Products completed

We have now completed all our media products alongside audience research for each one of them. Therefore, we feel our pieces are as successful as they can be at this point, so we feel we can not make any further alterations.

From now we will focus on our evaluation. Yesterday we planned our evaluation on four pieces of A3 paper, with diagrams to show how we will represent our work e.g. an area of work alongside a video, with who can say what. From here, throughout this week we will all individually analyse our blogs and focus on the different questions, answering them in various ways. Therefore, this highlights our varied contributions to our work.

From this, next week if we have completed this planning process, we will begin to make videos and powerpoints on the Apple Mac 'keynote' programme, which will be easy to present and our establish our work.

Final magazine cover

...we are not going to change our magazine cover. We feel it is suitable for our horror film 'Ouija' as it is at the moment, and the majority of our research sample's answers were quite positive. Therefore, our final magazine cover looks like this:

Results from magazine audience research

After composing our research, we got the following results from our audience research:

• DO YOU THINK THE COLOURS ON THE COVER COMPLEMENT EACH OTHER?

Everybody answered yes, so we are pleased with the colours

• DO YOU THINK THE COLOURS USED ARE QUITE EERIE?

Everybody answered yes again, so we are again happy with the colour choice

• DO YOU THINK THE COVER PHOTO IS RELEVANT TO A HORROR FILM?

Whilst one person did answer no, we feel the majority of our demographics felt that the image on our cover represented a horror film, so therefore we will keep the cover image the same

• DO YOU THINK THE COVER IS TOO CLUTTERED?

Again, only one person answered yes, so we feel that the cover cannot be too cluttered and we will therefore keep this the same

• DO YOU THINK THE SELLING LINE NEEDS MORE INFORMATION TO ADVERTISE THE FILM?

Whilst two people do think that the selling line needs more information, we feel that if we were to add any more text the cover will be too cluttered. Therefore, we will keep the selling line as it is

• DO YOU FEEL THE ADVERTISEMENT ELEMENTS ON THE COVER ARE ESSIENTIAL?

Everybody answered yes, so no change is needed

• DO YOU FEEL OUR MAGAZINE HAS ENOUGH INFORMATION?

Everyone answered yes, so no change is needed

• LOOKING AT THIS MAGAZINE, DOES THE COVER FEATURE MAKE YOU WANT TO WATCH THE FILM?

Everyone answered yes, so no change is needed

Magazine audience research

First magazine cover draft

Here is our first magazine draft. We have just completed the draft for this, although we will take some audience research in case we need to make any changes:

Out takes of our updates

Out takes of our filming

Our Teaser Trailer!

Now...

..we will focus on our magazine. We have already uploaded the core image of the magazine and included fonts/details around the cover, although we need to focus more on the colour and smaller images typically featured on magazine covers. We have currently been focusing on our trailer and the research so we have not had time to complete our magazine, but we will aim to within the next week

Following this - alongside our poster and trailer - we too will film and conduct audience research with a set of questions, acknowledge the answers and make any alterations that may be needed. Afterwards, we will then complete our evaluation, and have finished!

Taken from our audience research...

After viewing the results, we have discussed our samples' answers and whether and serious changes need to be made. Question by question...

QUESTION 1: The majority of our sample thought that the genre of our film was 'horror', whilst one participant started 'horror or thriller'. Therefore, as horror is the genre we have targeted to complete the conventions for, we feel succesful here

QUESTION 2: Whilst this was an open question about what they thought the film was about and therefore a wide range of answers would be said, most of participants stated many similarites; for example, three said 'Ouija boards' which was ideal in correlation to the title of our film, whilst other answers included 'curses', 'ghosts' and 'forces' of the paranormal kind. Moreover, these answers all combine well together. One individual stated 'I don't know' in reference to what the film was about, but we feel that the majority of our demographics understood the feeling of the film trailer.

QUESTION 3: Whilst not included on the video, we did give a range of closed options for the question; 'what word best describes this film?' Our samples included 'recluse, paranormal, slasher, kidnapping, murder or monster', but everyone answered paranormal; therefore, relating to our aim. We therefore feel no changes need to be made

QUESTION 4: Everyone thought that the title cards featured in the trailer were enough to supply enough information, so therefore we will not insert anymore in our trailer

QUESTION 5: Everyone said there was enough dialogue in the trailer. Therefore we do not feel the need to re-shoot or re-record any more dialogue

QUESTION 6: As shown in the pie chart on the previous blog, answers based upon 'how much out of ten would you rate the soundtrack' ranged from 6 to 10. This is in the upper part of the statistics, so therefore we are happy with these results and feel we do not need to alter the non-diegetic music in our trailer

QUESTION 7: Everyone thought the pace of the shots worked well alongside the music, therefore needing no change

QUESTION 8: Again, everyone was positive about the use of eerie colour we used throughout the shots, on top of the quick high-contrast edits throughout; from this, we are going to keep the colour the same

QUESTION 9: Everyone felt that the title of the film ('Ouija') being revealed near the end of the trailer in comparison to anywhere else was succesful, as it built 'tension' as one individual noted. We will keep this title at the end

QUESTION 10: Everyone but one said they would watch this film. Whilst one wouldn't, this was only due to 'not liking horror films' which is an personal genre choice which cannot be helped here. However, we feel pleased that people would be willing to watch 'Ouija' if made into a film simply from a teaser trailer!

THEREFORE... the majority of the results are positive and interlink with our initial ideas and aims in producing a succesful horror teaser trailer. We do not feel we need to make any changes from these positive comments, and have therefore concluded our media product of a teaser trailer!

Results from audience research

We conducted audience research on our teaser trailer in order to see if our demographic audience would appreciate it, as it is targeted at them. Therefore, we asked eight people who are 18 and 19 years old (of both genders) in order to get varied, accurate results from a fair sample.

The results of our audience research are as follows:

Question 1: AFTER WATCHING THIS TEASER TRAILER, WHAT GENRE DO YOU THINK THIS FILM IS?

Question 2: WHAT DO YOU THINK THIS FILM'S ABOUT?


The answers were all similar, but were of follows:
'Ouija boards...curses'
'Curses'
'Ouija boards'
'Forces attacking'
'Ouija boards'
'I don't know'
'Ghosts'


Question 3: WHAT WORD BEST DESCRIBES THIS TRAILER?
We gave a list of options that include: recluse, murder, horror, paranormal, kidnap... and paranormal was the main option from the sample


Question 4: DO YOU THINK THE TITLE CARDS WE HAVE FEATURED ARE USEFUL INFORMATION-WISE?
All of our sample said 'Yes'

Question 5: DO YOU THINK THERE IS ENOUGH DIALOGUE IN THE TRAILER? WOULD MORE BE BENEFICIAL?
All of our sample said that there was 'enough dialogue in the trailer'

Question 6: HOW MUCH OUT OF TEN WOULD YOU RATE THE SOUNDTRACK?


Question 7: DO YOU THINK THE PACE OF SHOTS ARE RELEVANT IN TIME TO THE MUSIC?
All our participants answered 'Yes'

Question 8: DO YOU THINK THE USE OF COLOUR AND THE CONTRAST LIGHTING IS RELEVANT IN THE TRAILER?
All said 'Yes'

Question 9: DO YOU THINK THE TITLE OF THE FILM -'OUIJA' - BEING REVEALED AT THE END OF THE TRAILER BUILDS TENSION?
All participants answered 'Yes'

Question 10: WOULD YOU CONSIDER WATCHING THIS FILM? WHY?

Answers for 'Why' in the 'Yes' column included:

'I want to watch it to find out more', 'looks scary', 'looks interesting', 'catches the audience's attention', 'I like horror film'

For 'No', the individual answered 'I don't like horror films'.

Audience research for teaser trailer

Update from Tuesday 8th March

Also.... we have decided to stick to our original 'bang' sound as the other options on Garage Band and www.freesound.org were not part of our initial ideas. We do not really have time to search the web for other websites featuring any free music, so we will keep ours as it is. We are happy with it, although we would prefer it louder. We looked on an mp3 website which can alter the tone/pitch/volume of a sound, but this was unsuccessful due to where our sound is saved

As said, we have also included the 'Magnified Productions' logo at the start of our trailer, likewise to the beginning of our opening film piece from AS. This is an ideal, realistic distributing logo, likewise to a real film.

We are willing to alter our trailer if needed from the results from our audience research. We are currently still conducting interviews on video from the Mac for this part of our research.

Update for our production work

As we have had half-term and other commitments, we have had little time to contribute to our media production work in the last few weeks. However, on Tuesday we completed altering the colours in our video, making them all contrast and correlate similarly to one another e.g. darken and contrast them all. We too added another sound from http://www.freesound.org/ alongside the opening sound of our shot; before it was a distorted groaning sound that we recorded ourselves, and now alongside this is another moany sound, which is higher in pitch and echoes. This has added further eerie sounds to our trailer, correlating with the horror conventions we have intended.
On top of this, we are currently researching 'bang' sounds from the freesound website. Although we already have a sound, it is not loud or extreme enough to alert the viewer. (even after turning this sound up to its maximum 200%). Therefore, we will continue to aim to find an ideal sound for this.
After this, we will hopefully paste our AS piece's production logo; 'Magnified Productions' into our trailer. This is on another Mac, but we should be able to do this. (Or we could replicate it as we already have the image saved) We have already included this logo in the bottom right hand corner of our poster, so it would make sense to include this. Here is the logo:

From this, we hope our trailer will be complete. We will allow our teacher to watch and analyse this, in case it is not accurate enough. When we have done this, we will conduct audience research by allowing people of our demographics to view our trailer - hopefully on video - whilst asking them questions based upon their perspective of watching the feature.
Therefore, we hope that all of the above will be completed by early next week. As we have started lessons on our exam now instead of production, we will ensure we spend our own time completing these tasks; for example, we have three frees on Monday and this time would be beneficial for the above. Therefore, next week we will focus heavily on our teaser trailer, aiming to complete it.