How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Throughout the process of making our creative outcome, we used different media technologies and enhanced software's to better create and improve our final film. We begun by using a Calendar application on our PC to keep the dates for filming and editing, this calendar was essential as it contained a "Sync" function with our mobile devices, keeping us constantly updated with times and dates of creating our film.
When we had our meeting with Helen from Age & Sons, we used an Olympus VN711 Dictaphone.
The Dictaphone was used to record the audio from the meeting and then I used Adobe Premiere Pro to create a video file out of the audio (with a simple black image, for use with YouTube). This helped us by allowing us to backtrack and re-listen to the meeting to remind ourselves of the insurance issues that had arisen. I used YouTube as the host for my film, it's drafts and most other media on the blog. I used YouTube because it's a free service to share your media with the world, and it also features an embed function to create a media player within the blog. Below is a Prezi on the other technologies used in the production of my film:
Throughout the process of our creative outcome, we relied heavily on feedback from our target audience to help meet a certain standard.
Feedback first caused us to change our initial idea. The iCan Contextual film was to be expanded and re-written, however the film was not meeting the requirements of the course, so we revised our entire strategy.
Wewere orginally going to make a commical TV advert for a fictional product based on the iPhone. For this we carefully emulated that of an existing iPhone advert. Due to audience feedback (comments on the video on Facebook and Twitter) we determined that our target audience would prefer a romantic-Comedy and started to work on Happily Ever After. In conclusion, our product was shaped and constructed by what we learnt from our audience feedback.
Our target audience is teenagers of age 13-18, both male and female. To meet this target audience, we looked into comedy films also targeted at our age group; such as "Vicky and Sam". In June we created a rough draft, the feedback we had received told us that the film lacked interesting shots and the comedy was much too generic.
Teacher feedback:
Here I received feedback directly from my teacher, this gave me direct knowledge on what improvements needed to be made from someone with knowledge of the course requirements and knowledge on blockbuster forms and conventions. The feedback from my teacher consisted of strengths, weaknesses and changed to be made. However we also needed feedback from our target audience.
After feedback on shot issues in our film, we decided to ever so slightly revise the script and re-shoot the entire film. Our original Happily Ever After used little music and was using obvious slapstick humour, however our new, final version of Happily Ever After uses more subtle humour and the shots are much more stylised and the video quality is stronger.
The image to the left displays the difference between setting in our two films, the original film (top) and the re-shoot (bottom). As you can see the area is more wedding like and has more on set.
Once this new version had finished its first draft, we decided to take a new approach to receiving feedback; social networking. We posted the video on Facebook to hear back from our target audience:
This feedback told us that it was appealing to our target audience, however also people spotted some small issues in the film; such as the lack of people at the wedding. For this we attempted to create a shot of many people in the church, however the split screen made the shot look out of place and the cuts can be seen. For this reason, the split was not used.
Audience feedback has helped me tailor the film to the target audience's preferences, and it has become seemingly vital in the film making process. Throughout the process of creating our film, our target audience have spotted and informed us of mistakes and things that they may not find particularly appealing, this has helped create a stronger film that better appeals to our target audience.
How effective is the combination of our main product and ancillary texts? Ancillary texts such as posters and reviews are primarily created and distributed to advertise the main product, such as a film. With this in mind, I created a poster and Benjy made a review using the same style to advertise and express the films forms and conventions. The film, poster and review have been created to intertwine with each other. The poster was created to effectively give the reader an understanding of the film's genre and narrative. The review then specifies what did and did not work in terms of our intentions, it also gives the opinion of the film as if from an outside source. The combination of these three products helps form an overall summary of what to expect from the film, and whether our target audience may or may not enjoy it.
As you can see, I used the same font for both the film and the poster's logo, this adds consistency between the themes of both texts. However I used a different colour for both font, this is due to different colours making sense and working based on the images surrounding the logo. Using the same logo gives viewers of the poster a better understanding of what to expect with our film.
The poster addresses the audience as a form of reaching out to them. This is done by Callum looking toward the camera, so the audience can empathise with him. The review then addresses the film's mistakes alongside the humour that worked. Both of these together help the reader understand what to expect when going to see the film.
As you can see to the left, the poster is using an image taken specifically for the poster as opposed to using an image directly from the film. This is a convention used in most Blockbusters and Romantic Comedies. However as you can see from the image below, the image was designed to resemble a scene directly from the film. This was done to communicate the themes and conventions of the film through the poster. The picture from the film is then to be used in Benjy's written review of the film.
The following review was made by Benjy Cohen (www.clapperboardcreations.blogspot.co.uk).
The review was deigned to communicate the films aims and conventions to readers. The image used is the section of the film that the poster is based on, this was done to link the three Ancillary texts together. As you can see, the review focuses on the good and the bad points in the film while displaying the Genre, this gives readers a strong understanding of our film's forms and conventions while also being used a good advertising.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Our film; Happily Ever After, is categorised within the Romantic-Comedy genre. This means we had to look into the general conventions of a Romantic-Comedy film (often referred to as rom-com), however at the same time we wanted to give our own spin on things. So in terms of following general conventions of a rom-com, we begin by introducing the characters subtly, with multiple comedy-specific sequences. We also have a romantic montage which is seen in many rom-coms. Similarly, we challenge the conventions of rom-coms by using a comedic meeting of the two romantic characters as opposed to over-exposing the romantic side of the film. Through the montage, we develop upon the general conventions of a rom-com. A usual montage will be a simple compilation of romantic scenes, while ours includes different scenes in a transparent fade playing simultaneously, we did this as we feel it conforms to the forms and conventions of real media products, while also adding to them and developing upon them. Our film was very much inspired by "Vicky and Sam". This short film uses similar shooting styles while also varying comedy types; they use subtle humour while also using obvious and over-exaggerated humour. The music used in the film goes for stereotypical love sequence music, however we decided to steer clear of that as we wanted to be less manipulative with our films micro-features. "Nightwalking" is another film that inspired our film, while focusing on the comedy as opposed to romance, the film uses many tracking shots to keep the audience following the main protagonist.
This image shows the comparison between our film and "Vicky and Sam", both shots are from the romantic montage, however we use cross fades between shots and light hearted music. However "Vicky and Sam" uses simple cuts and overly dramatic music. By opposing these conventions, we are challenging the forms of large budget blockbuster films.
For the poster, it mimicked other Romantic Comedy Posters such as the poster for "Win a date with Tad Hamilton".
Both posters feature two characters enticed within the narrative, while the other character is seemingly out of the loop. The thing we decided to do differently is not have the couple be the enticed characters, instead it is the protagonists best friend and 'girlfriend'. This was done to give the audience a fair understanding of what to expect.
.jpg)
