Evaluation 3 - What Have You Learned From Your Audience Feedback?

What Have You Learned From Your Audience Feedback?

During my for campaign for Delirium - I asked many different people for advice on elements to change regarding my advertising poster for the film. For example, i originally had two idea's in which i was unsure on, one was the idea of a split personality with a mirrored reflection, and the second was my idea i used for my final product. I was given advice to choose and create my final product poster idea over the original thought i had due to the availability of space, and the picture suggested more meaning. Therefore, I feel this was a successful change as it was less time consuming, and hinted towards plot points effectively.

when i first starting working on my poster, i began editing it in portrait. I chose this because many different posters i have seen before and researched are all in this orientation. However i was soon told by my classmates that if i wanted to get the best effect of the picture and still be able to add all of my poster conventions, i would in fact need to turn the orientation of my poster to a landscape style. This was because the effect of the shadow appears to be more menacing if it is extended, and this way i didn't need to crop any of the image out. I believe this change was extremely successful as it really emphasised the tone and mood of the film which i was trying to portray. This was also successful because if i was to keep the orientation of my poster portrait, it would have been very cluttered, and would have taken away from this main image.

A change which i was also encouraged to make due to my audiences feedback was that to make the billing block on my poster a lot smaller. This was because it was intruding onto the main image of Paul Leigh, which was taking away from the effect of the picture, and ruining the shadowy effect. I believe this change was successful as it allowed for the main image to be centre of attention, and this is important as it has narrative plot hints, and should be focused on.

Also, my magazine front cover also received feedback which enabled me to act upon and improve the final product. For example, i changed the font colour for the plugs on my magazine to an electric blue colour after being told my front cover looked to dark, and actually resembled that too much of a horror genre magazine front cover, than a thriller genre one. I was instructed to do this as my magazine was not very eye catching, and was very dark given the dark image aswell. I believe this change in font colour was effective overall for my magazine cover as it signifies the convention of action within the thriller genre, and emphasises the moments of excitement these brings, as the colour is very 'electric' blue. This was also successful as my magazine front cover became a lot more eye catching for the reader, rather than a dull monotone coloured magazine.

Due to the synergistic element of the shadow becoming a reoccurring theme throughout my products, my magazine also appeared to have many dark spots in which nothing was occupying. Therefore i was told by other people that there was too much empty space, and magazine covers never have empty spaces, as they are always trying to squeeze on and promote as much as possible to entice you to by the magazine. Therefore, i added a small grey advertising circle which promotes one of the characters in my film, as well as made the title Delirium itself bigger so that less empty black space was visible. This was a successful change in my opinion as this made my magazine look more realistic and true to a real magazine, as from my research i did find that there is not really any empty space ever found on a thriller genre magazine front cover, as it can effectively be used for promotion.

The image originally on my magazine front cover was a landscape long shot of Paul Leigh sat with his back against the wall, whilst this photo was efficient in presenting the idea that he is trapped, however i was advised to change it by my teacher as due to the image being a long shot, it was not very stand out, and it was easily looked over, and or misunderstood. I quote being told that 'He looks like something out of an independent gang film' and this was not the effect in which i was going for or hoping for. Therefore i changed my image to a close up on Paul Leigh's face with a stern look on his face, which allowed me to also add the synergistic element of the shadow. I believe this change in my opinion was also effective, as the image was more effective at suggesting the narrative of the story, as well as allowing for synergistic elements to be integrated.

Due to my two drafts of my Delirium trailer on the blog, lots of changes were made when it came to the editing together of our film trailer. Orginally when we edited(seen from the version 1 trailer) you can see that the beginning of our film was advised to be majorly changed as it was far too slow in comparison to normal thriller trailers i had researched. This was also an issue as no real plot lines were established, and the footage on screen was not really relevant in any way to the thriller trailer conventions. So when it came to carrying on the editing, we reworked the introduction of our film trailer by adding relevant plot points immediately, such as the non diegetic sounds of the heart beat, and electricity bolts. This was also made a lot faster with 'flashes' on any long scenes, so that the clip was not seen as too slow.
In the second draft of our trailer, you can see these changes in which we made to the opening sequence. We were however told that the scene was far too quiet as it did not build any tension, and had silent moments which needed sound to accompany them. Therefore, in our final draft of the trailer, we decided that adding slowly building music over the introduction, as well as the introduction of some loud bass non diegetic sounds to add tension causes to be a very successful change in increasing the tension and emotions felt throughout this opening.
In the final edit of Delirium, we did not add any institutional information to our trailer, which when watched by our audience, was proved to be an issue as this was a stereotypical convention trailers as a whole. Therefore, to make our trailer more realistic and true to trailer conventions which i had researched, we added a billing block to the end of our trailer which is only brief, but does however have the relevant information needed to make it look more professional. Which in my opinion was a small, but needed and successful change.