Final Film

In this final post I will be posting our short film Love, Fate, Destiny.

Here is our final film, Love, Fate, Destiny, it's been a lot of fun filming and working together again.

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

In this post I will be answering my fourth evaluation question.

Evaluation Question Four

There are so many new pieces of technology that we use in our media course, I'll be posting a Prezi with some of them in and then developing on my points.

So in the Prezi above I've just mentioned some of the pieces of technology that we use the most, now I will talk about the ones that we used less frequently and what stages they were used in. 

Research

This is the research that was done before our filming and our ancillary products. 

Storyboard Quick

This was only used for creating our animatic, this basically allowed us to insert and choose pictures and locations to use and make a small "mock up" of our film to see how it should look, it also allows you to add a soundtrack to it, we used this to create our animatic, which is shown below. 

 

Sony HD Camera

This is the camera that we had used previously to film other products, we didn't use it for filming our short film though, however we did use it for one of our techniques, which was slowing down the footage that we had, we used this for our smashing glass scene. Here are our test shots that we did before filming for our actual scene.

Slide Share

This software is available online and we used it for uploading presentations that we made and them embedding them onto our blogs, for example, I've used it for deconstructing movie posters and looking at their conventions and them uploading them onto my blog. 

This has been a very useful piece of software when wanting to show presentations on our blogs. I have quite a few of these in my ancillary tasks and evaluation, here is one I used for presenting a deconstruction of film posters.

Planning

This is the planning that went on before filming and constructing our ancillary products.

Scribd 

Scribd was used in the planning stages to present various documents for filming, we posted things like our shooting schedule, risk assessment and our props list, this has also allowed us to print and take documents like these out filming with us to enhance the filming experience. 

Quark Xpress

We used Quark Xpress when prepping to do our ancillary tasks, we all created a magazine review and a magazine front cover, for films of our choice to prep us for creating our real products, below are the ones that I created. 

Construction

This was the construction of our film and our ancillary products.

Equipment 

We used different piece of equipment in our filming process, one being the camera we used for the majority of filming, Canon 600 DSLR. We used this camera because it was more portable than the Sony HD camera that we used in previous filming, this was needed as we would be filming outside and on the go for most of the film, for example, the scene on the train platform was easier to film since there was a part where the camera was handheld to create a shaky and rushed feel.

We also used this camera since it had certain features that we needed that were better than that of those on the Sony camera, for example, the depth of field that we used for focusing on the pen in one scene. 

The dolly and the tripod were other pieces of equipment that we used in the filming process, one scene that the dolly came in handy was when our protagonist is walking towards the camera and her love interest is entering the hall behind her, the dolly was needed so we could keep our protagonist in the shot but have the attention on her love interest. 

The tripod was used to keep our shots stable in scenes where it could have been difficult, for example, the tripod was placed on the dolly to keep it stable as it moved.

To create our ancillary products we used Quark Xpress to create our ancillary products, this gave us the opportunity to learn a new piece of software and make our products look professional. 

We then used Scribd to host our products, this allowed us to post it a different way that just on our blogs. 

This is how our movie posters and magazine reviews looked in Scribd.

YouTube

YouTube is the main distribution center for our films and other videos that we've done, like rough cuts, feedback and little example clips for evaluation questions. 

YouTube also allows us to easily embed videos onto our blogs so people could see it and we could also send links to people who want to see our films or who we wanted to see our films. 

Below is a video that talks about other aspects of YouTube and it's features.

Evaluation

In the four evaluation questions that I am have been doing I have used different pieces of software and technology.

YouTube is one of the things that I've been using, mostly for little clips from our film for examples in my first evaluation question, this also ties in with another piece of software that I've been using which is Windows Live Movie Maker, which I use to edit and find certain parts that show conventions of romance films. 

Another piece of software that I used in evaluation is Prezi, I've used this to talk about each piece of technology that we have used in our filming and in talking about our audience feedback.

Prezi is an easy way to make interesting presentations that we can embed onto our blogs instead of just typing up our answers. 

Slide Share was also used to post deconstructions of film posters in question two, to talk about the conventions of the movie posters.

A final piece of software that I used is QuickTime, this was to create a screen cast for the second evaluation question, the screen cast showed our film and talked about certain parts of it like the ident and camera angles.

This is my final evaluation question and overall I am very pleased with how well everything turned out and how good it looks and am very happy with how professional our ancillary texts look.

Evaluation Question: What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

In this post I will be answering my third evaluation question.

Evaluation Question Three

In this answer I'm going to be talking about the feedback that our group received on different tasks we were set to do and how it helped us. These will be our short film, our magazine review and our movie poster.

TAP

First off I will tell you what our target audience was for our film and ancillary products; this just allows us to think about how we should present our products so that they appeal to our target audience. 

The target audience is going to be 'teenagers', specifically teenage girls ranging from 12-18, this is mostly because there is no reference to swearing or any forms of violence, which doesn't follow the typical conventions of romance films any way. The genre of our film is romance which automatically makes it a preference to girls but not exclusively.

We looked at typical romance films to help us see how we could target the audience we chose and how the films could relate to our own. The films we looked at were Safe Haven 

The Vow, these are typical romance films with the same target demographic as our own film. 

We gathered our research of the demographics from Pearl and Dean. 

For gathering our feedback we chose to ask our media group which consists of five people, since our target audience is teenage girls ranging from 12-18, one person in our group, Emma, fits the demographic perfectly, whereas the rest of our group which consists of mainly males fit the age range. Also our teacher Mr Hood is able to provide professional opinions on our film.

Short Film

We had various amounts of feedback on our short film, we gathered is by having our target audience write down their points and opinions on white boards, we also filmed them giving their feedback so that we could go back to it at a later date if needed. 

Here is the video

As you can see one of the biggest pieces of feedback that we got was for the sequence of events in the film, our audience felt that it didn't make sense and they didn't understand what was going on, we fixed this by having our protagonist come back in and create a voice over for the film, this in turn also created a narrative. 

Another piece of feedback that we received was that in one scene when our protagonist was getting out of bed her blankets kept rustling after they had stopped moving, this also tied in with the fact that the soundtrack was very loud and overpowering, for example, footsteps were loud when they didn't need to be. 

This is the rough cut version of our protagonists blankets rustling after they've stopped moving.



This is the final cut version where the soundtrack has been fixed.

Gathering the feedback really did help us in the end, since it showed us things that we had missed that would have brought our grade down. It also showed us things that could be included that could possibly make the film better for certain members of our target audience. 

All in all I think that the feedback that we got from our target audience was very informative and helped us a lot. It's also played a large part in our coursework as it helped us analyse where we were going wrong and gave an outsiders opinion. 

Audience feedback on ancillary products

Next I'm going to talk about the audience feedback we got on our ancillary products, which were, the magazine review and the movie poster.

Magazine review

The feedback we received for the magazine review was good overall but we had some small things to tweak so it would look it's best. 

This is our rough draft of our review, currently without content so we could focus on the layout and design.

The feedback, as I mentioned above, was good overall with a few minor issues, for example,one piece we received was that the line under the movie information was lower than the line above it and it didn't look right so that had to be fixed.

Another piece of feedback was that the convention was to have a date at the bottom of the page under the review and we hadn't put one, so in the final cut, you'll be able to see a date in the bottom right corner, next to the page number. 

A final piece of feedback was that there were large gaps in the Lorem Ipsum when there shouldn't have been and this didn't look professional so that was also fixed.

All in all here is the final cut of our magazine review with it's improvements, I feel that it looks professional now.

  

Movie Poster

Now I will talk about the audience feedback for our movie poster, we had about the same amount of feedback for our poster as we did with our review.

Here is the rough draft of our poster.

The feedback for our movie poster was a little less drastic than our magazine review was as it was only changing minor things and proving that things could be there.

One main piece of feedback that we received was the tagline, as you can see above it reads "Second Chance For Love" our audience that we were gathering our feedback from felt that it needed to be larger so it could stand out, a convention of movie posters is that the tagline is catchy and noticeable and ours was overwhelmed by our title. 

We also changed our tagline a fair few times until we found the right one, even the one in the rough draft above isn't fully right, we had various amounts of feedback for our tagline ideas as we needed a tagline for a romance film that would stick, we eventually came up with the one you'll see in the final cut.

A minor piece of feedback we received was that our audience didn't feel like the reviews had to be there and that they weren't suitable on a movie poster, to reply to this we created a type of list that showed movie posters with reviews on them and agreed to keep them, the list is below. 

Here is the final cut of our movie poster with all the improvements.

As you can see we've kept our reviews and the tagline is now "Second Chance at Love"

Overall I'm very happy with how our ancillary products turned out and feel that the feedback helped tremendously with making them look professional and good.

Overall the feedback was what really helped us do our best on these projects and get them to their full potential. 

In my next post I will be answering my final evaluation question.

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

In this post I will be answering my second evaluation question

Evaluation Question Two

In this answer I am going to show you a screen cast that was created that talks about certain parts of our short film. 

Here is the screen cast.

Ancillary text 1: Magazine Review

We created a magazine review that followed the conventions of an Empire review we did this to make it look professional like it was actually out of a real magazine. 

The conventions for Empire are that they always have 'IN CINEMAS' in the top left corner of the page just overlapping the border of the review, we have done this also and given it a purple, white and black colouring throughout the review, for example, in the actors names and the lines separating text. 

They also always have a line of text in a different box leading off from the 'IN CINEMAS'

A second convention is that they have the details of the films that they are reviewing placed before the text starts, it contains things like the main actors names, the certificate and the plot, this acts to give the audience a feel of the movie by showing who is in it and the plot.
We have also followed this convention, on the left is our magazine review and on the right is a real example from a review.

Third convention would be the use of the photo from the film, this photo usually takes up just under half of the page and is from the film so it hints at what is to happen, we do this also by using a photo from our characters wedding.

A fourth convention for magazine reviews by Empire is that they have the title of the film in big bold print and a small line of text under it before the review starts, this can be either a tagline or something that the magazine has entered themselves. Ours for example is a line that the magazine has entered, it reads "Make a date at your local cinema" we chose that line specifically because of the genre of the film, since it is a romance it could be watched when someone is on a date. 

The final convention is the actual review, the content and the layout of it. The review can contain one of two things, either it is talked about by the person writing the review or it could act as an interview between the two main characters, we have done the latter option and made an interview and have our two main actors talking about the movie. Then at the end there is something called 'Verdict' this basically says whether or not the film sounds good or not.

As for the layout of the review, the review is usually laid out in four columns that are all pretty much the same length, it may have a quote somewhere in the middle of the review, this will either be an outsiders review or a line from the review itself. 

Ancillary text 2: Movie Poster

I will now be talking about the conventions of movie posters and how we have followed them when creating our movie poster.

Above I have created a slide share that shows some conventions of romance film posters and have deconstructed two film posters that I had looked at previously.

We made sure that we followed basically all of these conventions when we were creating our film poster, I will now point out where we have used them.

Title, this has to be the biggest piece of text on the poster so that it is eye catching and people know where they are looking, we have followed this convention and made the title center and the biggest piece of text. 

Next convention is the tagline, this has to be catchy and it should grab the audiences attention and make them think about what it could mean, for example, one of the real romance posters has "Inspired by true events" which is definitely interesting, ours as you can see above is "Second chance at love" which will also cause the audience to wonder about the film. 

Third convention is Steel Tongs, this is a font used in every film poster, not just romance, this is the most professional way to show other information about the film, like director or producer, but it has to be small enough to not grab attention and draw it away from the poster, so that usually finds it at the bottom of the poster. We have done just that, we used steel tongs to list crew information of the film and placed it at the bottom of our poster so that it doesn't distract audience members.

Fourth convention is actually something I have missed from the slide share, this is the picture used, this has to be the main thing that attracts the audiences eye, for romance posters this will usually be a couple embracing each other or at least looking at each other lovingly, we have this with our two characters, Faith and Olly, looking and smiling at each other. 

Fifth convention is actors names, this convention has the actors names being the second largest piece of text on the poster, this is done to draw the attention of viewers, for example, if it was a well known actor it would draw the attention of viewers. The actors names also have to be the same font as the title, we have done both points.

The finals conventions are the release date and the ident, the ident is usually found at the bottom of the poster, sometimes in with the Steel Tongs because it is not the main focus and is not known to attract the attention of viewers. We have done this but put it in slightly larger text that the rest of the Steel Tongs.

The release date however is usually what is looked for if the viewers are interested in seeing the film, this means is is usually in slightly large text in an easy to see spot, ours is in large text and below our tagline so it also draw attention.

Overall I am very pleased with how everything turned out, especially the ancillary texts because I think they look very professional and eye catching.

In my next post I will be answering evaluation question three.

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

In this post I will be answering my first evaluation question

Evaluation Question One

In this post I will be comparing nine things from our own piece of media with nine things from existing pieces of media, these things will be:

• Camera shots/angles
• Editing
• Lighting 
• Locations
• Sound
• Credits
• Composition
• Acting
• Costume

Camera shots/angles

The above images are shots from our own piece of media and a shot from the real media product I, Robot, this scene in particular has the same shots and pretty much the same angles as our film. In this shot we can see that our protagonist is positioned slightly to the left of the screen and in the real media product he is centered, this follows the rule of thirds.

We also have another scene that has a shot that points directly at our protagonist as she is rushing up onto the train platform, we decided to use a hand held camera to put emphasis on how rushed and panicked our character is in this scene.

Editing

The editing that I will mainly be focusing on is the transitions between scenes, above is one of my favourite transitions in possibly our entire film, it was so cleverly done and worked out so well. The transition above is when our protagonist opens her curtains after waking and whites out into the next scene, I feel that this really works with our plot of fate not being able to be fought.

Here I have compared it to the end of the death scene in the final harry potter film, this is similar in the fact that it takes you to another location in the scene but the transition is used in a different way, instead of having connotations of happiness it has unhappy connotations and is used in a different genre. 

We have a number of other transitions in our film that I feel work well to show what is intended, one of these being the jump cuts between shots to show the tasks shes doing. 

Another transition that worked very well is the rewind that we did to show the audience what would happen if 'that didn't happen' or if 'that did happen'. This is one of the re-edits that had to be done to fix our storyline problem. 

Lighting

Since our film is a romance we had to have a relatively bright day to film on as this would create a happy atmosphere for the audience. Our best use of lighting I think is the curtains opening in the morning, as I think this was cleverly done. 

Another place we use clever lighting to create a good feeling atmosphere is when they are outside on the train platform and when our protagonist is getting ready in the morning we can see the light shining in from the window as she moves around her room, these scenes creat a happy and light feeling. 

 

The example of lighting in a real piece of media that I have found is from The Lucky One, in this shot light is shining on the protagonist and his love interest as they are embracing. 

Locations

We have a total of three locations in our film, our protagonists house, which we see the kitchen and the bed room, the office that our protagonists works in and the train station that acts as a means of transportation for our protagonist. 

I am mostly going to be focusing mostly on the train station location, above we can see our location and a piece of real media, from The Tourist, that looks similar to ours. However our location is slightly different as it is more natural and bright, we chose this location because it lets in a lot of light and it being bright follows the conventions of romance films. 

Sound



A main part of our sound is our voice over, this provided a narrative for our film so that the plot was understandable. Our main plot was that our character was looking back on her life with her love interest and thinking about what would have happened if she did something differently. 

Only a few real media products do this, Moulin Rouge do it at the start of the film and the example that I have is from a romance film called Safe Haven, this narrative effect in our short challenges conventions as not many romance films do this.




Credits

While we were filming we researched credits from real media products so that we could follow their conventions, we wanted our credits to be easily readable and not go by to fast so we picked a large font and ensured that there was enough time for everyone in the film to be seen. 

As for the layout of the credits, we picked that from other pieces of media, the one above is from X-Men. We found that this layout is used frequently so we went with it, it's even used in some films from the past, this is an example from a film called Possessed which was aired in 1947.

Composition

For composition we are looking at how the actors are framed in a scene, the shots that I've chosen are one from our own film and two similar composition shots from the real media products, (500) Days of Summer and Titanic. 

The shots we've used a lot of are over the shoulder shots, these are very common shots that are used in films, therefore they follow the conventions. Over the shoulder shots are mostly used when characters are conversing with each other so we have used the shot in these situations. 

Acting

For our film we had to choose the right actors, who had chemistry and could work well together. We chose our two because they were friends and were able to act in a romantic way when filming, we can see that they are friendly in the above picture.

We however couldn't just rely on our actors relationship, we had to ensure that they could actually act, we knew that the two we chose could act because of past experiences, they both had worked with our other peers before they worked with our film crew. 


Costume

It was obvious that since our protagonist was going to a job interview that we had to have formal wear for her and her love interest since that is one of the situations they meet in. We went for a pencil skirt and lace shirt for our protagonist and a shirt and tie for her love interest, this type of costume is also used frequently in the real media product I've used (500) Days of Summer.

Here is the last scene from our short film, this has some of the best examples of costume in our film and they are easily seen.

In my next post I will be answering evaluation question two.