Evaluation Part 2 - Ancillary Texts

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

The Poster
For the poster of my film we decided it would be good to have both the main protagonists taking up most of the space. This was to signify to the audience that these would be the main characters in the film that they would be seeing. We also decided that only showing half of each of their faces would leave anchorage towards there being two sides to each, however, one side will be seen more than the other e.g. Gordons older, more depressed self will be the main part of his story. The title was done similarly to the teaser poster as in we decided to ghost the title, and turn it round, so double layering. This was relative to the story as life has gone backwards, and therefore, so has our poster title. The medal in the middle having a slight glow around also provides anchorage to this object being the magical item in the narrative. In the real world an object like this wouldn't usually be taken to such a centre of attention, however by placing it in the centre shows that it is not just a medal and has significant value to our film, also creating narrative enigma as the audience do not understand what makes it important.  Underneath each picture of the characters we had the name of the actor who played them. This made a direct link to the audience as who was in it and played what as the name is in the same 'personal space' as the picture linking them together. Also, since that the actors were both unknown at the time we decided that it would be best to put 'introducing' as this shows that they are new to film. This is generally the case for most short films as a lot of companies tend to try get new talent each time they make a film to diverse themselves and also give actors a better chance of getting into film.
We chose to have the Guardian review us as they are more typically artistic and critical in what they view. Also being slightly mire upper class then some papers such as The Mirror and The Sun we thought they would be more likely to review a short film. We chose for them to give us 4 stars as it shows that we aren't too modest about ourselves, but also generally a 4 star would be given to a film made of an introductory cast to show that the actors have potential. This is another reason why we chose Empire as well. They will generally review big films of cinema rather than small films as their market is 15- 35 demographic and also middle-working class where they may not be as bothered about small films. However, they do tend to look into short films a little bit to widen their audience appeal and bring in other classes of society which means they select which short films they will look at more carefully, which means they would believe our film to have Potential. However, through feedback, we thought it would probably be better to avoid putting Empire on because the film is a first time, and probably wouldn't have enough hype for them, therefore we replaced it with a comment which was a view on our film. This is much more realistic as independent films will generally not get as many reviews from big names, but will get quite a few comments from small time, maybe big time critics.
For our tagline, we decided to change it from what it was in the teaser poster to what it is now in the main one. We though 'Time to take a step back' didn't reflect the narrative of the story enough where as 'Ever feel like living life in reverse?' does,a s it shows that the character will obviously have their life turned backwards at somepoint in the story, which shows the audience that this film wont be normal one.
Due to feedback, we changed our two main images. This was also because the narrative had slightly changed. This meant the school no longer had any significance in our film, and wouldn't work as the centre piece of the poster. Also the title was a bit bland so we changed it to being gradient to blue, which also fitted with the framing of the blue man. The picture of Ben Gibson had to be changed also, since he was no longer Gordon.


The Magazine
Generally, a magazine would not really be tied in with the production and distribution of a film. This is because the magazine is done after the film has generally been released, and also done by other journalists.
However, there are some films that do get a say in what is produced in the magazines. These films will generally be part of a conglomerate and therefore can converge with the publisher wing of the conglomerate and get more publicity. 
On the other hand, I think the combination of our magazine and our main product fits well. the writing of the magazine fits with our target audience and also gives a good history on the makers and other aspects surrounding the film, like real magazines.

Evaluation Part 3 - New Media Technologies

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





 
Youtube was a massive help with researching shortfilms. They have many categories throughout the site such as comedy, entertainment sport etc. People can also come together to form channels of which they will name themselves and post a series of videos under one name, generally with a purpose and a theme to these sets of videos. I typically always used the film and animation section or looked at the Future Shorts channel. This channel is linked to their own private website as well. They will every so often (2-3 times a week i think) post the best short films that are featured on their site and put them on the main page on their youtube channel. Since youtube has such a large fanbase these days it also gets the person who made the video a lot of feedback on their work.
A very good film information website I used for Director information and date of release etc. was IMDB (Internet Movie Data Base). On this site they generally list just about every film that has been released to the public or is going to be released. they have different sections on each film if the information is available such as Box Office and General statistics to Triva information and famous quotes. It gives you a very good insight to the major differences to major hollywood films compared to independent and British films.
When looking into other short films i decided to look at BBC. This gave me a range of short films rather than all coming from the same collection. They put films into groups such as, Duration, Region, Category, Views, it was fairly easy to find you way around the site. BBC has also been voted best internet site on many occasions.


Since technology is always advancing, I thought it would be best to advance with it as well. Therefore, I decided that this year I would use a better video editing software for my product as it would make the editing much better and higher quality than iMovie 06. 
For creating my Animatic I decided to use Final Cut Express 4. At first, I found this a little challenging as it was a new piece of software and also it had many more tools than iMovie. However, it had a tutorial which I followed and eventually i started to understand all the basics which got me going. I was also lucky enough to take an editing masterclass at the Co Op FIlm festival 2009. To take the pictures for my animatic I decided I would use my phone, This is because it is easier, and also phones have now advanced to use better cameras and mine was an 8.0mp camera, which was better than what was available to me at the time in normal cameras. I could then upload these to the internet site called Flickr which when I get to a computer I can download and use in the editing software.
For my main product, I decided to switch editing software and started to use Sony Vegas Pro 8. This was because it was available to me on my laptop which meant I could edit at home, and in  school. Most of the features were the same including the more important slice tool and ripple tool, however they did not both have the same media generators (effects) as each other so I would, for some parts use a piece from final cut, export it as a movie file then import into Sony Vegas e.g. I did this with the titles, which were not as good in sony vegas.
To create both the posters we used Adobe Photoshop CS4. This was a better version of photoshop which school had (Elements 2.0) and contained better Levels to use and also they had tweeked some of the tools so they worked better. We believed this was an improvment from last year as when we tried to edit text and use levels on them it didn't come out as good as quality as it had this year.


I used blogger for the most part of my research and planning. This makes my work ready and available to any of my partners who need to share the screenplay and storyboard and also can collect constant feedback from teachers and other students following my blog. This is good as you can get a constant stream of advice on how to tweek your product to improve its performance. Blogger has since been improved from last year. This means it is easier to edit your text, and also importing photos and moving them around is much easier as there are more options to do with your photos. However, they have for some reason taken away the import video option which means I either have to switch back or embed from youtube. It was also a good chance to do some Podcasting. This is a source which is very popular these days where groups of individuals will give news (or other types of shows) often on a particular topic. We tried to keep up with this and do a podcast every week, however when it got into the main production stage we lacked in timing. My final podcast is here at the end of the article.


I filmed all my shots on a DV camcorder, a Canon digital video camcorder MD101 which we used for my AS coursework as well. These camcorders are very easy to use, as I had already used it before however the settings are not so advanced and therefore not many options can be tweeked. Also a fault about these cameras are that there is a fatal 'Grr' when you are filming with the internal microphone. This puts bad background noise over your shots. 
To get rid of this sound, we used a boom mic for all the shots or at least most of them. This filmd with a buffer so it also cancels out the wind if there was any. However, when we imported the clips onto the software we noticed it hardly picked up any sound at all, even with tweeking framing so we could fit the mic to the action better, this was either because of low battery, or very low sound capture. This meant we had to up the volume seperately on the software, and lower the volume of everything else.

To burn my final product to a DVD I used windows DVD maker. This is because it is free on windows Vista and also is very simple to use, just dragging the file onto the DVD and then choosing what menu you want and other features. I also uploaded my final edit onto  the social networking site,Facebook. This has all my friends on it and also other people who are friends with them etc. This grants them easy access to my film so I could get more feedback and see how I could improve if i was to do it again.

Evaluation Pt 4 - Audience Feedback

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?


From the very beginning I have gained audience feedback. I got it from people looking over my shoulder when on a program such as photoshop saying how to tweek it, and also when I ask groups of people around my Age to view my work.
The first stage of which i gained feedback was my Animatic. I showed it to my media class who are all around the age 17/18 which was always, my intended audience. This is because I believed it would always be easier to get feedback if i only had to ask my friends and people around school. Also since I am part of a large network of people around 17/18 on facebook, it is easier to share videos with them.

The feedback I gained from this showing was that they liked the idea of the costumes I would sue, also the fact that there is a slight hint of a character in the background that is not in the focus of the shot. However, I also mixed these with good points from my team-mates idea and added the theory of time going backwards in the morning. This helped improve both our ideas into one main one, which shared the creative flow, not just focusing on one persons idea which means they will take all creative control.


The first piece of feedback I gained for our production was of the beginning. After filming half of our production we thought it would be best to get an idea of how our audience felt of it so far. I posted it onto Facebook but also uploaded it onto Youtube so it could be embedded onto Blogger. The main feedback we got was that they liked the music, but would prefer it to have the video more in sync with it. this meant we would cut it so it fitted with the music and was in time. This is much more noticeable in our new cut of the film. They also noticed there were some camera shakes and other flaws which i did not first notice, which i went back and cut out. 
On a second viewing, now with the rest of the film attached together the audience decided that the beginning was way too long. Also the narrative seemed not very noticeable  and they weren't sure what was going on. The dialogue did not help either as they did not understand it.This was felt by Me and my team mate as well, so we decided to go back and re-record the dialogue in a way they may understand better and clearer. We did this by using a reporters microphone, from school, and then placed it over the top of the original audio. We also tried cutting down what we could from the beginning to make it shorter. Differences seen here before and after.
We then showed our third piece to our teacher and to our class. Some of the feedback came back the same such as the story was still complicated and didn't make much sense. Also there would be some things changed which would leave the film with a much greater impact. Our teacher gave us feedback on how to make the twist much better. He said that if we had more sequences of people doing things backwards it would add a much greater effect and sense of abnormality. Also the Blue Man being able to speak takes away the narrative enigma of who he really is. The audience and our teacher also noticed that we didnt get the backwards bit just right everything was done the normal way round except the walking e.g. he only noticed the person doing the Odd backwards thing, once he's past them.
On reflecting on this advice, we decided we would re-shoot a lot of the footage, Also re-think about the story to make it seem more convincing and less confusing. We decided we would have an object that is connected to both gordon and the Blue Man. This creates more of a connection between the two. Since our main character was playing with army men, an our new narrative had the Protagonists father in the army, we thought a medal would do nicely. We also decided that the Blue Man would be less upfront in the film, and more behind scenes which gave him more of a mysterious atmosphere and a way of getting good shots and framing into our footage. Since problems raised with our main actor however, it ended up we had to re-film the whole film, which ended up making it seem like an entirely different film all together, however it still has the same basic outline as it originally did.
Just before we posted our final cut, a friend told us that they still didn't think it was quite obvious enough that the father was dead. This allowed us to put a voice over at the beginning, pretending to be a teacher of some kind in Gordons life where they tell him that his father has been killed in action. This improved the story as since the opening shot is of his father in an army suit, it instantly clicks with the audience that this man is important to Gordon. We eventually posted our final cut onto facebook, where all our friends and other people of the network could see it and leave feedback on their views of our final product.


Audience feedback is essential for any genre of film, especially if you are a low budget film and would like to create a larger, wider audience appeal to your film. For example Working Title was good at this as they understood what the american audience wanted in a film and therefore would create an aspect to the film they enjoy e.g. American lead role, or a stereotypical english-man(Hugh Grant). Another example is of Bridget Jones (Sharon MaGuire - 2001) the american audience did not get many of the jokes in the test screening, however, they found a part where a character wore a Christmas reindeer jumper hilarious.


(Podcast of My Final Thoughts)

Poster

The poster was designed in Adobe Photoshop CS4 and I used a variety of tools in its production including the lasso tool (with a feather of 50px), the eraser tool, the clone stamp tool, the text tool and some colour adjustments.

The poster was designed to reveal the main protagonist of the film and also show the connection between the two (same level, and both only half a face). Also to show a hint of the narrative, therefore the clock to show the time has been distorted, and the medal to show that it is the magical object (Propps narrative theory)

The text at to the top of the page is relating to previous work done by me and my partners AS work, also to give more of a sense of realism as posters with directors who have previously done good work, will usually have that work referenced.

The blue man image is re-used from the initial teaser poster but for the main protagonist we needed a new photograph so therefore my partner took a photo of himself with a Cannon EOS 350d camera.

The production logo was made earlier in production in photoshop and the reviews and was to make the poster look more professional
The white to blue fade was done upon audience feedback to reflect the contrast between the main protagonist and the blue man.

For this I decided to use a real film review body, the newspaper 'The Guardian'.

The BBFC age classification was chosen to represent the minimum age of the target audience.

Magazine Review

One Step Back

Final Cut

This is the final cut of our film. It has been adpated many times to the liking of our audience, and also to what we felt needed re-doing and changing.

Rough Cut 7

General Feedback gained was:
 - Still need to make clear father is dead
 - Some sounds do not fit e.g. Thump for Shocked little boy, and when dropping medal.
 - Father is very quiet

Changes due to Feedback
We will add in a voice over at the beginning and tweek the sound levels of certain parts.