Final Film: Misguided

After recieving all of our audience feedback we edited it and went over the film various times in order to perfect it. This is our final film.

Evaluation, Question 1: In what ways does the media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our media product follows the stereotypical idea of a teen drama, the storyline is much the same as most other teen dramas with a serious twist that sends a message out to the audience. Teen drama’s such as ‘Mean Girls’ focus around the new girl who is evidently a smart girl, trying to fit in with the popular girls at school, to later realise that they were only doing it so they could make fun of her. This is much like our own, yet we have the added twist of things getting out of control and our main character, Fiona, being raped as a result of it. The opening of our film shows Fiona waking up and proceeding to continue with her every day morning routine. Fiona is portrayed as the stereotypical geek throughout the entire film. We first see this in the way she dresses and how she has an organised routine for the morning. Not only does she have teddy bears on her bed, but she arranges them in an order that seems planned. These act as the opening scene of our film, in the form of a montage as it cuts to her brushing her teeth, doing her hair and doing her work, to ensure that we would be able to fit it in with 5 minute limit of the whole film, while making it convince for the audience. We added longer shots of her walking out of her room, or collecting her work and starting her laptop up to break up the jumpiness of the multiple jump cuts within the first scene, to ensure continuity within the film was present throughout all of it.

Our film per the stereotypical teen drama includes a multitude of characters, from the geek to the popular girl. Fiona being the main character is the geek and Alice is the popular girl, who has large groups of friends and wild parties. Much like popular girls within modern films like ‘Mean Girls’ and ‘Wild Child’, Alice has a mean streak that makes her turn on Fiona and drug her. Other characters within the film also follow the stereotypical popular teen that drinks and does drugs at parties. The sense of control within the film is in the hands of Alice, who seems to have the last word with everything, including the drugging of Fiona, since she nods for Kieran to put the drug in Fiona’s abandoned drink. Rather than having a party at a club which would have proved difficult, the use of a house only added to the believability of our film since modern teenagers usually have house parties.




When deciding on how to create our film within the 5 minute limit, we decided that we needed to cut scenes down to make them more effective yet smaller in time, which is how we ended up using the cross cuts of Fiona applying her make-up and walking down the stairs out of the house. This intertextual moment was created after looking at familiar scenes from the film, ‘Wild Child’, where we are shown cross cuts of the girls getting ready and walking down the stairs. Using this sequence allowed us to create an upbeat scene of a girl going from a typical geek, to the glamorous party girl.

When we set about creating our film, our main target was to ensure that it would appeal to our target audience while conforming to the typical teen drama themes and ideas. Using the idea of peer pressure, we were able to both entertain and educate our audience, by sending out the message that drinking alcohol is okay if you are fully aware of what is in and you are among your actual friends, because trying to fit in isn’t really worth it. We were also able to create our film based on Richard Dyer's theory of Utopian solutions, allowing our audience to have a greater enjoyment when watching our film.

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

READS


As a group we intended to address how peer pressure affects young adults. Our film focuses around a typical geek, who gives in to this peer pressure to fit in with the popular kids at a party. I believe that our film addresses the situation effectively, getting the message across with the use of typical teenagers as the characters and a typical house party setting. Our audience is able to relate to the story, learning how easy you can be tricked once under the influence alongside fitting in with others around you.

When creating our film poster, we spent a lesson in the photography studio deciding on the best way in which our characters should be situated for the poster. We then used photoshop to transform the photos we had taken into our completed film poster. When creating the poster we realised that we needed a phrase that would represent our film, which is when we decided on ‘How far would you go to fit in?’ The phrase not only concludes the film as a whole, but it makes the audience consider the hidden message about peer pressure further. Our poster consists of reds and blacks, creating a horror feel to our film, which although that isn’t true the sinister message within our film is represented in the colours we have used. The characters within our poster are of our two key characters, Fiona and Alice. We considered using a photo with Chris also, since he is revealed as the attacker. The fact that Alice is standing behind Fiona with her hand placed on her shoulder allows us to see who is in control. Alice has a wicked grin on her face as she grips Fiona, who is looking off to the side, unaware of what Alice is doing to her.

To create our radio trailer, we used Final Cut Express, consisting of music, narrative and clips from the film. Our trailer allows the audience to get a better understanding of what our film is about with the mix of these three forms, allowing our audience to receive an authentic radio trailer. When creating the script for our radio trailer, we decided to intermingle it with the clips we were using from the film. The middle of the trailer grabs your attention when the narrator states ‘We all want to be part of the popular crew’ after a clip from the film states, ‘it’s a laugh you won’t regret it’ The mix of clips and narrative allows us to link together the idea that the main character is going to change who she is to fit in. The radio trailer progresses much like the story itself, with Fiona saying ‘no, no thank you’ to the drugs only for her to re-evaluate later saying ‘don’t be a spoil sport’ in between these two clips from the film, our narrator uses the iconic phrase for our film, ‘how far would you go to fit in?’ alerting the audience to the fact that trying to fit in has its consequence, which are shown in our film. This sinister trailer again may make the film seem like a horror, however it simply emphasises the fact that fitting in isn’t everything.   

Our ancillary texts are a very effective selling point for our main production, since they allow the audience to gain snippets of what will happen in our film. Our audience will be intrigued as to why we have put a sinister twist on our poster and radio trailer, making them want to see the film. The main link between all three products being our key phrase, ‘How are would you go to fit in?’ even if this is never said within the film, the storyline is based on the idea.

Evaluation, Question 3: What have you leaned from your audience feedback?

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

When creating our media film we realised as a group that media technologies were incredibly important. When deciding on what we would do for our film we knew that we would have to push ourselves to the limit when using the media technologies we had available to create the result we got. For the filming of our product we used a Sony HDV1000 camera and tripod. Setting the white balance whenever we changed rooms took up quite a lot of time when filming, we tried to film in bulks so that we stayed in one room at a time, making it less time consuming. Another time consuming aspect of using the Sony HDV1000 camera was the fact that we needed to adjust the focus for every shot. When we first filmed we didn't focus the camera so we ended up with a blurry background once we enlarged the screen. We had previously used HDV1000 cameras for our first year film, however this year we found ourselves recording in HD, which made the focus and white balance mistakes stand out more than the previous year. Our film also involves the use of a voice over, which we produced using a Zoom recorder. It was the first time any of us had used a Zoom recorder so we weren’t aware of how far away from the recorder we needed to be when recording the voiceovers resulting in us originally having a crackling version which we had to redo, causing us to spend more time correcting our mistake.  

The attention to detail needed when 
editing our film the use of the editing software Final Cut Express made the cuts and effect all the more plausible. Even after using the HDV1000 cameras to white balance our footage we found that some shots didn't match up with the previous one, mainly due to the fact we went from inside to outside. Using Final Cut Express allowed us to change the colour balance to allow continuity throughout the film. The white balancing effect on Final Cut Express made it easier for us to correct the colour matching the codes with that of a correctly white balanced shot. When we originally watched through our film footage we noticed that the focus wasn’t always correctly set alongside the white balance problems. When watching the footage back on the camera the focus bouncing wasn’t obvious, however when on the screen of the Mac, the focus bouncing was easier to see. This was something we couldn't fix using Final Cut Express so we had to re-shoot certain scenes to complete the collection of rough cuts. When we re-shot the footage, making sure we focused for each shot, we found that the spinning ring didn't have a barrier to it, so it continuously changed the level of focus, the spinning ring moved rather fast, so it was hard to find the right focus for shooting the scene. Some of our shots were also darker than expected when viewed on the Mac, resulting in us changing the colour on the shots once again; however this time it involved us doubling up the video footage, we changed the contrast settings on one of the frames which made the overall image lighter.

For the most part of our research for the film, we became reliant on the internet to help plan and compare out own film. We used sites such as IMDB to research the different types of films with the same genre of the one we had chosen, while using YouTube to view extracts from films related to ours. YouTube is also the site we used to upload our completed film to the internet, allowing others to view and comment on our film. When we originally tried to upload our completed film to YouTube, we found that the college had restricted the bandwidth for the internet, restricting us from uploading our film to YouTube, postponing our audience review stage. We used Facebook to gain feedback from a potential audience by showing them a rough cut of our film, before taking their improvements on board and making our film better.

When designing our film poster we all produced our own original idea before combining the groups to create our final design. Once we had settled on some ideas for our final poster, we used photography facilities within college to take professional looking photos using a compact SLR camera for our poster. During these sessions we experimented with the different type of photos we could have and how we could portray our characters through one single shot. Once we had looked over the photos and found the one we wanted to use that involved bits of everyone's ideas together we set one member the task of creating the poster due to her graphics background and extensive knowledge of photoshop. Our radio trailer was originally proving difficult to create since we wanted to make it believable while expressing our message. Once we had our script written, we set about creating the voice over parts we would use, by recording them on a Zoom recorder, like we used for the films voice overs. We also mixed in snippets of the film to allow the listener to get a feel for what will happen within the film without giving too much away. Using final cut express we were able to combine our voice overs, video snippets and copyright free music to create our final radio trailer.


As a whole the created of our film, poster and radio trailer, I believe they have allowed me to enhance my creativity as I was allowed to chance to create my own storyline for the final film, along with how to present ideas and films using images and sound as separate formats rather than both at the same time.

Evaluation, Question 1- In what ways does the media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our product very much develops stereotypical forms and conventions of a real 'teen drama' film/television product. The storyline itself follows a typical teen drama storyline, as it has a underlining message; which teen dramas are mainly based around, ours is about peer pressure and the consequences of giving into it.

       Our Geek          Stereotypical Geek

From the very beginning our film introduces a stereotypical geek, wearing geeky pyjamas, reading glasses and pigtails. As the film goes on we are also introduced to some stereotypical popular kids with lots of makeup, long curly hair, fashionable. We write the characters to deliberatly conform with a typical teen drama character set up. We filmed in believable settings that our audience would be able to relate to, these settings are normal everyday household settings which are typically featured in 'teen drama' films.

Band Logo

Throughout the party scene we use original music by a local band called 'Scarlet Sunset' i feel that this music is a unique part of our film as we use different songs off just their album, this is effective because it holds the whole story together, and the rock theme behind it emphasises the house party that the film is set in, which again follows the conventions of a typical 'teen drama'. 

On a technical level i believe that we've used all the possible conventions of continuity and the language of film and editing. Continuity is particularly important in making a film run smoothly, due to having filmed on several occasion we have to make sure we had our hair and costumes the same every single time, we also made sure that we filmed at the right time of the day so that the lighting was right for the time of day. We made sure we stuck by the 180° rule, however in some parts of the party scene we broke the rule for effect. We also used match on action when cutting between different film shots, such as knocking on a door, walking in the door, and shutting it.(as shown in the clip below)
                                             Match on Action in Our Film

What is the 180 degree rule?

Editing of continuity, and
editing titles to the beat
of the music.

Furthermore, we used rhythmic editing in our titles editing to the beat of the music to again conform to continuity so that it was smooth and easy for our audience to watch.  However, when it came to editing continuity isn't something that was absolutely crucial within our film, as we used a very effective jump cut and cross cut editing techniques throughout a lot of the film.  We thought this was an effective way of showing passage of time as well as it being time efficient as we only had 5 minutes time limit for the entire film. (as shown in the clip below)

To avoid making the film too jumpy and hard to follow we made sure that we put in parts which were longer and have a lot of dialogue in order to shape the film.


Our Jump Cut Scene                                    Jump Cut Scene in Breathless (Godard, 1960)


Wild Child cross cutting                           Our cross cutting

This montage of cross cutting between getting ready and walking down the stairs was influenced by the teen drama film 'wild child', we thought that this sort of editing sequence would be upbeat and a great contrast between the conclusion of the film. This scene is used to subvert the expectations of our audience, in that they are made to believe that she's going to have a good time, shes going to meet new people and her life is going to be a whole lot better, however; this isn't how our film is concluded.

Our film creates a lot of audience pleasure, it follows richard dyers theory of entertainment and utopia.
Utopia is an ideal world, where people are transported when watching the film; Giving the feeling of what the audience lack.

If the audience are lonely, it gives the solution of community (lots of new people, house party)

If the audience are tired/exhausted, it gives the solution of energy(jump cuts, party scene)

• If the audience are Bored, it gives the solution of Intensity (high/low emotions)

Our main objective when researching, planning, filming and editing for our film was to involve as many conventions to conform with a typical 'teen drama', in order to both entertain and educate our audience about peer pressure and the possible consequences of giving into it and having the need to fit in with people, is it really worth it?

Evaluation, Question 2- How effective is the combination of your main product and its ancillary texts?

Reads:
Our intentions when starting the piece were to both entertain and educate our audience about peer pressure and the consequences. 

Throughout both filming and editing, I believe that we have included all the possible conventions in our main product in order to get across the message we were hoping.

We used close ups of alcohol and drugs and a combination of stereotypical characters and believable settings in the hope that our audience would be able to relate to it. 
 

We aimed to get across the idea that Fiona was in with a strike of luck and that she was going to develop a close friendship with a lot of new people whilst making it clear that she was a little nervous about being in a new situation, at the beginning of the film so that the ending it home harder when they realised that they guessed the ending wrong. 

Our film poster was initially designed and created in Photoshop and the pictures featured were taken in a photography studio to get the best authentic look possible. 

I feel that our poster strikes the right balance between shock and interest in order to intrigue our target audience.

The simple design is effective in that it gives the audience an initial insight into the characters, suggesting the hold Alice has over Fiona. (Hand on shoulder)

It attracts the attention of our audience, without giving too much away about the storyline.

In the studio we took a variety of shots, we wanted to get a picture which created the right vibe, we wanted to make Alice look cunning and Fiona look innocent. 

The poster directly asks the audience the rhetorical question ‘How far would you go to fit in?’ the pronoun ‘you’ makes it personal to every individual, therefore grabbing their attention and advertising our film effectively.

The colours used in the poster gives the impression of a horror/thriller, however our film is a teen drama, therefore making the film more pleasurable for our audience when they realise they’ve perceived the film wrongly. (Steve Neale’s Theory)

Our radio trailer was created in both final and garage band. In it is a mix of a musical sound track, important voice snippets for the film such as ‘here Fiona I’ve saved you some’ and ‘don’t be a spoilt sport’ and an effective female voiceover. 
 

When we researched into radio trailers we noticed that they all included a voiceover and snippets from the film, we wanted to make it sound as real as possible, so we featured these. 

Just like our poster, the radio trailer asks the same rhetorical question ‘How far would you go to fit in?’ the question is more effective in the radio trailer though, as the audience are directly asked the question rather than having to read it. This plants the seed of doubt, is it actually worth trying to fit in, and being pushed under by peer pressure, which was our initial aim. 

The mix of audio and voiceover is effective as the audio from the film gives the audience an idea of the storyline, whilst the voiceover talks directly to them, enticing the in. 

Overall, the combination of our ancillary text work well together in advertising our main product. 

The multiple use of the rhetorical question is the main link between the poster and the radio trailer.

Ultimately, the synergy between the three texts work brilliantly together, in creating one complete product, in both entertaining and educating our target audience.

Evaluation, Question 3- What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwXGHjtHtx0&list=UURcc1eir-pHd_7Bqa032c7w&index=8&feature=plcp - Audience Research Video Link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-aIVsNhAZk&feature=relmfu - Audience Screening Feedback

These are the main 10 points of the film we wanted our audience to notice.

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

RESEARCH & PLANNING

When we first got the brief to create a five minute film, we had to think of a good story line to fit which would fit in titles, beginning, middle, end and credits. I used the internet to research previous short films to give us inspiration; After researching existing production I thought that the theme of peer pressure should be covered throughout our film, because I thought it would be good to publicise a common issue at the moment, I researched possible genres for our film and then our group came up with the storyline of ‘misguided’ where a stereotypical geek got the ticket to fit in with the popular people she felt like she should go along with everything that they wanted, which lead to harsh consequences.

I used websites such as https://www.google.co.uk/, http://www.filmsshort.com/, and http://www.youtube.com/, BBC films to help me do this.  Google was my main search engine for anything i needed to know or any specific searches, such as existing short films.

We used microsoft word and paint when planning our project, we created storyboards, mindmaps, floor plans etc in order to get the best idea of what our film would look like before we started researching into whether it would work well or not. we did this so we were prepared to either get going with creating the film, or so we had lots of ideas just incase it wasn't the best one, so we didn't have to start from scartch.

we used facebook and twitter to distribute our draft video, in order to get suitable responses from our potential audience, so that we could finalise our film, with the audience in mind.  we used facebook as a means of getting a wider demographic responce, rather than just showing it to people in college.

The internet has also allowed me to create a blog which has posts on all three stages (construction, planning, and research) of production on it, illustrated through a variety of media types; videos, pictures, essays, web links etc.

when we wrote up the idea, we wanted to collect some audience research to see if the film would be a hit, to do this we thought of a series of question to ask a variety of students in college,we used HD1000 cameras to video peoples responses, and I used final cut express to edit the questions and responses together to make it look presentable when I put it on Blogger, when I was putting it together I learnt how to wire frame still frames to resize images in order to make the overall video look better.

wire frame was used in order for the little box's of stills would extend to full screen in the middle, for the video clips to play,i did this for the audience research video to look more effective. 

we used celtx software to develop a script, in order to learn and follow in filming our main product.

FILMING

After we collected our audience feedback, we started filming for our project. When filming the piece we had to involve a lot of new media technologies, we filmed the piece with HD1000 cameras, using HD settings, we learnt how to make sure all HD settings were on correctly and how to make sure everything was white balanced and focused; this was something we had to re-learn from last year, 
because after our first filming session we realised that we used auto focus throughout the whole of it, which made the film bouncy and unfocused(http://www.videomaker.com/article/7710/- http://www.friendsofhdvideo.com/hdv-tips/sony-hdr-fx7-hdr-fx7e-tutorial/) due to this we had to work around a situation which meant that we had to re-film the piece and also had to re-cast it; we went back to film it and made sure that all the settings were correct this time and we filmed to the best of our ability; putting in extra shots that we thought of just in case they would look good when in process of editing. We also used, laptops and zoom recorders in making our film. Due to our film involving a party we had to record the music separately to the dialogue to make sure that the voices were loud enough to hear over the music; this was something we had to make fit when we came to editing it. 

We used the zoom recorders in order to record the two voiceover within it, the first being the conversation between Alice and Fiona, and the second being Fiona’s thoughts of being asked to the party which plays over her journey in the car; we had a few problems using the zoom recorder where we had to record Robyn’s voice(play’s Fiona) a few times before it was correct, because of her mouth being too close to the microphone that it made bumping noises and also her voice being too quite; we eventually had to double up the recording.

EDITING

Here we used compisite
mode and turned up the
brightness in order for it
to look better without
making it look out of place

I learnt a lot when doing the editing part of the construction because I ended up taking a lead role in doing it, using final cut express has helped me with my creativity with both visual and audio effects; we have incorporated elements such as flashbacks to identify the rape scene, we filmed short clips of what happened, and edited them together with quick cuts and put in flashes between them for effect, voice collaborations,cross fades between both audio and video were also used, in order to smooth out the film, so it was easy to follow, making it easier to watch, and also learnt how to place visuals in sync with the beat of the music in the background to make it look much more effective. 

this is the colour correction as the
colour of this shot was originally
too blue and needed some oranges to
make the light much more natural.

Also how to change colour and brightness(some of the filming was really dark, therefore we had to brighten it up when we came to editing it).

EVALUATION & ANCILLARY TEXT

When we came to uploading a draft version of our film to get some audience feedback, the band width of YouTube through college wasn’t big enough therefore I had to upload it from home with took up a considerable amount of time and held us back in getting feedback to improve; however overall I feel that media technologies have definitely helped my creativity in all stages of making our film. We used youtube and facebook in order to get a wider respoce from our target audience.


we had to make a radio trailer and a poster to advertise our film, i have developed my skills from graphic design in using the software photoshop when i went on to develop ideas for our film poster, the limitations of photoshop elements though interrupted my creativity as it didn't have all the features i knew how to use. I developed versions of our poster, by playing around with some features such as feathering, bluring and sharpening; i didn't know how i wanted my poster to look like, so i developed ideas whilst creating it. after, we had a photoshoot, using an SLR digital camera; in order to help us make our poster as good as it can be; when we found the picture we wanted i created a further one on basic editing software, and robyn then created our final poster on the newest version of photoshop.


we had the choice of using garage band or final cut to edit our radio trailer together, we though that using final cut would give us an advantage of making it as good as it can, because we knew how to use it properly, and how to create effective pieces of work. we used sound bridges and fades, and overlapped effective music over the top of a voiceover and sound clips from our film, therefore we combined the two softwares in making our radio trailer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qccgpr6eajQ - Radio Trailer

In conclusion i believe that media technologies have allowed me to be creative and to make things look professional and to link the ancillary texts easily and efficiantly

Evaluation Part 1

Good continuity is vital when making a film run smoothly and making it look professional. We made sure we didn't change any costumes or props when shooting the same scene on different days and tried to ensure our hair and make-up was done the same. We had to make sure continuity in our film was perfect by making sure we followed the 180 degree rule, as well as this we used match on action in certain shots like when Fiona knocks on the door and is greeted. Also during the getting ready scene we used jump cuts and cross cuts when Fiona is walking down the steps, which shows her getting ready at the same time, after each step she went down we had to ensure that when it cut back to walking down the stairs after a cut of her getting ready it was the correct step as well as making sure it fit the beat of the music, we got inspiration for this idea from the film 'Wild Child' which also see's a transformation from a geek look into a party look. We used a lot of cross cuts throughout the film particularly in the getting ready scene, however we made sure we included some longer shots to improve continuity.

We stereotypically stuck to the genre of our film throughout which was a teen drama. We included elements such as friendships and peer pressure to try and make our of the film which implies the main character has been raped. We have very stereotypical characters in o

ur film, the main two are very different; Fiona who is very geeky and Alice who is a typical popular girl. The props and costumes we used in the film helped us communicate to the audience what they were like, for example at the beginning Fiona has lots

of teddies on her bed and is studying, on the other hand Alice seems very controlling at the party, always has an alcohol drink in her hand as well as that the party is at her house. target audience relate to, as well as dramatic scenes to make our film more exciting such as the end scene.

Stereotypical geek Our geek

We wanted to create a film that had a strong meaning to it and that our target audience could relate to and could send a message to our audience. After brainstorming all of our ideas together we created our story line which involved social groups and fitting in with the crowd which as teenagers ourselves we could relate to so therefore our target audience would. This then lead to peer pleasure by the use of alcohol and drugs, we wanted to put across to our audience that ‘fitting in with the crowd’ is not always the best thing to do, and that alcohol and drugs can lead to bad consequences and therefore our main character gets raped in the scene. I believe that our films meaning works for our film in that teenagers will be able to relate to it very well, and that the shocking story line fits well with the responses we received from our audience feedback as it was mentioned that the shock factor makes a good teen drama. Richard Dyer's theory of utopian solutions fitted with our film very well as it gives great audience pleasure with educating them on peer pressure, drugs and alcohol as well as entertaining them.

Evaluation Part 2

View more PowerPoint from hollyjohnson93

Evaluation part 3

Evaluation part 4

Throughout the making of our project I have used the internet to post my work onto blogger as well as to research and plan the film. In particular I used youtube for looking at title sequences, radio trailers and other short films as well as using google as the main search engine throughout. A problem we came across was the server in college as the ban width weren't big enough for us to upload our film. iMDB was helpful for me too when researchin
g into film genres, I used BBFC to look into film certificates also. Communication in the group was done through mobile phones and facebook, which was convenient for all of us as we could all get in touch with each other easily. I had few problems during using the internet however when trying to put pictures on my posts as they often wouldn't go where I wanted them to which I overcome by editing the html.

Our film 'Misguided' was created using Sony HD1000 cameras which are good quality cameras where you can get good quality filming in any location, the camera was generally easy to use and I feel like my filming skills have improved greatly. Another strength with the camera was the sound quality which was very clear. A problem we had with the camera was the focus rim on the camera, and therefore we struggled with a pulling focus shot as the camera has a spinning

focus rim (we

didn't end up using the shot in the final film.) A HD1000 tripod was also used, which was used to take sure shots were not shaky and to ensure they ran smoothly, some shots however we created to look shaky where we didn't use a tripod such as when Fiona is running down the stairs at the end, this works very well as we see things from her point of view insinuating worry and that everything is a blur to her. We also used a hand held camera to create a video diary which was very easy to use.

To edit our film we used final cut express which is widely used on

apple mac computers, I believe this programme has improved my creativity greatly. Final cut enabled us to cut out the shots that weren't needed and creating continuity. It also allowed us to alter the sound for example some conversation parts in the film weren't quite loud enough. We used different effects in the film such as fades, changing the colour, using cuts and flashes of light as well as speeding up shots such as in the party scene where everyone is stood around Fiona in a circle laughing. We didn't have any major problems the the mac's or the editing

software however sometime it was time consuming such as rendering the film when adding in new shots as well as when transferring our footage onto the computer. We also used a zoom recorder to record voice-overs for our film in a quiet room which we then put on the mac and edited and added to our film in final cut express.

To create our poster we all created individual designs and then as a group decided on a final poster design. The final poster was made on Photoshop, we used a photography studio to take pictures on a SLR camera to put on the poster. For our radio trailer we used final cut express which worked in our favour as we were very familiar with it. We recorded voice overs on a zoom recorder, took some sound from our film and used some copyright free music which works very well with the sound from the film, we also added in fades and sound bridges to make the trailer sound the best we could make it.

In conclusion I feel like the media technologies I have used has helped me improved my overall media skills such as editing, researching, sound recording and blogging, as well as boost my creativity. I think that any problems that occurred throughout the project I have able to overcome resulting in a successful project.

Evaluation, Question 1: In what ways does the media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our media product has a typical, convincing opening that is found in many modern films as it features a montage of events that our opening titles roll over. This montage helps to introduce our main character, Fiona, to the audience by showing her morning routine and portraying her as a geek who works hard and just gets on with life. We observed the language of media within this opening montage through editing the titles and certain shots to the offbeat of the music so it had a smooth, consistent feel to it. We also made good use of jump cuts so we could show a passage of time throughout her daily morning routine in a way that looked convincing but was time efficient as we only had 5 minutes to fit our entire film into and so couldn’t waste too much time on our opening montage. However, to avoid the film looking too jumpy, we made sure to include longer shots and make use of continuity in between all of our jump cut sequences, for example, when Fiona leaves the house and gets into her car we obey the 180 degree line rule and make use of match on action.

I believe that our film fits into the ‘Teen Drama’ genre as it has a storyline that reflects that of daily teenage life, however it is dramatised and so makes the story more interesting and have impact. The characters help to add to the believability of our film as they are all based on existing stereotypes, see left: in particular, Fiona, a typical geek who’s quite timid and unpopular, and Alice, a typical popular girl who is pretty, fashionable, has a lot of friends and can be quite nasty. All of our characters are deliberately meant to conform to modern day stereotypes so a sense of social hierarchy can be made apparent to our viewers and so that our characters stay close to representing real life teenagers, and our stereotypes are created through the use of carefully selected costume, make up and personality. The settings within our film also add to believability as houses parties among college students aren’t uncommon, meaning our storyline isn’t too far-fetched.

We include intertextuality within our film while Fiona is getting ready. In our film, there are cross cuts between Fiona applying make up and her walking down the stairs, and in the teen drama 'Wild Child' you're shown a similar sequence of cross cuts of a group of girls getting ready and then walking down some stairs. We believed this scene would be good to reference within our own film as we wanted to create an upbeat, flowing sequence that presented how a girl can go from geek to glamorous in a time efficient manner.  

Our film also makes reference to the short film I analysed, 'New Boy'. However, it makes reference to it in terms of themes as 'New Boy' presents an African boy's struggle with fitting in at a new school and our film presents a geeky girl's struggle with fitting in within her everyday life. Our film could be considered the opposite of 'New Boy' as 'New Boy' has a sinister underlying story and ends positively, and our story appears to have a positive underlying story (Fiona finally fitting in) but at the end there's a twist and the story ends on a negative note, showing the sinister intent of the film throughout. I believe that this twist to our story helps us achieve the audience pleasure we set out to evoke as the audience is lulled into a false positive emotion as things are going well, but are then suddenly shocked by the story's unexpected tragic outcome, which falls into Richard Dyer's theory of Entertainment and Utopia as these highs and lows of emotion help to cure an audience of boredom. As well as to shock and somewhat entertain, our film intends to educate teenagers on the dangers of alcohol, drugs and peer pressure, and I believe that this unnerving ending achieves this.

Evaluation, Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and its ancillary texts?

Reads:
Throughout the production of our film and its ancillary texts, our intention as a group was to send out a warning about peer pressure and the consequences that surround it. I believe that our film sends out this message effectively as we use a combination of believable characters and settings that our audience can relate to and a dramatic event to shock and educate our audience through the reception of our message.

Our radio trailer was created in Final Cut Express and features music, a narrative voiceover and sound snippets from our film. I believe that they all blend together well to create an authentic sounding radio trailer that will impress and interest an audience. As well as making our trailer sound authentic, we focused on getting across the message that a character in our film has to make some decisions surrounding fitting in by using snippets such as "It's a laugh, you won't regret it" and "Don't be a spoil sport" to present how others can encourage a person's decision. To relate this to our listener and get them to think, we ask them, "But how far would you go to fit in?" to make them consider potential consequences of succumbing to peer pressure, and therefore suggesting that there's a dark twist in our story and thus it can be dangerous attempting to fit in.

Our film poster, which was created in Photoshop using an image we took in a photography studio, also features the same rhetorical question as our radio trailer, "How far would you go to fit in?" which once again makes our audience consider whether fitting in is worth it. The colours used within our poster are mainly reds and blacks and therefore create a sinister feel within our poster. The main image is of the two main characters in our film, Alice and Fiona. I believe that this image is very important and portrays the meaning of our film excellently as it shows the power one person can hold over another, and thus how they can mislead them, as Alice has a grip of Fiona's shoulder and is shown to look very smug while Fiona looks innocent and unknowing.

I believe that our ancillary texts are very effective in selling our main production as there is a sense of synergy between them all and they intrigue our audience in a dark, sinister manner through posing a question to them which will ultimately make them curious about our film's story and thus want to see it. Our ancillary texts comply with Steve Neale's theory of genre as they send out a sinister feel and could potentially make an audience expect a thriller, however our genre is different to what our ancillary texts suggest, and so the shock value of our film will be even greater when the audience realises that they predicted the film incorrectly. This could also potentially make our film more memorable as it wasn't just another typical genre film that most people could predict the ending to.

Evaluation, Question 3: What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

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

The Internet played a big part in the research, planning and evaluation stages throughout the construction of our media product. In the research stages, we used websites such as Wikipedia and IMDB to gather together information relating to genre and conventions, however, we had to ensure that any information we gathered was reliable as Wikipedia is open for anybody to contribute to. We also made good use of YouTube throughout the researching process so we could observe other films similar to the genre we wanted to work within. Throughout the planning of our film, we recorded all of our ideas and findings in the form of a blog on the website Blogger. We were able to construct our blog exactly how we liked, and so we decided upon a housestyle that related to our production company, Green Apple Productions, ensuring that the colours, texts and layout all complimented our logo well. During the evaluation stage, the internet proved to be very helpful as we uploaded all of our finished products (film and radio trailer) onto YouTube (we faced a problem relating to bandwidth at one point due to college server issues, but it was soon overcome) and then straight onto the social networking site, Facebook, where we were then able to share our video with an online community and gather feedback instantly from our target audience and others, which made gathering audience feedback very easy.

Throughout our planning stage we also took advantage of our access to handheld cameras by videoing some of our peers’ answers to a questionnaire we created. After collecting the footage, we then seized the opportunity to develop our video editing skills through using Final Cut Express. While editing, we played around with titles and split screens where there was a title displayed over 4 video frames as one got larger and began playing, shortly followed by other answers to the same question that faded in and out of one another. I believe that this was helpful at this stage as it eased us steadily back into using the software and gave us a bit of practice before we were to start editing our final film. 

I believe that the creation of our media product itself was the most insightful experience for us all as we once again used a HDV1000 camera and a tripod, however this time we were shooting in HD and also got the chance to use a zoom recorder to record the voiceovers within our film, something we hadn’t considered in last year’s production. We found that when using the zoom recorder it was easy to get too close to the microphone and cause unwanted bumping noises, meaning we had to redo our voiceovers until we were happy with them. We also encountered problems when using the HD Camera as on our first filming session we struggled with the white balance and focus as we’d set the camera to the automatic setting rather than manual, meaning the colours were off and the focus bounced from one place to another rather than staying focused on a point, meaning we then had to rearrange filming. The practice editing video to the right shows these problems. Another problem we had with the camera was its spinning ring. This setting made it very difficult to pull focus which came as an inconvenience to us as we’d planned to have a pulling focus shot in our film that we then edited out later as it didn’t look as we’d expected it to because of the camera’s limitations. 

Once we'd overcome all problems with the camera, we were able to finalise filming and begin editing our film. I think we learnt a lot throughout editing as we attempted things that we hadn't last year, for example, we keyframed some of the text on our titles to position them exactly, we edited cuts to fit in with the beat of the music used to give a sense of consistency, we played around with audio levels to lower or higher voices and music wherever necessary (we filmed without music playing and edited it in afterwards) and we took advantage of effects such ‘flashback’ to give our film a gripping edge. Examples of what I believe to be our best editing are at the end of the film where there is the use of several sound snippets from the film to create an eerie, haunting flashback for Fiona, and the scene where Fiona is getting ready as shots are edited to the beat and we use cross-cutting between her getting ready and walking down the stairs. 

As well as creating a film, we had to consider a radio trailer and poster. As a graphics student, I found creating the poster to be an exciting task and took advantage of the skills I posses by using Photoshop to mock up poster designs. When creating our final poster we also took advantage of our access to a photography studio and took photos using an SLR style digital camera to give us high quality photos that we could then use within our final poster. When creating our radio trailer, we decided to compose it using a combination of Garageband and Final Cut Express. It is made up of sound snippets from our film, copyright free music we found on college CDs and voiceovers that we recorded using a zoom recorder. I believe that creating a radio trailer has helped to enhance my creativity as I had to consider telling a story verbally without giving it away; something which is easy to achieve when using images as they tend to speak for themselves. Although this task was difficult, I believe we overcame it successfully and managed to blend a mysterious narrative alongside film snippets to create a wonder-inducing radio trailer that will hopefully intrigue people enough to watch our film. 

Altogether, I believe that the production of our film, radio trailer and poster have helped me develop creatively as the experience has offered me the opportunity to think about a storyline, consider editing in terms of both video and sound and, finally, how to represent a motion picture through both images and sound alone, showing that I’ve been able to think of how pictures can accumulate to give an overall picture, how one single image can give an insight into a whole story, and also how words can be used cleverly to tell a story's outline but not its whole content.