Use of Conventions:
https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0Ac0MF7gJN8o9ZGZnZ3NoZl8waGg1NXI0Y3M&hl=en_GB
Combination of Main Tasks and Ancillary Tasks:
https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0Ac0MF7gJN8o9ZGZnZ3NoZl8zZ2pyMm00cjg&hl=en_GB
Questionnaire of Audience Feedback:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f_6dybZUpZhJ4gekys6n6f5dY9QurVsLjZJKvPCDhug/edit?hl=en_GB
Audience Feedback
Appeal to Target Audience-
I think all in all I appealed well to my target audience. More people wanted to view my soap opera after viewing my ancillary tasks and main tasks than didn’t. My Listings magazine and trailer appears to appeal slightly more to my audience than the advertising poster.
Strengths -
The strengths of my magazine cover appear to be my images and cover lines, as they are the elements my audience preferred. This may be as the pictures are relevant to the story line and show all the main characters, and the cover lines are bold and intrigue the audience.
The main strength of my advertising poster appears to be my image, which is the audience finds exciting, and it shows the relationship between the characters. My time and date seems to be popular, perhaps as this is prime time viewing, and my title and tag line are also rated well, as they provide interest and intrigue, leading the audience to want to find out more.
The Main strengths of my trailer appear to be the music which is rock and adds drama and atmosphere to my trailer, and the characters, who are all portrayed in a way to suggest what happens in the soap opera, without giving too much away, and to grab the audience’s interest. The storyline is also rated highly, perhaps because it involves romance and murder, which are both popular storyline choices for soap operas. My editing is also popular, as the words such as ‘anger’ add drama and interest to the trailer.
Weaknesses-
The weaknesses of my listings cover appear to be my masthead and cover lines, perhaps this is because ‘soap spy weekly’ perhaps isn’t fresh enough or creative enough to grab the audience’s attention. Also, the tag line ‘First for big Drama!’ is conventional, yet not individual enough to be particularly appealing to the audience.
The main weakness of my advertising poster appears to be my colour scheme, perhaps this is because it does not stand out. I used mainly white, and although this blended well with the image as I was aware I did not want my advert to look tacky, I think it does not stand out enough or grab the audience’s attention. Perhaps with a more interesting and/or colourful font, my poster would attract the audience’s attention more and make my soap opera more appealing.
The main weakness of my trailer appears to be the text. Although the minimal writing does not give away too much of the plot, perhaps the audience would have preferred more writing to add interest to the trailer, and more to think about. If more was given away, it may have appealed more. Also the writing was quite plain as it was white on a black background, if this was made to be more visually appealing this may have made a difference. Perhaps a voiceover may have made the text more interesting and the trailer altogether more appealing.
Audience Theory -
Theories that relate to my soap opera trailer are the Uses and Gratifications Model (Blumler and Katz) as my product satisfies the audience’s need for escapism, because the audience involves themselves in the storyline and forgets their own problems. As the audience feedback tells me that the images and characterisation is successful, I can infer that the audience can escape into the story and the characters well.
The Hypodermic Needle Model (Adorno and Horkheimer) is also relevant as I used black and white editing and mise-en-scene of Claire’s costume by making her wear dark colours to ‘inject’ the idea that she is a bad character to the audience and encourage the audience not to like her character. This is also present in the images, as Claire is often looking sinister or tugging on the character of Paul while Chloe looks distressed.
Use Of Media Technologies
I used www.blogspot.com for my blog. I found the blog an organised way to lay out my work, and liked how I could do my work in sections and add to things. However, using the blog was difficult, as it is difficult to place pictures, and I had trouble uploading some links with google docs. I also found re-positioning some things very difficult.
The internet was important to my research, as this is where I found images and clips and examples of conventions I would need to follow in order to make my package www.youtube.com . I could also use www.google.com to conduct research into my target audience, etc.
I used Windows Live Movie Maker to make my trailer with my clips. I really enjoyed this process and found it very easy to use, as all the functions were easy to label, and uploading my trailer to www.youtube.com proved very simple and quick, as opposed to last year where I came across problems.
I did a lot of the written work on Microsoft Works Word Processor as I find this the simplest method of doing my written work then adding a link to my blog using google docs. However, there is a lack of continuity to my work, especially my evaluation, as I came acros problems with google docs and have had to copy and paste much of my work directly onto my blog instead.
I used a handheld camera to film my clips for my trailer, and found this process simple and easy. The only problem I encountered was that I had to convert my clips from MP-4 format to WMA but this was quick and easy, and I used a free video converter called ‘Any Video Converter.
