1. In what ways does the media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
As a group, we were extremely aware of the importance of continuity, and what impacts it can have if it is not achieved. We often scrutinised other short-films from other short films that we had seen at college from previous years at AS and A2, due to their lack of consideration towards continuity and their lack of attention towards advanced concepts of film and editing.
The handheld camera made several conventions of continuity more difficult at times – such as maintaining the 180 degree rule (due to the constant changing direction of the camera), and the establishing shot rule (as we opened the majority of new scenes with the handheld camera) – however, we ensured that they were adhered to whilst using the larger static camera (we did have a small issue with the 30 degree rule as the car pulls into a lay-bay towards of the film, but we managed to solve it with careful editing). There are other techniques which actually became easier as a result of the handheld camera. Shot-reverse shots, eye-line matches and match on actions came naturally – and required little consideration.
There were times that we became aware of continuity whilst editing too, such as noticing that Daniel had different coloured socks from leaving the bedroom to putting on his shoes – which we either edited to make correct, or reshoot particular scenes. We were aware that sound had to be faded in and out (as a sudden change in sound is really obvious, even background noise), and that students abused the length of individual shots (which is why we tried to make our film more interesting and engaging by having a slightly quicker pace than our peers)
Our film was initially planned to be a romance/drama, and built our story around it. However, upon careful analysis of both genres, we realised that our film was more of a drama – as it contained very little romance (a small hint at romance in the opening scene), and more dramatical elements such as having likable, authentic characters, and a storyline which is believable and realistic. We tried to allow the protagonist feel both highs and lows throughout the story, and tried to incorporate a narrative which people could relate to, and possibly seeing themselves or friends doing – what we believed makes a drama. We tried to subvert expectations by having an unexpected ending - whilst the audience’s emotions were heightened by Daniel’s (Luke) enjoyment – we would kill him.
Richard Dyer’s theory of entertainment and utopia explained that ‘intensity’ is one of the satisfactions that an audience will receive whilst watching our film. The film plays on highs and lows of emotion, such as Luke being excited that he is fulfilling his dream, travelling Europe, meeting an entertaining girl and having fun, however he is sad that he is leaving his girlfriend who becomes torn to hear that Luke has been tragically killed. We are confident that we have achieved this throughout our film due to feedback we have received from our audiences – in general, they love that Luke is fulfilling his dream, but are sickened and emotional when his life is taken towards the end.
Additionally, Laura Mulvey’s visual pleasure and narrative cinema theory explains that audiences often get pleasure from scopophilia – which basically means ‘love of looking’. Audiences are fascinated by having the ability to look at other people’s lives from their perspective – our method was using a video camera; a technique which has been used in the past. Even though the film is obviously scripted, an audience can feel like they are secretly watching what Luke is seeing through the video camera, and allows them to become involved in his personal space
As we are media students, we all enjoy all aspects of watching and making films. Whilst we knew the films had to be original, it would be incorrect to say we were not influenced by other films, or that we didn’t use techniques and ideas from other films. The film I analysed earlier in the year was called ‘The Plan’. This is a short film written by Matthew Kalish, and is story about how the main character packs his bags and leaves for Vegas, and meets a girl with the help of his Polaroid camera. In many ways, this film helped influence our media project, with techniques such as packing his bags in the initial scene, and in some ways – our storyline.
Surely, ideas such as the initial under-water scene, the side-ways view of deceased Luke with cars passing by, or the ending shot of the camera zooming out from the hand-held camera may seem unique, however – it is likely we have been influenced by similar techniques in previous films we have watched.
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and the ancillary texts?
Ancillary texts are often very important in film production, as they can be used to help promote the film in numerous ways. After we had written our initial film treatments for our film, we all shared the same ideas of how we wanted the film to be, and making the ancillary material for our production seemed relatively easy, as we already had an idea of what we wanted to convey to our audience.
After our film had been completed, I started to research into film posters of similar films that I had watched, and films which had posters that looked like they would fit into our genre, such as Remember me, Ondine and Over Her Dead Body.
Although I only analysed one poster, I also incorporated experience from looking at film posters in the past, and my own creativity to produce my own poster.
I think the poster of mine greatly complements the film, and is effective in its contribution towards the promotion of the film. The two characters (Kirsten and Daniel) are sat at the front, with the video camera – showing that in some way, these two characters interact within the film, and that the video camera obviously plays a large part.
The film is blue and incorporates subtle background clouds, which suggests peacefulness (colours you would associate with a drama or a romance). The title is obviously big enough to allow the audience to identify the title of the film, and as this was chosen carefully – it limits the assumptions that the audience can make (i.e. the audience may feel that he is in fact saying goodbye to the girl on the poster, but in fact, it is to a character who doesn’t appear on the poster)
The poster is intended to entice the audience, giving away exciting aspects of the film, without spoiling it for them. I think my poster (and subsequently the final poster), does this perfectly.
The radio trailer was fun, yet often frustrating to create as it was our first attempt at creating one.
Radio trailers, much like film trailers, try to incorporate the most important parts of a film, which may help you get a real sense of the storyline, without giving away any spoilers. For this, we felt that we had to include extracts from our production, such as the beginning narrative from Daniel, and various extracts from Kirsten and Aimee.
I gave additional material for the radio trailer, giving information such as what LoveFilm said about the poster, and when the film will be being shown – elements which were not included on the film poster.
I think as a whole, the three finished products that we created show our creativity, and dedication towards the project. The two ancillary texts greatly compliment the main production, giving away enticing information about it, without revealing anything to spoil the storyline.
3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
In reality, the success of any film is based upon the audience. Throughout our film, we had a clear idea of how we would like our audience to feel and what emotions we would like to provoke. We were aware that for an audience to tell their friends about a film, they had to love it, and that’s how we recognised the important on acting upon audience feedback.
After the initial treatment for the film was written up, we decided to get feedback on our ideas – if a selection of people didn’t like the idea of our film, there was little point in continuing.
An initial questionnaire was written up, and handed out to around 30 people, as well as a forum. This allows us to gain feedback on whether or not our film was viable, whether it would have enough of a target audience who would take an interest in our film or not, and allowed us then to customise our film based upon the research that we got (such as less violence as our audience typically watches 12A or 15). Questions were asked such as ‘Do you enjoy romance and drama films’ and ‘what age certificate do you typically watch’
We also filmed various people, asking them more detailed questions and gained more detailed feedback, such as whether or not they liked our pitch idea, or if they had seen similar films such as The Notebook or Dead John. People explained that they like romance/drama because they can have a twist at the end, they are clever, and can often make you feel better.
We used all of this information to produce our film, and, as we had a lot more footage than we had planned for, made around a 10 minute production. Although we were never going to hand in a film this long, we thought it would be a good idea to show it to people in our class and see what they thought of our (real) first draft. As many students knew it had to be shorter, they kindly suggested elements which may not have been necessary in the film, and how we could cut it down.
A slightly shorter film was produced shortly after. We posted this to YouTube, and gained verbal feedback from eager friends and family, showing our target audience, as well as feedback from YouTube and Facebook. This was missing a small section in-between, where Kirsten and Daniel meet, as well as Daniel travelling to Hull – which confused the audience (but was planned to be put in the film). They also suggested that there were perhaps a few too many instances of the 1 second hand-held clips, and that they had no idea that the characters were in Belgium.
Again, we got feedback from various audiences amongst our family and friends, Facebook, YouTube, our peers and teachers. We received a lot of praise from the people who saw the film, and received no negative comments about how the film could be changed.
I think that audience feedback is a very easy aspect to neglect. It is easy to disregard comments you receive from an audience, thinking that you know best. However, given that you have been involved in every aspect of the film (writing the story, seeing all of the footage, the edits, etc), you need to be aware that things may often not be as clear as you would have hoped, and that things DO need changing as your audience may see them in a different light.
To conclude, the feedback we gained from our audience has been vital. Without it, the film is likely to have been very different, possibly a more graphic killing of the main character (who was supposed to be thrown from a cliff), and a more complicated storyline.
4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
As a group, we recognised the importance of how thorough, extensive research can substantially affect our media production. With the internet having around 135 million websites, it was able to act as a virtually limitless resource to provide inspiration, creativeness and imagination. Social video websites such as Youtube and Vimeo host vast amounts of content relating to our project, allowing us to view many long and short films by students, hobbyists and professionals to assist us with our research.
We were also able to use new media technologies to our advantage whilst planning our film. Collaboration of ideas within out group could be done through communication devices such as mobile telephones and tools such as Facebook and Microsoft Messenger - and, once our ideas had been finalised, we were able to use Word Processing packages such as Microsoft Word to create questionnaires which would enable us to gather feedback about our ideas. Questionnaires were personally handed out to friends and family, by printing formatted questionnaires with a laser printer provided by college, or sent out to contacts online. They were able to be formatted, and plotted onto graphs with spread sheet software such as Microsoft Excel.
We used websites such as the BBFC to research film certifications, iMDB to research film genres – both of which were helpful in searching and planning our project. Google has limitless archives of resources, including their primary search environment, Google Images and also Google Maps, which is a fantastic resource that allows satellite and street-view images (which was used to aid us to view exotic locations, some of which were 70 miles away!)
Physical media technologies made the entire process seem effortless. We used digital recording technology, such as a HDV-1000 video recorder, and a Flash Zoom recorder to record media for such as our audience research, our audience feedback, our actual film production, our production feedback and our radio trailer.
All of these were imported to an Apple Macintosh, and were edited on a variety of programs. Final Cut Pro was a very important piece of software for editing every video that we created, allowing us to naturally use advanced features to create imaginative effects on both video and audio (such as slow motion, wire-framing, colour correction, adjusting contrasts and all types of fading/cutting). These technologies were frequently used for every stage during our production process, and we feel fortunate to have such cutting-edge technologies provided (among others such as Garage Band and Adobe Elements)
Image editing software, Adobe Photoshop was used regularly throughout the production, which again – was fortunately provided by our college. Pictures were taken with a Canon 450D, and once imported were used in conjunction with Adobe Photoshop to design out title sequences, the movie posters, storyboards, and even smaller elements such as borders for our photo-story board, our production logo and many elements of our website.
Social networking sites such as Facebook allowed us to gather important feedback on the First Draft of our film in the final construction stages of our project. The initial draft of our film was transferred using the remarkable USB flash memory drive, and uploaded to YouTube and Facebook, which could enable us to reach out to thousands of people, quickly and easily – and collect essential feedback to help improve our film.
Like most technology, there were times in which is delayed our progress. We quickly discovered that technology was unreliable, when we depend so much upon it. We encountered hardware problems such as a faulty video player, uncharged batteries and tapes which failed to operate correctly. Due to human error and not backing our work up correctly, we had to re-film several scenes, and regrettably spotted numerous continuity errors.
Technology has flourished our imaginations and creativity, primarily via the Internet. We are able to take inspiration from other artists, directors, producers and editors and develop them into what we have created. The expensive recorders were ideal, allowing inventiveness to come naturally, as well as tools used to gather feedback and research, often fuelling our passion and creativeness to achieve a better film.
Although the Internet brings creativity and imagination, I do feel that it can also cause the complete opposite. I think that the Internet doesn’t allow people to truly express their imagination thoroughly, and at times, can allow people to be influenced and inspired by the work of others. Without the internet, ideas would have to be absolutely original; creative and inspiring in its own right.
As a group, we were extremely aware of the importance of continuity, and what impacts it can have if it is not achieved. We often scrutinised other short-films from other short films that we had seen at college from previous years at AS and A2, due to their lack of consideration towards continuity and their lack of attention towards advanced concepts of film and editing.
The handheld camera made several conventions of continuity more difficult at times – such as maintaining the 180 degree rule (due to the constant changing direction of the camera), and the establishing shot rule (as we opened the majority of new scenes with the handheld camera) – however, we ensured that they were adhered to whilst using the larger static camera (we did have a small issue with the 30 degree rule as the car pulls into a lay-bay towards of the film, but we managed to solve it with careful editing). There are other techniques which actually became easier as a result of the handheld camera. Shot-reverse shots, eye-line matches and match on actions came naturally – and required little consideration.
There were times that we became aware of continuity whilst editing too, such as noticing that Daniel had different coloured socks from leaving the bedroom to putting on his shoes – which we either edited to make correct, or reshoot particular scenes. We were aware that sound had to be faded in and out (as a sudden change in sound is really obvious, even background noise), and that students abused the length of individual shots (which is why we tried to make our film more interesting and engaging by having a slightly quicker pace than our peers)
Our film was initially planned to be a romance/drama, and built our story around it. However, upon careful analysis of both genres, we realised that our film was more of a drama – as it contained very little romance (a small hint at romance in the opening scene), and more dramatical elements such as having likable, authentic characters, and a storyline which is believable and realistic. We tried to allow the protagonist feel both highs and lows throughout the story, and tried to incorporate a narrative which people could relate to, and possibly seeing themselves or friends doing – what we believed makes a drama. We tried to subvert expectations by having an unexpected ending - whilst the audience’s emotions were heightened by Daniel’s (Luke) enjoyment – we would kill him.
Richard Dyer’s theory of entertainment and utopia explained that ‘intensity’ is one of the satisfactions that an audience will receive whilst watching our film. The film plays on highs and lows of emotion, such as Luke being excited that he is fulfilling his dream, travelling Europe, meeting an entertaining girl and having fun, however he is sad that he is leaving his girlfriend who becomes torn to hear that Luke has been tragically killed. We are confident that we have achieved this throughout our film due to feedback we have received from our audiences – in general, they love that Luke is fulfilling his dream, but are sickened and emotional when his life is taken towards the end.
Additionally, Laura Mulvey’s visual pleasure and narrative cinema theory explains that audiences often get pleasure from scopophilia – which basically means ‘love of looking’. Audiences are fascinated by having the ability to look at other people’s lives from their perspective – our method was using a video camera; a technique which has been used in the past. Even though the film is obviously scripted, an audience can feel like they are secretly watching what Luke is seeing through the video camera, and allows them to become involved in his personal space
As we are media students, we all enjoy all aspects of watching and making films. Whilst we knew the films had to be original, it would be incorrect to say we were not influenced by other films, or that we didn’t use techniques and ideas from other films. The film I analysed earlier in the year was called ‘The Plan’. This is a short film written by Matthew Kalish, and is story about how the main character packs his bags and leaves for Vegas, and meets a girl with the help of his Polaroid camera. In many ways, this film helped influence our media project, with techniques such as packing his bags in the initial scene, and in some ways – our storyline.
Surely, ideas such as the initial under-water scene, the side-ways view of deceased Luke with cars passing by, or the ending shot of the camera zooming out from the hand-held camera may seem unique, however – it is likely we have been influenced by similar techniques in previous films we have watched.
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and the ancillary texts?
Ancillary texts are often very important in film production, as they can be used to help promote the film in numerous ways. After we had written our initial film treatments for our film, we all shared the same ideas of how we wanted the film to be, and making the ancillary material for our production seemed relatively easy, as we already had an idea of what we wanted to convey to our audience.
After our film had been completed, I started to research into film posters of similar films that I had watched, and films which had posters that looked like they would fit into our genre, such as Remember me, Ondine and Over Her Dead Body.
Although I only analysed one poster, I also incorporated experience from looking at film posters in the past, and my own creativity to produce my own poster.
I think the poster of mine greatly complements the film, and is effective in its contribution towards the promotion of the film. The two characters (Kirsten and Daniel) are sat at the front, with the video camera – showing that in some way, these two characters interact within the film, and that the video camera obviously plays a large part.
The film is blue and incorporates subtle background clouds, which suggests peacefulness (colours you would associate with a drama or a romance). The title is obviously big enough to allow the audience to identify the title of the film, and as this was chosen carefully – it limits the assumptions that the audience can make (i.e. the audience may feel that he is in fact saying goodbye to the girl on the poster, but in fact, it is to a character who doesn’t appear on the poster)
The poster is intended to entice the audience, giving away exciting aspects of the film, without spoiling it for them. I think my poster (and subsequently the final poster), does this perfectly.
The radio trailer was fun, yet often frustrating to create as it was our first attempt at creating one.
Radio trailers, much like film trailers, try to incorporate the most important parts of a film, which may help you get a real sense of the storyline, without giving away any spoilers. For this, we felt that we had to include extracts from our production, such as the beginning narrative from Daniel, and various extracts from Kirsten and Aimee.
I gave additional material for the radio trailer, giving information such as what LoveFilm said about the poster, and when the film will be being shown – elements which were not included on the film poster.
I think as a whole, the three finished products that we created show our creativity, and dedication towards the project. The two ancillary texts greatly compliment the main production, giving away enticing information about it, without revealing anything to spoil the storyline.
3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
In reality, the success of any film is based upon the audience. Throughout our film, we had a clear idea of how we would like our audience to feel and what emotions we would like to provoke. We were aware that for an audience to tell their friends about a film, they had to love it, and that’s how we recognised the important on acting upon audience feedback.
After the initial treatment for the film was written up, we decided to get feedback on our ideas – if a selection of people didn’t like the idea of our film, there was little point in continuing.
An initial questionnaire was written up, and handed out to around 30 people, as well as a forum. This allows us to gain feedback on whether or not our film was viable, whether it would have enough of a target audience who would take an interest in our film or not, and allowed us then to customise our film based upon the research that we got (such as less violence as our audience typically watches 12A or 15). Questions were asked such as ‘Do you enjoy romance and drama films’ and ‘what age certificate do you typically watch’
We also filmed various people, asking them more detailed questions and gained more detailed feedback, such as whether or not they liked our pitch idea, or if they had seen similar films such as The Notebook or Dead John. People explained that they like romance/drama because they can have a twist at the end, they are clever, and can often make you feel better.
We used all of this information to produce our film, and, as we had a lot more footage than we had planned for, made around a 10 minute production. Although we were never going to hand in a film this long, we thought it would be a good idea to show it to people in our class and see what they thought of our (real) first draft. As many students knew it had to be shorter, they kindly suggested elements which may not have been necessary in the film, and how we could cut it down.
A slightly shorter film was produced shortly after. We posted this to YouTube, and gained verbal feedback from eager friends and family, showing our target audience, as well as feedback from YouTube and Facebook. This was missing a small section in-between, where Kirsten and Daniel meet, as well as Daniel travelling to Hull – which confused the audience (but was planned to be put in the film). They also suggested that there were perhaps a few too many instances of the 1 second hand-held clips, and that they had no idea that the characters were in Belgium.
Again, we got feedback from various audiences amongst our family and friends, Facebook, YouTube, our peers and teachers. We received a lot of praise from the people who saw the film, and received no negative comments about how the film could be changed.
I think that audience feedback is a very easy aspect to neglect. It is easy to disregard comments you receive from an audience, thinking that you know best. However, given that you have been involved in every aspect of the film (writing the story, seeing all of the footage, the edits, etc), you need to be aware that things may often not be as clear as you would have hoped, and that things DO need changing as your audience may see them in a different light.
To conclude, the feedback we gained from our audience has been vital. Without it, the film is likely to have been very different, possibly a more graphic killing of the main character (who was supposed to be thrown from a cliff), and a more complicated storyline.
4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
As a group, we recognised the importance of how thorough, extensive research can substantially affect our media production. With the internet having around 135 million websites, it was able to act as a virtually limitless resource to provide inspiration, creativeness and imagination. Social video websites such as Youtube and Vimeo host vast amounts of content relating to our project, allowing us to view many long and short films by students, hobbyists and professionals to assist us with our research.
We were also able to use new media technologies to our advantage whilst planning our film. Collaboration of ideas within out group could be done through communication devices such as mobile telephones and tools such as Facebook and Microsoft Messenger - and, once our ideas had been finalised, we were able to use Word Processing packages such as Microsoft Word to create questionnaires which would enable us to gather feedback about our ideas. Questionnaires were personally handed out to friends and family, by printing formatted questionnaires with a laser printer provided by college, or sent out to contacts online. They were able to be formatted, and plotted onto graphs with spread sheet software such as Microsoft Excel.
We used websites such as the BBFC to research film certifications, iMDB to research film genres – both of which were helpful in searching and planning our project. Google has limitless archives of resources, including their primary search environment, Google Images and also Google Maps, which is a fantastic resource that allows satellite and street-view images (which was used to aid us to view exotic locations, some of which were 70 miles away!)
Physical media technologies made the entire process seem effortless. We used digital recording technology, such as a HDV-1000 video recorder, and a Flash Zoom recorder to record media for such as our audience research, our audience feedback, our actual film production, our production feedback and our radio trailer.
All of these were imported to an Apple Macintosh, and were edited on a variety of programs. Final Cut Pro was a very important piece of software for editing every video that we created, allowing us to naturally use advanced features to create imaginative effects on both video and audio (such as slow motion, wire-framing, colour correction, adjusting contrasts and all types of fading/cutting). These technologies were frequently used for every stage during our production process, and we feel fortunate to have such cutting-edge technologies provided (among others such as Garage Band and Adobe Elements)
Image editing software, Adobe Photoshop was used regularly throughout the production, which again – was fortunately provided by our college. Pictures were taken with a Canon 450D, and once imported were used in conjunction with Adobe Photoshop to design out title sequences, the movie posters, storyboards, and even smaller elements such as borders for our photo-story board, our production logo and many elements of our website.
Social networking sites such as Facebook allowed us to gather important feedback on the First Draft of our film in the final construction stages of our project. The initial draft of our film was transferred using the remarkable USB flash memory drive, and uploaded to YouTube and Facebook, which could enable us to reach out to thousands of people, quickly and easily – and collect essential feedback to help improve our film.
Like most technology, there were times in which is delayed our progress. We quickly discovered that technology was unreliable, when we depend so much upon it. We encountered hardware problems such as a faulty video player, uncharged batteries and tapes which failed to operate correctly. Due to human error and not backing our work up correctly, we had to re-film several scenes, and regrettably spotted numerous continuity errors.
Technology has flourished our imaginations and creativity, primarily via the Internet. We are able to take inspiration from other artists, directors, producers and editors and develop them into what we have created. The expensive recorders were ideal, allowing inventiveness to come naturally, as well as tools used to gather feedback and research, often fuelling our passion and creativeness to achieve a better film.
Although the Internet brings creativity and imagination, I do feel that it can also cause the complete opposite. I think that the Internet doesn’t allow people to truly express their imagination thoroughly, and at times, can allow people to be influenced and inspired by the work of others. Without the internet, ideas would have to be absolutely original; creative and inspiring in its own right.
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