Can I get some audience feedback please?

[5-0]

So I'm coming to the end of my Media project now and part of it is gaining audience feedback. For my coursework my partner and I have created a trailer for a Western film, plus a poster and website homepage to promote it.
Quite simply I want to know what people think of each product. In particular, can you talk about which elements you like, and what could be improved on.

Thanks a lot.

Poster: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AQy26-Fz8iU/TZBQ-S4Qk9I/AAAAAAAAAHs/9RKjDdz_bOU/s1600/FINAL+P.jpg

Website Homepage: (being difficult to demonstrate in action, I can only provide screenshots)

Homepage: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uOrZSZsYvQ0/TZQ5ryJPJAI/AAAAAAAAAIQ/pKQ3Y-_HPlU/s1600/Final+website+homepage.jpg

I also created an "About" page to go along with it: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-SuNy188tuZM/TZBRWb6PhkI/AAAAAAAAAH0/FoP6d84VQto/s1600/Final_about_page.png

And finally, the trailer (this was done on a horrible old mini-DV video camera with a terrible microphone) Also, don't watch it in HD, it seems to lag.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maQkrhSw9oc

 

[Gralian]

The poster is great, really sells the Western theme with iconography like a six-shooter, cowboy hats and a posse of questionable chaps. You have the posing right; not looking directly at the camera, each of them looking a little bit shady and dogged, with the appropriate font for the text. What i like most is the 'filter' effect you have going on around the border. It makes it look like a close-up piece of old film, which is fitting for the time period it's set in.

The website seems a little bare-bones and too similar to the poster. The trailer should have a lot more focus and not just be slung to the right hand side like an afterthought. It's what's going to sell your movie, so you want it in the centre of the screen. The viewer must see it's the whole point of the website and draw them into the movie itself.

The trailer is a good effort, but there are various glaring issues. One being that sound synch is not up to snuff - actors fire their gun, you visibly see the recoil but the sound effect is delayed by a second or two. It could do with more visual flare such as a bright flash from the muzzle of the gun (but i appreciate you may not be technically proficient with visual tricks, only with editing) and the music was too loud. At times, i couldn't hear what was being said, especially by the actor who kept blinking profusely. He also seemed to not fit his role very well as he had a thousand-yard stare most of the time. The older gentleman and the one who wants the blinking guy dead really sold it.

As for the movie itself. It could do with more references to what the Silver City actually is and why the protagonist has to get there. Right now all i'm seeing from the trailer is a young man who's ticked off some bad men who want him dead for some reason or other. Is the Silver City itself a character of the movie, much like Silent Hill was for that franchise? If so, give it a little context; explain the purpose of it. Even if it was something like "I hear there's buried treasure in the hidden lost Silver City, let's go find it before the bad guys!".

Still, considering it's only for coursework and not a professional production i'd say you did a fairly decent job - be proud of yourself.

 

[Irridium]

Well, for the picture, smooth out the outlines of the characters. As it is now, they look very jaggad, and just not that great. Looks like a weak photoshop job(it most likely is photoshop, and I doubt its "weak", but thats how it looks).

The website looks decent, if a little small. Maybe the actual site is much bigger, but it doesn't look like it.

The about page seems nice. Just move the description to the left a bit since the faded bar on the right can obscure the text.

As for the trailer, well youtube's being a dick to me so I can't load the video.

 

[Kpt._Rob]

The trailer looks alright, though to be perfectly honest I can't say that it makes me interested in the movie. There's a reason that low budget productions often avoid heavy action, which is that it's incredibly hard for anyone to pull off and you tend to need really good actors to make it work. On top of that, the story, or at least what I can get of it from the trailer, seems pretty conventional. I think a good piece of advice for people shooting low budget films is to set them in environments that they have access to. Part of the problem here is that this world doesn't seem so much like the old west as it does like you just went out into the country in order to avoid any modern architecture appearing in frame. That's a nice idea, but it doesn't really hide what the film is, so if you can't get a good set together, trying to avoid a bad set isn't an optimal solution. That is to say that sometimes instead of trying to mold the environment to the story you want to tell, you should mold the story you want to tell to the environment that you have. That said, most of the shots look pretty good on their own, and while the action scenes don't really come off well (the one that really stands out to me is the one where that guy jumps over a log to use it as cover), the actors seem competent enough to pull off their other lines.

The website looks pretty good actually, but the poster is an incredible mess. I hate to say that like that, but the people in the poster were obviously photoshopped in. I realize that doing a good job with photoshop or paint shop pro or whatever you're using takes a lot of time, but it'll make a big difference. The edges of the characters make it all too clear that they were just cut out of other pictures and dropped into the poster, and as a result, it looks bad. Even if the photoshopping were done better, it would be, at best a decent poster. It emulates so many other movie posters that it comes off as kind of cliche and boring, and to be honest, I think that it would be better for you to completely scrap it, and try to find an image that is more interesting to draw viewers in.

There are some good elements here, and given the story you've tried to tell with the resources you have available you've done pretty well. That said, next time it might be wiser to build your story around what you've got to work with, as opposed to doing things the other way around.

 

[ClinttotheEastwood]

Hey great job. For a piece of coursework this is pretty good. I like the poster (from a distance) and the website. The trailer is good but yeah I agree with what these guys are saying. Absolute hilarious when that funny looking man rolls over the log. And the guy in the nice brown jacket needs a hair cut! But seriously good job, we all start somewhere.

 

[ClinttotheEastwood]

Oh and btw I bet Mr Price will hate it

 

[ClinttotheEastwood]

Oh and btw a bit of the boys hair look like its been added in

 

[Anarchemitis]

Well, for the picture, smooth out the outlines of the characters. As it is now, they look very jaggad, and just not that great. Looks like a weak photoshop job(it most likely is photoshop, and I doubt its "weak", but thats how it looks).

Quite simply, it's aliasing. Shrink the picture by a little bit to fix that. Take the size down from 1000 to 900 or summat, that should do the trick.

 

[5-0]

Well, for the picture, smooth out the outlines of the characters. As it is now, they look very jaggad, and just not that great. Looks like a weak photoshop job(it most likely is photoshop, and I doubt its "weak", but thats how it looks).

Quite simply, it's aliasing. Shrink the picture by a little bit to fix that. Take the size down from 1000 to 900 or summat, that should do the trick.

Thanks for that, that's an improvement I CAN make. To be honest, yes it was weak photoshopping, not on my part though! The poster certainly looks better when it's a bit smaller.

 

[Anarchemitis]

Well, for the picture, smooth out the outlines of the characters. As it is now, they look very jaggad, and just not that great. Looks like a weak photoshop job(it most likely is photoshop, and I doubt its "weak", but thats how it looks).

Quite simply, it's aliasing. Shrink the picture by a little bit to fix that. Take the size down from 1000 to 900 or summat, that should do the trick.

Thanks for that, that's an improvement I CAN make. To be honest, yes it was weak photoshopping, not on my part though! The poster certainly looks better when it's a bit smaller.

Additionally, if you still have the layers that govern each character, do a bit of color correction with Hue/Saturation and/or Histogramic Levels (Ctrl-L in Photoshop) to get the color consistence a bit more stable inbetween characters
Something a tiny bit browner like it was printed on tanned hide, so it masks a little the fact that none of the characters had their picture taken in identical lighting situations.

The video looks fairly good considering the resources you appear to have, such as a DV camera.

 

[5-0]

Alas, the photoshopping was done at school. I agree with what you're saying though.

Well that about wraps it up guys. Thanks for your responses.