1. 1. A2 Media Studies Coursework Evaluation Luke Mayes
2. 2. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? My research into the codes and conventions of short films have given me insight to what defines a short film(June 2nd What is a short film). Short films are films compacted into a short time frame, averaging from anywhere between 5 and 30 minutes, with a limited amount of time this also means that there can only be a limited cast of characters. The short time frame reduces any real chance of character development, however that does allow people to be able to define how they see and relate to the characters more easily. Whilst analysing pre-existing short films I learned that small casts can be very effective for comedic values, an example of this was the short film The Heist (See post September 19th Short Film Analysis: The Heist) which featured only two characters. Together these characters formed a comedic duo in which they used their fully developed personality to create various situations and events which create humour. The short film The Breaks (September 19th Short Film Analysis The Breaks) made use of a wide variety of character stereotypes in order to create humorous situations. Short films are not long so they take advantage of over reactions in order to make each event have greater impacts on the audience. In this way I am making use of the conventions of the short films as my film is made of a series of events, e.g. the recruiting of each of the characters and the introduction of Malcolm. Again I followed the conventions of making the impacts large by making use of stereotypes for the characters of Andrew and Mark. Andrew made use of a overly-friendly homosexual stereotype, whilst Mark made use of the shut-in anti-social hacker stereotypes. By using these I was able to create humour when their eccentric personalities contrasts with Malcolm's more average/plain personality.
3. 3. Continued... Short Films commonly share an idea of simple plots and low amounts of twists and turns. I believe that in a way I have somewhat broken this as I have not concluded the narrative or the story and left how the heist itself could have gone. This leaves the film at a cliffhanger, much like feature-length films often do. From what I have learned from researching short films is that they have greater room for abstract ideals and application of references. An example of this is my mentioning of 'The Gecko Team', which is a parody of the infamous hacker team 'The Lizard Squad' who became their own internet icon and meme. Feature length films usually don't or can't make the more obscure references due to having to appeal to a mass audience, however with short films they can be aimed towards a much more niche audience and won't be as restricted. In terms of distribution of my short film I followed the typical methods the short films use(november 7th Short Film Distribution), such as using various websites such as youtube where it can be viewed from anywhere in the world. Another method I would consider using would be a DVD release as this sometimes works out well for short films however sales vary greatly. In a way I may have developed my own genre within the heist genres as I although the film made use of the common conventions of heist film, but only developed it as far as the set up so it could be considered a heist without the event of the heist itself. This also changes what the narrative itself is as before it would considered a 'Start' 'Middle' 'End' styled narrative, however in this it never makes it past what would be considered the 'start' point.
4. 4. Ancillary Texts Film Review Film Poster
5. 5. How effective is the combination of your main and ancillary texts? I believe that throughout all three of my texts I have created a synergistic effect linking them. I created this by making use of consistent fonts and imaging. This is shown with the use of the font 'BlackListed' which I used for the main logo of the film, I have used this font for my poster (shown to the left) my title sequence and on the movie review. This will create a feel of familiarity towards the film as when people see one of the texts, they'll recognise the others. The main purpose of a poster is to advertise and promote a films release, I believe that although the synergy links the products together however I also think that the poster needed some form of slogan as the poster as it is may not be able to promote the poster as efficiently as I would like. For my poster I took inspiration from the older Soul Bass posters, such as his poster for 'Psycho' which offers little on image detail yet was one of the most well known posters made, I had hoped to provide a similar effect. For the poster I wanted each character to be represented clearly by their silhouette, which I believe I accomplished.I decided on giving each silhouette more humanistic characteristics so that the audience could better relate to them regardless of form. I made sure I gave Andrew's silhouette the tie as that was likely his most distinguishing feature. I decided to make use of the typical positioning by having the main character (Malcolm) in the front, with the supporting characters behind him. When making this poster I had to think about whether or not to include some visual representation of Mr.X in the background of the poster. Since X is never actually shown in the film I did not have a character design for him so in the end I decided on not including in, I did however design Malcolm to be on the phone for his silhouette indicating some form of external force. Poster
6. 6. How effective is the combination of your main and ancillary texts? Magazine Review The magazine review is meant to be a brief overview of what the film is about and talk about what people have thought about the film. To this extent my review has covered this however this may not be as effective the combination of the poster and the film. Although I had intended this film to be aimed at a teenage audience, which generally make use of more images then text, I feel that I didn't get the ratio correct and should have included more text talking about the film itself. I do believe that the use of a star rating works well as it is a simple indication which anyone could understand. I decided on using an action shot of Malcolm and Mark, I choose this as it was one of Malcolm's most animated scenes, this presented a more tense moment in an attempt to make it stand out further as an action film, I did this again with the smaller image in an attempt to again make the genre more clear. I think that the layout the of my film review however captures the professional yet not too formal appearance which displays the information nicely and clearly. I made use of placing the film logo over the main image, a commonly used technique in magazines, whilst again adding to how it appears professional but it also adds to the synergy of the three texts. My use of quotes from other reviews would provide a source of tertiary evidence for the reader. If a reader sees that other people have given the film positive feedback then they will be more likely to want to watch it. I feel a weakness of this text is that my fonts sizes may vary too greatly, the film details are all in bold and larger size than the rest, the quotes are larger than the description and the description is smaller than the rest, this inconsistency may lower its aesthetic appeal.
7. 7. Audience Review What us is your gender? 23 7 From this I have found that the majority of my viewers have been male, which I found useful as thats more who the film was aimed at, however having a few female opinions will benefit the further feedback. 6 4 12 8 What us is your age range? From this I have found that most of my viewers have fallen under the 16 18 age range, which covers my target audience and will again help me see what my desired target audience thinks about my film. 23 Male Female 15 and Under 22+ 19 - 21 16 - 18What age rating do you think Screwed should be? 12 15 18 Most of my audience suggested that the film should be rated 15,which I would largely agree with as I felt that although there was some strong language used within the film however aside from that there wasn't anything that really pushed the film into the 18 margins.
8. 8. Audience Review What did you think of Screwed? From these results I can see that most people enjoyed the film, however only a few people voted it to be 5/5, I believe that my past prediction of the film being rated 4. Since the audience believes the film to be around this level I feel that the film itself has succeeded in it's main purpose of entertaining the audience. From this I can see that most of my audience would expect Screwed to be available as an online release. This would likely be the easiest option for a short film as it wouldn't have to fit into a TV schedule or deal with retail for sales. Where would you expect to see Screwed?
9. 9. Audience Review Was the narrative easy to follow? This result showed me that my narrative for my film was simple and easy to follow. I was worried that my narrative may have been somewhat confusing to the audience as its events don't flow together as well as they could do. Yes No What was the films strongest technical aspect? From these results we can see that my editing seemed to be my strong point however both Mis-en-scene and audio were also considered good. I can see that no-one thought that my camera work for this film was a strong point.
10. 10. Audience Review What was the films weakest technical aspect? From this I can say for sure that my camera work for the film was by far my weakest technical aspect and definitely and area I would need to improve on. What was your favourite scene? From these results I can see that while all 3 scenes received compliments, the Malcolm and Andrew scene seems to be the most popular. At a guess I would say its likely to the character Andrew being the most eccentric and active character in the film.
11. 11. Audience Review Who was your favourite character? Interestingly enough I learnt that Mr.X, although never having actually appeat in the film, was voted to be the second most popular character. Andrew again was voted mots popular, likely due to his more active personality.
12. 12. What have I learned from my audience feedback? My results came from a fairly varied audience so I believe that I got a good variation of opinions in my feedback. Again the main aim of my film is to entertain its audience which from the feedback I received I would argue that I have in fact reached that goal. I have seen that there are definitely areas that I have been lacking in when it came to producing my film. My camera work for this product was rather poor, I know that there were definitely shots which could have been much better if taken from a different angle or distance. I have found however that the audience did like my use of editing when piecing this together as the majority voted that as my main strength. Again though I still question my narrative as Its not normally common to make an action film where the main event never actually happens in the film. I believe that if I used this same narrative with a full-length film it would likely of had a better turn out and the narrative probably would have worked much better. Response Summary
13. 13. What have I learned from my audience feedback? Improvements I would Make My first major improvement I would make to the film would be replacing the prop bomb I used in the first scene. I would do this because I feel that it didn't really look all that threatening which defeats the purpose of the 'bomb threat'. It doesn't really live up to the Action genre I was looking for. Another change I would make would be refilming the phone call. I think that I would this time film scenes of an actual person playing Mr.X (as opposed to a voice over) and also do some closer shots of Malcolm on the phone to emphasise his reactions further. I feel that I would also have to rework the script as I used quite a few clich lines in there and the film probably would have gone smoother with a more original script. I would also re add a previously cut out character of Alice, a female assasin with a lack of social skills which I had originally designed. I cut her out due to time restraints however I feel like a the female character would have allowed the film to appeal further to the female gender and bring in more viewers. I also feel it would of helped Malcolms character start to develop as he would be forced further and further out of his comfort zone.
14. 14. How have I used new media technology? Research Stage During the research stage, I made use of Web 2.0 resources to research and learn what I needed to create my own shirt film. My primary source for finding sites which gave me a look into what the codes and conventions of the genres are as well as what actually makes a short film a short film was Google. When I was done at looking at other peoples research I began gathering first hand research by making use of youtube to find previously existing short films. For my survey I made use of Google Drive which has a feature which allows the user to quickly and easily create online surveys. These surveys would be constantly updating and allow an easy and clear feedback of results with features which can automatically sort the information into graphs for easy analysis.
15. 15. How have I used new media technology? Construction Stage Luckily for me the technology involved in these steps where mostly software I was well acquainted with. For the creation of my poster I made use of Adobe Photoshop, a software I have been using for well over 6 years. This software allowed me to develop and produce the graphics needed for both my poster and my film without any issues or challenge. Adobe Premier was the software I used for the bulk of the short film editing, this again was a software I've made use of for a long time and did not have any issues when it came to editing the footage. For the editing of the sounds I actually made use of a software known as Audacity. This software I had only used a few times in the past so I was not as familiar as I was the rest however It didn't take me long to figure out how to clean up the voice over dialogue and then add the modulation sound effect. The main challenged I faced was learning to use Adobe AfterEffects. I had never used this software before and as I soon found out it functions quite a bit differently from the other Adobe Software I've made use of. At the start my original title sequence was just going to be the blank text with variating, inconsistent effects, however after I learnt about creating keyframes in After Effects I started to grasp a much better understanding of the software. By the end I didn't have enough time to invest into learning to more advanced capabilities, but I did manage to create my current title sequence which I believe worked out well given the basicness of it.
16. 16. How have I used new media technology? Evaluation Stage Whilst working on this evaluation I again made use of media technologies. I again made use of Google Drives to create the audience feedback survey. This again gave me a good number of results but to make sure I had people fill this in I made use of the social networking sites Twitter and Facebook. By using these I was able to spread word of my film and have them watch and survey it. Another way I was able to gain feedback on it was by uploading the video to youtube and adding the survey link into the description of the video. This mean it was easily accessible to find the video when the search criteria matches or was similar. To get this slideshow onto Blogger I made use of an online service called 'slide share' which allowed to to upload this to them and have them convert it to something that could be displayed without error.
17. 17. Did I use these new media technologies effectively to achieve my short film? All across this project I have been making use of media technologies in order to progress however I don't think that one can ever master one of these softwares that I have been using as new techniques and software updates are constantly being release along with new features, making it unlikely to know everything there is about the software, however that doesn't mean you can't stop learning. With this is mind my skills in Premier and After Effects have gone up quite a bit since the start of this course and I believe that I have been able to be more effective at its use therefor being able to use it effectively for my short film I would consider that a success.