WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM YOUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?
For our A2 media coursework, we produced a horror poster, magazine and a teaser trailer of the horror sub-genre splatter and psychological. In the post-production stage, we will be conducting further audience research to see whether or not we produced what our target audience really wanted as we obtain details of their opinions on all three of our final products. We will also find out what went well and what went wrong; even potential areas for improvements if we were to do this project again. In order to conduct this research we would be using different social media networks such as, Whatsapp, Snapchat and iMessage along with some video interviews and group screenings. Finally we will then ask our target audience 10 questions for each of our final products.
WhatsApp Messenger is a cross-platform instant messaging application that allows iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Windows phone and Nokia smartphone users to exchange text, image, video and audio messages for free. WhatsApp is especially popular with end users who do not have unlimited text messaging. In addition to basic messaging, WhatsApp provides group chat and location sharing options.
YouTube is a free video sharing website that makes it easy to watch online videos. You can even create and upload your own videos to share with others. Originally created in 2005, YouTube is now one of the most popular sites on the Web, with visitors watching around 6 billion hours of videos every month.
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Snapchat is a video messaging application created by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown when they were students at Stanford University. Using the application, users can take photos, record videos, add text and drawings, and send them to a controlled list of recipients.
iMessage is the name of Apple's proprietary instant messaging (IM) service that lets you send and receive free text, photo, video, and audio messages from your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Mac to any iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Mac.
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OUR FINAL PRODUCTS
Posters are generally used to promote and advertise new films around the world. They often tend to be quite simple as it would only include features of the film such as the main character(s), film title, credits and release date along with actor and actress names to avoid giving away too much information about the film. 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' is one of our main major film inspirations in terms of the antagonist/ main character Freddy Krueger. He tortures and kills people which is quite similar to our main character Ed Morte. Also the characters face is quite inspirational as it looks disorientated and he also has an iconic weapon very similar to ours. In terms of location and narrative to an extent 'Hostel' would be one of main major film influences as it is based on people getting tortured in an abandoned building.
QUESTIONS
1) Is the Main Character Portrayed Effectively on the Poster?
a) Yes
b) No
a) Yes
b) No
2) What Main Convention of the Film Poster Grabs Your Attention Most?
3) Do You Think the Typography is easy to read and understand?
a) Yes
b) No
a) Yes
b) No
4) Does the Poster Look Like it Follows the Main Conventions of a Film Poster?
a) Yes
b) No
a) Yes
b) No
6) What Horror Sub-Genre Does Our Film Poster Look Related to?
7) Do You Think Our Colour Scheme (Red, White & Black) Was Effective for the Film Poster?
a) Yes
b) No
a) Yes
b) No
8) Do you think the layout of the poster is effective?
a) Yes
b) No
a) Yes
b) No
9) Do you think the reviews on the poster make you trust that the film is good?
a) Yes
b) No
a) Yes
b) No
10) Does the title look like a horror movie title?
a) Yes
b) No
a) Yes
b) No
RESPONSES
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EVALUATION
Overall, majority of the feedback for our poster was positive as it seemed to be very appealing towards our target audience. They particularly liked the close-up image of our antagonist Ed Morte which turned out to be quite effective with the help of the horror make-up although initially, our target audience wanted a mid-close-up shot for the main image on the poster but we decided that a close-up shot would be more effective and work better. Due to the use of the colour red being used consistently on the poster and red horror make-up representing blood, our target audience were able to successfully guess our horror sub genre which was indeed a slasher. From making this poster, we learnt that it is important to follow typical conventions in order for our final product to look professional and that the opinion and suggestions of our target audience actually matter. The poster appear to be a success as majority of our target audience stated that the poster makes them want to watch the film in the cinema which is what the poster was designed to do.
The main purpose of a horror magazine is to entice and frighten our target readers. 'horrorhound' and 'Empire' magazine were our two major influences when we were creating our own magazine. We stuck to typical conventions of these magazines and their layouts in order to obtain a professional look. We found that the film tape feature is becoming more and more popular in horror film magazines so we thought it would be an attractive feature to add it. We also thought it was important that we keep one character as the main image although there are feature characters on the page as it was what our audience wanted and it makes it look more effective. we also thought the colour scheme for these images worked really well as the colours were consistent for both text and images and was definitely something we had to consider.
QUESTIONS
1) Is the Main Character Portrayed Effectively on the Magazine?
a) Yes
b) No
a) Yes
b) No
2) What Main Convention of the Magazine Grabs Your Attention Most?
3) Do You Think the Typography is easy to read and understand?
a) Yes
b) No
a) Yes
b) No
4) Does the Magazine Look Like it Follows the Main Conventions of a Magazine?
a) Yes
b) No
a) Yes
b) No
5) Judging From the Magazine Does it Make You Want to Watch the Film in the Cinema?
a) Yes
b) No
a) Yes
b) No
6) Do You Think Our Colour Scheme (Red, White & Black) Was Effective for the Magazine?
a) Yes
b) No
a) Yes
b) No
7) What Horror Sub-Genre Does Our Magazine Look Related to?
8) Would you buy the Magazine if it was in stores?
a) Yes
b) No
a) Yes
b) No
9) Do you think the layout of the Magazine is effective?
a) Yes
b) No
a) Yes
b) No
10) Do you see any Continuity between the Magazine and Film Poster?
a) Yes
b) No
a) Yes
b) No
RESPONSES
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EVALUATION
Overall, we believe that the magazine turned out to be quite a successful form of advertisement for our horror film trailer as our target audience believed that it generally looked like a typical, professional horror film magazine and had intriguing cover lines. Also, particularly the main image, appealed to our target audience as they thought the make-up looked realistic and the mid-close up shot that we used turned out to be quite effective as we see more of the antagonist in terms of costume and body language which they found engaging. If we were to do this magazine again we would be more creative in terms of the typography used and try to link more of the cover lines to our actual horror film but we are pleased with the outcome.
As well as being our two major film influences, we also designed our trailer to be similar to these; not only for the narrative but the pacing and the type of shots used. Our main trailer film influences are 'Hostel' and 'Saw 2', which are shown below. In our trailer 'Vanity' the pace was fairly slow but then gradually got faster and faster as the disequilibrium takes place, we were influenced by the 'Hostel' trailer as they too had this element. We wanted to replicate this as our narrative is based on torture and if the pace goes from slow to fast, the audience would want to see what extreme torturing we would have in our film especially as not all footage can be shown in a trailer. For both film influences we noticed that the resolution of the film wasn't shown in the trailer.
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QUESTIONS
1) Do You Think the Narrative is portrayed Well?
a) Yes
b) No
a) Yes
b) No
2) Do You think the Sound is Effective in terms of creating tension?
a) Yes
b) No
a) Yes
b) No
3) Does the Trailer Follow the conventions of a typical horror film trailer?
a) Yes
b) No
a) Yes
b) No
4) Do you think the trailer gives away too much information?
a) Yes
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b) No
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5) Judging from the trailer does it make you want to watch the film in the cinema?
a) Yes
b) No
a) Yes
b) No
6) Does the Pace of the trailer help to build tension effectively?
a) Yes
b) No
a) Yes
b) No
7) In Your opinion, What is the most effective element of a film trailer?
8) What Horror Sub-Genre does the trailer look related to?
9) Are the captions effective in terms of telling the narrative?
a) Yes
b) No
a) Yes
b) No
10) Do you Think the Ending of the Trailer is Terrifying?
a) Yes
b) No
a) Yes
b) No
RESPONSES
Three of our target audience who are shown above in the video, took part in a test screening where they watched out trailer 'Vanity' and were then asked a few questions about it based on the narrative, sound, pace and further improvements to the trailer itself.
EVALUATION
Just like our horror poster and horror magazine, the majority of our target audience thought that our horror film was a slasher which in fact it was. They guessed correctly as we included typical elements of the sub-genre slasher such as the main characters dripping in blood, the main characters faces scarred with different types of scars with the help of horror make-up, their clothes also had blood on it and the antagonists iconic weapons were present as well in the trailer. This all emphasized the fact that our trailer was a slasher. For the narrative most of our participants had an idea of what it may be about however some thought the narrative wasn't portrayed well at all, if we were to do this again we would add more captions to allow the audience to have an idea of what the narrative may be about, and we would add more footage of the characters as some of our audience thought the two girls in our trailer didn't play a big role. overall, we had a good time filming the trailer and engaging with our actors and actresses so we are happy that our target audience were pleased with the outcome.
In addition to uploading our horror film trailer to YouTube, we were able to collect various data and statistics from the overview section. We managed to obtain over 50 views in the period of about two weeks. Generally we think this is quite good. We used various social media forms such as WhatsApp and snapchat to advertise our final product, where we sent people the link to our trailer and asked them to watch it.
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OVERALL CONCLUSION
Overall, we've had a tough but enjoyable experience creating our three final products where we obtained valuable skills like using Photoshop and operating a professional camera whilst working together as a team. from our audience research in both the pre-production and post-production stage, we have learnt the importance of the opinions of our target audience in order to obtain successful final products. even though we did not got through with 100% of the suggestions, we were pleased to find out that our target audience was pleased with our final decisions.