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

New media' is a term used in media studies to describe the emerging on demand media that became available towards the later part of the 20th century. Most technologies that are described as 'new media' are digital and can often have features such as manipulation ( adobe photoshop) , network connection (the Internet) and the ability to be interactive (online gaming).

1: Blogger. This is what I am using throughout the whole course. It is where I upload my coursework and is a very modern approach to coursework and without it our coursework wouldn't look the same and probably be in some paper folder and not have the same effect.

2. YouTube. YouTube was a great resource as we used it to conduct research into short films, allowing us to watch a wide range of short films. It is also where we upload our final product. Without this website research into short films would've been very difficult and our final product would probably be put on a DVD if YouTube wasn't available. As I also used YouTube as a resource for example short films I would have great difficulty in finding short films if it wasn't there. If YouTube wasn't here I would have had to go to a short film festival or perhaps to a cinema as short films are sometimes shown before the actual film. This would be extremely long winded and take a long time to gather my resources, and also I wouldn't be able to go back to the video if its shown at a festival as the festival isn't always there.

3. Memory Stick. This was used to transfer work done at home to the school computers and vice-versa. It allowed us to have more than one place with the documents, so if we lost it on the school network there is always a back up. Without this a lot of work would remain in one place and not get completed as early as possible. I would also have to print a lot of work out and move it from one place to another if I wanted to work on it somewhere else.

4. Mobile phone. This was used for communication between myself, the other group members, Mrs Shipp and our actors. Without mobile communication, the process of organising filming between the group members and the actors would've been considerably harder and a much longer process. If we didn't have a mobile phone we could have used a landline telephone. The problem with this is that people only pick up the landline if they are in the house, however if they aren't at home then I have no way of communicating with them.

5. Digital SLR Camera. This was used to take pictures during filming and of our postcards. This allowed a high quality picture to be taken, not comprimising the quality of the final product. If we didn't have this camera we could use a lower quality film camera. This would comprimise the quality of the pictures and they are also heavy and expensive.

6. Computer. This was a key peice of equipment in our coursework as it had so many programs that we used to research, plan and construct our film. Some of the programmes we used include windows office, adobe photoshop, the internet and an film editing programme. We used all these at different points of our coursework with Microsoft word being the ideal programme for a lot of pre-production documents, adobe photoshop was used in the creation of my postcard, the internet was used to access blogger, youtube and many more resources and the editing programme to put the film together. If the technology was unavaliable we would've had to splice the film together, written many documents out by hand and not be able to manipulate images to get what we wanted out of them.

7. Sony PD150 Video Camera. This was used to film our entire short film. This had a high quality resolution, giving us the best quality film. If I didn't have this during filming we would have used a film camera, which is ridiculously expensive, big and hard to use.

8. Email/ Hotmail. This is very similar to the memory stick as it was basically another way for me to transfer documents from one place to another. It offers a viral place to store documents, so if the computers crash, or I lose my memory stick I can access my emails and take the document from there. Also I can use it to contact other members of my group or actors via email. If email was unavaliable I would have to make many copies of may documents for everyone else, which would take a ridiculous amount of time and comprimise the eventual quality of the film.

evaluation question 3- What have you learned from audience feedback

Film feedback:

This was our first piece of feedback and it was from our other media teacher Ms Rolfe. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDPeK6ZgtX4

As someone who enjoys watching films and regularly giving us her own personal feedback on films that she has seen at the cinema, with her husband also being in the film industry we were expecting a thorough piece of feedback. The first thing she commented on was the originality of our title. She mentioned that a previous feature length film is called Closer and that there is also a magazine called Closer. However she goes on to say that she does realise the choice in name and how it links in to our film.

She applauded our use of flashbacks in the opening scene saying how it symbolises his anxiety. She did however say that the lighting was not consistent, especially when it varied a great deal between the light from outside and what we got inside. We had tried in the editing process to reduce this as much as possible, however we couldn't do any great change to the lighting. We also explained that we used fades, which Ms Rolfe wasn't overly keen on. However we explained that they were to suggest changes in the days and that this movie isn't a single day, but instead a collection of events over several days. Also she noticed something that we didn't. Throughout the film we had left a calender up in the kitchen and on the calender there was a dog dressed up as Einstein. This distracted Ms Rolfes attention and potentially could've ruined the whole tone of the film. As she states in the video she believed that using the magnetic letters for a message was a good idea, however she did miss the other message in the leaflets and instead focused on other parts of the shot rather than the message intended. She was not the only one as other people who watched our film didn't immediately notice the message. She concluded her feedback by saying that our final scenes involving the flashback was our best part and that it pulled the film together and that the character of Kate was very good and was used well as she only appeared twice briefly.

Following Mrs Rolfes comments I would have definitely applied her comments to the final production of my film due to her comments being widely agreed on and in hind sight would make our production much better.

After getting feedback from Ms Rolfe I decided to get feedback from someone who attends the cinema very regularly. I asked my 22 media productions student cousin Lauren. She is an avid reader of Empire Magazine and is always interested in the newest films and the British film industry. After showing her the film she spoke highly of her film, with a couple of constructive criticisms. She said that the music used was 'striking', matched the tone of the film and worked with creating the mood from the start. She commented on how the variety of shot sizes, especially in the opening scene were good and helped go along with the irraticness of Lucas' behaviour. Lauren however didn't see the leaflets message first time and only after I showed her the second time did she realise. Also she was slightly confused by the message that Lucas receives. She personally thought that it was too distracting from the plot and could possibly mislead the audience. She praised the use of the single location, saying she personally hasn't seen many films were there was use of just one single location and that she believed it worked well in symbolising Lucas' isolation.

From both of these responses I have learned that for my title I will have to make sure its original. Also will have to try much harder to get the continuity with the lighting spot on and make sure that there aren't any props such as the dog calender in the film as it acts as a distraction.

Feedback for Film review:

Again for my film review I asked my cousin Lauren for her feedback as she is a regular reader of Empire Magazine, which is what I based my article around. She said that the general layout was good and resembled many an article she had read before. She praised my use of the star rating and the quirky comments that go normally on the main image. When it came to reading the actual review she said that it was good, however because Empire doesn't review short films she said that they most probably would have given the film a side of an article instead of a whole page. She also said that I needed to criticise more as films with 3 star ratings don't have one criticism they would have a couple. As a conclusion though she said that I had the general idea and that I have nearly met all the conventions of an film review.

Postcard feedback:

Before I created my final postcard I came up with two ideas that I believed to have been creative and persuading enough to draw my audiences in. I asked a fellow media student Clare which design she preferred and why after I read her the synopsis. She said that she preferred the first as it was very simplistic and believed that the second image gave a lot more away than what it should do. I also asked a avid cinema go-er Jake as to what he thought. He believed that both of the designs were good, however he believed that the first image left more to the imagination and wasn't a stereotypical design for an advertising tool.

As the first image proved to be more popular I decided to base my final design on that. I decided to follow the conventions of many other postcards that I have seen and stuck to the minimalist approach and just have the vodka bottle and the magnetic letters and get rid of the picture. I then needed to get feedback on my final design. I asked my friend Dom. When I asked him if the postcard would make him go and watch that film he said that because of the minimal imagery it produced a lot of questions and made him curious about the film. He also said that my tag line 'Hes not alone' produced lots of different genres and ideas in his mind about what the film was about.

I believe that the feedback I recieved for the postcard was constructive and allowed me to create a interesting and creative advetisement.

evaluation question 2- How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

For my postcard I used the image of the magnets on the left as an influence for the front of my design. I believed that the use the magnetic letters was a symbol of the film as they play a vital role within it. Another influence was the vodka bottle as it was one of the reasons for lucas' downfall and that by using it on my postcard the audience might begin to question what the film is about by the objects they are presented with on the postcard.
Also I believed that the use of magnetic letters was original and that by using such a simple thing to give the title to my film on the postcard added suspense and mystery. For the back of the postcard I used a picture of a vodka bottle on its side. Again I believe that it added mystery to the film and presented a lot of questions to the audience. I kept to the conventions of a postcard as my layout is representive of nearly all the back of postcards that I have seen.

For my film review Iused this picture as the inspiration for my film review picture. I believed that it summarised Lucas' plight and also begins to let the audience know that he is in trouble. I didnt like the shot from our film, however luckily we had taken a still fo him drinking as a potential picture for my postcard, however I didn't go along with that idea with the postcard.

Using this picture helps the audience to establish who the main character is. Also all he is doing is drinking so it doesn't give away too much information about the film, however there is still a dark and mysterious look about him.

With the film review itself I believe it works well with the conventions of Empire Magazine. The layout is typical of Empire Magazine as there is a dominating picture, the main review of the film and also at the bottom of the article a star rating for the film.

When I wrote the article I wanted to stick to Empire's style of writing as that is what I believe the audience remember most. I kept focus on the plotline and talked about the actors and what they bring to the film and I always kept it in mind that it was a short film, not a feature length film. I also kept the tone of writing similar to Empire as their tone is normally quite funny and never to serious or mundane.

evaluation question 1

Screen grab 1: This is our production company. This follows conventions as it comes before the main film and tells an audience the film is about to start.

Screen grab 2: This is the title of our film. It follows conventions as it has come on before the actual film has started. Also many short films use a black background and very few put their title over action.

Screen grab 3: This is the first introduction to the title character. It however can challenge conventions as nothing is revealed, his behaviour starting to become erratic. This leaves the audience questioning why he is behaving like this.

Screen grab 4: This is a development in Lucas' character. It follows conventions as it allows us more into the character, however it still leaves questions as to what has happened and why he is refusing help from his friend.

Screen grab 5: This is a piece of comedic relief to this otherwise darkened mood. It breaks conventions because even though his mood is depressing there is still some comic relief in terms of the calender with the dog that looks like Einstein. It was noted during feedback that the calender added comical effect, however as a group upon reflection we believe that Lucas wouldn't have time to alter the possessions in his house as he is isn't in that state of mind and is trying to deal with his friends trying to help him.

Screen grab 6: This is the first message that Lucas receives from Kate. It breaks from conventions as there is no specific focus on the message and it is in fact over very quickly.

Screen grab 7: This is a letter that Lucas receives. It develops narrative as it acts as a distraction from the storyline and gets the audience thinking that something more is going on and that much more is going to happen.

Screen grab 8: This is a shot of when Lucas considers burning a photo of him and Kate. It shows a development of the character as he is falling deeper into his depression and is at a state that he wants to forget what he has done. In one of my feed backs the development of Lucas' character was praised as it shows that he is truly sorry for what he has done and is panicking and doesn't know what to do.


Screen grab 9: This is a defining moment in the film as Lucas decides that he can't deal with his life anymore and decides to commit suicide. It conforms to media conventions as it brings the film to the climax. It lets the audience know about the characters development and lets you into the characters thoughts.

Screen grab 10: This is the resolution of the film. As everything comes to a conclusion it develops real media texts as the conclusion is vital as it helps the audience piece together and understand what the film is about.

Screen grab 11: This is a screen grab of the closing titles. This develops real media conventions as short films and feature length films both use closing titles as its a way of telling the audience the film has concluded.

Film review:
I believe that I have used conventions well when putting together my film review and that it reflects real life media products.

To make sure that I stuck to the conventions of real life products I conducted a lot of research into what different magazines do when writing articles and how they visually present the articles. I compared both Sight and Sound Magazine and Empire Magazine. After completing my research I decided to base my magazine around Empire Magazine and their styling.

I stuck to conventions by sticking to a layout that is similar to what Empire use. My writing style reflects their writing style as the tone and style is relaxed. Much of the visual styling I used are reflective of Empire magazine, such as the quote in blue, the quirky comment on the man picture and the title character having a dominant picture. I also included a star rating which is a very common part of Empire's film review. Overall believe that I followed the conventions of Empire Magazine well and reflected that in my own article.

Postcard:

My postcard design was influenced by some other postcard designs that I had seen before. I used two key props as the illustrative point of my postcard. The incorporation of a tag line follows conventions as it works as a method of making people wonder what the film is about as very little is revealed.

The back of my postcard follows the conventions of promotional postcards as it has the information needed about the film such as the director, actor, synopsis and film company and also the layout follows the conventions with there being space to write the address and the message as well.

final product

Film Review:

This is my final film review page. I used Adobe Photoshop to help me manipulate the image and the text together so that it was reminiscient of the Empire Magazine article. I included many of Empire Magazines conventions such as the quirky comment on the main picture and a star rating.

Postcard:

This is my final postcard. I used Adobe Photoshop to edit the lighting and pull more focus towards the magnetic letters and also to write my tagline at the bottom.

For the back of the postcard I also used Adobe Photoshop as it allowed me to change the opacity of the background image and also create the text that I was required to give.

Final Film:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkHBtwDgo4E

post-production report

As we have previous experience of editing our film, it did not take us that long to again get familiar with what we needed to do and how to do it. However this didn't get off to the best of starts as when we first went to edit our first days worth of footage we realised a large amount was unusable. This prompted us to have another days worth of filming, which was reviewed in the production report.

When we had finished the second days worth of filming we went back to the edit suite and used Adobe Premier Pro to edit, capture and log our footage. This all went well as the entire group did have previous knowledge of what we needed to do and how we could do it.

However before we could capture anything we had a problem with transferring the footage from the tape onto the computer. The device we had put the tape in had some minor difficulties as it would not send the audio along with the clips. However once some technical assistance had been used we were able to capture our visual and audio together. Once we had got all the footage we began organising our footage in order. This was fairly easy for myself and my group as we all had previous experience of adobe premier pro. After arranging the footage we began cutting it down to size and putting it together. This was easy and we had the clips cut down and organised very quickly. However during this process we realised that scene 8, in which Lucas is on the phone talking to someone, for some reason had no sound. At the time of filming we didn't realise no sound was recording and foolishly only had one take of the scene. Upon realising this we had to remove that scene from the final cut.

When it came to editing my group was fairly experienced and we as a group knew what looked good. We used cross dissolve for the transition between scenes and we also used fade to blacks when we wanted to establish a new day in our film. We also added a glass smashing sound into scene 2 when Lucas chucks the glass at his friend in rage. We used light editing as well as we needed to change the intensity of some lighting- for example in scene 2 when Graham comes to talk to Lucas the natural light was more intense than we had originally noticed and because of its intensity it made Graham very hard to see. We lowered the intensity of the light, making Graham easier to see.

There was also a slight problem with one or two continuity errors. These however were at the end of the film as for the enitre day we had been paying great care in looking out for continuity. For example in the second to last scene we see Lucas cutting himself and blood being shed. However in the next scene we cannot see any blood on his wrist . We didn't notice this at the time and although it isn't the most notable thing it still showed that we needed to pay more attention to continuity.

When it came to choosing music we had to use copyright free music and with the internet this was easy to find. However I found some difficulty in choosing music which I believed was adaquete and reflected the mood of the film. I decided to use a reliable copyright free music source which I had used before. Freeplay Music is a copyright free music website which has many different genres and types of music which is free to download. I decided the best music that would reflect the film would be an slow orchestral or piano peice. Luckily I found the music and gave my colleagues the chance to listen to them and they agreed that the music was appropriate for our film. We added the music to the film and it gave the film more atmosphere.

The editing process, even though it had some difficulties and required some comprimise I believed it was positive because as a group we all had previous experience and nothing that troubled us became too much of a problem and we organised ourselves very well and got the editing done very quickly.

Production report

Our group had two filming days. The first day was largely unsuccessful as most of the footage we captured had something wrong with it, such as camera flashing, leaving equipment in the background and some shots being the wrong size. This meant that we had to re-capture a lot of our shots again which happened on the second filming day.
(This is a montage of a mixture of our two days of filming)




When it came to the second day of filming we took note of what we had done wrong and made sure that we avoided the same mistakes again. When we finally got going we decided to film according to location. This involved us filming all the scenes in the living room one after the other, all the scenes in the kitchen together and all the scenes in the dining room together. We came to the conclusion that when I shouted 'cut' at the end of a scene Kenny would freeze, allowing pictures to be taken. This would also work as in the first scene with the jumpcuts we needed Kenny to stay exactly frozen, hopefully not comprimising continuity and as a result it didnt comprimise continuity.

We did face some problems with the location itself, which we could do nothing to counteract at the time. The lighting, especially at the front of the house was extremley bright and unfortunatley there are no curtains to pull across to get rid of the light. This was however editied slightly during post production. Also behind the house there is a train track and also Apsley train station is very close. This proved to be an interference as we couldnt have the train track coming in and out of our scenes as it would ruin continuity. To keep continuity we had to stop everytime a train went past. Even though this proved to be an annoyance it allowed us to keep continuity.