G325

Evaluation

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


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

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

 

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

Ancillary Tasks

Radio Advertisement

We first listened to some examples before we could know how to structure and create our own.

This is how we planned out our radio advert, we used a prezi:



After familiarising ourselves and planning out our radio advert we created a draft,



We then gathered feedback by interviewing some listeners and recording the interview using a Tascam portable recorder. This was the feedback:



After applying the feedback, we created our final advert:

Poster Advertisement

We had a similar process during the production of our poster. 

1. We viewed some existing short film horror genre posters.

2. We created a draft for ourselves using what we know so far on Photoshop and Indesign (by Adobe)

3.  We then gathered feedback similarly to how we attained feedback for our advert, we recorded interviews with our audience using the Tascam portable recorder.

4. We applied the feedback to create our final draft.

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Main Task

By practicing how to use the camera, we will reduce the risk of delaying any processes we have in the future such as while we are filming, we wouldn’t have to stop for any mistake of lack of understanding (which may cause things to take longer than if we had learnt how to do it effectively at the start).

Here is a colleague of mine learning how to station a camera and its on-board features.

Once we familiarised ourself on how to use the camera, we started following the storyboard an shot list to film the short film,

This was our first draft:



After posting this first draft on the popular video sharing website "YouTube", we gained some feedback that we will use to decide which parts of the movie to edit or improve. The feedback came in the form of comments:

Our youtube feedback was not a successful way of getting constructive feedback so we decided to choose another method of gaining data, the other methods included questionnaires, a video or an interview (audio) with the people we consider to be our target audience (ages 13 - 21, excluding short film enthusiasts). We decided that at the time, the easiest method to use effectively was by interviewing people who have watched our first draft:




Mid Production Vlog

Inspiration for Ideas

Direct Link to "Tedpod" Show with Sting

In this radio show hosted by TED, Guy Raz talks about how the mind becoms creative, processes crativity and what we do with it. Paticularly, Guy asks the musician Sting about how he eventually got over his writers block. <1:30 - 3:40>.

What I find particularly interesting is how Sting say's that your creativity mostly depends on your childhood, and his childhood were spent in the quiet city of Wallsend, sitting with his father in the van whilt delivering milk, dreaming as much as he can. He was able to convert that creativity he had gained from all that dreaming into the famous classic-rock music tracks. But it is what he did (or dreamt of in this case), that I want to understand, since It would be the dreaming that might have made him decide to write and sing classic-rock song as opposed to say, pop songs or hip-hop. Understanding this, would allow me to understand why people like certain genres, and potentially, how to get them to like other genres.

My Idea
Unlike Sting, I did not use my history as inspiration, however, my creativity did have a part in it. At the start, I planned that the film I would take part in must have a puzzling aspect to it, this is because att he time, I was immersing myself with puzzling films (joint with horror), whatching films such as Exam (2009) and Would You Rather (2012), films that make the mind think and wonder and leave you excited and tense.

It would be hard to add a complex puzzle in a short film sure tot he short duration, however,  many short films have had a mind-twisting plot, in particular the animated The Backwater Gospel. However, I did not want to add such a sinse of horror in my short film like how all these others seem to do, so I decided to use the familiar setting of my school at daytime, which makes the environment seem more friendly.

The process taken to decide on the actual plot was made as a team, the idea was a result of collaboration. The plot incolving two individuals searching for each other in a single campus, yet always ending in the opposite sides of the campus (and how they got there) added that puzzling aspect that I wanted.

This was our second draft:


After this draft, we had changed our filming group, the new group changed from Patrice Ashy, Ali Hakimy, Patryk Kulas and Elle Gilbert to Patrice Ashby, Ali Hakimy and Ravey Pambu.

So we created a draft using our new idea:



Which we then also got feedback using YouTube's comment section:

We applied the feedback and created another draft:



Feedback given using YouTube's comment section:

Points taken from this feedback:

1. Reduce the walking scenes' length, perhaps remove some of them of cut out bits from them.

2. Build up the plot from the beginning by showing the audience the antagonist, but keeping it hidden from the antagonist. This may make the beginning scenes more interesting and fun to watch and tension is slowly being built from the start.

3. Overall try to add elements of excitement and mystery to keep the audience interested.

After applying the feedback, we created our final:

Research and Planning

Short film

What is a short film? It's defined as a film or movie that isn't long enough to be considered a feature film movie, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines this length to be anything under 40 minutes. But what is it, as a production rather than what its properties are. 

A short film is, in a way, trying to reach the same reaction from its target audience as a feature film would (interest in the plot, affection for the characters, etc.), but in a shorter time. Sometimes, this would lead to the film being simpler in terms of story line, and sometimes it may portray aspects of the film in a way to show hidden meanings in order to fit in more about the story in a shorter time space. Some may say the main difference between a feature film and a short film is that feature films are made up of more scenes than a short film, giving you the space to develop more complex characters put in a larger variety of situations or obstacles for the characters to interact with.

However understanding the whole subject of short film cannot be done by researching the views of other people, and one must involve himself in the act of watching and familiarising him or herself with short film, which is what I must do. 

My research would begin as I decide to pick out three different short films, watch them, and analyse them to the best of my ability. By making a note of the important aspects of a short film, I could gain knowledge about the subject that I can use in the future, when creating my own short film, to increase the possibility of making a successful product.

Codes and Conventions of short film:

The codes and conventions of a short film is what distinguishes short films form others, such as feature films and etc. Therefore it would be smart to learn about them so we can apply them to our short film production.

One code and convention is the duration and storyline of them. It is clear form these three short films, Risk It, Room 9 and The Open Door, that short films have an average length of less than 10 minutes. The  Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all credits".

The characters and locations are another. From my research, I found out that short films have around 2 to 3 characters. This could be because of lack of budget that short films usually have, some short films have NO BUDGET. This could also be the reason that the storylines are simple. Similarly, having no budget limits where the production team can film, which results to there being around 2 or 3 locations within the film.

The title used is another. 'Risk It', 'Room 8' and 'The Open Door' all have titles that are short, sharp and are relevant to the genre and usually relates to the main plots in the short film. This would signal my group to keep the title for our film short and simple.

Another code and convention would be the cinematography used; this refers to the different shot types seen. Different cinematography is used for different genres, but short films usually have some in common. In ‘Risk It’ there are close ups of his phone and the “risk it” coin. Also in “The Open Door” there is a close up of the door handle. These objects shown all play major roles in the short film, this suggests that a common shot type used in short films is to have a close up of important objects. This could link back to how they must be kept simple as there is low budget.

 

Storyboards and Shot Lists:

  

A storyboard is used similarly to a script for planning, except it provides some degree of visuals so that the group can visualise the film and its potential shot types and locations. We started off by sketching certain aspects of the short film to represent the scene in the shot such as a door. And besides it we created a list of the different shots we would take.

Camera Practice:

More research we had to do was to familiarise ourselves with pieces of equipment, we had already learnt how to use portable recorders and microphones last year, but this year we would be using a video camera. By practicing how to use the camera, we will reduce the risk of delaying any processes we have in the future such as while we are filming, we wouldn’t have to stop for any mistake of lack of understanding (which may cause things to take longer than if we had learnt how to do it effectively at the start).

Here is a colleague of mine learning how to station a camera and its on-board features.

Research methods:

Primary Research:

Questionnaire:

Pros:

- Feedback is given straight from the target audience as they were the people who were handed the questionnaire.

- Simple and relatively cost effective way of finding out answers to queries.

- Can be analysed more 'scientifically' and objectively as the answers only come in one form.

Cons:

- Lacks the ability to interpret some forms of information such as emotion and behaviour.

- Hard to tell whether the person has answered truthfully or to the best of their ability.

- People may have different mindsets as to what means what, and what is wrong or right, impacting their question and making it hard for the researcher to understand the answer.

Interviews:

Pros:

More direct and easier for the respondent to answer because it is direct to the interviewer.

You can read the respondents body language and emotions to further increase the effectiveness of your research.

Interviewer can search for more answers by expanding the question to understand more.

Questions can be more understanding to the respondent because it can be explained if not understood.

Answers are received as soon as the interview finishes, rather than waiting for a questionnaire to be sent back for example.

Cons:

Some specific equipment may be needed (professional equipment can make the research more costly).

Interviewer may be biased and asked closed questions leading to expected answers that may not have been the respondents intention.

Interviewer must be consistent or each interview will result in a hugely different set of answers, making it harder to analyse.

May be more time consuming.

Observations:

Some research can also be conducted by simply observing actions taken to something natural over a large period of time. This would be effective to things that apply to long periods of time, such as popularity tests to see how popular a certain thing is in an environment by seeing how many people approach it. However, it would be inefficient otherwise as it is very time consuming and you may not always get the answers you are looking for.

Secondary Research:

Newspaper analysis/Book search:

Researching using book and newspapers provides on hand information; this information is usually factual and therefore is accurate and can be relied upon. Newspapers must be factual as they are describing current events. Also book, if written by a well-known author who has qualifications on the topic he or she is writing about, it can be very useful to read. However, books and newspapers very easily become outdated as times change and books or a single newspaper cannot be updated. It is also relatively time consuming to research using books.

Internet search:

Unlike books and newspapers, the internet is always updated as it is easy to edit and is connected to millions of people. A pro of researching using the internet is a large amount of resources available on the internet with relevance to countless things. Also, the internet is relevantly quick. Since it has links to many people, professionals also use it to publish data, once found, this data can be precise and valuable to use. However, a problem with using the internet is that when webpages are NOT manually updated or have no automatic updating in place, it also becomes outdated, potentially rendering the information/statistics useless. Also, since it is available to so many people, you could end up reading unrealizable data as you do now know its source, which could end up being from an amateur. Finally, when using the internet, you often find yourself in a filter bubble, where your search results tunnel down to your personal interests, restricting views from other points of view.

Software:

Adobe Premier Pro CS6:

Premier Pro is my primary editing software, it allows me to edit the videos i have recorded in many ways and combine them to make a final short film (or any video). To begin, I import my video clips into the program, I can then order them in a timeline, before processing them so that they could be combined. The different features that Premier Pro provides me includes the ability to split-screen clips (a huge part of my groups short film)

Audacity:

Audacity is an audio editing software that I can use to clip, trip, and amplify (or the opposite) audio that has been recorded.

Target Audience

Who are the target audience for short films?

The short film industry’s audience is quite specialised and niche compared that of the mainstream audience of larger full length FEATURE FILMS.

Short films is really limited to those people who are interested in the form of short films and in making short films themselves, it is a very specific production. In London there are short film festivals, which are screened at places like the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts), Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn and Ritzy Cinema in Brixton. These are places that attract consumers who enjoy theatre and specialist cinema. They are usually university educated and middle class people.

The gender is approximately 50/50. Because there are a higher number of women studying creative arts, short films tend to be aimed slightly more towards them.

Short films are often shared on social media, which is dominated by young people. This results in the age range being around 15 to 30 0year olds, but other ages also take part.

Short films mostly target young, bright film enthusiasts, both male and female. It is important to understand that, unlike feature length films, short films do not target a broad, but a smaller specific audience depending on its genre.

Planning

Logos:

A logo would be used to distinguish our production group from other production groups, it gave us a label we can be referred to.

Our first Logo:

After changing groups:

Moodboard:
We created a mood board to make a collection of different images that could potentially inspire our short film, this could help us develop the plot and the short film. We brought together a variety of images that we believed to be relevant to our short film such as clipboards, stairs in different lighting and people chasing each other:

Todorov's Narrative Theory:

Todorov's Narrative theory helped us create our storyline, it seemed to be the most rlevant to our personaly story idea. We explain the theory in this prezi, and then show how Todorov's theory is similar to ours.

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We changed groups due to creative differences and adopted a new member, Ravey Pambu. We then came up with a new idea that would be able to meet the duration of 5 minutes. So we made a schedule, so that we could meet the deadline. This gave our group a structural backbone so that we remain organised and on point. This is illustrated below:

New Storyboards and shot lists:

Risk Assessment:

A risk assessment was used in order to ensure that we understood the potential risks and could act to avoid them during the phase they are relevant in: