Evaluation Starter

Overall I really enjoyed creating this trailer, although it was a considerable amount of hard work and dedication after watching our trailer through on the big screen I am able to take pride in all of my hard work and think it has paid off considerably well. At times it was incredibly stressful and the end result looked difficult and so far away but now it has come to it I'm glad I persevered. 

  Deciding on a genre was not only the first step towards creating our trailer but it was also a very indecisive one too. Choosing the right genre was vital as the whole group had to agree on it and it also had to be something we would be able to interpret well. Originally we thought about doing a thriller yet this appeared to be a common choice within the class therefore we wanted to choose something a little diverse from the rest and set ourselves a challenge. After watching lots of different trailers on YouTube and getting inspiration from a range or resources we decided upon a theme, Gangster and Crime. Immediately the ideas started flowing so we organised them all onto a list where we were able to keep a note of them. We then had to cancel down the list of scenes and shots that were actually achievable. One of the hardest jobs to do was finding the actors to star in our trailer who were willing and would also fit the part right. Once we eventually found the actors who were willing to help us we then had to organise a date for all 9 of us to meet, this was one of the biggest challenges we faced. Although our organisation was perfect, from having lists of props, shots and our storyboard to follow as a guideline our communication was not.

Audience Feedback

Audience feedback was really important to us as we wanted to see if all of our research, planning and hard work had been accurate and accommodated what our audience wanted. We posted our video onto YouTube and Facebook to see what people thought of it and to see if it targeted the audience we were aiming for. We received good comments over the Internet and also verbally. We got a lot of positive feedback from classmates especially on our magazine covers which is where the feedback was needed to see if we had captured our two different target audiences. We were pleased to hear that we did this well and both magazine covers worked. I'm pleased we chose to get our feedback this way as it is convenient for people to quickly comment using the Internet as everybody uses it. We did consider making a questionnaire but we found from our last one that people found it to be a chore to fill it in. If I was to collect feedback again I would make a questionnaire so that I had a variation of ways to get feedback to show the diversity when it comes to collecting feedback.

 We knew that the age group we wanted to target was 18-25 therefore we created a specific magazine for this. From our researched into target audience in relation to our film genre we found that the target audience was quite big it didn't pin point specifically. We found this to be the case with films such as James Bond. That's when we came to the decision of targeting a wide audience and made two magazine covers. One for 18-25 year olds and the other for 30-40+ year olds.

In class we watched every ones trailers and showed them our film magazine and poster, this was incredibly useful as it allowed us to communicate with the rest of the class to see if our end product was as effective as we had hoped. As our film was targeted at 18-25 and our audience were 17-18 year olds it was really useful to see if our products appealed to this audience. It was also very useful as we had made two magazine specifically targeting two different audiences. The first one was targeting 18-25 year olds and the second was 25-40 year olds. A large majority of the class seemed to like the first magazine a lot better which was really good to see as that was the age range we were targeting. We also found that the older members in the class preferred the other magazine which was also really good to see as again this is the age range we were targeting.
 We were pleased to see that we got a lot of positive feedback as this made us feel really proud of all of our hard work and it really felt like it paid off. We also accepted constructive criticism and spoke about the pros and cons of our trailer with the rest of the class, which made it really helpful as we were able to use this when blogging about our audience feedback and also found it useful to write about in our evaluation.

  Some of the positive feedback consistent of:


- 'Text in between informs and helps break the clips up.'
- 'I think I prefer the close up mag cover. The colours tie in much better than the grey one and the title of the film stands out better.'
- 'Complied with conventions.'
- 'Cuts and music convey genre.'
- 'Camera control is very good.'
- 'It is quite short making you want to see what happens.'
- 'I like how there is no dialogue.'
- 'Own music works brilliantly.'
- 'Use of slow-mo and fast paced shots of London show portrayal of time.'


Some of the constructive criticism feedback consisted of:


-' The title is not that apparent it could stay up for longer'
- 'Maybe there needs to be a little bit of dialogue.'
- 'Not long enough for gangster trailer.'
- 'Not sure if the music works?'
- 'Dont overly understand why its rated 18, considering that the trailer doesn't show any violence.'
- 'They should have all been smoking or just one.'

We then collected all of our positive and negative feedback and put it into a bar chart. We did this so that we were able to visually see the feedback percentage. We feel that this helped us a lot as we were able to see how well our product worked and the ratio between positive and negative feedback.

Media Technologies

Photoshop:

When it came to creating our film poster and magazine I used the programme Photoshop. As I have to use this programme for some of my other subjects I knew how to use it, what techniques to use and what did and didn't look good. Therefore I was able to create both these products relatively quickly and accurately. I also had time to experiment with different colours and techniques to see which would be most effective. Here I have shown the print screens of different steps and techniques I have used throughout creating this product. I also used similar techniques when it came to creating the magazine. Overall I am really pleased we used this programme to create our film poster and magazine as we were able to create all of the techniques and styles that we wanted to. We were also able to manipulate the images in such a way which reflected our genre really well. If I was to create these two products again I would use Photoshop every time as its quick and easy to follow and gives you the freedom to do what you want with the image.

Garage Band: 

Originally we used the programme Garage Band on the iMac to create the soundtrack for the non-diegetic music for our trailer. We wanted our music to start off slow and then build to an upbeat tune. We ensured we included drum beats and subtle guitars to do this. We got a lot of inspiration from the soundtrack used in the trailer for Public Enemies therefore we referred back to this quite regularly. As none of us in the group had used the programme Garage Band before it took a lot of getting use to but we spent a while experiment with a range of different beats to make sure we got the correct music for our trailer. We thought it would be a good idea to each make our own version of what we thought the soundtrack should sound like, I think this worked really well as we were able to constructively criticise each others soundtrack and then pull it apart and put together the sounds we did like and thought would work well. This really helped us to create our end soundtrack therefore I am really pleased we decided to do this. Although in the end we didn't actually use garage band it was really helpful to understand how it works as we may want to use the programme in the future, it also gave us as a group a good idea of what we wanted the soundtrack to be like in the background. Therefore I don't think we wasted anytime at all experimenting with Garage Band but instead gained knowledge. In the end we decided to use the song The Beast In Me sang by Jimmy Gore who is staring as our main character Tony 'Don' Milano.

Final Cut Express:

Final Cut Express is the programme we used to edit our entire trailer, unfortunately none of us in the group had used this programme before. This wasn't a problem as we had a tutorial before we started using it and as it was a really straight forward programme we didn't find it hard to get to grips with it at all. In the previous year of this course we had used Pinnacle and there wasn't much difference between the two programme, but we did find that Final Cut Express was easier to use therefore I'm really pleased we made this choice. I found final cut express to be really straight forward and it provided us with all the tools we needed for the job, I was really pleased with all the transitions and effects that we used and think it complimented our genre really well. The only thing that we did find difficult as a group was inserting text as we weren't actually able to crate text on Final Cut Express but instead we had to use the programme LiveType. But overall I am pleased we used a different programme to create the font even if it was time consuming as we had a lot more choice and it looked more professional.

LiveType:

We used the programme LiveType to create all of our fonts for our trailer. Our reason for this was that we were unable to create text on Final Cut Express. Although this would have been easier if we were able to do this I am really pleased that we used LiveType as we had a lot more freedom when it came to creating exactly what we wanted. We had a range of different fonts to chose from as well as styles, sizes and effects. No one in the group was actually sure on how to use this programme so we had to teach ourselves and ask our friend for help who knew how to use it. This was a really good programme to use and I am so pleased that we found out about it because it enabled us to produce fonts, styles and effects that looked really professional. I also think that all of our fonts worked really well as we kept the colour and style consistent for all of our titles except for our main title 'Grow Your Own' where we changed the colouring to red. Although this was a different colour to our titles throughout the trailer it made our title for our film stand out, it also kept a strong link between our film poster and magazine cover as both the titles for our film were also in red.

YouTube:

YouTube was a massive help to us when it came to developing our research. We often referred back to videos we had seen on YouTube to help us with our own work. We used this programme to look into film trailers such as Snatch, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Public Enemies etc. This really helped us as we were able to keep watching these videos and rewind them to keep going over certain shots and angles. We also used YouTube to listen to the music we think would work as the non-diegetic music for our trailer. Not only did we use this programme to watch film trailers which were in the cinema and are waiting to be released or already have been released but we also watched trailers other media students had uploaded onto there from other schools etc. We found this to be incredibly helpful as they also put what grades they had got from their trailer which gave us a rough idea what we should be aiming for. As some of us in the group are also visual learners this was really useful when we were explaining and sharing ideas with one another as we were able to keep good communication with one another which was a good factor in the group. 

Our Complete Package

Our complete package comes with a poster, film magazine cover and a trailer which we have aimed at a mainstream audience, we got the inspiration to do this from films such as Snatch and Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels etc. I am pleased that we made the decision to chose a mainstream audience as there is a large interest in gangster films where it appeals to all ages and genres, which widens our target audience.Overall I am pleased we chose this genre as it gives us the freedom to attract all kinds of audiences and mould our products around them, for example we made two different magazines to ensure we attracted all audiences. We chose to make our own production company and I am really pleased we chose to do this as again we had the freedom to make the front, style and colour of the text our own and didn't have to use exactly the same colourings and fonts etc as the production company we were using. We chose to name our production company 'Woodstock Productions' this was a simple name to remember and also fitted in with our genre of film well therefore I was pleased that we had a strong link between all of our products as well as productions. When it came to choosing the font for our film we firstly did some research on the Internet especially into other film trailers and posters such as The God Father, Public Enemies, Reservoir Dogs etc to ensure our font reflected the genre of our film well and was also eye catching. We saved the texts that we liked and then as a group went through them cutting them down to the final three to chose between. We also used a website called dafont where we were able to type our title in and it showed us what it would look like in a range of different styles. This was really helpful and I'm pleased we chose to do this as it enabled us to make our choice a lot more quickly and easily as we were able to see a range of different fonts in front of us.Choosing the font was extremely important to us as we had to ensure that our title stood out in all three of our products as we obviously wanted to promote it and for it to be recognised. I think that our font design and distinctive colourings were really effective and showed a really strong link between all three products. For example our title 'Grow Your Own' on all three products is in capital letters really similar fonts and is also in red. The colour scheme red, white and black is also consistent as it is shown across all three products for example the magazine cover and background of the texts on the trailer and poster is either a dark grey or black, this works well as it enables the white font to be visible and also makes the vivid red become really in your face.
  We chose to use our main character on our magazine cover as we learnt from our magazine research that this is the typical convention. On both of our magazine covers we chose for Jimmy to be in character. This is because it fitted in well with all of our text, we also thought it would be appealing to the consumer. The magazine cover that is targeted at a younger audience has a picture on it that is a frame taken from our trailer. We chose to use this particular picture as it would be more appealing to our younger audience. I am glad we chose to have Jimmy in character as I think this is a really strong selling point. I also think it works well as it shows a strong link with our film poster. The only thing I am concerned about is the magazine targeted at the older audience, although I am very fond of it I don't think the long shot view of Jimmy works as well as I hoped it would but I am pleased with it as it shows the shovel Jimmy is holding which keeps a strong link with the title, which I feel works really well. The shot of the shovel works well as it reflects the connotations of the title well and sort of double bluffs the audience.  If I was to create the two magazine covers again I would either make one of them have Jimmy on the  front not in character to see how it works out or create a third magazine to do this. This would work well as it would show our variation in skills and would also help us make a strong comparison between the two magazines as well as target all audiences. When it came to creating the film poster we chose to put all of our main characters on the poster, this was because it looked really effective and after doing research into films that inspired us such as This is England, Public Enemies and Reservoir Dogs which also all use the main characters on the poster. It also gave our genre away really well and showed the authority in the group giving the consumer a clear idea of what the plot may be heightening the interest of the audience. If I was to make this poster again I don't think I would change anything about it, I was really proud of this poster and I think it represents our genre really well. If I had to make a change I would probably include some red font on our billing block so it showed a better link with our red title and kept our colour scheme consistent.
  Overall I was really pleased with our trailer it came out a lot better than I originally thought it would and I think our best decision we made was not using the video cameras that school provided but instead using our friends HD camera. Although we didn't rush into this decision we took our time and used it wisely to test our all the cameras and see which ones we were comfortable with using and which one complimented our film best. I am more than pleased with our choice as I think it makes the film. Although making the trailer was incredibly time consuming it was all worth it in the end and did pay off. When making the trailer we found that we had a limited amount of shots and had to film more than once to ensure we had enough shots to pad our trailer out. As we did thorough planning before filming we found that this really helped as we also made a list of different camera shots we need to use to show a variation. As we did this we ended us with a diverse number of angles and shots which made our trailer look a lot more professional and a lot more interesting which worked extremely well. Another problem we faced when putting the trailer together was keeping the font consistent. we wanted to keep the font consistent to show a strong link between our three products but we also had to make sure the audience were able to distinguish the difference between the text which was telling the story as well as the title etc. That's why we made the choice to make the title red and this made it a lot more recognisable as well as highlighted the link between our three products and genre. If I was to make this trailer again there isn't actually a lot id change about it I was really fond of all of our shots, our transitions, our fonts and the length of our trailer. I would improve upon the organisation and dedication in the group but overall our film came out better than expected and i am really proud of my hard work and dedication and think its paid off.
  Overall there is a strong link between all three of our products in our promotional package. This is shown through the consistency in the text, colour and our actors being in character. All three products use the colours red, black and white which I think works really well as all three colours have strong connotations which reflects our genre really well.