A2 ADVANCED PORTFOLIOEVALUATION

By Isabel Ayres 8010

In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?The forms and conventions of films (short or long) are

subjective to each individual genre, sub-genre and hybrid-genre (e.g. rom-coms). For example, psychological thrillers are known for their twisted plotlines and, sometimes, chilling characters. To challenge and develop the ‘spoken’ parts of the forms and conventions, my film has very little dialogue compared to the ‘normal’ psychological thriller/drama, which have mostly continuous dialogue with very little, in the terms of voice-overs. An innovative decision that I made during post-production editing was to include voice-overs, which could signify the plot twist that I scripted.

This mid shot uses the mirror as a periscope-type devise. Having Lily in the far left hand side of the screen, leaves room for a potentially unexpected character to come into the screen as either someone who is part of the plot or someone who ‘appears’ for tension.

Using the effects that were available for me on iMovie, I altered the exposure levels of each of the dream sequence clips and had the first shot as a wide shot to capture the whole of Lily’s body and to make the quick-cuts effective.

This part of the dream sequence is where the pace quickens, to create a feeling of unease within the audience – as they’re not expecting the change from the present sequence, to the ‘flashbacks’ and then back to the original sequence. (this sequence-’flashback/forward’-sequence is for the latter part of the dream sequence)

This part of the dream sequence is where the pace quickens, to create a feeling of unease within the audience – as they’re not expecting the change from the present sequence, to the ‘flashbacks’ and then back to the original sequence. (this sequence-’flashback/forward’-sequence is for the latter part of the dream sequence)

This short sequence has CU and ECU shots of the scarab necklace which focuses on Mona’s indecision of what to do with the necklace – her psychological need and her pure hatred for it.

This scene with the first bit of dialogue really is the moment when Elisa recognises the erratic behaviour of her best friend. I used the tripod and a remote control here to make the scene easier to operate from where I was. The two shot I used was continuous throughout this scene.

This sequence shows the audience exactly how quickly the spirit can ‘engulf’ Mona. As soon as she stops moving and drops the necklace, she turns.

The start of this part of the ‘handheld’ sequence, is the start of the introduction of the ‘others’(demons). I used a handled camera and slow motion for this as well as taking the audio out of it.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? The extent to how effective the combination of

my short film and the ancillary texts (poster for the film and a magazine review of the film.)that I chose to do, ended up being a good amalgamation of promotional ‘materials’. The poster went through stages of different designs, the drafts weren’t relative enough (I felt) to the genre that I had chosen my film to be. A promotional poster for any film is the one of the key marketing and advertising materials and methods. (apart from trailers, TV spots, teaser trailers, ‘leaked scenes’ etc.)

The use of the scarab introduces the idea of a hidden secret and history that stretches a long way back. Possibly hinting that one of the characters has a link to the history.

The angle that Mona's face is at shows the audience that she doesn’t want to face up to the fact that she is/was being controlled by this ominous being, that will never leave her.

I decided to change the music here, from Paramore to Muse – whose music has a mysterious and eerie feeling.

The font I used was taken, amongst others, from a website (1001fonts.ccom) who ‘specialised’ in the type of fonts that I wanted.

Here, I used the same picture of Lily as I did for the poster because when the audience see the poster then see the magazine review, they will recognise it and read it.

The combination of the movie reel and the title of the magazine, really work well together as it’s a film magazine.

To give the magazine more ‘bulk’ to it, I used recent films who have a worldwide fan-base to help market the magazine. I used The Twilight Saga.

They layout of the review was researched using the internet and other film reviews in magazines. I combined

my two ancillary texts together to get this review. The poster featured here is the same as the one that i used for my ancillary text.

The poster ancillary task, was a better option than the ......because with the magazine review text, I could feature the poster in the actual review . This, in turn would benefit the advertising campaign which would make readers more aware of the film.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?Audience demographic really decides on how much profit a film makes. However,

even before one gets to that point, you must be able to define the target audience. The audience must be able to relate to the characters or to empathise with the characters, to be able to enjoy and buy the DVD after the cinema time is ‘up’.

Youritv.com states that Audience research is a major element for any media producer. Companies are set up to carry out audience research for media producers, broadcasters and advertisers. These research companies use questionnaires, focus groups, one to one interviewing, and electronic devices to find out about people’s life styles, and television viewing habits as well as the type of products they want to buy.

Short extracts or trailers for up and coming programmes are often shown to focus groups to see how they react. If they don’t like something then the producers may make some changes. Hollywood films are regularly ‘trialled’ in front of cinema audiences in America. In some cases the ending of the film is changed because the trial audience do not like it. Sometimes several endings are filmed and the trial audience asked to choose the one they like best.

Media producers spend a lot of time and money finding out who the audience for a programme or media product might be. It's a serious business; media producers want to know how the audience is made up. A mass audience is very large, so ways of breaking it down into categories have been devised.

Audience research: Demographics

A common and traditional method of audience research is known as demographics. This defines the adult population largely by the work that they do. It breaks the population down into 6 groups, and labels them by using a letter code to describe the income and status of the members of each group.

I have had lots of valuable feedback from my audience with regards to a few bits in my film, most of these I amended. For example, the music that I featured was too prominent and made it look more of a music video than a short film. So I changed the music, and turned down the volume where needed, so that that audience could hear the voiceovers clearly enough.

In conclusion, the audience feedback that I've received so far has been quite positive.

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

The planning and research stages were done using the internet, previous research that I had done on the genre and using magazine articles as inspiration and for examples of reviews (Empire Magazine etc). To expand, the planning was all done in a blog format which, in turn, helped me to expand my abilities further.

As I have freeze frames taken from clips in my film, I used the “Ken Burns effect to create some or no movement in the frame.As it is, I changed the

‘start’ position to match the ‘end’ position, therefore eliminating any movement that I didn’t want.

This is what I clicked on when I wanted to add still images – from the original film footage, or a existing clip that I’d used – to the actual film.

I used the dream video effect (circled in red) to make it obvious to the audience that Mona was in a state of subconscious ‘limbo’.The very soft lighting effects used to create this really do create that ‘ethereal’ feeling and look.

For the dream sequence I slowed down the vast majority of it to make the quick cuts seem more sudden and jumpy.

To be able to create the ‘summary-reverse’ sequence, I set the footage to reverse and stabilized the clip to help it stay smooth when I slowed the speed down.I also stabilized the clips which were set to a slower speed too.

Exposure levels, contrast levels, colour gain and brightness levels played a crucial part in my film. Especially in the dream sequence, where having the dream video effect just wasn’t enough.

So that the audience could hear what Mona’s and Elise’s voiceovers were saying, I changed the volume levels of any tracks that were playing at the same time.I also used the fade in and out options to make the transitions much more clear, controlled and subtle.

The website I used to upload my film on is called ‘The Smalls’. This website is like a lot of other short film ‘distribution’ websites where you can upload and share your short film. The thing that I like most about this website is, is that you can choose whether you want to distribute only or to distribute and put up for sale.From here I used the

‘share’ button and the ‘tweet’ button, to share with everyone who is on my friends on Facebook and who is following me on Twitter, that my film has been uploaded here.Anyone who watches my film is able

to leave comments by using this box. I – as the owner of the film and profile – have the options of opting out of email notifications and profile notifications when somebody posts a comment and/or posts a reply to an existing comment.

On the website that I uploaded my film to enables me and the viewers of my film see how many views I’ve had, how many comments, how many times my films been ‘favourited’ and what the rating of my film is.

Another feature of TheSmalls.com, is the ability to bookmark a film that you particularly like watching, so that you can go back to watch it again later.

For the evaluation stage of my project, I have used a range of programmes and websites available to me. To create my evaluation, I used Microsoft PowerPoint 2007(also used the 2010 beta version of PowerPoint) and to post it up onto the web I used slideshare and myPlick to enable me to be able to upload the link to my blog.