Unfortunately, towards the end of our coursework, Alice, our third group member, had some health problems and after we completed it she decided to leave the sixth form. She was an integral part of our group and had a big input on the outcome of our coursework. 

Flat Plans

This is a rough flat plan for our magazine cover. It is a simple guide to aid us when we make our magazine cover.

Likewise this is the flat plan for our poster.

Finished Trailer

Audience Feedback Questionnaire

1.What is your gender?

Male      female

This basically allowed us to know the gender of the viewer, and therefore how this may have effected the results overall.





2.   What age range do you fall into?

Under 14              14-18              19-25            26-35          36+

As you can see there were no under 14's asked, we did not purposely not ask anyone of this age range, however we feel people of this age would not fully understand the film. Our main age range of candidates who replied to the questionnaire were between 14 to 35, this is perfect as we planned for our target audience to be between 16 to 35, so their opinions on our media products are most important to us. We added age ranges out of our targeted demographics as we also wanted to know opinions of a wider age range.

3. With 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest, how well do you think our trailer fitted the romance genre?

1       2        3      4       5

The fundamental conventions of a romance are for the film to be based around feelings of love, often based around a couple, and for there to be a happy ending.  This question not only lets us know whether our film has met these conventions but also indicates people’s opinion on whether our film is successful or not. The majority of people answered 4 or 5, showing us that we have successfully made out trailer fit into a romance genre. Two people answered 3 which is disappointing and shows us that there’s certainly room for improvement. Bearing this in mind we asked in the final question what improvements could be made.

4. How well do you think our poster fitted the romance genre?

1       2         3        4      5

This question is of the same format and the question before, however asking about our poster. We asked this to know the audience's opinion on the poster. The majority of the audience answered with a 4, which indicates that although the conventions weren’t noticeable the best they could have been, they were still strongly recognised by the viewers. 2 people answered 5, which shows that we have made the conventions successfully noticeable. However, one person has answered with a 2 which shows there is room for improvement.

5. How well do you think our magazine cover fitted the romance genre?

1        2        3      4     5

Again, this question is set out the same as the past two, but asking about the magazine cover rather than our other media products. From the results we found there could be much room for improvement, however due to the fact there were no examples of other romance magazine covers to work from, we found this particular task hard. When creating the magazine cover we tried to follow the conventions of a basic magazine cover that would appeal to women, and basic conventions of a romance film. We also deconstructed other magazine covers of different genres to get an idea of how our magazine cover should work.

6. On a scale of 1 to 5 how much did our media products as a whole make you want to watch the film?

1      2       3       4       5

By asking this question it allows us to see if our media products was successful in engaging the audience’s attention. Our whole project is based around the plot. What is the point of the film if you don’t like the storyline? From this feedback we can see out media products worked well as the majority of our feedback were 4s and 5s.

7. How would you rate the camera work?

1        2      3    4      5

Camera work was one of the main ways we could get across the emotions of the characters within the media products. After having experience using the cameras when doing out AS coursework, we we quite confident when using the cameras and when choosing the angles to use. This feedback clearly shows that our camera work is good, 4’s and 5’s show that it is better than average even.

8. How would you rate the film overall?

1       2      3      4      5

Having a majority of 5 is an excellent result, although there is room for improvement due to the lowest result of 3, their rating of the overall film may have been due to personal preference. The results of this question show that we targeted the right audience.

9.How would you rate the choice of setting?

1      2      3       4       5

The setting is a restriction we have, we can do it anywhere, but practically, it can only be within the Peterborough area. However the graph shows that our choice of setting was good. Some people think it could be better, but no one thought it was below satisfactory.

10. Is there anything else you would improve on any of our media products?

-----------------------------------------------------------

This is an open ended question because we wanted individual people’s opinions.

Some answers given are:

'better setting'

'less sad plot..made me upset'

'Include George in the magazine'

'Make the plot more obvious in the trailer'

Other than these we were told there was nothing we could improve on. This is helpful feedback. It's clear there were a few things that could have been improved, however a high percentage of people were happy with our media products as they were.

Pictures of location

This is the house that we used for our location, it is shown in the first establishing shot of the couple moving in. Although this house might not be considered realistic for a first time buyers it was appropriate for our filming as we had easy access to it. Pictures from inside the house are also shown; we did the majority of our filming inside the home to show the loving relationship of the newly wed couple in their new home. 

Evaluation Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

The audience feedback questionnaire gave us an insight into how successful our media products were and what we could improve on. They also gave us a good idea on what gender and age our target audience should be.


We found there there was a big difference to how different genders viewed our products. Females were more interested in the romance genre as the generally gave better feedback than the men questioned. However, due to our small sample number, this result cannot be truly generalisable, but it is known that on average women enjoy media products with a romance genre more than men.

From the feedback we learnt that Romance films are enjoyed across a large age range, especially with females. Our target group is therefore females around the age of 15+, however our main target age range is ideally professional women 25+, as these are the people who are likely to have a surplus within their income to spend on leisure activities such as going to the cinema and reading film magazines, so by making out products appeal to them, we are more likely to gain a bigger profit from out products.




The questions asked in regards to the film trailer were:

• With 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest, how well do you think our trailer fitted the romance genre?
• How would you rate the camera work?
• How would you rate the film overall?
• How would you rate the choice of setting?

When analysing questions about our romance trailer, we received a majority of positive feedback, with the questions getting marked around 4s and 5s. However, when answering how well did the respondents think our trailer fitted the romance genre, we had a feedback of 2 people rating only a 3, which is generally rated as 'satisfactory'. This shows that some respondents thought there was much more room for improvement. After completing the questionnaire we asked the audience the reasoning for answers that gave a low mark. When asking the two people the reasons for their 'satisfactory' grade, the reasons were:

• 'It wasn't romantic enough. There was just not enough 'love' involved, The film seemed to be based too much around Alice's life without George rather than there relationship together.'
• 'It seemed to fit more in the genre of drama. Although there was love involved in the storyline, the main theme was George's death.'

From this feedback we learnt that some participants thought that the genre of romance was too broad for the trailer. However, we did earlier decide that the genre would be a sub-genre of  'romance tragedy'. From this, we learnt that we should have been more specific when writing the questions. When we asked the two respondents the same question but replacing 'romance' with 'romance tragedy' they both gave a rating of 4.

Our camera work was rated all 4's and 5's, with the majority giving a rating of 5, showing that our camera work was of an 'excellent' standard. Although 4 is still a rating we are pleased with, as it was the lowest rating on that question we asked one of the participants why they rated it a 4 and not a 5.

• 'I didn't like the hand held camera work. Although I can understand why it was used, personally i just don't think it fits in well with the romance genre, it's too scary and reminds me of horror films that have used that technique. However,  all the other camera work was great, and i would have given it a 5 if the hand held was not in it.'

This response is based more around personal experience rather than the actual camera work. The participant thought the camera work was worth a 5, but as they have seem other films that have frightened them using this filming technique they now make a link between the two, and still find hand-held camera work uncomfortable to watch.

When deciding to use this technique we didn't take into account this aspect. Although we realised that it was used in horror films such as 'The Blair Witch Project' and 'Paranormal Activity', we thought by using it in such a different genre like romance it could be a refreshing use of the technique. 

Below is a comparison of screenshots of the horror genre and our romance trailer when using the hand-held technique.

Paranormal Activity 3

The Blair Witch Project

Our trailer 'Until The End'

Within the questionnaire we only asked one question about the magazine. We felt teamed with asking the participants the reasons for their answers this would give us enough feedback. 

We asked;

How well do you think our magazine cover fitted the romance genre?

A  majority of people rated either a 3 or 4 for this question. Although we would have ideally liked to have got higher marks, due to the fact that we had little romance magazine covers to deconstruct as there is a lack of them within the real media, we had to guess what the conventions of a romance magazine cover would be. 

When asking the participants who gave us ratings of 2s and 3s the reasons why, we found that the reasons were generally the same problem that we had; knowing what the conventions of a romance magazine cover actually were. Many respondents said they thought the magazine cover looked professional and followed the conventions of a normal magazine cover, but were unsure on how it could follow the conventions of  a romance magazine cover. They gave us constructive criticism by saying maybe we should have made the romance more obvious, we could have put both and Alice and George in a loving position on the front cover (however we thought this would be too similar to the poster) or we could have used colours that represent love like red. 


From this audience feedback we learnt that we did a good job on the magazine cover, but due to the fact that conventions of a romance magazine are not well known, we could have made the 'romance' of the cover more obvious, however we didn't want to go over the top with romance conventions as we thought by having both Alice and George on it and having other conventions such as 'red for love' and roses it would give the magazine a tacky look.




Like when asking questions about the magazine cover, again we only asked the one question for the poster;

How well do you think our poster fitted the romance genre?

                                                                                                        

From the participants responses, we learnt that overall we did a good job on the poster, with us getting a majority of 4s, which is normally a 'very good' rating. When speaking to the participants who rated us a 4 about the reasoning for that grade, many said that you could clearly see it was a romance film. Alice and George are in an embracing, loving position and there is a quote from the film below the title. The reason they did not give it a 5 was that many of them thought it could have been more simplistic, as there is no need for all of that writing on the poster.

Our audience feedback was an important part of our project as it gave us insight into what we did well and what had room for improvement. Overall our feedback tells us that we did a good job, especially on the film trailer and the poster. In regards to the magazine cover there is room for improvement, but due to the fact if it was released into the real media it would be the first romance magazine out there, we did a good job without making it look overall romantic and tacky.

     

Evaluation Question 4

 How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

In the research stage we used a range of different media technologies:

• We used Youtube to watch romance film trailers
• We also used Youtube to look at contrasting genre trailers
• We used Sky+ to watch films, we used this particular TV provider as it was easily accessible and we could rewind to watch specific parts of films
• We went to the cinema and watch the trailers and previews before the film started
• We looked at the posters outside the cinema
• We used the Sanyo Xacti HD cameras to practise shots and find out what would work best.
• We watched DVD's to learn about the conventions of the romance genre

We used the internet as our main source of research. We round we had most control and freedom with the internet and knew we would have a good outcome at the end.

When we were in the planning stages, we used our smart phones and calendars on our laptops to log what needed to be done and by what date. We also conversed using email and text so that everybody knew the plans and what had been completed.

When in the constructing stage we used Sanyo Xacti HD cameras as we were familiar with them cameras and thought that produced a good outcome. We also used photography lights to lighten the room for filming. As well as these, we used my iMac, with iMovie to watch and edit the clips as we went along. This way we knew what worked and what didn't work while we were constructing it.

We also used iDVD to burn the trailer to disc. 

We used Adobe Fireworks to create both the poster and the magazine cover.

In the evaluation stage we used Survey Monkey for our audience feedback questionnaire, however we found we were more suited to doing this manually, so we would speak to the people giving the feedback about our products. We used Microsoft Word to create our questionnaires and Excel to create the graphs.