Final Evaluation Section 3

Audience feedback helped us to get the best final result for our trailer, poster and magazine cover. Before putting the music to our trailer we asked a few members of our group if the trailer made sense to them and whether they had enough time to read the text. This was helpful as it meant we could get the lengths of the clips right before we made our music to fit the production. With our poster we used a more formal way of gathering audience feedback, this was by giving our questionnaires to a selection of people. Once we had got these back it meant we could see which poster design was their favourite and also if we needed to change anything on it. We also asked a selection of people what they thought about our magazine cover so we could do the same.

We used digital technologies in all of the stages of our project. For the planning and research phases we used Youtube to look at existing film trailers, IMDb to get an idea of what movies sold and what sort didn't, Google to see existing film posters and the Total Film website to look at magazine covers.

Once it got to the construction stages we started to use more technical programmes. For example when we first started to create our music I had a go on the programme Logic. However this proved very difficult as I had not used it before so we ended up using Garage Band because I felt it was easier to use. For our animatic and trailer we used the editing programme Imovie. I had already used this in my AS level production so I found it fairly easy to use although some of the more technical features took a while to use. To create our poster and magazine cover we used the programme PaintShop Pro which I was already familiar with as I use it in other subjects. This allowed us to experiment with different features and effects to create impressive outcomes. All of the pictures that were taken through out the construction stage had been shot on a Sony A 330 which is a digital SLR. Unfortunately we could not use this to film our trailer with as it does not have a record setting so instead we used a Canon DC310 camcorder.

The web site blogger.com has been used to create posts on the research, planning and other stages that have been involved in our coursework. This has been a useful way of working because there is no need to email work back and forth from school, also I find that my work is in a better organised format.

There are a couple of things I would have improved if I were to go back and do it again. For example I have already mentioned in my evaluation that we had to make a second story board which resulted in us going out to film a number of different times. This meant we had a shorter period of time to edit our final trailer. I believe if we had accessed a high definition camcorder then some of the shots would have given our trailer a more professional look as some of the clips with low levels of light looked a bit grainy. I was very happy with the outcome of the poster and the only improvement that I would have made to it was getting more of the axe in the image that the tree so the poster looked less confusing.

The final change that I am considering still to make is to mute the clip with the swearing. This is so our trailer could be shown to a wider audience. However when I did mute the clip it made the plot far less obvious. If I had more time I would go back to the location and re film this scene, making sure that we did not include a swear word in the narrative.