Evaluation-Will

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

In two cars one night there are allot of shots that determine the characterisation of the characters. In two cars one night the main male character is trying to be the dominant figure, he is trying to convey traditional representations of masculinity by trying to act tough in front of the girl to try and impress her.

The shot above shows a sequence of shots where the conversation between the two youngsters is interrupted by and old man. The two react differently as you can see in the shot above it is an over-the-shoulder shot of the girl winding up her window, this could be a sign that she is scarred by him and would show a traditional representation of women that they are weak, even though in this film the girl is represented as very modern and sticks up for herself against the boy who is goading her. The boy nods at him as if to portray that he is not scarred and it is again an over the shoulder shot, as you see below.

If you compare the two shots the girl does not make eye contact with the man whereas the boy is looking straight into his eyes, to portray the notion that I explained above.So there is a mix here of the old and the new representations of gender and films and short films are supposed to portray some of these representations in their products, we did this as well. We showed the new representation of our main character, who is a teenager and in today’s society teens are represented in the media as rebellious and no respect for society and its rules and regulations (highlighted by the riots and student riots last summer), as you see below with two teens jumping the barrier at the train station.

We again showed this side of our character when he was stealing the bottle of alcohol, as you can see below.

A bit later on in two cars one night another man appears , but this guy looks a bit more menacing than the previous guy as you can see below.

The boy’s reaction again is two nod back at him, but it kind of puts him back into reality that in fact he is just a small boy and he does not have that much authority and all this bravado that he has shown just looks stupid. This is backed up by the fact that the girl asks him his age afterwards and it turns out that she is older than him, this brings his character is brought back down to earth and there is kind of a power shift from then on from the boy to the girl. This kind of happens in our film as well because Jack thinks he is above the law, but when he opens the door to the policeman the power shift happens and he is respecting his the rules and regulations now and it shows the old representation of young males, also when the music is playing in the flashback it kind of creates the mood that Jack thinks he is going to get caught for one of his crimes, but he gets away with it. So our character is shown to represent the new representation of teenagers and also the old ones as well. Also I feel that our representation of Jack as a teenager is a very real one because quite allot of teens think it’s acceptable to commit petty crimes, as seen in the student riots last summer, and allot of the times they get away with it for one reason or another, mainly because the police don’t have time to deal with these small cases or they simply don’t know about them and this is what our film shows. So the way we ended it was good in a way because if we had shown the policeman catching him for his crimes, then it would have been boring because there would have been no twist and two it’s not very accurate of what really goes on, I know allot of people who go out and get drunk and they commit petty crimes and most of the time they get away with it, but not all the time.

Genre

In short films there is often a mix of genres because they are often too short to really establish one genre so they are often a highbred of genres, which is what we have done. One genre that is used in our film is thriller. The elements of our film that use genre conventions are the use of a flash back, which is often used in thrillers because it works as that style of narrative in order to build tension. We also built tension up for the audience by putting in the music in the flash back.  A key thing is the clever storyline that has the audience fooled into thinking that Jack is going to get arrested for his crimes, but the twist at the end was not only a relief for jack, but also for the audience.  So we challenged forms of real media products where most of the time the bad guy gets caught for his crimes, whereas in our film he gets away with his crimes and although this does not send out a very good message I feel that it is a more accurate representation of what life really is because the police can’t catch everyone all the time.  

Editing post/production

We used some clever techniques in editing to portray the begging and the end of the flashback sequence. We used a sound bridge, this is where at the end of one scene, the sound from the next scene is heard, leading into that scene and we used this at the end of the flashback sequence. Below is our video and at 4:27 is the sound bridge 

Sound
When Bradley was waking up we used diegetic sound for the music in the background. We did this because it gives it sense of realism which we thought was important in the scenes not in the flashback and then in the flashback we used non-diegetic soundtrack in order to try and show the difference between reality and the flash back.

Above is a video clip of the film adulthood and in the clip at 3:24 mins it shows the main character taking his iPod out of the docking station which cuts out the music, which I think works really well because it gives the viewer a chance to see where the music is coming from and adds to the sense of realism. This gave us the inspiration to do it ourselves and below is a shot of Bradley doing the exact same thing.

        

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

I have had real trouble uploading my video, ive been trying to upload it for hours.

3,)What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

I put the film up on Facebook a couple of hours ago and got some good responses. I chose Facebook because the majority of people who use it are our target audience which is 15-25 so it was perfect for getting feedback from the target audience. Although all the comments are positives about the film which is nice, but its not very balanced. The reason they were all positives was becuase this that the people who commented where my friends so it might be a bit biased.

Also throught the editing we got feedback from you, Andy Hampson, Andrew Mann, Ollie ans Andy Paul which was very helpful. Especially with the sound because we had to tinker it quite allot especially in the flashback, but it has seemed to payed off with comentts such as” lovley use on non diegetic sound” from Matt aged 18 and “I liked your use of music throughout the film” from Rachel aged 20 and “the music was just an added bonus to an already good film” from Jack aged 17. So I have learnt that you have to listen to feedback especially well grounded negative feedback in order to improve your film.

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

http://prezi.com/rnjcj4qnspoz/how-did-you-use-new-media-technologies-in-the-construction-and-research-planning-and-evaluation-stages/

Final Review - Bradley Mills

Final Poster - Bradley Mills

Evaluation; Aditi

Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Genre.

Firstly, the main convention of a short film is that it doesn’t often follow or is based on a single specific genre but is a hybrid of a few different genres in order to create a unique and outstanding short film. The short films that I researched had elements of fiction/ fantasy and realism. For example in 2:20, a man is sitting and enjoying his meal in a basic and real environment is been handed over a pair of glasses by a mysterious woman which shows him the death time of the people he looks at. I wanted to reflect the thrill that the 2:20 creates in my film as well and use the knowledge from the previous AS coursework which we learnt. I’ve combined social realism and the conventions of a thriller. I thought that this would help me as I have a better understanding of a thriller than any other genre, also social realism because we’ve studied it in class previously on the course and this will be a good opportunity to reflect this on the task. The hybrid of social realism and thriller will help me convey a short narrative in a short period of time that engages my target audience and keeps them entertained.

Narrative

Because the film is has a restricted time limit, narrative and is more difficult to develop than feature length films. In the short film Colour bleed, the narrative of the film is short but snappy and is in real time yet it manages to clearly convey its narrative to the audience and creates a full story in a short period of time. In 2:20, the audience doesn’t have much characterization or set up for the narrative. In my film I decided to use similar shots as 2:20 because it works well for my idea of a thriller with the fast pace editing, less dialogues and restricted camera work. I decided to create the set up for the audience as I didn’t want to take any risks for the audience to not understand the film and the complex narrative. Therefore, I decided to follow Jack’s character’s daily routine but in a reverse chronological order to make my short film more interesting and engaging with active viewership as the audience have to work out what’s going on/ resolve the narrative as the beginning of our thriller like other thrillers raises questions.

Characterization.

·         Close –ups and mid- close- ups are used as a means of communicating the character’s emotions and feelings via their expressions and because of the short running time of the films its vital in shorts films to use close ups so that the audience can develop ideas about that particular character.

·         A few close-ups are used in my film where the police officer is questioning Jack – the shot reverse shot, this engages the audience and makes them think what’s going on in Jack’s mind, which they eventually find out.

Character’s representation:

The short films I researched showed a more diverse and modern representation but some of them had aspects of stereotypical views. The short films such as Barry, ColourBleed, About a girl and Two cars one night- they all have a strong female character or is based on a female dominant character, perhaps to show the shift in power and status in the genders as the society has moved on and also it shows equality amongst the characters. This however wasn’t the in the film Brief Encounter where the protagonist Laura is represented in a typically traditional manner but with a twist – as she cheats on her husband and family for another married man she met, but the fact that her voiceover throughout is her guilt and how she explains the audience that she’s wrong is basically teaching the spectator of that time what is right and wrong.

Laura was the voice of the people, she had a choice but did her duty of being an idol housewife Although she takes a big step of cheating and trying to become independent, her ethic and values come in between and she takes a back step- this probably was done on purpose by the director to show that this was a wrong decision she took and regretted but as she did the right thing by not moving on.

Laura’s character was of a housewife whose husband is the breadwinner while she stays at home looking after her family- this was a traditional representation but was perhaps true according to the time it was made in a more reserved and a patriarchal society. But, society and culture have moved on. Most popular representations confirmed to the dominant ideology of the time. Moving on, in ‘About a girl’ we see a completely opposite character to Laura’s, as she’s strong, independent, a girl of a modern society, makes her own decisions and doesn’t care about the world making herself fearless.

Also in the movie ‘Barry’, we were introduced to an unfortunate young girl from a working class family but has a disabled mother, which people around her use an excuse to mock about her. But she uses a rabbit as her best friend and a form of escapism. Although she’s constantly being bullied and has no other friends than Barry- her rabbit- she seems like a strong character as she ignores all the bullying around her and carries on doing her own thing.

In ColourBleed, the main character is a girl who is creative and idealistic, dreams of brighter days in a forgotten Eastern European city. Her fate is inextricably sealed when she crosses paths with a scheming, and enigmatic old woman, who harbours a dark secret. The film is based around her character and shows a very modern representation of femininity. This is shown by her being independent, free and also by her hair, make-up and the way she dresses up being a crucial part of her appearance.

Mise en Scene

       

      The short films I've researched they’ve varied in terms of using a variety of locations and keeping it simple by just one or two.

• In Two cars one night, the location is in its simplistic form as the whole film is shot in a car park, inside of two cars, interestingly the secondary characters do come and go past their cars but the location stays the same even till the very end.

• Similarly in Barry, the girl stays with her rabbit- Barry- mainly outdoors and in the park, but goes back to her house. They show about two to three different locations. This keeps the spectator engaged and not left feeling monotonous and bored of watching the same setting again and again. 

•  Most short films are situated in realistic situations and locations for example: restaurants, council housing, offices, trains and so on.

·             I decided to use these similar locations for my film. The plus point I had was: I could use a variety of different locations in one film with it being relevant to the narrative. 

• In the short films i’ve researched they’ve varied in terms of using a variety of locations and keeping it simple by just one or two.

• In Two cars one night, the location is in its simplistic form as the whole film is shot in a car park, inside of two cars, interestingly the secondary characters do come and go past their cars but the location stays the same even till the very end.

Similarly in Barry, the girl stays with her rabbit- Barry- mainly outdoors and in the park, but goes back to her house. They show about two to three different locations. This keeps the spectator engaged and not left feeling monotonous and bored, also it manages to keep the flow of the narrative without complicating it.

Narrative.

• The narrative is these short films have a twist to them, which makes them different from being monotones and boring. For example, in Barry, we find out that in the end her mother is disabled and her father looks after her, in Colourbleed we find out that the strict woman with the stamp- she’s also got the colours in her nails, and in 2:20 we find out that the old woman gave him the glasses that show the future death of everyone because he was the net one to die.

• Overall they all have a twist that makes these hybrid short films interesting and fun to watch.

• After analysing these films I decided that in my short film we must have a twist as well. In order to achieve that I decided that I should base the film as a suspense thriller but then in the end change the build up by making Jack- antagonist transform into a protagonist. And also tried to give a comedy feel because he starts to think that he’s committed a serious crime and goes into a flash back, but then we find out that he was just careless and left his wallet somewhere and the police officer just wanted to return it.

Post production.

• 
  In terms of sound-editing the films had sound bridges and a lot of diegetic sound leaving the diegetic sound as being used the least. Both Colourbleed and Barry use this as they both have soundtracks which help set a relevant mood for the film. Also the shortfilms used voiceovers which was effective which allows the viewer to feel a character’s feelings and emotions.

• The colour and brightness was a key feature of ColourBleed as they had special effects of colours bleeding from nails and bursting from the building. Therefore, they kept then whole film’s saturation low and overall colours very dull and booring, but later on as the narrative unfolds and the colour starts bleeding, you feel that this was done on purpose so that the coulors stand out and make the city a better place.

     

Poster.

Q3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

My target audience was amongst the age group of 15- 25 year olds. Therefore I firstly made a group (mixed males and females) friends watch my short film and then recorded their feedback. The feedback has mixed view both negative and positive.

The positive feedback was mostly their first reaction and they explained it in a few words such as “NICE!!, what? That was really good, interesting..” and so on. After asking them on what they liked and disliked about the film, their replies were as follows.

Vishal (Male, 20yrs): It was really good, the sound in the beginning works really well and I liked it. You don’t really expect it shocks you in a way and then the alarm clock scene, really well blended! The bit where he puts the music on and then picks the shirt up was well good!  And all the stealing CCTV scenes were really cool! Also when the voice in his head was the bit I liked and also in the end is it like a link to the first scene where it goes all black and you can only hear- it creates that thriller/ suspence feel to it when you watch, quite cleaver! Overall good piece of work.

Sophie (Female, 18): The bits with all the natural sounds like the tap water and walking on the concrete sounds good! The bit with the headphones and how they change the sound/ volume was well good!

Ishaan (Male, 20): Really interesting film, doesn’t get boring at all, nice work with all the fancy camera angles – when he enters the bathroom is good! And the humour you were trying to create was a good idea. I like it how the music is all tense and serious but he’s suppose to be drunk and doing funny things? Also the voiceover with the police officer is good, quite realistic when he comes to see the Jack guy. Well done

Swati(Female, 16): It’s quite good, I love the bit where the random inspector’s face but him talking comes up the screen, and the and stupidities are funny! I really liked the beginning when it’s all dark and you hear him walk? Sounds good! And then again in the end with the door was good!

Pip(Female, 17): I didn’t quite get the whole point of it? Like the scene with the camera zooming towards the end, it seems weird. Makes more sense after you explain the narrative.

Sophie(Female, 18): The music in the beginning bit could have been more interesting/ different, it’s boring when it’s quite.

Ishaan(Male, 20): The scene which are shot outside are really bad quality which takes away from the movie, and then vertigo effect which I can see you tried could’ve been smoother and put somewhere in the narrative where it would’ve made more sense. It seems like you’ve just put it for the sake of it.

Vidushi(Female, 22): Maybe the dialogues could have been better, choose professional actors to make it more believable, the zooming shot in the end is really good but could been improved- good effort though! The editing is very good, but some bits can be a bit more polished. Towards the end it feels like it’s been dragged a bit. And the bits filmed outside seemed slightly messy, but I guess that’s to create the realism feel, really good first short film though ;)


  These comments are made by the people who were in my target audience (15-25).

From this feedback, I’ve learnt that although people understood the concept, some of them thought it was a bit too confusing and a lot was going on. This could have been because of the complex narrative. But once they had watched the film through people did start to ask me questions if it was what they thought. I did get mixed feedback from people, some enjoyed it and some found bits of it boring as they thought it was dragging on a bit. They particularly enjoyed the diagetic and non- diagetic sound’s mixture. They like the whole idea of having a flash back as they’ve seen it in some previous films/ tv shows- and therefore the idea of reverse chronological narrative was “cool”. In terms of improvement, we could’ve improved on the sound track and experimented more and also the narrative could have been much simpler so that we can use a lot of editing, sound and camera work in a more experimental manner. The way we wanted to add the humour aspect in our short film didn’t come across as strong as could have. Also we can next time use professional actors instead of non-experienced in order to convey the character more effectively.

Finally, after getting all the feedback on my short film, we found out that people enjoyed our film but if a few more improvements were made then it would’ve been much better.

Q4.

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

http://prezi.com/154acnq0lage/edit/#19_4472262

Evaluation - Aditi

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

Last Night Film Posters - Bradley Mills

Poster option 1


The making of


I opened the picture into photoshop in an A3 format, I then edited the picture by going to Layer then New adjustment Layer and chose Brightness and contrast and adjusted the amount of contrast to give the picture darker shadows to create an enigma about the character.  I then added a new photo filter adjustment layer and picked a blue undertone, this gave the photo some cold tones which connotates to the story line and blue has police connotations, then i used the magnetic lasso tool to select the eyes i then went to filter and sharpened and increased the sharpness of the eyes to make them stand out as a key feature of the poster. I then used the burn tool along the left side of the face to add darkness and shadows to create an enigma about the character, i also used the burn tool to darken the whole background so that the face was the main focus of the photo, i then used some credits from the star treck movie poster by using the magic wand tool to deleted the background behind the text, i then used the opacity setting to have the text blend in with the image, I then chose a font from Dafont.com to use for my title as this font was used in our film to create synergy, i then selected layer style and added a blue drop shadow and a outer glow to the title this adds into the cool blue tones of the poster, i then added text for the cinema release dates actors names and tag line, i then added a new text layer and added numbers which i wanted to appear on the skin, i then brought the opacity level down to about 30 percent and used the layer style to bevel and emboss to wrap the text around the face i went to edit transform and then warp and used the contor circles to match around the facial structure.

Poster option 2


with the second poster i added a red photo filter and the burn tool to darken out the street and add a red undertone and added drop shadows to the title letters.


Pre poster

My previous experience with photoshop


In GCSE media studies I was asked to make a CD cover and back cover i could not locate the back cover but i took an estate tower and tilted it and had the track titles resting against the side of the building, I then added effects such as the outer glow to give it the effect that as on the front, i took a brick wall picture for the background and also added a dim red-ish glow to it, i added the london map on top of the wall with a red tone to it and added a puzzle effect to the picture for effect and added text blocks and key images at the bottom.


I achieved an A for this CD design but it has been a few years since i last used photoshop so i had to re familiarise myself with the application.

In year 11 I dressed as superman for non school uniform day and photoshopped a picture of me picking up a bolder and applied it to a city setting this was the last time I used photoshop.

This was the original poster posted by Aditi - I felt that it looked amateur and it had many flaws such as the text not being the text we used in the movie, the background was a plain brick wall and the credits were in the wrong place, also the images were not framed properly, as well as the date of birth on the passport not corresponding to the date the character gives in the film.


I decided to take more pictures myself and complete the poster myself and feel that the poster is now a part of my work that i can feel proud of, and I believe that is the most important part about producing work for others to view.

I believe that my movie posters incorporate the two main features from my original design the first poster has the character looking directly into the camera, and the second poster incorporates the character walking in the street lights alone.

Evaluation - Bradley Mills

1. In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products.

Genre

Titles

Due to the fact that most short films do not have a clear genre it was difficult for us to convey a certain feel or use generic conventions of similar style movies we had to take inspiration from all types of genres and artists.

Our Film

Our title that appears at the beginning of our movie doesn't challenge the conventions of a short film, as you can see we used the fade to black as an opportunity to have our text appear, we decided to use a  white font in order for the text to stand out against the dark background.

We chose to have the text appear over a sound bridge of the preceding and following scenes and as the title appears, the sound of the 'bottle' we see the character holding is heard smashing, symbolizing that the 'Last Night' involved some sort of mischief or problems for this character giving significance to the title and also linking the title to what is happening on in the film.

The BBC short film 'In The Meadow' uses a lot of the conventions that we have used such as the Capital White text on a Black Screen, the  differences are the size of the text and the positioning of the text, where we have placed ours bigger and towards the bottom left corner, with this BBC short film the title appears smaller and central to the screen.

Because we did not really have a specific genre we were not confined to using any particular fonts, we chose to use a font that wasn't too suggestive, the font we used was simple and modern which we feel gave us the desired effect we found the Font on Dafont.com.

Character

This is a shot taken from our movie it shows the character from behind looking towards the mirror, this gives the character a feeling of insecurity and most importantly shows the character in the space that he is in, in this case the bathroom which helps to develop the plot.

with the camera being behind the subject it almost allows the audience to feel as if they are monitoring the character and are always one step behind.

This shot taken from BBC short film 'My dream/Reality' shows the same thing but at a long shot with a bigger mirror, we see the character looking into the mirror suggesting that what she is thinking about is more important than what she is actually doing. The Mise en scene allows the audience to understand a little bit more about her, it suggests that she is a dancer due to her surroundings which are made clear by the long shot and the reflection.

Just like with our film we had to shoot the shot with the mirror at an angle in order for the camera not to be seen in the reflection this short from the BBC short film is shot in a way that the reflection can be seen but without ruining continuity.

This screen shot taken from our movie helps to show what kind of character this person is, it depicts a modern representation of 'Masculinity' and shows the male character looking into the mirror in order to adjust his appearance in this case applying gel into his hair.

This screen shot taken from our film portrays the police officer as a serious and stern man, this is usually the generic representation of a male authority figure however police officers in films usually catch the criminal in our movie the police man is oblivious to the criminal and actually helps him by returning something to him.




This shot taken from 'The Bill' depicts a serious and stern male authority figure,but unlike in our film this film he looks more aggressive because he is aware of the crime whereas our police officer is not.

Narrative

We used props such as the bottles of alcohol seen bellow to help tell the story about what happened to the character  this technique has been done before in movies such as 'The Hangover' the idea was to show that the character had woken up to a mess in which he had created the night before, and this triggers some fazed memories for the character which will later in the film somewhat be explained, in our case the flashback scenes explain why these bottles of alcohol are surrounding him.

This screen shot from the wake up scene in 'The Hangover' shows what we tried to achieve in our film but on a more elaborate scale, due to the higher budget that feature length films such as this have.Just as our film tried to use props to tell a story this film used props to connote activities and helped the audience to understand the plot without having to spell it all out.

We used the alarm clock in this screen shot to show the time, this helps to explain the narrative by providing a timeline, which are relevant to the sequence of events in our movie, particularly because there is a flashback sequence in our film and this could become confusing without providing a  time line.

I tried to help explain the narrative of the movie through the use of different clocks throughout the film whenever possible such as the CCTV shots and the shots with the alarm on screen, however sometimes i had to add in a text layer of the time in order to help the audience understand what was happening.

This screen grab from paranormal activity shows this technique being used to show a flashback sequence but instead on being a flash back to 'last night' it shows a flashback to '1988' like our movie where we added the text to show a date and time that we wanted in order to tell our story this footage was probably taken in the present day and then in editing the time and date would have been manipulated to suggest it was from the 80s.

2. how effective Is The Combination Of Your Main Product And Your Ancillary Tasks? - Bradley Mills

3. What Have You Learnt From Your Audience Feedback?

This Blog Post is all about me learning from others more about my movie, I want to be able to better my own ability to entertain and reach out to others through film making, I used social networking sites such as Facebook to receive comments about my movie, I pasted them the link from youtube and waited for a response.

Responses

Facebook

I searched on Facebook mainly for our movies target audience of males between the ages of 15-25 but i also wanted a more general view of our movie so I also asked outside of our target audience.

The biggest negative with using Facebook to receive feedback is that Facebook is a social website and not everyone wants to be bothered by questions about education related matters, particularly during half term, so for every ten people you ask to give you feedback on your project you will only get about 4 or 5 constructive responses.

I asked Tom aged 18: what he honestly thought about the film and his response was not what i expected "it was Hilarious..." the reason the response was surprising is because we hadn't set out to make a comedy, but we   never really had a genre so these kind of responses to our film had to be somewhat expected. Tom found the drunken scenes funny "and when your cousin pushes you into the bush lool'' these shots were supposed to show the character having fun but also starting to maybe overstep the boundaries of good and bad, i believe that the drunken scenes served there purpose because of the reaction of the audience but if they lost its feeling of nervousness for the main character then they were not effective, So i started to ask Tom and others did the fact that you found those drunk scenes funny did that stop you from being nervous about the characters problem with the policeman at his door.

Jack aged 21 replied ''no because when hes with the police man again i still thought he was gonna get arrested or something''

But the main opinion on this that I wanted to hear was from Tom because he mentioned the fact that he found the drunken scenes really funny Tom replied in answer to my question ''the funny parts made me think why he could be in trouble in with the feds and if the police knew about every crime he committed or just one'' This is the reply i was hoping for because if the atmosphere could have been ruined by these scenes if received poorly, however on reflection i feel as if it is good that the atmosphere does lighten up for these scenes because the character is experiencing fun at the time along with the audience and then later has to deal with the consequences of his actions, or so he thinks so along with the audience.

 When I asked Tom what particular shots he liked he replied " like the bathroom scene no joke the camera thing is sick and the music ipod bit" we shot the bathroom scene and at first it was one of our worst scenes because of the length of the shots, we decided to cut all the shots in this sequence down to be short and snappy and i am happy that this worked, I now know that if there is anything that you are unsure will be well received by your audience then you should change it until you are more confident in your product, and that sometimes a shot that is 2 seconds long can be just as effective as the same shot lasting 10 or 12 seconds sometimes a shot being short is actually better like in this circumstance. Where before we had negative feedback about this sequence now it has been highlighted as a good scene because of the changes we made.

I spent a lot of time editing this film, I had an idea in my head of how i wanted the music scene to be edited before we even started filming, i edited in the music and faded it up and down when the character moved closer to or further away from the music source, and when the music source changed from speakers to headphones i added a tinny effect to replicate that, to have the idea in my head and to be able to edit it the way i wanted and to receive positive feedback from that was nice to hear.

CCTV shot

Harry aged 23 ''i thought that was pretty good, with the security camera shots and some of the cuts were pretty sick'' The security CCTV shots were also an early idea i had in my mind before we started filming i felt as if there needed to be interesting ways to show these crimes because if it was just shot from one camera angle or one perspective the flashback scene being long would become boring, it also adds to the feeling of his actions being 'criminal' as we connote CCTV cameras with catching crime, and this suggests that the character will be caught adding to the tension.

Michael aged 16  left  a comment on  my wall in response to the video, he said he particularly  liked the shot at the beginning where we put the camera underneath the  bed in order to make the sequence more artistic, we cut from a high  angle shot to this one on the right, in order to show the character  getting out of bed which otherwise could have been a very dull shot.

Although Michael wasn't very particular with his comments I am happy with this piece of feedback because I felt at the time that  this shot would be good, at first the lighting wasn't right so we fixed the lighting by using the black umbrella instead of the white one to create a feeling of darkness whilst still being able to see the important footage and ended up with a nice shot that received some good  feedback.

JOE BARKLEY age 18 gave me a list of things he took from watching the  film

''good story line - thought provocative; so the audience make predictions and expectations

and then are relieved, and interested when proven wrong''

This  feedback was particularly useful because it was clearly from a member  of the target audience who understood the kind of constructive feedback i  was looking for and knew about media texts.

In  conclusion I have learnt from the feedback that the majority of this  target audience like the more experimental shots such as the CCTV and  the under the bed shot of the alarm clock and if i was to re do this  film project i would include many more artistic shots and try to provoke  stronger emotions from the audience

I also asked about my movie posters

the problem was I kept having to send links and pictures to everyone in order for them to see the posters and Facebook wanted to repeatedly security check me.

The problem with Facebook is that the feedback i was getting was not of a high quality and lacked any constructive criticism, so I asked two media students if they could watch my movie and leave some comments in the hope of gaining some better quality feedback.

Hannah and Hannah


''Overall I thought this was a good effective short film. I like the narrative structure you used as you cut back to the clips of the night before which refer to what is being said in the dialogue. I think your soundtrack was good and adding to the tone of the film and you had a good range of shots throughout. I especially liked the 2 scenes (supermarket and train station) where you used editing to make it look like a CCTV camera and it worked well as it looked like a real image a CCTV camera would see in the end. One thing I would say is that at time the image was just slightly too dark and so you couldn't see very well what was happening on camera as could of done if perhaps there was some extra lighting. Overall I thought this film was really well done and I liked the twist in your narrative at the end that threw where people thought the narrative was going, off track and added a sense of humour to it as well.''

The feedback I revived here made me think of my film more judgmentally whereas before with Facebook friends I was getting very basic responses with the two media students i gained some real insight, although Hannah and Hannah both aged 18 are in the right age range of our target audience, they are female which in a way is important in terms of seeing how well our movie has appealed outside of our target audience.

The movie Bridesmaids was successful not only because it appealed to its intended female audience but it also ended up appealing to the male audience too which had a 35% male audience as apposed to the 20% male audience usually expected for this genre of movie in its opening weekend so therefore I believe these comments are still very valuable to me as a film maker.

''I like the narrative structure you used as you cut back to the clips of the night before which refer to what is being said in the dialogue.''The point about the narrative structure is helpful because at the beginning of our process of making this film we did not really have a structure for how we were going to show the crime scenes, but I decided to use a chronological order to help the audience make sense of what they were seeing and I hoped that it all made sense to the viewer, this comment confirms that it helped.



''I think your soundtrack was good and adding to the tone of the film and you had a good range of shots throughout.''

The soundtrack was the hardest part about making our movie because I did not have a specific genre or feel that I had to portray to the audience I had to search through websites of royalty free music for hours in order to find a suitable soundtrack and the use of shots I feel could have and should have been more advanced and experimental so that's where I disagree with the comment.

The most helpful part of this criticism is the more constructive comments such as...

''One thing I would say is that at time the image was just slightly too dark and so you couldn't see very well what was happening on camera as could of done if perhaps there was some extra lighting.''

I believe that my group were too happy to cut corners in the making of this film and that showed in the scenes outside where we didn't use added lighting to enhance the quality of the footage this screen shot taken from our movie shows the lack of quality that the street lighting provided us with for our footage.

Poster option 1

Poster option 2

my Personal opinion about the posters is that i prefer poster option 1 but I decided to get some audience feedback online, and came to the conclusion that the majority of people prefer the poster option one, the key points that they were making where that the first poster seems to stand out more and look more professional I think that is because of the strong eye contact that is made with the first poster i believe this is key to the poster, the other key point i received from feedback is that the blue numbers made the poster look as if something interesting is going to happen in the movie.

i decided to ask people who had'nt seen the movie what they thought about the poster because they are the people that the poster would be targeting in real life.

4. How Did You Use New Media Technologies In The Construction, And Research, Planning And Evaluation Stages - Bradley Mills

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