we worked on it from that position to make it better and maybe change the minds of the people who didn't like it.

In the final audience feedback we learnt that our trailer has been eminent in telling the story, and grabbing the audience attention enough to make the want to see the film. What people previously didn't like, such as the issue with the flow of the clips and the lack of dialogue was changed and proved successful according to the latest audience feedback.

BY DEMELZA

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

The combination of our main product and ancillary texts work extremely well together as the same colour scheme and fonts have been used constantly throughout. In doing this it allowed for familiarity to ensure and a house style is enabled in which the audience will start to recognise.

The film poster has a clear pinkish colour scheme, featured in the background fonts and the main characters clothing. In the magazine front cover, the colours are very simular, as well as the clothing and chosen pose is the same; as research did show us that these types of texts are often matching. This colour is also seen through out the trailer, starting with the same shade of pink. The flash of the names and then at the end describing parts of the film. This allowed us to achieve the overall girly appearance we wanted, therefor it was proved effective.

The use of clothing has been effective in that it the same outfit was ensured for both Magazine and Film Poster, as the audience will become familiar with the pink shirt and associate it with the film. Simular to Juno's stripy top in Juno (2007). The pink shirt is a tool in how Sam is set apart from the rest of the cast, which is repeated through out the trailer, which connects with the storyline and her questioning friendship with the others. The combination has been overall effective in that we have kept it simple enough for all audiences to associate the collective products with each other. BY DEMELZA

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

Chick flicks usually have a strong female cast, or at least a female cast. Our film had one female main character and four sub main characters, by having this, it is clear to the audience as to who it should appeal too not just making it clear what the film is about.

The film is largely based around the main character, Sam, and the trailer followers her too, therefore we have stuck to the convention of their being a central protagonist. She is the character that the audience likes, sympathises with and is happy with as you follow her through through her adversities.

There is also an element of overcoming, in our case, Sam has to deal with the nerds, eventually becoming friends with them. This is in fact the obstacle, whether or not she will stay enemies or give in to her better self.

Unlike other chick flicks our film doesn't include a love interest purely because it's about getting what you want in terms of a future for yourself. It could be a feministic view, that isn't always depicted in chick flicks for young girls as it's always about 'getting the boy' which is where we have decided to change that.
Camera angles such as mid shot, close up, POV are used which are typical of any film in any category.

Voice over is a popular tool when it comes to chick flicks, you often have a narrative telling the audience what is going on or what the main character is thinking. We have interpreted this by having a voice of in the trailer, asking questions to the audience and bringing them into the situation in the trailer itself.

BY DEMELZA!