Evaluation Question 4

Evaluation question 2 kieran

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Evaluation Question 1

Our film generally follows a simple method in terms of the story telling and goes straight from start to end without any flashbacks or flash forwards but with the twist at the end it has a flashback indicated by the black and white scene, the editing of the film allows the film to break away from conventions as the split screen style shows both our characters at the same time which isn’t conventional in a film.

The convention of continuity worked well within the film and we thought our short film was smooth with the transitions. There was a lot of editing incorporated into our film, in some parts the cuts where very choppy like in the scene of Claire’s face and the not attached to the lamppost. In addition to this, we used shot-reverse-shot which made the conversations between two of the characters more appealing to the audience as they see both reactions of the characters, the conversations between the characters have more of a fluid motion allowing the scene to seem more natural.



We also used a few close-ups in our film, which I have spoken about earlier with the choppy cuts to give the effect that something wasn’t right. The way we did this was by making the shots get slightly larger which gave a zooming in effect to make the cuts more attractive.

At the bottom of the paragraph is a screenshot of a close up of the main characters having a conversation over the phone, this gives the audience the insight of these two young people in love with also the reactions throughout the conversation as you can see their facial expressions when they are talking to each other and gives off this sense of love from the Kieran and almost a slight resentment from Claire as if an argument has taken place with the way she replies.



I personally believe our film has taken a different more artistic approach to how a film should run with the split screen showing the films main characters scenes running at the same time. Also with the artistic approach of the style the genre is quite different and exciting by taking the love and compassion of a romantic film and subverting the stereotype of one by adding the heartache and drama of the disaster. The film starts of as a happy and uplifting film, which we used as the romantic side of our genre that is the general convention of this type of genre, the genre then gets flipped on its head quite dramatically with the twist and the shot where Kieran disappears. I believe it goes against the stereotype of what might happen in the film with them just believing the film to be a romantic film and then completely turning the genre on its head which will cause a hard hitting twist which is what ultimately we are going for.



Our film follows the traditional genre of these types of films and several of our shots are split screens with Kieran on one half and Clare on the other doing the same thing, for example, one of these shots is where they are both putting the coat/shirt on but with it being with opposite arms and the centre of the screen split it gives off the sense that these two are in fact one in the same. Our film and the plot could be compared to the film ‘Titanic’ as the plot is very similar with the story being about two people being in love but then the ending everything changes through a tragedy.



To make the shots look a lot more attractive we edited in a way that the characters where always on the same side as not to confuse people other than the last scene after the conversation between Kieran and Alex as the scene worked better this way. Also we kept the characters similar in size to give off how similar they were. This is seen in all the scenes running up to the conversation between Kieran and Alex with Kieran always being on the left and Claire on the right.

There is not really any reference to any other films in our short film although the idea to use split screen came from an initial idea of the group and other short film that we looked at to see if the idea could be done to a good standard looking professional and smooth. As we wanted an artistic feel to the film we tried to stay away from the conventions of the genre and make the film more unique.

The film link is below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJyeITd_msU

choppy shots – 3:05 – 3:17
Phone call split screen – 0:30 – 0:36
Kieran disappearing – 3:22 – 3:32
Shirt/coat shot – 1:09 – 1:16

Radio Trailer

Here is the radio trailer for our A2 media production. When planning how to make our radio trailer we looked around various different sites on the internet, including YouTube, to look for previously uploaded trailers so that we could absorb ideas for our very own trailer. The structure of our radio trailer is very basic and is like what you would find on most trailers with it being roughly 20 seconds long, having audio clips from the actual production in it, as well as a voiceover describing it in as little detail as possible so that the plot is not given away. We feel this is effective as it builds tension which may entice the listener to go and view the end product.

Evaluation Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

At the planning stage we did audience research of our target audience, which is 15-20 year olds, a couple questions about our film, things such as what they think to our plot, story and what they think we should do that might improve our film. This was after we gave them various bits of information such as the main outline of the film and the script.

The audience research was a success as many people who we asked questions to were interested in this genre of film and with the added twist at the end, they would be interested in seeing how the film pans out and how much it alters from films that are similar but don’t have this twist at the end. This twist was a major part of our project so this made it very beneficial to ask the audience what they thought about the twist. The feedback was good to receive as it was very interesting to see what our audience thought about the story and what they thought about the characters. The most beneficial thing we got from the audience research was to keep all main conventions of a romantic film with smiles from the characters and the sense that the two main characters are going to see each other while keeping the major twist unknown as to shock the audience.

This obviously means that when we are filming and editing our film, we need to make sure that there are no obvious hints about what is about to happen later in the film to make it effective. It was very effective to keep this under wraps throughout the film but we did but one inkling towards it with Liam Fountain’s character swearing after Kieran Lawless’ character says “you better not be drinking cause I’m getting a lift home with thee” and with the screeching car when Kieran disappears gives the audience that flashback of that moment. As our film has a lot of editing in it, with various shots such a split screen, and phone conversations which keep jumping from one person to another, it can get a little confusing for the audience if it is not edited and filmed properly, we made sure that we did this correctly and made sure the story made sense to the audience. When we first made the production the ending was in a different order and after one of our audience watched this they said it didn’t quite make sense so we changed the order round to make it more obvious.

In addition to this, although the main character in the film is dead and this is the twist in the end shows that he is dead, you don’t actually see how he dies which means that it may be confusing for some of the audience to understand that he is actually dead. Originally we decided not to have the sound of a car crash when Kieran disappears although after what we learned from audience feedback that it may be confusing if there is not a clear sign that Kieran is dead we decided to add it.

Another key piece of audience research that we picked up and we decided to take on board and changed our film massively was that the split-screen not working as well as having a little bit of both split screen and normal. This was because we wanted to have the entire film in split-screen although we had more than 2 characters, this made this concept a lot harder to do especially with conversations being had which could have given off an amateur feel to our film. We feel that just having split-screen now and again to show how similar the two characters are and for some phone conversations would work much better than having the entire film in split-screen.

We also felt that we wanted the audience to relate more to the main characters in the film, therefore we added more dialog and conversations between the characters to show what emotions they are going through. This was shown massively with the conversation right at the end between Bethany Vaines’ character and Nathan Denman’s character as the emotion shown in both their faces, body language and speech.

Media Evaluation Question 2

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
We used many types of media technologies in all stages of producing our movie project; these include types of hardware and software to help us in the production. Examples of these are digital cameras; the camera we used is a Sony HD 100. The camera is of great quality and the boom that picks up sound is also very good which gives clear conversations and has minimal external sounds such as wind making their way into the film.



This is a link to images of the camera we used to film or production. We also used editing software called final cut express. This is very good software to use to add all types of editing and effects to give your production the edge over other productions being shown around the internet. The software has a very simple layout which makes it easy for new uses to get to grips with the software and after a while of using the equipment you get used to the layout you can make a very good production that looks professional.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOTodkjB8KQ

This link shows how the software works and the basics of the kind of things you can achieve with the editing software. Another piece of equipment we used is digital sound recording equipment. We used something known as a zoom recorder to record the sounds we added into the film and also the voice over of the radio trailer we used this piece of equipment. This equipment gives a great sound quality which helps with the clarity and believability of our production.



This link shows images of the type of zoom recorder we used for our production. We also used the internet for our research into many different things about our production. The internet is probably the best part of our equipment as this helps us reach types of research we wouldn’t previously be able to achieve without it as many websites are from other countries so without it we would have struggled to get information and also to get ideas for our production. Websites we used are things such as:

http://freemusicarchive.org/

http://www.youtube.com/

http://lknmedia.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Kieran%20Lawless

These are websites we used to find our music fir our production, get ideas and information and also keep all our findings in a blog on Blogger.
These types of technology helped greatly with the creativity of our film as we realised the barriers of our film were very minimal and we could almost do anything our minds could come up with. A good example of this is the scene where Kieran disappears as the scene is actually two shots placed together instead of one continuous shot which made it very hard to achieve this but the editing software final cut made this possible. The internet helped massively as the music became a massive problem for us as our original piece of music turned out to be copyrighted which isn’t allowed for our production so the internet helped us find a piece of music which fitted well as well as being non copyrighted. The camera helped massively with its professional look and style as this helped the production look more believable and stylish and more like a piece of art than an amateur film. The zoom recorder made the radio trailer possible as without it we wouldn’t have been able to achieve the voice over that gave the trailer a very powerful feel and attractiveness for the audience. There were some limitations with some of the technology such as the editing software final cut only having a limited amount of effect to add. There were some aspects we had to scrap because if this, it wasn’t too bad as we made some changes which were very nice and could also be arguably better than our original ideas we had.
The following Link is for our feature length production:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJyeITd_msU&context=C4bdd1cfADvjVQa1PpcFMByT3JOu8CC38tTqROk_5j_tfP1DvKy-0=

Evaluation question 4

First of all, when we were doing our initial blog to plan our film and research we used an Apple Mac with the iMac interface and operating systems which are massively different from those I am used to using on Windows, which meant for the first couple of weeks using this, but I got more and more familiar with the overall outlook of the operating system with more experience. When we were researching, we also used search engines such as Google to find out genres of films and different ideas such as posters and radio trailers. Using this, but I got more and more familiar with the overall outlook of the operating system with more experience. When we were researching, we also used search engines such as Google to find out genres of films

and different ideas such as posters and radio trailers. This is a screenshot of the iMac interface.

When we were researching and using the internet to find out information about film genre and looking for things such as posters and radio trailers, I found the search engine Google useful as it gave images and information quickly and easily which made the whole process of researching easier and quicker. To the left is a screenshot of how we used google to look at different types of posters and what we need to put on our posters to make them successful. We have used google many times before on our foundation portfolio so we could do this very quickly and easily.

For our film, we used a Sony HDV 1000 and a tri-pod. Using the Sony was very effective for what we needed to film and was extremely easy to use with very little things to set up before we actually started filming which is always a bonus as we can just get straight on and start filming. But in addition to this, even though the Sony camera was very easy to use, it gives a very high quality picture quality which makes our film seem more professional. The only downside to using this sort of camera is that it is quite big and heavy, especially with the tri-pod as well which makes manoeuvrability quite difficult, it also takes up a fair amount of space when it is attached to the tri-pod, making certain shots more difficult than they would be when using a smaller handheld camera. Although a strong point from the Sony being quite big and bulky is that it gives a solid standing when you are using it with a tri-pod which can make it slightly easier to use on bumpy ground or against poor weather conditions such as wind. Below is the same camera we used when filming.

When constructing our film we used Final Cut express to edit it, this was key aspect of our film and without this we wouldn’t have been able to finish and construct it, this is because a large aspect of our film is in two different time zones and often more locations at once, for example when we used a split screen when two people are having a conversation over the phone, without using final cut express and editing it, our film wouldn’t have really worked and without knowing the story or plot you wouldn’t have been able to understand what was happening. Final Cut Express can be quite difficult to use when you first start although the more experience you have using it and more editing you do, you get more confident using it and editing more of your film. I personally thought it enhanced my creativity as this was only my second time using Final Cut express as I also used it last year at AS level to create my 2 minute opening sequence and I wasn’t very confident when I was using this particular Apple application although using it more made me feel confident using it and made me try more things and make our film more creative with some of the effects we used on our film.

Although editing went beyond our actual final product as we also used Adobe Photoshop when we created our A3 poster. This involved using Photoshop to import pictures such as the image of Kieran and Clare looking at the lamppost with the note on, writing text such as the title of the film and key points such as actor/actresses’ names and add effects such as blurring part of the background out to make the title and images more

prominent and important. Without using some type of editing software such as Photoshop, we wouldn’t have been able to create a poster like this. We also used an 12 megapixel camera to take the photo which would be put onto the poster, I have used a camera many times before so I could take a photo of this very quickly and easily, It is also easy to upload this picture onto a computer as you just need to connect a USB cable in both the camera and computer and upload. Using Adobe photshop massively enhanced by ability to edit large pictures like this into a poster as I have only really used photoshop before for small editing but now I have know how to work a lot of things in photoshop and have confidence to edit and create a large poster such as this one. To the right is a screen shot of me working on the poster using Adobe Photoshop.

To the left is an annotated screenshot of the effects of blur and using blur on our poster. We used blur to make the key aspects of the picture (titles, names and pictures are clearer and more prominant so they are the first thing that the audience sees and looks at on the poster. They can then also see  that they are an important part in the film.

We used media technologies to a large extent when making our film, but also a large amount of our planning also involved using media equipment such as digital cameras. We used digital cameras to take pictures of the different location so we can upload our location photos to the blog. We felt that location photos are a key part of our planning and preparation as they can show the audience what the different locations of our films will look like and how they relate to our film. New digital cameras are very high quality and give a high quality shot to our locations in our film.

Furthermore, we also used a sound recorder which we used both in the film itself when various sound wasn’t recorded properly or how we would have liked and to record a 30 second radio trailer. We found this to be a very effective piece of equipment, and even though we haven’t used one of these before, we found it incredibly easy to use. We then put the recorded sounds on GarageBand where we edited them and made them into a radio trailer.

Evaluation Question 3

Please click for a larger view.


To Summarise:

At the planning stage we did audience research by asking the public, particularly of our target audience (15-20 year olds) various questions about our film, in particular things such as what they think to our plot, story and what they think we should do that might improve our film. This was after we gave them various bits of information such as the story to the film and the script. We did this by sending about 10 people questions on the social networking site Facebook and evaluating the results that were sent back to us.  To thr right is a screenshot of the questions we sent to our audience.

The audience research was a success as many people who we asked questions to were interested in this genre of film and with the added twist at the end, they would be interested in seeing how the film pans out and how much it alters from films that are similar but don’t have this twist at the end. We took this feedback on board and the main point we took from the feedback is that the advertisements and overall story of the film needs to follow particular habits which are found in our genre of film although keep the twist at the end hidden until it actually happens. This means that it will be a surprise to the audience and will be more effective.

This obviously means that when we are filming and editing our film, we need to make sure that there are no obvious hints about what is about to happen later in the film to make it effective. As our film also has a lot of editing in it, with various shots such a split screen, and phone conversations which keep jumping from one person to another, it can get a little confusing for the audience if it is not edited and filmed properly, we made sure that we did this correctly and made sure the story made sense to the audience.

In addition to this, although the main character in the film is dead and this is the twist in the end shows that he is dead, you don’t actually see how he dies which means that it may be confusing for some of the audience to understand that he is actually dead. Originally we decided not to have the sound of a car crash when Ciaran disappears although after what we learned from audience feedback that it may be confusing if there is not a clear sign that Kieran is dead we decided to add it.

Another key piece of audience research that we picked up and we decided to take on board and changed our film massively was that the split-screen may not have worked to full effect. This was because we was originally because we wanted to have the entire film in split-screen although we had more than 2 characters, meaning that we would just have to sharply switch from one character to another, which would make it look slightly amateurish. We feel that just having split-screen now and again to show how similar the two characters are and for some phone conversations would work much better than having the entire film in split-screen.

We also felt that we wanted the audience to relate more to the main characters in the film, therefore we added more dialog and conversations between the characters to show what emotions they are going through.