Question 4 - How Did You Use New Media Technologies In the Construction and Research, Planning and Evaluation Stages?

Technology was vital to our entire Media production from the first part to the end. we used a range of technology for all aspect of our short fil whcih i will go on to reveiw.

New Media Technology   

New media technology is a term used to describe all the technology which is used since the late 20th centuary. These technologies rage from instant internet access to websites to the devices we use like DVD and CD-ROMS. Almost all new media Technology is digital which means that magazines and books do not fall under new media technology.

I will go through all the different tyoes of technology that i used and then asses them on how they contributed to our short film and were they successful or not.

Mobile phones

we used mobile phones to communicate with eazch other which was vital during our short film making process. As we all do other subjects and have busy lives we could not always be able to plan everything when together and also last minute changes would always so mobiles were used my phone call and by text to ensure everyone was kept in the loop on what was happening where ever we were. this was great for organing things aswel as at anytime we could ring each other to confirm dates of filming and other important things. also if either of us were ever stuck or unsure of something I could call the director Anton for any assistance. our mobile phones also can take pictures which was useful in a few instances notably when i was at Antons house were were discussing weather one of the camer shots should be shot over Simon's shoulder looking at the computer, we were unsure how it would look so i took pictures on my iphone which gave us a good understanding on how it would look. small things like this were very helpfull which gave us a lot of help.   

Facebook

Facebook was very helpfull as it is very popular and all four of us in our group use it often which gave us an alternative option of communication. while texting is good it costs money and is not instant messaging and free flowing. Facbook chat is intant messaging and you can have free flowing instant chats with people. it was also very usefull for us to be able to have another means of communicate with each other incase our phone ran out of credit or and been lost/broken it ment we could carry on talking and communicating.   

The Internet 

We used the internet mainly for research things we were unsure of and to find definitions of things that would help us understrand them fully. this was very helppul i remember one instance when me and anton were sorting out all the camera positions and we had forgot about the 180 degree rule. we used he internet to instantly find out the full definition and managed to continue working with out having to stop until we next saw our teacher. This speeded up the hole process and made us more indepent to do our own reasearch and not depend on our media teacher constantly. also we could reaserch and watch other short films to help us with our own and try and take some ideas to enhance the quality of our short film.

Digital Camera

This was an important part of equipment because we had to take many pictures before our short film was filmed. as shown previosly in my blog we needed to do the location recce which I personaly did it was important because it gave us something to reffere to when we were sorting our the lighting and the camera positioning.

PD150 Camera   

This camera made it possible for us to able to film our short film. We had to learn how to use the camera before we could film as there are a lot of applications on it.  it allowed us to be able to zoom in and out aswel which was unsful.


Laptops/Computers

Computers and laptops made it possible for us to complete our short film. my laptop at home made it easy for me to use the internet for research and do continue doing pre production work at home whcih ment i could get far more done. Also the computers at school made it possible for us to share work using computer email and of course the edit suit is computer based software making it possible for us to complete the logging the capturing and the editing. computers helped us in almost every single aspect of our the entire production of our short film Synchrnicity.

Edit Suit

The Edit suit was the quipment we used to put our film togther after we had filmed our short film. this was very important as with out its high quality applications we would have struggled to make our short film look good at all. we managed to add music and to cross dissolve.

Question 3 - What Have You Learned From Your Audience Feedback?

In this post we had to get audeince feedback from our peirs about our short film. Our media teacher showed the class all the 3 groups short film to each other so we could all give audience feedback to them and to receive it. this was important to find out weather we had acheived what we set out to acheive for example was the message we wanted to be portrayed sclear for people to see in our short film? These were important questions for us to know to know weather our film had been a success or not.

we used the flip video recorder to record what the other 2 groups felt about our short film. here they are:





The first question we asked them was did you know what the overall message of the film was supposed to be?

This group did not seem to understand the message of our film saying that they only knew because they had seen bits of it during its production. They said it was hard to understand weather the film was foccusing on the parents or the child I personaly feel that the film his quite obviously focusing on the child and how she is being neglegted this point is reinforced  at the end when she had clearly run away and hiding somehwere and says they will never find me here this comment from this group did puzzle me. But that is what they felt so we as a group had to take on the feedback and try and see what we could have done to improve the clearness of the message.

The next question we asked was what was the strenghts of Synchronicity were?

The gpoup agreed that the setting of our short film was good and suited the story well. They also beleived we used a lot of props which was good and suitable for every scene. One of the members of their group was very impressed with the camera work saying it was used very well with the story line. and fianlly they felt that he credits were good especially at the begining of the film.

We then asked this group what they thought the weaknesses were of Synchronicity?

One of them beleived the sound was of poor quality at some points making it hard to hear the actors due to other noises. Another member of their group seemed to think that the film was to scripted and that the actors should have been given a more free role than to stick to a set script. and they did not seem to understand our film very clearly.

the last question we asked this group was wether they felt the music for the film was suited to the film?

They all agreed that the music was good and appropriate for the film especially theme of the song

we then recored the second group to find out what there perception of our short film was:





we asked this group the same question.

 Did you know what the overall message of the film was supposed to be?

Bobby O'brain seemed to have a very stong understanding of the film and had obviously payed good attention when watching our film becuase she found very easy to understand the message of the film infact she understood both messages of the film the first being how the child isabel is being neglegted and secondly how she may have supernatural powers as seen with the train crash.


The next question we asked was what was the strenghts of Synchronicity were?

Emma awnsered this Question stating that she was impressed with the overalll story line of our film.

what were the weaknesses of Synchrinicity?

This question was awnsered by Matt who beleived that there were a couple of weaknessen in our film. firstly he felt that our actors may have done better if they did not have such a strict script as it would have been better if they were allowed to imprevise a little bit making it better flowing and would overall make the film better. another weakness that he brought up was the scene where isabel trying to put the train set together he felt that the scene dragged of for far to long making it rather boring and making him wonder what the point of the scene being that long was. I would agree with both of these weaknesses and had already identified them before we were given aduince feedback.

Was the music suited for our film?

They all agreed that the music was suited to our film

in conclusion i feel that the audience feedback was very helpfull and gave us all a lot to think about. it makes us loot at our film form another prerspective and opens our eyes to thing that we may not have been aware as we were so engrossed by the production. we a far smarter now and learnt through our mistakes if we were given the taks again now we would be able to do it so much better.

Question 2 - How Effective Is the Combination of Your Main Product and Ancillary Texts?

In this post i will be looking at how Effective my post card was and how i came around to making my post card. first of all i had to go through some thinking proceses before i could start my final postcard. this involved a lot of planning on my part. first of all i had to have a stiking image for the front of my postcard which would be effective for anyone looking at my postcard. i think my image and texts on my post card are well suited for the film and in perfect format. i used a red theme with my postcard as it is dramatic and striking which i founf neccecary as isabel has potential power to cause huge destruction and death as shown with the train crash incident in the film.

Question 1 - In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop or Challenge Forms and Conventions of Real Media Products?

Post 20 Final Film, Final Postcard Final Reveiw

Post 19 Post Production Report

In this post i will be looking at all the stages that we as a group went to after we had filmed our short film. filming is just the beginning of the process to finishing our short film, a lot must be done after for the film to be finished.

We stated with the logging. this is making a table on a Microsoft Word document and going through our film picking which shot takes we wanted to be used in our film as we took up to 10 takes on some shots due to mistakes or unhappiness with the shot. We had to find the start time and the end time of every single shot that we did, log them into a table, wright a short description of the shot and then wright yes or no next to the ones we wanted. This took a very long time a lot longer than any of us had ever anticipated it to and found it very boring by the end. however we manged to eventually complete the logging wick all four is contributing which as good as the work was shared and not one person was handed the job.

We then went on to the next stage which was capturing. After we had decided the shots that we wanted we needed to put the exact time start and exact time finish of all the shots that we had chosen into the Adobe Premier pro. Then the Adobe Premier Pro would take the information and run the tape playing all the shots we had chosen. after this we could begin to edit.

Now we could start edit our short film together which is what we have all been waiting for. For this section of the post production is the combining of shots into sequences. this is where everything is put together in order and then we can play about with it a bit by cutting down scenes, using cross dissolve ( when the end of one scene fades out and the start of another scene fades in causing both scenes for a few moments to be seen simultaneously) and other aspects such as adding music and changing the brightness and colour of a scene for what ever reason. Also credits and titles need to be put in when editing like the 'Presented By Clockwork Productions' and the director, camera man ect.. i had to familiarise myself with the editing as i had not done it in over a year and it was important for me to get a good understanding of all the editing equipment. after a short while it started to come back to me and with help from my media teacher this was made possible.We had to make sure we did this as a group to make sure we were all very happy with the final look of the film. we all made a contribution which was vital for the successful completion of the short film.

we did have some problems when the camera had reformatted to 4:3 from 16:9 but thankfully Nicola and the director Anton managed to solve this problem by zooming in on the shots to make them the correct size. unfortunately did this have a consequence as some of the quality was last in these shots where we had to zoom this is something I have learnt and will improve upon if I was to make a another film.

In conclusion i felt as a team we worked well together and avoided any argument causing our film to be a success in my opinion there are things which i would have liked to have done better as with all things when finished but on the whole i felt that the short film we made was very good and I and my group can be very proud of ourselves.

Post 18 Production Report

In this post I will be reveiwing our full production on the day of filming which eventually came to pass on the 4th of March 2011. I will be looking at how we had planned the day out and how we went about doing our filming.

first of all we had to set out a plan before hand because organisation was key for a successful production. we had all agreed to meet at the filming location at 10am which was a sunday morning. we came at 10am with the ambition and thought of filming by 12 (the arrival of the actors our director had organised). so we had one hour to organise the house and to set up all our eupiment and to fully organise everything before the actors got to thr filming location. For some reason which i am not aware of the actors could not arrive until abot 2 oclock leaving us a huge problem as we would not have enough time in the day to film and that it would be equally difficult to rescedual a filming day especially as many of the production team including myself had booked time off work. but this turned out to be a blessing in disguise as one hour was no where near enough time to organise the house to be ready for filming. there where a lot of things that we had not fully accounted for and under estimated  how much time we needed to organise everything. the main problem was organising the house to make it look like what we had drawn our plans of the filming and furneture. 3 hours was more than enough time and we had everything perfect awaiting the arrivel of the actors. it gave us time to sit down and calmly discuss our plan which was very helpfull. we drew up a plan which is here -

This set out all the tasks that we individually had to do to ensure that our filming day was a successful one.
this was very helpful so we could all refere to this plan so no one was confused with what thewy had to do.

we then had to take pictures of the hole house because we felt that it would be a wise idea to put everything back as we found it so using the camera we took photos and coul refere to them so we knew where everthing had come from so we could put it back accordingly.

after we had put all the rooms into the correct position we had to look at the lighting as the camera man i was looking through my camera and made the point that thwe room looked very yellow and did not portray the atmoshere that the scenes need to be portrayed. I with my fellow work mate Ryan set about putting filters on all 12 of the lights in the living room. This was a difficult and frustrating task as the filters did not seem to want to stay on the lights causing frustration between both of us. But eventually we managed to put them up, here are some of the pictures that were taken of the filters to try and dampen the light into a colder/darker feel of the room.

The Actors in our film

in our production organisation it was important for all of us to know who and how many actors were coming to make it easier for us to know what is happening when they arrive. the fact that they were from comumbia was important information to know before hand as their english could have been poor and we would need to prepare for that but it turned out there english was fine and there were no issues. we had never met these people before unlike Anton our director so we had to rely on him for all the information about the actors that were going to be in our film.

The actors that were in our film were as follows: 

Louis Fernandez - 23 years old and played the role of Simon. He was a fun lively character who I engoyed working with I felt he played the role very well and though he did make some mistakes it would have been unfair on us to expect him to be perfect as he is not a contracted actor and is simply doing this as a favour to the director Anton as they knew eachother this is the same for all the actors.

Judith Earey - 33 years old and played the role of Lisa. she played the role well and did everything we asked of her making it easy for us to do what we wanted which was very helpful.

Isabel Earey - 12 yearl old and played the role of Isabel the daughter. I did think that having someone so young could course a problem as she would get bored and loose interest and perhaps be very difficult to do what we wanted but instead she was very good and we had no problems at all she played the role to a high standard as she was the main character this was important.

The Filming

possibly the post fundermentlay important part of the day was the filming. as i was the camera man it was very important for me on a personel level as well as it is very important to use the camera well and film the shot to a very high standard. when the actors finally arrived it was Nicola's job to make sure they were dressed suitably while I set up the camera for the first shot which was outside. Anton was going through the script with the actors as they had not had time to look at our script before hand. after they were all dressed accordingly and ready and comfortable in what they had to do for the day we started to film. this went very was though we did have to take lots of shot retakes to make sure we hade a large variety to choose from we came to editing this is important so if one shot is wrong there are othere to choose from. We had to make small changes while filming with positions of characters and camera positioning becuase we felt it would make the film far better and though we wanted to keep to our plan we also wanted to produce the best finished film that we possible could so we felt that some changes were neccassery though none were very large changes so we kept to our pre production plans very well. All went very well and though we did not finish until late we all walked away very proud of ourselves. Here are some photos of our hole group during the filming day:  

Post 17 Ancillary Task 2 Film reveiw part 1

In this post I will be analysing our film and creating a film reveiw page. for this i needed to look at other film reveiws to see what they have done to try and gain  a full understanding on how to conduct and structure my own film reveiw. this includes looking and newspappers, magazines and websites to see how these film reveiws and been done. This will give me a firm understanding on how to do my own film reveiw to a high standard.

Sight and Sound

sight and sound is a film reveiw magazine which as a class and individualy looked at to try and see what they had put in their film reveiws and what i could take from that and put into my own. firstly we looked at a reveiw from a full length film called frozen. we were put into groups and read the reveiw individualy then discussed in our group what we thought. at fist i found it difficult to understand but after reading it a few times i stared to uderstand that the writer of this reveiw was establoshing important parts of the film and discussineg why it was important and what relevence it had to making it a good and bad film. the writer of the reveiw talked about the location and the cast which I found interesting. i had not thought of these point prior to reading the reveiw as my mind was set on the story line and just the acting. but then I thought about it for a while and thought that the location and cast was incredibly important to a film and must be perfect for a successful film.

after looking at some points on what needs to be mentioned in the film reveiw i went on to look at how it is structured and set out. 

it is clear to see that it is striking with its images and coloring and the different styles of writing that is used. I think the name of the film is obvioulsy very striking and intreiging aswel which makes the front cover a high standard.

Post 16 Ancillary Task 1 - Postcards part one

In this post i will be looking at how we as a group came up with our production name, posters, logo's and out post cards. we had to be far more imaganative with these tasks that we have done previously through out our media course. we had to to a lot of brainsorming in our group tryi g to thin of a production name that would be suitable and would tie in with our film. our director (Anton) had organised all our Actors that they were of from columbia so we tries to link the name to that. But we quickly came to realise that there is already an internationaly recognized production company called 'Columbia Pictures'. we did not want people to think that we were copying so we had to divert our search to other options. we had to try and think of something far more imaganative that linked with our film. in our film there is a constant theme of a clock during our film







we then came up with the name cockwork productions as our film as a constant theme with a clock during the entire film. This seemed appopriate and becuase it was origional and it linked in with our film which made it a perfect choice. now we could start creating our Film posters, Film logo's and Film postcards.

Film Postcards

There is a large range of ways that Production Companies try and advertise their films to rtry and target their target audience. For the big production companies it can be hugely exspensive for them to try and market their films and TV is normally the main way to target audiences.  

for smaller production companies who are creating short films and wish to try and make the films more known about it is more difficult as they have limeted funds compared to larger production companies such as Warner Brothers and Comumbia Pictures. the limited funds that were available would have been used in creating the short filmand would have no money to be able to invest in TV advertising.  short films must then look for other sources apart from the obvious TV advertisement. good ways of doing this is to try and showcase the short film at a film festiva. film festivals are a great way for directors and film writers to try and get recognition of their work so they could then go on to bigger companies and get into full Films with larger funds for disposal. so by showcasing their film at film festivals they can try and work their up to the top, this is usually how directors and film writers beome big, by starting with short films, impressing, then going on the big production companies. this is also the came with the film crew i was the camera man in our Film production and if i wanted to go on and do other films i would want my work to be rtecognized for other companies to see if i could be a camera man in other (bigger) films. But the method that a lot of small poduction companies use to try and make people aware of these film festvial showing (and a method we as a group will be using) is postcards. 

in class we looked at some already existing postcards and discused them as a group looking at their charataristics and why it was good choice of design to try and adverrise their film. the short film postcard we looked at was 'On A Lifes Edge'. 

As you can see the image that the postcard is showing does relate to the title of the film. personally when I heard the title to sounds like a drama perhaps social realism about someone depressed or close to suicide or death and I think that the postcard reflects these feeling by making it rather a sad, lonely image. the colours of the image imedietly suggest unhapiness and an unhappy atmoshere. the producer has put a short description of the films and then the cast of the film, how long the films is and then the credits of the film.

in our Media class we talked about the important structure and infomation that is needed in a short film postcard. we had to look at several short film postcards and i started to see that they all have similar layouts and structure. 

there was certain infomation that almost all of them had on the postcards :

• location of the showing
• what times is it being showed 
• how long each showing will be 
• who are the writters and directors of the short film 
• the producer and filming crew 
• any sponers involved  

Film Posters 

in our Media class we looked at how film posters are used to advertise films and how effective they are. we looked a few different types of posters and i did some of my own research in film posters and came up with a few theories. Different film posters use different styles in my opinion. some production companies will look to be big and dramatic which will drw people in, these usually consist of  big dramatic image these type of posters will most likely be for actions films. some other production companes try and do the complete opposite by creating a poster with little infomation and not a lot happening on the poster yet it stikes people who see it with interest and curiositty. I beleive this is risky yet a clever way of marketing by perhaps luring people to see the film out of pure cutiosity. but on the whole i feel that most film posters are big bold and stand out to try and grab the intection of anyone who may see it. espeicially if there are big name actors and directors in the film these must be highlighted so people know that they are involved and will imedietly make them more likey to see it. Colours and brightness sets the tone and atmoshere for the films in the poster and can show veiwers what genre it is instantly which is good.

certain infomation must be put on the poster which will inform all veiwers about the film so they know exactly what they are paying to see. Important information consists of : 

• Title of the film 
• Release date 
• Directors 
• Notabable actors 
• company production name  

Production Logo

As a group we had to think of diffeerent design for our production logo. we had to be creative and use the internet for a scourse of images and ideas. As we had agreed to use clockwork productions as our Production name we needed to find images that would relate to clocks. we needed something that was effective but not to complicated and easy to remember so when people see the logo they can instanty associate it with Clockwork Productions.  

post 15 Reflecting on Theory

In this post I will be reflecting on all the different theories we have learned in class over the last few months.we have been discussing 3 main topics.

• Genre Theory 
• Narrative Theory 
• Audience Theory    

Genre Theory 

Genre theory is used in films to put films into categories. Common genres are thriller, action, comedy, Drama, social realism and horror. Genre is very much dependent on different factors mainly things like the story line, who the director is (what their vision is) and what are the audience expectations of the film. when discussing genre theory in class we identified it by using genre theory we can create a short cut in how can try and describe films.

In order to fully understand genre I need to look at several examples. for example with horror films there is a certain expectation and there is a general notion in people that will think everyone will die besides one person. the people who to watch this will expect to see violence and will be scared.

I have already looked at different notions of genre earlier in post 4. The most important theorist for me was Robert Altman. i feel he looked at genre and identified that a genre needs to be easily recognized by audiences he is quotes saying 'that genres are defined by producers and are easily recognized by audiences.' 

This was very important for me when it came to our own short film. it was important for us to establish a genre for our film, our genre was Drama.

The actors are very important in film and genre. some actors are specified to certain genres. For example an actor like Seth Rogen has only done comedy his hole career basically and for him to be cast into a film will automatically make audience's feel that the film will be a comedy.

In my opinion through my own research i feel that there are two reoccurring genres short films these are 'social realism and 'horror'. this is because short films often suffer from small funds which would make it difficult to create an action films with explosions ect.. comedy is another one which is difficult to portray in a short film mainly because in the time period given it would not be easily to portray humour which wasn't a bit corny.

Narrative Theory

Many people mistake a narrative with a story. This is incorrect as a narrative is something far different. a story is just what happens a narrative is how it is related. all good stories has some sort of action which ultimately changes the characters life of how they behave. there are four main media conventions these are:

Character
Genre
Time
Form

Audience Theory

audience theory is very important it is how the audience see the film through their eyes and how the perceive and respond to what they see. this theory fist arrised in the 1920's and it was suggested that an audience receives the information via a media text without challenging what they are seeing and just accept it as reality this is known as the hypodermic needle model.

Post 14 Pre Production Work

location recce was very important so we could have a full understanding of the rooms dynamics and could prepare our selves for when we came to shoot the film. as camera man it was my job to take all the photos of the house so we could take them back to school and put them all together so we all had a clear understating of the house and what factors we had to talk about before the filming day. things like furniture  was important and also where the windows where for lighting purposes .



as the cameraman it was important for me to take all the photos needed so i could take them back to school and think about what factors we need to take into consideration. The positioning of the camera is vital and by taking these images I knew i would be able to work out where the best places would be. when it came to plotting the camera positioning with the director it made my job a lot easier.

the script is obviously very important and though I do not have any acting role in the script it was in vital i no the script and can access it easily to read if i have any problems connected with my camera role.

me and Anton worked closely with the shot list, story boards, camera and lighting positioning. we had to constantly change the script throughout improving it through out due to problems with actually filming certain bits. this portrayed our professionalism becuae we could adapt and work around any problems that we faced.  

costume design is very important because it portrays what the actors look like and what the audience feels about them. for instance if there is a very angry and aggressive person in a film who is supposed to portray fear then it will not make sense for that person to be wearing bright lively, fun colors. so making sure costume design suits the actor is important. as the camera man i need to make sure when I am filming that the costumes are all perfect and I must make sure the costumes are worn consistently  through out filming for continuity reasons.

The story boards were very difficult and required a lot of work. these are vitally important so when we come to film we can refer to our story boards so we know where the shot is who is in it the layout of the room (furniture) and how long the shot is meant to be and also where the camera needs to be positioned. when it comes to filming this will be vitally important.

The story boards are great to have on the film day so we can make sure we do everything correctly and follow the plan that we have been working on months in advance.  

the shot list is one of the most important parts of the filming process. this will lets us know the shot size (long shot, medium long shot, medium shot ect..). it states who is in the shot and gives a brief description of what happens in the shot (who speaks).