Audience Feedback

Responses

"It's short and quick and the character's are introduced clearly so you know what is happening".
"The crop offers an origanal part to the trailer".
"Set's up enigma's"
"The king and joker cards clear up the roles of the characters".
"The pace fits the music".
"The woman glancing was quite slow".

Rob Maclean - Evaluation

Introduction

In my A2 media project I worked in a group of three myself, James Laraway and Hannah Gilrane. At the beginning we were unsure as to what type of piece we were going to produce but eventually we felt that the soap opera trailer and poster combination was the perfect task for our group, as all three of us enjoy and have watched soap’s in the past. Our trailer consisted of a poker scene that involved a love triangle that was the current hot topic of our invented soap, Challenge Way. For our ancillary tasks we designed and made a series of posters and one front cover to a TV listings magazine.

Our main intentions was to aim our piece at the 16-35 year old female group and the elder women lower middle class/ working class as these people are the most likely to enjoy soap operas. We used the GRASS guidelines to locate our audience. I made my most serious contributions toward the trailer piece, both the editing, writing and music for the piece. I also posted some links between our poker scene and the regular poker scenes shown for TV advertisements and from viewing these you can see where we got inspiration for our end product. I also put forward a few posters for the ancillary tasks, showing how the cards (King, Queen and Joker) all link back to the image we had created for the main protagonists. During the making of our trailer I acted in the shooting and also shot some of the scenes. I also researched a range of musical scores before stumbling across the perfect track to complement the mood of our trailer.

When we finished shooting I did a rough edit of our piece before cutting and selecting the best pieces to fit in our trailer. I was more than happy with the range of shot’s that we had made and therefore I could achieve the fast-paced editing finish that so many other poker advertisements have. After cutting all the pieces I had to re-range them to vaguely follow our storyboard before fine-tuning the pace and colour of the clips. I gave the final edit a Hollywood style colour-graded image as this is in keeping with most soap trailers. I then edited the music into the piece, having to cut and change the song in order for it to reflect what is happening on screen. I then designed two posters of the cards and characters to go toward the ancillary task. I also took the photograph of Blackburn that led to being our soap logo.

Genre

After looking into genre in class our group understood that it was extremely important for us to get across the main conventions of soap in our media product. In the trailer and posters we also wanted to highlight the dark gangster image of the poker scene that was in keeping with the persona of the storyline (love triangle). Our group decided to follow the genre cycle (Graeme Burton 2000) in order to satisfy the needs of the audience, which are expecting to indulge in the classic codes and conventions that every soap trailer delivers. We knew that in order for the audience to experience pleasure we had to get a brand image and look (gangster theme which is often only specific to the current storyline such as the gangster in Challenge Way who influences the image of our trailer) this is guaranteed to excite the audience. Burton also said that, “Genres are created through repetition and recognition leading to anticipation and expectation” and this shows that audiences do not want to be tricked are surprised, they like to be able to predict what happens next and our group decided to follow this belief. I used many shots in the production of our trailer in order for the genre to highlighted in the final piece. Shot’s such as the split-screen eye close up showed the passion between the three people and also the shots of the good guy and the gangster trying to intimidate one another with the eye contact shows the gangster genre. Shots such as the card flick and the close up shot of the chip tossing are often shown in gangster scenes, such as the poker scene of on Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.

Lock Stock – Poker Scene

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Here in this scene you can draw many similar cuts and techniques that we use in our final piece. The first person view of leaving the poker table is very similar to our cut of Hannah walking toward it. Also many of the people in the scene are drinking alcohol, which is the same as our gangster.

It is important in soap operas to create a sub-genre and we believe our gangster style presentation of this from our trailer fulfils this need. The feedback gathered said that the narrative and understanding of the trailer was excellent and they could easily say which genre the piece belonged in whilst knowing that it was a TV trailer. The ancillary tasks are very typical of the genre also. I felt that the magazine front cover was in keeping with the classical soap look and also the posters carried through the idea of the gangster sub-genre.

Here you can see that the black background and font deliver the dark gangster genre style that we were aiming to deliver in this campaign. It is finally notable that we did not want to achieve the Coronation Street look as this type of soap is more upbeat and bright. We wanted our soap to look like a Northern version of Eastenders, with its dark look and murder-based storylines.

We also took a shot of all three of us together for our ancillary taks in order for the poster collection to be complete. With the girl in the middle of the two characters it actually seems like the two men are fighting for her, the black background and red text gives the connotations of darkness and danger, highlitghting the relationship between the three of them.

We also used a range of props to further our gangster genre image and make it seem as though we were playing a real game of poker for the woman. These props add to the poker scene image and will make the audience instantly denote the props to know what scene we are setting.

Finally I believed that the caption, “Love is a game, but there can only be one winner” could also be linked back to the sub-genre, as it shows that murder is a possibility in this storyline.

Branding

Our brand image is constantly referred to during both the TV trailer and ancillary tasks. The brand image itself was to appeal to our specific audience and therefore it had to be familiar (similar to other brand images from this genre).

The logo itself was taken by myself from Sherbrow road in Blackburn. It is an image of the town centre and more importantly Challenge Way in Blackburn. The picture labels very familiar places/ the ‘hot spots’ of Blackburn so that more people can recognize it. Our logo, I feel, is very typical of most soap logo’s. The image can be compared to the Eastenders logo as it simply an image of the city of London. The logo can be compared to the Coronation Street logo, as both fonts are a very similar style. This was done deliberately as we wanted our audience to be familiar already with our product.

The final piece has links to our brand image as we have used the same font when it is finished as the logo has. It says Challenge Way and then shows the start time and this is done for the audience to already familiarise themselves with the soap brand image that we wish to deliver.

Also the ancillary tasks show our brand image. The magazine front cover is very typical of a soap opera as it is glitzy and cheap looking. This shows the classical soap genre image and can therefore deliver the image that we wish to show about our soap. The big stars with the important information and the image of the three main characters is very similar to most magazine covers and utterly typifies the image that soaps such as Coronation Street and Eastenders have.

Audience Feedback

Before we even began our media product we had to find and pinpoint the target audience that we aimed our media product at. We used the classic GRASS method to locate our target audience. The gender we chose was female as soap opera's are very often linked to being enjoyed and watched regulary by females. The race we chose was White- British as it is this race of people that is most common on soap opera's and therefore the audience can relate to the cast and characters. The age that we discovered was middle- aged women (40 - 60) as these people very often  enjoy watching light, short entertainment such as soap's. They are likely to also enjoy the stroyline of a love-triangle. The Socio-economic status we chose was the Lower class as soap opera's such as Coronation Street and Eastenders centre round this class of people.

We also opted to use Psychographic Profiling instead of the Demographic Profiling as the Psychographic is more recent and can be linked to closely to people of the regular times. We believe we are aiming our media product at the mainstream audience as the Lower- Class take up the majority of the population and can therefore follow a product in great numbers, such as a soap. We further narrowed down the audience of our media product by using the 1980s/1990s Lifestyle Groupings list. SINBAD, SILKS and SITCOM's all seem to relate to the target audience that would watch our piece. All three relate to women some single yet some with children yet all three are likely to enjoy soap opera's as a way of using escapism to get away from their mundane lives. We also checked Maslow's hierachy of needs to see if our program can fulfill and basic human need. I believe our program can help with a persons security of morality as the program can identify to the audience who is living a poor quality of life and who is not. The audience are likely to compare themselves to the characters to see whether they are living a good life or not.

Before we started our task we were able to gain the follwing feedback.

This date told us that the love triangle was the most popular storyline out of the choice we had created and therefore we chose to do this, we had a wide target audience including parents and classmates. After we finished our piece we handed out some questionares to fill in about how good our product was and these were the responses.

The data we collected said that every person thought that our product worked well and that they all understood the storyline and the symbolism used on the poker cards. This was particually pleasing as we thought that it would be relativly hard to follow. Many people believed that we should improve our audio which I did after the advice.

 

Media Technologies

In this project I feel that we used a wide range of media technologies in order for us to obtain the final image that we wanted for our soap. We used a range of software to manipulate our images and footage so that it looked more and more like a TV trailer.

(Image of us sitting at computer)

The main software that I used during production was Final Cut Express. The programme itself was fairly similar to iMovie and therefore I could pick it up much more quickly. At the start I was simply using the cutting tools to break the clip down from 20 minutes of footage, to just the 1 minute 30 seconds that we needed. This was a difficult task as there was many good shots that needed to be cut out of the final edit, as there simply was not enough time to show it all. As I used Final Cut Express more often I was able to become more expressive in the final product. I started to cut the clips down to just one or two seconds before cutting to another shot that was similar to the first so that the audience could experience a range of interesting shot types. For example at the start I used a shot of Hannah walking toward the table, to her first person shot of the table and then a shot of her sitting at the table, instead of just using one shot. I then began to use transitions to make the cuts more attractive and free flowing. The next tool I used to add to the creativeness of the final piece was the rewinding clip of the cards and of the chip toss.

I used the time effect to make it reverse, as it was cool and interesting for the audience to enjoy in the trailer. If this effect was used in the actual programme it would be very unsuccessful but because this is a TV trailer it fit the style. I then learnt to use cross cutting in order to show more shots at one time and also make the characters look as if they were staring at each other. Another thing that I learnt was how to import the music and manipulate it to fit what is happening in the trailer, I felt that it was very difficult to cut the track down without the audience hearing a skip and therefore this was very difficult. Another thing that I used with Final Cut was the pages with the text to highlight our brand image. I had originally imported our logo to be seen at the end of the trailer however this was not in keeping with the style of the TV trailer. The last thing that I learnt to on Final Cut was the colour grading. I used this colour grading to take away any views the audience may have of the background of our filming location and finally to give the trailer the Hollywood affect that so many TV trailers have.



I felt that Final Cut Express was possibly the best Media Technology that I worked with during this coursework as it helped me to create a very interesting and attractive TV trailer.
I also used Indesign and Photoshop during this coursework in order for me to make a poster for the ancillary task. I found this software to be quite tedious as the cutting out of an object to plenty of time however the end product looked very stylish.

I also used the camera’s to help film our product and also to take images that would help our product. I used the camera for many different shots in the production of our media product using many different shot types to make interesting cuts in our final piece. I also used the camera to record the storyboard. I then used the stills camera to take the shot our logo and also the shots of the equipment that we had used.

I used many websites in the making of our product and the most important was probably Jamendo.com, the site which I found both our potential musical tracks. I was very surprised to find a version of ‘The House of the Rinsing Sun’ on Jamendo and was extremely happy at doing so as it was the perfect track to use for our piece.

I also used Blogger.com a lot to show what I was up to in this coursework. I posted about the music, how the editing was going and also the storyboards during this coursework.

I also used Youtube.com to post my final video on. The video I posted was unfinished, as I needed to post it early to get more responses. The video can be found at

To conclude I found that the media technology used was a massive help to our final product. It was helpful as we could experiment with our work to get its best look. It was also very helpful for research and finding the perfect musical piece.

Conclusion

To conclude I found that our research and planning of the media product was excellent, as we needed to find many different TV trailers before starting our own to get a feel of the style of one. We planned our products as best we could however in the Trailer itself we often went against the storyboard to put more interesting cuts in however speaking in general we stuck to the direction of the storyline.

I felt that I did extremely well in working with the group as I played a major part in the practical work done (filming, editing) and could therefore call the final piece work one that I had contributed majorly toward. I was extremely strong in both my research and planning as I showed the group a range of poker scenes and other TV trailers that could influence us. My weakness was probably in not blogging as much as other people as I was very involved in the editing and filming however the blogs that I had posted were specific and made good points.

Finally I felt that the coursework was very strong in places shown in the final piece and the ancillary task which both looked good. I wish I had contributed more towards the blog however my time spent on editing was extremely useful shown in the final piece.