Evaluation Questions for my media A2 coursework.

1. Tuesday Bramley

2.  Before starting my A2 coursework of creating my trailer I conducted a lot of format research on horror trailers. This was by
watching them online, reading reviews as well as on YouTube seeing how popular certain trailers were. I could also start to
understand what conventions and codes were in a horror trailer which then led me to be able to make a horror trailer with
certain conventions in the trailer. One of the main conventions I followed was having a scream or a sound right at the end of
the trailer when the last scene or title screen appears. I decided to follow this convention however I added my own
convention to this by waiting until the last few seconds of the last title screen to then play a scream so it would catch the
audience but also makes them wonder what happened to the character and why is there a scream. Another convention was
what was shown in horror trailers; there is always a lot of fast cuts in the middle and towards the end. I wanted to do this so
the audience recognized it was a horror genre and I believed they would whilst watching my trailer as the fast cuts were
when the characters were in danger or we saw the ‘villain’ this goes along with a convention.
 Another convention I found whilst watching horror trailers is they always show that someone has died or is dying in the
trailer. I decided against this as I didn't want any of my characters to die in the trailer and then the audience would already
know I wanted to keep the suspense of whether they survive or not. Looking further into forms and conventions of horror I
found that horror trailers don’t often follow a narrative. Although the actual film will follow a narrative the trailer it doesn't as it
would give too much away. Narrative theorist Todorov states that most films follow a narrative theory but not in the trailer.
The trailers I looked at was Scream and Saw. These gave me ideas which again i added my creativity to, which made it
unique but also sticking to the media conventions to a horror trailer was realistic.

3.  I have learnt a lot from audience feedback I believe that it is very important as it was
a guide to me where I was going wrong or if my work was not following codes and
conventions of my genre. But also the audience feedback gave me ideas to already
add to my work and as they were target audience who gave back ideas it helped
overall improve my work. I got audience feedback from social media, talking to my
peers, questionnaires and group discussions all of which were very helpful. I believe
though that social media was the best way to get audience feedback as I targeting
my audience for which I was aiming my work at and asked for their feedback They
were clear, in the format it was set it was also easy to understand and as more
people saw my work I got more feedback and discussions on what was good and
worked well and in certain areas I could improve my work. I feel that through the
process of actually filming the editing my trailer I have learnt for when I come to edit
in the future that if I have certain ideas planned in my head or have an idea about
something I should always get audience feedback as they always can tell me
whether it is a good or a bad thing but also they can add ideas to make it even
better.
 If i did not have audience feedback I believe my trailer would not be to the standard
it is of now as well as attracting my target audience as after feedback i changed
certain aspects to attract them. Having audience feedback also helps as the director
i didn't see certain things which they picked up on such as sound not matching the
video or the colour of the scene not right.

4.  When I was creating my film trailer as well as my poster and magazine front cover I always made sure there was
link of my horror genre throughout and that the audience could tell it was for the same film as well as being
creative for all three so they were not really similar. The main things which were shown throughout these were
the fonts, colours, costume of my villain and the characters. I used one main costume for my villain throughout
the three tasks. However for my trailer the villain can be easily recognizable in a white cloak, with blood
splattered over it and the audience are unable to see the face of the person wearing the costume. This straight
away made a link for me to use whilst doing the ancillary task of using this character however I decided to go
against the conventions of doing that instead used two different gravestones which linked well with my movie
instead as I beloved it gave the audience a bigger range for them to not just see the character but also other
objectives which was linked to my trailer. Fonts and colour were also very important to the trailer as I decided to
have the same house style for my trailer, poster and front cover to help connect all three of them together. This
lead to our audience could associate the colours to each work. The colour was also very important as I wanted to
have the same font for all three. After doing research I decided against this and went with the convention of
having all three different fonts. As they were all different ways of promoting my trailer I wanted to attract the
different audiences using different fonts and believe I did so by choosing to go with the conventions.
 Looking back at my ancillary texts to my main product i can see how far i have come and improved by just how
more confident and comfortable using programmes but also how my quality of work overall has improved.

5.  First of all to show my research, development, my work and my evaluation, I set up a
blog on the site blogger. I would then be able to post daily of the work I was doing and
how I was using media technologies. The first stage was research which I used Google
for. This was so I could research film posters and magazine front covers, I could also
see reviews about them online. I also used YouTube which I used to watch horror
trailer but not just to watch I could also see comments from users of the site to see
what they liked or disliked about the trailer which started it help me think about what
my trailer would have in it. When I started to construct my work this was when I started
to edit my trailer as well as editing the ancillary tasks to record my scenes I also used a
tripod to make sure there were no shaky scenes but also so it looked professional.
 I used a programme Adobe premier to edit my trailer and create it on that programme,
I first of all found a soundtrack and using YouTube converter added it to the Adobe
programme and started to edit my trailer on that along with it going with my chosen
song. For the evaluation I decided to do a directors commentary over the top of my
trailer to say why I decided to do certain things and speak about the conventions and
why I had go along with them or had chosen not to. I also talked about my feedback
from audience and how it influenced my trailer. I also used Microsoft PowerPoint to
write out my answers to the questions but also to put it then on slide share. I believe
my blog was the main aspect of showing off my work.