Evaluation: Question 1

In what way does your media product use develop or challenge forms or conventions?

That is an overview of how conventions effect my film and how they are implemented within it. These are what make a particular genre and it is highly important these are followed to address a particular audience and to ensure the film follows a path rather than crossing into other genres.

Evaluation: Question 2

This is a two part documentary, compiled by me and the rest of the group explaining how effective the combination of our film and ancillary tasks were;

As you can see, we have been very successful in creating a brand identity for our film with the combination of the film and two ancillary tasks. Altogether, we wanted to ensure that everything was authentic and believable and everything reflected the other tasks, as it would do in the industry if created for real. Karen, our main character is always seen to be happy or eccentric in the ancillary tasks, showing her mental state but without giving away too much in the film by showing what becomes of her in the end. The poster shows something may be bothering the male star (Bryan) leading us into curiosity as to why, encouraging an audience.To conclude, I would agree that the combination of these tasks are very effective. The film looks professional for a short and both the ancillary tasks seem to be fit for any cinema wall or magazine respectfully. Finally f put in a real life situation would be key figures in the distribution and post production of the film which would follow its release to the public.

Evaluation: Question 3

Here is a small compilation of clips, showing my rough cut and final cut, one after the other respectively. They show the changes I made according to feedback from my peers. This enabled me to hear what my audience thought and change what they did not like or spotted that was wrong in order for me to make my film that little bit more perfect.

Next up are the two posters. On the left is the rough version while on the right is our final version. A lot of our poster was liked a lot by our peers but there were still some things that we could change. To start with, we got rid of the rating as it was not very authentic for a poster and is more suited to be on a billboard or the review. Because of this we then had to move the tag line down a touch to make it look better as it was drifting. Some changes were then brought up to be made in relation to the information at the bottom, we added a few more names and we had ourselves a great poster! Go ahead and take a look at both of them and see the tweaks

Here you can see the two different reviews constructed. On the left hand side we have the rough version, and on the right the rectified version after we received feedback from others we had shown them to. To begin with, the most apparent change required to be made was the fact there was no written content in the review apart from lorem ipsum, I personally wrote a review that I believed was an authentic style and would not seem out of place for a film review. This was highly approved of by my classmates. The next thing our audience pointed out was that, as our page is a double spread, if split down the middle the two pages would not look right and some things would be cut in half. This was the first thing that we addressed as it would completely ruin our review and was glad that this was noticed as we had not picked up on it! The next issue was to add some subheadings including the production teams name amongst other things. This again was simply to add realism to the review. Finally, our audience really liked our character profiles, but pointed a run around going circular around them would look perfect. Listening to their advice, it went straight back into QuarkXpress and this was done. feel free to look at both reviews above to view the changes made

Evaluation: Question 4

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

The progression of technology in the past ten years is phenomenal and is the only reason that projects such as my own have been possible at all. All the technology I have had access to has been utilised in order to produce the finished products I now have.

To begin with, the research and planning section of the course was completed solely on Apple Macintosh computers and my own Macbook (as was the rest of this course) and this was documented on blogger, a blogging community enabling people to read my journey through my A2 course in a structural, chronological order. Using the internet I managed to research into short films and romantic thrillers in particular in order to gather ideas and conventions required to construct a high quality version of my own. My findings in relation to examples of the genres studied, some were hosted on Youtube and some as pictures screen shots.

After I had an idea of what I wanted to create, I set to work on writing an idea which i hosted to the class using Microsoft Powerpoint for Mac on an interactive projector. Groups were then determined and my idea was deemed best, so I set to work creating a treatment on Microsoft Word for Mac, hosted on Divshare, online software enabling files to be hosted on the internet for all to see. Feedback was filmed and hosted on Youtube using HTML data as well as vocally recorded on WireTap and hosted on Divshare. Now the plan was devised and it was time to put it into action! A script was written on Final Draft enabling the actors to know what was occurring in each scene and what to say. As well as this, a storyboard (made in Storyboard) was constructed alongside it giving us our first visual product to see what the film would look like. Of course this is simply not enough, so in order to take it to the next level an animatic was created, consisting of all the frames imported into Final Cut and altered in length to represent how long the shot will be, including any effects and transitions we required. Once this was finished, any sound in the film (including a basic form of the dialogue) was realised in Soundtrack Pro on my Macbook and then exported back into Final Cut. After it was determined that all was in order, the Animatic was exported as a mov. file in order for it to be watched using Quick Time Player.

Apple Mac

Hosting/Recording

Planning

After the bulk of the planning was done, the final parts of the preparation were needed, this included a props list and research into which costumes we would use. I made what is known as a Prezi which is an interactive presentation which is more fun than your average Powerpoint with a lot of motion and animation. I highly enjoyed creating these. The next stage was the most important. Filming. Filming was done using a Sony HD camera, tripod and a crane which we were quite familiar with and had experience in using. Once the film was finally realised, we chose the useful clips in Final Cut for piecing it together and used Soundtrack Pro for all sound aspects, much in the same manner as the animatic. One particular scene however saw us needing to re-record some of Matt's lines for Brian which we used a microphone for.

Recording Equipment

Editing

Finally for our ancillary task, we had to create a poster using photoshop in order to advertise our film. This was done to cut people out of a white background and blend them in as well as insert text. Other than this, a review was made in QuarkXpress to make a life-like magazine article with text wrapping and precise adjustments for aligning pictures and borders.

Ancillary

Without equipment like this, all we would have is film to be developed. No means of creating digital copies or extensive soundtracks. This all allows film making easily accessible to the masses, leaving no end to the amount of new and wonderful creations to be discovered from the hard work of others.

Final Film Review (Ancillary Task)

Here, after recommended changes is our final film review. First things first we added real text into the review which I conducted and corrected the run around. I also put a run around with the text by the pictures of the actors as I personally felt this made it look much more slick and professional, which many agreed. Headings and a brief plot description were added to which added to the authenticity of the whole review. It was also stated that if it really was over two pages, key items would be cut in two so we moved a lot of content towards the left in order to correct this.

Final Film Poster (Ancillary Task)

After minor changes, here is our final, finished film poster and thus concludes our ancillary task. The initial poster received very high levels of praise and was very much liked. However, virtually everybody had quarrels with or disagreed with the stars or the review quote. We knew it would have been a risk! We initially made the stars smaller, then removed them, pleasing some critics. I eventually decided I didn't wish to have any review on the poster and many agreed, I do believe one group member decided to keep part of this review as he was happy with how it was.

Rough Film Review (Ancillary Task)

This is our first shot at a film review. We stuck to our plans to replicate one double spread review and implement features from another and it went pretty well. This was done in Photoshop as we were much more fluent with it, however I created the run around in Quark Xpress as opposed to using Photoshop to do everything as I felt a change in software would be good for my work. We did not however type up words from a review yet as we wished to have feedback first

Rough Film Poster (Ancillary Task)

After holding a photo shoot with our main actors, we imported them onto photoshop on the Mac and began work on the poster. We used this picture as it shows the two original perspectives of the characters; Brian's feelings of misfortune and Karen's glee to finding a potential lover. We decided to keep the generic text at the bottom of film posters, however with our names and even our own logo (see right of COMING SOON) We kept the headings in a simple font and added a catchy tag line we collectively came up with. Taking a risk, we decided to put on a review from a potential pre-screen and finished it off with fade towards the bottom.

Using Photoshop

We used Photoshop in order to create and authentic, realistic film poster. We began by first of all taking pictures of our actors, deciding which one to use then import it onto the Mac. After creating a new layer in Photoshop we cut out the edges of the actors and used the soft edges tool in order to make it not look as if they had been cut out of paper. We decided that leaving the background predominantly white was a good idea, showing the innocent mystery of the plot with black fading into the bottom (using a fade) to make all the information at the bottom more clear as well as adding to the idea this is not a love tale, bad things do happen in this film. Our titles were put on top and a heart was used as a full stop, complimenting the romance part of the genre and bringing more attention to the word love, as its meaning is questioned in the film as Karen clearly believes love is found by forcing men to save her. after inserting further text we sourced from another poster we researched we were done. The only added touch was to create our own logo, drawing in a cube and placing three J's on it. They were then warped in order for them to look as if they were part of each of the three face of the cube on display.

The video beneath shows how a person i found on Youtube made his very own poster and used this as an example'



We also used this software to make our review. It was done in a very similar way but more care was take with the alignment to minimise the work we would have to do in QuarkXpress.

Using QuarkXpress

I used QuarkXpress simply to put a run around on text and line text up perfectly within my film review. After removing the lorem ipsum from my review, I imported it directly into Quark. I then inserted the text with a run around where I needed it. I only did not use Quark entirley as Photoshop was simply an easier option for the whole group to interact with.

Small Introduction to Film Reviews

Film critics working for newspapers, magazines, broadcast media, and online publications, mainly review new releases. The plot summary and description of a film that makes up the majority of any film review can have an important impact on whether people decide to see a film. Poor reviews can doom a film to obscurity and financial loss.

We were toldto make a film review as part of our ancillary task and below are some examples we found which are both from leading film review magazine, Empire;

This review, clearly a single page review shows some content and pictures as would expected to be seen in most reviews. However what i really liked about this was t

he profiles at the side with the circular pictures. I found this a great touch and was set on having this in our very own review. I didn't however like the idea of the single page review, it was too common amongst my peers and we wanted to be different, not to mention we quickly realised all the bigger blockbusters are featured on a double page. With all this in mind, we decided to look for a double spread.

This was what we found and thought it would be a perfect example to base our own on. We decided to use this almost like a stencil but implement the profiles off the first one that we liked.

Small Introduction to Film Posters

A film poster is a poster used to advertise a film. Studios often print several posters that vary in size and content for various domestic and international markets. They normally contain an image with text. Today's posters often feature photographs of the main actors. Prior to the 1990s, illustrations instead of photos were far more common. The text on film posters usually contains the film title in large lettering and often the names of the main actors. It may also include a tag line, the name of the director, names of characters, the release date, etc.
Film posters are displayed inside and on the outside of movie theaters, and elsewhere on the street or in shops. The same images appear in the film exhibitor's pressbook and may also be used on websites, DVD (and historically VHS) packaging, flyers, advertisements in newspapers and magazines, etc.