Evaluation 4

Evaluation 3

What have you learned from the audience feedback?

In order to complete this evaluation, Myself and Zoe discussed a number of different questions that would make up a questionnaire for my target audeince. I then went away, put together the questions together and gave out as many of them to my target audience as possible. I did this not only to get feedback from my audience but the whole purpose of doing this short film was to please my audiences needs and wants; this will in turn allow my film to be successful. By creating a questionnaire it allows me to gain detailed information straight away from the audience, so I can find out what they liked or maybe disliked about my short film. I have purposely selected a range of opened and closed questions and used flow of emotion to gain access on how the audience felt when watching my film. This also helps me to gain quantitive and qualitative details. 
Throughout making and planning my project, I wanted to make sure I concentrated on the target audience as they would obiously be the individuals watching the short and will hopefully find it successful. I based my age range on 12-50, as there is no real explicit content that would scar or be inappropiate for a 12 year old indiviudally; this meant I would focus on this age range to complete my questionnaire. At the beginning of this project, I did primary research into SAGEL; social econoimic group, age, gender, ethnity and lifestyle. My film is aimed at middle/lower class groups, however anyone is welcome to watch it, the gender is mainly based on males, but females are known to watch this genre film so I tried to concentrate on both genders. As I have said above I have based my film on the age range of 12-50 mainly because the content can be related to a wide range of people. On top of this I aimed my ethnity on White British because it is produced in Britian and the lifestyle of my audience could be a person from a working back ground. Furthermore, I also used the Laura Mulvey male gaze theory which is based mostly on including whats known as a pretty young girl, with an old man being the victim. This is also based on including certain actions in the film to express the females body parts or beauty; this will attract the male gaze. Below are the questionnaire responses I gained from my audience, after they watched my short film.
After looking over Uses and Gratications, I can see that my audience may be able to gain certain feelings or thoughts in my film. As media consumers or readers watch texts in different ways and for different reasons, it's harder to furfil ways to achieve feelings that audience want to gain, as the artistic worth is subjective for different views; however through the genre we chose, this can be narrowed down and we can suggest what they want to gain through this idea, and purposely use different ideas or events to achieve this. Within my short film, my audience could use my text to gain the following purposes; this could be a personel relationship with Lilly, which will allow them to create a emotional or other interactions with the young girl, due to the position she is in or the events that are happening to her. The audience could feel sympathy for her or scared for her. I think this is a good way to interact with the audience, as it is so easy for the audience to gain these feelings, using conventions like abducting young children or putting someone innocent through fear through different ways and events, I particularly know this because I have gained the same reactions and feelings in films such as the Lovely Bones, Cupcake (Anotehr short film) and Along came a spider and these are the films which I have think link to my film and the events that I have chosen, so I hope my audience gains simialar feelings to what I did.

 

Questionnaire Responses

 

After looking at my questionnaire results, I have seen a pattern that mostly every one of my participant liked the film as they all said 'yes' in question 1; this shows me that altogether the short film was successful and my auduience did like it. They also rated the film '4/5' in most reponses which is very successful as it suggests that the film was liked and the feelings and actions I wanted to achieve were liked. I also think it is a personal achievement to gain a rate that high mostly because it was the first time I acted, and had to produce such a scared and terrified approach, which actually proved very hard. As a whole, I think I have learnt to plan very wisely before filming what you want to achieve; this proved time consuming but worthwile mostly because by planning ideas before like camera shots helped me to figure out what types of feelings these will gain. For example, in one of the responses from the questionnaires the person liked the 'different angles, camera shots and the graveyeard scene' and in this particular secton I planned a huge amount of camera shots before filming them, especially the low level footsteps in the leaves, which builds on the anticipation for the audience. By planning ahead, allowed a lot of time to be saved as I didn't have to think of ideas from the top of my head, I could just get on with the features I had planned.

I also worked closely with using 'Flow of emotion' within my questionnaire, as it allowed me to gain what and how my audience felt when watching my short film. This was really useful for me, as I gave my audience a list of feelings I wanted them to feel whilst watching the film. Mostly all my responses came back with achieving one of these feelings, meaning that I was successful in the way I built and created feelings through my acting, sounds, camera shots and mise en scene. I also gave my audience a chance to suggest any new feeings they may have felt and none of them felt differently. By doing this, it suggests that they understood the flow of meaning if they picked up these trending feelings and emotions from the content of my film; this meant that my audience were on the same understanding as me and how I feel about my film. To link to this idea, I asked my audience in question 5 'Dod the storyline work for you? ', which helped me to understand if they got the feelings and meaning of the film. All my responses came back answering yes, meaning that the flow of meaning was successful and they understood the storyline.

I have also learnt to keep time precious, mainly due to the fact that it goes so quickly when doing a project like this. However, after doing a similar project before doing my short film, I had the chance to practice editing and filming when doing 'the day in the life' project, although it was much shorter, including a total time of one minute. I learnt a lot in this project and it mostly allowed me to development my skills to prevent the same problems happening again. One of the biggest problems I faced was time, as I ran out of time when I was editing and ended up spending too much time on filming; this helped me schedule my time when it came to my short film, as I knew editting would be a major part to maintain a successful short film. I also think my film was successful due to the responses of my audience, as there weren't any abberrant or oppostional readings , which meant that my audience didn't like the content of my film or didn't get it and understand it. However, I think there was a lot of room for negotiated readings within my film as the ending wasn't shown or spelt out to the audience on what happen to my victim; this meant that the audience had to work out for themselves that she died in the end and how she died to them is up to their imagination.

Looking closely at question 6, I wanted to make sure that suggestions for improvements were included within my questionnaire; this is to give my audience to point out the bad features or features they may not like, which will allow me to improve my film to suit my audience more too. I picked up that some people didn't really like the ending, mostly because they wanted to know what happened to the victim and wanted to know if she died or escaped. However, as time was very precious and demanding, this was a big factor that I couldn't really change as it seemed almost impossible to reshoot as our deadline was fastly approaching and we both had over committments; this meant as a whole we couldn't succeed the audiences wishes to change the ending so they could find out if the victim lives or dies. Before shooting the film, I did believe this genre would be challenging as at sdome point in the film I would have to show how the victim dies or escapes. To twist this up slightly I thought it would be clever to not actually show how she dies and see how effective that is for the audience. Also it was extremely difficult to produce a scene on this idea as the murder was my media teacher and I think it would be very hard and uncomfortableto act and produce this. To gain information on this particular factor, I thought it would be very benefitical to center a question within the questionnaire on this topic of the film. I asked the audience in question 7 'Did you like the grim ending or would you rather a happening ending'; this would show us what type of ending as a whole they would of prefered. Mostly all my participants stated that they liked the grim ending as it supported the events and feelings express throughout the film; however some participants would have rather know what happened to the victim. Again, we did have a fast approaching deadline and if we didn't have this problem in the way I would of definitely filmed more to portray what happens to the victim.

I also picked up that some people thought the camera could of been more stable in some areas; this was very helpful for me as this camera shot was actually purposly done to suggest the effect of realism, however it is helped me to see that maybe the audience didn't like this camera shot and this could of been changed. Although, I did get a lot of comments back saying they liked the camera shots and angles, so I wont change this feature to please one person. On top of this, when participants were watching the film, occassionly I would sit with them and wait for the responses. By doing this, I actually found and picked up on a number of little errors that seemed to be ocurring. This shown me that all the small editting parts really matter, and by changing these could make the film better. I then suggested to my partner if they needed to be changed and we did so.

In conclusion, I feel I have learnt a lot from my audiences feedback. I found that showing others your work can help you to see from a different perpecive rather than your own; this then helps you to improve work to suit your audience. If I hadn't of gained audience, my project may not have been successful to my audience and they may not have liked it. However, gaining this information allows them to suggest problems or other suggestions to appeal to them.

Evaluation 2

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Before completeing my anciliary tasks, myself and Zoe chose to split up the two task between us. After discusing what we would want to do, the conclusion was made that I would do the film poster and Zoe would complete the film revew page.This helped me to section my time up efficently and concentrate on one section of these tasks. We also completed both of these tasks at school,at the same time together so we could share ideas and comments to suggest what could be better or what we didn't like; this allowed both pieces of work to be shared but done seperatly. Also, by doing this it allowed us to keep consistency, for example in the colour scheme, front type and font size.




My short film that both my partner Zoe and myself made and created.

 Typically scene within my short film that shows and denotes the darkness and danger this victim is under; this shows that my short finl connects with the two ancilliary tasks as it allow the tasks to support the dark features within the film.

Film poster that I made.

 

 

Film review page that my partner Zoe made

 

 

As you can see from the genre of my film and the content that is displayed within it, you can see why chosing certain features to make up our anciliary tasks were done. For example the colour scheme was consistent, by using dark colours such as black and grey for the backgrounds of our texts. As said above, when producing both of these texts we concentrated on staying together in the same room throughout the process, to maintain a consistent formula. As our film is based around dark content and eviliness from certain characters, I took this to my advantage and was certain to maintain this through the anciliary tasks; this is clear through the colour schemes we have both used, these being black and grey and the font colour and titles are the same colour as well, this being white. I purposely done this, as I think a combination of white, grey and black suggest and denote certain feelings. For example, the white suggests the angelic, innocent and naive young girl being a victim to this dark, evil and dangerous old man/killer. I also think the contrast between the two are very eye catching and the white on black works really well. These colours also link to the events that take place within the film, such as the pure young girl still being at school, still hasn't lived and explored the world links to colour white and the black/grey supports the horric crime the killer is doing, when taking and tying this young victim up, followed by killing and raping her. Also the contrast between the film posters grey background, mostly concentrating on the killers black mac, and the film review pages consisting of a black background, could be suggest that the killer is standing behind her, connotating that he is in control. It also denotes the black and dark place she is currently in, suggesting bad and dark things may end up happening to Lily. When I was doing the film poster, I knew it needed a little bit more than just these colours so I thought it would be extremely revelant to put some red into the tag line; this suggests many ideas, for example that the killer is dangerous and capable of killing, but it also works well with the link between Lily's father and events that happen to her as the red suggests blood which could mean that she's more close to her father than she thinks. However, this could have been included within the review page and this would definitely be something that we would change if we was to go back and re-do this project, although I don't think it is a error that critically needs to be changed now. On the other hand, the ancillary tasks are two different forms of media, meaning that different techniques have been used to gain different results. This links with my film poster as I wanted to concentrate on attracting my audience, so the red colouring will catch the eye of the viewers; however the purpose for the film review page is to encourage the audience to watch it and in ways to show it off as a successfully hit; this means that the mistake with the red colouring wasn't a huge problem as the texts won't be shown together at the same time.


I also made sure the formula of both anciliary tasks consisted of similar images. However, we didn't use the same images but obviously used relevant images from our films and I decided to use the killer and Zoe decided to use the victim tied up. By doing this, the audience can see a link between the two, which suggests negotiated readings as they can work out their own meanings to whats happening; by doing this it may encourage the audience to watch the film, if they like this type of genre, as we have given some hints out within the content shown in the anciliary tasks. The one problem we did have, was that we didn't use a picture that was taken at the scene, we chose our images from the actual film, resulting it images that were slightly distorted and didn't hold great quality. I think we could of changed this, however it would of been very time consuming and as a whole I think the images being this way made the poster and review page look spooky and scary. However, if I had more time with this project and the audience picked this up as a bad feature to the poster then I would definitely change it.
On top of this, we both decided that we was going to keep a consistency through the use of the camera shot being a mid shot and I think this has proved very effective. Using this certain camera shot, allows the audience to have a clear picture of what's happening within the shot and gives them a hint into what may happen in the film. As you can see in the film poster, there is a shadow following him up the stairs, which could suggest to the audience a devil like figure is following him, almost inside of him about to do something extremely, the black mac again supports this idea as it suggests death; this constrasts very well to the shot of the victim being shown with grey masking tape over her her mouth, suggesting a link that the old man has done this. The image that we made within the film was very clever and I took it too my advantage to use it in my film poster; this being the typically, iconic image from the nosferatu. By displaying this in my film, I made an intertextual referance to an iconic sequence in that horror, to fit conventions as many people will see that image and it will remind them of that film, which onbiously hints to the type of the content it may display.

The format of the film poster is also very important as it shows the killer almost in the middle of the page, leaning towards the right hand side; this works extremely well with the review page as the girl is centered towards the right hand side of the page, suggesting clearly the killer is going to her and is going to kill her.





Finally, I think the tag lines I have used within the film poster, relates very well to the content of the film and strongly supports the events that the killer is able to do so easily. Using the colour red within this tag line, supports the danger that the young girl is in and conveys how deeply disturbed the killer is when taking the young girl at her fathers bedside. However, I would have chosen this to be done within the film review page, so that the tag lines link in a consistent manner and they stand out together. Also, the tag lines are slightly different which wasn't what we planned to do, and was done accidently; this would be changed if we was to re-do this project again.

 

Syngery

Whilst producing the tasks I had been set, it was very important to consider the main factors on doing and creating them; this was down to syngery, based on the way you can sell a product in different mediums. One of the main factors I had to achieve when creating my task, was that it would be attracting and encouraging to buy, based on the appearance and what it looked like. If this was achieved then it was most likely that it would be brought and would gain money. As the genre was a thriller and the content of the film wasn't very positive, it was important and vital to display this within my anciliary tasks. I think I achieved this, due to the dark and dull colours schemes that were used and the explicit/spooky images that both my partner and I chose. I think one way I achieve this through the film poster was that when you see and look at the poster, you want to know what this creepy/spooky looking man is doing, questions instantly come into your head on why is he walking up those stairs, who is he going to see and then what is he doing to do? So baring that in mind, I think that is a great and effective way to encourage audience to buy the product. After doing a lot of secondary research into film posters with a similar genre to my film, I found a recurring factor that was seen at the bottom most film posters; this was the advertising side, displaying which sponsers the film had. For example, I chose and included 'Dreamworks' and sponsers such as Film4, to promote and attract my audience and to show them this film is on the same levels as the rest of the films that become extremly successful through this label. I also used the convention of using and displaying the actors names and director on the film poster. I again found this a recurring feature which was seen on many other existing texts; this was to promote my actors mostly. I did make up some names for other job roles as I didn't want to repeat myself and Zoes names, eventhough we did all the work; this was to make the film poster look professional and also to follow conventions from similar existing texts. Finaly, I also included many promotional methods to attract and encourage the audiences to watch the film when it was released; this was again shown of a number of other existing textsincluding our genre and others as well. I included things like the release date so the audience was aware of when it was coming out and made up a website for the film, so that the audience could view that too. On top of this, I displayed 'Coming soon' in a bigger font to suggest to the audience that is a must see film.
Zoe also used and considered synergy when producing her film review page. As the film would already be released it was harder for her to promote the film as people may have already seen it; however this didn't stop us using synergy on this piece of work as we wanted to ensure that the people that hadn't of seen it already, would be encouraged to do so. The first main thing she included was using a star rating. As we didn't want to put the star rating too high or too low, we decided on putting the rating on 4 as it would be encouraging for the audience and they would still see it as worth the money spent to see it. The questionnaire responses that we used to gain feedback from our audience also supported this rating so we decided to go with that. Finaly, one of the best ways Zoe has promoted our film is due to the emphasis on how good and breathtaking the film is, within the text on the review page. By suggesting and emphasising how good the film, will make the reader feel like they need to see it for themselves.

In conclusion to this evaluation, I think I have achieved the main function of the mian task and the anciliary tasks mostly because I have kept all the four F's closely related to the genre of the film, making sure that the appearance is consistency managed in regards of all the tasks that I have done. I also think the syngery of the film and the anciliary tasks has been well managed and successfully achieved the aim to promote and encourage audiences to watch my short film.

 

Evaluation 1

 

 

I have put together a slideshow to show what conventions I followed and challenged; this was through the stages of my film.

 

Conventions I have followed, Developed or challenged..

After producing and creating a slide show oresentatio, I thought it would be useful to show the different stages of my film through screen shots. This will be supported on how I challenged and followed conventions as well.

One convention of a thriller movie is a symbolic code of location. As we kept it based at school, the same as Lovely Bones, which holds an atmosphere of young, naive children that are almost oblvious to bad things happening. I also thought this would be very effective as it hightens the audience anticipation, mostly because there's so many children in a school the killer could chose and the audience want to know who, whilst hoping they react to his appearance.

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We also seen in the film Lovely Bones the strong connection between Susie ad her family as you can see from the top picture. After watching the film myself, I felt myself feeling sympathy for Susie as I knew from the beginning of the film, that something bad was going to happen to her and a possiblity that she would be snatched away from her family. As I wanted to based certain aspects of my film on Lovely Bones, I thoought it was be very suitable to create this same feeling and feature mainly because Lilly is being snatched away from her normal life and including this creates a sense of happiness and love, leaving more sympathy for the audience to build up. Using a midshot in our film, shows clearly the stronge friendship and senses of happiness as Lilly is smiling and hugging her friend.

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The technical code of conventions I used here was a mid shot focusing on a black mak. This is a key feature I purposely used throughout the filming as the color mak suggests a dark and evil person, and if I used a different colour for the mak, it wouldn't of gave the same symbolic code that the black colour suggests, which could of actually confused the audience at the start of the film.










I also concentrated deeply here, on the eye contact and expression on the killers face; this strongly suggests that the killer has his eyes set on his next victim and also builds up audience connections and iinvolved the audience as the victim is unaware, however the audience use these hints to put two and two together. This type of camera shot is used a lot in the genre of this type of film, meaning it would be beenficially if I used it too to keep coventions.

Harvey, from the Lovely Bones also uses this eye contract to hint to the audience that he is looking at his next victim. As you can see from the picture above and to the left, his eyes and face expression is very much similar to the killer in my short film. From the picture above, there is a slightly bright ray of light overlapping his eyes; this suggests straight away he is fixed on his victim and having the rest of his body dark, suggests the evil he has inside of him. This is also a symboli code of convention that I

concentrated on in my film having the set of most of the plot being dark, which I think reallyworks as it suggests bad things are going to happen.

As you can see from the picture above, the angle of this camera work is a low shot, either suggesting that the victim is looking up at him or symbolising that he is in control and has the power of his victim. In my short film, I have done the exact same code of convention with my killer, as the victim is tied and taped up it suggests she is powerless and he has all control over her. As you can see from the picture to the left that is from my film, the face expression and eye contract he is giving his victim suggets bad things will happening, with a darl and dull background supporting this idea.


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I have then reinforced this idea the opposite way round and basing it on the victim, involving a techniquical code of convention with the camera shot leveled higher; this picture here to the left is taken from 'Along came a spider' which is very similar to the plot of my short film. The symbolic convention I used here was the deep  fear and concentration shown on the talents face, with the camera shot being at a more higher level, suggesting a techniqical code; this showns someone could be empowering them or controlling what they are doing. I wanted to make sure I used this same feautre in my short film, mainly because it creates sympathy and inticipation for the audience, as they want the victim to get away however they have this great deal of control from there and the likelihood of getting away is little. As you can see from the image taken from my short film, the same idea has been done. The victim is showing a huge amount of fear in her face within the midshot and at the same time the camera shot is slightly leveled higher to support this techniqical code of convention.

In the Lovely Bones, they show a stronger techniqical code of cnventions in the picture to the left, as the camera shot is much more leveled higher with the victim lookimg up; this shows that the victim is overpowered by her killer but also conveys the idea of looking up to something higher and taller than her, meaning she is faced with someone that is much more powerful then her. I have tried to do this successfully in my short film, however it didn't work out exactly the same as this high angle shot, but I could develop this idea further if I had more time on my short film.

Above is the image taken from my short film, using this same idea. I think it links to the same idea as the two other images above as it focuses on the symbolic code of convention of fear in the talents face, however I think it concentrates more on a close up of her face to sbhow the audience exactly what this killer is doing to her; this idea is used a lot in this typically genre of film, so I thought it would be very effective using this particular camera shot on top of using the same conventions as the images above.

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 The camera shot shown in both of these images from the Lovely Boens are a symbolic code of conventions. It is known to be symbolical as the lighting shown in this mid shot is coming from one side of the face, meaning the other side of her face has a shadow. I think this camerashot is very effective as it suggests two main things, these are that the victim could be in great danger or she could be close to being killed, meaning the light is representing heaven. This is shown stongly in the picture of Susie below on the left, as it shows more clearly that the light is more behind her on the right hand side; this could suggest she is walking into that light representing death and heaven.












As you can see from the image taken from 'Abduct', I have kept conventions of a dark and dull mise en scene, symbolising a code of conventions as it suggests she is in danger, however to develop this I could of tried reinforcing this shadow of light idea that Lovely Bones has developed. I could of had my talent side lit to keep conventions of this symbolic code.

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I have purposely used this camera shot here, as it is a technical code of conventions; this is because of the tools you can see in the shot, above the victims head, which suggest and represent the ways the victim may die or the way she has been abducted. I think this is a really effective camera shot to include, as I dont want my audience to see how my victim died, I purposely wanted them to work it out for themslves so no explicit content was involved. This is a prime conentions of a thriller film, as the age content doesn't allow explicit footage and supports strongly with the film
'Along came a spider' and the image is shown below.


 

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I have also purposely created the same effect that the film, nosferatu did, with the murders shadow against the wall; this is a really good camera shot mainly because it builds up tensions and antipation on want this person is going to do and if the victim will get away in time before he gets to the top of the stairs. I think the conventin I produced below to the left, challenges conventions slightly mainly because its the shadow of the murder at a particular time but it's actually his figure of his body not a shadow, suggesting that the shot is realistic and really happening. As a whole, I think I have challenged conventions, mainly because I don't show what happens to the victim at the end of the film, either if she dies or if she gets away. As the voice over says at the end of the end of the film, ' And that's when I died' it suggests the victim dies but the audience doesn't see how she dies; this means that I challenge conventions mainly because the audience wants to see how she died, but they are left disequilibrium. I also challenge conventions, because this genre mostly end there film on a positive resolvalution and like to know that the victim is safe and gets away from the killer.


In the Lovely bones, the same type of shot was used, however as a high ankle shot looking up towards the killer. I could of developed this technical code of conventions in my short film, as it suggests that the murder is looking at his victim and showing he is in power


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I've also used a strong convention in this shot, showing the killer following his victim; this was very significant to use mainly because it builds sympathy and anticipation for the audience, as they can see this happening, but the victim can't. This suggests that the victim id naive and oblivious, which helps to create sympathy towards her.
On top of this, I have also based this scene in a graveyard, following a symbolic code of convention. Basing the scene where the killer will take and abduct the victim is a really good way of suggesting something bad is going to happen to her without having to show what happens to the victim in a explicit way. We see in the Lovely Bones that the same scene is not used in a graveyard but a corn field, which also allows the same feeling to occur as the location is abandoned and creepy.

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Finally, I have used a typically symbolic code of convention for my ending title. This was important to use to allow the audience to see the title, but more importantly to maintain a black on white colour scheme. By doing this, it suggest danger and fear, which supports the genre of my film.
This has also been used in the Lovely Bone, which maintains the feeling of a bad ending and danger.








After watching 'Along came a spider', the same idea was used here on a black background, however using hte colour red instead. This was a good idea and I could of used this convention in my film, as it suggests death and possibly 'blood', which would support a bad ending in my film. The fading of the colour red also could suggest that the the film could contain gory and bad contents.

Evaluations

After completing my short film, film poster and film review page I now have to complete my evaluations based on these aspects, these are shown below:

Evaluation 1- 

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

Evaluation 2-

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Evaluation 3-

What have you learned from the audience feedback?

Evaluation 4-

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

ABDUCT FILM POSTER and REVIEW PAGE

FILM POSTER

 

 

FILM REVIEW PAGE

Unappropiate Poster

After having a conversation with my teacher, myself and Zoe found out that the original image we wanted to use with me looking directly at the camera with my mouth covered in duck tape would be too distressing for the audience and would most likely not get through the sensors.

As we originally based our layout on the Antoment and Avatar posters, we didn't make our poster conventional to our genre. In order to overcome this we have searched for posters from our genre to get ideas of conventional features. We have also paid close attention to 'The Lovely Bones' film poster below and feel like this would be a perfect template of ideas that we could use, for example  the darkish covering the old man and the shining light hovering over the young girl; this would obviously represent the idea of good and bad and suggest that the young girl is in danger.