Critical Evaluation

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

Continuity is a majorly important convention to uphold, maintaining a solid concept of plot and character continuity is considered vital in modern day film. Whilst filming our production, we took careful observations to try and maintain a strong consistent level of continuity and avoid possible suspension of disbelief. Even with careful planning our continuity was not perfect, but any errors made were indistinguishable unless you were looking specifically for continuity errors, for instance a continuity error is the colour of Ruby’s bag which changes, as the original brown bag broke during filming, and we could only replace it with a black one on the day of filming.

Based on research into the generic conventions of a thriller film, our film’s main genre would be classified as a thriller due to our utilizing of generic conventions. A thriller films aim is to get the audience’s attention and keep them wanting more, we used a convention called a plot twist in our film to try and create this desired effect. A second generic convention of a thriller film we used was minor key music, which is often used in order to add to the suspense, mystery and overall atmosphere of the film. I believe our film fulfils the nature of the genre, we made no aim to deliberately subvert any expectations and we did not.

We did not deliberately use any elements of pastiche or parody in our production, our idea was completely original and drafted from a treatment made at the beginning of the term and our research into the thriller genre. Aspects of our film however could be seen to use elements of pastiche, for example our invisibility effect used could be considered pastiche of other thriller films using invisibility effects such as science fiction thriller Hollow Man.

The audience pleasure we were trying to achieve was based on Richard Dyers theory of entertainment, the aspect of intensity and the extremes of emotion’s invoked by the plight of Ruby Fox as she tries to regain her visibility and identity as well as coping with bullying. Our audience feedback showed we gained this aspect of intensity as a number of people spoke about how they related to the character through bullying after themselves being bullied in the past.

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

The main achievement we sought to obtain was to make our production a good short film, with a solid plot and storyline that would make people want to watch it and would invoke emotion into our audience using the bullying concept in our film. We wanted to broadcast a message through our production that said running away from a problem, or in Ruby Fox’s case turning invisible, isn’t a solution. We referred back to this in both our radio trailer and poster design. On the poster we utilized the tag line “All she ever wanted was to be invisible”, which refers to Ruby’s plight. In our radio trailer we also used this tagline to dramatic effect, using the voice of Ruby’s actor to whisper it in a chilling fashion. A second tagline we used in the radio trailer is “Sometimes your biggest wish could become your worst nightmare”, another referral to Ruby’s plight, and displaying her false judgment, that even though she in-avertedly ran away from her problems, it has only caused them to now worsen. The 2 taglines both help broadcast the message our production is trying to put across to our audience regarding bullying.

Radio Trailer Link

http://youtu.be/mFlHBuG5hos

3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Our initial step in gathering information for audience feedback was to create a questionnaire consisting of 9 questions, asking for answers rangin

g on subjects including the narrative of our film, the portrayal of bullying and improvements that could be made. We then let our prospective audience watch a rough edit of our production so they could answer the questionnaire; w

e filmed these answers using a Sony HDV 1000 camera and tripod. This helped us garner a concept of what our audience wanted to see, shows that we used genre conventions correctly and matched our set genre as well as how good they thought our film is overall.

After gathering feedback using this method, our group then separately conducted audience feedback sessions using social networking site http://www.facebook.com/. I constructed a template message which I sent to people asking them to kindly take the time to watch our rough edit which a link to was included and answer 6 questions on the film. This feedback gathered helped us to decide what the key things to strengthen were in the final cut of our production. With the assistance of audience feedback overall I think we made our film realistically believable and well adapted within the conventions of our chosen genre.

4: How did you use new me

dia technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

In the initial stages of starting blog work, one of the new technologies to adapt to using was the iMac interface and operating system, as primarily I have been a user of Windows and Linux operating systems and interfaces at home, school and college. Some of the new things I had to adapt to were new keyboard shortcuts, as I am quite adept using them on windows systems however they aren’t always strictly the same on iMac. Another feature to adapt to is the lack of a start bar, which is a pivotal feature of windo

ws systems and a very unusual change to a regular user, as apart from desktop shortcuts it is where you would access all of your programs, documents and other forms of files from.

For research, I usedvarious search engines such as http://www.google.com/, www.imdb.com and http://www.wikipedia.com/ to research films, film genres, generic conventions, distributors and various other things. I also made use of the site http://www.blogger.com/ to keep an online textual and multimedia log of our work. I felt using a blogging site helped improve my blogging skills immensely as I had no previous experience of blogging, giving me a skill that could be very useful for the future.

To create our film, we used a Sony HDV 1000 camera and tri-pod. Using the HDV was a massive change from using the smaller handheld cameras, it gives a massive improvement in terms of visual quality moving from what felt like an amateur quality to a more professional quality, however manoeuvrability is impaired due to the HDV being around 4 times the size of a handheld camera. The range of shots we could confidently use was improved using the HDV, as the lower quality of the handheld cameras previously used was an issue when it came to smaller more concise details we wanted noticing, or longer shots as again smaller details that are in the distance are harder to make out. Another strength of the HDV was the sound capturing quality it provided, which was a great deal clearer than the handheld cameras.

To edit our production we made use of exclusive apple iMac application software, a non linear video editing piece called Final Cut Express, which is designed for the purpose of advanced editing of digital and high definition video. It is used by amateurs and professional videographers and media personnel alike.

Using this software helped increase my creative skills and my understanding of editing film, including the different tools used in the software for instance transitional effects and the many methods of editing. The professional standard stood out compared to other video editing software I have used, for instance windows movie maker, offering more complexity and finer more detailed editing, further showing an increase in my skills.

For the final poster design, we used graphic image manipulation software package Adobe Photoshop, a very commonly used and high standard piece of software, well known for its user friendly tools. We used this program to insert text, images such as distributors and age certification logo, resize and cut our image, use tools to change the contrast and various other things.

For my own poster design however, I chose to use Adobe Fireworks, which I had previously used to create animated graphics for web design and other various tasks such as creating radio buttons and image optimization. I chose to use this programme as I had used it before to create simple images or animations, but I wanted to see how I could edit and manipulate images using the programme. Using Fireworks, I took a screenshot from our film and used various effects such as grey scaling the image to make the atmosphere more dark and moody to suit our genre. This further developed my skills using a piece of software I was already familiar with but using tools and features I had never been required to utilize before.

For the radio trailer, we used a piece of equipment I had never heard of before called a zoom recorder to record our scripted lines in a sound proofed room. We then imported the recording onto an iMac and used a piece of application software called Garageband to edit the required pieces of sound from the recording. I had no previous experience using this software however after doing some research using a search engine I discovered how to do so. This improved my skills using this particular piece of software, and my researching skills using the internet as I had to filter through a lot of websites containing non-essential search results.

Overall, I feel that new media technologies have helped improve my creativity as a whole, helping me develop new skills in sound recording and image manipulation, and further develop skills in filming, editing film, using unfamiliar operating system interfaces, conducting research using the internet and blogging skills. We have created various pieces of work to professional standards and an end product of undoubted quality using our developed skills and creativity.

Critical Evaluation

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

When filming continuity is a major factor enabling a film to be believable to an audience

and so it would make sense to them. So with this in mind we kept a conscious watch on anything that could break the continuity in the film. However, throughout filming we found that minor problems occurred which broke the continuity, mainly things like props broke the continuity, for example, at the beginning of the film you will see the main character with a brown bag, however later on she has a black bag, this is due to the fact that half way through filming the original brown bag broke so we had to find another bag in time for filming. Throughout our film we have kept to the 180 degree rule, making sure that even when re filming or editing we did not change the 180 degree shot. Also we used different shots used in media productions; these are eye line match, graphic match.

Our film would be classed as a thriller mainly because we used several of the known conventions of the genre thriller; some of these are Minor Music, Plot twist and damsel in distress.Minor music is used to create suspense and a dramatic atmosphere for the audience; we use this in the 1st and last scene, both which are important scenes as it’s the finding and getting rid of the necklace scenes. Plot twists are used to keep the audience’s attention throughout the film, which creates more suspense for the audience.Damsels in distress are normally the main character needing rescuing, our film is no different, and our main character is getting bullied and has been put in a bad situation with the necklace.Also because of the couple of audience feedback sessions I undertook. The idea for our film is completely original, there are of course certain aspects that are used in different films such as the invisibility effect that is used most famously in Harry Potter, however the idea of it being a necklace and the events that happen in the film are original, the ideas coming from what we as a group knew about the genre and film conventions. Our main goal throughout making our film was that the audience would get entertainment throughout the film but also to identify slightly with the characters.

We did this by adding a well known issue today, bullying, this would make some of the audience identify with the character as many people have suffered bullying. However we also wanted to entertain the audience so added in interesting plot twists. Overall I feel that out film is entertaining for the audiences whilst keeping in track with the conventions of our genre.

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

The overall objective for our main product was to have created a realistic and effective short film that would entertain and attract audiences. Whilst doing this we wanted to relate the film to a popular issue that is big in the country at the minute, bullying. We wanted to create the message that even though you are getting bullied; going invisible or hiding isn't always the best solution to the problem and you should confront your problems not shy away from them.We also kept onto this theme throughout the different media texts we created. On our poster we used the tag line of “All she ever wanted was to be invisible”. We also used this line in our radio trailer, in a whisper. Another tag line we used in our radio trailer was “Sometimes your biggest wish could become your worst nightmare” this relates to the popular saying “Be careful what you wish for”. All of these sayings again help us portray across to the audience that wanting to be invisible or to disappear isn't going to really help or solve your problems, no matter what they are. However whilst wanting to get across this message we also wanted both the radio

trailer and poster to be realistic and believable. To do this we looked at what real radio trailers and real film posters included and adopted them into our own.

In our poster we included; Title, Age certificate, Tag line, extra

information, Image. All of which are included in all of existing film posters.

In our radio trailer we included; Information quotes from the film, music. All of which are included in all existing radio trailers.

Our Radio Trailer:

Existing Radio Trailer:

3) What have you learned from your audience feedback?

When we 1st started to think of ideas for our film we handed out a questionnaire to people in our target audience, we then filmed their answers on a Sony HDV camera. By doing this we got a general idea of what our target audience expected in to see in our genre of film and also within the restrictions of our chosen target audience guidance. This further helped on the bits we wanted audience to relate more to like the main character.

After we had complete our rough edit we did an audience feedback session, recording them again on a Sony HDV camera, we then separately did different audience feed backs, giving us more outcome than if we did just one audience feedback. I used the website www.facebook.com , on this I asked a select few people what they thought of the rough edit and then what they thought could be improved before the final cut. Overall I felt that by getting the thoughts of our target audience helped greatly as it helped us to know if we had made an effective short film that was believable and stuck to the main conventions of our genre, also it helped us to improve any scenes that needed changing.

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

At the beginning of the project research was a major part of it, researching different aspects of genres of films and different films. For this I used websites such as www.google.com and www.youtube.com

I also used the website www.blogger.com to keep track of the progression of the film making journey. By doing these my research and blogging skills have improved, making me more advanced in these areas, and making it easier in later years if I needed to use either of these again.

To make our film I used a Sony HDV camera and Tri-pod to film the scenes in the film. By using these I have improved my camera skills and have a better knowledge on how to

effect film shots to portray messages, also this has helped me greatly to understand how to use the camera efficiently and effectively for future use. The Sony HDV camera is extremely effective when filming on it and easy to use in any location. The only problem the occurred during filming was on one scene at the lake, the white balance was off, so we had to edit it later.

When editing our film, I used Final cut express, on a Mac computer. This programme is very effective and has helped improve my creativity in order to edit our film into a successful final piece. I have improved my editing skills and now know that I can use this programme confidently in the future if ever needed to. After using this programme I understand what different effects do what and how it can make your film more effective

and how certain effects won’t work. In our film the most effective effects include the cross dissolve, speeding a shot up and garage matt. There were hardly any problems that occurred whilst editing our film the only major problem was the Mac computers crashing and work not being saved.

For the final poster we used programme Photoshop to design and create our films poster. I used the tools available to edit the photo for our poster and to insert text and other features of posters. However for my individual poster, I used paint and www.picnik.com to create an effective poster, which would later contribute to our final poster.To create our radio trailer for our film Garage Band was used. We used a zoom recorder to record the sound for our radio trailer and then added it to the software to create an effective radio trailer. I now feel that I am more confident in using these different software, enabling me to confidently use them in the future and not have to worry about not being able to use them.

Overall I feel that all of the new media technologies I have used have helped to improve my media skills and on the whole have developed my creativity. I feel that any problems I encounter throughout the process I overcame, and made me more confident in using these technologies, and enabled me to create an effective final piece.

Critical Evaluation - Question Four

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

CONSTRUCTION
Digital technology was particularly imperative to use during the construction stage, as the use of digital equipment was particularly high. We filmed “Shadow” using Sony HDV 1000 cameras with a Sony HDV 1000 tripod, to ensure a higher quality visual element, and to make certain that the shots were filmed smoothly, to make the film as realistic as possible; even the hand held shots were filmed with a certain precision so that the camera didn’t shake too much. We did this by filming the handheld scene slowly, so that the camera operator could walk as slowly as possible, in order to track the character gently. The speed was then increased through the editing process to the normal pace, to make the scene the accurate speed.

















The editing process was created on an Apple Mac computer, and completed through the software Final Cut Express; here we were able to use fades, cuts and dissolves to create the film with excellent continuity. We transferred the scenes from the camera to the Apple Mac using a zoom recorder. This was a simple software to use, and was efficient in quickly converting the scenes onto the program Final Cut Express.







INVISIBILITY
As our invisibility effect was quite difficult to portray, our research from the internet came in very useful. We first of all used the garbage matt effect to successfully make the protagonist’s reflection disappear, with the character still visible in the frame, to give the effect of invisibility. In order to widen our creativity with the invisibility effect, we also decided to use a ripple dissolve effect on the protagonist, during the canteen scene, in order for the audience to view a range of ways in which the character is portrayed as invisible, ensuring the film isn’t repetitive with the special effects which we use.

















Not only was the Sony HDV 1000 camera used to film our production, but it was also used during the audience feedback, to record the target audience’s responses. This came in useful, as it was an efficient way to capture, and combine the responses together, again cutting them together through the use of Final Cut Express.

















This software provided us with the tools and ability to create a professional looking short film. The software was quite difficult to understand whilst trying to resurrect the invisibility effect, but any problems were overcome by seeking technical support on search engines such as Google and by watching YouTube videos.

RADIO TRAILER: In order to construct our radio trailer, we used a zoom recorder, to record our voices in a sounds proof room, in order for our voices to sound effective, particularly the whispers, and then uploaded the recordings onto the Mac computer, through the software garage band. At first this was difficult to use, as I have no previous experience using the program, but this problem was immediately overcome, through the use of research on the internet, again using the search engine Google.

POSTER: We created this though the software Photoshop, which is an extremely effective program to use, as it allowed us to be precise in the cuts and re-sizing of the photo. The contrast was easily increased, and we added text in various different fonts, with the certification which we had previously given, to ensure that the poster looked professional and realistic, and also make certain that it denoted the genre through the use of colour, image, and text.
This is the poster which I created using the programme photobucket:

Please click on slideshow to view larger screen

The convergence of a 3.2MP camera, with the Blackberry Curve mobile phone, to create this new media technology meant that I could take quality photographs and upload them straight to the internet using my mobile phone. This played an important part during the process of creating a poster, as it allowed me to quickly and efficiently upload the photos onto the internet, without any problems.
This process has helped me to learn about the fast paced nature of the media industry from recording to editing and to the final product as this whole process only took about an hour and a half.

PlANNING
In order for us to even begin to think about creating a film, it was imperative that we first created various different treatments, to expand our ideas, and create an idea that would be successful to use in a 5 minute film. Research from the internet, on the search engine Google came in specifically useful during the planning process, and it allowed me to research previous treatments, which had worked efficiently.

GOOGLE













• Conventions of a thriller film
http://www.slideshare.net/Cissnei/conventions-of-thriller-films-and-tables-of-analysis
• Certification
http://www.bbfc.co.uk/
• Distribution
http://www.film4.com/features/article/online-movie-distribution
• The invisibility Effect
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=130424&page=1
• Costume
http://www.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENUK367&q=extravagant%20costume%20designs&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi
• Music
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENUK367&tbm=vid&q=thriller+genre+film+music&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=
• Narrative Theories
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narratology
• Existing Short Film
http://www.bbc.co.uk/filmnetwork/
• Existing Film Poser
http://www.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENUK367&q=inception%20film%20posters&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi
• Existing Radio Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=teaser+trailers&aq=f


Not only was the search engine Google useful, but the website Photobucket, was useful to create the costume videos which featured the actors in their costumes, but was also used to create the initial poster design, and used to create slideshows of thriller genre research. Photo bucket allowed me to easily edit the contrast, and brightness of the images, in order for them to stand out against the page.
At the feedback stage we also tried to get people’s opinions from social networking websites. I uploaded the first cut of our product to YouTube and then posted a link on the social networking website Facebook where my friends were able to leave comments. As well as this I also posted a link to the video on another social networking site, Windows Messenger, where people left me replies with their comments on the video.
We collaborated and shared our ideas at the planning stage using online blogs. I used the popular blogging service Blogger, as it allowed me to share pictures, video and other media quickly in a neatly presented manor. This meant that whenever I was inspired be something, no matter where I was, I was able to share this inspiration with the rest of my team.
Overall new media technologies helped us to create a professional piece at a fraction of the cost and time that it would have otherwise taken. Everything from using the photo editing software Photoshop when designing our poster, to distributing media on Facebook helped us to be more efficient.

Critical Evalutation - Question Three

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Please click to view large image.

LINKS (please click on each to view):
Video Feedback
Audience Feedback

Critical Evaluation - Question Two

This is an audio video, please ensure volume is not muted.

COMPARISONS
Poster: (please click to view larger image)

Radio Trailer: (please click to open links)
Existing Radio Trailer - 500 Days Days of Summer
Our Radio Trailer - Shadow

Critical Evaluation - Question One

Shadow presentation

Please click to view slides.

Critical Evaluation - Question 4

(The text below is all of the information included in the video)

4- How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
During the first few weeks of our project I used the internet to research and plan our film. I visited popular sites including www.google.com and www.youtube.com to investigate the starting points of our project. I also used the website www.blogger.com to make a blog that would show the progression of our film. This has helped to improve my research skills and also my blogging skills. It also allowed me to design and create my own online blog.

Whilst blogging about our film I used my digital camera to take photographs for my work, I took all the photos for our photo storyboard, several for the props and a few for locations. By doing this I have improved my photography skills and also my planning skills as the photographs helped to plan out the shots for our film.

In order to actually create our project I used a Sony HDV camera and tri-pod to film the require scenes. I feel that I have improved my filming skills greatly and now have a better knowledge of the different shots that help make an effective piece, including eye-line match, graphic match and other creative shots. I believe that using the Sony HDV camera has helped improve my skills as it a very easy and simple piece of technology to use, that can be used in many different locations and still provide a professional result. The Sony HDV camera was incredibly easy to use and I didn’t really encounter any serious problems, the only one I can recall is that whilst filming the final scene I had great difficulty in white balancing the camera, after several attempts the shot still seemed to bright and therefore I had to film it and re-edit it on the computer. This took up quite a lot of filming and editing time.
I used the programme Final Cut Express on a Mac computer to edit our project. This programme is very effective and has helped enhance my creativity in order to edit our film into a successful final piece. I have definitely improved my editing skills and now have increased confidence with editing; I understand the different effects and edits that can be used on a film as I have used several different ones on our film. These include cross dissolve, speeding up a shot* and garbage matt. I found the garbage matt to be an incredibly valuable effect and used in twice in our project, I feel that without it our film would not have been as successful. I did not have many problems whilst editing our piece, the most common was that the Mac computer kept crashing and I was at a high risk of losing any unsaved editing. Also when re-arranging and adding in new footage I had to keep rendering our project which took up quite a lot of editing time.

I used the editing programme Photoshop 7.0 to design and construct our films poster. I used the tools available to edit the photo for our poster and to insert text and other features of posters. This has helped to improve my design and editing skills as I have now gained experience is film poster design.
In order to create a radio trailer for our film I used Garage Band to put our sound, which was recorded from a zoom recorder, together and to adjust it in order to make a realistic trailer. I used the programme to edit the volume and to arrange the sounds in the correct order. I feel that now my sound recording and editing skills have been enhanced and improved as I have never made a radio trailer before.
Overall I feel that all of the new media technologies I have used have helped to improve my media skills and on the whole have developed my creativity. I believe that I successfully overcame any problems I encountered with the equipment used and that I have created a successful final piece.