A2 MEDIA EVALUATION PART 4

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?By Jack Bricknell

What was the audiences reaction to your rough-cut screening?

Section A:When we first showed our rough cut trailer to the class most of them liked it overall but the main criticisms were that it was too short and that for a gory horror there wasn’t enough gore. I agreed with both of these because our trailer was only forty seconds because we didn’t have enough footage at the time. I did plan to add more gore in with Adobe After Effects but I had almost no experience with the programme and couldn’t find a simple tutorial or appropriate effect downloads due to the college restriction on many of the websites. As a result I was never able to add in the effects I wanted with after effects. After counting the score we got 13 out of 16 overall for our rough-cut which I was pleasantly surprised with.

What changes did you make after the rough-cut screening?

Section B:The two main problems with our original trailer is that it was too short and it didn’t have enough gore which was pointed out by almost everyone. At the time we hadn’t finished filming everything so we had to meet a deadline for a rough-cut with the footage we which ended up being forty seconds long after editing, we knew this was short and were determined to film more. We also had to appeal to the members of the audience who wanted more gore which we wanted too so we got more people to be zombies and victims so that we could film more gore scenes. One of these was the neck bite effect which was made with fake blood and liquid latex, to make the bite I followed a tutorial on YouTube at home (Zombie bite tutorial). The other effect was the gunshot to the head, for this I bought an old Halloween mask that had a pump mechanism and hid it under the clothes and hat of the actor, who squeezed the pump which then squirted blood out of his head.

How did the audience react to your final product?

Section C:When we showed our final version of our trailer to the class I was surprised with the amount of positive feedback seven people in the class scored us a 7/10 which was the lowest scores we got four others scored us an 8/10 and one person gave us a 9/10. Most people said that they liked the make-up and gore effects as well as the music and narrative, however some people still don’t think hat there was enough gore and some also thought we needed more close-ups which I agree with. Overall was very pleased with these scores because the group put a lot of effort into making this trailer and it feels like we’ve achieved something. Originally we wanted our target audience to be eighteen and over however I think the finished product is more of a sixteen, this is mainly because it wasn’t gory enough and didn’t have any jump scares. I think we reached the sixteen year old target audience well by including some comedy moments such as the running away shot and the egg throwing.

Continued

I think I played a large role in the group by doing the make-up and gore effects on our actors for which I did a lot of research to find the most simple and effective ways to do zombie make-up. The most helpful source was from the Indy Mogul channel on YouTube which has got a large selection of different effect tutorials on it. I tried several different techniques with the make-up which included attaching scrunched up tissue on the cheeks with latex and going over with fake blood which was the best looking way to do it but it took too long so I tried applying thin layers of liquid latex on to the cheeks, forehead and nose of an actor and then rubbing it to peel some off giving it a decaying look.

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