1.In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products ?
For my short film, I did research on the established conventions of short films to guide me on what makes a short film successful. I found out that many of the short films that I had viewed had very similar conventions, for example, two short films I viewed titled ‘Veronique’ and ‘Double Take’ both had a linear narrative structure, where the events were in chronological order. This linear narrative structure is a very popular convention, I feel that the reason a lot of short films use this narrative is because of the small duration of the film, there is simply not enough time to incorporate flashbacks and flashforwards without sacrificing a good storyline. I found out that having an underlying theme is a very popular convention in British short films, as the theme can act as social commentary and display the changes in society. Some shirt films also displayed a 3 part circular narrative where we end up in the same place we started and most of the short films had an ‘open-ending’. The genres I had viewed were romance, comedy and thriller, all equally related to British films. Short films tend to normally focus on one main character, this allows the character to develop and the audience can follow them easily. Short films rely on a gripping storyline or and interesting character rather than special effects and tend to have cliff-hangers or twists to keep things interesting. The short films I have viewed haven’t been over edited as things are best kept to the minimum and serve the purpose of them which is to entertain the audience and show what the director can do. The themes in short films tend to be realistic, you don’t see the mainstream blockbuster storylines of superheroes flying through walls or massive explosions, in short films you have more realistic themes that are common to life and happen daily.
My film had a classic example of following a typical convention of British film which was the use of the underlying theme throughout the film. The film had a message that it got across to the audience which was that not everything is as it seems and nothing is ever perfect no matter how perfect it may seem. Having an underlying theme is crucial as it adds more depth to the film, knowing that the audience could take something from it. The genre of the films was typically British-social realism. It displayed the struggles and complications of life. On the cinematography side, I wanted my protagonist to appear as some who is not in control and rather weal, I used conventional camera shots such as kinetic camera movement, which is common in the genre of my film, the kinetic camera movement puts out the feeling of the protagonist being watched. I also used high angle shots to portray the protagonist as vulnerable . In the finale of the film, I felt it was necessary to add a shock twist for the audience as they had just seen the protagonist being beaten up, the camera then zoomed out on his body and the audience were shocked to find that it was the protagonist watching himself, being beaten up on ‘YouTube’, I wanted to give off that shock feeling to the audience as it was not expected. This is also were the audience would remember the tagline, ‘ignorance is bliss’ as the character lived his life as nothing had happened.
I developed certain short film conventions to go beyond the classical types, for example, I gave the films narrative structure a twist as it’s a mixture of non-linear and linear as although the story progressed in chronological order the film relies on going into the non-linear with flashbacks acting as a major part of the story. I also attempted more spectacular shots, something that is not to common in short films due to the limited equipment available, however I wanted to try a more ‘brave’ shot that could mirror the ‘birds-eye-view’ shot and it worked, I had to climb onto the roof of a building but the shot was worth the height, the shot was of the protagonist walking into his school and such a high angle shot was oozing with the message that the character looks exposed. Another convention I developed was the time setting of the film, most of the short films I had viewed were all set during a set period of minutes or hours, my film started in the morning and finished at night. It let the audience experience a day in the protagonists life.
I challenged certain conventions of short films, for example, flashbacks are represented by a narrator to portray a second story which is rarely seen in short films, the flashback portrayed the a day in the life of a immigrant moving to England and his experience. My film also did not feature a score as I felt that the social realism genre should be raw.
After researching typical film poster conventions I found out that most follow a typical layout and have the following conventions: a title, name of the main stars, picture of the main star, tagline and billing block. Film posters try to create an element of attraction to the audience and the prime aim is to attract people and make them interested, the tagline is also used to make the audience ask some ideas. My film poster followed the 5 main conventions, however I opted for a landscape sided view instead of the more common portrait view. I wanted my film poster to stand out and have a ‘classic’ poster look, I thought choosing the right font was crucial to how many poster looked, I didn’t want to make it look to bland as I feel the font can tell a lot about the film, I opted for a ‘rough’ typewriter font, this tied into the gritty look and feel of my poster, I used a split screen effect to portray the 2 sides to my film and it looked very iconic, you could picture it on a big widescreen landscape billboard around city. I challenged many conventions of the film poster, for example, many film posters would feature some of the main actors as the main image, this is because the actor is a selling point itself, unfortunately my film did not star any a-list Hollywood actors that could sell the film alone so I opted for a image of an estate, which portrays the setting of the film. My film also did not feature the names of the star actors, usually at the top of the poster because of the fact the actors were unimportant.In researching conventions of magazine articles I have found these common conventions: a headline, image subheading, pictures, strap line, graphics, introduction, by-line and breakout boxes. My magazine article met all these conventions, in order to give the audience the maximum information. I developed certain conventions by adding more information and mini-facts in order to give small ‘bites’ of information.
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Social realism is the main genre, which certainly comes across strongly in the short film and film poster and to a lesser extent, in the magazine. The film sets the genre and it becomes clear to the audience towards the end of the film what the genre is, although on second viewing the audience would notice certain features which hints at what is to come. The link between the film and poster in terms of the genre are very effective, as naturally, upon viewing the poster the audience would get an idea of what the genre could be. The genre is the foundation of the film and the poster effectively portrays this genre through the use of gritty setting that has been split into two views which reflects the film title. The film narrative is linear with non-linear aspects however, the narrative is not clear in the poster. I would say the poster is a bigger success than the article, the poster displays the theme and sets the setting. The poster is split into two ‘viewpoints’ which is meant to represents the main protagonist in the short film, one view point shows a perfect day while the other viewpoint shows a gritty, dark view and in particular the rain stained window effect is very effective. The posters font, a ‘typewrite’, effect has a very realistic genre. I don’t feel it is necessary for the audience to have seen the poster or read the article before understanding the theme or purpose, however they both set the tone by not revealing too much to spoil anything.
The target audience for the short film is around the male 15-25 age mark while the film certificate would be a 15, there are no drug scenes, scenes with heavy gore/blood or excessive swearing which would all bring the rating up to an 18, which would take away the main core of the audience. The product targets its audience through the genre of social realism, this is a rather sophisticated genre as opposed to rom-coms which are suited for women and ‘girls-nights-in’ or action thrillers which are more aimed at adults as they are full of fast cars, swearing and naked girls. The genre of social realism targets its audience as its very easy to relate to aspects of it as the target audience would have experienced crime and covering things up either through personal experience or from the news. Older audiences could use the film to see how times have changed while he middle-age man could see how its like during the ‘youth’ of today, which is well known for its lack of discipline and respect towards others. The poster draws in the target audience mainly through the image of the council estate as through the media portrayal, estates are filled with lower classes and are often associated with crime as opposed to a quiet village in a rural area. The split-screen effect makes the audience curious as to what could happen in the film, thinking of possibilities.
From an institutional point of view, the purpose of the magazine and the poster is to promote the film, they all work with each other to build up a base of views. People see the poster and get interested, the tagline gives hints to what the poster image is about, ‘ignorance is bliss’. The film poster and magazine are an important part of the films marketing and distribution, as essentially, these two products will be the deciding factor for the viewer to go and watch the film. The poster would attract the attention of possible viewers because it sets the scene of the genre it looks gritty and serious aswell as having questions un-answered, e.g.: why are there 2 different views to the same image, the tagline: ignorance is bliss leads on to the question, who is being ignorant? The audience then may decide to want to find out more about this film, they would want more information about it as the poster alone may not be enough so the magazine allows the level of information is enough to fill the audience with excitement to go and watch the film. The more people that see the poster and read the magazine, the higher the number of people will go and watch the film making the poster and magazine very important. A magazine article is desirable as it gives a neutral point of view and review of the film. It isn’t biased and it forms an opinion that could be the majorities views. It allows information about the actors and the film companies to be displayed which also attracts interested people to view the film companies website.
3. What have you learned from audience feedback?
Audience feedback is very important as it lets you know what went well/what could improve/what didn’t go well at all. It is important to follow up audience feedback as it was from my target audience, which the film is aimed at. Audience feedback also allows me to perfect my product by in cooperating everyone’s advice that seemed fitting.
In the my audience feedback of the film, I conducted a series of 6 questions that catered every aspect of my film, the questions asked where: 1) Is the theme of the film clear? 2) Does the film achieve its purpose? 3) Is the film suitable for its target audience 4) Is there anything that could be altered or added to make the theme, narrative or purpose clearer or to make it more suitable for the target audience? 5) What do you think about editing? What works well ? What needs attention? These questions enabled me to find out everything that I need and about 5 people viewed the short film and gave feedback. The responses I got were all very similar, the fact that they were all similar was a good thing as this indicated that everyone was on the same wavelength and it was a majority view. These were the average answers,:
1) ‘The theme is clear, the gritty setting and feel to the film indicates its evolved around social realism’. – This was a good factor as it meant my theme was clear and that no changes had to be made here.
2) ‘It seems the purpose of the theme is to imply that not everything is as it seems and that there is more than 1 side to a story’- This was another good factor, I made sure the underlying theme is pretty clear and the audience definitely agreed.
3) ‘The swearing in the final scene where the teacher is getting attacked seems abit to heavy for the target audience, its language that should be feature in an 18+ film’ – This piece of audience feedback indicated that we had to re-script that scene as the swearing was indeed heavy, the target audience would know what type of swear words they hear and have let me know that it needed changing.
4) ‘The classroom scene seems very staged when the students answer the question it didn’t seem very realistic, the narration was also slightly out of sync with the flashback’ – I agreed on these 2 pieces of feedback and addressed this issue, I edited the students responses to make it seem a much more fluid motion so it looks consecutive and realistic. As for the narration I simply moved the sound file a slight bit forward so that it would be in sync.
5) ‘Some of the editing transitions seem slow and not always in a fluid motion, the night scene seems abit dark’ I cut the shots slightly early so they transit fluidly, some of the shots were slightly to long and I found out that they could be cut earlier so they didn’t drag on too much.
6) ‘There seemed to be some background noise that distracted me from the film in the classroom scene, a score could fit in during the video scene near the end’- I reviewed the classroom scene and heard that there was a loud buzzing sound during some of the shots, these had to be re-shot as the noise was disrupting the actual speech of the character. I decided to go against the view of fitting in a score as I didn’t think there was any space to fit it in.
This feedback evidently proved to be very helpful to me, I was able to make changes and problems that I overlooked were corrected.
In order to receive feedback for my film poster I printed a copy of one of my draft plans and stuck it in a wall among other film posters, I asked randomly picked people to tell me what they thought about the poster and how it compared to the other posters. I asked them if they could identify the theme of the film through the poster and how effectively does the poster promote the film, appeal to them?
On draft 1 ‘ The poster seems to give off a cool, edgy thriller type theme to it, the bright lights in the background could suggest fast cars or a speedy chase, I like the steam glass effect it might suggest scenes of passion’
-This was the response I didn’t want to hear, evidently the poster was not gritty at all, it looked like a Hollywood action film poster and I had to shy away from the full steamed glass effect and the bright colours were not a good option.
On my final poster ‘The poster has a very cold feel to it, it seems rather odd that there are 2 different sides to the images, I would say it relates to the viewpoints, also the title of the film. I would say the theme is a dark thriller or social realism film however It would be hard to guess to any of the story as there are no characters on show. The film poster appeals to me and I would definelty try to find out more information about it.
-I was pleased with this feedback, it lets me know the average audience member can re-tract this level of detail from the poster.
In my final stage of feedback I wanted to know what my target audience thought of my film magazine. ‘ I found the magazine, ‘reader-friendly’ the article didn’t give up too much of the story but was enough to leave me wanting more, I particularly enjoyed the information box as it let me tell my mates the rating, website etc. One thing in particular that I didn’t like about the article was that it was lacking pictures, it could have had a lot more pictures to give a little idea to what the film is about
Overall I thought the feedback stage was very useful to me as I made some key changes that were needed to my work and was informed of what my target audience thought of my film. This stage allowed to make the most of my time by correcting any changes that needed correcting.
4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
I have come across many different media technologies during my coursework, all had served a purpose.
Starting with the research stage, I used the internet to create a blog, the blog was to be used to record all my work entries. Having a blog to edit with work has many advantages, as I can access my work from any computer as well as always having the ability to update and change my work, without having the use of a blog, I would have to record all my entries on paper which would be harder to keep organised and I would have to re-write things that went wrong. Most of my research had been conducted over the internet, I would use official short film sites as well as Wikipedia for statistics. I viewed a lot of short films over YouTube and those that I wanted to display onto my blog I was able to embed them easily. In addition, I also viewed a DVD that had a compilation of short films in good quality, however, the disadvantage of viewing this DVD was that I couldn’t upload any of the videos on the blog.
During the production stage, my primary use of equipment was a DV camera, which was used for filming. There came many disadvantages from using a DV camera, the battery life was very short which meant there was little room for error and take twos, the camera has not got a built in flashlight so I was only able to film in well lit conditions. In addition, I did not have any lighting equipment, I overcame this problem by filming in better lit conditions. However, it was very easy to transfer from the DV tape to the laptop by using a firewire cable, it took an average of 10 minutes to upload footage.
During the post-production stage I used a much wider range of technologies. In order to edit my film, I used a video editing software package called ‘iMovie’, this programme was simple to use, after I transferred my footage I had to cut it up and select what parts I needed, and what parts I could delete. Effects wise, this programme was very limited, there was a range of basic transitions and fades however nothing mind-blowing. This could be said to be an advantage as I focused on the quality of the film not the quality of the effects. To create my film poster, I used a programme that was new to me, it was a photo manipulation programme called Photoshop, this is a very complex programme and the things you can do on it are endless, however after reading a few guides I was able to comprehend it. Using this programme at times became frustrating because when things didn’t go your way it was hard to understand what to do, however the ‘history’ feature saved me a few times by allowing me to go back a few steps. My magazine article was created using desktop publishing software called Pages, it was simple to use and their were many templates on offer, however some of them were very basic, the features allowed me to create a professional magazine article.
During the evaluation stage, my biggest technologies use has been the internet, it has had a very big impact on my projects as I used it in every stage, for example, my blog, my research, guides to using Photoshop and magazine articles for using Page, the internet allowed me to find everything I needed to access.
Film poster research: Conventions
