Evaluation

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Evaluation

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Evaluation

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback? For this, I produced and handed out a questionnaire to the target audience following the viewing of my trailer. The questions are shown in the questionnaire below.

From the results of the questionnaire, I can see that there are things the target audience both liked and disliked about my trailer. For example, things such as the camera shots, the music, the range of scenes were frequent things people liked, whereas others said they disliked the music, that there was not a large enough range of transitions, and that they didnt find out enough about the characters. To make the pie charts, I have chosen the 5 most common likes and dislikes and put them into pie charts.

They show a range of opnions on the music choice, many said that it was catchy and easy to remember and the lyrics fitted with what was happening on screen but others said they felt it didn't fit as well as something else could have done. The pie charts show that more people said they liked the characters and enough was found out about them than not. However, my aim of the trailer was not to give too much away about the characters at this point, which may be why some felt they didn't get to know much about the characters and put this as a negative point.

Evaluation

4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Breaking even - final edit

This is my finished trailer.

Mood Boards

These mood boards show the work that I have done so far, that I have spoken about in previous Diary Cam updates.

Diary Cam 2!

Breaking even - draft 2

This is draft 2 of my trailer. I have changed the opening and closing credits, and cut out some of the clips, such as the watch. I have also cut down alot of the clips, such as the karate clip that I was and still am debating cutting out completely. To finalise my trailer I am going to get some target audience feedback, to help me make my final decisions. I still wish to add in some more transitions, and I think that the lighting need editing on some of the clips, for example, on the clip of the group in the pub. I feel the lighting is too dim there which can connote negative things about the group, which is not what I intended. Therefore I may make it brighter to connote in a more positive light. (pardon the pun!)

Draft 1 of my trailer

This is my first draft and there are several changes that I would like to make. For example, some of the editing is rather slow, and clips need to be cut down more, e.g. the shots of Kelly doing her work at college. I am also debating if there is too much of the Karate in the trailer, and if it is at all necessary. The idea of having it in there was to show that Dan was rather angry and upset and by doing the Karate he was letting out his anger and frustration at being hit by his mother - however I'm not sure that this effect is created. If I decide to leave it in there, I think that I will take out of of the clips, most likely the last one that is then cut to the shot of the car, but I do think that the most aggression is shown in that particular clip. Also, the watch and the speedometer, I am not sure that they are needed in there, but I need to fiddle around more with the clip timings to see what looks and works best.

I think the trailer may benefit from a range of transitions, rather than just hard cuts all the time. I have found that a 'cross dissolve' works well, as it is more subtle to change scene compared to something so obvious and bold, and the trailer isn't about that. I want the characters to be implied as individuals who are associated with one another, but they all have their own personal story to themselves which is a different and more difficult yet interesting approach to creating characters in a soap I think. As well as transitions, I would like to change the text at the start and finish to the trailer. I am thinking that the name of it shouldn't be revealed until the end, as a way to encourage the target audience to watch it. And for the ending, after the 'fade to black' and shot of the flowers, I am considering a clip of a single character or the characters as a group with the name, channel and time of the soap. However, I fear, this will ruin the effect that the ending has on the target audience, but I may try it to compare which is best.

Diary Cam 1!

This is my new way of doing updates, by a diary cam! And this is my first entry...

Busy busy busy!!

To be honest, i've not been doing much on my blog, which isn't good of me! But i have been busy, with editing, and changing bits and bobs around, for example, my ending is now slightly different to my storyboard. And I have another To Do list!
To keep the blog updated, my plan was to do a Diary Cam type thing until the deadline, but to be honest, im not sure I will go through with that now - as each small clip I film of myself needs to be edited a bit and then the uploading onto youtube and then blogger will take time. So... instead, I'm thinking about doing podcast updates, as they wont really need editing, I can just write out in notes what I want to say, record it and upload it, which I think will be a quicker process. Seeing as I have recorded two diary cam updates, I may upload them but I need to go through them properly and fiddle about with them tonight as they aren't very good really. I may film a little bit to add to them at the start, if I decide that seeing as I have started them, I might as well carry on with them.
Also, I will upload my first draft of the trailer onto my blog, along with changes that I would like to make becuase I have found bits that aren't neccessary or that drag on for too many seconds.
Then, I need to crack on with my evaluation! To get audience feedback from my target audience, I am going to create a questionnaire and hand it out, then upload the questionnaire and the results onto the blog with my evaluation.

Update!

Things have gone a bit wrong if I'm honest! I've been poorly and then when I was supposed to finish filming at the last minute one of the actors couldn't be there so I still have a small amount of filming to do. However, I have started to edit the footage that I already have, which is good. The fact that I haven't finished it yet is just frustrating!! The next time that I will be able to do it will be next Sunday now, so that is when the filming will be finished - fingers crossed!

Final Magazine Cover

I have made a few changes to my magazine cover after having spoken to my friends, who are the same age as the target audience. They said that they thought that the top looked a bit plain, and that the picture didn't feel relevant to them.They felt that it showed nothing about the character or the soap. So I have taken out the picture at the top right hand corner and added in the website address, and also a bar code. As well as this I have made the size of the "TV Today" bigger, and in result moved the date and price around slightly.

Fliming

Today I have done my second lot of filming, so so far I have filmed half of the footage for my trailer. Tomorrow I will be filming the rest of it ready to start editing.

So far I feel everything is going well, and I am pleased with this. The list of tasks that I set myself to complete over Christmas is nearly all completed, so I am on schedule for where I want to be, with editing being my main task from now on.