Evaluation Task 4

Who are your audience & what have you learned from your audience feedback? 

The intended outcome for our production

was to create a gritty, atmospheric trailer for a post-apocalyptic thriller, which I think we achieved. This is because of the use of action involved as well as some drama elements, creating emotional interest and depth. The target audience for our production ‘Dust’ would typically be male, around the age of 20-45 years old. This is due to the fact that it is more serious than a 'guns blazing' action film and isn’t your everyday comedy film, which a younger, male audience may be more interested in. The social class would also be more educated and middle class as some of the concepts and themes of the film would encourage intellectual engagement:It would make the audience think about society today and how threats to our survival, such as the risk of nuclear attack, are increasing. 

 









Due to the emotional content in the production; shown through the use of the photo of the child and the voiceover from Tom, explaining about how his family is missing, it has audience appeal to females as well. However, due to it being a 'gritty' film, it would probably appeal more to older females aged 25-45 as it isn’t a romantic comedy which is the usual target audience for ages under 25. We do think it would still appeal more to males than females due to the violence and the idea that the protagonists are being hunted, adding strong thriller elements to it.

Our likely BBFC rating for our production would be a 15. This is because our film involves gritty realism, violence and some swearing which wouldn't be appropriate for a younger audience. However, not having an 18 certificate opens up the film to a larger audience on its release date. On that note, this would be major film release on an estimated 350 screens within the first week of its UK debut. This is because our film is supported by the same institutions as The Book of Eli (385 screens) and Terminator Salvation (389 screens). The fact that our film would be made by a renowned  Hollywood director which in our case is our friend Daniel Devine (who we are potraying as an already famous director), it would increase the likelihood of our film getting wide release as people would expect high things and a great film from him. However, other directors who would likely do this sort of production are the Hughes Brothers who have had experience doing The Book of Eli which was a dystopian post apocalyptic film that did well review and profit wise. Another director who would do an excellent job is George Miller, who has done the Mad Max trilogy which, once again are very well acclaimed along with him doing a new one coming out in 2014.

We asked our media class as well as some of our friends and family for feedback on our production to gain some qualitative data. The feedback which we received was extremely valuable and helped our production become what it is now by people offering constructive criticism as well as having extra vigilance on any mistakes or errors within our editing. Thanks to this feedback we added more effects onto our production such as the chroma key and colour correction to eliminate the bright blue sky and make the whole production seem darker, dirtier and more desolate.

We also received a lot of praise and positive comments about our production from these responses. We were complimented on the use and variety of camera angles which creatively helped create appropriate meaning such as the low angle mid shot showing Curt in the office. The low angle gives off the impression that he is dominant compared to the shot before which was a high angle of Max connoting that he is weaker. We were also complemented on the use of our music with comments saying it created a sombre, serious and dramatic mood that helped establish the genre and mood that we were aiming for with our trailer. This pleased us as we had put thought and effort into finding the right 'score', contacting the band “If These Trees Could Talk” for permission to use their song. We also included a bible quote at the beginning of our trailer also which a lot of people felt deepened the impact and added weight to the trailer, though some thought it was rather clichéd, as religion as a concept is overdone in a lot of post-apocalyptic films.

We also collected some quantitative data from 20 people asking them what genre they believed our production was. The results showed that the majority immediately recognized that our production was mainly set in a Post-Apocalyptic society whilst the other results show that our production also has influences from other genres making the genre hybrid. We believe that this is due to the appropriate and creative use of mise-en-scene of our production, for example, desolate locations and dirty/ruined clothes as well as the fast paced editing, montage scenes and the obvious connotations of violence from the replica rifle among other things. The drama aspect of the production would probably be due to Tom's family and trying to find them or at least uncover what's happened to them. This information received was very useful during our production as it allowed us to revise and reinforce certain aspects of our film.

Over the past two years, I have learnt many new skills and techniques when it comes to filming and creating our production. However, from my initial skills at the start of 2012, I have grown accustomed and learnt how to apply different skills in certain areas. I have learnt how to use Pinnacle Studios HD15 which is the editing software we use within Media. I have learnt how to edit clips up to 1/24 of a second making my final production run smoothly. I have also learnt how to apply edits to my footage such as colour correction and chroma key to block out some colours and to add a blue tint to the production giving it a more apocalyptic feel. When I first started using Pinnacle, I couldn’t use many of the editing tools and struggled to add sound files and edit down the clips to fit into the production. However now I can do all of these easily as well as being able to find new tools such as the slice tool to cut clips up in half and move and place them in different places to create a montage effect on the production which worked well. I have also grown accustom to using a variety of different transitions when I try to split up scenes or show an ellipsis of time. For example, during the production of Dust, we added a fade to black, dissolve and erode transition so that it matches the scene at hand and make the trailer seem more fluid. The erode effect worked especially well as it matched the fire in the next scene making it look like the last scene was being burnt away.

When I first filmed my preliminary production in 2012, I was pretty awful at using the camera as I struggled to use the settings on the camera such as changing the iris to make the image more dark. Setting up the camera and tripod as well was trouble as it took a while to make sure that the camera was perfectly balanced and was the correct height to get a variety of different shots and angles, whilst trying to figure out which shot would suit our production the best. However, now I have the ability to professionally control the camera to create a variety of well framed and composed shots and angles appropriate to the demands of the task. For instance, during this production, we immediatly knew what we were aiming for in terms of shots and angles for each scene and executed them flawlessly (apart from our acting). We also set up the camera and tripod straight away and had no problems with it or the balance.