How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

How effective is the combination of your media product and ancillary texts?

 

To conclude I think that my Film Review page, Film Poster and Short Film all work well together and help to demonstrate the emotions and feelings behind this story-line. I think that they all work well separately and and together to convey to the audience just how professional this project feels and how effective they all look together. I think that my research, feedback use of conventions has helped me to create a very effective piece that connects well with the audience. I think that all my pieces of work together create a clear piece that clearly demonstrates it's genre and the purpose and message behind it.

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Research 

Screenshot of Short Of The Week

When I began to start my A2 coursework I first had to do some quick research around the topic to identify what genre I wanted to pursue and then research the conventions behind it. To do this I used the search engine Google. I decided to use this search engine instead of others as I have previous experience with Google and this meant that I was able to find the information I wanted easily and in a format the was informative to me. When I was researching through google, I used websites such as Short of the Week. This enabled me to view short films of all genres and allowed me to creatively think about what genre I want to chose and any plot ideas that I have. The website was good as it helped me progress to the planning stage as it gave me inspiration when creating a plot and idea behind my short film and what it was going to be about. I decided to look at existing examples of work and see what student shad chosen to do their film about as this would help me make a decision about what realistically I could do as my budget was £0. I used blogger as this was the website I am using and have previously used to post and update my media work. In AS I was very new to blogger and this became clear as my blog posts were simple and lacked originality and something other than just text and pictures but by looking at other peoples blog I was able to understand all the different way that you could display your work and findings. Moving into A2 I already knew many different ways of posting my work. Due to my previous experience of blogger I was able to apply this knowledge and advance the presentation of my work. YouTube was another media technology that I used throughout my media project. I used YouTube to research existing short films and create a textual analysis of films surrounding my chosen genre. This was good as it enabled me to see how the conventions of those genres were follow or if they were broken. 

Planning

Screenshot of Celtx Website

A media technology that I used during my project was Celtx. This website that enabled me to create a professional looking script that I was able to distribute these to my cast and have some spare for when we were going through scenes. Celtx was a good website to use a it had a simple layout that was easy to use first hand and I soon got into the way of things and created my script. I found that this media technology looked very professional when it was published on my blog. I also used this website to create my call sheet. This made it look more professional and the project as a whole more professional which then I feel had a positive effect on the film, as people felt it was more serious and took a more dedicated approach to my project. Another media technology that I used during this stage was a website called StoryboardThat. This website was especially useful as it allowed me create a storyboard about my film. This allowed me to keep my mind clear and I was able to make sense about how my film was going to turn out and whether it was going in the right direction. I think that this technology was good to use at it also enabled me to keep track of my film and how it was progressing. A advantage of using StoryBoardThat was that I was able to include text which included any shots, camerawork or mise-en-scene that I was considering using in my short film. 

Construction

Screenshot of my short film in Final Cut Pro

Throughout the construction process of my film I used a range of media technologies to create my film and ancillary tasks. The first I used was Final Cut Pro. This piece of software allowed me to edit my film in many different ways. One of the things I liked about Final Cut Pro was that you were able to change so much and that there was such a wide range of choice, and this meant that I was able to experiment with my film and I was then able to give my film the look I had imaged. On Final Cut Pro I was able to add text, filters and sound. This allowed me to create a new way of supplying information to the audience without using dialogue, this is felt was an interesting way to keep the audience on their toes. Final Cut Pro allowed me to insert sound clips that I had downloaded meaning that I had a wide choice for any non-diegetic sound. When I began to make my film I used a Canon VIXIA HF S21 Camcorder. I used this camera as it was to my disposal and would record the film in good quality which I would then be able to edit. I was allowed to borrow this camcorder and take it off-sight to my film location and begin filming my scene. This allowed me to create zooms, focusing and to store large quantities of film clips which would later be uploaded. Another media technology that I used was a website called Canva. I used this to create my film posters and my film review page. This media technology was good as it allowed me to put filters onto my images and be creative with the way that my ancillary tasks and the layout of them. Canva was a good media technology to use as it was easy to use and I was able to get a grasp of things pretty quickly.

Evaluation

Finally in my evaluation stage I used Blogger as the main media technology that I used this was because I am very familiar with this site and I didn't think anything fancy would be appropriate for describing my work and my findings. Blogger allowed me to create posts about my work in a professional and proper way. I used blogger to post about my work and evaluating it, they include examples from my work this was good as it enabled me to show how I did things.  Another media technology that I used during the evaluation stage was Prezi. Prezi is online presentation creator, I had used Prezi previously for a short time and therefore was able to use those skills to help me create an interesting an different way to present my findings with my evaluation looking smart and tidy. I liked using Prezi as a method to display my findings as I thought this helped to break up to load of writing that featured in the evaluation stage of my blog. I was able to include images and text into the Prezi in order to make it more interesting.

Without these media technologies I would not have been able to create my film and ancillary tasks to the level that they are. Media Technologies allow us to create inspiring and interesting pieces of work that can be view to the public for enjoyment and to express people's creativity.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real music products? 

When looking at my media products I must first look at my short film. A classic code and convention of a short film is that there are limited characters. I follow this convention throughout my short film as my characters a low in number and are not as in-depth as they would be in a feature length film. To follow this convention I decided to base on film solely on one character and include brief characters  when the plot needed to be examined closer. I recently watched a short film called Plastic by Sandy Widyanata which seemed to follow this convention of a short film as it was based on one character, a female who was unhappy with her body but when she was given the choice to change anything was unhappy with the results. This short film included a second character who was brief and included so the the plot line of the story made sense. This was what I did in my film. I based my film on a character called 'Chloe' and we see her life and from this a plot line forms. We briefly see characters such a the doctor who informs Chloe of her inability to have children as this is a necessary part to the plot. This does allow me to keep to the convention of limited characters in a short film but allowed me to examine the plot line of my story in more depth. This however does challenge a classic convention of a short film that would be a limited story line. By having limited characters allows me to explore my main characters and create a plot which entices and intrigues the audience. The way I created my plot line meant that I was able to display a real story that was full of real emotion rather than a rushed and simple story line. My plot line is about a mental disorder called Schizophrenia and the effect it can have on a persons mind and life. This meant that I was challenging the convention of short films and this was unusual.

Another convention of a short film is a plot twist. This is to keep the audience interested in such a short period of time. An example of this would be in a short film I watched recently called 'The Root of The Problem' made by Ryan Spindell. This film seemed to be about a woman who was afraid of the dentist and appeared to be hallucinating, however in the end (the plot twist) it appeared that the dentists were in fact monsters and she wasn't in fact hallucinating. This plot twist worked as it made me curious about what was going to happen, because of things like the music and mise-en-scene I felt anticipation when watching this short film as though I knew something was going to happen I was just unsure what. I tried to recreate this effect when I was planning mt plot twist. This meant I had to work hard to create the same build up of emotions as I saw in the existing text.

Example I found

After looking at short film it was time to turn to the ancillary tasks I had to create which was a film poster and I film review page. A classic convention of a film poster is that there is a focal point. This will be something that draws the attention of the audience. I looked at existing texts and found that there was a film poster that was similar to how I wanted mine to appear and that the focal point of this poster was in fact the face of the main character. I felt that this would allow me to follow the conventions of a film poster but also to develop them and create my own twist on them. Another classic convention of a film poster is that it clearly covney's the genre of the film. I feel that my film poster does not follow this convention as when you see my film poster it is unclear what my film is about and even what genre of film it is. I think that this works to intrigue my audience and allows them to make their own judgements about the film before seeing it. 

Finally we look at my film review page. A classic convention of this would be quotes. It is common that quotes taken from the film are to be shown around the page to almost give the audience a clue or a sneak preview of the film and this sometime excites the reader and keeps them interested in the film. I decided however that I would not include any quotes on my film review page as in a short film there is limited dialogue and this makes it difficult to display quotes without giving away vital parts of the film. I have not include much about the film in the review page other than the opinion of the 'critic' and the plot summary. I feel that this was sufficient enough information to present and that no more information is needed as it should entice the reader enough about the film.

 

Editing my Film

Editing My Film

Title Sequence

After I finished filming my scenes it was then time to edit them. I decided to start off my creating an opening sequence to my film. This was important as this was where the audience would make their first impressions about my film so it needed to be good. I decided that it would be simple as this can be effective in many ways. I started off with a black screen that would eventually fade into my film clips. I then added text over the black screen to display the title and production company name, as this was what I had scene in previous examples. After watching the sequence I had made I decided that it lacked something to interest the audience so I decided to add a backing track to the opening sequence to see if this would engage my audience more. When adding this backing track I chose to make the music fade out when the film clips come into action. This was because in the first scene there is dialogue and in order for the audience to feel the emotions of the character, her voice needs to be clear.

Adding Transitions

After creating my title sequence I decided to move straight onto creating the body of my film. I started by adding all of the clips I filmed into Final Cut Pro, from this I was able to watch the clips and how they flowed together, which lead to me cutting clips and altering the order until everything was in the correct order and the story was being told. I then realised that my film didn't flow well with quick cuts to the next scene so I decided to include some transitions in order to make my film flow better and to help it look more professional. I looked at all of my options and tested a few out that I thought would be good before deciding that a fade seemed to work well with this film. This transition also helped show that some time had past but not a lot.

Adding Transitions

Green Scene Editing

Next I had to fix the green screen scenes and give them a background to work with. I found this quite difficult as I had no experience with a green screen before and this made things tricky. However, after learning how to alter the green screen background I was able to begin creating my scenes. Something I liked about using the green scene was that it enable me to change the background in my scenes if I felt the background didn't work with the dialogue or emotions that were meant to be going through these scenes. This allowed me to be creative about the choices I was making throughout the editing process. When deciding on a background I sometimes had to alter the colour and add filters onto the clips in our for it to match with the background. I found that this took a long time to do but I felt was worth it as it made the scenes look more real and professional. 

Creating my credits

After I had created most of my film and it was just finishing touches left I decided to begin work on my credits. This meant that I needed to find a song that would fit the overall view of the film and would still interest the audience. I decided that the best way to do this was to go with the original opening sequence backing track as this worked well in the beginning of the film. I then decide to stick with a plain black background also like my opening sequence and like the existing texts that I had looked at. I then added text from there including people like the actors and extras as well as directors and producers. This made my film look and feel more professional.

Ancillary Task - Double Page Spread

Double Page Spread

When I began thinking about my double page spread and what this would include I decided that I would look at existing film magazine review pages and analysis what made them and what I was to put onto my design.  

I looked at a film review page to see what information they included and what the layout of the page was. As you can this page is quite basic there is a cover image at the top of the page almost like a masthead for the page and the information/review is written in paragraphs below. I thought that this was a clever way to display the film review and that I would do something similar. 

 

This is the double page spread that I created using the website 'Canva'. I found that this website was especially good when it came to creating film poster and double page spreads as the website itself was easy to use and there were many different sizes and styles of canvases. This allowed me to expand my creativity and create a poster or double page spread that was to my liking and allowed me to create multiple magazines for different methods of distribution. 

To create this I started off with a blank canvas and because there was no double page spread setting I had to make my double pages separately then combine them when completed.  Before I began I decided to think about what I wanted on my double page spread. I uploaded the pictures I had chosen to Canva and from there I was able to begin creating my film review page.

 After I had chose the image that I wanted to be displayed on my double page spread I decided that I would do a quick bit of editing through canva to help give the image the correct look that I wanted. I chose to select a filter to put on top of my image, the filter I chose was called 'Street'. This filter gave the image a black and white look and helped to convey the feeling the 'Chloe' was almost gone and is a ghost of who she used to be. By using this effect it also helped me keep to the colour scheme that I had originally planned. This colour include colours like blues, white and blacks. This helped to great the emotion that I wanted the audience to feel. After editing my image and choosing a place to have it I decided to start working on the titles and headings for the review page. I started off by selecting a style of text that I felt would work for my review page and then I picked where I wanted this text to go. I felt that the title worked when it was aligned vertically against what would be the crease of the double page spread. I then proceeded to add some small headers at the top of the page. These would be quick brief titles that included things such as the directors, producers and the leading role. I decided that I liked the look of this and these headings would stay. Next I added the title of the film which would be large in order to draw the attention of the audience to the title of the film. After this I decided to add columns of texts which would be the review as this was the way that the text was set out in the existing texts that I looked at.

Changes made/suggestions

Changes made/suggestions

I decided that a good way to get overall feedback of the my film would be to to ask my peers and members of my target audience to view my film and give me some feedback on what they thought of my short film and any changes that they would suggest. Here is the feedback that I received. 

 

After receiving this feedback I decided that there were some changes in my short film that I could make. For example, I changed the music from the doctors office to a more suitable song that fitted the scene and also helped to create the emotion in the scene that I wanted there to be. Another change that I made was altering the background image in the green screen to a more appropriate image that would fit it more appropriately.