HANNAH MITCHELL - FINAL EVALUATION

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

Short films that have inspired me and illustrate typical features of short films

• 1. Narrative -As illustrated in 'Two Cars One Night', a common feature of a short film is a simple narrative/idea as simple ideas usually are the most creative in terms of short films. 'Two Cars One Night' has the narrative of 3 children waiting in a car park for their parents and 2 of them gradually start  talking and exchange a ring in the end. While the narrative may sound boring, it allows the makers and editors to be more creative with effects etc. and the narrative can be interpreted in many ways to the audience. For example, the ring be given to the male character by the female could be a symbol for something in the future or someone else could interpret it as their paths could cross again while someone else may not think it has any significance at all.

• 2 Mise En Scene- Another typical aspect of short films is the use of Mise En Scene and that there are a limited number of locations as there is less time, too many locations and changes can take away from the narrative and take up too much time in a short narrative. 'Two Cars One Night' is all set in one location throughout in the car park and adds to the simplicity of convention 1 - the narrative. 'About a Girl' is also similar in this convention in that the lake is the main location throughout with a few changes to location with flashbacks but not too many to take away from the simplicity I feel.

• 3. Representation of characters - In all the short films I watched for inspiration, a modern representation was used rather than a traditional representation. Many of the films : 'About a Girl', 'Barry' and 'Two Cars One Night' all included a young female character perhaps showing the change in power and status in gender now and showing that females are as equal as men as they are the main characters. These films all show the females being very strong characters as well showing a modern representation of females unlike films like 'Brief Encounters' where Laura is the typical representation of traditional females (Housewife, Looks after her children all day, husband is the breadwinner in the family). In 'About a Girl' we see a complete opposite to Laura as this girl is very opinionated and isn't afraid to voice those opinions unlike Laura who was very shy and scared to voice her opinions as men were the dominant sex and she was in a patriarchal society. 'Barry' also showed a strong modern representation of a female as the young girl in the narrative has a disabled mum to look after and care to while also being bullied at the same time for having her best friend as a rabbit. Even though she is being bullied and has a disabled mum though, she doesn't react or care to it and shows a strong female in a modern representation. 

• However, in 'Love Sick' they used a more traditional representation of a male rather than the modern day representation of men. In 'Love Sick' the main character is a traditional representation as we see future clips of what he wants with one of the woman as: Love, marriage and children. Even the editing with the old film editing technique makes it immediately seem old and traditional and this a very traditional way of falling in love as it was supposed to be done in that order in older times. Today though, many couples have children before marriage and so using a traditional representation creates a more interesting representation of the character to the audience as the makers and directors are going against the norm of what is expected of genders. 

• The representation was all very modern in terms of class as well. All 3 of the example films had examples of working class individuals in them and their life in a working class environment. What this represents is again a modern representation of these characters and Britain as it shows our country today and could also be a representation of what has happened due to the recession in our country showing the modern Britain. The representation of class is shown in accent (About a Girl) or location (Barry) in these films and this indicates their class to the audience which allows the audience to make assumptions on the character based on these factors.

• 4. Characterization - Most of these short films use indirect characterization so that we are left to determine the character and their personality's ourselves rather than being told their characterization. Even though 3 of the short films I have used as an examples have voice-overs from the character, the voice over still doesn't reveal much about their personalities. This makes short films more intriguing to the audience and leaves the narrative more open to be interpreted  as well as the characters themselves in these narratives. In 'About a Girl' we interpret the girl as growing up in  a working class but wanting something more from her life as she talks about being famous and about Britney Spears. 

• 5. Genre Conventions - Even though the genre of all the short films are different, they all have a similar convention in that they all use a genre and story that we can all relate to and understand the story and connect more to it. In 'Love Sick' we can all relate to wanting to find love like the main character, in 'About a Girl' many people can relate to the social realism behind it of teenage pregnancies as they are becoming more frequent in Britain in today's society and many people can relate to the social realism of looking after someone disabled like 'Barry'. 

• One of the main conventions in terms of genre in short films is that they use a hybrid of genres. The use a couple of genres and together put them together to make a more interesting concept to the film. This allows an interesting media text to be created and creates more enigma for the audience.

• 6. Editing/Post Production - A common feature is to have minimal diegetic sound and use more non diegetic sound. 'Love Sick' and 'Barry' are an example of this as they both used a soundtrack and a voiceover throughout from the character and a reason for using this feature is to create more of a mood and tone to the film and using the soundtrack and voice-over allows the tone of the film come across from these features as they set the mood.

• 7. Narrative Organisation - A common feature that inspired our film was the use of flashbacks so that it made the narrative organisation more interesting and the audience find it more intriguing. 'About a Girl' featured some flashbacks to do with the narrative and this created more interest when watching it as we saw more shots from her life and so it created a more interesting organisation of the story than just seeing her walking along the bridge the entire time and allows more creativity in term of camerawork and location.

• 'Love Sick' also used an interesting narrative organisation as it used not flashbacks, but flash forwards of what his life could be life with another character. By using this interesting convention, it allowed the audience to see his view on the character and also added humour as he doesn't even know the character and is already imagining his life with her and he doesn't even know her name.

• 8.Editing/Post Production - Another feature I identified is the brightening and colour of images to convey moods and differences between scenes. Box number 7 shows 'Love Sick' and they took the colour of the image down and added a grain effect to give the look of an old camera along with the noise and showed the that it was a 'flash forwards'. Box 8 shows the brightening of the image to reflect the mood of the film and show happiness through the frames shown.

• 9. Narrative - Another common feature that inspired us was that most films incorporated a twist in the narrative. This allows the narrative to surprise the audience  and change the tone of the film while taking the story down a different path the audience weren't expecting. The narrative usually follows quite a normal path to represent the person's 'ordinary' life but as the narrative is limited to a specific time span in a short film, they usually have a twist  to make the narrative more interesting for the short time span. Unlike feature films, which have enough time to build up to a twist or moment and create enigma, a short film can't do this as there is limited time so the narrative is usually at the end after trying to build up to it from the beginning.

Does our short film use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

•        1. We used the convention of real media products by using a Simple narrative. This we felt was a convention we really wanted to use as the most successful short films have a simple narrative throughout. We used a simple narrative by not over complicating our story with twists throughout and lots of characters in the short time. We stuck by one simple yet effective idea like real media products do so we used this convention in our short film. All of the short films that inspired me had a very simple idea/narrative but were effective by their use of editing, camerawork etc.

•       2. Our short film also used conventions of real media products that inspired our film by incorporating Flashbacks. A few of the films that inspired our film used flashbacks throughout which were effective in the story like 'About a girl' or flash forwards like'Love Sick'. We developed the convention further by adding more than 1 in and used the flashbacks to really get a look in to the characters relationship and used dramatic irony to add another dimension to our narrative. 

•           3. We also used a limited number of locations like 'Two cars, One night' and 'The View' as with a short film there isn't much time and so to be changing locations a lot and justify why it has changed in the narrative would take up time and take away from the story so we kept our locations limited. We used a few but only showed them for a short time as they were flashback sequences. We also used locations like in the two films that inspired us that could relate to the audience and have recognition with them.

•      4. We represented our characters in our film in a modern representation rather than a traditional representation. We did this like the film 'About a girl' did as it means our target audience for this film could relate to the representation and the characters better and understand them more. We showed our characters in a more modern representation from props such as an iPod and mobile phones while also having the female character and male character differentiate from their traditional representations. The Male character isn't seen as a strong and independent male as such but more of quite a timid and shy character I feel and those assets aren't associated with a traditional male character. Also our female character is not a traditional representation as she is not shy or relying on a man, though at the end she could be seen as a more traditional women as she seems to want love more than a friendship and could be seen as wanting to rely on a man so she may not be a completely modern representation. However, she is quite loud and outspoken on the train in conversation with him which would not be traditional assets of a represented character.

• What also shows our modern representation is that we used a black actor to represent the male and character. By doing this, we represented ethnicity in our film and we represented the diversity between having a black and white actor and actress as a positive thing in our film and wanted to show the representation that 'opposites attract' in our film. The effect of using a black actor and white actress is that we target many social and ethnic groups from this in our short film and show 2 different ethnicity groups. We represented these characters in a positive way regarding each others ethnicity as we wanted to portray a positive message of ethnicity in our film and a positive showing and representation of diversity of people. By using a white actress and black actor, I feel out film is very modern and attracts a large and wide audience because of this modern touch/edge to it that not many other films incorporate. 

• The social class of these characters is represented at the beginning of our film. The use of public transport can represent that they are not high class as high class characters would not use public transport but have their own car. The green on the trains is also an indicator of the class of the characters as this represents southern rail trains and the South of England is known to be middle class so our characters are represented a the beginning to the audience using these indicators and signs as middle class characters. They also later on have technology like an iPod and phones which show they have some wealth to be able to buy good technology.

• 5. We used a convention some of the other films did and didn't use a normal chronological order narrative organisation. We had a use of flashbacks which I have already explained about and used these to make the narrative and narrative organisation change so that it wasn't a boring usual story line and kept the audience intrigued throughout as to how they related to the characters.

•   6. Like most real media products, we used the convention of a range of shots sizes and angles. We used various shot sizes and angles to make the audience, for example, relate to the character better in a point of view shot or get a feel of their relationship by their body language in a long shot. The use of various shots and angles were also used in our film because they make a more interesting film to watch rather than from just one angle.

• 7. In terms of genre convention and other films that inspired me, we took inspiration from their genre conventions as they all used a genre and inside that, a narrative that the audience can relate to. Which a genre convention that people can relate to and a narrative then people can, it creates a connection between the audience and story they are experiencing and is effective and creates a successful film as people can relate to it and say they've been in a situation like it. We created a hybrid for our genre of our film and use romance and comedy to create a rom-com genre. Even though there is no definite romance in the film, the ending with the music hints at romance and the narrative before has hints of romance because they are a male and female. The comedy aspect comes in with the female and when she is eating her crisps really loudly and talking on the phone really loudly and at the end the comedy comes across with the sound effect and twist at the end when the audience are lead on that it is a romance but instead it's a comedy.

•       8.  In the media products that inspired me, a few that were effective to me focused primarily on non-diegetic sound. In our film we challenged this convention of some films and had an good mix of diegetic sound and non-diegetic sound so that while the music played a big part and set the mood and tone of the film, the diegetic allowed the audience to hear what was happening on the screen at that time and so they knew what was happening as they could hear everything.

    

•  9. We took inspiration from the real media products we looked at and used the convention that most the short films had which is in the narrative there is a twist. In our film, by using this convention we were able to accomplish a more humorous feel to the end and an abrupt change which worked well with the story and added to the reality of the story.

Ancillary tasks

Poster

These analysis's I had completed before show what some conventions from posters can be identified by the audience and interpreted as.

Conventions of movie posters:

• The film's name needs to be displayed so that people can read it clearly and see what film the poster is advertising

• Images also should be included and should reflect the movie in some way; Genre, actors etc.

• The actors name can also be a convention used on movie posters; however it is dependent largely on how known the actors in the film are as highlighting unknown actors won't help promote the movie as people won't know who they are.

• A tag line is also a convention used as it gives the audience a insight into the story and what it's about.

• The date it is released should also be included to tell the audience when they can see it in cinemas and it also should be displayed where they can see it: Cinemas, theaters or both?

• What also needs to be included is the text at the bottom displaying production companies, cast and crew members and funding logos.

• An added convention is also quotes the film has received from reviewers that they want to put on the poster to show that is a good film.

• These conventions are mainly for a big budget film poster though which has some anticipated release rather than a short film and so a short film poster may not use all these conventions as it differs from a big budget film and doesn't have such a wide audience and anticipate release.

Does our poster use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

We used all the film conventions that can be used on real media products on our poster (below) :

• The film's title is located at the bottom in a large font and number so it stands out and is easy to read for the audience to immediately understand that because it is the largest text on the poster, it is the title of the film. 

• We decided to only use one image as this would keep our poster simple and the simplicity of the poster then reflected our film and the simplicity of our film and it's narrative. We used  an image of our two characters on the train to hint to the audience the location of our film very subtly. 

• The actors names were also a convention of movie posters we used. Even though our actors are not big Hollywood stars, we decided to out the names on anyway to give them some recognition but made the names quite small so that it wasn't a main part of the film poster as it wasn't as important as some of the other features on the poster.

• A tag line is also a convention we used as this allowed the audience to have an insight into what this film could be about and make the audience more interested into what it is about.

• The date it is released we also used and used it so that it could  tell the audience when they can see it in cinemas.

• A convention of posters we didn't use however is where the audience can see it : Cinemas or theaters. This is because our film is only a short film and so it wouldn't be displayed in many places or in places like cinemas so there was no reason for us to use that convention as it wouldn't be relevant for our film. 

• We also used and made the text at the bottom displaying production companies, cast and crew members and funding logos as these should be identified on posters to highlight people and company's who have helped in making the film.

• The last convention we used were quotes from reviews. We put these on our poster to highlight to the audience the good points of the film so that it would attract more attention and a more positive outlook on our poster as it showed that this film was reviewed well.

Review

This is what the magazine version of Little White Lies reviews look like.

Conventions of Little White Lies Magazine:

Layout

• Screen-capture from film or a still image at the top of the review page to illustrate and show the audience what this film is about.

• The title of the film the magazine is reviewing in bold and a large font number.

• Three subheadings below the title: 'Directed By:', 'Starring:' and 'Released:'.

• Ratings out of 5 given for the film at the end with the headings: 'Anticipation', 'Enjoyment' and 'In Retrospect'.

Language

• Around 400 to 500 words long

• Avoid giving away spoilers in the text

• Restricted code in the language used 

• References to other films

• Use of adjectives

• Use of complex nouns

• Use of quirky language/ text throughout 

Does our review use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Here is our review:

• In our review we used the conventions of Little White Lies Magazine. We didn't develop or challenge the conventions of the magazine otherwise it wouldn't reflect the magazine itself and we  then wouldn't have written and copied the format of the magazine.

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and your ancillary tasks?

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Here I have feedback I have received from people I know in right demographic for each piece of work (the film and poster between 15 - 21 year olds and the Little White Lies review 25 to 35 year olds) and shows how well we have targeted that audience over all with our work and them in mind.

Film:

What I have learnt from this feedback is that even though all the comments here told me that people understood the concept, they didn't initially when watching the film and when they had watched the film the whole way through then they understood it properly. We have had  mixed feedback from people who have understood it from the start to people who didn't understand  the concept at all. What I have learnt is that the flashbacks to some people weren't easy to detect as flashbacks even though we edited the frames and took the saturation down and added a glow to give a flashback/dream effect. Even though most people did understand that these are  flashbacks, a few people didn't and therefore didn't understand the concept as a whole. What I have learnt from this is that perhaps our flashback sequences weren't distinguished enough from the normal scenes and could have done with the effects a bit harsher.

I have also learnt that the music in our film is a strong point of our film. People felt it had set the tone of the film and helped communicate the humor more and that it reflected the film's mood and were happy that it was communicated through our music choice.

I have learnt from my audience feedback on my film that people enjoyed our film even though a few were a bit confused with our narrative at the start and that a simple narrative with the right editing and sounds can make an enjoyable film for an audience.

Here is also a friend of mine explaining the positive and negative points of our film that she found when watching it:

Poster:

Here is one persons feedback I got from facebook back. This feedback shows that they thought the poster looked authentic and was clear to read in terms of colour choice and the layout we decided to use. 

However, I did receive some constructive criticism here which was that they thought the image didn't work well as it didn't show the characters and their relationship the way it is portrayed in the film and gives off a different vibe and theme to our film. She says they "seem quite shocked and detached from one another" and also "seems different to what you were trying to get across in the film" which shows that the audience of the poster don't see from the poster the developing relationship or relationship at all between the characters and no suggestions of the comedy/romantic/friendship side to our film. 

These feedback comments however didn't pick up on the photo issue the other person mentioned but the first person actually liked the photo in regards to out film and the narrative of it. They both have said that it stands out well with the colours and features and 'used all the specifications of what a film poster needs'. 

In relation to the previous comment about the picture and no suggestions of our genre hybrid we used, the 2nd comment here said the quotes at the top were a good feature as our choice of wording allowed to 'get a feel for the genre of the film' which therefore, allowed the audience to get our genre from the text we used and lexis choice we used in our quotes if the audience are like the first comment and cant understand the genre from the image.

Review:

From this feedback I didn't really learn much as all of her feedback was positive and therefore couldn't improve on anything. What this shows is that we should check our work more next time  for mistakes but other than that nothing sticks out needing to be improved from and she thinks that the review is good and meets up to the criteria we needed.

I was only able to get one piece of feedback for the review unfortunately as I only knew one person between 25 - 35 who was able to review the piece and give me feedback.

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

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

HANNAH ALFRED EVALUATION

1

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

Short films in particular have some very inventive and unconventional methods in film making compared to that of a feature length film.

I have thought about 5 categories in which I could analyse the ways in my film either uses or challenges forms and conventions of other films. These I have differentiated by colour to make it easier to read and navigate:

1. Narrative Organisation

2. Characterisation

3. Mise en scene

4. Use of genre conventions

5. Editing/ posproduction

Firstly ‘Narrative organisation’.

Short film’s length means that they often can only fully deal with a situation that surrounds only one or two main characters and they are often a slice of life because they only focus on one event or occurrence.

For instance with ‘Love Sick’ – one of the short films we did our research on:

In this example we are thrown into the middle of the man’s life, in fact, this short film starts with action right from the start. The whole story is set over the actual time of the film and so it’s but a few minutes of the man’s life. We don’t know what the character was doing before or will be doing after.

Similarly, my film first introduces the male character walking and we don’t know where he is going or where he has come from.  

We took great inspiration from the ending of ‘Love Sick’ like the fact that it is open but also closed in some respects this gives us as the audience some satisfaction but leaves us wondering.

Our film could be seen as having a closed ending because the two characters are left separated at the end and the male characters seemed to establish that he is not interested near the end.

However it could also be seen as open because the complexities of the storyline show that the pair often cross paths but take no notice of each other, so therefore it is likely that they might meet again and possibly develop their relationship from there. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

Our narrative structure is chronological but it is broken up with flashbacks.

These flashbacks are essential in forming the concept behind our film, which is the fact that the two characters have met before. 
Other than that, the occurrences between the characters happen in a chronological order. [picture of their relationship start process end with subtitles]

The flashbacks are also used in ‘Apricot’ one of the short films I came across whilst doing my research. However here they are used to represent a flashback from her memory:

We have challenged the way flashbacks are normally used as conventionally they are used in a similar way to Apricot (as a memory) however we have used them in a way that makes our audience more knowledgeable than the characters about the fact that they have crossed paths before, creating suspense. Using flashbacks in this way, I believe, is more difficult and resulted in some of our audience not fully grasping their role in the film and getting confused as to whether they were flashbacks or flash forwards.

Both short films and full length films nearly always have a twist in their storyline. Although they may not always follow the simple narrative structure (introduction, rising action, climax, resolution) exactly, they nearly always have a climax or twist.

So we conformed to that narrative organisation and have our introduction of the characters meeting, the rising action of them beginning to get along, the climax of them getting along the falling action or the twist as it turns out the boy comes back only to get his phone.

Secondly ‘Characterisation’

In terms of representation our film dealt with a lot of different social groups:
Ethnicity: Our main character was afro Caribbean and we chose to represent him in a modern way as an accepted member of society - rather than going down the path of using his culture difference as the main issue in our film. We wanted to show that black and white people can live together in Britain today without their being any reference or attention drawn to their differences. The male character is quite passive at the start but that is a reflection of his character and not because we are trying to say his entire culture is that way. A scene in the film that draws on his origins is when the female character says ' where do you live' and when he replies where he lives in England she then says 'no where are you from originally'. In asking this we can presume that she assumes that due to his ethnicity and accent that he was obviously not from England. Perhaps this then represents young British teenagers are quite naive to the fact that once someone is a British citizen they are British despite their colour. Nevertheless when he replies which Caribbean island he is from she reacts positively so the question could be seen as innocently being curious.
Teenagers: British teenagers in general have also been represented here is a modern way which is reflected in their costumes as the clothes we told them to wear are quite normal everyday clothes for this time and so they don't fall into any stereotypes which might make the audience form preconceived views of them. The way the boy and girl interact shows a more forward concept in the way that in the past, opposite sex teenagers were perhaps more timid towards eachother, as the male character demonstrates. But in our film the female character has been represented in a very self-assured, go-ahead, confident way which is a modern representation of femininity. Then again in the film the female character typically falls for the male character and in doing so we have made her conform to some of the stereotypical characteristics of the female sex.
Class: There's also a representation of the working class in both the characters. We see them riding the train which is public transport which again could be a reflection of the amount of money they have.They also come across as rather open minded and sociable people as we see them grow their relationship quite easily from stranger status.

Short films typically only follow one or two characters in the plot; this is because of the length of short films and the nature of them, so I have taken this on board and followed only two characters in my film.

The costume and makeup of our characters is in no way traditional. Our film has more of a modern approach to masculinity and femininity like most modern short films do, reflecting on the changing attitudes towards the subject.
We chose a black actor to represent our male character also to represent the modern ethnic equality because we feel it gives the film a more diverse and urban edge, especially as he is involved in a romance when our white leading lady. 


The characters are opposite in a lot of ways and we chose them in particular for this reason as it creates an interesting atypical relationship.

It is similar in that way to ‘Love recipe’ where the characters differences contrast each other:

We thought about exactly who are characters were and how they behave. We came up with one character which was quite annoying and loud and sure of her and one that was quite submissive and passive, so not only did they contrast in demographics but also in personality.

Creating these differences allowed our film to have a deeper meaning like demonstrated in ‘Love recipe’.

Short films usually involve a story or part of a particular characters life. This means that point of view shots often occur because the best way to express to the audience how someone is feeling is to show it from their point of view. As we have two main characters, we have examples of POV shots from both of their prospective. In the first frame a POV was used to invite the audience to share how annoying the female character is being as she chews. The second frame shows a POV shot simply used so the audience can see what the female character is looking at.

Thirdly ‘Mise en scene’

Our short film has used a recognisable location and everyday props because after doing research we realised that a lot of short films create realism this way like short film ‘Winter’:

‘Winter’ seems to have not altered the natural background that the characters are portrayed in which makes the background a common British setting. Winter uses this simple setting because changing the surroundings isn't normally necessary in short films due to their length nor would it suit or be justifiable for the narrative. So we have done the same in our film as one of the main ideas behind our film is that the situation could apply to any of audience and could possibly have happened to them before. Which is why we chose a train station/train as most of them have been on some kind of public transport before, creating that sense of realism.

It seems a lot of short films use realistic settings like all of these:

Short films normally do not have a very big budget at all, probably a reflection on the fact that they a given/accumulate small funding, because, as a whole, the short film industry does not generate much money. This reflects on the popularity of realism in shorts.

Fourthly ‘Use of genre conventions’

 According to this article 'here' - “One of the conventions of romantic comedy films is the contrived encounter of two potential romantic partners in unusual or comic circumstances, which film critics such as Roger Ebert or the Associated Press' Christy Lemire have called a "meet-cute" situation. During a "meet-cute", scriptwriters often create a humorous sense of awkwardness between the two potential partners by depicting an initial clash of personalities or beliefs, an embarrassing situation, or by introducing a comical misunderstanding or mistaken identity situation.”

This is exactly what we did for the plot of our film because it is a rom-com. We have tried to establish a ‘meet cute’ by showing the unusual circumstance being that the male character misses his train. When they do eventually meet there is a clash of personalities as the female character really annoys the male character by doing things like talking on the phone loudly and chewing her crisps in his ear etc. This creates that sense of a comical situation for the audience, but then also typical to romantic comedy’s that awkwardness soon changes into the characters relationship growing so they appear to like one another. We thought it was important to follow the conventions of the plot of our film because we feel it is this that is key to defining the genre of a film.


"The basic plot of a romantic comedy is that two people, usually a man and a woman, meet and then part ways due to an argument or other contrived obstacles. Initially, these two people do not become romantically involved, because they believe that they do not like each other, because one of them already has a partner, or social pressures. However, the screenwriters leave obvious clues that suggest that the characters are in fact attracted to each other, or that they would be a good love match"
Again this is from the website mentioned above which describes conventions on rom-coms. Our film has exactly that a man and a woman who meet and then part ways, however this is at the end of the film rather than during and that it what gives our film that edge - by not following that particular convention. Again though we did follow making the two refrained from liking each other at the start as the male finds the female annoying, but then we have left obvious clues that they begin to like each other (like the close-ups of them smiling). The fact that our characters leave each other at the end is a reflection on the way that our short film twisted some of the rules of feature length genre conventions. 


"Then, after one of the two makes some spectacular effort to find the other person and declare their love, (this is sometimes called the grand gesture), or due to an astonishing coincidental encounter, the two meet again. Then, perhaps with some comic friction or awkwardness, they declare their love for each other and the film ends happily." Again we have half a grand gesture at the end when the boy is in slow motion like he's coming back for the girl, but unfortunately for her he is not, which again creates the "comic friction" and our audience is left sad and shocked rather than the happy ending.


Another convention of rom-coms is the use of humour. Obviously we had to create subtle humour in our film, but we didn’t want to overpower the story with loads of bold attempts at jokes.

So we used things like facial expressions, annoyances and misunderstandings:

The use of sound is very important in capturing the film’s genre. The music for rom-coms tend to differ according to whether it is the comedic part of the film or the romantic part. In our film however we have used music more as a way of creating a light upbeat feel to the parts of the film that have no dialogue.

To get our music for our film we had to ensure that it was royalty free so that we weren't breaking any copyright laws. After much searching we found a couple of sites that offered free royalty free music - 'Jamendo' and 'Incompetech'. However Jamendo's music mostly had lyrics, and our research had actually shown that few short-films used songs with lyrics and rather instrumentals. But we found we found a couple of songs which fitted our film perfectly on Incompetech:

 We wanted to establish a buoyant atmosphere right from the beginning and kept it alive as the song continues later on. This song we chose comprised of guitars and drums which are instruments that can’t help but make a more upbeat tone. Its appropriately called 'Brightly Fancy' and you can listen to it HERE.

We also had a song for the romantic scene at the end of our film. The song is an instrumental with a piano, which creates that soft, tender, loving feel between the two characters. Its appropriately called 'There is Romance' and you can listen to it HERE

Humour is then brought back into the film when that song harshly comes to an end with a record screech. As the romance stops the music stops as it is parallel music.

The dialogue also uses conventions as at the end the male character creates humour by coming back and saying ‘forgot my phone’ when the female character thought he was coming back for her. Also there is a rather starry-eyed moment created when the characters say ‘it was really nice meeting you’. This indicates a possible romantic relationship between the pair which is exaggerated by the use of close up’s which is also a convention of romance films as they exaggerate emotions.

Fifthly ‘Editing/ postproduction’

As short films are indeed short, a lot of thought needs to go into the editing of the sequences so that the whole story can be told. Therefore this means that cuts and cross-dissolves are necessary to move the story on and create space for more interesting and important shots.

Again, short film ‘Love sick’ has also done this, used cuts to show a small progression and cross-dissolves to show a significant amount of time passing.

I also had to incorporated cross-dissolves to show time passing by in my film so that we get the idea but don’t have to sit through all of her on the phone.

And the use of cuts meant that I can still maintain continuity but not show every frame:

We did follow the way that a short film like Apricot attempted to aid the illusion of a flashback by making them very light and bright and changing the colours of the shots in post-production:

For us to create the illusion of our flashbacks we unsaturated the colours to make it seem less bright and sort of faded (like the past is) and added a glow which gave the flashbacks a hazy blurry feel, differentiating it from the present footage.

THE ORIGINAL

THE EDITED CLIP

In one of the films I researched ‘leave me’ I picked up on the use of fades:

 They used fade to black which I felt was appropriate for that particular film as there was a death and black has connotations with death. However we wanted to use fade in a different way, we wanted to almost use them to separate reality and something that was in the past. So we also used a fade, but instead a fade to white – on either side of our flashbacks. We felt it really helped to isolate the flashbacks and separate them from the film:

Earlier in the course we looked into how we would perhaps distribute our film and created a prezi that looked at the various ways we could. I will talk about how we would distribute our film in further detail in question 3:

Now I will talk about how my ancillary tasks used, developed or challenged their forms and conventions

POSTER

After doing my research into posters like ‘Shame’ and ‘Juno’ I didn’t find much differences between the two of them even though one was a British film and one was an American film.

I also briefly looked at these three short film posters:

Similarities to my poster:

• They all contain an image that it similar to how they are in the films (I presume) somewhere on the poster - poster 1&3 contain what looks like actual screen-grabs from their films and poster 2, I can imagine, reflects how she portrayed in the film.
• The main images are of the main characters in the film and they are very prominent. 

And at these three feature length British film posters:

I did not see any particular trend of differences between a short film poster and that of a feature length film but I did see similarities.

Some of the conventions I followed were the use of a large title in order to make sure the name of the film can be seen and recognised:

The use of reviews from appropriate sources and awards they have achieved in order for the target audience of the poster to be able to establish that it is a film worth seeing:

An image that incorporates the main characters and gives a hint to the tone and events of the film:

REVIEW

It was essential that I found the most appropriate magazine to write about reviewing my film. After much searching I decided that Little White Lies was the best because film review magazine to write for because it was a small British magazine just like my film. Its writing style was very original and modern and it was one of the only magazines that reviewed short films.

After my research into some of conventions of Little White Lies film review articles I noticed some conventions of the layout which I was told by my teacher from here::

So I did the same with mine:

2

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

3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Our target audience:

15-25 year olds

Both sexes but perhaps slightly more females

Did I successfully manage to target and appeal to my target audience?

I targeted my audience to get my feedback through Face-book because it is an interactive social networking site commonly associated with the younger generation, which means I could gather a lot of feedback easily. I am 18 years old and our target audience is between 15 and 25 years old. This means that most of my 1,300 friends on Face book should be within my target audience. So most of the feedback I got was from my target audience and therefore I did successfully target them.

I appealed to my target audience by having the characters be a similar age as them. By having the location be a recognisable location for young people as they perhaps don’t drive yet (because they aren’t old enough or can’t afford it) so they catch the train. Trains being a form of public transport, most people should have been on one before and so the surroundings are identifiable. The plot/concept surrounds something that 7/10 people I asked from my target audience said they had thought about before. That age is also very much associated with strange romances and ‘young love’ so it’s a topic they could relate to. It also has humour in it which mitigates the romance factor but this genre is known for appealing to our majority female audience.

And with 55 ‘likes’ on Facebook from my target audience I would say I successfully targeted and appealed to my target audience.

This is one of the more detailed Face book messages that I analysed earlier in my blog post about audience feedback on the film:

This message was from a female aged 19 and so she is therefore our ideal target audience and her message seems to sum up pretty much most of the concerns that were also brought to light by other people who viewed the film on Face-book.

I have gone through and analysed her response to our film further and said what I have learnt and how I would address the problems she has brought to light and talked about what went well that she has noticed. What her feedback has thought me is highlighted in Yellow.

On a whole:

In hindsight –

We would have probably left another day of filming after most of the editing because a lot of the problems with the film came from us having to settle with certain shots postproduction because we didn’t have a backup filming day.

Enjoyment –

By the amount of positive comments we got from people in our target audience via social networking site Face-book – I would say that they enjoyed it. The audience even found both the romance and the humour in the film.  The music seemed to come up a lot as being good and well timed.

Characters –

the feedback about the characters was that the acting was actually quite impressive. A few spectators even said that they found them quite relatable especially in that situation.

Did they understand it –

There were some issues with some of the audience understanding the flashback scenes due to perhaps there not being enough of them, or clear enough indicators that they were indeed flashbacks.

Other than that however they did seem to understand what was going on in terms of the fact that they weren’t really hitting it off at first but then they get along and the girl gets a bit of a wrong impression.

The aims we had before setting out to create this film for our target audience:

• For people to understand the concept behind our film – that the two characters live their lives seeing each other so many times but only think they met once.
• For people to like and grasp the fact that the situation could happen to anyone
• For people to find the humour in our romantic comedy

All of these aims I feel were achieved on the whole.

POSTER

The target audience for our poster would be the same as that for our film.

We would try and display it in youth occupied locations (student campuses) and websites (social networking sites)

Before deciding on which poster we felt would appeal to our target audience best we made these three posters:

General Audience feedback on them was:

1. The first one didn't really look like a poster and suggested too much of a relationship

2. This one was too complicated and picture-like for a film poster

3 The third was the most favourable by our audience but it needed some tweaking.

.

We learnt that all three posters needed some work to be done but we were only to develop one which we felt was the most suitable and professional, so we decided to go with poster 3.

After deciding on poster 3 due to the comments we had to decide what title positioning worked best on the poster and so did a poll on our target audience to decide which they liked best and here it is:

So again we took the audience feedback on board and went with version 1 where the titling was at the bottom and the reviews at the top.

We took everything on board and made and uploaded our final poster on Face book and there were some good comments but they were also some negatives ones:

From this I have now learnt that posters aren't going to suit the tastes of all of my target audience. However as long as I plan, get their feedback throughout and have justified reasons for my decisions, my poster will be appealing to most of my target audience. Then again I do feel that if my photo was more bright and lively it would have better suited my genre. 

REVIEW

Little White Lies target audience:

25-35 year olds

Minority 18-25 year olds

Students and young professionals

Majority males

32 year old Maylo
"A good, well-written review which puts the film 'crossing paths' in today's context. It could do with some 'fleshing out' in descriptive terms, to give a more overall view of the whole scope of the film"

The fact that she complimented our review saying it was 'in todays context' is a particularly good compliment because of the fact that little white lies is quite a modern and 'hip' magazine. Therefore we have sucessfully writen in a tone which is both formal and informal like we were trying to. I agree with her criticism that the review could do with some more detail on the actual film. However I think this has occurred because it is a short film which means that the whole film could be described in few words so I didn't want to give too much away which is why I found myself trying to limit what I said in regards to the plot. 

23 year old Lucy
"This review makes me want to see the film 'crossing paths'. It gives enough information to tantalise the reader and makes me wonder what the twist might be. My only criticism might be the length of some of the sentences, made me a little confused."

In this case the review seems to have been successful because it has done its job and made her want to see the film in particular because of the way we made the 'twist' seem so interesting through our particular wording. I agree that some of the sentences are quite long and confusing but in my defence the Little white lies reviews oftend have complex sophisticated sentences.

25 year old Olivia 

"This review gives a very good insight into what the film is about and what to expect in the film. The language used was easy to read and light hearted which was easy to relate to"

This feedback was particularly positive and she did relate to it which is really good because she is in the target audience so we wrote mature enough for her but also with a young modern register as well. She mentioned that it was lighthearted which I am particularly pleased to hear because Little white lies reviews are quite lighthearted.

29 year old Joseph

He has noticed something that I tried really hard to do - not give any spoilers but still give a sense of what the film was about. This is a convention of little white lies as they never give away any spoilers but still make it interesting and in doing this makes readers want to see the film. The reason I probably slipped into using the pronoun we is because in the little white lies reviews they sometimes involve the readers by using personal pronouns like 'we'. We did try to give different prospectives of the characters which is why we said it that he lives up to 'his' full potential but on a wider-scale not so much.

4

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

Below is a Prezi I made to answer question 4 in a simple visual way. Watch following the path I've made or simply select the technology you'd like to read about.