Final Post

I have really enjoyed Media Studies, I believe I have learnt an incredible amount from the two year process and have also improved my skills a considerable amount.

I began in AS making a simple 1 minute film copy on a phone, to making a short film as a preliminary task, progressing to creating the opening title sequence of a film. While I enjoyed doing this, upon reflection the work was relatively poor quality, falling down particularly in the areas of sound, editing and camera work. However, when I compare that to the short film I have created this year, there has clearly been a huge progression in my skills, and I am very pleased with the outcome of my short film.

I hope to build upon these skills even further throughout my education and perhaps this course will have helped me to decide my career interests and aspirations.

Evaluation Question 4

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

Evaluation Question 3

As discussed in the presentation above, audience feedback was incredibly important to the construction of my media pieces.

We first received feedback on our pitch, to initially gauge what people thought of our idea and potential ways of improving it. This was an extremely important stage of audience feedback as it allowed us to ensure that our idea would appeal to our target audience. The most useful piece of feedback we received at this stage,= was people thought the best way to put faces on the fruit would be by making the facial expressions separately and then sticking them onto the fruit.

Following our pitch, we later received feedback on our animatic, this was an equally important stage of feedback as we had now visualised our idea to the audience, allowing them to better understand what we were trying to achieve. People generally liked our idea, however having now seen our animatic they suggested we shorten some of the shots and employ faster editing, as it appeared slow to them upon seeing our animatic.

The next stage in which we were able to receive considerable feedback was after having presented to the audience a rough cut of our film. The rough cut is the closest representation of what we want our final piece to look like, and so receiving feedback at this stage was extremely important. The feedback at this stage was overwhelmingly positive, however, to improve, it was suggested to us that we experiment to create better lighting effects, we were also advised to re-film a few of the shots as they were slightly unsteady.

After having completed our short film we were then able to present it to our audience and gain any final feedback for potential adjustments and improvements. Our film was generally very well received and at this final point there were very few suggestions of ways to improve, however a couple of points were raised with regards to improving the sound. It was suggested to us that we should include some ominous music when the "villain" character appears, thus making it immediately apparent he is the villain and the fruit is in danger. It was also suggested to us that we could add some form of sound when the fruit blinks, this to help break up the segments that currently lack sound.

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 2: How effective is the main combination of your media product and ancillary tasks?

I produced my ancillaries after my main product was almost entirely complete. However, when making my ancillaries I wanted the images used, to look like they fit with the short film. To achieve this I used the same characters and props, on the same set as what I had used to film it. In addition, I used the same lighting for my ancillaries as I had used for the filming, this to allow the images used in my ancillaries to appear as if they had been taken directly from the film.

I think I used the technologies I had available to me quite effectively to create my ancillaries. I predominantly used Photoshop to create my ancillaries, and although they were largely comprised of a photograph I had taken, Photoshop allowed me to add the necessary text and promotional images (e.g. Star ratings), as well as the overlaying title.

As previously mentioned, I created my ancillaries after almost having completely finished my short film, however to gain the necessary visual inspiration for my ancillaries, I returned to the location of filming and tried to recreate the same aesthetic as used in my short film.

I carried out a considerable amount of research when considering how I was going to design my ancillaries. I began by researching existing film posters and magazine articles and considered what aspects of them I liked and why I thought they were successful. After having done this, I selected a couple that were my particular favourites and that also contained aspects that I would like to attempt to recreate in mine, and then deconstructed them, analysing them in more depth to decipher what made them so effective and how I could replicate that effect.

Film Poster Inspiration:

- TinTin

- Avengers

- Fight Club

- The Proposition

- The Fight Club

Several of these posters, while I liked them, were of genres very different and unrelated to mine, meaning the style in which they had been made did not fit the style I was attempting to create. Thrillers, action and sci-fi films all have interesting posters, however they all use a bright and prominent colour palette and are extremely busy, with there being numerous objects and effects in the photo. I wanted my poster to be more simplistic to reflect the simplicity of the story and concept in my short film. 

Deconstructed Film Posters:

- Whiplash

- Fightclub

How did my ancillary tasks employ, or challenge codes and conventions of my media product:

- Simplistic

- Low Budget

- Only presents one character

- Possibly emotive (facial expression on the orange)

Consideration of artistic and photographic elements:

- Composition of the photograph (positioning of the orange)

- Lighting (Well lit, cool/cold, lonely lighting, similar to that used in the short film)

- Framing of the shot (used the table to underline the image and create a new section of it)

How was font used?

- Tried both black and white

- Tried both 2D and 3D text

- Tried numerous different fonts, chose to use something simplistic so it was not overbearing and fitted well with the simplistic theme and concept of my short film.

Evaluation Question 1

Short Film - Complete

This is the finished version of my short film.

Revised Short Film Poster

After having finished the first draft of my short film poster and had received feedback on it, I made numerous changes to improve the overall quality of my poster. The most significant change I made was replacing the picture of the orange and the table, I replaced it to a single picture with the orange physically on the table and I improved the overall quality of the photo, predominantly by improving the lighting.