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,
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 ma
in 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 - fa
cebook.com
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.
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 ma
in 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 - fa
cebook.com
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