CW Evaluation – “Apple”

By Sam Thorpe

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

media products?• We used the traditional generic conventions of short

film when coming up with ideas for the piece. Genre was our blueprint for length and subject matter.

• Most short films are based upon single ideas and that idea is usually very simple. Apple is no different, the idea is: What consequences do our everyday actions have? We explored this by making all the consequences and actions occur to one thing, the apple. This continues right up until the apple saves the businessman’s life, making it clear that all the things that happened to the apple have led to one massively important thing happening to the man.

• We followed the creative and exploratory feel of short films by using experimental camera techniques, such as 1st Person views from the apple’s perspective. They help to make the audience relate to the apple more and also create variety. We added most of these shots after our draft because people had told us that we should focus on the apple more than those who are interacting with it.

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

media products?

• In creating Apple we also decided to reference an existing media product, our first piece Witness. We recycled our photographer from Witness to be a tramp, implying that after the events of Witness things went terribly wrong for him and he was left with nothing but a small disposable camera and the clothes he was wearing in Witness.

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

media products?

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?• The most important ideal that we wanted to

achieve across our 3 products was to create a brand identity across them. We did this in various ways.

• Firstly we decided to use one colour scheme and font set across all of our pieces. This meant that the green writing and apple pictures in our poster and magazine spread became synonymous with the film, eventually being the same when the end credits roll.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?• After this we set about creating authenticity in the

ancillary pieces which would give credibility to the film.• We created our poster using a simple design which is

in keeping with the subject matter of short films. It contained one image of the apple, the title of the film and a tag line as it’s main pieces and then numerous small touches for authenticity.

• These included a certification, an authentic Belfast film festival to be the premiere spot and an line which tells people who created the film.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?• After the poster we created the magazine article. This

was to be a review in a film magazine so we placed it in a more upmarket film magazine which is likely to review art-house and short films.

• The article and it’s page again followed our colour and font scheme and was again basic in design.

• This time we had a few more elements to add though. These included a reference to Witness, a pull quote, a tag line and production photos. The article also tells readers that the film can be viewed in Belfast, backing up what the poster says.

How did you utilise audience feedback?

• Throughout production of our film, we were constantly creating drafts and reporting them back to our teacher and classmates.

• This gave us a constant stream of feedback which allowed us to better our film throughout the process of making it.

• This began straight away in our initial ideas stage when we were told that it would be better to follow a single object rather than have linked events between humans.

How did you utilise audience feedback when creating your media product?

• We also got told similar feedback after our first draft after people came to the conclusion that film lost sight of the apple towards the end. With this in mind we re shot some scenes and the end product is far better.

• The soundtrack was a source of criticism throughout but the final version has everyone happy.

• At first we had no soundtrack at all but soon after we added in a random track we had found on YouTube which grated on some people’s nerves because of it’s repetitiveness.

• These were all temporary just because we were waiting to create an original composition which meant waiting for our final visual piece to be finished.

How did you utilise audience feedback?

• One of the pieces of feedback we didn’t utilise was to change the face of the apple. Our vision was that the apple itself was just an inanimate object but people wanted us to bring it to life with changing faces.

• For example we were told to put a face of dismay on the apple when it fell from the bridge, and put a cold face on it when it stays on the bench overnight.

• Were we to film Apple again, we decided that in fact we would heed this advice.

What technology did you utilise when creating your media product?

• Perhaps the most important of technologies we utilised is not the camera as you might expect, but in fact the internet. The Web 2.0 Hypothesis has allowed us to upload all of our user generated content to the internet, thus allowing us to create the blogs which have tracked our progress.

• The internet has allowed us to add video clips, photos, podcasts and slideshows to our blogs and this has been critical to creating good blogs.

What technology did you utilise when creating your media product?

• The internet has also allowed us to advertise the project through our Facebook group, garnering interest in the film throughout production.

• Facebook is also the official home of the premiere for Apple, and was uploaded to the group on the day specified on our poster. It has allowed hundreds to watch it so far with the possibility of millions in the future.

What technology did you utilise when creating your media product?

• Of course, the camera itself was hugely important in creating the film too. It records in High-Definition and Real Time Slow Motion and captures to an internal hard drive, meaning we could shoot and then easily watch our footage back to correct it if we needed to.

• We also made use of a Digital SLR stills camera which gave us plenty of material for our blogs, podcasts and evaluation video.

What technology did you utilise when creating your media product?

• We also used a large amount of software on Apple Macintosh computers. This included…

• Pages to create our 2 ancillary products. Despite being basic software, we were only creating simple layouts in our pieces so it was perfectly adequate for us.

• iMovie to create our film and drafts. The ease of use of iMovie made it perfect for us because we were constantly changing things and it made that easy for us.

What technology did you utilise when creating your media product?

• iCalendar to organise our time. This allowed us to easily show when we were all free and allocate those times to filming.

• Keynote to create slideshows. These slideshows could then be uploaded to our blogs and were a refreshing way to display information without being large chunks of text.

• Garageband to create our Podcasts. These gave us another refreshing way to present information regarding Apple and allowed us to be far more personal than we would be through text.

What technology did you utilise when creating your media product?

• The final technology we needed in creating our poster was a place to get a professional shot of our apple. I managed to ask a friend of mine who takes photography to get us access to the school photography studio where we used a white backdrop and high lighting to get a pure shot which would suit our poster.