Question 1

Question 1

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

Our film, Switch is based mainly in the genre of Comedy but has developed as there are some elements of the genre, action/crime in it as well. The key themes shown throughout our film was Thieft/ Robbery and East end- gangs. All through our film you can see the theme thieving/robbery as the double act Frank and Charlie do con after con in order to make money to buy their dream car. This shown when we see Frank and Charlie come up with the idea to cookie con, where they are seen going door to door trying to sell biscuit but failing miserably. We next the theme when the double get idea of begging for money as the pair stand on the corner of road asking for money, Charlie pretending to be blind and Frank holding the money tin. The last one was the actual SWITCH. When the pair arrange to meet with big time drug dealer, Big Pete; coning him and his body guard into thinking they have drugs which they made from sugar/flour, Frank and Charlie get away with taking a large sum of money from him. The double act, Frank and Charlie not being the most intelligent pair come up with most silly money schemes... this is very typical convention in comedy and is very similar the Chuckle brothers (Chuckle Vision) who come up with so many ideas to make money but end up failing by doing silly things. The double act is also very similar to Del boy and Rodney as they are a typical form of a comic duo. The other theme is of East End gangs is not typically something that you see in our genre and challenges the form/conventions. The other characters Big Pete and the Bodyguard who were briefly mention before are a representation of this theme and are shown through their hard facial expression, serious unapproachable body language, costume of a suit and props of large sum of money and drugs. This is similar to the characters Brick Top (played by Alan Ford) and his Bodyguard, Doug 'The Head' Denovitz (Mike Reid) in the film Snatch.

One of the settings being a staged hotel we challenged the stereotypical codes and conventions of it typically being in a house or it being outside. The setting of a hotel was used in a drug scene Frank and Charlie make the switch. We develop the idea by mixing action into our genre of comedy. The other setting is outside and is where most of the film takes place. An outside location is very typically in our genre which is convention, we used in our film. Characters are mainly seen doing silly in front of other people.

Question 2

Question 2

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

A source of ADVERTISTING a film is through the use of Posters and Review. The Posters have a clear industrial purpose of promoting the film or product to the target audience. Review to criticize the film. The review lets the audience know what points were good or bad in the film, and whether or not it is worth spending time or money to watch. Both posters and reviews work together as a package to engaging and trying to encourage the targeted audience to go and see the film so it sells. If the film is successful it brings the institution recognition.

Poster, Review and the Film are all very important for an institution and audience. The Film is the product that the institution is trying to sell to the target audience; who they want to enjoy the film so they would want to see other future film products that they may make. However it is important to the audience as they want to see something that they will find interesting and worth their money. The poster allows the institution to show off the film and connect with the audience. The audience get to see what the world of the film is about (genre) and it also appeals to the fan base of the genre; who may potentially go and watch the film if they like what they see. The review is essential to the institution as it tells them the good and bad aspect of their film and if the readers are loyal it benefits the magazine; the audience because they trust what the magazine say.

As part of our Ancillary tasks, we had to create a film poster and magazine review. The poster we created had to be similar to the genre of our film so we carried out research on other real media film poster in the comedy. Our main focus whilst researching was to look at the layout, compositions, font, colours etc. To see how it portrays the genre. In my research I found that the genre was represented through the actual image... e.g. their facial expression being silly so when coming to do my own I wanted to include this in my poster but however remembering that one of the themes is the east-end gangs; I decided to make some sort of seriousness. I had to create three different draft of my final poster; the images I decided to use are screen grab from my film as I wanted images used in my posters to have more relation and relevance to the film... this was the same for my film magazine review as well. All of them shared the same house-style along with the theme so it worked to together to send out the message to the audience of what the world of the film was about and also to create realism. The house-style posters was basically the same image screen grab from the film, same the sort of layout of the character with costume of a suit next to each with a silly serious facial expression represents the comedy and gangster elements; the consistent colour scheme (blue, black and white) and not too big bold font is representation of the double-act front to be something they’re not. The review I had to follow house-style of an existing film magazine which after research I choose to use Total film. Following the layout, language and style but also trying to keep it in relation to my film I used a screen grab of a scene in the film to help tell the story.

In conclusion to this I try to portray the world of the film and the character’s personality in the other film institution does to show off what the film is about, encouraging and appealing to my target audience/fan base of genre who may want to see the film. The poster got people asking questions whilst the review answering some of these questions and the film rounds up all the other questions, answering all the thing audiences are thinking.

Question 3

Question 3

What have you learnt from audience feedback?

Audience feedback is very important and essential because the film is being created for an audience and the aim is to meet their expectations for our genre (COMEDY). The whole purpose is for the audience to inform us on what else is needed for us to do to meet our goal and making the story clear to them. The first set of audience feedback I received was from several members of class in the pre -production stage (planning) for the Treatment, Script, Storyboard/Photo storyboard and Sound.

In creating the Treatment we had to pitch our ideas to several of our classmates. From this we received feedback on whether it sounded realistic; characters; whether the plot-points and story was stronger to carry out. It was explained to us that having to many characters may take long to film all them and may be complicated things as we are only doing a short film. The organisation of which the story had been written needed to be more simplistic and shown throughout the beginning till the end. On the other hand we also received good feedback on how the short plot-points in the story were very interesting and worked really well. It has a lot of potential and the ideas are adventurous. After receiving this feedback made changes to our treatment also changing the title from Heist to Switch. The changes that were made was that the story was more organised, making the themes stand out throughout the treatment. We decided to only use four characters, mainly comic duo/double act to save time and so it was easy to manage. Following this we then received feedback again from several classmates on our second treatment which was primarily positive. My classmate feedback overall said that there was not any vital elements of the treatment that need to be changed as the changes made from the first to second draft was successful.

Many changes were made to the Script before we came to our final one. We received feedback on our script which caused us to make changes three times some being just manor changes. The feedback we received was that there was too much dialogue and be a silent film there should not be too and should focus on mainly the visual elements. We therefore decided that we would have to cut down and exclude some of our dialogue; instead of them having speech used dialogue boxes. Adding no voiceover and including more action. This was all achieved in our final draft and found to be more victorious. We also had problem with location because we was unsure as it was brought to our notice by a member in our class that staging a hotel may “bring down the production value”. We made the decision to change the location and causing changes to our script but because of weather conditions on the day of shooting. We were unable to proceed and had to change it back to our original idea. Which we successful managed to pull off without bring down the production value.

The Storyboard/Photo storyboard many different feedbacks from members in class were given to us on whether the shot we chose to use was interesting, what could look better and what was not needed. Showing this to members in class and other media students, we found that some shots were either missing such as the shots of how the double act got to find the drugs. These basic or very interesting if we managed to pull it off in the production stage. From this we meet as a group and made changes by adding more shots, making the basic shots more interesting by adding tilts, zooms, pans etc. We also thought about how we would maintain these interesting shots in production. After re-showing our new storyboards we received positive feedback.

When researching the sort of Sound that is used in our genre, Comedy I found the soundtrack to be loud/upbeat, silly and crazy. The first few non-diegetic sound I found, fit these descriptions but after receiving the feedback from several members in my class saying that it portrayed but did not fit world of my story because even though my film was under the genre comedy it still had some elements of crime/action in it. I realised that overall this kind of music is the right theme and sound but at the same time it was too classical for the world of my film. I seemed to be too “Retro comical” and would best for a “black and white film”. It was also said that I would need to get upbeat/action music so I decided to make decision to look at comical action film like Snatch and Bad boys to see what type of sound was used. Later on noticing the pattern of low-orchestral sound in the background when there was no major action and low upbeat sound when there was; I began to search for the new sound that could be potential sound used in our film. After the second set of sound we realised that it was the important and difficult part because even though you may get sound that you think sounds good. Does not mean it would fit the action. Coming realisation from this we decided to leave the parts that were difficult to find music to match and screen our un-finished to a small audience asking them what believed would suit the particular scene. “Low-funky music” was suggested by one person in the audience and everyone else agreed. Taking into account what was said I went off again, looking for some music of this sort and found a couple which I felt was likely to merge with the rest of the music that we already had. Knowing that having too much music could sound really messy and my aim was to bridge the clips together with the music; I want sound that I could not use for one scene. Final when we had put all the music together and were happy with it, we screen it to year 9 class and question them on it. One member of class claimed that “The music was excellent... as it really fit the film!”

After completing our film and both Ancillary tasks we showed our film to the rest of the students in our class and they gave us positive feedback on our film, they thought it was very funny/ interesting and the use of effects added realism to the scene. Overall without the feedback we receive from our audience we would not have been able to make our film as successful as we did because it was from their opinions of what they wanted that we made the changes from, to make our better.

Evaluation 4

Question 4

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

Media technologies were used in the construction and research, planning and evaluation throughout. These four stages needed many elements from different technologies in order help me succeed in creating the final product of our film. The main technology which had a major impact on these four stages was the INTERNET as it was used throughout and also linked with many other technologies that were used; this will be explained and shown further, later on in my answer. Furthermore the ways in which internet was used as a whole was through BROWSING. Browse – surfing the internet or World Wide Web, which I did to look at different website page. For example websites such as YouTube, Google, 1001 fonts, Slide share/Kizoa and London gird for learning.

YouTube – a video sharing website which was mainly of use for the research stage but also in planning, as I needed the site to find and look at other examples of video/clips of similar film in the genre, Comedy. In doing this I was able to have a better all around understanding on the conventions of this genre; why it was so effective and how I can develop these things into my ideas when I come to the construction of my film. An example of this was when watching clips so I could study the convention of CHARACTERS. I learnt to understand character motivation, and learning how to build character motivations for my own STRONG CHARACTERS in planning stage.

Google – A web search engine: information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on the World Wide Web. I used Google for many things such as gathering information and pictures; surfing for other websites that contain information useful/relevant, to what I may need when coming to planning. From this I was able to get more ideas and develop the ones which I already had in mind then apply these developed in an action in my film. E.g. for my construction stage of the Ancillary task 1, the poster I used the images I gathered from the research of other existing poster. I looked at the way in which the layout, text and images were position and used it improve on my ideas of how I wanted my poster.

1001 fonts – An online font bank which I used in my research and construction stage. I started through researching the fonts on other existing poster of my genre and learnt the sort font that I would need for my mine so it would have a similar professional look; from this a gathered fonts from 1001 fonts incorporated my chosen font style into my poster.

Slide share – an online slide hosting service which you are able to upload files and share it. Like Slide share, Kizoa is very similar but more advance because although you are uploading slides, you can actually create the slide from scratch online where else with Slide share you have uploaded it from a PowerPoint. These websites were mainly used in the planning stage when came to uploading my storyboard, photo storyboard etc. I made these things into slideshow that I could access/ viewed on my BLOG.

LGFL (London Grid for Learning) – has an online audio bank which you are able to download copyright free sound/music. This was of use in the planning stage because I used to the website to gathered potential music for the construction stage which I then added the ones which fit best into the final film.

Furthermore although the Blog may come under Internet, it could also be counted as another new media technology itself. The Blog – is an online journal/website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events or other multimedia such as graphics and videos. Everything which was done ended up being post on the Blogs so it was used through all of the stages. I had pervious skills in using it and learnt that just post writing could look very dull and boring. When taking what I learnt into account in A2 I decided to not just post writing but make it creative by using slideshows and other multimedia such as pictures and videos.

Another technology was the different HARDWARES technologies used such as Still camera, Canon XH A1 (film cam), Sound equipment and the Computer & Scanner.

I used two cameras: the Still camera which I used in the research and planning stage, to experiment creative shots of things using different angles; making an object of image look like it is something else (deceiving the eye). This experiment was to discover interesting shots that we may be able to incorporate when actually doing the construction stage. Used in the planning stage for the photo storyboard. The second camera was the Canon XH A1, film camera which was used in the construction of my film. In taking creative interesting image with the still camera, I wanted to continue this in construction stage so instead of doing a basic shot of the actor walking towards the camera. I decided to try the shot out from doing angles with zooms and pans to make it above the basic level.

The Sound equipment in which I used in the construction stage, I had pervious skills in using it and found that it was very fragile and picks up any sort of sound. When I came to applying my knowledge in A2 I would first do a proper sound-check then position the sound equipment in a place where I think it would be best. For example in scene one when the double act where walking, I did numerous amount of sound checks to see what was the most appropriate place to put the sound equipment. This was to ensure that it would not pick every little sound around as we were at the side of the school it was picking up the students talking. However when I re-positioned the sound equipment in another corner, it was decreased the amount of noise being picked up.

The Computer was used in all of the stages and also linked with most of the other new media technologies. For example I needed the computer to surf the internet in the research stage; also in the planning and construction stage the software’s installed in the computer to create things such as my photo storyboard, blog and the ancillary tasks etc. The Scanner was used in the planning and construction stage to scan in the hand drawn storyboard and for the ancillary task other existing film review magazines.

In conclusion to this was the SOFTWARES in which were used such as Microsoft packages, Paint, Abode Photoshop, Corel Photo Impact and Adobe Premiere Pro.

I used a variety of Microsoft Office software for example Publisher and Power Point. Publisher was used in the construction stage of my Ancillary task 1, the film review. This software was used it is more suitable for what I wanted to do. For example its focus is placed on page layout and design differs from Word which more based on text composition and proofing. Microsoft Office PowerPoint was used in my planning stage to actually create the document for photo storyboard which was very efficient as I didn’t have to insert the photographs one by one because with the new upgraded version I was able to use the album tool which allowed me just select the album and it uploads it all together. This was also very fast and saved a lot of time. Furthermore when I had finished the document I uploaded it on the internet using share slide.

Adobe Premiere Pro, a professional real-time, timeline based video editing software program. Adobe Premiere Pro was used throughout the main construction of the production my film... the PUTING THE FILM TOGETHER! I had some skills of capturing, digitalising and arranging but in A2 I learnt how to use it more confidently and was able to change the speed of a shot which I found useful in speeding up many shots that were slow and wasting time such as the toilet scene when the body guard was be followed by the double act. This was found to be very long and wasted a lot of time so we cut out parts of the shot and sped it up. Other effects which could make the film more eye-pleasing for the audience were used such as dip to black and adjusting the effect through Customizing effect presets, using Motion and Colour correction. An example of where I used these effects was in the cookie scene when a dip to black was used in for the montage shots of the doors slamming, making it fit together better and flowing. Effect adjustments were used in the screen drag effect on the shot where frank pulls Charlie out of the frame and after audience feedback on the effect needing to being sped up so it was more effective, I changed the motion. Colour correction was used in the last scene of switch when there was a flashback of frank and Charlie when they were making the fake drugs.

Paint is very simple/easy to use software which I used in the construction stage to crop photographs from the film for the ancillary tasks. In AS I would have to you the select tool then right click and copy to… but in A2 I was able use the crop tool and just save because of the software advancements. However when it came to the actual creation and editing the image in the construction of my ancillary two (the poster); I found it more useful to use Abode Photoshop as this software has tool/features such as the lasso tool which enables me go around the outline of any part of an image freely. Another tool/feature that was used is layers. Layers used throughout as it offers me the ability to make much more slight changes to my image by utilizing opacity, blend styles, and other options. Layers also made it easy to remove one edit without affecting the others whilst I was working. These are all tools/features that the Paint doesn’t have as it is more simplicity and only has basic tools/features such as crop and shape. After creating one of posters using Abode Photoshop I felt as though the poster had something missing (poster 1 with the white background) and I was finding it quiet complicated so I decide to try another program, Corel Photo impact. Corel Photo Impact was more effective for me than Photoshop and Paint because it was very easy to access around it and also had more advanced features such as the clone airbrush tool. Instead of cropping or cutting freely you clone the part of the image you want into any other image or even the same image; this I found to be very fast and easy to use. Corel Photo Impact also features such as special effect which enabled me to add textures to my image. E.g. making my image look comic strip, distort or even just artistic. Furthermore these were all feature I could not found in the Paint or was complicated and would take very long in Photoshop.