Evaluation Question 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction, research & planning and evaluation stages?

This is the screencast of our powerpoint presentation for our forth evaluation question.

Evaluation Question 3 - What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Throughout the length of this course audience feedback has been a great help to us. Almost everything we did was not complete first time. So we created our first draft, and relied on various audience feedback to improve our documents/products further. Without this feedback our documents would not be up to the standard they are. We gained various forms of feedback, including audio feedback and written feedback.

At the very start of our A2 Course, each member of our media class had to write up an idea for a 5 minute short film, and pitch it to the rest of the class. After creating our presentations and talking our class through our ideas, there was time for questions, and any feedback about the idea was welcomed greatly.  Here is an Embed of my pitch, and earlier in my blog i embedded my groups pitch's (our final idea was gathered from a combination of everyones ideas).
Adam A2 Treatment Pitch from Gavin Hood on Vimeo.  


The feedback received by the audience really made me think about my idea, and what would be achieveable, and whether the idea would work, such as the issue with finding an office that actually looks like a business office. It definitely made me and the rest of my group all think about our ideas and really what would be achieveable in the time we had and the resources we had available. In the end after sitting down and discussing our ideas, the audience feedback about each of our ideas really played a part in deciding what elements of each others ideas we would use to create our final idea.

The audience for our feedback was our Peers, who are fellow film makers. By presenting our pitch to this type of audience, it meant we could gather feedback about a variety of topics. As fellow film makers they know the difficulties and potential problems one might face when producing a film. So they have an informed opinion on which ideas might be pheasable and which would be difficult to create. As people who make films, and teenagers who watch plenty of films, they also know what makes a good storyline. The target audience for our thriller includes teenagers, so as teenagers we need to be sure that they would like the idea. So by our class presenting our pitches to our peers/fellow teenagers we could gather feedback about the storyline as well as the production problems. 


After all deciding on an idea, we had to write a treatment for our idea as all film makers do. This was merely a draft treatment, and we needed to be sure it was up to standard, and gather feedback on the idea. If our audience didnt like our treatment idea, then it would be pointless to continue with that idea. So to be sure the idea would make for a good thriller short, we presented the treatment to an audience. Here is an embed of our treatment.

On the Edge for Love
Our audience was once again our Peers and our Teacher. As i have already said, as experienced film makers and regular viewers of film products, our Peers can give very informed feedback. They know the workings of a film product and how it is created, so can give us technical feedback, but also as viewers can give us narrative feedback. Our teacher has watched many AS and A-level films from past year groups, and knows what sort of idea would work well as a thriller short. As a media teacher, he knows the technology our school has available and what would be possible to create. So as an audience this was a great source of feedback, as we could get various type of feedback to help make our treatment/idea a lot better. 

This is an embed of the feedback we gathered from our audience about our draft treatment.







This reading helped us greatly with our treatment, we managed to answer a lot of people's questions about our film, and gathered a lot of advice about how we could improve the treatment. A lot of idea's were bounced around between the class and it got us thinking about some of the things we could employ in our film to make it better. A few of the things we considered from the feedback was.

• Pre suicide shot with vertigo type effects added to them. 
• Tracking forward as zooming out.
• The shot of the main character standing still, with everything zooming past behind him in fast motion. This was a crucial shot that we used in our final film product, that we gained from the feedback.
• The motivation of our title change came purely from our feedback, our new title was much better as it didn't make the plot of our film to obvious. So without gathering this feedback our title would still be the old title. Making this feedback a crucial bit of help.
• The focus pull while Joe was watching them in the cafe, we actually used this idea from the feedback and employed this into our final film product, we thought this would work really will, so we took the audience feedback and used this in our film.
• The shot where he see's the part where he is sitting, and it fades to him actually sitting there. We used this shot in our final film also, and this was a crucial shot as it showed the fade from flashback to real life, and signified the end of the flashbacks. This was a great idea from the audience, and it really shows their experience in film making. 

They also gave us their opinions on the treatment, and the audience thought our idea was a very good idea, and as long as we made the shots correct it was a great idea. This boosted our confidence, and we learnt that we needed to put a lot of effort into our film. Looking at our final product and comparing it to the feedback, a lot of the ideas were learnt from our audience, and the feedback really helped our film progress to what it is now. 

We also gave our audience a quick questionnaire, just to test if our audience could figure out the target audience, the conventions we have used and whether our story was established clearly enough. Here is an embedded audio recording of our feedback.

This questionnaire showed us that our film treatment was successful, people knew clearly from our treatment the conventions of our film, the genre and the target audience. This feedback helped us gather that our treatment was a successful one, and also our audience told us some weak points in the plot of our film that really motivated us to not mess up. As you can hear from the end of the feedback, we tried to keep our film not cheesy, and we wanted to ensure our shots are executed perfectly. This feedback also helped us greatly, mostly through motivation to do well in our film.

The next thing we gathered feedback on was our rough cut, this helped us learn a lot about our film, and how to change it to make our film better. Here is an embed of our rough cut.

<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/2An2uYUPtIE" width="560"></iframe><br />

We presented this rough cut to our class and teacher to gather feedback on it, as we have already said they are experienced audience members, who watch a lot of film, and also produce some film. So they can give a very accurate opinion on our film.

This is a summary of the feedback we were given by our audience to change in our film.

• Production company ident has been made in Livetype. That's fine, but you need to change Livetype settings to PAL and 16:9 so that it matches the rest of your film. You can change the settings and then just render & export it again. (At the moment you are using NTSC and 4:3).
• The Glam Productions ident disappears just a little too quick.
• Same applies to the film title; wrong settings and not on screen long enough.
• Establishing of shot of train station with train movement is good, but maybe the 'starring' text needs to be a little bolder.
• Music fade-up at 0.35 needs to be a little slicker (perhaps more gradual).
• Dialogue in 'swing scene' needs to be clearer (overdub whole film?) and the camera moves just at the end of the shot. You seem to fade over Stevie's last bit of dialogue.
• Love the way that the photo blows away. Was this deliberate?
• At 1.26, it isn't clear that he tried to kiss her until she slaps him. Perhaps a change of angle is called for?
• Some of the shots of Rob at the station linger just a little too long (1.58 for example). Keep the pace moving.
• Shot of Stevie at the bus stop is crying out for a focus pull.
• At 2.10 we have a shot of Rob's bum. I know he bends down into shot, but I'm not convinced that this is the best choice of shot distance. Can you make it more obvious that he is watching her?
• At 2.16 it seems funny that Rob to talking to her on the phone and then we see her raise the phone to her ear. Was he leaving a message?
• Again, the grass in the foreground is in focus and surely we want to see the characters at the bus stop?
• At 2.26 there is a sudden colour change.
• At 2.30 (and other places) the camera shutter effect is too prominent in the mix (do digital cameras have shutters?)
• Love it when she turns round and Rob ducks; good editing. Would be even better if we could see the couple in the distance from behind Rob.
• At 2.35, the POV shot is too shaky don't you think?
• At 2.42, it would be good to cut to the medium shot of Rob sitting back at the station first; before we cut to a close-up of the next photo.
• Cafe shot, at 3.05, is out of focus. Again, begging for a focus pull to Rob in the background. I expect that this is what you attempted, but it didn't quite work.
• POV shot at 3.13 works great.
• Where is the ambient sound at 3.23? We can hear the camera, so why can't we hear the wind & traffic?
• When Rob walks out of shot here (which is a good idea), he doesn't quite walk out of shot. You need him to do it in a more assertive/aggressive/intimidating manner than his previous movements; to represent the building of his emotions; moving from hurt boyfriend to suicidal psycho. The way he stays on the edge of the shot doesn't quite work; you don't need to show him at all as we know that he is still watching them. It is more tense if even the audience doesn't know where he is!
• Inconsistent ambient sounds around 3.50.
• Photo shot at 3.53 is a little weird. Wouldn't Rob be seen if he was that close?
• Tracking shot at 3.58 is effective.
• Rob still looking down at 4.16 is a little strange. The other bloke is now standing up! I know Rob is probably just hanging his head in depression, but it doesn't quite look right. Get him to look at the other character.
• At 4.18 he walks too close to the camera and the framing is now weird. This would work is Rob continued to walk towards the camera (until it goes dark) and then you can cut to the opposite view showing Rob approaching the other bloke or walking off. That would make a good march-on-action. Are there any MOAs in this film?
• Need shot/reverse shot during the dialogue between the two blokes (just before 'Joe' runs off). The editing needs to be fast pace here to represent Joe's building stress.
• At 4.42, Rob looks a little weird. I know you are using green screen, but I'm sure this can be improved now that you have a little experience.
• Cross-fade jump shots of Rob walking up the path need to be symmetrical; he should 'miss out' the same amount of path each time for this to work really well.
• When Rob stands up in the train station shelter, you cut his head off. This is sometimes ok, but you need to be able to demonstrate the advantage of only showing his torso at this point. I think you can't! Remember, you are assessed on framing; what you exclude as well as what you include.
• When he walks to the train tracks, why would he think to put down his camera/phone? He's just about to commit suicide, why would he worry? Would be more tense if he walks slowly and erect; imagine how someone would walk if they were sleep-walking; that's what I'm talking about. Would be good if you could then introduce some kind of shot of a train speeding past (perhaps via a cut-away so that Rob doesn't actually have to jump in front of a train to get the shot). Or maybe a more shocking sound effect!
• At the end, Stevie should run up the path and stop dead in her tracks; cut to close-up of her shocked face and scream; on the scream, cut to her falling to her knees (in a much more convincing way than she did here. Sorry Stevie).
• Slower fade required at the end; to represent life fading away (both his and hers).
• End credits are not good. Not enough of them and too big. Why not differentiate between the job titles and the person's name? Consider all the roles of all the people; including production crew and actors. Consider all the roles you see at the end of a real film. You can put the same person's name forward for several roles if that helps.
• Excellent use of fades throughout; even though I usually advise against using them, you've used them in a totally appropriate manner here. Well done.

This feedback helped us greatly in changing our film, we learnt a lot about it, and were very grateful for the positive and negative feedback. Without this our film would have achieved a much lower mark, and would have been a lot lower quality. So gathering feedback was definitely an essential part of our production. We did not follow every piece of feedback due to time constraints and some of them would have been difficult to implement. 

After making the changes to our film here is an embed of our final cut. 

 The feedback from our audience really helped us, and here is a quick summary of the changes the feedback inspired.

• We changed the Livetype settings on our title and ident to make it clearer and better quality so it matched the HD content of the rest of our film. 
• We made the Starring text of the titles a little bit bolder so it is more user friendly and easier to read. 
• We cut the shots at the train station a bit earlier to make it a bit more fast paced, and so it didn't linger for so long. This made the film more entertaining for the audience. 
• We edited the colour change at one of the shots as it looked unprofessional and was a generally bad shot.
• We made the shutter sounds a little less prominent throughout our film based on the feedback given.
• We replaced the shot at the start of the fight scene to something a little more easy to understand and something that adds the creepiness to scene.
• We re-filmed the green screen as there were numerous problems with it, and we had new equipment in school to film a new one with.
• We made the cross-fades as Joe is walking up the ramp more symmetrical and this made our film look a lot better.
• We re-filmed the shot of him jumping on the train tracks as this was unprofessional, so we made it look more realistic and better quality.
• We edited the credits to make them slightly longer and better. 

This feedback really helped the progression of our film, and we learnt a lot about it. Feedback was an essential part of the construction of our film.

We also gathered feedback on our poster and review. 

Here are embeds of the first draft of our poster and review.

On the Edge of Love Review



























We presented these to our teacher, as he has an experience of past movie posters and reviews, and has seen many reviews and posters in empire magazine and other places. So our teacher could give very reliable feedback on our ancillary products and whether they followed the conventions of real media products. Here is the feedback we received from our teacher about our ancillary products. 

This feedback helped us greatly improve our poster and review, we learnt a lot from our feedback and it  helped us improve them so they looked more like a real movie poster/review. 

Here is an embed of our final movie poster. 

This is the final version of our poster.

Our feedback really helped us and here is a summary of the changes our feedback inspired to make.

We have made the less important characters from the poster black and white, as they are not actually in the film, and merely part of the crowd. This allows the characters of the film to be seperated from the rest of the poster. We added the coming soon with the red lines at the side to make it a bit more like a proper movie poster. We changed the font of the title to make it look a bit better as the old font looked a tiny bit out of place. 

Here is an embed of our final movie review.


On the Edge of Love Review_Film Review TestFeedback really helped us gather information about how to change this to, and this is a summary of the changes we made to our review.

We changed the quote to something from inside the text.
We made the text slightly smaller.
We added bullet points to the look closer section.
We changed the colours of some of the texts to make the review more colour co-ordinated.
We closed a gap between the picture and the title.
We added a page number, website banner and a edition bit of text at the bottom.
Made the indents around the text slightly bigger.
Added a drop capital at the start of the text section.
Changed the size of the stars slightly so they don't touch the sides but are all the same size. 



Overall we learnt a lot from feedback gathered, and throughout our movie product and our ancillary tasks, feedback inspired a lot of changes that would not have been made without it. So feedback really helped the progression of our products and feedback should be a key part of anyones media productions.

Evaluation Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts

Here is the YouTube clip for the evaluation question two.

Evaluation Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop and challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Here is the YouTube film for our first evaluation question.