Meg's A2 Media Studies Evaluation

1.   In what ways do your media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Camerawork is very important for all film types whether it be a short film or a feature length film. As one of our tasks we were researching the conventions of a short film. Throughout my research, I noticed that a lot of medium close up shots (MCU), as well as extreme close ups (ECU), which admittedly are used less; although, they also seem to use medium long shots (MLS) frequently too (as shown in the short film “Identity”). However, they do use extreme close ups more in “The Elevator”. 

                               (SCREEN GRAB FROM 'THE ELEVATOR')

I feel that these two films are so different (as one is almost a surreal documentary type, and the other is comedic) that they use different techniques to show their genre. The angles are generally eye-level as a way of “being in the shoes of the protagonist/antagonist”, it’s also common to see is a medium shot/angle which is used to capture a conversation, or to watch the short as an outsider rather than watching it through the characters perspective (point of view angle). By doing this it could represent the equality within a situation, or a social status, although ‘Black Hole’ uses low angle shots, which suggest that he is powerful, making him to be the superiority. This particular film also uses eye line matches throughout, which already brings a different dimension into film making, specifically in the shorts I researched.

                             (SCREEN GRAB FROM 'THE BLACK HOLE') 

The sound used in this film is mixed between diegetic and non-diegetic sound. This particular blend is commonly found in short films as well as feature films, conventionally; it’s used for soundtrack purposes, either music to build up tension, or some sort of theme tune. There is diegetic sound all the way through ‘Black Hole’, like the beeping from the printer (which would make sense within the office setting) and also ambient sound from being in a quiet room. Moreover, ‘Black Hole’ is also interesting as there is no dialogue throughout the whole duration. What I found in my research is that depending on the genre is how the sound is going to appear in the film. For example, horror/thriller films typically experience crescendos within their duration. ‘Black Hole’ using a futuristic, metal-like diegetic sound (what’s affective here is that the ‘hole’ associated in the scene is printed on paper, so as an audience we would expect to hear that sound, which is why it’s difficult to distinguish whether or not it is heard by our protagonist or not).

Mise en scene is a very important and valid part of filmmaking. Without it the film may not make sense. This is because mise en scene creates iconography (describing the visual image on screen) which is also important within any genre. The mise en scene in the films I have research all have significant reasons as to why things are placed where they are. For example, directors are very specific with their props and décor, in ‘Identity” the film is primarily based on masks; which is a main prop in the film. The colours of the props are also significant in how the film makes sense, the mask colours all have a contextual meaning, and the film setting is in a place of education. This particular film challenges a mise en scene element, ‘facial expression’. Until right at the end of the film, we don’t see any facial expressions whatsoever, only the props covering them. Furthermore, the film such as “The Coin Machine” involves bigger, and a more extensive amount of props. It is set in a laundrette, which could either be because they are of a lower budget, or because they wanted to create an authentic setting, similarly we wanted to do this with our film. Working from a low budget ourselves, it seemed more practical to film in a set place (i.e. a white kitchen) rather than creating a setting ourselves, this also helped create realism and authentication. 

                          (SCREEN GRAB FROM 'THE COIN MACHINE’)

Lighting is very substantial within every film, it also creates a genre. For example, thriller/horror films often use low-key lighting; we borrowed these lighting conventions in our own short film as it was a thriller. We also decided to challenge the “dark” convention with bright lights and high-key lighting in certain scenes, which could categorise it as more of an “American Slasher” genre film. ‘Black Hole’ uses low-key lighting, but we see plenty of light sources; one being the lamp on our characters desk, the other being the source above his head, which we can see is a ceiling light in the first shot.

Editing techniques are vital in creating the finished product, it’s where you see everything put together and run as one. The most general shot is a straight cut, which is used in big feature films as well, although they tend to use more complex cut types. In most of the short films I studied they mostly use straight cuts however in ‘identity’ they use quite a range, including straight cuts, jump cuts and cutting to black. We took into consideration the cutting to black and other shot types, however we didn’t think too many would be suited to our theme.

                 (SCREEN GRAB FROM ‘IDENTITY’ – A CUT TO BLACK)

Genre Conventions are finally recognised during post production. Rick Altman came up with the “Semantic and syntactic approach”.

Semantic codes include:

Hair

Makeup

Costume

Setting

Decor

Props

Colour

Lighting

Syntactic codes include:

Stereotypes

Relationships

Binary Oppositions (Claud Levi-Strauss’s theory)

Semantic codes represent the mise en scene to make the genre (hair, makeup, costume and so forth) evident. The iconography is important to making the film make sense. The two theorists relevant to our short film is who I researched in the most depth, Tzvetan Todorov and Claud Levis-Strauss.

Todorov’s theory states that a plot stays the same and follows a certain sequence. Starting with equilibrium (definition: a state in which opposing forces or influences are balanced), followed by a disruption, a realisation to the problem, a solution which then resumes the previous equilibrium as before, or a new norm. Film directors have a tendency to use this theory; therefore this could seem mainstream, compared to some other theories. An example of this order is in ‘The Coin Machine’ which is intriguing as it’s a comedic short film. It starts with our protagonist approaching a laundrette – (the original equilibrium) and then the coin machine rejects his money - (the disruption), he then steals a framed dollar to put into the machine – (the realisation), shortly after, receiving his change (new equilibrium).

Within our short film, although it’s of the thriller genre, we wanted to execute this specific theory as it developed our understanding of the conventions of a thriller. I feel as though we achieved this throughout our narrative, starting from an ‘innocent’ and ‘regular’ night on Halloween, later turned into something sinister.  We didn’t challenge the conventions so much in this way, we followed them instead.

Levi-Strauss studied the idea of binary oppositions (relating to Rick Altman’s syntactic approach). He stated that the way we understand particular words is dependent on the opposite that comes with it. He believed that you didn’t need to know the meaning behind the word to understand it. Binary oppositions are quite common in horror/thriller films and also romantic films, involving:

Good vs. Evil (mostly found in horror/thriller films)

Girl vs. Boy (romance)

Insane vs. Sane (thriller/psychological horror)

In our film we used the ‘insane vs. sane’ and ‘good vs. evil’ binary oppositions. This gave our film a specific ideology as we are distorting a rather regular plot, with sinister elements. Film directors generally want their film to be different, especially with short films as their duration time is shorter, therefore, using binary oppositions which aren’t so commonly used such as ‘insane vs. sane’ leaves room for the audience to think about the psychological factors within the film.

PROPP came up with the idea of 8 roles in each story including:

-         A villain (tries to stop the hero reaching his true goal)

-         A hero (seeking something – often on a mission to save someone/thing)

-         False hero (someone who we are led to believe is good but isn’t)

-         Princess (someone/thing given to the hero as an award for bravery)

-         Father (rewards the hero)

-         Dispatcher (sends the hero to his goal)

-         Donor (gives/donates an item of power to the hero)

-         Helper (who aids the hero when in need)

The short films that I analysed didn’t particularly partake in this theory however, there is often a hero and a villain involved. In ‘The Coin Machine’ it’s quite hard to apply this theory, but if you were going to, you say our main protagonist was the hero, and the machine itself was the villain. The theory doesn’t specifically state that either of them can’t be objects. As this short film is a comedy, it’s not going to follow all of the traits for Propp’s theory. This theory would normally be applied to feature films, for example ‘Star Wars’ or ‘Twilight’. In our film we took a few roles into account but not all.

VOGLER’s theory is all about the protagonists (usually the hero) journey to his goal, with various complications along the way. As Vogler’s theory links with Propp’s, it’s a very similar scenario. As I was saying, short films don’t have a tendency to follow a particular structure, which is why this theory can’t be exercised fully. The protagonist (“hero”) often makes their journey and is met by a complication (a potential “villain”), however they may not be in the order Vogler originally intended.  

Characterisation is a descriptive element about a character and in short films it always seems to be very different and unusual to any other film type. For example, in ‘Identity’ there’s not any particular personality traits raised, the protagonist doesn’t use dialogue, which isn’t very stereotypical anymore (silent films aren’t a popular trend in this day). This is what makes the character so different, it makes the audience engage more into what our character is about as it’s more of a mystery to us, as she communicates through body language.

                        (SCREEN GRAB FROM ‘IDENTITY’ SHORT FILM)

In feature length and short films, themes and issues will always play a major role in making it successful. Without them, the film might struggle to gain the audience’s attention and create a link to the viewers. In our short film we wanted to use binary oppositions (Strauss) as a theme which I think was executed clearly in our finished product. We wanted to do this as we found during our research that the ideology behind the narrative and plot is very diverse compared to a feature film. Going back to my point about the short films being shorter, you have a lot less time to make it appealing and interesting to audiences. Short films usually fall into a few different genres. We continue to classify ours as a ‘thriller’ but it falls into other categories as well such as, psychological and crime/mystery. This being said shows that short films don’t usually follow a set structure.

In our short film

The camerawork used in our short film is varied between extreme close ups (ECU), medium close ups (MCU) and a few (medium) long shots (M)LU). As our film is trying to fit the conventions of a thriller, we kept the camera close, and so that it filled the frame. This makes the audience more aware of what is going on. The medium long shots were used to generally establish the setting and surrounding areas, especially when filming outside. Using different angles such as high angle shots, bird’s eye view close up shots, and eyelevel shots gives the film a whole new dimension. Challenging the conventions this way makes our film more original; however, we haven’t completely transformed what a thriller should be. Compared to the ‘Black Hole’ we seem to use more shot and angle types, especially the bird’s eye view angle shot. It wasn’t really shown in many films I researched, more of a high angle shot rather than bird’s eye.

 (EXTREME CLOSE UP SHOT)

  (LONG SHOT)

(MEDIUM LONG SHOT)

(MEDIUM CLOSE UP)

(LOW ANGLE SHOT)

(HIGH ANGLE SHOT)

(BIRDS EYE VIEW SHOT)

The sound is important within our film. We have a soundtrack towards the beginning when the title is on screen. It’s a non-diegetic soundtrack, but because our film is misleading, we had to choose carefully to make sure it wasn’t contrapuntal to the story. Although we wanted a big reveal at the end, I personally don’t think it was as big as we intended, only because you can get that uncomfortable feeling because of the soundtrack used - we went with a piano track in the end which eventually faded out into the ambient sound of the footage and the recordings of the dialogue. Using a piano instead of a guitar for instance makes it that little bit more sinister. In the middle of the film we actually used a clip from “I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here” to work as “ambient” noise as it was filmed when that show was on the air. Towards the end of the film, we have another non-diegetic soundtrack which is a much more out of tune piano contrasting with the one at the start. This shows the progression of how the film turns more evil throughout. When the end comes, the soundtrack has stopped, and you can just hear ambient sound, until a loud “boom” effect plays when the reveal is finally shown. This technique is often used in films; ‘Black Hole’ is a prime example. I feel as though we executed it well, although I don’t think it challenged the convention as such, I believe it has developed into a greater understand of sound within that genre.

The Mise en Scene element of our film I feel was very controlled. We thought very carefully about what the setting was going to be, how it was going to look, and what our characters would be wearing. We tried to make it as authentic as we could with such a low budget. We contacted our friend Gemma to ask if we could use her kitchen as the setting. It’s pearly white, which contrasted with our sinister plot idea. With permission granted, we sorted out costumes for each of our characters. Kierah was to wear casual clothing, so it’s hidden as to who she really is. The shirt she wears is red, which discreetly connotes danger and evil. Hair and makeup was to also look like not a lot of effort went in at all – she isn’t supposed to mind about appearance. I feel with a character composition like this, it’s challenging the normal conventions slightly. Normally you’d see some kind of stereotype with a character who is evil, but in this case we’ve put her in red, as an underlying meaning. The lighting around Kierah is very low-key. This is purely to symbolise her being dark.

(KNIFE PROP AND COSTUME)

(ISOBEL'S COSTUME AND HALLOWEEN PROPS)

The editing and post production process was really significant to us, as we filmed the same scene at two different times; therefore it was crucial to see how the filming looked when it was all put together. We used a variety of shots, mostly your standard straight cut. These cuts were quite fast paced to make the audience feel on edge. We used a dissolve as a transition from the title sequence to the film footage; we also used a cut to black right at the end which then took you to the credits of the film.

Viewing the genre conventions used within our short film, it’s clear we have used one of Rick Altman’s syntactic codes: binary oppositions, (leading back to Levi-Strauss’s study) such as young vs. the older generation and good vs. evil, which is also a convention in ‘Identity’ (good vs. evil; the protagonist being the good, the stereotypes being the bad). It also includes his semantic code approach such as hair, makeup, costume, lighting, colour, setting and props (i.e. mise en scene). Todorov’s theory helped us a lot to challenge the conventions of a thriller, we used his idea of an equilibrium being disrupted although, our film ended on a cliff hanger therefore we never got to see the equilibrium reform, if we were to make a sequel, that’s where the theory would be applied fully (carrying on from the previous film). We were able to change the original layout of the short films we researched as nearly none of them had cliff hangers, which made ours an original.

                                    (BIRDS EYE VIEW - TRAUMATIC ENDING)

                          (FOLLOWED BY A 'CUT TO BLACK'  = CLIFF HANGER)

The characterisation in our short film is different as they are of different ages. Isobel is a young girl who seems very content with her decision to go out on Halloween night as a witch. She doesn’t show many facial expressions however, her dialogue shows she’s intrigued about getting sweets from neighbours. This shows her personality to be interested and also quite vulnerable to her surroundings – our film is unrestricted narration (we know more than the character) therefore we understand her vulnerability. As for Alex, who has taken Isobel out to trick or treat, is shown to be sensible and respectful. This is also shown through the binary opposite of the two characters – boy vs. girl and young vs. the older generation. Stereotypically it’s seen as a male job to look after a girl, especially younger, which shows his respect.  As for Kierah, who portrays somebody who is quite unhinged, it shows through her sharp body language and facial expressions. Kierah’s identity isn’t supposed to be shown until the very end, which is why there is no dialogue from her until the three characters meet.

(KIERAH'S WIDE EYED FACIAL EXPRESSION)

The themes and issues in our short film consist of: 

- The loss of innocence 
- Good vs. Evil
- Youth/Vulnerability

-  Young vs. the older generation

As you can see we use Strauss’s binary opposition theory (good vs. evil and young vs. the older generation). We tried to challenge real media products by using unusual binary opposites as themes. We developed our ideas by looking at a short film called ‘Bitch’. This was a film that Alex found during his research, but got us all brainstorming. The ending is shockingly funny because it happens as a sudden reveal to the story. We wanted to have a theme of mystery until right at the end where we have a reveal. We didn’t find many short films like ‘Bitch’ which shows how original short filmmakers are. This was effective as we challenged the normal conventions of a thriller, but acting as though it wasn’t one.

b) Ancillary Task 1 - Short Film Poster 

Titling is one of the main points in any film poster – or it should be. It’s where the name of your film lies, and draws the audience attention in.

Here are two short film posters. It’s interesting because the title will always be centred – some are right in the middle. The title also tends to be bolder and larger than the rest of the text on the poster – this is a strategy to make the title stand out and not get lost within the rest of the image. In these two particular posters the titling is actually contrasted against the photography.

Names of actors are widely used on original film posters, but it tends to be a lot smaller, yet bigger than the billing block. They seem to appear more in films where the actors have received good publicity from other films, the bigger the text with the actors name, the more popular they are (in some). Depending on the arrangement of the poster is where the designer will decide to put the names at the bottom or top of the poster – this seems to mostly be centred also. 

In comparison, these conventions also apply to feature length films (The Woman in Black) starring Daniel Radcliffe, most known for his role as Harry Potter. The unique selling point (USP) is that he is from an extremely popular franchise, causing the audience to recognise him straight away, making the films popularity go through the roof. “Daniel Radcliffe” is also approximately the same size as “in cinemas” which shows his importance and popularity as an actor.

My research shows the protagonist and sometimes antagonist will feature in the poster. Often they are both included to provide a contrast in the image. With the posters I looked at, the protagonist(s) are featured more alone, they tend to be the biggest part of the poster/most visual aspect, which gives the audience an insight as to who the character is. This is done without blocking out any of the previous text said, making use of the dead space.

Billing blocks are crucial conventions to any film poster. They are used in every poster I researched. They always appear in a much smaller, and narrow font compared to the rest of the text on the poster, and is put generally towards the bottom of the page – this makes use of any dead space, or is overlaid over part of an image which isn’t significant to the film (e.g. the protagonist’s shirt). They usually have the colouring so it’s discernible, following a certain colour scheme, but not distracting the key elements. For example in “Lovefield” they used the same coloured writing for the billing block that is used for the title, an often this is a convention with other posters. They will most likely have logos on the side or underneath the billing block showing their production company and sometimes a redirection to a website of the film.

                        (BILLING BLOCK FROM ‘MIXTAPE’ FILM POSTER)

Reviews and ratings are an important part of gaining positive publicity for the film. They involve quotes from the reviews from perhaps newspapers, magazines (more often seen for feature films) and critics. They are often placed above the title, above the actors names. By doing this, it gives the potential audience a taste of how the film has come across to certain people involved in the media. In ‘Mixtape’ it’s a little different. Instead of rating as such, they use symbols with text inside explaining how this film has been “officially selected” for different things. It also shows nominations for certain film festivals, such as ‘Virgin Media’ and the ‘Bafta’s”. “Brighton Rock” was a film we looked at to learn how to construct a film poster ourselves. In comparison to ‘Mixtape’ it uses 5 star ratings to show the likability of the film.

 Our film poster

My own poster draft is the one on top which was one of the entries for the final film poster, along with the one Alex created alongside mine. We went with the main conventions – the title being centred and bold. Even though both mine and Alex’s posters are very similar, I personally feel there was too much dead space in my original photograph used. Although, the white font making the billing block looks professional as it contrasts with the black background. I also feel mine particularly challenged the titling conventions as my title wasn’t centred. I feel the second entry (Alex’s) poster uses up the entire frame with no dead space, but isn’t too busy either. “Soup” is the title of our film, and is also made up of an image rather than being typed, this gives a more of an original effect I think. Again, the billing block and actors names are written in white. This colour scheme goes well as it is contrasted too. Within the image is also a subtle eyeball which is a major element in our film, I feel it gives a different feel to the movie, without giving away too much.

                                                                 (MY FILM TITLE)

                                               (ALEX'S FILM TITLE)

The actor’s names are placed in order of protagonists and then the antagonist. The font is also quite small – looking back I feel the names could be made larger, although as the actors aren’t well-known this could be a reason for why we’ve done it this way. In my entry I typed our antagonist in the middle of the two protagonists and I also wrote it in a larger text size. I did this as I thought ‘Kierah Rathborn’ played a bigger role than the others, however, Alex kept the names the same size, suggesting he values the actor’s importance the same. We actually have challenged the convention of having the protagonist(s) as the focal point of our poster. We didn’t use any characters at all. The focal point of our poster was the main concept of our film. “Soup” is a very simplistic title; therefore it raises the enigma as there are so many possibilities to what it’s about.

                                      (ACTORS NAMES FROM MY POSTER)

                                        (ACTORS NAMES FROM ALEX'S POSTER)

The billing block was always going to be an important part of the poster. We decided to put names and places in a slightly larger text size, keeping the font consistent throughout, and putting the “headings” (for example ‘directed by...’) slightly smaller (only really approximately pt3). This was purely to make the main parts pop out more. We went with the bottom of the screen to place it, which is like most of the short films we studied as a group. 

                               (BILLING BLOCK FROM MY FILM POSTER)

    (BILLING BLOCK FROM ALEX’S FILM POSTER)

I don’t feel as though we challenged any conventions particularly. We stayed within the colour scheme too which is similar to the real media product. On my final poster, I placed the logos and our production company logo which you would see conventionally on a real media piece; however, Alex challenged this as he obliterated the idea of having logos alongside the billing block. Neither of us included any reviews/star ratings which makes the design look sharper (in my opinion). It almost gives it that little more mystery, however it doesn’t “promote” our project perhaps as well as it could.

Ancillary Task 2 - Short Film Review

The last task we had to accomplish was writing a review in the house style of a magazine company “Little White Lies” who specialise in review writing. We had to take all conventions of this particular magazine to make sure our own review matched the requirements.

As you can see from the screen grab of the home page of the website, it includes a boxed layout, including social media links; navigation options and links to certain articles on the website. They also use the same fonts for all the titling and use a different font for the descriptions; the sizing is all the same too.

On the “reviews” tab, you can already see there is a particular theme running through. The website and magazines are constantly changing, but currently in 2016 the web design is very sleek looking. The colour scheme isn’t busy, so as an audience it’s easy to navigate and read the information given. It also includes a “LWL Recommends” tool which redirects you to the most popular reviews/films at the current time. This keeps you updated with the latest films.

Research about the reviews in this magazine taught me a lot of things, starting with the layout conventions:

·       The page size including the margins is 196mm x 245mm 

·       The columns are approximately 52.4mm x 107mm with 3 columns

·       Fonts used: Aparjita, Century Gothic, Yahei

Aparjita (main font) is used for the date the film was released; Century Gothic is used for the titling of the film reviews; Yahei is used for the “reviews” along the side of the page.

·       3 numbers for a page number (e.g. 003)

·       Usually 5/6 paragraphs

·       The title and director/main character  information is centred in 2 different fonts

                      (Names are bold but not italic)

·       Very particular writing is in bold and italic   

·       "Reviews" is on the left/right depending on the page in capitals

·       The image will always remain at the top of the page which is often a main character of a film, and will be from the film itself.

·       The authors name will also be included in bold capitals at the end of the review, in the same font as the directors and starring characters shown at the top.

Little White Lies is a magazine internationally distributed for movie lovers. It focuses on giving reviews about different films, with a main film in mind for every issue. The magazine is distributed under a bi-monthly frequency, meaning there are 6 magazines a year. The magazines also sell for £6 each. The publisher "The Church of London" first introduced this magazine in 2005 and now also produces the 'DIY Culture' magazine "Huck" which was founded in 2006. The audience consists of 37% female readers and 63% male readers between the ages of 25-35, this already shows us that more than half of the readers are of a male demographic. (Extract from a blog post I wrote).

In order to successfully relate our own review to the little white lies reviews, we needed to consider the layout, (so the different dimensions used; page size, paragraph size), the language techniques and the content.

Here is a review from the magazine, where you can really see all the conventions I am writing about.

The photograph is mostly always taken from the film itself, and is spread across vertically. “Side Effects” is written in bold Aparajita and so is the capital letter “H” (also in bold) at the beginning of the review. The text underneath the title consists of the director and who stars in the film. These headings are in font Aparjita italic and the names are capitilised Aparajita bold.

In this particular article there are 6 paragraphs (not including the rating at the end). The columns are approximately 52.4mm x 107mm with 3 columns in the real media product, which is where all of the content of the review is, in ‘InDesign’ (the software used to make our review) the actual page dimensions are H: 245mm x W: 195mm. The reviewers name is also written at the bottom of the text, written in bold Aparajita. To the left is vertical text reading “reviews” (the category of the text), which is written in Microsoft Yahei in bold. This changes depending on which side of the magazine the review is on. At the bottom of the page, the page number is written with three digits rather than two (e.g. 001), written in New paragraphs are visualised by having a space indent under the previous line of text.

There are 3 columns of text and the body of the text is actually only two and a half columns. The other half is a rating scheme, made up of “Anticipation”, “Enjoyment” and “In Retrospect”. These headings are followed with a phrase/comment about the film and how it’s ranked with a number on the right of it also written in bold Century Gothic.

The language conventions used are a varied:

There is a serious register meaning it’s factual based and opinion based.

Puns are used to create more of a comedic feel.

Adjectives are often used to make the body of text more appropriate for a certain audience

Quotes are sometimes used from the film itself, or director speaking about the film. This just gives more of an insight to what the film is about/what people think of the film.

Restricted language is used which means the magazine is suited to people with knowledge on the subject of cinematography.

Nouns such as complex nouns are used to refer to either a location (the setting) or people (a character).

Our short film review

As a group we were able to construct these conventions within our own short film review. Rather than challenging the conventions of a review we developed them by looking closely at the features, we learned in lesson the page dimensions and titling techniques which we stuck to in able to make our review as similar to the ones featured in Little White Lies, we also included the language conventions (listed above). Hopefully the way we interpreted their language codes, targeted a similar audience to Little White Lies.

The body of the text is written including the genre of our film, which I think is following Todorov’s theory especially. We also tried to include subtly about Levi-Strauss’ theory on binary oppositions when speaking about the “psychotic babysitter from hell” and a sane “girl” (the sane vs. the insane). By doing this, it doesn’t give away too much about the story or plot, but lets the spectator into what the genre is – in this case a thriller. We were ensured to write about the most important parts of the film without explaining the whole narrative. The age range for our film is between the ages of 15-25 (part of the younger towards the more younger adult demographic) which is supposedly easier to work with as a review author as it draws in more spectators to our review. As I mentioned previously 37% female readers and 63% male readers the original media product between the ages of 25-35, however our film isn’t made for any particular gender, therefore we have challenged the normal convention of the real media product (Little White Lies).

2.   How effective is the combination of your main product and your ancillary tasks?

Transcript:

The effectiveness of our ancillary task combined with our main task comes across as very complimentary; our ancillary tasks included our own short film poster crossed with a film review written on our own short. They work well together to give a wider knowledge to what our film is about. This works as a subtle way to use marketing strategies to lure in audiences, but hopefully comes off as an enjoyable experience for our spectators. It was important during the post-production of making the film and two ancillary tasks that we met the targeted demographic using the correct marketing strategy on all three media platforms. Our target audience is between the ages of 15-25, which is quite a vast age group to work with, this being identified meant that we still needed to consider what will gain this particular demographics interest, and successfully promote our productions.        

Firstly, our poster was made following the real media product conventions as closely as possible, which meant it worked successfully to promote our film. I feel that the poster would most likely promote and market our film because of its visual aspect. Controversially, our film poster doesn’t use any characters or protagonists present, which challenges the conventions of the real media product. This offers a sense of mystery to our target audience and also raises the enigma. Because there aren’t any characters shown in the poster, it shows that our demographic isn’t set to one age range – it’s vast. What I mean by this is that, if say we had a picture of two teens, it would most likely be aimed at just teenagers, so they could relate. As our poster is of a bowl of alphabet soup, with a subtle eyeball hidden within the letters, it already starts to spark our spectator’s imaginations – a youthful food combined with the sense of thriller equals a wider demographic. The suggested meaning already starts to reveal the thriller aspect. Something as innocent as alphabet soup, (which is a general association to children), can be instantly changed into something sinister. The whole idea of the eyeball being present in the poster was to gain a sense of shock from the audience, as you have to look closely to recognise it. 

Secondly, the titling techniques used were quite original, yet we still infused the layout conventions from real media products. Because we used alphabet soup, we were able to make our film title “Soup” out of the letters, sitting on a spoon. This technique was also used within our title sequence in our short film, which develops are unique selling point, as we’ve challenged real media products by not using the conventional typography titling. You see this similar technique being met and developed in the short film ‘Mixtape’, where the title sequence shows the title on an actual Mixtape.

In addition, the features of our film poster were carefully constructed as we wanted to keep the enigma quite high, which is the reasoning for only having props involved. Doing this doesn’t really give any hints to what the narrative of the story is. I feel we successfully raised the enigma – it reels the required demographic in by not spoon-feeding the information on the film, visually. I feel we have enough themes and issues within our poster which keeps the spectator interested and want to view the film. We didn’t use film footage for the poster; we took separate photography so that the image didn’t experience any pixilation. We submitted two film posters, one uses up a lot more da=ead space than the other, but one is also a darker contrast. Using up dead space suggests that the film has a lot going on, but as this contrasts with such a simplistic film poster idea, it also conveys more of a simplistic story line. Both of the posters have the same idea going on, but the contrast of dark colours within the other film poster explains more of the sinister side of the story, despite having an eyeball featured in the other.

Moreover on the subject, the location isn’t really established in either of the posters, it requires some common knowledge to where everyday items are found. As it features an edible substance in the poster, it automatically navigates our minds to it being in a home, or a kitchen. My submitted poster is more zoomed out compared to Alex’s. This means you are able to see the plate used. However, I used photoshop to edit the image, so that everything behind the plate was blacked out; I also de-saturated the colours within the letters on the soup. I did this to stay in touch with the colour scheme. Alex however zoomed into the soup itself, and placed an overlay of the “Soup” on the spoon, he also put a black vignette effect on the image. I think both of the posters effectively execute the genre. 

Our next ancillary task was to create a review in the style of the magazine “Little White Lies”. We had to create it for a slightly different audience, as the target for “Little White Lies” is specialised. The psychographic is generally people who enjoy artistry, journalism and film. As the reviews are created for people who have knowledge about cinematography, we needed to make sure our language was able to relate to this demographic. “The audience consists of 37% female readers and 63% male readers, between the ages of 25-35, this already shows us that more than half of the readers are of a male demographic”. Another important factor of this magazine is where they are distributed out to the public; they are sold at the popular store ‘Urban Outfitters’ which also suggests the kind of people who are interested in reading this magazine. Because our film has a reveal, it opens doors for our article to receive some positive publicity. When looking at the conventions of this certain ‘House Style’ magazine, I think we executed it well, including a screen grab of our said film, placed vertically above the content written and their specific “house style” layout. We did this to make it as realistic to the real media product to reach the target audience of ‘Little White Lies’.

The rating system at the bottom of the article is cruicial for our spectators. If we get a bad rating, it will make our target less interested in the thought of watching our short film. As I’ve mentioned, the ancillary tasks are primarily there to compliment our film, if they don’t, we lose out of viewers. Because we’re a low-budget independent film production company, we can’t afford to show our film poster on billboards and other media platforms, so the next big sharing system is, social media. Uploading our film to YouTube, or sharing with friends over Twitter and Facebook, will definitely give it publicity and eventually be a part of a bigger audience. After we reach a further popularity position, we’d be able to attend to events such as short film festivals, much like ‘Mixtape’ who attended film festivals such as the Bafta’s and Virgin Media.

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Our target audience was for 15-25 year old males; with this in mind we still asked a wider range of an audience over social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. We did this so it wouldn’t be biased feedback. Although our ‘target audience’ is males, it doesn’t mean females won’t watch it too.

Moreover, the psychographic for our film is generally males who have a fond interest in horror and thrillers. We made sure that all three of our creations/products were made to attract this demographic, such as dark colours in the poster, and subtle, but descriptive thriller language in the review. Deciding to put the reveal in at the end is also something we think males will enjoy, as it is a sense of feeling uncomfortable.

Audience feedback in our case was to gain constructive criticism rather than hearing positive (which also helped, but wasn’t what we was initially doing it for. We used a few different sites to achieve this, and also communication in real life situations.

Verbal communication was one of the biggest ways in which was used to receive audience feedback. We filmed some of the responses during our post production of our film. We asked for different opinions on all of our products, including our teachers, peers, friends and family members – and some of whom are associated with our target demographic.
Film footage from some of our peers’ feedback: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wei80hI6yKo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTmbnRCspYo

Facebook logo

We used Facebook also, which was useful as a wider range of people were then able to reach our posts, and also share it around so their friends-of-friends could see it and so on. This also meant we could reach people of our target audience easier, as we are within the same required demographic. 

Survey Monkey was actually very crucial when creating our film plot right at the beginning. It was a way of getting anonymous responses, enabling us to then reflect on constructive criticism, and fairly discuss the options we had. We shared the links on social networking sites like Facebook, to make sure we got some responses definitely within the target audience.

Another influence to our film was the feedback we got given on the website Blogger. Each peers’ blog was accessible which meant it was easier to receive feedback from them if they wanted to. We also gained comments on our blog posts from our teachers, of them explaining either minor improvements, or bigger improvements. 

Most of our targeted spectators will own a mobile phone/Smartphone which is able to receive multimedia items such as videos and pictures, or open links to these things. This helped us to gain a wider knowledge of what people liked and what we should work on. Texting was more used more to arrange when the group would collaborate to film, however, using our mobile phones to distribute posts on social networking sites was definitely the case on numerous occasions. 

I have quite a big profile on Twitter, as do Alex and Holly, which worked well to our advantage as it meant it was being seen by thousands. It also meant our demographic was being met as it’s all considerably the same age range. Also as we don’t ‘know’ the people, it meant they were being more honest than say someone who is friendly with you.

Moving onto the feedback

Survey monkey was one of the most influential to our group as it made some of the biggest group decisions for us, such as the entire plot idea. We had two different ideas, and we were stuck on which one would be liked more by our picked target audience. 

Doing a survey meant we could get the most honest opinions from a lot more people. We also decided to only do it as one question as people can be lazy, and have a tendency to not participate in long surveys. Although, with more questions asking about their age and interests in films, would help us to gage which responses belong in which spectator demographic.

We also used Facebook to gain more feedback once our short film was finally published. For example, we got told what was good about the film, and what we could do to improve our next film if we were to make another. This constructive criticism helped us to understand what our chosen demographic is after in a film.

Here was some post production positivity and constructive criticism to a response on a post I posted, which we would definitely go on and improve if we were to film anything similar to this task we've just completed.

We asked people what they liked about the film and the poster. We especially had our queries about the eyeball. 
During verbal communication feedback we'd ask:

Does the eyeball look realistic?
As the shots weren't up close people said that "it looks real from the angle it's being shown from, you wouldn't question it".
Does the non-diegetic sound fit with the reveal at the end?
The first soundtrack we used against the reveal happening, it sounded "fake", as in it didn't fit with what the reveal was. This helped us construct a better sounding reveal sequence, which people agreed eventually "worked well with the footage on screen".
Does the eyeball look too obvious within the poster?
People seemed generally impressed as most of the people asked didn't even notice it until last minute. They said that it "blends into the background of the picture nicely".
Is there anything we should change?
Nobody really said we should change anything apart from the little things said above.

Our poster feedback

We used blogger to gain feedback for our posters. Our teachers would leave comments telling us if we've met the conventions or not.

On alex's first draft he got quite a lot of constructive criticism, which made his final poster carry all the short film poster conventions that he needed. 

I also got a lot of constructive criticism which helped me also towards making my final product, which came out the way I wanted it to. By making my billing block longer, and having all the text/typography lined up on the screen made it look more professional. After coming up with a few ideas when creating these drafts, we ended up using the alphabet soup letters idea (like above), which also meant we could take separate photography to successfully create a short film poster to promote our film.

The comments on my final draft helped me on little details I had missed.

Comments on Alex's final draft

Notice how both of our feedback got shortened, which suggests we took the feedback in good hands and changed the right things.

Review Feedback

We asked people to help us choose our main image that sits vertically on the top of the review, this helped us to see what people thought gave away to much and what didn't.

People said that this image "gave away too much", which completely loses the enigma we were trying to conclude with the film in the beginning, so we went for this image instead:

Which was said to look like a "normal dinner scene" which shows that the enigmatic sense has not been lost. People will watch it without knowing the big reveal.



The content in our review was helped by our teachers giving us verbal feedback when in class. Being told that "there is a specific language technique little white lies uses to get in touch with their audience" helped me understand what this review is all about and how to construct an article effectively.

Pre Production review writing

In conclusion, I'd say that our biggest audience feedback platform was Survey Monkey, and verbal communication. This is because it was easy to distribute the survey to different people all over different social networking sites, rather than posting to just one. Verbal communication was helpful as we have media lessons more than once a week, which enabled us to ask frequently what people thought of our products.

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

Click on the image below to be redirected to a presentation answering this question