Evaluation

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

Short Film

The main aspect of our short film that challenges current real media products is the genre. It is relatively ambiguous, especially at the end, however genres of short films are usually sub-genres, as it's mainly the top feature length films that have a clear genre.

Other features of short films include:

• Inventive camerawork - able to tell the story much quicker, gives audience a different view of a situation and is a lot more interesting to look at

• Minimal effects - short films tend to be much more realistic (low budget?), so they would have less effects, maybe sometimes a green screen (e.g. Office Space)

Model rocket over green screen in Office Space

• Simple design/costume - actors are usually in normal clothes/costume, neighbourhood and/or simple settings (e.g. everyday clothes used and simple house setting in A Map of the World)

OTS of man in A Map of the World (all characters in normal clothing)

• Characterisation - most don't tend to linger on character development, but has enough content about them for the audience to build some form of understanding/relationship with them

• Sound - dialogue can alternate between lots and none, simplistic music that is usually parallel with the image

• Themes and issues - can sometimes address larger issues that affect a lot of people, usually it's smaller and simpler things that can be identified in everyday life, which again affects a large number of people

In our short film, there are some similarities:

• Camerawork - worm's eye view (WEV) and point of view (POV) shots, graphic matches of the setting, post-production editing of the footage helps tell the story/time pass

WEV of main protagonist finding her locker

WEV of the protagonist walking towards the camera

POV of the boy looking at the girl



Graphic match from the woods to the pier

• Effects - prolonged shots of cars in fast motion to convey time passing, typewriter text overlayed on the image to show the text messages being exchanged between the two characters, splicing two shots together to create the bus scene and to give a shock effect

Two shot of boy and bully, whilst boy texts girl

LS of boy about to be hit by bus (two shots put together)

• Costume/setting - brighter clothes for girl, darker clothes for boy, though his clothes get steadily brighter throughout film because of the effect of the girl, several settings to give the film more realism

• Characterisation - little to no back story, mainly for the boy, but the audience can build for an emotional bond with the girl due to what she's been through and what she explains about her disability

• Sound - moderate amount of dialogue to help the audience understand what is going on, same soundtrack used throughout (singing version and guitar version of the same song), links to title and character, quite cheery and upbeat which is parallel to most of the film's content, but contrapuntal to what happens at the end

• Themes and issues - raising awareness of disability, addressing something not many short films and feature length films acknowledge a lot in modern society, linking to Neale's theory of 'Variation and Repetition' - bringing something different to the screens to keep the audience interested and it gives them something different to watch

Film Poster

Film posters have to give the audience a sense of what the film is before they've seen it. Therefore it needs specific conventions, such as:

• Text - the title (the biggest, most obvious), names of actors (equal size), billing block, reviews and ratings, references, awards, tagline
• Imagery - image(s) of actors, setting, colour/lighting (pathetic fallacy?)
• Context - sometimes little is given about the film due to limited imagery (e.g. Fish Tank), leaves the audience guessing/creates enigma. Other times a lot can be hinted at (e.g. The King's Speech) due to what's in the foreground and background

The lighting from the left side creates a deep shadow on the right side of the character's face, suggesting drama. Her facial expression shows that she is looking at something or has seen something, and this adds to the drama and tension being conveyed in the image.
Stereotypically, her clothing implies that she's around the South London area, which is known for being quite suburban and working class, so the income is low therefore her clothes won't be at the top of the market. She is wearing a cheap-looking hoody that is slightly open at the neck, suggesting that she is confident in herself and wants to be noticed. This can be seen behind her in the background, with high rise flats and terraced buildings, typical housing for that area of London.


The lighting behind the actors is quite low key, but in front of them around the statue is high key, suggesting that there is a bright future. Their clothing of the actor on the left shows he is of royalty (clearly the king) and the actor on the right is not of royalty, but of a high class. Linking to the 'bright future', the facial expression of the actor on the right shows he is confident and optimistic, whereas the expression of the actor on the left shows he is nervous, suggesting something about their characters. The title has a 'shiny' look to it, almost as if it's made out of gold, which suggests wealth, and the crown on top of the 'i' continues the theme of royalty.



We included the same conventions in our film poster:

• Text - largest font is the title, Blind Faith, followed by the names of the two actors, then the reviews, ratings, billing block and awards
• Imagery and context - a photo of the two characters on a road (black and white, photo-booth picture), hints at a few key aspects of the film, doesn't give a lot away; suggests their closeness as friends, road could imply something else/something darker

Review

i) Little White Lies (LWL) is a magazine that contains reviews and information of both mainstream and independent films, and also more media products such as video games. It's layout is very sophisticated and the language is both colloquial and formal; this is to make it easier to read for it's audience, who are mainly upper class males ranging from those interested in films to those working in the industry. Because our audience is different, teenagers/young adults aged 15-24, we had to write in the same style but in a way that our audience would understand, whilst keeping as close to the house style of LWL as possible as depicted below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe9AAfGgJuU

ii) We kept as faithful to the house style of LWL as possible, which included:

• Using the same font - two different fonts for the title and the main body of text
• Using the same measurements - the spacing between the paragraphs, the screenshot from our film, the font size
• Writing in the same language style - both formal, complex diction and a slightly more colloquial tone in some parts
• Writing in the same paragraph structure -

Correct dimensions needed for the review

Screen grab from film used at the top of our review

Title and director information below screenshot

Final edit of the review

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

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Towards the beginning of the portfolio, we struggled to come up with a name for our film. We'd decided on two possible names, Blind Faith and Out of Sight, but couldn't choose which. We then decided to use the website SurveyMonkey and got our audience to choose which name they preferred.

We wanted to get our audience to feedback because we wanted it to relate to their age group as much as possible, so we based our decisions on what our audience wanted.

We also got feedback on the layout of our title, as we wanted to link it as much as we could to the theme of our film, so we incorporated braille into the formation of the letters (using Photoshop).

Also, we recently got feedback on our final poster design using the social networking site Facebook.

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


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