Final Short Film

Final Ancillary Products

My poster:

 

 

My review page:

 





Evaluation Question 4:

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

Evaluation Question 3

Through audience feedback I have been able to go through my work and make improvements. Some of my improvements that were suggested by audience was some shots that would be better in different angles, this was when I went back to reshoot the scenes by myself. It was also suggested for a better ending so I took some more shots which would give a better sense of revelation in the short. the editing seemed to be good as the audience feedback says so however one thing that was mentioned was making one of the clips (the flag overlay) to be a bit brighter so it is more noticeable. There was no improvements suggested by audience for my poster and review and only good comments. Audience feedback has been a great help and ensuring it appeals to the audience to make my short film the best it could be.

Evaluation Question 3:

Evaluation Question 3:

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

  Here is a questionnaire that I have created and took responses to.

Audience Response

Evaluation Question 2:

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? I must mention in addition to the above is the use of synergy; my poster and review is only a small portion of the promotional marketing campaigns that take place for films. You will see the poster in various places, be it in magazines or on billboards but there is a vital piece of synergy on the poster which is the website. Since the age of Media 2.0, the use of a website for the film is extremely important, also with Film4 as a sponsor for the film, they have their website in wherein you can watch shorts, so everything is done virally. This reaches my target audience as they will be well and truly involved in this era of media and technology.

Narrative

Narrative is a series of events in a connected sequence to create the film. The most basic form of narrative structure is the starting point of equilibrium, then disruption, then a new equilibrium. Films play on this basic narrative structure to make the film more exciting and different, possibly by adding in more disruptions etc. I have used a non-liner narrative structure to play with the storyline. The equilibrium is the first flashback of the child in the woods, nothing seems wrong at this point. We start to see the disruption through more flashbacks of when he is in the army. He then goes to attempt to return to the equilibrium however this does not happen as he knocks the glass for taking his tablets on the floor and no equilibrium has been restored. My short film is a compressed form and so it is necessary to use narrative short-cuts (no new equilibrium) and visual ellipsis (using flashbacks to tell the story without having to go through from start to end in a linear sequence) to tell the story in such a short space of time.

Question 1: Uses and Gratifications

Evaluation Question 1

Evaluation Question 1:

Evaluation Question 1:

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Here is my analysis of the poster and review to analyse the conventions I have used from existing products:

Responsibilities

I find both Rebecca and I equally put in the effort for different areas of the construction of the film, however I think we both had our strengths in different areas which has worked in our favour.
Rebecca had excellent camera skills - and a steady hand - so I think giving her the responsibility of the camera has been definitely a good choice. Editing I feel is still more to my liking as I see what we have to work with and make it effective to the storyline. I do think we gave a good go of every area possible and and inputting many ideas where we thought necessary. Working in a group has made things easier in areas we were least comfortable but we have both learnt more and developed in these areas and found strengths we never knew we had. The responsibilities that we given ourselves at the start of the year we have followed and it has given us more focus but the end result is good so we gave each other the best roles in creating the short to make it the best we could.

Final Filming

From looking through our video and showing members of our target audience, we seen what shots we could retake and make better. I was eventually able to get a hold of George to get the last bit of filming done at Rebecca's house. Unfortunately Rebecca was unable to attend but this has made the camera work even for both of us as there was a session earlier on in the year which I was not able to attend. To remind myself of what shots I need to retake I screen shot them from the film to make sure everything was in the right place and putting notes on to tell me what was happening in each scene. The most important part of the filming session was to make sure I got something for the end so we really captured the effect that the war has had on the character. The filming went incredibly well for being on my own, however, not all the shots were used because the lighting was different (not controllable due to the lighter nights which we didn't have back in the first bit of filming) but fortunately the important shots were good to use.

Changing the font

 

Finding the correct font to fit with Little White lies has been very difficult however I looked through all the existing fonts on InDesign and I was stuck between two styles; Century Gothic bold and Corbel bold. In the end I went with Century Gothic bold as this was the closest to match.

This is now (I believe) the finished product for my review. I will look through it again another time to see if I can pick out any other improvements.

The decided photo

It is clear that this photo was the favourite as thirty people chose this one out of the three of them. This photo was not only the audiences favourite but was also my favourite. When I printed the review out the photo had a yellow/orange tinge so I have altered the picture on Photoshop and put it back into the review.

 

The difference is minimal on the screen however when I printed it out again there was a large difference.

Audience feedback

I printed the review off with the three different photos and actively went out to ask people which they like the most and to tick them, I asked sixty people directly and here is their responses:

Photos

I am unsure what photos to use for my review page and I have a choice of three that I have taken from the film, which is what looks like Little White lies do. Here are the three photos I am stuck between:

 



I am going to do some audience feedback with these inserted into my review and see what people prefer.

More ancilliary

Looking closer at the final details of the review in Little White Lies I can see that the text is justified to both sides of the columns, this is a convention of magazine articles s it I something I definitely need to do in my work. Also there is other features that I missed before like making the lines, where the ratings of the film are, slightly thinner as they are too bold. I also need to look for a font closer to the Little White Lies font that they use for the title.

 

 

 

I have justified the texts, change the line width to 0.5mm but I need to look for a different font to best suit for Little White Lies.

The lines look grey, however they aren't, it's just how InDesign shows them on the screen.

This is the almost finished product of my review. I have inserted the review text and corrected anything that needed to be altered but all that's left is the photo to be placed.

Screen Shots

Stupidly I have forgotten to screen shot throughout doing my article (obviously because I was so engrossed with it) and I can't go back through stages of my work. So, this is what I have created so far. Work will need to be done to it when I put my written review in as there might not be enough room and I still need to get a picture for the top. I plan to have a picture of a still from the actual filming rather than a photo shoot as it gives it a bit more insight into the film.

Dimensions

Using Little White Lies for my style model, I have had to work out dimensions of the page in order for my work to fit the same.

This is what I came up with and what I will be going off:

Reminder

Here is a reminder of how Little White Lies looks and this is how I will be setting my review out like this too.

Filming

Here is a few shots that I would re-do to include them and make them better:

Moving on

I am now moving on to doing my second part of the ancillary task, the review in a magazine which I will create in InDesign. The style model I am using for the magazine is Little White Lies. I wanted to choose this one because it is simple but contemporary. The film reviews have a wide range of films from mainstream to smaller independent and less popular film so it is a good choice.

Emailing OCR

Because I can't go out and get photo's of air crafts I have had to compromise with an image off Google. We haven't found any other solutions so I checked with the specification and it does say that we are not meant to use found images however I wanted to know for certain if we cannot use it. So Rebecca and I emailed OCR and queried about this. they replied straight away and they said we were allowed to use it as long as we made it clear that it is a found image and not a one we have taken and that we wouldn't get credited for it. I'm now rethinking about what possibilities there are for changing the photo, but for now, it's staying there!

Progression of poster

after my research into film sponsors and such, I have put their logos on their and sticking to the same colours roughly and put them at the bottom of the page, commonly seen on film posters.

 

 

Finally I have added the rest which are the credits above the logos and a quote from a viewer with a four star rating on it. both are common features on film posters and the quote and rating encourage people to go see the film.

 

 

Survey Results

Research

Film posters have the logos of production companies, places that are featuring the film and the sponsors of the film generally along the bottom of the poster. I can't just simply pick any film sponsors as such as we are making a short film not a feature length film so I had to do some research into who could sponsor my film and where it could be shown.

Here is what I found:

Titles

We are stuck between a few titles so I have set up a survey to allow for people to choose the best title that would attract them the most to the film. you can take the survey here.

More screen shots

Moving on from the images I have added a background colour matching with the colours in the photos which are quite browny colours. I have also chosen where my title will be, but Rebecca and I haven't yet chose a name so that is something we will have to do next. The actors names have been put beneath the title in a far smaller font but big enough to be able to notice it is still important as thy are potentially well known names and so this will attract viewers to watch the film if they know the actors in it. The font I have chosen, 'Perpetua Titling MT', which was already on Photoshop, is rather an old style font but also a formal looking one which goes with the theme and era it is set in.

 

Screen shot

I have added in my other photo of choice but smaller so it doesn't detracts away from the main photo. I have added in tow other photo's that I have found on Google but I am certain that one of which (the child) will be replaced by one of mine and Rebecca's own photo's that we will take in the near future of her nephew. As for the other photo of the aircraft, we will be unable to get any photo of our own of an aircraft so we are leaving it there until we can either think of a solution. With all of these photo's I have used the same technique as the main photo with image, adjustments, variations and then fading the edges with the rubber. I want the poster to show stages through life and to where he is now (the main image), so using a photo which is meant to be him as a chid, then a photo of him as a young man in the army and photo's of war to further emphasise his involvement with the war.

 

Editing the photos



I have started with the main photo and putting it where I want on the page. As this is meant to be a film set in the times of World War 2 I thought of the idea to make it look like an old photo and having that sort of colour to it. With a bit of fiddling on in Photoshop I have found out how to create this effect, by changing the photo from colour to black and white and then going to image adjustments and variations and then simply adjusting it to the colour of my choice. I have cut around George and masked the edge to bring back anything that I could have cut off by mistake. I also used the blur tool to go around and blur the edged of him to make it look less harsh. I then used the rubber and made it very big and soft to make the bottom corners look faded out.

The decided photos

R=These are the photos that I have decided on:

Ancillary

I have started my ancillary tasks with a poster for the film. Doing the work on Adobe Photoshop, I will continually update my blog with screen shots of how my work is coming along.

The next step

Due to no returned email from the care home, myself and Rebecca have been thinking of other options for quickness as time is running out. There was other options of emailing different care homes however we run the risk of waiting for more replies and having no time left to film. We have had to rule out any unnecessary props that would be in the room to really narrow down what we want, or rather, what we need. A modern room wouldn't fit so there was a possibility that the care home could have been unfit for purpose anyway, but this could be hard to find somewhere not modern  so we thought about somewhere very plain which we could put props in ourselves to make it look in the right era. Fortunately, Rebecca's room is all white and we could simply move anything that doesn't look right and put in what we need and so we have decided that there is where we are filming next.

Photos

Here are some of the photos:

Photos

Eventually, we got George in for the photo shoot to start our ancillary task. I feel the photo shoot went really well with camera angles and how he looked as he wore the kit that would have been worn in the world war. This really portrays the character and sets the correct scene so I think it will be good for the poster. I will upload some of the photos that I wont use and the ones that I may use too.

Emailing the carehome

Rebecca and I have been looking into more locations for filming and making sure we get the correct place that will fit well with the story. We are starting to look into care homes which I believe will be a good place if we get props to make it look like it is in the right era. So we have emailed the Hawthorn court care home in Hebburn and we are waiting for a reply back.

 

 

This is what we said in the email: