1) In what ways does your media product, use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
When we first received our brief we read over the things that needed to be done. In the previous year I had knowledge on cinematography, editing, sound and mise-en-scene from the exam unit therefore this helped with the planning for the short film. In order to create a successful short film, we needed to make sure we broadened our knowledge on the short films that were already in the industry. The reason my short film follows the codes and conventions of a British social realism short film is because I wanted it to be as professional and as realistic as possible.
As research, we were given a number of short films to analyse and looking into. This include:
- · The Rain Horse Sebastian (Sebastian Godwin)
- · Cubs (Tom Harper)
- · Cherries (Tom Harper)
- · Wasp (Andrea Arnold)
- · About a Girl (Connor Percival)
- · Two Cars One Night (Taika Waititi)
The reason we looked into these short films was to gain a deeper understanding of what the codes and conventions of a short film were and how we could incorporate them into our short film. Some of the codes and conventions that we could use from these examples are:
- · having a time length of 5-10 minutes
- · having a small cast list
- · having a good plot twist or turning point within the story
- · Todorov's theory
These are the most common codes and conventions that you will see within a short film, therefore, it is very important that they are present in mine. I believe that my film has done well with ensuring that all of these conventions are met. This is due to it having a running time of approx 5 minutes having a small cast list of 4 actors and having a good plot twist at the end of the short film. One of the concepts that I found important when planning and producing this short film is keeping it so it remains as a British social realism short film. In order to do so, I needed to make sure I understood what a British social realism film was and what issues are explored. This lead me on to research into different factors that affected the younger generation of today. The one that I thought was most important was the idea of relationship abuse as this targets the younger audience who are dating or have just started dating. This is also an issue that isn't explored very much, therefore, it will be more intriguing and interesting for the audience. In order for our film to then reach out to this younger generation, we used words such as 'yatt' and 'I got a girl' in order for it to sound like a normal conversation and to make it more relatable to them.
Another way my film abides by the forms and conventions of a short film is through Todorov's Narrative theory. This is where equilibrium is broken and restored and consist of usually 5 stages. These stages are:
· Equilibrium (Normal)
· Disruption of equilibrium
· recognition that disruption has occurred
· resolution of equilibrium
· restoration of equilibrium (normal again or issue has been resolved)
The reason why our film follows this is due to the fact that the issue is going to be resolved. When Dean calls the police he is going to end the issue that has arisen between him and Roxanne which shows there is a clear ending to this film. This means that the audience isn't left confused to what happens and that they know there is an ending. This also means that the audience will be more satisfied as they know what has happened and how it concluded. Another way in which we stuck to the codes and conventions of a short film is through the casting. In a short film, there is a very few number of characters. Within the film, I only had 3 main characters and 1 supporting character. This means that I was able to explore the characters in more depth and to focus on their relationship in more depth. The supporting character helped to emphasise this. This means that the audience is able to connect more with the characters and this will generate a better and more positive response from the audience.
We managed to achieve most of the codes and conventions of both short films and British social realism. The reason I chose to do this was to keep the film realistic and educational for the younger audience of the film who are already or have just started dating and getting into serious relationships.
2) How effective is the combination of your main product and your ancillary tasks?
When producing the film and creating the ancillary tasks it is important that each of them complement each other. In order to do this, it must keep the same aspects. This means that each of the ancillary tasks need to be linked in one way and this then needs to be able to compliment the main product.
The ancillary tasks that I produced for my film all follow the same house style. This is important as it gives the audience something to recognise the film by. I used bright yellow and light blue in order to make all my ancillary tasks stand out in the public. This method is a good way of raising awareness for the film as well as making sure it stands out amongst the other film or adverts. The posters also have a speech going on. This is 'it's time to see things more clearly' to 'look closer' and then finally 'can you see it yet'. This little game offers the audience who noticed to gain a deeper understanding about the film and to also show you that relationship abuse is something that can happen right under your nose.
As well as this, I also used the same font style within each of my ancillary tasks. I have used big and bold words in order to grab the reader's attention as well as to make it stand out. This is also influenced by the colouring of my words. As well as this, I have used a basic font rather than a fancy one within the feature article in order to stick to the same theme of bold and basic like the poster and teaser poster. This helps to show continuity within the work. This is then carried over into the film as the short film used basic bold font when showing the title screen and the credits. It does not, however, use the yellow writing. This still works well however as it is no longer being used to attract the attention of the audience due to them already watching the short film.
Another aspect of the short film and the ancillary tasks that I wanted to keep the same in order to show effectiveness what the clothing. I wanted the poster to ensure that they wore the same clothes in some of the scenes that they acted in to show continuity as well as make it more relatable to the film. When I shot the first act I took the official poster picture to ensure that they were wearing the clothes that they would wear in the film. This also helps the audience to relate the poster to the film through clothing.
Lastly, in order for the poster to show the main theme within the short film, I made William look almost ghost like. This is to show how he feels like no one is, therefore, him and that he has to go through this abuse on his own. This also helps the audience gain a bit more background knowledge about the film before they go to see it. This helps to make the film more effective and also helps the audience create deeper relationships with the characters.
In order to show the representation of our film, we made sure that the actors were dressed a certain way. In order to show that relationship abuse can happen to anyone, we chose to put the 3 main characters in normal smart clothes so that it would be less likely for the audience to know that anything was going on unless they saw it. I put Billy in a hoodie because I wanted him to be more 'gangster'. This is then influenced by the speech within the film using words such as 'piffy' and 'Yatts'.
3) What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
Audience feedback is a very important aspect of any production company. This shows the company where they went wrong what they did well and how they can improve in the future. Getting feedback on your film before you release it to the general public is a good idea as it helps you to make changes within the film in order to improve it. As well as this it also makes sure that you are producing and making a film that people will watch and enjoy.
Within pre-production, the feedback for the film planning was very helpful when I was finalising my script. Before handing in my final script I gave it to a number of people to read over and I then made the necessary modifications. The reason I did this was so my script was as realistic and natural as possible and acted as a good foundation for the actors.
In addition to this, I also conducted a focus group in order to make sure the idea for our film was something the audience would enjoy and want to go and see. Within this focus group, I discussed the ideas that I had come up with and discussed the possibilities of what we could do within it. In the end, the focus group and I decided it would be a great idea to follow the relationship abuse story line.
After the film had been created, I did a survey online on survey monkey in order to get feedback on the film. This questionnaire featured the following questions:
- · Name
- · Age
- · what would you rate the film
- · How would you rate the acting in the film
- · Your least and favourite part of the film
- · would you recommend this film to someone else
The feedback that we received from this film was great as a lot of people rated it very highly and all of the feedback was positive. The audience of the film said that they would recommend the film to other people which shows that it was enjoyable for them to watch. Overall the acting was good, however, some of the audience thought that the acting was only satisfactory in comparison to others who thought it was great. This feedback helped us a lot and also helped us make changes in the editing process and some people commented that there was to many fade to blacks within the film. The film then went under more editing and the final short film was produced.
4) How did you use new media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?
Within my AS foundation portfolio which was to create a music magazine I had to use a blog to showcase my final pieces as well as upload the thought process behind my magazine. In order for me to upload all my work in a high quality, I had to make sure that I PDF all my work before uploading it onto my blog. This meant that my work would be more effective and of higher quality. This was the only thing that we needed to upload onto our blogs at AS. However, within A2, we had to blog everything that we have done which has helped towards the development and creation of our short film. This was my first time using a blog in such a way and I found it very useful to keep everything on the blog as it helped me track my progress. another media technology that helped me make sure I was on track was the Trello. I used Trello in order to create a checklist of the things that needed to be done and when I completed them I was able to tick them off. This helped me to make sure that I have done and uploaded everything that I needed to do. Using blogger helped me to conduct research in a more effective way as I could post blogs on specific subjects rather than have to tie everything together. This means that everything flowed easier and it looked more presentable. Some ways in which blogger was not useful is when I was doing my storyboards for the film. This is because they were hand written. In order to out these onto my blog I had to scan them into my computer and upload them as a jpeg file.
Another technology I found useful was the internet. The internet allowed me extensive knowledge on short films and other things that I needed to research. Some of the websites I visited frequently was YouTube. This is to find short films that would give me some inspiration as well as videos on what the codes and conventions of short films were. Another site that helped me a lot as Scribd. Scribd is free to use and allowed me to put up documents from my computer and embed them into my blog. This made it easier for me to transfer my call sheets over to my blog as my call sheets had a lot of tables within it which means that sometimes it would distort the document.
This year with the film we had Premier pro to use. This is a movie editing software that allows you to create professional looking videos from your own home. I was not involved in the editing process, therefore, this was given to our editor Bilal who used this to create the final product. As well as this, we also used InDesign to create our feature articles. This helped us get the structure we needed as well as help us easily create professional looking articles. For my teaser poster and my official poster, I used a site called PicMonkey to edit my photos. This is due to the site having a wide range of photo editing options to choose from and this helped me to create a professional and eye-catching poster as well as mysterious and interesting teaser posters.
Before we started to film, I did some camera exercises with the camera in order to get used to the different shots and how the camera worked. This also helped me get to grips with using a microphone and a tripod for the first time. After getting this footage I then put it into windows movie maker and I use this to make videos for my own personal YouTube channel. I then used this to showcase my camera exercises and make a little clip and added music to make it more interesting.
