Dear Examiner, 
I've tried to create a Blog which guides the reader through the process of creating my main and ancillary tasks. 
Through the course of the project, I believe I have developed dramatically in a number of key areas. These areas are researching into the horror genre, making sure that I am always organised with my work, working as a team and being able to meet my target audience through my trailer and two ancillary tasks. Examples of these skills can be seen in the researching and planning area of the blog and evaluation of my whole project. 


The Blog highlights some of the main tasks I've carried out through the course of the Blog, but could not possibly show all the hard work which went into the filming of our trailer and the editing of our horror trailer. 


I feel that my strengths are into planning my work, being able to follow the teams deadline and the construction of our horror trailer. Theses are evident in some of my favorite posts such as the detailed analysis of horror movie magazines, research, my front cover movie magazine and my horror movie poster. 


Finally, I would like to thank you for taking the time to read through my Blog. I hope that you find my work enjoyable and exciting. 


Yours faithfully, 
Muna Gaunt 

Q4:How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

PLANNING AND RESEARCHING: 
The first stage of the whole project was to make sure that we had researched our chosen project well. We did extensive research into the horror genre to see what kind of horror trailer we wanted to come up with. We used popular search engines such as Google and Wikipedia to research on the history of horror. The research that we had collected from the search engines inspired us with how we wanted our trailer and our ancillary tasks to look like.

The  most useful tool that allowed us to look into horror trailer was YouTube. YouTube was one of the most important factors in our researching, which allowed us to analyse horror trailers thoroughly. YouTube was crucially important in showing us what direction our horror trailer would take. We knew that we wanted to create something unique which had not been created before. We kept watching horror trailers making sure that our ideas would be unique and would have little elements of other professional horror trailers. We were highly inspired by the horror trailer 'The Final' where we found on YouTube.

To research for ideas and inspirations, the internet was the main source in where we would visit magazine sites such as EMPIRE, PREMIERE FILM and horror magazines, FANGORIA and HORRORHOUND.

BLOGGER:

I had used Blogger again this year as I felt that it was successful in my last years foundation portfolio and would again be as successful this year. Blogger allows me to keep my work up-to-date and manage my time effectively, as I was able to priorities my time equally from planning to filming. My teacher was also able to look at my work easily on blogger and help me on making improvements. Throughout this course I think that Blogger has been an excellent place in where I was able to keep my work without knowing that I would lose pieces of work. Overall, it has made it much easier for me to keep looking back on my work and to keep improving without major problems or issues.

SKYDRIVE: 

As a group we created our own Hotmail account and used a fantastic feature called 'Sky-Drive' which allowed us to upload our clips that we had filmed for our horror trailer. It was easy for our group to go online and view the clips then edit segments their selves. This made sure that we did not waste time and used our time effectively.


SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES:

Social Networking sites was another important factor in providing me feedback from my promotional package. It was also used to advertise my products so that audiences were aware of my products and showed me if I had met the conventions of horror throughout the three tasks. Even though there was mainly advantages in using the social network sites, there was some disadvantages too for example a lack of responses from the audience. Even though I was asking for audiences to watch and comment, there was some comments that were not appropriate for my work. However, I would always use social networking sites to promote as its an effective and quick way to get your product out to the audiences eyes. 

PHOTOSHOP:

Photoshop was used mainly to make my two ancillary tasks. As I had used the software last year I was familiar with it and was able to use it quickly to make the movie poster and magazine front cover. I loved using Photoshop as I was comfortable with it and kept going back to make improvements after showing my target audience the drafts poster and magazine front cover. I did have a couple of technical difficulties with Photoshop but was able to use Macromedia Fireworks to sort out the issues.   

MACROMEDIA FIREWORKS:

Macromedia was a software that I had to get used to this year, when I had problems with Photoshop I had to use another software which was similar. Macromedia Fireworks allowed me to edit parts of my two ancillary tasks. For example, the bit in where I have circled red was added on in Macromedia Fireworks after I had saved  it in a wrong area on Photoshop. This again allowed me to add improvements on my poster to make sure that it looked professional and I was keeping the the right conventions of a movie poster. 

MICROSOFT POWERPOINT:

Microsoft Powerpoint was a good software in where we could plan our ideas for our horror trailer and share them with each other and the class. Microsoft Powerpoint was easy to use as I've used it before many times. 

FILMING EQUIPMENT

CAMERAS:

This is the camera that we had used to film our trailer. Even though we were unfortunate to not be able to use professional filming camera we were happy as this camera had a good quality to it and was HD. This gave us a professional look to our trailer. If we did have a budget for our trailer we would of loved to use filming camera's like the one below. 

TRIPOD: 

The tripod was a useful filming equipment as it was used in the majority of the filming of our trailer. It helped us shoot our still scenes and the scenes in where we had to pan, zoom and tilt. 

WINDOWS MOVIE MAKER:

At the beginning of the making of our horror trailer, we played around and tried to use Windows Movie Maker which was the only available software on our school computers. We felt that Windows Movie Maker was a difficult software to use as we was not familiar with it and it had basic features which we found difficult to use to keep our trailer looking as professional as it could. Luckily, we were fortunate to use I-movie which helped us significantly in the editing of our horror trailer. 

I-MOVIE: 

I-movie was used for the editing of the horror trailer. The software which was used on a i-mac laptop allowed us to edit together a professional looking horror trailer. The software was also easy to use and did not waste time for our group. We were able to keep going back to make improvements on the trailer. When editing we were able to keep to the horror conventions easily by cutting the lengths of our video's (if they were too long) to create a fast paced, tensed horror trailer. Overall, I felt that we were fortunate to use the i-movie software, it was easy to use and made our trailer look professional that followed the horror conventions. 

Throughout the process of the making of our ancillary tasks to the making of our trailer, the technology that we used was easy enough to use and gave us a great trailer in the end. 

Q3: What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

 The Importance of  Audience Feedback:

Audience feedback is essentially crucial in allowing me to target my audience successfully. The feedback that I gain helps me to look back and analyse my promotional package, so that I may have time to make changes as soon as possible after listening to my target audience. Below are the feedback that I had gained from my target audience.:

POSTER:

When asking students in my college what they thought of my horror poster this was the feedback that I had received:  

'The poster looks really professional and would stand out on billboards' 

' The blue door doesn't fit to the horror conventions, but it makes the tag-line 'time to repent' stand out' 

'I love the fact that the smashed windows look as though there eyes and it's staring right at you .. It defiantly scares me' 

' The use of the gold cross in 'SIN' has been cleverly used as you would associate the word 'SIN' with evil things' 

'The poster looks really mysterious and it would make me go to watch the film' 

The comments above were overall great and showed me that I was fitting most of the conventions horror. There were some feedback my target audience gave me to make changes such as the color of the door in the poster. One of the changes to make were that a member of the audience thought that the 'blue door does not fit the horror conventions'. I then went back on Photoshop to edit the door and add the conventional color black. As you can see below I manipulated the color of the door and made it look slightly more sinister. After doing this, I then went back to my target audience and asked them if they now preferred this style to the other poster. Their opinions had changed and they thought that there was 'too much black on the poster, you couldn't see the tagline well, and it didn't fit well with the whole style of the poster'. 

This showed me the importance of feedback from my target audience as I had changed to make improvements and could see if there was a good outcome in keeping the changes or if my original poster was more effective to fit the horror conventions. 

MOVIE MAGAZINE:

When asking students for their views and opinions on my movie magazine, this is what the target audience had said: 

'The magazine looks really professional'

'I love the fact that you can't see the killers face, it makes it more mysterious' 

' The colors suit together and fit the horror conventions' 

'You used the classical black and red to show the genre of the magazine' 

'I think you could have added more pictures on the front cover to make it more interesting' 

The feedback that I  had received showed me that I had met most of the conventions of a horror magazines like other professional magazines.

There was some great comments overall for the horror magazine, however if I was to make improvements I would of tried to add more pictures on the front cover to see if it looked better and then see what the target audience thought. Here are some horror magazine that have more than one picture on their front cover. I could of styled out my magazine to a similar layout to these: 

POSTING MY HORROR MAGAZINE AND POSTER ON SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES:

I then posted my horror poster and movie magazine on social networking sites to get the general public's opinion and feedback. This is again important as my horror poster will be able to reach a wide range of audience and give me a variety of feedback. I used the two most powerful and popular social sites:

TWITTER FEEDBACK: (change to horror poster) 

Once I uploaded my movie poster on 'Twitter' these were the comments that I had received online: 

'I thought it was a real horror poster, its really good' 

'I like how it's different to other horror magazine as you haven't used the conventional black and red throughout the whole poster' 

'The use of the blue door is quite different, I wouldn't of used that color though' 

As you can see, I had received a comment about the color of the door used again. This clearly showed me that the it does not wholly fit the conventions of a horror poster. However, as we are so used to seeing dark colors throughout horror posters used it may catch audiences attention as it's something that they have not seen before. One member of the audience thought that the color of the door was 'effective in capturing the audiences attention as the tagline stands out'. This was a positive comment on the color of the door and made me look at it in a different perspective. 

Uploading my poster on Facebook:

                                                         

The above image shows me trying to get audience feedback from the public for my movie magazine and movie poster. 

Uploading my magazine on Facebook:

After uploading my movie magazine I received comments such as

VIDEO FEEDBACK:
Here is a video of the feedback that I received from the members of my target audience:


TRAILER:

I had also used 'YouTube' to promote my horror trailer. YouTube acts as an important factor to promoting my horror trailer as its free and allows people to globally give me feedback on the trailer. The pictures below show how many people have viewed the trailer and the comments that I had received from audiences.

YOUTUBE:

The above images shows the number of views increasing over time. This shows that YouTube is a successful software in allowing our trailer to be aired all over the world for our target audience to watch and provide feedback. 

The picture below shows when the audience were viewing our trailer and how frequent. As you can see 2 people have made our trailer one of their favorite video's which shows that our trailer is beginning to become quite successful. 

This picture below shows were the audience are viewing our trailer. As you can see our horror trailer is being watched world-wide from the UK to South America. 

  

Overall, I feel that our audience feedback has been successful. The most significant thing that we have learnt throughout the audience feedback is the changes to meet and if I had met the horror conventions correctly. Collecting audience feedback is crucial as it shows us if we have met the target audiences needs within our horror trailer. This brings in the 'Audience gratification' theory in where we explore why audiences watch particular media texts and what they get from the media text, for example the thrill of being scared from watching a horror film. Media Institutions collect audience feedback through test screening in where audiences go and watch the film before it has been released to see if it meets their needs as an audience. After they will provide feedback on what they liked/enjoyed and the improvements, this then gives the film institutions a chance to adjust parts of the film, for example if the target audience did not like the ending they will then change the ending to meet their needs and gratification. This is why audience feedback is a significant part within the making and releasing of films.