In what ways does your media product use, develop or conventions of real media products? (Question One)

Film

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The main inspiration for the opening sequence, e.g. the woods dream sequence is from ‘Eden’ by Justin Cane. This sequence uses similar shots, and focuses mostly on the altering of depth of field and focus from the foreground to background. This is something I used in my film as I feel like it gave a surreal and dreamlike atmosphere. Another main focus of ‘Eden’ is the fauna and flora of the woods. This is also something that I kept throughout my opening sequence.

One of the things that I changed for my opening sequence from anything that I have looked at, especially ‘Eden’ is the transition from the dream sequence to the waking world. In ‘Eden’ the transition is too artificial and doesn’t flow as that well with what I wanted to do. So to change this and make it more fluid I created a natural change of scene using an image the movement of the character to make it more natural.

The opening of ‘Daddy’ uses a slow track/steady cam to open the film; this makes it feel as if it searching through the house. I used this type of shot twice, the first I used it was during the opening sequence where it is cross cut with the dream sequence. In this shot I used a steady cam to search through the house until it gets to the bed of the main character. However in ‘Eden’ it is very smooth and natural, so I changed it to make it less flowing so it feels as if someone is searching for the character. Another place that I used a similar type of shot is when the main character is sat on the sofa; the camera slowly tracked forward toward the character. This creates the feeling of isolation as the only sound that can be heard is the ticking of a clock.

The image on the left is a still shot from ‘Don’t Leave Me’ and the right is taken from my short film ‘The Absence of Reality’. The reason I have chosen to compare these two scenes is because I have used the idea of a sharp focus and depth of field; but I changed what the camera us focused on, from the person to the mug of coffee. This is because it shows the audience what the person is focusing on, so it is a similar technique just used in a different manner, not to focus on what is happening, but to place the audience with the character

 

The comparison between these two is because of the focus on nature throughout both. But at this point during my film this nature theme has been ignored from the beginning of the scene. In ‘Eden’, on the left, the nature is out of focus and the character is, whereas I have placed the nature in focus and the character out. This is because it gives the effect of being lost again, even for a split second. It is also a mention to the earlier dream and shows thus the lack of trust in the characters reality.  


Audio Comparison

Audio Comparison

One of the instructions given to Helen when doing the music is that we wanted it similar to ‘Daddy; e.g. using only piano and that it must create a somewhat eerie atmosphere. When comparing it directly you can see that if ours was closer to the ‘Daddy’ sound it would be too much like horror. So we decided to make it more emotional than eerie. There are two different sections to our soundtrack though as we wanted to have a release of the tension. This is different to the soundtrack on ‘Daddy’ because the break of the tension created in that is diffused in the visuals, while it isn’t in ours.   

Poster

 

 

The colourisation in these posters are all similar; the yellow tint in the natural lighting is obviously enhanced digitally. This is something that we did on Photoshop to match the other films.

 

This is a comparison between my short film 'The Absence of Life' and institutionally produced 'The Descendants'. Here you can see the similarities between my product and a product made within institution. The area that is Pink shows the characters and where they are within the poster. You can see in my film the character is placed to the left of the film title, this is similar to the film on the right as the character who is prominant is also on the left; wlthough there are other characters under the title. The title placement (Blue) themselves are very similar; to the right of the frame, although mine is higher in the frame. The Yellow square shows the credits of who is in the film, this is similar placement in both posters, however in mine is lower and more centre than the institutionlised poster. The Green are the 'tagline' or name, within 'The Descendants' poster it is the most known name of the film and is thus the 'Banker' as people will see the movie as they recognise the name. The area in my poster is above the title but it is not the 'Banker' actor, it is who created the film as we felt it would be more eye catching. the area in Red is the date of release, in both it is coming soon; however the placement is different, in mine it is below the title and not the credits, this is again because it looks better in the frame and it seems more eye catching. The area in Cyan is something that is in one poster and is different, the cyan area shows the rating and a quote which isn't in the instituionalised shot because this is much before the release; however we felt that it was needed to fit with the genre.

 

The institution poster on the right is for 'The Tree' a drama based around the passing of a family member, so it is close in terms of narrative and feeling. The Blue area of the poster being the title credit shows that the placement between the two posters. They are very different as the poster image on the right has the title in the centre of the page because it makes it easier to see and also allows room for the characters to be prominant; this is while the image on the right is the majority of the frame while the image on the left has the landscape as the focus so the title is more to the top. The text in the Yellow box is the credits, however in my film they are smaller and more pushed together; this is because we only had a few and it would have not suited the style of the poster, however the larger styles are more typical of the industry. The Pink coloured box is the character placement, as you can see in the right image is the prominant image.

The landscape in this scene is very similar in terms of shape, it curves around the centre of the frame, this is important on both as it places the characters in the scene. The area in Pink, the characters are placed in the scenes very specifically. My poster on the left shows the character next to the titles, but 'I'm Here' on the right shows it above, closer to 'The Tree' layout. The area in Blue shows the titles are in two different places, the right poster has it more centred, however I didn't think that this would work well with the mise-en-scene of the poster. However the area in Yellow is the same on the posters as all posters have credits, rather they are indipendant or mainstream.

How effective is the combination of our main product and ancillary texts? (Question Two)

Ancillary texts (Poster and Reviews) are primarily used to advertise the main product (Short Film). This combination is shown throughout the poster and film because they share a similar style,

Here you can see that the same font was used in both products, this is because it creates a consistancy throughout the themes of both. However looking at industry products the poster designs normally favour a more simple font style. We decided against this because of the style of 'The absence of Reality'. The use of prolonged silence and very little dialogue shows that it is theme heavy and is about interpretation. This means that using the same font will allow for the transition to be easier and the main themes to be understood easier.

You can see above that the image for the poster has been taken from the short film directly. This also gives the theme of the film and makes it interesting for the audience. This is proven in the feedback recieved from facebook

Here people have shown their interest in seeing the short film and their interest in the themes. This shows that although it differs from what is found in real institutions it is still effective.









Review:

The review however uses a seperate font and style as it will be in a newspaper, who will use their own layouts and fonts.

What have you learned from your audience feedback? (Question 3)

Teacher Feedback

Throughout the media project I have had feedback from my tutor/teacher on how to improve my final products on every draft. This consisted of being given strengths and weaknesses of the blog to guide me in the correct direction. I took this advice on board and altered my products accordingly; these changes came in the form of changing specific shots throughout the sequence and even completely taking certain scenes out. The main place that this was placed was the basketball sequence; at first we didn’t have this sequence planned or shot because we had the beach scene. However after being told that this flashback sequence was one of my strengths adding another scene like this was advised.

After shooting the basketball sequence the first time we found that it was too staged, this was reinforced in the feedback we got from our teacher. So after taking this feedback on we re-shot it to be more natural. We also changed the characters in the sequence and used two other, younger actors who are aged between the main character and his first flashback. This allowed us to create a growth in age of the characters, and also allowed for the acting to be natural. This was majorly important as the first shot of the basketball sequence was too staged and didn’t look real, both us and our teacher agreed on this so it did need to be changed. As a group we decided at the begging that the ending would be open and up to the audience to decide how they would take it. Our teacher, in the feedback agreed with this. Although the first ending we had was too open and from our first piece of out-group feedback, we knew that we had to make the older brother’s death more obvious.

Our teacher feedback also gave us direction in our ancillary texts, for example the use of our names in the poster e.g. who did what in the credits. This was because we only worked in a two so it was difficult to write out who did what without repeating our names. But because of the poster that we looked at showed us the casts and directors names we had to repeat ourselves so it could look correct in comparison to the industry.

New media Feedback and Use

Facebook

Facebook is the easiest way to get feedback on all of our texts as it is just uploading images and videos. It is also very easy to find our target market on their because it is between 16 and 25 which is the mean age of our ‘friends’ on the site so it easy to get their feedback.

This gave us a lot of analytical advice and feedback on the poster:

However getting this information was something that we decided to do on the last edits of our texts as it is more ready for an audience to view it then. Also the teacher feedback was more useful at the start because that is advice within the industry. So the use of feedback from audiences was fulfilled more at the end of the progress because we didn’t want to deviate from what we wanted to do and we could just alter it at the end.

Keek

Using Keek to advertise and gain feedback was difficult and risky because it is a relatively new website that doesn’t have many users as twitter and Facebook. This means that there aren’t many people to give feedback because not many people would see the posts. So we didn’t get any feedback from Keek, but the site has potential to gain feedback because of its video sharing qualities.   

Twitter

Gaining feedback from twitter was easy because of the sites easy to find content. However because of the letter count it was difficult to get any feedback that could help in the design other than people just saying that they liked it or not. It is much more helpful to get full paragraphs and not just one sentence because that allows us to gage a much more accurate response. So we used twitter as more of an advertising technique to get people excited for the film rather than gain feedback. Also, because of the frenetic nature of the site it is very easy for these posts to get lost in the mass of content and not many people would see it or answer. This is because it is used as a small update device that people don’t focus on too much so it is difficult to keep people’s attention. This is why Facebook is more useful as people can focus on it and it allows for more time.

 

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

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

Final Film

The final edit has a few alterations. My name has been altered to have my full name. Also at the end of the short film the music has been kept but the volume lowered where the main character is sat against the wall. I feel that this use of non-diegetic sound makes it more powerful against the silence that is used earlier. 

Draft 10

This is a later draft of the film, however there are some minor issues. The first is the opening credits; where the credits read 'Mickey' it should read 'Michael Dearsley'. This is because it is more professional to have a full name, the shortening was used earlier as a place holder to make it easier to edit. Another part I want to change is near the end where it cross cuts between the character in present day and the other character walking out; here I think that the non-diagetic sound used throughout should run over quietly to the reality sequence. This will make the sound transitions less jaded and cumbersome.

Draft 9

Feedback & how to improve: 0:46 - Oridiginal Score, dropped frame 3:50 - Callum lying [shorter] 4:10 - Music to fade out when no woosh. Make music fade. 4:30 - Music ADD Peer said: The lighting is good, the way there is a cut from shot to shot is highly emotive. The way we have captured the relationship between the brothers, and the pain that can be caused after death and how it is expressed through the shots is extremely inspiring.

 

From the feedback from Facebook it is clear that the music and visuals are very effective. However some aspects of the film are difficult to understand.