Evaluation Question Three

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

What have we learnt from audience feedback concerning our trailer development?

We deconstructed the trailers of Franklyn, Minority Report, Nineteen Eighty Four, iRobot, Blade Runner, Gattaca, V for Vendetta, Equilibration and The Matrix. Our overall trailer convention list can be found here.

The most vital feedback we received was on our trailer. We uploaded the trailer to YouTube, promoting it through our personal Facebook accounts and through Twitter by linking it to trending ‘hashtags’. Our draft trailer had the following audience demographic: We found that most of our audience lived in the UK, most likely our friends through Facebook. However a small amount of people from the USA and Canada have watched the trailer also. We found that it is most popular with females between the ages of 13 and 24 and males between the ages of 25-34. One of the issues with the YouTube statistics feature is that anonymity allows for misinformation.

We made the following changes to the trailer because of feedback we have received:         

• We removed the shot of our heroine being dragged along the floor. This is because of the genre issues we had, our feedback led us to believe it may have made the trailer look like a slasher. We also wanted to decrease the importance of the romantic sub story within the trailer because one viewer told us it detracted from the thrill.
• We made the news montage shorter. This was for two reasons, firstly that our trailer was too long already and didn’t meet convention in this way. Secondly that some viewer commented that the pace of the beginning could be faster.
• Some viewers believed that the narrative should be clearer. However our research into teaser trailers as opposed to theatrical trailers told us that the amount of narrative we revealed was appropriate. Our teaser trailer research can be found here. 

• In terms of the sound element of our trailer, the audience noticed two errors we had not picked up on. Firstly, between the beginning montage and the political speech shot, we wanted silence to emphasise the sound of the tv static and coloured bars so as to illustrate a definite change. However the backing track continued between these few shots. Secondly, during the speech, the sound changes according to the setting in which it is being played. Between the hall and the pub, the sound continues in one way then the pitch changes halfway through the shot. We rectified both these issues thanks to our audience feedback.
• Lastly while playing our trailer in the controlled feedback session, we noticed that the sound was being compressed on the larger speakers which created level issues and unwanted noise. We found that on smaller speakers that this was not a problem.

Draft trailer:

Final Trailer:

What have we learnt from audience feedback concerning our poster design?

Our initial poster research included research into set out, archetypal poster designs and appealing to different audiences. We deconstructed the posters of Franklyn, Minority Report, 1984, Blade Runner, Gattaca, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, iRobot, V for Vendetta, Equilibrium, and The Matrix and then summarised what we believed were the conventions of posters within the thriller genre. We then took images we would like to emulate, turning these into poster ideas.

After initially designed our posters, we asked a small demographic of majorly teenage male and females to vote on their favourite design. These poster designs can be found here. We found that the most popular tag line was ‘A Society Fed on Lies is About to Get a Taste of the Truth’ and that the image of the Prime Minister, with it’s bright colours and contrasting text and background, appealed to this niche audience. When researching audience theory, we came to believe that our audience are between the ages of 18-30, are male, interested in thriller books and movies, are middle class, and are educated to a higher level.

(Although the audience we asked were not this targeted audience, it did allow us to get vital feedback.) From this point we developed our poster further using the feedback we got from our audience and from our Media Studies teachers. The main issue we approached was that of genre: we believed people were becoming misled as to which genre our film was. The use of the flag background suggested the social realism genre and the juxtaposition of the rebel symbol and the union jack suggested a political drama. In order to make the genre clear, we had to change the design to create a sense of a world alien to our own. We did this through the mirroring of the two images, black rectangles which censored the character’s mouths, a monochrome colour scheme with contrasting coloured anchorage and the static effect over the Prime Minister’s image. For our entire justification of our final design, click here. Due to the genre issues we have already explained, we believed that the second tag line was linking our trailer too extensively to a political drama and to some extent to conflicts like those involving the IRA. Moreover, we wanted our audience to be on the side of the rebel group, not have the choice between the two. Therefore we decided to use the first tag line; it aligns the audience to the rebel side of the conflict.

What have we learnt from audience feedback concerning our website design?

We began our website research by deconstructing the webpages of The Matrix, Gattaca, Blade Runner and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, then made a list of overall conventions. 

Our website received less constructive feedback, perhaps due to a less complicated design process and more easily met codes and conventions. To see our development post click here. The set out of our website, with central home page and two other pages, one for each opposing side, meant that it was easy to create. We created a sense of the contrast using different videos for the backgrounds of each. The feedback we received was limited to a need for a ‘back’ button to take the user back to the central home page. For all of our website research including website development, click here. Alongside the trailer and poster, the title font changed as we attempted to achieve conventions of the thriller genre. The overall final webpage design justification can be found here.

In conclusion, audience feedback allowed us to modify our trailer to improve its continuity, to polish up the editing and to fully achieve the conventions of our genre. It was vital to the development of our trailer and ancillary tasks.The full achievement of the conventions of the soft sci-fi thriller genre can be seen in our final audience questionnaire:

Evaluation Question Four

HOW DID YOU USE MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH, PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGES?

In the process of planning, creating and evaluating our film trailer, poster and website, we used many different media technologies. 

CREATION

• Wix - We used Wix, a free website creation site, to make our website homepages. It allowed us to make a dual-homepage system to continue our theme of the two sides of the freedom of speech. When technical problems arose with the site, we considered using Microsoft Publisher instead, but found that the professional quality of the Wix sites were worth the hassle of working around issues. 
• Photoshop - We used Adobe Photoshop to manipulate our photos and create our poster designs.
• iMovie - We used iMovie to edit and arrange our footage for our trailer and the background videos for our website. A prime example of this being combined with other media technologies was when we decided, following audience feedback, to change our montage to give it more of a sci-fi feel, by putting blue filters over the news footage and cropping it in more 'artistic' ways.

• Camera and Tripod - We used both of these to capture our original footage and create exciting and individual shots.
• DVDs and TVs - To give the sense of the political speech being shown nationwide, we burnt it to a DVD and filmed it being played on several different TVs and screens.

SOCIAL NETWORKING

• Facebook - We created a Facebook group for our team to post links, organise meetings and for general discussion of ideas. We also created a fan group for the film which the public can like and follow for up-to-date news. Later, we used Facebook to create a poll on which of our initial poster designs were best, and shared our intial trailer draft there to get feedback from our target audience.
• YouTube - We found all of our news footage on YouTube, as well as our non-diegetic music. We created our own channel, where we posted our trailer drafts and the background videos for our website. 
• Twitter - We set up a Twitter newsfeed, with the tweets being directly shared to our Facebook group and blog.
• Tumblr - We shared our poster designs and initial trailer draft to Tumblr to create interest and promote our blog. 
• Blogger - We used Blogger to organise and collate all of our research into a managable system, using tags for easy access. 

 

OTHER MEDIA

• YouTube Converters - We used several converters to get news footage and music from YouTube, for our trailer.
• DaFont - We downloaded our poster and blog fonts, Dink and SteelTongs from this site.
• SurveyMonkey - We created several surveys on this site to get audience feedback.
• Photobucket and Flickr - We set up several accounts on both sites to create a photostream to our blog, however, technical difficulties prevented them from working.

Going Viral!

Visit our Facebook group, our Twitter feed, our Trailer or YouTube Account, final poster design or website.

Final Poster Idea

Our final poster idea; we changed the layout because our strongest design was the political one, with the union flag background and the "lies/truth" tagline, however, when seen without the other three posters, it does not effectively convey our genre, looking more like a political social realism drama than a soft sci-fi thriller.

We used the idea from our landscape poster, the two faces, two give the sense of the "mirror image"part of the narrative. This is a similar layout to the Equilibrium poster, which suggested the rivalry and shows it to be a character-focused film. We used monochrome photographs becase it directs the focus to the faces without drawing it away from the tagline and title. We added the black rectangles to their mouths because it shows the absence of freedom of speech whilst drawing on connotations of anonymity and news footage where eyes and faces are blacked out. We covered Jon's photo with TV static to implicate him in the shutting down of the news networks.

The background is an image of a staircase that Luke jumps down in the trailer; it gives the poster a very urban, "grungy" feel, inkeeping with our ideas from the Social Stage theory. Staircases are also a convention of thrillers, and the strange angle of the image invokes ideas of Escher's stairs, playing the psychological side of our narrative - that no one is winning, and the fight is just going round in circles. We kept it monochrome to stick to the colour scheme and so it would not detract from the photographs of Jon and Luke.

We changed our font from "Dink" to "SteelTongs" because, again, we felt Dink gave it too much a social realism feel and we wanted something crisper that would convey the political side, as well as the rebellious side. The font and the colour scheme of the tagline and title are very similar to those from the Tinker Tailor Solider Spy poster. The tagline is in the middle of the poster, separating the antagonist and protagonist, a metaphor for their different causes. We put the title in red so it completely stands out from the rest of the poster, as it sets the tone for the whole film, and as it joins their shoulders, so the feeling of Dysphoria is the one thing they have in common. Underneath the title we put the date - 21/12/2012 - the film is released; we chose this date for the connotations of the Mayan calender, when the world ends, suggesting the completely revolutionary nature of the narrative of the film. We removed anything separating the numbers, to give it the feel of a code, as with the Tinker Tailor Solider Spy website, the date of its release is the access code.

Developed Poster Designs

We developed our initial poster designs with better quality photos and editing, also incorporating our second tagline, credits and date.

Universal Pictures International - Sales and Distribution Work Experience

I went for a one week work experience placement at UPI, in London, in the Sales and Distribution area which works on the promotional packages and marketing for Universal films across the world, liaising with headquarters in the US and Japan.
The promotional packages include:
- all posters (Bus side, Billboard, Premiere, Cinema, 3D cardboard cut outs, Magazine, Character and Collector) and
- all trailers (Teaser, Theatrical, TV spots, Radio and Online) for each ‘territory’.

A ‘Territory’ is decided by language (and a poster/trailer’s need for translation/ subtitles/dubbing). For example, France is counted as 2 territories because parts speak Swiss-French and others Dutch-French.

Posters:

The commercial process of creating posters has to conflicting objectives: CREATIVE verses LEGAL.
For contract reasons certain actors need to appear at certain sizes and with names in a certain order. Confirmation is needed from the Director and the actor before images can be used.

Each territory has poster preferences in order to create different social responses. See the examples from the 2010 reimagining of ‘The Wolfman’.

UK – Emily Blunt is a British star, Conventions of a supernatural Horror (eg. full moon, mist, forests, isolated vulnerable girl), monster is shrouded in mystery – one of the film’s hooks

French – Creates an ambiance of a thriller or mystery. The implication is that the narrative is sophisticated and character driven.

This poster (possibly Turkish) highlights the Romance element of the narrative and shows their relationship to be of importance. These actors may also be hooks to see the film.

Japan (which is the only country which Universal lets have complete creative control over their production material because Japanese culture is very different to the rest of the world)
 – This poster fits conventions of supernatural but the splashes of red have slasher connotations as well. However, the middle text actually explains most of the narrative (even one of the main plot twists) which implies that the story is in some ways prophetic.

This poster of ‘The Unborn’ (2009)  appears with a skirt on (in varying lengths) for some Asian countries, for example Malaysia.

Posters must conform to convention to indicate the genre but also subvert the viewer’s expectations and be in synch with the trailers, usually through colour or motif.

Feedback and revision of posters happens in small groups with the director, this is to gauge audience perception and the success of the work. [Cost is crucial to what can be produced.]

When I enquired as to what was considered a ‘bad poster’ the team suggested ‘floating head’ posters because they do not effectively convey anything except the actors who will appear in the film.

Each of these posters are for the same film yet show it from completely different angles.

UPI explained that different film angles sell better in different nationalities. For example, in Japan emotion is key, and in Asia explosions and action are popular.

Even in one country each poster series for a film may show it differently. Sometimes this is to attract different demographics.

For the demographics populations are divided into 4 categories:

In some countries posters may vary for social reasons. In the UK guns can appear on posters but cannot be pointing out of the poster. In some countries tolerance for nudity, guns and smoking is different and sometimes removed to avoid offense.

'Franklyn' Film Poster Deconstruction

The poster for 'Franklyn' uses dull colours to emphasise the dark nature, and mood, of the film. The smoky texture and city image at the bottom (which includes Big Ben) is reminiscent of London during the Industrial Revolution. The texture of the poster is also quite grainy, and this shows that the film is not a clean and sharp picture, adding realism to it. The characters' costumes too use dull browns and greys, and even the light streak, which cuts across the poster, isn't excessively bright.

The expression of the two men tell the audience about their characters. Ryan Phillippe's character, who is centred with an aggressive slanting stance and a stern facial expression is obviously the more masculine of the men. Sam Riley's character looks more worried and has his hands in his pocket. His head is slanted forwards and he is looking up and out of the poster at the audience (the only character to do this). This gives the audience the impression that he is the more sensitive, or less masculine, character and that he is the character who the audience is likely to sympathise with.

The blending of the light, the characters and the city in the poster suggest a narrative that involves a less clear-cut sense of boundaries. Indeed, the narrative of the film is set in two “worlds”, present day London and a dystopian fantasy world, and the characters and narrative are intertwined between these worlds. The colour and font of the typography also blends into the grey and white lighting of the poster, with the three actor's names spaced above title of the film. The size of the spacing between the letters in the film title also suggests a fantasy, or sci-fi theme.

Initial Poster Designs

This is our poster idea based on the poster from The Ides of March. The faces of our protagonist and antagonist don't fit together quite as well as Ryan Gosling and George Clooney's, however it could be made to look more effective if we have Jon's face on a TV screen, or Luke's on a wanted poster, like how Clooney's is on a magazine.

These are our poster ideas based on the album cover of The Saints Are Coming. We also tried it in black and white, and found it was more effective because it highlighted the red of the flag and rebel symbol. This would be more of a billboard advert, however, than a poster. To incorporate this idea into a poster we'd have to change the layout significantly.

These are our poster designs based on the posters for In Time. Again, the black and white faces with the colour backgrounds highlights the red, and we would possibly produce another one with a third slogan for our secondary protagonist, Jazz.

'Minority Report' Poster Deconstruction

The poster for 'Minority Report' gives obvious emphasis to the character played by Tom Cruise. The lack of any other characters on the poster shows the significance of the character in the film's narrative and also the attraction of an audience towards watching a film that features Tom Cruise. Cruise's name is at the top of the poster, and this shows the importance of his name in attracting a potential audience for a film. The fact that it is the only name signifies that there are few other important actors within the film, or that Cruise's name alone sells the film to an audience.

The stance that Cruise has adopted shows the action-theme of the film, especially with the added effect of the streaks of light around him. The background image, which reads “Pre Crime” also adds to the sense of action within the narrative, alluding to police involvement. This shows the element of crime-thriller within the narrative also, and the audience makes a connection between Cruise's character and “Pre Crime”. The image of “Pre Crime” is created to give the impression of a law enforcement badge in the USA, and “Pre Crime” is indeed a department of law enforcement in the USA in the narrative of the film. The lack of this badge on Cruise's character suggests that he is a senior member of law enforcement, therefore wearing his own clothes, or that he is working against the law. In the narrative of the film, Cruise's character is actually both. The costume of a black leather jacket, which is typically associated with rebellion or “cool”, indicates that Cruise is playing a rogue character, to whom the audience will sympathise with, and his worried, but seemingly in thought, facial expression also heightens this.

The typography of the poster, a white bold font, corresponds directly with the background colours of shades of blue. This again highlights the inclusion of the law in the USA, as the typical US uniform of law enforcement officials is blue. The lighting effects, however, indicate that the narrative features a futuristic form of law enforcement, also highlighted by “Pre Crime”. Although in smaller text, the name of the director, Steven Spielberg, also draws the attention of a potential audience as Spielberg is the most respected and revered director of his time.

Initial Poster Image Inspirations

From our research we discovered that there are certain angles from which we can present our film.

These are:

• The symbol/cult poster - the poster has one image which creates an enigma
• Title poster - a play on words or the meaning of a single word becomes the focus of the poster
• Character poster - usually a close up, introduces you to the protagonist or antagonist
• Romance poster - aimed fundamentally at women, suggestive of a more complex relationship based narrative
• Action poster - gives an indication of excitement and 'coolness'. Usually the protagonist and sidekick or antagonist. This is aimed primarily at young men.
• Thriller poster - hints at conflict but requires more thought from the audience. Suggests a more complex narrative
• Technology based poster - Plays heavily on the conventions of the genre and appeals to fans of that genre

These are the posters and images which have inspired our initial poster ideas:

These are two different posters from the new film, In Time. They appeal to two different audiences; the first is for the fans of the more character based part of the plot, or Justin Timberlake, and the second is for those who would be interested in the romantic relationship and action in the narrative. 

 This is the artwork for the single 'The Saints are Coming' by U2 and Greenday. The idea we particularly liked is having the two profiles mirroring each other, but being essentially different. Within our poster this could suggest conflicting views. We would have the profiles of our protagonist and antagonist instead of the lead singers.

This is the poster for 'The ides of March'. We liked this 

idea because it too suggests conflict between two central 

characters whilst emphasising similarities. This applies itself

to our original idea for a tag line 'One man's terrorist is 

another man's freedom fighter'. This is an intertextual reference
which has become a cliché in our society. It was first written
by Gerald Seymour in his 1975 book Harry's Game.

Poster conventions we wish to focus on:

• Protagonist's intense expression
• Two characters as opposites or a foil to each other
• Eyes looking out in order to draw in the audience
• An introduction to the protagonist/antagonist relationship

Initial poster designs will be up soon!