Evaluation 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?




My original idea was ‘A group of teenage boys and girls go camping on a dark moor in the middle of nowhere. They stay up all night drinking and then start to experiment with a variety drugs. After a while, they start hallucinating and becoming paranoid, the side effects from the drugs, about what they can see and hear outside the tent. A small group go investigate and leave the majority behind but they find it funny to play jokes on the rest of there friends. The group left in the tent are scared for the others out looking, not knowing its actually them playing the pranks, so they split up into groups and head out. Still influenced by the drugs, all the groups are becoming scared as there out in the dark and cant properly see what's going on around them. They find a body but cant identify who it is or whats happened to her as its so dark, they all start suspecting each other so tension and arguments begin to arise within the group. Throughout the film as the drugs are having a stronger effect and taking over the shots are increasingly from point of views so you don't know if its real life or hallucinating.’

Our target audience for our production is the youth audience so 15-24 year old male and females (although it could be argued even though it has a bbfc rating of 15 a younger audience may still be able to view our film due to piracy or if an older person rents out the film and they watch it)

We presented our original ideas to our class which was extremely useful as our class consisted of approximately 20 17-18 year old boys and girls which is our target audience. We discussed issues regarding each others ideas such as factors which make it difficult; lighting, location and narrative. We also added in ideas to each others project which would make the idea more realistic or scary.
Once deciding on groups we discussed ideas further and combined ideas taking aspects from each which would be most successful.
Throughout the process we continually asked our target audience for their views on ideas or footage we had taken. We would then reflect on what they had said and improve it if possible.
We originally thought we could show a clip in black and white to represent a different time period of a young girl seeing her mother and father arguing over her father cheating on her mother. We thought this could be an added motive for the protagonist killing the girls as she has already experienced relationships when people cheat on each other. Including this would mean we could have also shown an authoritive figure however, when we told our audience feedback about this they didn’t like the idea as it seemed to confusing and being rejected by the male was enough of a motive for the killings.

Our audience feedback helped us on parts of our trailer such as when the protagonist Lucy cuts her leg shaving there was a shot of her shaving her leg and then the next shot was of her leg bleeding and we were intending on putting a voice over of her saying 'ouch' but our audience feedback told us if we added another shot in the middle of Lucys reaction to cutting her leg then this would create a 'shot reverse shot' therefore including more shot variety.
In one of our first drafts we wanted to show straight away that Lucy was a sexually active character so we included a conversation between her and Sophie saying how she wasnt sure which boy she fancied and then listed 3 names. Doing this lets the audience know she is a 'slaggy' character but our audience feedback made us realise that a trailer needs to be quick shots and including this makes the shots too long.

In one of our draft cuts we had Lucy and Sophie meet Tom outside the bar who was Sophies boyfriend who says ‘ iv got a friend for you mate’ this was to show that Lucy and Sam are on a pre-set date. After showing this footage to our target audience they felt this clip was unnecessary as you can establish Sam and Lucy are on a date by the location of being in a bar. Also, when we were filming this clip is was raining, windy and dark which made the sound on the clip hard to hear. After we had taken this clip out it meant there was 1 male character and 4 female characters which may mean males are less interested in our film as there are less characters to relate too.

After we had made changes to our trailer we asked our target audience for feedback again to see whether they had liked the changes we had made. Emily, gave us some positive feedback as she told us she “liked how we had re-filmed the bedroom scenes and there was now more shot variety than before which created tension and was more fast paced”

We realised that our 'getting ready footage' which consists of Lucy and Sophie applying make up and straightening their hair was too dull and was featured in many horror films so we decided to add a shot of Lucy putting a CD in the CD player and when she presses play the music comes in for the audience. Our target audience really liked this idea as it is a different idea and makes it clear to the audience the characters are getting ready to go out.

Also, to make our trailer more fast paced, when Lucy and Theo are in the bar she says 'so are we going back to mine then?' clothes being thrown onto the floor are intercut into this shot and the shot is shown again when there in the bedroom. Doing this makes Lucy seem a stronger character type and again adds to her being a sexually active character as in horror films it is typically the male who makes sexual comments.

When we showed our first draft to our audience they told us why the 3 girls were dying wasn't coming across to them. This happened as Laura and I new the storyline well we presumed the audience new more then they did. From this feedback we then added a picture of Theo and the 3 victims and each time someone dies you see them being cut out of the photo and the last shot of Theo alone in the photo. We added sound effects when the photo flashed up to make it stand out more.

The first original killing was of a blonde girl being killed by a hairdryer. After showing this footage to our audience it was apparant they could immediatly tell who the killer was as she was too visible in the shots which is the opposite of what we wanted as we wanted it to be an unknown killer. We decided to reshoot the killing completly and have it in a new location to hopefully create more shot variety. This killing is when the victim opens the door and greets the killer as she knows who the killer is but is unaware at that point that she is going to kill her. This is an intertextual reference to Scream as Drew Barrymoore pulls the mask away from the killer and recognises who it is. Our audience liked how we had done this as it is more uncommon in horrors for the victims to made a comment about the killer just before they are killed.
One of the main problems our audience told us about our trailer was there needs to be more narrative enigma around the killer. Looking back we could have done this by having the killer wear a mask, gloves or hat as in one of the killings you can see the back of the killers head and see her brown hair.

http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=1645392058161487385&postID=5160553765919682563
(link to specific audience feedback taken throughout the production process)

Poster
After showing our poster to our potential audience we decided it would look better if you could see the actors on the sofa but then have a black background behind them were we could add text and other images. So using the magic wand tool we edited out the background. Our audience feedback also told us to move the billing block to the bottom of the poster instead of the top as this is a common code and convention of horror posters.
We also decided we needed something to signify it is a horror genre (although the font used for the tagline is a specific horror font we thought we needed more) so we took a photo of a hooded figure, eyes and a hand holding a knife.

We took all 3 photos so we had a varied choice of photos we could use. We asked our target audience whether they liked the images we had taken and which ones best and why. From this we decided to use the hand holding a knife as this is a phallic object and links into the narrative of the trailer as one of the victims is killed with a knife. We didn't use the hooded figure as the image isn't dark enough and you can see too much of the actors face. The image of eyes is one that we used as is gives a aspect of msytery as you can only see her eyes and not the rest of her face, it also gives a sense of 'being watched' .
The updated poster with the billing block moved to the bottom, reviews at the top and the bloody hand holding a knife.



Magazine cover
We made two different copies of magazine covers and changed them after our audience feedback told us our first one didn’t look like a typical magazine cover due to factors such as;
the masthead is too small and doesn't fit across the top part of the magazine.
The blocks of empty spaces should have been filled up with text and the text is predominatly on the top half of the magazine instead of being spread out evenly.
Needs to include more detail about other films which were also being released.
The edges of the image need to be edited more cleanly and less jagged.

In the second magazine cover we predominantly used black and red colours to signifiy blood and death which ties into the horror genre and the audience will associate these colours with the genre too. I applied alot of my research to the new poster by looking into the language used such as 'trouble on set' however, it may be difficult for the audience to make the link between 'trouble on set' and the exclusive with 'A date from Hell'. Also, the majority of magazine covers had a 'must see movies section' so I added this to the magazine to make it look more realistic and it gives the audience a taste of what to find inside if it was a real magazine.
Overall, I feel the second magazine cover looks alot more realistic and has more similarities to actual film magazines. However, if I was to do the magazine cover again, I may add a 'film-strip effect' with a variety of clips from the film as this is commonly used in industry. I would also apply the 'rule of thirds' by having the features of my film on the right hand side of the cover, the picture in the middle and the general features of other films on the left as this follows the audience reading the cover from right to left while my cover is the other way around.