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

Film:

For our short film we decided to create a social realism. It is about a young girl, named Mia, whose birthday is approaching. Whilst looking for her present she discovers a diary which reveals that she has been adopted. The film follows the life of Danielle (Mia’s birth mother) and tells the story of her tragic abuse. We decided to give our film the title “The Birthday”. We used this as we didn’t want to give too much of the story away. Initially we were going to call it “The Birthday Surprise” but decided it did not work due to the fact that it sounded more like a comedy film. The equilibrium is at the beginning of the film, where we see Mia and her mother having a conversation. Everything seems normal and there are no complications. The equilibrium allows the setting and time to be made known. However it doesn’t last long as the disruption occurs in the first scene. This is when Mia is searching the house for her present and she happens to find the diary.

Social realism films are made in order to show real life situations and make the audience think about the society they live in. These genre films usually tell the story of a broken family and we decided to take this approach. The film we made is similar to the comedy/drama “East Is East”. Both of the films portray scenes of violent abuse within the family. The characters in our film are typical of those in social realism films. Danielle’s step father Daniel is very similar to the character “Ray” in “Nil by Mouth”. Both characters are abusive and use vile language. The facial expressions Danielle’s character used were very clear and effective. Similar to some of the characters in “East is East”. This helped to show the feelings of the characters reinforcing the realism that was trying to be portrayed. The costumes used were also for the same reason. Casual clothes were used to show the characters were if a lower class like in the film sweet sixteen.

In “The Birthday” the main prop that was used was the diary. The diary played an important part in the film as the storyline revolves around it. Without the diary the story would not make any sense. The diary was shown a lot throughout the film and was used from the first scene.

Throughout the film a hand held camera style is used. This, along with the invisible editing is used to portray the realism.

Film Poster:

The film poster that I made follows the forms and conventions of film posters that I analysed such as “enough” and “provoked” these forms and conventions where things such as choice of font type and size and images to grab the audience’s attention but also informs the audience of what genre the film belongs to, in this case social realism. A typical convention of a poster is to have the main character(s) as the image, a bold title to draw the audience to poster/film, and most importantly critical acclaim which influences the audience into watching the film depending on how well the reviews or ratings were. The genre of my film is communicated to my target audience through the image used, of the main character in the background of the poster of a young teenage girl reading a diary which may

appeal to our target audience, teenagers. As ‘The Birthday’ is about a teenage girl that experiences struggles in her life it informs teenage girls about social issues that may occur in their life, so makes it relatable to the target audience. As well as the characters clothing suggests that she is from a working class background, which can also be relatable. Also formal language is used with very little text is used other than the critical acclaim used; this is so the target audience are not bombarded with too much information at one time and the storyline is still kept hidden.The purpose of our film awareness to parents and teenagers and could help teenagers talk about certain issues that are going through in their lives so the film is ideally made to inform but is also a form of entertainment. The written language we have used is to communicate with our target audience as it is informal, and most young teenagers use informal language. The tagline of our film is short and informal also the typography is not in times new roman but in a font that is easy to read and attracts the audience’s attention. The tagline of our poster is “Mia thinks she is a normal teenager, but on her 16 th birthday life will change forever” this tagline doesn’t give away any of the film but gives the audience a slight idea to what the film is about but enough to keep them guessing and wanting to see the film.

Film review page:

We analysed three magazine reviews which all had different main focuses, they varied form narrative to background of the director. The layout of the film review is somewhat similar to those that I had analysed and was inspired by Total Film. As shown above, both the film review that I have created and Total Film share similarities for instance, both are split into four columns, both have relatively large pictures, the name of the films are written in bold with the ratings written next to it in red. The first column is dedicated to background information on the production i.e. the director, cast etc, and a brief synopsis. Lastly they both use stars as a form of rating the films. Throughout my review I consistently made references to narrative, genre and the director. I specifically chose

narrative as our main focus as our film may be difficult to understand, so throughout the review I tried to explain the storyline without revealing too much. As our film conformed to the conventions of a social realist film, we lacked a unique selling point, but like other social realist films we decided to choose the director as the USP, thus the reason why it was one of the main focuses in the review. For the picture, I used a still-image of Reean sitting at the bus stop. I chose this particular image as it enables the audience to identify the genre of our film through the use of mise-en-scene the depressed look on the characters face, the fact that she is sitting at a bus stop and the costume that she is wearing suggests that she is not from a wealthy background. These are all typical of a social realist film. Through this image it is simple for our audience to identify that it is a drama of some sort which would attract our target audience to our film as teenagers seem to respond well to drama. The form in which we chose to rate our film was with stars and it was laid out in four columns (as previously mentioned above) I also tried to follow the conventions of other magazine reviews by including a text wrap insert which reads ‘all round this film is a must see’ this draws the audience to reading the review which therefore creates the desire to watch the film. The language used in the film review was formal although our target audience are teenagers the tone of the review reflects the genre of film it’s self.

2) How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary text?

1. Genre

In the poster the genre of the film is portrayed by the imagery which shows a domestic setting, this is common in a social realism film e.g. the use of mise en scene such as costume which is clothing that normal working class people wear. The review also reflects the genre by the synopsis e.g. the quote “mother raped by step dad” this informs the audience that there is domestic violence which is common in society and happens mainly behind closed door without anyone seeing. Our film also portrays social realism by the use of mise en scene e.g. the location was set mainly in real houses and a real hospital (Whips Cross hospital) this is typical of the genre because it is about people and their real-life situations. The costumes e.g. jeans and top is typical of the genre, sound such as digetic and non-digetic sounds makes the audience sympathise with the characters. These all link together because they all use the same technique to reflect the genre of the film more successful in achieving this and gain good reviews from the audience.

2. Clear target audience

Our film as well as the poster and the magazine review, have a clear target audience as the film has several representations of social issues such as teen pregnancy, rape and abuse. Primarily, our target audience would be those who have experienced or are experienced these issues before. As well as the film appealing to those going through similar issues, it also appeals to those who particularly like drama, commonly teenagers. We were also able to illustrate our target audience through the choice of characters, mise-en-scene. Danielle (Reean) age reflects the audiences.

3. A coherent approach to representation

Representation of age is shown through characters costume i.e the main character Danielle. Representation of class is also shown through the location; Danielle sitting at the bus stop in the

magazine review page indicates that she is of a lower class. The representation of teenage pregnancy is represented through location, the hospital and the use of props, i.e pregnancy test in the bathroom scene. While she is on her way back from hospital on the bus a point of view shot is used this shows her looking outside the window at a buggy, this is a representation of adoption and the repercussions, the feeling of reject. In terms of the representation of abuse/ domestic violence this is shown through the step dad’s character, he is aggressive, domineering, drunk, and a strong male, these are typical characteristics of an abuser.

4. Themes/narrative

In terms of themes/narrative the images in both the poster and the magazine review page are very clearly presented, as the audience are able to identify the genre through the use of the particular selected still images. As previously stated this is evident through the fact that she is sitting at a bus stop, which indicates that she is of a lower class. The image used in the poster where Mia is sitting in her bedroom through the use of mise- en- scene i.e. everyday costume, and the fact that she is holding a personal diary reflects real life which could indicate that it is a social realism film

5 and 6. (Characters, unique selling point)

The magazine poster and the film review show a successful example of where we have created a synergy between media texts. Both texts state that our film is a “tear jerking true story”. In the film review there is an image of “Danielle” sitting alone at a bus stop. From this picture we can see that she is pregnant and her clothes show she does not have much money. This shows that she may be struggling and has no support. In the film poster there is an image of “Mia” reading the diary. From the film you will know that the two images link, as the diary tells the story of what is happening in the image on the film review. The image on the poster is quite dark and “Mia’s” face is not seen. The main focus of the image is the diary as it is the most important element if the film.

3) What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We handed out 20 questionnaires to our selected target audience of teenagers 16-19. The majority of our target audience thought that our initial idea was good and that they would watch this type of film in the cinema, thus making our film a successful. On the other hand, some of our target audience didn’t think that our initial idea was good so they gave us feedback that the issues we were trying to raise could be hard to film i.e. the rape scene and the pregnancy so they advised us to change the story-line and genre, although this was positive criticism, we resolved this by filming characters from behind and during the rape scene we included more aggressive, abusive dialogue than physical. As our audience felt that our film was hard to comprehend, we altered the voice over to inform the audience of who plays different roles. We took our target audiences advice and changed certain characters in the sequence as they didn’t quite suit the role that they played, which in turn made the film seem unrealistic. As a result we re-filmed, edited and altered one of the characters, we also added in special effects such as black and white to show the change in time this was another issue that the audience brought forward, which was that there was no differentiation in time as we had not yet adjusted the colour of the flashbacks.

We learnt from our reaction sheets that the audience thought that our products altogether where satisfactory overall, but minor changes needed to made such as editing, text, voiceovers etc. We also learned that our products appealed to the target audience and the end product was successful. We thought that doing a social realism film will appeal to our audience as 80% of our audience said they enjoyed watching social realist films and 20% didn’t which meant that the majority of our target audience liked the concept of social- realist films.

For the film poster they said that it wouldn’t appeal to their age group, as the language was to formal and it didn’t include enough images that you would typically see in posters i.e. certificate rating e.tc so. They also said that our tagline was a bit too simple. They also thought that we could have chosen a better image as the quality of the image was poor, although we were aiming for the audience to be able to identify the genre of the film by the image, which they were. We changed the language to informal added pictures and a more informal font. For the review page they said that it was fairly good but it needed to be put into a review page layout and include more criticism as the review was mainly positive and like most films it needed to have some sort of negative criticism. From the draft of our magazine layout our audience thought that we should include a short synopsis of our film as again our film may be perceived as a bit difficult to understand.

This question was very significant as our audience’s response to this question shaped what issues were represented in our film. As you can see above, Fifty percent of the audience said that they would expect to see ‘crime’ in our film, however although crime is also a typical of a social realist drama, we decided to incorporate abuse, family-life, rape and abortion in our film to reflect what others may be experiencing in their lives, thus making it relatable. We also wanted to go against the convention of the obvious ‘crime’ shown associated in most modern social realism films, i.e. kidulthood etc

The audience’s feedback from our rough cut was that fifty percent proposed that our film should end with a cliff hanger (open narrative) in order to conform to social realism convention, and so we decided to make our film have a un- resolved ending which allows our audience to wonder what happened next.

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

In our film we used new media technology e.g. we used internet research to view different films which enabled us to do our textual analysis, the reason we did this was so that we gained knowledge of films which are similar to our genre and it gave us an idea of the different emotions as well as shots that suits our particular genre. We also used different research to get reviews on our chosen film to see what critics said about it. Another new technology that we used was “new digital cameras” to take pictures for our recce report. We also used HD DV cameras, to set the white balance we only need to press function on the camera and find the white balance symbol, this is important because without it the picturing will not be of good quality.

We also used new media technology in the post-production phase to edit our film; this is where we put our films together. We used various features of final cut pro e.g. firstly, to upload all our footage, because we had new DV cameras we needed to import our memory card and transfer our footage onto the computer. Once all the footage is imported we then find the footage which is needed and add your input and output by pressing “I” and “O” on the keyboard, this enables you to either make the footage shorter or separate two different footages from another.

Another key feature of final cut pro is when we are adding sound. In our film we added voiceovers, firstly we got the characters to record the diary entries then we saved it in final cut pro, when we added it to the footage we had to mute the sound out in the scee that we recorded in, we did this by clicking on the icon at the right hand side of the screen, that looks like a pen, then did the markings on the pink line, this allowed us to mute the sounds and add the voiceovers. The use of voiceovers was very effective because it gives the audience a deeper insight into the characters emotions e.g. this reflects a real-life situation because most teens that have been or are being abused find it difficult to talk about it, some don’t speak about it at all, and they do not show any emotion. The diary entries inform the audience of how children suffering from domestic violence feel and how they are unable to cope with it, this helps the audience understand. We tried not to use a lot of music due to the genre, although when we did use music it was very effective e.g. when Danielle was in the toilet and she found out that she was pregnant, the type of music we used was soft and slow, the reason for this choice of music was to make the audience feel sympathetic towards the character. Another scene where music was effective was when Mia was interacting with her mother and listening to her IPod as the camera jumps to the mother the music stopped playing, then started to play again when Mia was back in the shot.

We added music by using garage band, at the bottom of the screen, there is a guitar when you click on it there’s a variety of options, you click on “create new sound” you can then choose different

sounds from numerous genre/styles of music and import it onto your scratch disk. We also made some of our footage black and white we did this using video transition. By using black and white it made our film easier to understand i.e. it portrays the different time settings in our film, past and current; this enables the audience not to get confused and creates an effective visual in order for it to be more effective. Fade was also used in our film, the way we did this was going to effects and clicking on dissolve fade and drag it between the footage that you want the footage to fade in and out of.

Poster:

For the film poster I used publisher to create a poster advertising our film from scratch this involved choosing the write texts and font to appeal to the audience but also making the texts and font be typical of the social-realism genre. A screen grab of La Keish (Mia) was also used and needed to be manipulated to make the picture lighter; the picture also had to be stretched and enlarge to allow it to cover the whole of the poster. To insert the text for the title I had to go insert word art, choose the type of text I wanted, type the word in, choose the font that is suitable for the poster title which was Edwardian script and change the size of the font if necessary then click ok then move the text to wherever you want to place it in the poster in this case the title would be at the top

Choose word art

Select font

Change size of the font

Position text wherever you need it to be in this cased the top.

To manipulate pictures and move them I had to click on the picture to select it then wait for an arrow to appear to move the picture and make it bigger or smaller and the same with the text move it around to where you want it.

Magazine review page:

Both the magazine review page and the poster were created by Publisher. To begin with the magazine review, there were two options, one choose a template or two create your own page

Picture at normal size Picture being

stretched

Picture at different size

layout from scratch. I opted to choose a template; I decided to choose one that was relatively similar to the Total Film review page previously shown above. I also had to take into account the amount of columns the layout contained as too much information often doesn’t appeal to teenagers, our target audience there has to be a balance between images and writing thus the reason why i choose a layout with four columns with a large section at the top, for an image. After choosing the layout I then copied and pasted the review to publisher, as not all of the review would fit I had to firstly increase the length and width of each column, next I had to change the font size to 9.5 and the font to ‘Rockwell’, as it found it best suited an article. For the heading I used a bigger font size (41.6), I also changed the font to ‘Arial Black’ to conform to the conventions of an article, which is to be the largest form of text on the page in order to draw the readers to the article. On the other hand as in most magazine film reviews I made the films certificate rating smaller, written in red next to the title of the film. Next was the sub heading this read ‘film of the month’, still the same font but was again smaller than the heading (12). I decided to position the star rating beside the sub heading to justify the caption. Subsequently, for the picture, I cropped a screen grab from final cut pro and then I pasted it to publisher and adjusted it to fit in the box. I then decided to add a text wrap insert (another convention of a magazine article).