Evaluation

Date: 16th December 2011


Evaluation
Engayne Avenue

1. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
To begin with we brain stormed the possible storylines (considering the results from the questionnaire) that the audience would find entertaining. In the end we opted for the most popular and most well known themes that were relationships and bullying. We decided not to over exaggerate any of the storylines, as we wanted the audience to relate and to feel as though it was real.
One feature that did come to mind is a help line for people who may be affected by the content shown. The number is always shown after a real TV Soap. However, we all decided in that it was necessary as our product was only a trailer and not the full episode.
When filming the bullied character we originally planned to effectively use the lighting down the corridor (where the bullying takes place) so that the gang would be walking in the dark, making them look threatening. The lack of light also indicates that something bad is going to happen, just like real soaps would show that. On the other hand, we have the bullied student walking in the light to show that he is innocent and oblivious to what is about to happen. These clever yet simple effects would usually be used in existing soaps.
Additionally, we noticed from our research that original Soaps use more basic camera shots; however, we challenged this by using more interesting angles to add affect. For example we used a ‘Dutch tilt’ in the scene where the bullied student is sitting down with his head in his hands. By doing this we were able to create the feeling of tension and that the character is not thinking straight.
We developed our soap by using characters of a similar age to the target audience. This will then allow them to relate to the situation/ storyline and the characters feelings. We also formed the characters by making sure that they were in the correct and consistent clothing. For example the gang are all dressed in quite ‘fashionable’ and up to date clothes. Whereas, the student who is getting bullied is constantly wearing baggy and dull clothing.
Due to some information we came across from a well known website ‘ChildLine’, we found that the gender who is most likely to commit suicide by cutting their wrists are women. However, we challenged and changed this idea by using a male character instead.





2. How effective is the combination of your real product ancillary texts?
Both the poster and the magazine are effective ways to help to advertise our Soap. The images alone will draw the public in simply from the emotions displayed on the characters face. Simple emotions like anger and worry are common in Soaps; therefore, people will be expecting lots of drama. Use of bold lettering and bright colours helps to make these two products more appealing and interesting. Furthermore, a poster which is far away should be bright and bold enough to see from whatever distance, therefore, this is hopefully what we have achieved. Presenting our trailer on a magazine is a great way to spread the word of a new Soap. A great percentage of people read and buy magazines every day. Moreover, people- especially women like to gossip and share news. Therefore, they will want to spread the word about the new soap.
Trailer- Our trailer consists of a number of emotions and life like situations.




3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
We asked 15 people to answer feedback forms after watching our trailer. From these results we found out that most people found that the titles were gripping therefore we decided to leave the titles in the trailer as the titles generally attracted most people to continue watching the trailer. Secondly, everybody we asked agreed that the camera angles added effect therefore we did not make any changes to the camera angles as they were successful to the audience. Thirdly we asked the audience if they found our storylines easy to understand, everyone one of the audience we asked agreed that they were simple to understand therefore we didn’t make any adjustments to the storylines as they were not over complicated. We then asked the audience if they thought the storylines were suited to the location, only one person did not think that they were suited to the location and therefore we did not change this aspect as it was a large aspect to change especially when most people agreed that it was suited to the location. We then asked if the audience thought the music suited the location, a few people did not think that it did but as it was large factor to change and due to lack of time we were unable to change this however a large percentage thought that it did suit the trailer. We then asked them if they thought it was appropriate for young adults, everyone agreed that it did which is very successful for us as it shows we have created a soap that meets our target audience. Most of our audience thought it seemed realistic therefore we hope this can encourage people to watch the actual soap and finally we asked them if our magazine front and poster was successful and nearly everyone thought it was so therefore we have advertised our trailer successfully.

4. How did you use new technologies in the construction and the research, planning and evaluation stages?
The main use of technology we used was the internet where we created and editing the Blog. Additionally, by using the internet we were able to gain the knowledge of the concepts and origins of soaps and what is needed to create a successful soap. We used such websites such as Wikipedia and Digital Spy to do so.
Some of the research for our soap came from watching and analysing existing soaps from the TV. This was used in the planning where we could also gain inspiration from the storylines and camera effects. We also looked up posters and used a camera to take pictures of a bus advertisement to analyse. The filming camera equipment was also used to actually film our Soap trailer.
Finally, we used Windows 7 Movie Maker Software to upload and edit our trailer. We gained an understanding of this software and we were able to add titles, music and visual effects to make our trailer more interesting and effective.

By Hannah Jeffs and Laura Perry