Final Evaluation - Gareth Allen

Evaluation for Blog

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

· The Social Realism in our film has been used to target the audience so that they feel they can relate to the film themselves. This was done by the main character driving along day to day roads and we see him acting as if it is a normal day in his life.

· We also used thriller aspects in our film so that there isn’t just the one aspect in the film. We tried to make the unknown figure, kept unknown so the audience are questioning who they are.

· We didn’t use the technique of Mike Leigh’s where the characters are at different extremes of each other (mainly because there is only the one character and they didn’t use any dialogue throughout).

· The sounds used throughout are similar to other shorts in how we used both diegetic and non diegetic sounds in the film. This is used in other shorts such as ‘Joy Ride’, ‘Eight’ and ‘Slap’. We used mostly non diegetic sounds, such as the soundtrack at the start, middle and end of the film, except for the phone going, the car horn and the only words used at the end of the film.

· For editing this short, we felt that in traditional films, they use dissolve transitions to show a difference between time and we used this to indicate the difference between the dream world of the character, and the reality world. We also changed the soundtrack along with these transitions during the film.

• Mixtape uses music to express what is happening with little dialogue. We used this as inspiration for our film, we liked the idea of using hardly and dialogue and using music to express what was happening in our film. Mixtape uses music to show how one young child feels for another it sets the scene with an upbeat tempo. we wanted to use music rather than dialogue because it meant we could use faced paced music to make the audience feel on edge, we also sped up part of our film and we wanted to add something fast paced with a beat to it to add top the effect of going at a high speed.
• We used a variety of different editing techniques, we included a slowed down rewound clip of someone being run over. Traditionally in films this effect is used to show something that has happened or something that is about to happen. We used this effect as a memory that would appear frequently thought the film as flashbacks.


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

• I think that our two ancillary tasks the film review and the poster link both well together and with the film itself. We wanted the audience to question what was happening in the film and add some mystery to this so we felt we should do this with the poster also.

• We didn’t want the poster to give too much away so we used the film Red Road’s poster as inspiration for ours we tried to keep it as simple as possible.
• We used a shilloute as our main image to add the added effect of mystery which we also wanted to show in our film. Also the fact that the mysterious character that matt is chasings identity isn’t know the poster goes along with this kind of idea of no identities being known and nothing about the film is being given away.
• The bright background also makes the poster stand out and catch the audience’s eye, it also goes with the idea that matt has to wear a florescent jacket in the film and the florescent jacket he is also wearing in the image used for the review.
  

• We tried to create the review in the same format as in little white lies. We used an image from the film at the top of the page lie most of the articles have in the magazine. We also included the small colorued boxes on the left top corner above the text like the magazine does. We wanted it to look as realistic as possible like it belongs in the magazine.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

• We have received several positive comments form our audience to get these comments we posted out film and a blog link on Facebook and received some comments through here and also through You Tube itself.
  

• From these comments we have learnt that our film has worked very well using the conventions we decided on. Though many people were confused as to why our character was running around a scarp yard once we explained the story in detail to them they completely understood.
• We have had many positive comments on the soundtrack of our film and our audience have said it really adds to the feeling of the film.
  

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

• During the creation of our short film we were quite successful in using many different types of digital technology. These included two digital cameras to film with using mini DV tapes. I found these quite easy to use as we had used them last year however one of them filmed in wide screen and one of them did not we had to change this in final cut which I did not no how to do but was shown.
• We used final cut pro which I had some knowledge of how to use but learnt a lot of new skills on this program, these included how to slow scenes down and speed scenes up also how to rewind scenes and resize them so that they are wide screen.

http://files.lynda.com/files/finalcutstudio/index.html#fcp7

• We used garage band to create the soundtrack to our film however I didn’t really use garage band much as I didn’t play a big part in creating the sound but I did learn how to convert the files into an MP3 format to add to our film. I also learnt in final cut pro how to change the volume of clips meaning we could get rid of all the background noise and add music. I also learnt how to fade the music in and out which I did not no how to use before.
  

• The only we problem we seemed to have was with one of the cameras we were originally using a camera that Gareth had but when we went to log our work we found out it wasn’t possible as the camera was using a cassette sized tape and we should have been using mini DV’s. When we finally managed to log out work we saw it was of poor quality and we would defiantly not be able to use it so we took the decision to re-film with two digital cameras that used mini DV tapes.
• The blog was a big use of new media digital technology in the creating of our short film. I didn’t need to learn much to use the blog as we had used one last year. However I did learn how to upload links to with our film such as inspiration for our film and the link to our film itself. We had trouble at first working out how to upload our anamatic onto the blog but soon worked it out and didn’t have any trouble uploading our final film onto it. I also learnt how to upload images onto the blog as I did not now how to do this before and found it was quite easy once I new. This helped as then it was easy to upload the storyboard and various images to go with my research for the film and also images for the poster research and the initial poster ideas.

Essay Evaluation - Chloe McGlinchey

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

• The use of Social Realism in our film has been used to target the audience in a way which also connects to them. We had achieved this by using a young cast who were drivers and including the dangers and reality of falling asleep at the wheel and cause major disruption to other drivers on the road.
• During our film we also included some thriller. We added a mysterious figure to the story so the audience is thinking about what is happening all the while the film is playing and hopefully sending them about the dangers of being tired and driving.
• Looking at some of Andrea Arnolds work and again at our own film I have noticed some differences at the different aspects of Social Realism some including dialogue, camera work and soundtrack.
•

• The sounds used during our film are similar to the lines of short films “Joyride” “Eight and Slap” we mainly used non-diegetic sounds such as the soundtrack (as we used garage band to make our own music to make it feel more unique and individual) which carried through the start, middle and end of the film.
• Editing our film came to be a bit of a struggle due to have a lot of different shots and then trying to piece everything together like a jigsaw to make it all flow. The similarities to other traditional films include using dissolving transitions to show differences in date and time. We also used this for the flashbacks in the film and allowing the audience to be slightly dazed and confused about the film.

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


• Our poster I believe to be fairly effective as it makes the audience think what the film may be about. However it doesn't give away any of the storyline. the colours contrast each other yet they work extremely well together to give the poster a more professional feel to it. Our inspiration for the designing of the poster was "Red Road" simply because of its effect and simplicity and as soon as we saw it, it caught our eye.
Not much text on either posters makes the posters much simpler and eye catching because of the colours that have been used.
The character is looking down and is silhouetted which gives the film a mysterious feeling.

• The review that was created for our film was written as though being published for "Little White Lies". We tried to be "chatty" yet formative throughout the written piece, making it personal to the reader. Also giving good reputation for both the film and magazine it was advertised it.
• We included an image in the bottom corner of the review as similarily featured in "Little White Lies" we wanted the review to be as realistic as though it would be published in the magazine, in that case we would have to include alot of detail to go into our review to make it seem enot so different from other reviews in the magazine.

• Because the target audience was aimed at males and females aged from 15 - 25, we used language that was understandable to everyone. Also "Little White Lies" do not usually include words that are challenging and want to connect with their readers in order to widen their target audience in order to boost their reputation therefore resulting in more sales of the magazine which will both give the film and magazine good media coverage.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

• Looking back at our audience feedback we had received several positive comments from our target audience as we had posted our film on YouTube, then from there we had posted a link on facebook aswell as setting up a group and asking for peoples general thoughts. We had also sent an attachment using e-mail for those who may not have facebook or various other reasons.
• Looking and discussing the comments that were made we had noticed a repeat pattern of people saying about how they were slightly confused about what the film and placement was about. We overcame this by explaining our film in full detail and also giving them the film synopsis also to read which then after being explained to they was then in understandment of what went on.
• The conventions of well known film directors: Mike Leigh, Ken Loach and Andrea Arnold. Differ in many ways in our film, these directors give out their characters lives more or less straight away. Where as we done the total opposite and chose not to show our characters lifestyles at all.
• Many positive comments were also made on the soundtrack of the film, the audience saying that was our strongest point making our film enjoyable and more effective. As the music flowed well with all of our scenes and shots.
http://www.youtube.com/watch=?v=F6bMj1kTWE
• Our audience was aimed at males and females aged from 15 - 25, because of the type of message we had put across to our audience including driving scenes we thought we would put it as a 15 due to the fact who we actually trying to target.
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and the evaluation stage?

• During the editing process i had learnt alot of different techniques and also using the same knowledge of the Foundation Portfolio. As other members of the group were able to use the best of their abilities with Final Cut Pro; i was able to learn from both their and my own mistakes and together we were able to produce a decent short film, If i were to any of it again i would perhaps find out more techniques that may of been successful at the editing process.
• Using garage band again i really enjoyed as i was able to play around a bit more freely and comfortably as i was made one of the "music makers" in the film. Mixing our own sounds gave us all a boost of confidence that we had definitely achieved a successful film and soundtrack, which all recieved positive feedback. During the process of making the soundtrack we did have a bit of a joke around with some of the sounds, but doing this we actually had included some sounds into our final piece as in a weird way it definitely flowed better.
• The blog allowed us to be responsible for our own posts giving us the opportunity to express our own feelings and opinion to what research we had done. And what work we had produced as a group. Being able to add videos and images to the blog gave it more character and gives people a feeling to our group personality with alot of information with doesn't overload people. Planning and research stages i felt were a lot more controlled and thorough as we all done our own individual research yet always come back as a group to discuss what we had watched, read and seen over the time we had. This also allowed us to talk about each others post explaining things others may not have of understood or recommended films that we had spoken about in our posts. We were also given freedom on our own drafts for what we would like our Ancillary Tasks to be like, Researching other posters and reviews gave us ideas of what we should include in our product.
• My part in the ancillary task definitely allowed me to show what i was good at. Having been studying Photoshop in more depth in other A2 lessons i did have a knowledge of what i was actually doing therefore being able to produce a fairly high quality professional looking poster. If i were to recreate the poster i may think about redoing the layout maybe so the figure is faced the other way and different colours and fonts on the poster itself.

Final Advanced Portfolio Evaluation - Matt Bull

(click each section to enlarge & zoom in)

Audience Feedback

‘well done, its really good! didn't quite understand the bit about the scrapyard though (I'm probably just missing something! lol)
The background music and filming were spot-on and I liked the way the scene was set at the beginning with the re-wind. Very impressed!’.- left on our video on youtube

'Good start, middle and great finish! Wasn't entirely sure what he was looking for in scrap yard..(new bumper..or boy in accident??) Loved the accompanying music. Well done'.- Left via facebook

'was very good but im not quite sure what was happening when he was running around the scrap yeard. i really liked the muisic it really set the scene and thought it was very good overall'- Danny Clough

' I didnt really understand what was happening, why was he running round bridges? it just confused me. the music was really good though. good job'- Luke Chesham

Final Ancillary Tasks - Matt Bull, Gareth Allen, Chloe McGlinchey & Hannah Sell

These are the final ancillary tasks for our advanced portfolio.

Matt Bull, Gareth Allen, Chloe McGlinchey & Hannah Sell

Final Draft Review - Matt Bull & Gareth Allen

This is our final draft design for our review. This is going to be the final piece we hand in, although if any tweaks need to be made we will.
We changed the size of the overall page to the same as a Little White Lies magazine (24cmx20cm), and therefore alterations had to be made to some parts of the page (picture size, layout) to fit everything in.

Matt Bull & Gareth Allen

Draft Review - Matt Bull & Gareth Allen

This is the first draft of the overall review spread for the Little White Lies magazine. It includes the image we chose from the film, and the copy that is posted in a earlier post, and put all together.

Matt Bull & Gareth Allen

Final poster design - Chloe McGlinchey & Hannah Sell

This is the final poster design for the film that we produced

Poster Draft 2 - Chloe McGlinchey & Hannah Sell

After a fair amount of experimenting with placement and colour this was coming up to be part of our final design. we still have to add a few more details to it such as a certificate and some newspaper or magazines reviews.

First Draft of Film Review - Gareth Allen & Matt Bull

This review is in the format of the typical reviews that you get in Little White Lies. We haven't used the font at this moment in time as this is a draft version but will do when producing for the final piece.

Gareth Allen & Matt Bull

Poster Draft - Chloe McGlinchey and Hannah Sell

After discussions with Gareth and Matt; we decided on this to be our first poster draft. We as a group had wanted to create something like the Red Road poster which had been our main influence for this Ancillary task. The poster design was to be created to draw the audience in and focus on our main character of the short film with contrasting colours to make it more eye catching.
Chloe and Hannah

Image for Poster- Hannah & Chloe

This is the image we have decided to use for our poster. We are going to make it look like a shilloette like on the Red Road poster. We have not decided on background or text colour yet but we are going to put the tittle over his face like on the red road poster. We have decided to use this image as it was the best one out of the five photos we took.

Hannah Sell & Chloe McGlinghey

The Final Film

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6bM7j1kTWE

This is the URL to our film that we have created, click on it to view. We would appreciate any comments you have for the film to be left either on our blog or on youtube underneath the video.

Gareth Allen, Matt Bull, Hannah Sell and Chloe McGlinchey

Review Layout Idea - Matt Bull

(click image to enlarge)This is the draft idea that I have come up with for the layout of our review of our film in the latest issue of Little White Lies in which the review will be placed. I have taken into account previous layouts that Little White Lies has and designed it around them so that it looks like it is a genuine review.

Matt Bull

Review Layout Idea - Gareth Allen

(Click image to enlarge)
This is the layout of the review that I came up with for our review. This is the same layout as the magazine Little White Lies, which is the magazine that reviews short films, like our film. This is why we have chosen this magazine instead of the other film magazines that are out, Empire and Total Film, because they normally review major Hollywood films that are coming out.

Gareth Allen

Research - "Little White Lies" - Matt Bull

(click images to enlarge)
Little White Lies is a magazine that for each issue, is focused on one particular film throughout through its front page, copy content, images and layout.
Within the copy it provides reviews, ratings and interviews with the people behind the film, as well as a vast amount of images showing more of the film.

Published and produced by The Church of England, the first issue was created as the final degree project of co-founder Danny Miller in 2001. The first issue was released in February 2005, printed in edition of 2500, and distributed only in UK Borders stores.

Rationale: "Becasue movies don't exist in a vacuum, we venture beyond the boundaries of the bog screen, exploring the worlds of music, art, politics and pop culture to inform and illustrate the medium we love. Bold, beautiful and unique, Little White Lies is a magazine on a mission - to reshape the debate across the movie landscape.

Other issues of Little White Lies can be seen via the link in the link section...

"Little White Lies" Review Layout - Matt Bull

(Click image to enlarge)

Completed Film - three

Matt Bull, Hannah Sell, Chloe McGlinchey & Gareth Allen

Completion of Short Film

Today (Monday 15th March) we completed producing and editing our short film.
After many hours of hard work including vast amounts of filming, and editing all of the pieces together.
Overall, as a group we are very pleased with the way the film has come out. With all of us putting in our own input, as well as group decisions on certain areas, it has been put together they way we wanted it.

Matt Bull, Chloe McGlinchey, Hannah Sell & Gareth Allen

Poster Ideas - Gareth Allen and Matt Bull

After having a few days to think about our poster design, we felt that the poster we had originally thought would be best for our film, seemed to have too much on the poster. Whilst looking through some different posters of films, we noticed the Red Road poster. This was a simple design and felt that it would be suitable for our poster. The image that there is on this poster is a silhouette of a woman that is in the film. This made us think that we could use the same style for our poster, and we could use either Matt or Gareth as the image on the poster.

Gareth Allen & Matt Bull

Poster Influence - Chloe McGlinchey

(click image to enlarge)

The poster above of "Red Road" has been an influence to our own poster we are in the middle of producing. The reason for this is because of the style and conventions of the poster as a whole; the way the designer has layered the images and text works well together because of the use of colours that contrast against each other. The fact that they have decided to silhouette the characters face gives the audience a glance of the film being mysterious and eerie.

Decisions on Poster

(click image to enlarge)
From the four posters we have all produced, we have decided to pick certain parts from each poster and produce the main/final design from it.
We are going to use a image of the main character looking over their shoulder from the first idea, but instead of the background being of a scrapyard, we were going to change it so that we use a light source (possibly headlights) to highlight the characters expressions, which is a style used in some posters we have researched. We will also take the picture of the main character from different angles (side-on etc.) so we can see which is best for the design.

Matt Bull, Chloe McGlinchey, Gareth Allen, Hannah Sell

Certificates - Film & Poster

U Universal – Suitable for all
It is impossible to predict what might upset any particular child. But a ‘U’ film should be suitable for audiences aged four years and over. ‘U’ films should be set within a positive moral framework and should offer reassuring counterbalances to any violence, threat or horror. If a work is particularly suitable for a pre-school child to view alone, this will be indicated in the Consumer Advice.
PG Parental Guidance – General viewing
Some scenes may be unsuitable for young children. Unaccompanied children of any age may watch. A ‘PG’ film should not disturb a child aged around eight or older. However, parents are advised to consider whether the content may upset younger or more sensitive children.
12A/12 – Suitable for 12 years and over
Exactly the same criteria are used to classify works at ‘12A’ and ‘12’. These categories are awarded where the material is suitable, in general, only for those aged 12 and over. Works
classified at these categories may upset children under 12 or contain material which many
parents will find unsuitable for them. The ‘12A’ category exists only for cinema films. No one younger than 12 may see a ‘12A’ film in a cinema unless accompanied by an adult, and films classified ‘12A’ are not recommended for a child below 12. An adult may take a younger child if, in their judgement, the film is suitable for that particular child. In such circumstances, responsibility for allowing a child under 12 to view lies with the accompanying adult. The ‘12’ category exists only for video works. No one younger than 12 may rent or buy a ‘12’ rated video work.
15 – Suitable only for 15 years and over
No one younger than 15 may see a ‘15’ film in a cinema. No one younger than 15 may rent or buy a ‘15’ rated video work.
18 – Suitable only for adults
No-one younger than 18 may see an ‘18’ film in a cinema. No-one younger than 18 may rent or buy an ‘18’ rated video.

Matt Bull, Gareth Allen, Hannah Sell & Chloe McGlinchey

Systems Go!

Today (Monday 8th March) we continued editing the footage that we have picked out as the best shots. after going through the footage, there are some things we need to re-film, but they wont take long to re-do. Also, Gareth produced the radio transcript to place over the top of the first part of the film...

Matt Bull, Hannah Sell, Chloe McGlinchey & Gareth Allen

Short Film Posters - Gareth Allen

(click image to enlarge)
These are all posters of short films that have been out recently. I decided to look at posters that are recent to see if there are any trends in what short film posters are including at the moment. With these posters, all except one of them use dark colours on the poster. This is effective I think on the posters as it gives the idea that something mysertious has happened in the film. This would be good for our poster as we are creating a thriller piece, so this would give off the idea that something mysterious is going to happen in the film. Again, all but one of these posters uses people on the poster. This is what we are also hoping to include on our poster.

Gareth Allen

Editing - Hannah Sell and Chloe McGlinchey

During our allotted time for editing we decided to make a few changes to the idea of our short film and thinking while watching what we already had. We decided to scrap the idea of the newspaper because we thought of a better and more effective start to the film which has widened our knowledge of using Final Cut Pro. The beginning and the end of the film are more or less exactly the same however the beginning will be slightly different and hopefully give the wow factor for the film. We also have yet to record our radio interview with Gareth and Chloe in which they will be talking about the themes and issues of our films story.

Individual Poster Design - Hannah Sell

This is my initial poster idea for our film. I wanted to emphasis the title of the film and the main point that our film is aiming to put across which is 'tiredness can kill'. The poster shows the tiredness can kill sign which appears in our film along with the tittle of the film over the top.