George Brinan A2 Media
Candidate No. 8149
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Initially in order to come up with a narrative that would seem like it was from a real film we had to pitch our idea to our media studies teacher that she would then analyse and give feedback as to whether our idea was suitable for what we wanted to achieve.
We had already decided what genre we wanted to base our trailer on; Horror, which gave us some sort of template that we could base our trailer around. Our initial idea focused more on a sci-fi horror trailer that was based on the journey of two friends who are hunted by an unknown alien presence. This was to be set in an abandoned warehouse near the house of one of our group members, as we felt this would be an ideal location for an event like this to take place, with the lack of human contact and the broken windows and walls adding to the scariness of the setting. After receiving feedback from our teacher these are the main points that we took:
"There is a lack of a real storyline, it seems more like a section from a film rather than a plot"
"Filming at night in an abandoned building will be hard to achieve without any proper lighting"
We were told to analyse these questions to try and help us improve the synopsis we had:
What frightens people?
What will the audience see on the screen?
What will the audience think is about to happen?
What is the quest?
After having received this feedback we decided to start from scratch and create a brand new synopsis that focused on the slasher genre of horror. We adapted our ideas to fit the horror genre as we felt this was more achievable with the experience we had. We found that they are particularly set in a house which meant we had an easy location to film. We focused on the idea of someone breaking into a house and killing the single occupant after having been left by their parents.
We had to produce another pitch that we would receive feedback on similar to our initial pitch. This time we were told that our idea would be more achievable than our initial idea. However we were also told we would need to try and add more tension filled aspects such as jump scares in order to make the trailer look professional.
As these points came from an experienced media studies teacher who knew how to achieve level 4 work we knew we would have to take her feedback into consideration and try and implement them into our production.
After developing our final concept we were able to start filming and produce a rough cut of our trailer. We received feedback from our media studies teacher as well as fellow year 13 media students.
This was very helpful as we received feedback from people with both experience and knowledge on the conventions that we would need after having researched into it for their own projects.
Positives:
Setting is ideal
Builds Tension
Improvements:
Lack of jump scares
Lots of camera shaking
Too many establishing shots
No music meaning there is a lack of tension from the sound
Story cuts off at the end without much happening
This feedback proved vital for the production of our final cut as it gave us things to improve on. From what we were told we learnt that the trailer didn't seem much like a horror film as there was no scary aspect. We found that sound can add a lot of tension to the trailer meaning it was vital we found a suitable soundtrack for our final cut. People seemed to like the setting of a suburban street which gave us some inspiration for any re-filming we would have to undertake. However
The main piece of criticism that we received was that there was no storyline to the trailer. Our teacher told us that it takes too long to arrive at the house of the victim and by that time the audience has become disengaged which is something we didn't want to happen. This was an invaluable piece of information for us as it meant we knew we would have to get into the action of the trailer very quickly in order to keep the audience thrilled.
When re-editing I took note that the pace of editing seemed slow in the rough cut, meaning we would need quick transitions in the final cut of our trailer. Also as we had been told that it took too long for any action to occur it was inherent that we quickened the pace of our final cut. Below is a comparison video between our final cut and rough cut to show the differences between the two.
After we had completed the editing of our trailer we were able to present our final cut. This was shown, similarly to our rough cut, to the class as well as our teacher. Our fellow media students were asked to fill in a small sheet explaining what they liked and what could be improved in our final cut.
These are the main positives and improvements that we took from the feedback of our final cut.
Positives:
Music is very good
The start/build-up is good - Time of day and lighting
First scare is perfect
The voiceover is fine
Improvements:
Storyline = Hard to follow
Need to remove some background noise
Lighting is a bit dim.
Enhance the scream
Remove the static sound at the end
Editing in the middle is not perfect
Living room is too bright
Titles/font need to fit the genre more
Try and make the news broadcast seem real.
As a result of our peer's feedback we were able to draw the 3 most common pieces of feedback we received.
1. The soundtrack we used was the biggest improvement that we found through our feedback. This was down to the helpful feedback we received from our rough cut which told us that music can play a vital role in any horror trailer.
2. In some places the lighting was poor due to the outside filming. People were quick to point this out which meant we were able to combat it by using some editing effects in adobe premiere pro and in some cases even refilming poor sections.
3. The storyline was difficult to follow. This was a result of the editing we undertook being slightly rushed meaning the trailer did not suit the effect we were trying to achieve. Therefore when it came to re editing we knew what needed to be changed because of the feedback we had received.
The feedback we received helped us to conduct an action plan to help improve the quality of our final trailer.
Our action plan consisted of:
The first thing we will work on is to make the storyline easier to follow, currently the editing makes it seem jumbled and that there is no plot. Secondly we will work on some of the sound in the trailer as there are some pieces of sound that are unnecessary or too loud/quiet, so they will need to be changed. Any footage that needs to be refilmed or added to will be filmed so that we can get the trailer looking as good as we can. This allowed us to improve the professional look of our final cut (below)
Along with a trailer we were also tasked with producing two ancillary tasks which consisted of a poster and magazine front cover. In order to achieve the desired effect we wanted it was important to gain audience feedback to help us improve upon what we already had. We set up a Facebook page to promote the film and people were able to leave feedback in the comments section for our ancillary tasks.
Overall the feedback we received throughout the production of our portfolio was definitely the most important aspect in terms of helping us to produce our final portfolio. We were able to gain an insight into exactly what our target audience expected to see from our production and what was needed in order to fulfil the forms and conventions of a trailer. The feedback from our peers as well as our teacher helped us to achieve our final cut compared to our original rough cut, as a result the audience feedback was invaluable throughout our entire project.