EVALUATION | 4

How did you use Media technology in the construction, research planning and evaluation stages?

Construction & Research

YouTube
I used YouTube in order to research other short films to gather ideas of codes and conventions of already existing short films. This became a valuable source for my textual analysis i didn't throughout.
YouTube became useful later on also when adding music such as background music and the title music. I knew I wanted eary title music which incorporated childrens voices as this is a typical stereotype of horror film music.

Evaluation

During my evaluation stages I have used Prezi, Blogger and filmed some of my responses. This makes my evaluations more interesting for not only me to complete, but more interesting to read! When filming my response it was a lot quicker and easier that typing it all out on to a Prezi but I did have a tenancy to miss a few key points out, and although it is more interesting that reading a block of text I still needed to add writing in Blogger to make sure I covered all the main criteria.

Prezi
When using Prezi, although it took a lot longer than filming my response I did manage to talk in depth about certain points. For example with this Prezi I was able to put it into main and sub sections to keep the bulk of text to a minimum and added music to make it more interesting when reading.

iMovie
As I own a MacBook Pro, I was able to use iMovie at my own home as well as bringing in my laptop to do work. Although I would have liked to have used Final Cut pro, iMovie was simple and easy to get to grips with and helped me to successfully create a short film.

Google
Because Google is my preferred search engine I used it a lot to find other students blogs to compare my work and to find images that I could later use for my own primary investigations and analysis. This helped me discover the typical conventions of short film and feature film posters but also the conventions of short films.

Pixlr
For standard photo editing for my short film poster and my short film review I used Pixlr as it was a simple and easy way to get professional looking tasks. However, with Pixlr, once the finished product is saved you cannot go back and change certain things without starting all over again. From finding out this, I began to selectively screen shot sections of my film poster and review to enable me to copy and paste it back in if i needed to amend something.

Blogger
By constantly updating my blog I was able to keep up to date what I had written/researched about. Making individual posts about certain subjects, for example uses and gratification or target market made it easier for me to get my ideas clearly and simply in a blog post. Blogger overall has been the biggest help in my planning as it  also helped me as I was able to keep everything that related to my short film in one place and allowed me to see my own development.

EVALUATION | 3

What have I learnt from my Audience Feedback?

Questionnaires :

Questionnaire Audience feedback is the most important thing to consider before attempting to create a media product. Large amounts of information can be collected from a large number of people in a short period of time and in a relatively cost effective way. Before the construction of any of my Short film, I did a questionnaire for the research as it will better help me understand my target audience and what they expected from my media product in order to be satisfied. The results of the questionnaires were rapid and easily quantified.

Throughout the stage of planning, preparing and creating my media product, I have sought audience feedback at a number of different stages. Audience feedback helps to get a real insight into what people think about the product and the direction it's going in. The feedback I received personally helped me to decide in which direction I wanted to go with my product, how I could make my product relevant to my audience, and also helped in the editing stage to determine what I needed to do with my piece to make it excellent and meet the important 5 objectives of:

• Fitting with genre conventions of the film horror genre

• Representing codes, conventions and characters that my audience can recognise

• Reaching my audience through a number of factors

• Building an appropriate and strong narrative

• Using media language

Having researched the film horror narrative, I then created a storyboard to show what the narrative of my final piece would be like. The feedback for this was positive, and people saw that I had clear ideas of the direction of my film. The main criticisms were whether I could make the storyboard translate into the eventual film, and so the storyboard feedback taught me that I would be able to be flexible with the storyline.

I also did a survey with members of my target audience demographic to see their views about the genre, my direction with my media product and whether they felt it could work.

EVALUATION | 2

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

• A2 media studies coursework required me to make a short film with an ancillary task of making a film poster and review for the film. Horror is the genre of the film, so I put together codes and conventions of the horror genre and the unique selling point of my film into three different products. I did this inorder to make the film expand and attract and keep the audience engaged and interested in the film. By keeping to a house style, it ensures that the film, along with the review and poster, are easily associated with one another.

What are the links between the film, the review and the poster?
An obviously link shown between the film, review and poster is the images used. The eye used in the poster is a screen shot from the titles of my film just cropped and edited. The same images is also seen in the review as the film poster is on it as well as a screen shot from my film. The review, poster and film all follow the same colour scene and house style. The font I have used throughout all three tasks has been continuous and offers an obvious link to be made between all three products. Another link between the three shown is that they all stick to the genre of social realism, in how the review is written, how the photograph is taken and the film was filmed. They all stick to stereotypical codes and conventions of each media text.

• What are the functions of the ancillary and main tasks?
  The main task, my short film shows the life of my main character who has supernatural powers which result in deathly consequences. Within this are micro to macro elements that convey certain themes and issues. The main function of the main task is to make sure my film is viewed by my target audience and is enjoyable for them.
• My film posters main function is to obviously persuade people to go and watch my film and to also represent my film in a fun attractive way. The sole purpose of a film poster is to advertise an upcoming film; through letting audiences know that a new film is due for release, which raises awareness and in turn aims to generate hype. A film poster provides a range of information on an upcoming film such as; the name of the film, the stars/actors and actresses who are in the film and the BBFC certification. This information both attracts a viewer; through naming the stars who are popular and well known, aswell as a catchy film title, and at the same time informs them of vital information they may want to know about the film such as the certification- which will determine suitabity, in such cases as an adult wanting to take a child to see a film. The photos and graphics of the poster can suggest a particular genre and narative that the film will follow which is an insight to what the film may be about/along the lines of and therefore helps them to decide whether this film is something they may be interested in seeing. I feel that my film poster successfully does this.
• Just like my film poster my review attracts my audience to my film, the review accompanies the film and allows the audience to make an assumption of the film before they have seen it. By using star ratings it allows my audience to see how well the film has done prior to them watching it and thus encouraging them to go and see it for themselves.
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• How well does my ancillary tasks and my main task fit into the genre of social realism?
  I made sure my film & poster fit into the genre of Social Realism by using the technical elements of Camera, Sound, Editing, Mise en scene & Lighting. 
  Camera:
  Camera shots and angles used to convey meaning, a mix of wide shots & close ups.
  Mise en scene:
  A common environment, the work place or home is common, the story takes place at school, making it a natural and neutral environment.
  Sound:
  Minimal sound, the story is told through voice overs and camera shots rather than main diabetic dialogue. 
  Lighting:
  Natural lighting, a small budget means no lighting equipment, the light in the story comes from the sun and lighting in rooms.
• 
  
• Overall view on the main task & ancillary tasks:
  Looking at my short film, review and poster, I feel that they all compliment each other in a specific way. 
  All three convey the same themes throughout and also fit into the same genre, so they reflect each other. 

EVALUATION | 1

1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
What are codes and Conventions?

Codes and conventions in media can be separated into 3 distinct groups -
- Technical (camera techniques & shots),
- Symbolic (ie clothing, colours)
- Written and audio (music etc).
These give the text meaning and determine the response of the viewer. They can be used as a basis for any simple text analysis.

What are generic conventions of Short Films and how I develop or challenge?

Characters - DEVLOP
Characters is an Obvious Convention as ‘Short films’ tend to stick to 2 or 3 main characters as short films don’t have time to create deep back story or history for the characters, therefore character numbers are kept low.
I used two main characters, Ella and Avi, along with one extra of the psychologist who was not actually seen. I opted to use the generic amount of characters as I wanted the audience to relate to a small amount of characters rather than be confused by a larger amount of characters.
Twist - CHALLENGE
Short Films are always certain to contain a ‘Twist’. As the film is so short, twists are used in order to keep viewers interested.
Although my film does have twist in some ways, it is known from the beginning of the film and is not revealed in the middle of the short film.

Budget - DEVELOP
Short Films typically have a low budget. This is based on the fact that most Short Film Directors are independent without the sufficient backing in terms of funding. They keep their budget down by sticking to one or two locations and only using one or two actors. Having such a short film allows costs to be little to nothing in some departments as some actors will work for free if they really like the storyline.
Obviously, I developed this convention as I didn't have a high budget available to me along with resources.

Situation- DEVELOP
Short Films usually take an everyday situation that we can all relate to and then flip it on its head in some way. This allows the viewer to relate to the Short Film, but at the same time intriguing the viewer.

My short film begins in a school which is an everyday situation for the majority of teeneagers. This makes my film relatable to the audience.

PROBLEMS

I would be being lying if i was to say everything during the process of this A2 coursework went smoothly. I encountered a variety of issues including technical, personal and general problems when creating all three tasks.

Dreaded technology:
Obviously, technology some times has a mind of its own and my laptop often froze when in the middle of a crucial editing stage causing much frustration. For some of my scenes I opted to use the school cameras which were available. BAD CHOICE. I often found myself sifting through 10 of thousands of students work only to find that I was looking at the wrong camera! Furthermore, the quality of these camera was incredibly low and so I changed to using my iPhone 6 as the quality its considerably better. However, this causes a noticable shift in quality throughout my film which is so annoying! As we had lesson time to work on our coursework I often spent lessons keeping up to date with my blog on school laptops. The laptops that are available take approximately 20 minutes to actually start up and a further 25 minutes to sift through the pages that scream 'WEB PAGE BLOCKED' when trying to access websites such as youtube. 

Timing:
Bad time keeping is a personal bad habit that i just cannot crack. Even though I made a schedule of when i wanted to film, blog and edit i still found myself editing instead of blogging! Adding to this, trying to organise two 18 year old actresses was almost impossible. They also do media studies and had to focus on their coursework as well as being huge social butterflies and finding time to take part in my short film.

TEXTUAL ANALYSIS | FILM REVIEW

In order to create a proffessional looking film review, I had to analyse the content along with the layout and structure already existing film reviews. 

Alot of the online reviews i have looked at rely on a brief outline of the plot along with numerical facts. As you can see, the reviews above have very limited writing as in today's society we often do not have time to sit and read a large amount of text and tend to rely on trailers for films to decide whether or not we want to watch them. With this in mind, I refrained from writing a large synopsis of my film and large quotes from people as i knew my target audience especially would not be interested.The second thing I noticed about film reviews is the limited colour scheme and it often only uses 2/3/4 colours. Having a simple house style such as black, red, white and yellow will ensure that all the attention is drawn to a catchy bold title and the star ratings of the film ensuring that the main information will be taken in by the audience.

ANCILLARY TASK | 2 TAKE 2

Here is my final draft of my short film review. I took into consideration the audience feedback i received on my first draft and hopefully created a more professional and realistic review. 
I decided to add in the logos on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Blogger in order to make my film have some sort of synergy with other companies as in todays society most films are advertised on bigger platforms such as twitter and facebook. This also enhances my chosen target audience as the age range 18-25 is the most likely audience to have access to these applications.  
I also added a larger amount of text to inform the reader what goes on in my film, although it does not go into too much depth it allows the audience to gather more information than what was available in my first draft. I kept the same colour scheme as it coincides with the house style of my other two tasks (short film and short film poster). 

ANCILARY TASK | 1

FILM POSTER

Along with creating am actual short film, I had to create a professional film poster to go with the film.



The poster above was my first attempt at creating the film poster for my film. The extreme close up of the eye is the eye of my main character Ella Young and I had to cut the eye out from a close up of her face. I then layered the eye on top of a plain black screen on a programme called Pixlr. Secondly, I added the title over the eye making sure I used the same font as what I used on the titles of my Short film.
The tag line under the title 'See it or never know' is used in order to draw people in and make them feel like they have to see it. This relects influential power on my behalf as it is I do not have power and I am trying to gain influence over the audience. This is very common in advertisement as they are trying to gain power over you to buy their product thus, I am trying to get people to watch my film.

After receiving the below feed back I went back to my poster and added some slight changes. The most obvious change I made was the colour of the eye as it is more suitable to the title 'Seeing Red' and has an obviously link. Other minuscule changes I made to the poster was the size of the font on the credits at the top and bottom of the poster.

E.Y: 'The poster is really good! the eye really catches my attention and links well the title. Maybe make the eye red to make a more literal link.

A.G: 'The tag line really makes me want to go and watch your film, and the fact you have mention real horror films makes it seem so professional!'

S.W: 'Definitely make the eye red, other than that it looks very realistic. I can imagine it in a cinema!'

R.H: 'The close up of the eye is so eary, perfect for a horror genre.'

ANCILARY TASK | 2 TAKE 1

FILM REVIEW

Here is my first draft at my ancillary task of a short film review. I incorporated screen shots of my short film as well as my short film poster I also created. I like the look of this film review although I think it lacks a professional and realistic feel to it. I conducted a questionnaire to gather a wide range of responses in how to improve this task:

Does this review inform you enough about the facts of the film?

85% responded YES

What Genre do you think the film is?

100% responded correctly with HORROR

Could you imagine this in a magazine?

45% respond NO and suggested it looks more like an online review

What should be added?

More information about what happens in the film

A border

Synergy of other companies 

ANCILARY | POSTER IMAGES

Obviously, my film poster is not an actual image and is just a black page with only an eye as a real image. To get this image, I asked my main actress to send me a close up of her eye to which I cropped to create an extreme close up.