The Finished Primary Task

Below is a copy of our final film trailer for 'Press Enter'. From research to planning, creating, editing and evaluation. It has been a thoroughly enjoyable task in which I have learnt loads about the film industry and producing a trailer through all the steps. Our team is really happy with our finished piece, it has required a lot of editing and tweaks, but we have all worked well together and I hope you have enjoyed reading my work and watching the trailer below, thank you.

The Finished Ancillary Tasks

Below is a copy of my final ancillary tasks for our film 'Press Enter'. I have created a film poster and magazine cover and am really happy with how they are in their completed form. It has taken a lot of time researching, planning, editing and evaluating but I am pleased with the authentic look of my finished pieces. 

Evaluation - Question Four

"How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?" In this Google Slides presentation below I discuss the different software and hardware used in every stage of this project and my opinion of them and what I have learnt since the start of the year.

Evaluation - Question Three

"What have you learnt from your audience feedback?". I believe that audience feedback is quite possibly the most crucial part of making a media product. I have used audience feedback all the way back to my research task and continue to use it, I used it to determine my film poster, etc, I think it is of extreme value. Apple are known to do a huge level of market audience when making their products and despite the high prices and strong competition, their sales continue to increase. I wanted to conduct my research in multiple ways to get a lot of feedback. Recently, in Sociology, another one of my A Level subjects, we have been looking at different research methods and in particular the benefits of quantitative research compared to qualitative and vice-versa. For this task I decided to carry out some of each and have done along the way so that I could create a product that I was happy with as well as one that appeals most importantly to the consumer. A little while back, I did a blog post about my cousin Russell who has his own filming company, he gave our team some valuable advice and told me to send him the final copy when it was completed. I did just that and his feedback was extremely valuable to us. He told us that he really liked the trailer but felt the areas for improvement were fixing the lip sync errors between Liam speaking and the audio and to also tone down the phone call affect with the Prime Minister as it was hard to listen to. We re-watched our trailer and could agree with the points Russell made and so edited the film trailer, re-rendered and uploaded to YouTube, this shows how valuable feedback can be.

I also decided to send the video to lots of people that fit within the target audience bracket for their qualitative feedback to both the trailer and my ancillary tasks, I feel quantitative isn't as useful because it doesn't suggest what to improve but it does allow for wide-scale responses but in the case of a film trailer and ancillaries it is not effective as they are visual and highly subjective to one's opinion. Below is a recording of the feedback and results we received from Grace and Tim and how we plan to use this feedback.



To extend opinions and criticisms, I also asked a number of peers that fall into our target audience bracket for their opinion on my film poster, magazine cover and trailer. Below are pictures of the happy consumers and their opinions.

To conclude, I continue to believe that target audience feedback is extremely important and useful. I asked so many people and got an extremely positive set of results. I am really happy with the final product and feel that I took on-board all the feedback that I have received throughout the task and year.

Evaluation - Question Two

"How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?". I had thought a lot about this evaluation question during the task as I have always wanted my trailer and ancillary tasks to work well together, I felt the best way to discuss my views on the connection between them and what I would have changed would be through this attached voice clip below. The main and ancillary tasks can be seen as completed, at the top of my blog.

Evaluation - Question One

"In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?". In the presentation below, I explore my media product and compare it to the conventions of real products and decide which parts use, develop or challenge those traditional forms.

Film Trailer - Stages of Development

The first stage of editing the film trailer was to find suitable clips of current news and make a montage for the very beginning. We firstly created a minute long sample of clips and put a filter and music on them to make it fit the theme of our film [1], we knew that the introduction to the trailer couldn't be this long but it allowed us to have options for later debate. We then created the first part of the trailer, it was not a perfect version but was a good start to the project in our eyes [2]. However, feed back from peers and family taught us that the plot was not clear enough and that the trailer needed work through reconstructing the order of scenes. The film trailer construction has been changed since the first edits and storyboard. I feel that making a plot clear through a trailer is a difficult task as naturally the ones making it know the plot inside out, so it is easy to forget how the story will be seen by a viewer who has no pre-knowledge of the films plot. As a group, we looked back at our storyboard and clips that we have recorded and considered how we could rearrange the events in the trailer using the same clips and basis. We did this by looking at the storyboard and rearranging the steps as shown below as well as stripping back on unneeded scenes as we were starting to get a sense of how long each part should be to keep the audience engaged, [3]. Although the changes we made were time consuming it meant that our finished trailer will make more sense and it is paramount that the trailer creates mystery but not confusion to audiences. The rearranged storyboard and first edits are attached below.

[1]

[2]