Group: Audience Research Questionnaire

We have composed an audience research questionnaire to ask audience members after the viewing of our final cut. The questionnaire comes in two parts, questions 1-7 which are filled out as a normal questionnaire, and questions 8-11 which we will be filming the audience responses for.

Audience Research Questionnaire

1)     On a scale of 1-5 (5 highest), did you like the choice of all female protagonists?

1                      2                      3                      4                      5

2)     Was the choice of music appropriate for the genre?

Very appropriate       Appropriate               Neutral            Not appropriate

3)     The zombies were effective in creating fear. To what extent do you agree with this statement?

Strongly agree           Agree             Neutral            Disagree        Strongly disagree

4)     On a scale of 1-10 (10 being highest), how believable was the character death? [scale]

1          2          3          4          5          6          7          8          9          10

5)     Were the titles appropriate for the genre?

Yes                                                                  No

6)     How would you change the pace of the opening?

Faster                                     Slower                                    No change

7)      Rank these aspects of the opening according to how well they added to the feel of the piece? [1 best]

(   ) Make-up

(   ) Costumes

(   ) Locations

(   ) Props

8)     How did you feel about the protagonists? [open question]

9)     How was the dialogue in the protagonist’s main speech successful in explaining the narrative and creating tension? [open question]

10)  What was your least favourite aspect of the opening, and why? [open question]

11)  What was your favourite moment in the opening, and why? [open question]

Group: Evaluation Planning

Questions 4 & 5

• For our collaborative evaluation for questions four and five, we are planning to make a multi-media Prezi presentation demonstrating audience responses to our final cut, in the form of both questionnaire results and interviews.
• We will also be explaining who our target audience are, and how we attracted and addressed them within our opening, with reference to past audience research that we have carried out.

Question 7

• For question seven, we will be scripting and recording an interview in which we will be discussing how our film making skills have developed since the preliminary task and adding clips from our film opening and preliminary task and comparing them.
• For both the initial task and the final cut, we will comment on how we carried out our filming and editing, what challenges and difficulties we faced and how we overcame them. We will evaluate both pieces for their strengths and weaknesses.

Group: 'Gutted' Final Cut

This is the final cut of our horror opening, 'Gutted.' It will be premiered on 29th of March to an audience of media students and other members of our target audience, who we will ask to complete our questionnaire on their response to the opening.

Group: Photoshop Title

• The effect we wanted at the end of our opening was the video to show through the titles, so in order to do that, we went onto Photoshop to make the titles, then put it onto the timeline.
• The way in which we did this was to start by checking how big the video was (1280 pixels by 720 pixels) and making a transparent layer.

• The next thing we did was to fill in the box with black, then to add our text in with white and placed and re-sized it until we were happy with how it looked. Then we merged the two layers together.



• Finally, we used the magic wand tool and clicked on all the white areas and deleted them until we could see the transparent layer again (where the video would be).

Group: Colouring 21/03

• After editing all of our clips and adding the titles, we have started on colouring each clip so that the corpses in the first scene look more dead.
• We have decided to mute the colour as we filmed in the day when the sun was just about to set and it was too bright, which would not have gone with conventions of our horror opening.
• The way we have changed this is by altering the brightness and contrast, saturation and lightness and making this consistent throughout the first section of our opening.

Before

After

• The setting we have gone for are the following:
• Lightness: -1.4
• Saturation: -40.3
• Black clip: 1.54%
• Brightness: -2
• Contrast: -5.5
• Blend with original: 20%

Group: Rough-Cut Audience Feeback

Today, we exported a rough cut of the editing we have done so far, and previewed it to a selection of our target audience We were then given feedback as to what they felt worked well in this sample of our opening, and any improvements we could make.



What positive feedback did you get from the sample target audience?

• The audience liked the handicam shots where the characters are using their cameras. They particularly liked the shots of Alexis while she is speaking directely into her camera. They liked this because they felt the dialogue was really effective and they felt that the acting was really believeable, so added to the verismilitude of the piece, as well as positioning the audience with her.

• The audience liked the part with the parallel lines of action between this shot and the handicam shots of the other girls in the kitchen. They also liked the fact that the audio ran over these shots, so that the dialogue wan't interrupted.
• We recieved positive feedback on the screaming and dialogue as Alexis is running to find the other girls, as they said this was really effective in creating tension and fear.
• One shot that they particularly liked was the shot from within the fridge, as they appreciated the creative camera placement.

• The audience also picked up on the enigma that was created throughout the opening. For example, the bodies on the floor in the establishing shot: are they corpses or zombies?

Group: Title ideas

I was a fan of these titles as the way the text is layed out is in rules of thirds which doesn't look out of place. Also the titles slightly move which gives an obscure view for the audience which is good for conventions of a horror film opening as the audience do not expect the text to move. The music in the second one fits in very well with the effects on the titles, I like the disordent sounds that are made as they are timed well with the effects therefore making the titles more interesting to look at. We could use some elements of this in our opening.