HOW DID YOU USE NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN
THE CONSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH, PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGES?
Upon
reflection, I believe the use of new media technologies in the construction,
planning, research and evaluation stages of creating my products was very
important. With the rise of convergence culture and the audience's desire to
participate in the age of Web 2.0, it is essential that the audience can engage
with filmmakers such as ourselves. It helps to generate a 'hype' for them
whilst giving us useful information on what they want out of a new crime genre
film (such as in the initial research stage where I conducted surveys).
However, I think in order to have an authentic presence, some interactions
should be done face-to-face, such as when I asked for feedback on my products
from my peers. Of course, when it came to presenting these products, it was
more efficient to use the most accessible platforms (i.e YouTube for the
trailer and any vlogs, which could then be embedded into Blogger and other
sites). I also acknowledged the prevalence of social media usage among my
target audience, as the median age was 19 (younger generations are known for
spending a lot of time online) and so used sites such as Facebook and Reddit to
gather informal feedback and reviews, keeping SurveyMonkey and Typeform for the
more formal research.
Using new software and hardware that was new to me was also important as it was
an enjoyable challenge and I had to adapt to the programs as we went through
post-production (such as learning to use Premiere Pro and After Effects,
programs that were completely new to me and my group mate Tia Briers). The fact
that these were modern programs that high-budget films have used helped our
trailer to appear more professional and polished. In all, I believe that
pushing myself to use these new technologies and engage with my audience in new
ways not only gave me more confidence and developed my skills, but made our
trailer all the better for it and ultimately gave us a unique learning
experience that we will always appreciate.
Part 3 - How has audience feedback benefited me as I progress?
Part 4 - Final Audience Feedback & Reflection
Part 5 - Conclusion - What have I learnt from my audience feedback?
Audience feedback was a key part of the construction process of my products. I engaged with my target audience through surveys, used social media to my advantage, and sought out opinions from friends and peers to try to improve my work. I think having this kind of audience interaction benefited my work immensely and is something the media industry as a whole seeks out, as evidenced by my research. Reaching out to my audience helped to not only improve products such as the trailer and poster, but to build my brand and make our presence known, as building a 'hype' is important for a film's success especially. There are certainly elements of this I could have improved on, such as by running a Twitter or Facebook page that focused on interacting with the audience (perhaps through polls and posting gifs). From this feedback, I learned more about the programs I was using (as friends who happened to be in the target range for age and gender were experienced in the programs too and could point out any errors) and even when I didn't completely accept some advice or pieces of feedback, it taught me to strive to improve my skills and I enjoyed the challenge and problem-solving aspects of the project. All in all, I believe audience feedback was essential to the construction of my products.
Evaluation question one is: In
what ways do your media products use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
The Trailer
Part 1
The video I created below compares my trailer with various crime trailers, explaining how they conform to or challenge conventions and representations.
(https://youtu.be/6N-ttxWkQAk)
Part 2
In terms of challenging conventions, my trailer is subversive in that it features a mostly female cast and the actor playing Anon, the serial killer, is female. Although it could be argued that in my trailer the females featured are victims, it is not typically common for crime films to have characters where the majority of them are female and even our one visibly male character is a victim, making the representations of them fairly equal.
However, it could be inferred that the character Alice (third person in
the image left) is a stereotypical representation of a lower-class
woman, and is somewhat sexualised because she wears a provocative
costume (short, lacy dress, black leather jacket, fishnet tights and
heels). Furthermore, this class status is reinforced by her accent in
the trailer and the phonetic divergences this causes. On the other hand,
Alice could be interpreted as empowering and not as much of a victim as
you'd think, as the actress performs her confidently. Similarly, George and Eve are presented through costume in a slightly masculine way; they wear hoodies and jeans with trainers and Eve appears dishevelled. More often than not, all female characters in crime films are as attractive as possible and objectified.
The fact that the actor playing Anon is female is subversive as usually, serial killer characters who give in to such destructive desires are masculine and dominating. Instead, here their gender is left unspecified; the distortion of the voice-over preserves their identity, and consequently the enigma of the trailer, intriguing the audience. Furthermore, the killer has an explained motive which is unusual for most crime films and is not purely giving in to a desire for carnage, communicated by the voice-over and prop photograph, making them more of a counter-type character, but an antagonist nevertheless. The voice-over itself could be considered as convention-breaking, as usually they present a protagonist's point of view as they attempt to overcome a great struggle, whereas here, it is the antagonist communicating his threatening world-view.
Our trailer perhaps conforms to conventions of the crime genre most in how it features the majority of the elements of the genre's repertoire. Firstly, in terms of typical locations:
We used a playground because in Britain where our film is set, these are typical locations for a druggie set-up or for 'chavvy' young adults to congregate, especially in the evening (although we chose to shoot in the daytime so it wouldn't be in use), making it quite suitable for our drug exchange scene with George and Alice. The relatively secretive, but informal, way in which the package is exchanged suggests the two characters are already acquainted, while communicating the illicit nature of the deal to the audience.
This location of an abandoned airfield, while not common to the crime genre entirely, gives the impression of a run-down place where druggies may meet up. Here, Eve appears dishevelled and sickly, which would repel the audience and make them uncomfortable, introducing a disconnect between the audience and the characters they may not relate to. However, this is not exactly a negative aspect, as my group mate and I had always stated we wanted the boundaries between the 'good side' and 'bad side' to be blurred and for the binary oppositions created to be confusing, giving an enigma for the audience to solve and enticing them to see the film. It therefore, rather bizarrely, appeals to either side of the moral spectrum, depending on whether an audience member wants the drug abusers or Anon to 'win'.
Secondly, my trailer features familiar iconography such as props:
Guns are an iconic symbol of crime films, as they are used in innumerable chase scenes, murder scenes, etc, by almost any type of character. What sets our film apart from the rest is that there is no evidence of any interference from the police and therefore no character to represent 'correct' morals and the law. This erases a possible binary opposition, blurring the lines even more and making the audience unsure of who to 'root for'. This shot is the last in the trailer and therefore has high-impact, as it seems as if Anon is directly threatening the audience with death. It is also left unclear which character Anon is pursuing at this point, and whether there will be any more revelations about their motivations for killing. Essentially, the prop gun is a clear symbol of death and gives the trailer a more perturbing atmosphere.
We also openly showed prop drugs such as cocaine and pills. This makes the genre of crime even clearer, as these are obviously illegal items. Interestingly, the lighting for the pills seems warmer in tone due to the sunlight and the hand shakes, suggesting a brighter escapism and implying these will get Eve, the character holding them, 'high'. Conversely, the shot of the cocaine on the right is colder in tone, implying a darker aspect of the narrative and drugs as a whole - possibly bringing us to Anon's point of view that these are sinful items and should be condemned. This darker turn is further expressed through George and Alice's dialogue as they begin to get suspicious of the disappearances of those in their druggie circle. In this, a typical narrative plot point is established as they must solve a mystery and figure out who the killer is (again reminiscent of the themes shown in film noir), although it is not entirely conforming to convention in that there is no representation of law and order: they are on their own.
Thirdly, we incorporated some approaches to micro features that are different from generic crime films, such as in cinematography and sound. Our trailer doesn't feature a lot of diegetic sound or foley sound effects and most scenes are left muted in a montage-style with the soundtrack being the main focus, whereas in a lot of crime trailers they will choose to feature exciting dialogue that has lots of exposition. Our approach was a lot different in that we wanted to maintain a sense of mystery and show that we are convention-breaking to generate interest. This approach can be seen in more independent, smaller films, such as the teaser trailer for A Monster Calls, in which there is hardly any dialogue at all besides one line spoken by the main protagonist and an off-screen voice-over.
In terms of cinematography, our trailer diverges from the norm because it is often quite artistic and unusually shot. For instance, this shot of a blood-covered hand dropping to the floor, while heavily implying death as many crime trailers do, has intense shallow-focusing and is clearly colour-graded to make the crimson blood striking against the blue hue the rest of the image has. This kind of creative expression is not often seen in crime films, at least not in mainstream films that tend to focus on the action in a scene with the camera positioned in a long-shot, so as to show explicit violence. The fact that this shot is at ground-level also positions the audience with the victim, making it all the more ominous.
Overall, through these convergences and occasional divergences from the style of the crime genre, the audience gets a pleasurable viewing experience from the repetition of genre tropes they are familiar with and like, but also the added surprise of unexpected elements, making our trailer distinctive, unique and refreshing in its approach to convention.
This is the final version of our trailer. We didn't end up making any further changes to our footage, aside from adding in the credit for Alex, who made our new soundtrack.
Today I received the final draft from Alex in .wav format, so I put it with our last draft of the trailer to check that the dialogue still syncs up correctly. It seems to have been successful...
I noticed a few subtle changes to effects such as the opening and how the piano notes seemed slightly muted and softer, which I like. Overall, Tia and I are really happy with this and think our trailer is a lot more effective. All that remains is to re-export the trailer properly on Premiere Pro with the new soundtrack and do any last edits we may need to, likely in terms of visual effects as altering any transitions or cuts may alter the runtime and therefore cause the soundtrack and dialogue to be out-of-time. We will also add an extra credit line for Alex to ensure he is credited for his work, which he will be able to embed into his website and advertise on YouTube, his portfolio, etc.
Today I received another draft from Alex. He said in his email that he changed the montage so it starts sooner but had to remove the piano note and replaced it with a different sound effect. He also fixed up our background noise in the scenes with dialogue so it sounds much better, and adjusted the volumes of the dialogue and voice-over so we can hear them more clearly. Below is the draft:
Overall, Tia and I are very happy with this. We think the montage sounds a lot more punch-y and effective, the volumes of the voice-over and dialogue all seem to be correct and easy to understand, and it has generally improved the tone of our trailer. I told Alex this and that we have no further comments to make and so all that remains is for him to master the soundtrack and polish it up in any way he sees fit. We should have a final copy by early next week.
His message is shown left, where he describes how he attempted to synchronise the hand dropping with the piano note as we suggested. Below is the second draft video...
Tia and I think this version is a lot better; in particular we like how the style is more discordant, such as where the character Connor turns his head and the piano note is off-key and then has a distorted reverse effect. We can also see that he took our comment about the drums into account and are pleased with the result, although he says he wasn't concentrating on the montage part and the drums will be a lot more intense once he does. In short, we definitely prefer this version. However, some elements I would like to see improved upon and which I will bring up with him are that the montage drums again aren't quite strong enough and I feel that the synths/music during the montage and how they only last ten or so seconds before they're cut off for the voice-over's "Expect us" line make it a bit short-lived, so I'm wondering if it really fits. Additionally, I will suggest a reverberation effect similar to the one in the first second of the trailer when the Lionsgate logo appears because I think it sounds really ominous and would be a good way to fade out the trailer. Apart from this, we both love it and can't wait for the next update.
Today we received the first draft of our soundtrack from Alex:
His comment about the drums is regarding what we said about how we would like to keep a fast-paced drumming sound for the montage with each shot high-impact. We discussed style yesterday and he said his ideas so far were to involve piano and synths/drones, which we thought sounded great. Below is said first draft...
Tia and I love the soundtrack so far: we think the tone is appropriate in that it is tense and dark, and the piano introduces an interesting dynamic that we hadn't thought of with our previous soundtrack choices. We are finding that being able to communicate in this way with the creator is a big benefit as we have a lot more input when it comes to how it fits, rather than our previous method of working around what we already had with pre-made music. A few issues we picked up on in the first draft are small, but nevertheless significant: currently the dialogue and voice-over are hard to hear (which we assume is due to how this is only a first draft). We also think that it could be more effective in terms of the timing of some piano chords: for the shot of the hand covered in blood, we would like the chord to be synchronised with when the hand drops to the ground, so it is more impactful. We'd like a similar effect for the shot of the character Connor in the woods - when he turns his head, we have suggested to Alex that there is a strong drum beat that builds up during the montage. Overall, we love the progress so far!
After reviewing my last theatrical poster and getting some feedback from others, I decided that it wasn't true to the film and didn't adequately communicate the theme to the audience. I therefore opted to make a completely new poster with a much different layout and extra elements (shown above). Below is a presentation on the process and thoughts behind the design choices I made:
As the main issue people brought up in the audience feedback was the soundtrack, we decided we should go about finding a solution. For purposes of audience feedback, I had been browing the Reddit sub r/Filmmakers, when I came across this post by a composer looking for work:
I then commented that we had wanted a composer for our trailer before, and that the trailer was finished:
Luckily, Alex still expressed an interest in working with us, so we asked for a sample of his work and gave a link to our trailer so we could both see what we may be working with. Below is the sample he gave:
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1s&v=5qdFVpW-ccU&app=desktop)
My group mate, Tia Briers (Candidate 2015) and I both agreed that this was great work and loved the attention to detail, such as the Harry Potter motif at the end of the trailer, while Alex said: "I liked the [Illicit Obsession] trailer, I think it builds up nicely and would look great with some more dramatic music, especially at the end". We then concretely agreed to work with each other, after discussing how files could be exchanged, etc. The plan is that next Monday, when I have access to the original file, I will remove the soundtracks we added and send him the trailer with no soundtrack. We discussed a deadline of mid to late March, as this gives plenty of time to finalise the trailer. In terms of what he will get out of this commission, he has stated that he is looking to build his portfolio, and so we will provide him with a finished copy of the trailer for this purpose and credit him. If the soundtrack is somehow unsuccessful, we can keep our original final cut and try to improve it through a different method in editing.
Here is a presentation I made on the audience feedback I gathered, along with my thoughts on the comments I received and how they can be taken into account when next editing the trailer.
This is the final cut of our trailer as of 17/02/17. All of the errors I described in my last post have now been fixed: all audio tracks were separated and put on their own tracks, colour-coded accordingly so we could easily tell which clips were the voice-over etc. This also meant we could fix the volume problem where some soundtrack samples were louder than others, as now we could have a volume set for the entire track without it affecting any others. We fixed the overlap problem where a part of one of the character's lines was repeated in a cut by cutting out the audio for it and replacing the gap it caused with a section of the previous clip where there was no dialogue, so the cut we'd made wasn't noticeable. Alternatively, we could have cut out part of the whole video clip but we thought this would affect the synchronisation of the soundtrack, so we avoided changing the lengths of clips.
Finally, we had a similar overlap problem in the bloody hand shot. We tried adjusting where the second soundtrack came in and removing it entirely but neither of these solutions seemed to work very well and we needed to maintain the pacing of the trailer, so in the end we decided to move the shot to after the characters Alice and George talk about Eve's disappearance (as this shot is supposed to imply Eve's death).
As we now have these issues solved, we would like to gather some audience feedback to find out if there are any improvements we can make. I would like to conduct a survey aimed at the target audience of the trailer (ages 15+, either gender, as the trailer doesn't show explicit gore or extremely violent themes).
This is the final cut of our trailer - by which, we mean that all footage has been integrated, it has a voice-over, soundtrack, and has been colour-graded and we are happy with the result. All that remains is a few last finishing touches (which will be outlined below) and possibly some audience feedback, in-case we can improve it even further.
Footage audio error When it cuts to the character Alice after the line "Not getting my usual rounds lately", you can hear the end of the word 'lately' being repeated. This can be fixed by muting the audio for the small segment where this happens, or cutting the clip down slightly to get rid of it. Soundtrack 2 audio error
When the hand covered in blood drops, a similar effect to the one described above occurs, in that the sting we use repeats slightly. We can fix this by cutting it down, replacing it or removing it entirely for this shot.
Soundtrack 2 volume error
Some of the stings (where it isn't lowered for Anon's voice-overs) clash in that they aren't exactly the same volume. We can fix this by organising them clearly on the timeline (perhaps changing their colour so it isn't confusing) and making sure the volume is consistent for when Anon or another character isn't speaking, as at the moment it is a bit mis-matched. We will also need to perform these checks for Soundtrack 1 and make sure it's on a different audio track on Premiere Pro.
Audience feedback
After these issues have been fixed and my group and I are happy with the trailer, I'd like to show it to a select few target audience members to get their opinion on it and to see if there are any issues they can spot.
Here is a compilation of export files, showing our journey in editing my group's (Tia Briers, candidate 2015, and me, candidate 2044) trailer together (with dates).
This is our last official piece of footage for the trailer, our voice-over by the menacing Anon. We did some experiments prior to this (see 'Voice-over Experiments' blog post) so we knew as we went into the studio what type of voice style/performance we wanted. We decided to both do some takes so we would have plenty of choice and could splice clips together in editing (for which I used the software program Audacity). Below are the results in a short vlog!
(https://youtu.be/XCjUCkiJxuo)
The rough cut of our trailer as of 08/02/17, meaning the footage is all in order and most features are present (primary soundtrack, colour grading, etc) and only a few items are needed for completion. Below is an annotated version explaining elements that are still in progress.
Before we record the voice-over by Anon (which will be our last piece of footage we need to complete the trailer) we decided to do some practise runs using different actors, which I would then edit in the program Audacity to sound distorted (as members of Anonymous typically adjust their voice). We used three actors - Tia Briers (candidate 2015, who is in my group), myself and Daniel Gilbey, who was asked because we wanted a male actor experiment (as males typically have deeper voices and so not as much editing would be needed). In the video below are the results.
