Evaluation Question 7) What do you feel you have learnt in the progression from preliminary task to main task?

Evaluation Question 6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Adobe Photoshop 

Adobe After Effects

Adobe Premiere Pro

GarageBand

For filming, I used a standard video camera and tripod in which I already knew how to use so I didn't learn anything technologically new. 

Evaluation Question 5) How did you attract/address your audience?

Firstly I carried out primary and secondary research, and this included a questionnaire in which I asked 8 people 10 questions about Fame 2009, and I recorded their feedback. This was so I could learn what features they found most appealing about the film opening and what their general ideas were about the target audience was and why. The secondary research consisted of me researching the two drama films, 'Paper Towns' and 'Me and Earl and the Dying Girl' on the Pearl & Dean website. This website gave me information about the demographic who went to go and watch these films and how popular the film was within certain age ranges, classes and sex. This information helped me adjust my ideas of the conventions needed to appeal to a certain target audience. In this case, mine was teenage girls.

Once my final film was completed, I asked 10 people the same 10 questions plus a few extra (this is because looking back at my original questions, I would have liked to ask a few others for a better understanding) that I did in my original questionnaire from my primary research. In both questionnaires I asked a mixture of age ranges and a mixture of males and females. The questions were the following:

1) What genre do you think the film was?

2) Did you enjoy this?

3) Who do you think the target audience is?

4) Why?

5) Would you watch the rest of the film?

6) Why?

7) Did anything catch your eye?

8) Did you find everything interesting?

9) Were there any parts that didn't hold your attention?

10) Were there any parts that surprised you?

11) Do you think that there was anything that wasn't necessary/didn't fit?

12) What kind of social groups do you think that opening appeals to?

Responses:

1) 100% of the people that I surveyed guessed that this film was a genre which was the intended purpose. They were able to guess this through the use of establishing shots and the accompanying music.

2) The main response to this question was yes - that they did enjoy it. However 3 of the 10 people that I questioned said that they didn't particularly enjoy it, they thought it was quite interesting, but 'not enough for them to want to tell a friend'. These 3 people were males, one was aged 17 and the other two males were 18+. To me, this was very promising as a young adult male demographic is not the audience I was aiming for, but they still enjoyed the film opening to some extent.

3) Again, every single person had the same response to this question and that was that they thought the target audience was for teenage girls which was the audience that I was aiming for. Only 2 out of the 10 people that I questioned were teenage girls. 

4) Some people thought this because it contained characters that were relatable mainly to teenage girls (two teenage girl best friends)  and others said it was because the film was very up to date in terms of style and technology - the use of an iMessage lookalike conversation and the use of an iPhone in general. They thought that would appeal most to teenage girls, who are stereotypically known to be 'obsessed' with their phones and social media. 

5) The overall response to this was that yes, they would watch the rest of the film. One response stuck out to me in particular and that is because it is about a very subtle hint at the storyline ahead. The sport that the main character is obviously very talented in is not actually revealed and they found it interesting that the medals showed different sports on it - one had a netballer on and another had 2 hockey sticks on. The person said that this made them very intrigued to watch the rest of the film.

6) As mentioned in the response to number 5 above, one person wanted to keep on watching to find out the characters actual talent. The majority of the other answers said they wanted to keep on watching purely because the opening held their interest because of the sudden change and boost in the main character's emotions.

7) Some of the girls said that they found the text on the screen eye catching because it was bold and it stood out on the screen, they also said that they enjoyed that part of the opening because the texts  were easier to read than when people usually film the screen of the actual phone. On the other hand, the part that stood out to the males was the opening logos. One male said 'I liked the logos a lot, they looked really professional which was surprising in a good way'.

8) The overall response to this question was that yes, they did find everything interesting; from the logos, until the main character walked back out of the room with the sports bag. They said that this was because the story line changed quite quickly and it was interesting to see why the main character's emotions were changing. Furthermore, another person said that they found it interesting because there was a second character introduced half way through.

9) From the people that I questioned, it was apparent that there was not any part of my film opening that couldn't hold their attention. It was said that if I had kept the opening to the main character just moping around the bedroom unhappy for the whole opening, then they would have lost interest, Luckily, for me, during my research into drama films, I learned that within a film opening it is very likely that the story will change within the opening, such as mood or emotion, whether its through the storyline or through the soundtrack and this is to keep the viewer interested and to give them a hint of the types of ups and downs they will experience within the rest of the plot of the film.

10) From my original research and questionnaire it was apparent that no on found anything particularly surprising within the opening to Fame (2009), so there was no surprise to me that no one found anything particularly surprising within my film opening. Looking back on this, the question perhaps was not necessary for my research.

11) This question had a 100% the same response and that was that there wasn't anything which didn't fit within my film opening. A couple people said that they wondered why the trophies and medals showed 2 different types of sports but this only made them want to carry on watching to find out and only made them more interested. They said that it wasn't that this part didn't fit, it just made them quizzical.

12) Most people struggled to answer this question as they thought it would just appeal to any type of teenage girl, but 2 out of the 10 questioned said that from what they could understand from the opening, they could deduce that the rest of the film would carry on the part of the story about moving away from your closest friends and pursuing and succeeding in your particular talent. Therefore they thought that this would appeal to those people who are also away from the closest people to them or are maybe going through something similar. To me, this seemed like quite a select social group, but I thought that their answers fitted well.

Features of my film
In earlier research I mentioned the conventions of a drama film and to make sure my film was as true to the genre as possible, I followed these conventions to attract the right target audience. For example, if I wanted to attract the audience for a drama film, but all of my features were more like a horror film, then the target audience would not be interested in my film because it isn't the type of film they are expecting and wanting to see.

I used professional looking and fitting fonts (nothing that seemed silly, too crazy or over the top) to fit in with the drama genre.

I chose white as the font colour to keep it simple and there wasn't a colour in my opinion that had connotations to anything in the story/plot of the film. 

The soundtrack also used 'up to date' instruments such as guitar and piano. This was so that the music was relatable to the teenage target audience in some way. My thought process was that I thought using these instruments, which are some of the most widely used in today's mainstream music, then it would appeal more to a teenage discourse community. 

Within my film I also featured texting over the phone and I used the ever so popular Apple iMessage layout to again, make this more relatable to the audience because, as mentioned before, teenagers are stereotypically associated with being obsessed and addicted to technology and social media. Within these texts I tried to keep the language as simple as possible because I thought that if I abbreviated anything, the texts might become unclear.  I wanted to make this seem as realistic as possible that a teenage girl would be texting this so I only used 'haha' to include a feature of a common teenage texter. 

Evaluation Question 4) Who would the audience be for your media product?

Evaluation Question 3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Evaluation 3 from 048860

Evaluation Question 2) How does my media product represent particular social groups?

Evaluation Question 1) In what ways does your product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Please note that the second video might take a while to load or appear.