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

My understanding of the codes and conventions came from while I was watching different types of short films. After watching the short films I compared and contrasted similar conventions that appeared. The first convention that I felt like I met with was of the use of close ups and mid shots. This type of technique allows the audiences to engage more with the character. It allows the audience to understand the character.

While choosing my genre I thought about it a lot as to what kind of audience people would like and the more popular genre. The reason for choosing the comedy genre was because at the time of choosing there was a more range of aspects in comedy that I can produce. I then came across ‘diary of a bad man’ which is an internet hit. From then on I decided I would carry out a parody of this hit video. For me to finalise that comedy would be the choice of genre, I did a questionnaire looking into what the public would want to watch. So then from the decision we decided that comedy was the popular choice, I would make a comedy genre based short film.

The mise-en-sence that is used is to make sure the representations of the characters reflect those of contemporary society. I used many different types of background music to engage the audience more. I don’t feel that I have met this convention fully; this is due to the lack of locations available to me. While researching various short films, the first thing I looked at was what type of genre my short will be. By knowing what type of genre I will be doing it allowed me to know what type what location it needed to be shot , male or female who will be in the short film, and at what angle I wanted to take the different types of shots, for example whether it was a long shot, mid-shot or close up shot etc

Shots

This is a mid shot of the two characters that are in my short film.

This is a over shoulder shot as you can see the character writing in more detail.

This is a close up shot, as it emphasis on what the person is writing and how much importance it has to them.

This a over the head shot as it shows the above view of what the person is doing.

This is a mid shot of the character holding a prop which is highly important in this short film. As the prop some how presents a certain person.

This is a long shot of the character and her prop (vacuum)

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

From the audience feedback I have gotten the majority of the ideas put forward from the film. Making sure that I have good use of special effects and editing is important as I need to make my short film look professional as possible. Good music choice that fits well with what the character is doing and will able the audience to feel a certain way about the scene while the music is playing (will set the mood of the scene). I feel that I shouldn’t have used dialogues and could of shown the character personality more. I have also learnt that it is better that I base my products on what the audience want rather than a personal choice.

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

The Mac computer is what I used the most and did all my work on. IMovie was used to produce the film. This helped me as it provided me with a variety of editing options and different effects which featured a lot in the original clip. I filmed all my video with a video camera which was very efficient and easy to use. Whereas at the start of my As course I wasn’t sure about how to use a digital camera, whereas now I have more experience with the technology.

The Research for my media product involved the use of many new media technologies. I used YouTube to a great extent in the research of short films that would be the same to mine. This greatly helped me find the codes and conventions necessary to use in my final product. At as I spent a long time searching for the texts to view analyses however now with a2 my skills on YouTube have improved as I knew what I was looking for and what types of links I should go on. This made my search much faster and more efficient.

Firstly I used Blogger to create a blog in which to present a timeline of the analysis of my work and to show my progress and development throughout. This helped store all of my data from the start of my course.

I was able to upload videos and images of my story board onto my blog. This was much more efficient for me as it was easy and not time consuming.

I was able to create multiple sounds tracks and was able to cut and change the levels. I was also able to add sounds to my film to improve the feel and look of my production. The effects allowed me to faster the phase of a certain scene within the film

Camera, tripod

This is the equipment which I used during the whole process of my short film.

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

In comparison to all the posters and magazine covers that I have created the fonts throughout are more similar to one another throughout the ancillary texts. They all use the same images and all are centred on the cast. The poster is centred on the main actors in the film. The lightness of the poster gives a relaxing feel whereas if it was a horror film there would probably be more darkness within the poster.

I feel that the combination of my short film and my ancillary texts is very effective as they all cover the codes and conventions of real media products. For example, all three have a specific genre(Comedy) and both the poster and article follow the same colour scheme(light and dark colours) that relates them together.

Layer: while researching other film reviews. The layers of the reviews are very important. I put all the main conventions onto my film review as you can see above I have chosen to use the same layout for the film review as it appealed to me a lot more. As you can see I have used columns as my final layout. The reason I used columns on my film review was because when I researched various of other film review they where mainly layer out in columns. So I thought I would use columns on my film review page. I have used 1 picture on my film review, I was inspired to do this when I saw The road’s film trailer.

I have used the same types of conventions while creating my film review for example I have tried to keep the font colour similar to the original piece. As they have used red and I have used a dark orange. Also I have labeled everything that has similarity to my film review.