Development & Changes Evaluation

From our original idea we changed and developed our final media product a lot through the stages of construction and editing.

1. Due to not enough footage in the film itself we decided to make up the time by creating an opening title sequence - the title sequence was a result from some research - to produce the opening title sequence we recorded the camera panning a table, which showed the contents of alcohol, drugs, keys, and cigarettes. We added an effect on these shots during the editing process to create a confused effect.

2. Our original idea was to have Stacey Leigh talking to an unknown person in a room that looks like an interrogating room for the scene where it is Stacey Leigh's narrative; through the course of the production we have had to keep re-filming these scenes because of them not being realistic and up to acting quality also because of our re-think of the ending.
So at first we had the interrogating room, however we changed that to Stacey Leigh looking and talking to the camera to fit the ending of the film but due to circumstances of those shots we decided to have Stacey Leigh sat in a car and looking out of the window while a voice over ran over the shot.

3. Due to us changing the narrative shots and instead having a running voice over the film, this meant had more access to produce different shots for the voice over to run over, however this meant we needed to create a new ending to film which had the same effect on the audience as did the original idea. For the last few minutes of the short film we created new shots for the voice over to run over instead of sticking to the car shots.

Instead we had Stacey Leigh looking over a bridge in a park looking at her phone then walking off into the distance while the voice over is on, this fades out to black to the ending.







We decided that the ending should be Stacey Leigh on the streets, alone and in the cold, to fit the part of the voice over in which was going to b played over it. So instead of the TV - Death ending, we decided that it should be left on a cliff hanger with Stacey Leigh's step dad - Baz ringing her mobile phone, and her rejecting the call, with the last piece of voice over running to a black screen.

Critically Evaluating Video Production (By Olivia Davies)

For our media product we have chosen do to a short film which follows the conventions of the genre of drama. The short film follows the story of a young teenage girl whom experiences different situations in her life, which force her to go ‘down the wrong path.’

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

At a technical level, I feel the continuity of the short film is good, as we worked hard to ensure during editing that every match on action flowed and followed fluently. For example in the first scene, when we use the camera to follow Baz’s feet from the living room to Stacey Leigh’s bedroom, matching up the right leg of movement in each shot.






In the editing process we made a lot of decisions on how we want the film to appear and come across to the audience, as well as changing and developing original ideas. Due to filming and camera errors we made the decision to do one scene with jump cuts; jump cuts were used in this scene to show a passage of time by jumping from different kinds of shots such as Medium and Point Of View shots; these style of shots give a variety of visual pleasure for the audience. The scene which I am mentioning is the drug taking scene - using Point Of View shots gives the effect of the audience being in the shoes of the main character, where the viewer is given an unique access to the characters mind, we chose to accommodate this narrative style by applying an effect called 'Earthquake', this was a good effect to use on our Point Of View shots as it made the shots appear fuzzy and distorted, the appearance of the shots with the application gave the audience a feeling of what Stacey Leigh was feeling such as confusion and dizziness as a result of taking the drugs. Influences for this kind of effect come from other drama's such as Skins, which also have scenes of drugs and their effects,

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWAzFTxTsRA - example of Earthquake effect.



• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mHD_HuJgtUom/watch?v=5mHD_HuJgtU - example of jump cuts.

In comparison to other drama's such as Skins, Shameless and short films which we researched to find the conventions of the genre of drama, I think that our film 'Uncherished' fits the nature of film genre and doesn't subvert the conventions of the genre. We found out from our research that most dramas depended on realistic characters which deal with emotional themes, in which in some way could affect the audience or share a mutual similarities of emotion. Common themes in UK drama's included Drug and alcohol abuse/addiction, crime, poverty, racial prejudice, and acts against society.
The most influential real media text which we based our original idea on was a short film called 'About A Girl' - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL2z8Qzn1dc , which was the winner of the Best Short Film BAFTA in 2001; it showed themes of stereotypical family characters and contained an in depth narrative and gave the audience a unique access to the main character through objective character identification, by using such scenes of flashbacks/memories.
Using influences such as the in depth narrative and flashback scenes I am confident that we have achieved to provide the audience with the pleasure of having a connection and emotional attachment to the main character of Stacey Leigh.

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

In our main product we were trying to achieve a sense of attachment and revelation, as well as showing what some people are experiencing in the contemporary UK, as the combination of 'wild' teenagers and drugs is becoming a serious matter in the country as there is a growing commonness to the equation. To achieve the sense of attachment to the main character we wanted the audience feel the emotions of the characters such as the feel is of being lonely, scared, unwanted, depression, etc. With this in mind we created a poster which creates a melancholy and despairing tone, this is due to the image we have chosen to use and the colour scheme of blue, greys, blacks and whites. The radio trailer sets a tone of loneliness with the use of echo's within the dialogue which we extracted from our film and we used the same pianist music from the film to be consistent with the film and the tone.

I think our two ancillary texts are effective in selling our production as it doesn't give too much information away about the film and creatives a sense of mystery about what the film is about; this mystery can therefore entice the audience to want to know more about the film and its plot. For our final two ancillary texts we took influences from real advertising products. The film poster was mainly influenced by a 'Joker' poster for the new Batman film; we liked the idea of the main character being behind a glass that looked foggy and condensed, we thought we could incorporate this idea into our film poster, and referred back to such scenes when she is in the car looking out the window and when she is looking into the mirror in the taking of the drugs scene.

For our radio trailer it was hard to find examples we could refer to on the internet, however to over come this we looked at film trailers to consider factors such as a voice overs and music, but also what information is given in a trailer. The most helpful film trailer was for a recent film called 'The Blind Side' - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9ChnAnKeYQ - this film showed trailer features of a voice over and film dialougue extracts. On the other hand we could have had approached our radio trailer in a different way than using a narrative voice over and could have used the voice of our main character Stacey Leigh to advertise the film to be consistent the narrative depth of the objective character identification, such as what is used a film called 'The Tracey Fragments' - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0jEN2_REy4&feature=fvst.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

In response to the original brief of the production we did carry out some audience research at the planning stage. To keep the audience in mind we produced a questionnaire, from the research we found some results which showed what the audience would want to see in a short film and what genre they liked the most; this was helpful in the first stages of our production, as it provided a good base to start being creative with story lines and researching similar films. In the filming and editing process we did have to make many creative decisions due to filming errors, these decisions were also for the benefit of our audience. For our film to be accessible to the audience so they have emotions of sympathy and empathy for Stacey Leigh we needed the film to believable, for example Stacey Leigh's monologue scenes were shots many times as in many it looked and sounded like she was reading it, rather than saying it with any emotion, therefore in the end we used the car shots and had Stacey Leigh's voice over to creative a narrative effect, and for the audience to get into the characters mind.





Audience feedback from final piece was very positive and most commented on the plot and music choice.

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

Using various technology was really helpful during the construction stages of our film, as it enabled us to develop our creativity. In the research and planning stages of our production we used the access of the internet for research, as well as presenting our findings and produce planning we created a blog with 'www.blogger.com' - this enabled us to keep organized with work and for each member of the group to have easy access to group work and to contribute to the work.

In the construction stages of our film we used a Sony HD 1000 Camera to record all of our footage for the film, the camera was perfect for capturing the different shots we needed and produced a perfect quality picture.

In the editing stages we used Apple Mac's and used the software of 'iMovie' - this software was good for editing purposes however there were limitations on what could be done with the footage we captured, and sometimes resulted in having to re shoot some scenes, therefore to improve the quality of our film we could have used 'Final Cut Express' which is more of an advanced programme. For some of our audio we used a H4 Zoom Recorder to record certain background sounds and the voice over of our main character Stacey Leigh, we also used music from a non copyright play-list website http://www.freeplaymusic.com/ic.com this was very useful to find music which fitted the tone of our short film.

The poster is a result of using 'Photoshop Elements' which was very useful for this ancillary text as it is an advanced editing software. The radio trailer was constructed using 'GarageBand' which is also an advanced software which enabled us produced a good quality radio trailer with different and affective effects.

We used the technology of the internet to gain audience feedback, this meant uploading the film onto youtube.com and then sharing the video onto the social networking site - facebook.com

Critically Evaluating Video Production ( By Kasey Swift)

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

For our production we decided to create a short 5 minute film. We chose to do a drama which contained conventions of the drama genre as well as incorporating different things from influences which we had. The film follows the down fall of the main character Stacey Leigh, a teenage girl. The film follows her as she makes bad choices and mistakes which cause her life to spiral out of control. Our film shows conventions of a drama as we have realistic characters who have to deal with emotions and clash with themselves and other character and deal with dramatic themes like alcoholism and drug taking in our own film ‘Uncherished’.


I believe that we followed such conventions as good continuity and editing as our film shows a lot of passing of time so we wanted to represent this in a way that our audience could understand, we found it quite hard to fit a large amount of time into just 5 minutes this caused massive changes with the whole filming process. At first we placed a shot were Stacey Leigh speaks directly to camera like a sort of video diary, but when we played the film it did not flow properly. We thought that the easiest way was just to use fade out and fade in transitions between different scenes to show that time has passed.
I think that this worked quite well as well as a change in setting and costume as it distinguished the different scenes but also allowed the film to flow. For one of our main scenes in the film is the drug taking scene, we wanted this scene to show the change in Stacey Leigh due to taking drugs and we decided to do this by using jump cuts. it makes the scene look unusual for an audience as these cuts between different shots .
A jump cut is an editing technique where two shots of the same subject are taken but the frame changes slightly and emphases the editing. They are often used in horror films to make an audience feel uneasy as it disturbs the continuity of shots.

An example of an other film using Jump cuts is Trainspotting -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koP4O6QAzx4&feature=related . It has Jump cuts to represent the fast paced opening scene where people are being chased down the street.


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



We have produced two different products to advertise our film. The first is a poster. We wanted to focus on the main character as she is the one who’s life the audience are following and the film presents Stacey as a loner, so we wanted the same with the poster. We incorporate ideas from the film like the streamed window which is seen in the scene in the car.

We used a dark colour scheme with little colour in it as we wanted it to convey the atmosphere of the film through the poster so we thought that this would fit best to show the rollercoaster of emotions which Stacey Leigh experiences. In the film a shadow of the Main character is off centre to draw more attention to it and to give the effect that she is alone. Altogether I think the poster does attract people to it as it quite striking as well as looking quite depressing, it also makes it look quite mysterious. The second product was the radio trailer, we wanted this to fit well with both the actual film and the poster. Effects like echoes were used to create the effect of loneliness the voice over uses a cold tone, we used quotes directly from the film and music too. I think that both of our ancillary texts work well together to attract an audience, therefore selling our product. We looked at other successful films for influences for our own products. This helped us to see a different range of target audiences and how the products were actually targeted these audiences.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

For our film we carried out some research to get information about our target audience and what they wanted to see in a short film. One way we got information for our audience was through a questionnaire, we did this to gather information on what they did and didn’t like in films and what attracts them to a film to help us with our own film. We displayed our findings in graphs to make it was easier to use the information. I think we used our audience feedback well to create a short film that we knew would appeal to our target audience. We decided that we would get a bigger audience if the film was shown on TV rather than in a cinema. Things like music and what shots and angles we used were also influenced by our audience feed back.

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

We found that using a variety of technology was helpful during all stages of production, and allowed us to get things done a lot quicker and easier. In our research and planning stages we used the internet to research other film and used things like youtube to watch other films and help plan our own film.

We used a Sony HD 100 Camera to film our actual film production and stored all footage on tapes. The camera helped us produce good quality shots, but at times we found the camera way too bulky when experimenting with different shots. Some of our audio like voiceovers and backing sound had to be recorded on a H4 Zoom Recorder to create a better sound quality.

For our editing we used Mac’s and used editing software called iMovie. We used this software as we thought it was a lot simpler to use and we also had past experience using it, although it wasn’t the most professional software and wasn’t as good as other options therefore limiting what we could do with our footage. Other software which we used was GarageBand which we used to put our radio trailer together. We also used Photoshop Elements to create our film posters.

Radio Trailer (By Jordan Evans & Olivia Davies)

This is our Radio Trailer for our production of a short film - 'Uncherished'
The main objective of the trailer was to not give the too much information
away about the storyline of the film, to do this we didn't extract too much
audio from the film itself, such as the narrative speech from Stacey Leigh
whom shapes the whole story of 'Uncherished'

Critical evaluation of video production (By Jordan Evans)

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

The Short film we have produced this year was set on a Drama Genre of film and follows the story of a young teenage girl called Stacey Leigh, a daughter, friend and all round a good person in society and what different situations that she comes across in her life force her to do with the rest of her days. I feel that our short film has taken a full Story and plot line and shortened it down into a five minuet short film, and i feel that this is the main purpose of a short film is, to get the message across in a short amount of time, I think the hardest thing to follow with the conventions of a short film is not to make it have a cliff hanger at the end as a short film is a whole film from start to end, but i think that our media production follows this rule well, and it also gives the audience the information they need rather than in things such as Trailers for films you have to be careful not to give away all the information.

In the Film i feel that we have used the conventions of things such as Continuity and editing well. We have a lot of different types of shots in our film which give a variety of visual pleasure for the audience but also the shots fit in well with the mood of the scene for example,
this shot from the film, as you can see in the shot that we wanted to give the feeling of what effect drugs have on the body, i feel that the effect that we used which was Earthquake effect.






The effect itself is a good effect to give the feeling of confusion and dizziness which is what we wanted to achieve and i think we achieved this well. We also added camera shots such as jump cuts,







Which show the passing of time by means of jumping to different shots this is shown with the two screen shots of where the jump cuts were placed in the film, this shot was used in the same place as the earthquake effect in the same scene and we feel that it gave the shot better continuity and flowed better with the idea that Stacey had just taken some drugs, also we had seen this type of jump cut in a film called "Seven"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEZK7mJoPLY

which we liked the shot, so we decided to incorporate it into our own film as we felt it gave the right feel to the film and what it was trying to put across.

The Genre of our Short Film is Drama and in the Research that we did into the Gene Which Showed us that a drama film genre depends mostly on the in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as Alcholism, Drug addiction, Racial Prejudice, Racism, Poverty, Crime, and corruption put the characters in conflict with themselves, others and Society. We decided as a group to follow the conventions of the genre rather than subverting the genre and making it the opposite of what is expected in a Drama Genre film, a good example to show this is another short film that is the closest thing to our own Short film which is called "About a Girl"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL2z8Qzn1dcw.youtube.com/watch?v=dL2z8Qzn1dc


it shows how a girl relates stories about her ordinary teenage life, there is a uncomfortable sense of sadness underlying her easy going tales, which is what our film is loosely based on, I would say that this short film is as close to ours as possible in terms of outside media by other people, it is set in Manchester and is a girl that is the only major character in the film and it has many similarities to our own. This shows that our film does follow the convention of the Drama genre, by comparing it to an existing, award winning piece of film this tells us that our film is not subverting the genre.
In our main production of the film i think that our initial ideas is that we wanted to make a film which follows the day to day life of a teenage girl and the struggle that she has within her family and the world outside. I feel that this was a good subject to show in our short film as it is a serious topic and i feel that there are not a lot of films that portray it, there are some similar films out a few of them are:


"The Unloved" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3vwXWoSpVY

"About a Girl" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL2z8Qzn1dc

"Dirty Money" (No link, removed from site)


There are also some other types of media that have a lot of similarities such as the Barnardo's advert which was on TV around June 2009.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFOcrZeMRUU



The advert was shocking to get the message across to the audience that the adverts were aimed at.

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

Like the Barnardo's advert we have also produced two promotional and advertising products which consists of a poster and a radio trailer. The poster itself i feel fits really well with the genre of the film and the story of



the film i think it does this by portraying sadness through the main image and the colours that are used in the poster suggest darkness, sadness and loneliness which are all included in the Short film , also the font type also goes with the theme of the film, because the font type is so soft it clashed with the fell of coldness which is in the background this contrast of emotions, i feel attracts people to the poster. We were inspired by the poster for the new "Batman'' film, as we all felt that the poster itself was so effective in what it was trying to get through to its audience, and this worked well, not only this but we saw that we could take the idea and change, manipulate and update it to fit with out genre of film, and the original Batman poster which is below



is for the Action/Horror hybrid Genre of film, we thought this poster would attract our target audience for the film. The radio trailer was harder to produce, most of the radio trailer itself comes from voice shots of the main film, including background music that is included on the film which is the piano sounding music, as we felt that there needed to be a connection between the film and the radio trailer, and the music is that connection also the audience have something familiar to remember before they watch it on Television so i think this also contributes to help promote the product. A main voice over is included as well to give the audience the information they need to view the film which is compulsory in any radio trailer. It was hard to gain research into the radio trailer itself so instead we looked into opening scenes of films, as usually with what we already know there can be voice overs and other effects that intern could create its own radio trailer. this is followed by some dialogue from the film, i think this part of the radio trailer gives the audience the feel of the genre, without giving too much information about the film on the Radio Trailer.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

For our short film we carried out a couple of things that contributed to market research, which we used to get information about our audience and what they want to see in a short film from what genre they liked the most, to what they think to the actual story line. One of the things that we produced for audience feedback is a questionnaire, this was one of the first things we did towards getting information to base our film on so it will appeal to our audience. The results that were gathered for the questionnaires proved helpful in the making of the film. With the results we decided to create graphs so that the results could be displayed easily and simple for us to draw conclusions from and display them in a simple manner. In our film we made a few creative decisions on things such as Camera shots and effects when editing, as we wanted it to appeal to the audience so we feel that we had to choose the right type of Camera shot and Effects to add to the audience mood when they watch the film. This is also included in the props and costumes as we wanted them to look realistic yet to let the audience relate to the situation being shown in the film. I think that the overall production will suit the target audience and i think that it if was shown on TV the audience would like the subject and how its has been covered by the film. A lot of things contribute to what the audience thinks of the film and if it will appeal to them one of these things are believable characters and i think this shows in our film, here is an example scene.




As you can see in this clip the characters are believable and i think the acting is also making it easy for the audience to put themselves in the situation. Again another additive to this is the music which was gained from a non copyright play list website called www.freeplaymusic.com this is also the website we used in our previous production last year. For the music we wanted something sad but not scary so we chose to have piano, as we all agreed they are sad and moody which is what we wanted to portray to the audience, the music we chose is called Memorial park and here is a sample clip of it.




I think all these contribute to the audience pleasure and i think we have done this well and appealed to the audience. Another selection of music was made for the credits as we did not want to be repetitive with the music, so we chose another song from the same website and added it to go with the credits, it think that's this is good because it feel that its truly finished and complete and it seems to round up everything. The song that we had chosen is called "Alone in the cold" again here is a clip of the song:




The last song itself is a Guitar, it has a feeling of being a dramatic melody and this is what we wanted to end on, because i feel that it was a dramatic film, Also it make you feel alone but drawn in, knowing that there is a light still burning, i think this is what we wanted to leave the audience with, sort of thinking about the film and relating it to their own life's, this is why i think its good to have a piece of music and credits as it give you time to reflect on what you have just taken in.

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

The technology that was used to create the film was easy to use as we had used most of the equipment last year except for the High Definition cameras which we had to have a lesson in on how to set up the cameras and use them properly along with the tripods, but once we had

learned how to use the cameras they became easy to use and operate.

For the editing we decided to use the software that we used last year which was IMovie as we felt comfortable with it and we were able to use it better that we would have if we had used final cut to edit, plus with time management it made sense to use the software that we were comfortable with so that we can finish in time for the deadline instead of having to do lessons on training for the new software.

Other technology's we used were Photoshop Elements, this was used to create the poster for the film, for this i personally felt comfortable with the software as i have used it before so it was easy to manipulate pictures to advertise out film.

We also used Garage band to product the radio trailer, i wan not really comfortable with this software as i was unfamiliar with it and it was hard at first to create the radio trailer, this was time consuming for the group as we had not had any software training so we had to figure out the layout by ourselves but after we found out how to use it it was easy to crate a radio trailer for the film.

Some other small parts of equipment we used were the Tri Pods and Zoom Recorders, these again we used last year so we knew how to work the equipment and have to add it to the film, we used the Zoom Recorder to ass voice overs to the Radio Trailer and the film itself.

The major change this year in terms of using media technology's was actually creating work on the blogger rather than paper based. I actually prefer this type of working, because everyone in the group can access it at any time and edit their own work, also people can leave comments on how to improve our work so we can make the necessary changes to our work. This year we had no real problems within crating and editing our film, It all went smoothly and we were able to keep within the deadline time and the software was able to add to our creativity rather than obstruct it through effects and camera shots.

Closing comments

I am please with what we have achieved this year, there has been some changes made from the initial ideas for the film, this are things like shots and other factors, simply for the fact that the film did not flow properly and it did not fit together well in terms of continuity and story line, we have had to change the ending too, this was a knock on effect of when we changes the middle parts of the film as the ending then did not make any sense, all this is explained in a second group evaluation online.

Video Storyboard - Final (By Olivia Davies)

Video Storyboard for Uncherished
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mn0jM1xrKZU