What makes an effective trailer?

Reflection of my AS Media coursework

What were the strengths of your AS work?

• I had strengths of my AS work, but my main strength was my research into the genre. Prior to choosing the genre thriller, I looked at several films. My research into genres through these films allowed me to come to terms with what genres would fit my very small budget and limited editing resources; this allowed me to rule out sci-fi and action as they often use CGI and have high budgets. The research helped choose a final genre that I liked and something I could do to the best of my ability, through this research I learned about the conventions of the thriller genre helping me plan my final opening sequence. Without this research I would've found it a lot harder to make an opening sequence that came across as a thriller, this lead me to look at films that were in the genre of thriller.

• Another thing that went well was my target audience research I gathered research from my peers as well as a website called yougov.co.uk/profiler which allowed me to look at people that enjoyed films similar to my genre. This research helped me pick a suitable age rating, and in turn filter the content in my film to match those who had enjoyed similar thriller films.

What could I have done better?

• A weakness was time management, although I filmed my title sequence in one day, I constantly kept on having new ideas. This meant that I would often go off plan and this would slow me down and this hindered my quality as I then had to start to rush, to meet deadlines. I believe this greatly affected on the quality of my final piece, I now realise that it would have been better if I had had my ideas earlier or filmed early to allow me to add new ones as well as sticking to the plan.

• I believe I could've prepared better, by this I mean I could've planned out my idea for my final task better this would've made filming shots; the script far more time efficient instead of rushing on the day.

• Another thing I could've done better was the amount of blog posts I often paid more time to my final task than actually showing how I edited, gathered research and questionnaires because I would forget to make blog posts. This lead to me having a hard time writing the evaluation as I didn't have pictures of the surveys and/or my editing process. 

• A further problem I had was my equipment at the time I didn't have a very good camera, this lead to poor quality as well as not having a tripod. Because of this it lead to shaky shots that were often of poor quality, this made my final piece grade lower. 

3 Targets I have set for my A2 work:

1. Try to plan earlier.
2. Stick to the plan.
3. Keep my blog up-to-date.