Critical Analysis

Samra AwanNairobi International SchoolCourse: Media and communications A2

Questions.

• How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?

• How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of branding.

• How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?

• How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

• How did you intergrade technologies-software, hardware and online- in this project?

Introduction

As part of my final A2 level coursework includes a 5 minute video. To be specific it is a stop motion love story. The Title of the short film is Another Love Story. It is aimed at teenagers, both boys and girls between the ages of 13 to 19. It is about a boy and a girl who fall in love but face obstacles along the way

• Stop motion (also known as stop frame) is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object or persona appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence.

1. How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?

• In this stop motion short film, the representation here is fixated at teenagers. It shows them to be young and in love. This film in some ways shows a stereotype of teenagers as they are portrayed to be naïve.

•Another area in which representation is shown here is by using interracial characters. This allows people to see equality in race and eliminate the idea of the stereotypes of different races.

The conventions shown and displayed in my short film include; •A color scheme- The color scheme used in

this moving image is red, green, blue and black. These are colors represent the color of the female character’s dress. Red in this case emphasizes the feminism and delicacy of the color.

•As for the male character I used the color green to show the masculinity and emphasize the gender difference.

The use of the color red to show feminism and to bring brightness and color to the film

The use of the color green to express and emphasize on masculinity and differentiate between gender. As well as add a pop of color to the film

•Title- The title/name of my short film is ‘ANOTHER LOVE STORY’. The title on its own gives the audience and slight idea of what the film is about. It may also leave them with the idea of what the word “Another” could mean.

• Credits-the credits of a film make the movie and introduces the produces, directors, actors, songs and even locations of where the film took place.

•The reason as to why I decided to place my credits at the very end of the film is to portray the skills shown during the movie and give the producers and directors and everybody credit at the end of the film.

•Costumes- As part of my costumes I used colors(red and green) to emphasize the difference in gender by wearing making the girl wear a dress and the boy wearing shorts.

•As part of my real life stop motion, I made the characters wear close to what the drawn characters wore to show that these are the same actors.

•Lighting- As part of the lighting in the film, I used two settings in my stop motion, I used a drawn whiteboard scene and a real life natural scene. In both settings the lighting is different. It contains natural lighting and artificial lighting.

•There are also challenges I came across with the lighting. For example, the balancing of different lighting. From dull to bright and bright to natural.

This is where by dull lighting is shown. But is artificial

Bright lighting. But is also artificial

The change in Lighting

The change in lighting between the dull and artificial and the bright and artificial

The use of natural lighting is bright without even being adjusted.

•Sound- In this short film, there is no form narration or any other sound apart from the instrumental guitar solo audio. which was an audio gotten from a website known as Free Music Archive. This allows handlers to use the audio from the site because it is copyright free. This allowed me to chose a song and use it without the worry of having to ask for consent.

• Scene- the scenes shown and portrayed in the film include,

• The camera shots- in this film there are very few types of camera angles and shots. Most of the film includes the long shot. This is where by the character is shown from head to toe to show full body reaction and movement.

• In this case we don’t use shots such as over the shoulder or panning because there is no need for these shots in stop motion. These shots are basically to emphasize on that specific scene, but in this situation we must keep the shots at a minimal to allow focus to go towards the setting and story of the film

• pastoral setting- another example of setting is the location at which the two main characters fall in love. This is In the forest which could be related to pastoral setting where by the environment setting or weather reflects the characters mood. In this case calm, soothing and relaxed.

Here we see the example of

pastoral setting

•Where- Where and when the product will be sold will be at all music stores, book stores and even online for purposes of more viewers and to engage with the intended and unintended audiences. This is also to allow those who prefer watching movies as a software rather than buying hardcopy films.

•I challenged a convention by creating a stop motion film on its own. Most short films are in normal video footage. I decided to go against the norm by doing this.

2. How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of branding

•The way in which I used several elements combines to create a sense of branding. For example in my poster, I used the maid characters to show a type of relation between the short film and the poster as well. I also used my website to link in with the short film, this is that the three elements, the film, the website, the postcard and the blog to be all linked up and not sparsely placed.

3. How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?

•As a final product, I feel that my product will allow the audience to relate to it, in terms of relationships.

•Another way in which the product engages with the audience is by appealing to them with a different format of making a film(stop motion) and even using different colors so as to appeal to the audience. By using different production skills, this will allow the audience to know more about it so as to buy the product.

•As part of the distribution, Another Love Story will be show cased at several film festivals and this will also be a method of advertising for the product itself. This will allow the viewers to want to later buy the product and advertise it to their peers about it

•Another way of advertising and engaging with my audiences is by using the social media to attract my audience (which are within 13-19 years of age). I created an online page on Instagram as well as Facebook. And short trailers and teasers will be posted to keep the viewers and audiences in their feet.

4. How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

•In the making of this product, a lot of hard work and skills went onto putting this final outcome together. In a stop motion film, there are several different skills to perfect on. For example movement on frames and knowing of camera angles and shots to combine a moving images with simple pictures

•Using movie maker- Another way in which I developed my production skills during this project is by using and facing difficulties with the editing software Windows Movie-maker.

•This allowed me to learn my skills ‘On the job’. Where by all my skills developed throughout the production of the media text. For example adding pictures to synchronize with the audio when played together.

•By using Movie maker as a software, it helped me not only edit my work but also bring it together as one. This Is one of the main and only software's I used to create my product.

By using the software premier pro. Here is how I slowly brought my work together into a final product.

Postcard- Another way in which I can say my production skills have developed is by making and creating my very own film festival postcard. This not only allowed me to familiarize myself with word and photoshop as well as paint but also get to know and develop my understanding of what film postcards are meant to look like.The reason as to why I used the characters on the front of my postcard, is to give the audience a brief introduction of the characters and show them what the movie may be about.

•The reason as to why I chose to place symbols such as the Oscar winning awards etc. is because this will differentiate a postcard for a film festival and an actual postcard and a poster. These are three different things and one way in which the audience can or my know the difference may be through the commonly known Oscar symbols

•I also got inspiration from online resources to provide me ideas of how I would like my final postcard to look like.

How did you intergrade technologies-software, hardware and online- in this project?

•I did so by looking at some of the most famous stop motion made to get inspiration, for example the movie Coraline and Boxtrolls. I used a software known as Movie Maker to create and bring together more than 1000 frames to make a moving image with a total of 5 minutes.

•I also got the help of using online resources by using YouTube for inspiration and tutorial for the software I used.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYLajMqw8bI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKSnt_xxSmQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DluTYpa97k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGAa4MEYkJk

• Blog- One way in which I used online help is by creating a blog and website to show step by step stages of how my product came to be one final and finished text. I used the blog to write about what the is film is about and the website to showcase a part of the film online and to show a portfolio of images I used to combine together to make a shirt film

• Blog link http://ccherrywonderland.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2015-02-25T22:03:00-08:00&max-results=7

• Website link; for A2 http://editor.wix.com/html/editor/web/renderer/edit/308cad09-d5d0-4295-a48c-739a4499751b?metaSiteId=93906883-4ed7-48ea-ac0b-a57e7cc9d502&editorSessionId=55C5DD32-37FC-4702-82F8-FB8DD3CCD0D6&uaToken=NYvzXsA9YxdTd-UT62VkMDtjOI4V8atA6FO111iBEZqebIGE8_csG_4auRXJlz4YYUVmT0NYy5x_19rSPBgPrD7DMc97SKX7aOD713jhoiw7ptY6jrLQN2z3_WjEhvOyXWFFDF38iTdp-_pmhH0pPg

The hardware products I used in the making of this film are

My laptop(HP invent) – This is how I imported all the pictures taken on the camera and edited them by bringing them together and combining it to create a movie.

A professional camera(Nikon D3000) – This is what I used to capture all the pictures that combine to create my film, Another Love Story.

A tripod – This is what I used to hold the camera in place and keep it stagnant without having to constantly hold the camera.

•One of the main difficulties I faced when using the software is exporting and saving the file as a movie and not as a project. This costed a lot of time and effort put into saving the finalized work as a final mp3 video

• Overall I faced several problems when doing this project, for example the shakiness of some of the shots and pictures taken as I made a mistake by placing my tripod on my bed.

• Another problem was balancing the lighting of my scenes.

• I overcame some of these issues for example my tripod placement, and I placed it on a stable stool whereby it will not be moved.

• I could not delete some of the pictures as this would send me backwards in my production and video making.

Thank you for watching…