Evaluation

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

The main impact that new media technologies has had on our project is the use of the internet . For our research and planning we were able to quickly assess who our target audience was and examples of similar media texts on sites such as Youtube and Fastpasstv, peekvid and so on. it became very easy to watch these films through the click of the button whereas before relying on television etc. We were also able to gather the opinions from our audience by reading some of the comments that can be left this gave us clear views on what our audience liked and what they disliked.



This is a slideshow we did on Photo-bucket and this is to just advertise ourselves on our blog and to also show our time plan. The time plan which we made in Toms Planner. The internet also helped us with storyboarding as we have used our draft filming to make screen shots to show people an idea of what we would like to do in the short film. In doing this we were also able to show the more detailed mise en scene for our film in the storyboarding. During our research and planning we realized that we needed to utilise the social networking sites like Facebook to reach out to a broader audience.










Within the production of our work, we used the Mac computers to edit our video. This device has helped us so much in our development of this film. We have been able to correct parts that were not in sync, we have brightened up parts which were making the video look dull, we have also added effects which make the audience not realize its a film. For our ancillary tasks we used Adobe Photoshop also on the Mac computers. This really demonstrates the power of technology because in one machine you find so many devices to help with the production of your media text. I used photoshop to do the film review and I was very proud of it because there was no limitations to what I could put on the page. I could use the brush to brush off anything i didn't like, I could add more pictures and even edit them to fit my plans.


The biggest benefit that new media technologies had within our work was being able to present it all clearly on a blog. Sites such as Scribd allowed to embed our work (which was saved as Word documents and Powerpoints) onto our blog neatly and efficiently. This was especially helpful in presenting audience feedback results which we were able to present as graphs. We were also able to gain audience feedback using our Facebook group page as well as uploading all our work for everyone to see, giving us the opportunity to have our work be seen by market that we wanted.

Evaluation

What have you learned from your audience feedback?
The use of Web 2.0 within our product has been very beneficial in gaining accurate audience feedback. As well as going about audience feedback in the more traditional ways such as questionnaires, interviews and viewing sessions we've also posted our short film and ancillary tasks on the Front Room Films Facebook group page and also on Youtube.


What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Here you can see a screen cap of our Facebook group.
The main response from everyone has been surprisingly positive, the reaction we were hoping for really came out as our teachers really seen the humour we were trying to show as we were not very sure if they would pick it up. One of our teachers also complimented on the speed of the editing in a small part in our film as it's extremely fast paced to show an effectively that the actor is bored. We were also very fortunate to have thought about making a twitter page because it also helped us get the word out and to get people following us and seeing our progress.


When analysing the results from our questionnaire we can see the most people thought our short film was good and a few people thought our narrative was stronger than our performance which is a very good thing. We can also see that the majority of people thought that our short film was appropriate to the genre. We've also found out that 20% of our audience thought the genre of the short film was not clear enough something if we had more time we could rectify, but majority people realized the genre very quickly which is very pleasing.




This is a screen shot of our youtube page in which we uploaded our video and we have a few subscribers. It seems that we had a mixture of comments as some people thought it lacked depth, other people loved it. We liked that we were given creative criticism.









How would you rate our short film out of 5?
1 - 0
2 - 0
3 - 2
4 - 4
5 - 14

How would you rate the performance out of 5?
1 - 0
2 - 0
3 - 0
4 - 6
5- 14

How would you rate the narrative out of 5?
1 - 0
2 - 0
3 - 4
4 - 6
5 - 10

Is the narrative relatively easy to follow?
Yes - 13
No - 4
Don't know - 3

Does our video look like a typical comedy short film?
Yes - 13
No - 7

Have we used a variety of different shot types?
Yes - 16
No - 4

Is the editing at a standard where meaning is apparent?
Yes - 15
No - 5

Evaluation

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

We have gone through a long year and its definitely not been easy and developing ideas has also been a very difficult thing to do. I would say that our short film has much relation to the film poster and the review page, looking at existing promotional packages this is particularly common in the film industry. The film, film poster and the review page all connect layout wise because we see that in every one of those products we put a clock in the layout. It has become sort of a logo or something viewers would remember the film by. In the film it also has a comic flow to it as it demonstrates how bored the main actor is as he keeps looking at the clock. The film poster shows a photo of the main actor looking towards the clock. The review page shows the name of the page next to the clock so it all connects together.




Our short film is definitely not the brightest around. It has a very depressive feel to it which makes it fitting that our film poster is black and white and the background of our film review is grey. has a sort of lonely, isolated feeling in the way it's very gloomy but comic at the same time. I think they are all effective together because they connect in a way the audience would notice that "this review is about this film" without seeing the text.

Evaluation

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

To make any successful short film you need to know how to incorporate at least one of these elements of conventions. In our group's case I think we had all three elements to help us with our short film production and pre-production.


The Black Hole:

Black Hole is a great short film and we decided to challenge the message of the film and turn it into something different. The Black Hole's message was about greed but we channelled our message to show that "there will always be someone bigger than you" which in a way is a common convention in the film industry. I cannot say that this film had a large amount of conventions which are common in the industry but the ideas we gathered helped us a lot in planning stages. We also did not develop any of the conventions from the film. The message of the film was what appealed to us the most before we started the production journey.


New Boy:

This is probably the short film we used the most conventions from. We used conventions from this short film because when we were developing our ideas we decided to move on to another message consisting of bullying. In our ancillary task mis en scene was our main priority and we used the classroom setting as shown in New boy and we developed the bullying into physical instead of mental. In our final product we used very effective shots we seen in the New Boy, shots like the 'over the shoulder shot' are very effective in making the audience see what you see and also show some of the emotion being portrayed.



The Bullying Effect:

This is very similar to New boy mis en scene wise. When we were developing our ideas we came across The Bullying Effect. The name of the film is a clear indication of the message. The shots used in this short film made the main actor seem more segregated amongst the class. shots consisted of 'close ups', 'over the shoulder shots showing kids laughing behind her. They are all very creative shots but we decided to challenge the conventions and channel our thoughts to a more comic delivery, so we made sure the shots we used gave a sense of humour to the audience. We used a very effective camera pan movement when the first person walks in signifying that there was no reason for him to sit next to the main actor when there is so many seats still there. A very uncommon convention in the film industry as the characters are usually introduced straight away. We also used the point of view shot for the audience to see what the main actor saw. We used this convention as a lot of hollywood films use this convention for intensity.
Before we had made our decision we had been very stuck on what non-diegetic music to use and the Bullying effect seemed to have straight forward, powerful music which we thought to use. 'Let the drummer kick that' has very powerful lyrics which would be very good in getting an emotional side to the audience out but as we went on, it became apparent to us that using this convention would drain the comedy we wanted to show in the short film so I decided to make an original in Garage band.


The Waiting Room: This is the start of our film and we decided to use the wall to lead it into the reveal shot. A convention which is not very common but worked for our short film. The convention however is very common in the music industry. I think it is a very great way of starting the short film because of the mystery. Another convention used in this clip is the non-diegetic music. Most films start with their soundtracks so that people have something to remember them with. Its always catchy and repetitive and I feel that ours meets the criteria.

This is a very common reveal shot which we used after looking at a film called Training Day. Its common in the film industry as it gathers up mystery for the audience, makes them wonder what will be happening. It is most important at the start of films because the audience can almost predict the rest of the story from the start so it has to be very clear. I can say that we used this convention to make our short film more professional and less realistic as possible.

In this scene we challenged the point of view shot so common in the film industry. We opted for this shot so that the audience can also see the actors face as well as where he is looking.











I personally really like this camera movement as we pan around his legs as he walks and the camera slowly tilts up. A shot I think should be more common than it is in the film industry. It has the same effect as the reveal shot because it creates mystery.










The close up is probably the most common of our used conventions as it shows people the emotion of the actor and also allows people to pick up what the actor is saying with their body language. The close up we used so that the audience can realized that the actor was confused why the man came and sat with him with all the other chairs free.









Here we did a pan movement on the chairs for comical reasons and this we challenged as usually in the film industry they put dialogue to show a comical effect but we just used the shots which we thought would work and they have.

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We have used a pillar as the background of our first credits because we thought it would be a creative way to start the film. This is where we introduce the name of the film. I like this shot because it leads onto a panning reveal shot to the beginning of the film.

GarageBand

I decided to use GarageBand in our short film because it is quick and easy to use. I new that I have to put strings and something that'll support the mood on the screen (Contripuntal). I have also added some acoustic guitar to it which will give it more depth in my opinion because it has the effect of making people think more into the story. The main focus is not on the music but it makes a difference when giving the audience an insight in the genre of the film.

Credits:
For the credits I have decided to use a simple drum beat to end it. I got this idea from watching some short reviews on youtube and its a really good way to end something on a high.

Film Poster Final

We have decided to change the picture of the poster to the smaller actor looking up at the taller actor to give a direct message already through the poster. Its also a very strong indication of representation which is always that the taller male usually is represented as the bully on the smaller one. I have used conventions from a magazine called The Empire. A review page of Casino royale gave me a lot of ideas for our Film Poster, especially with the title of the page.