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.

Rough Cut 6

Posted onto facebook and asked for feedback. However, not much was given as people thought it was too similar to the old one but has removed the most flaws from the old one which was the main feedback given.

Storyboard 2

This is the storyboard to our new version of the film. However, some shots have been taken out and others added in to give a better effect as when we arrived on set, we decided they would work better.

Screenplay 3

One Step Back Screen

New Narrative Idea

Based on feedback from our Target audience and teacher, it was clear that the narrative of our film wasnt clear. Therefore we have decided to pick a more current day issue.
The narrative now follows as that our main protagonist Gordon's father has recently died at war in the RAF. He now has an emotion attachment to one of his fathers medals. He wakes up, gets ready and heads out to the funeral which is today. His whole world is twisted upside down, and has literally gone backwards on him, and he notices that on the way to the funeral, there are lot of odd occurrences where people are going backwards. Over watching him is a blue man, in a suit with a black tie, but he never confronts Gordon. Gordon then comes into an alleyway where he starts to hold his medal and look at it thinking deeply. This stresses him out and ends up throwing the medal on the floor, and walks on. The blue man picks up the medal.
The next morning Gordon gets up as usual and goes into the toilet. He looks in the mirror shocked to find he is a young child. He sprints downstairs into the kitchen where he finds another note this time saying 'See you at the game son!'. He turns round and behind him is his father, in a white shirt and black tie, same as the blue man. Gordon leaps onto the father to embrace him.

Rough Cut 5

It is missing the ending at the moment.



Feedback (Feedback gained through a group of AS media students and teacher)
 - Liked the syncing to the music
 - Liked the fact the Blue Man was being used
 - Some shots were a bit shaky
 - Liked disappearing Blue Man shot
 - Was obvious Protagonist was walking backwards
 - Was very confusing what the actual story was
 - Note was too illegible
 - More exposition is definitely needed
 - Subliminal shot too short


To Change Based on Feedback
 - We will add in more exposition about the character and why he is walkign around town, also create more of an attachment to the RAF medal e.g. Father died in Iraq war, therfore connects to medal.
 - This explains backwards as his life has been turned upside down.
 - Re-Do some of the shots, maybe all depending on conditions
 - We will have more usage of the younger Gordon as this makes more exposition

Evaluation Pt 1 - Conventions of Media Products

In What Ways Does Your Product Use, Challenge or Develop Codes and Conventions of Real Media Products
To go about researching into Short Films I looked at a varied range of videos on the popular Video streaming site Youtube. I specifically used the channel Future Shorts has has a lot of shorts posted by users to the main site of the company, and then uploaded by them onto Youtube. I also watched a few on BBC which has a good range. I found out from watching the shorts that each video is around 5-11 minutes long. The longest one  I watched was around 20. My film, One Step Back fits to this and is around 5 minutes long including the credits and the opening sequence. Since it is short, it also has to have a quirky story line which can start and end with an impact that wows the audience. However, since this is hard to do in a short amount of time it has to be very creative and generally, as I have seen, unusual. For example The Black Hole by 'Phil and Olly' is about a printer that to print a black hole. My film lives up to this convention as it is about time being screwed up and our Main Protagonists day isn't as normal as he expects it to be. Also, to leave more of an impact on the audience with the storyline there is generally a twist ending to keep them thinking or just shock them. The best one I saw would be Spider(Shown below). This is because i did not expect the ending at all, or even the event that lead up to the climax because there is no foreshadowing of any of the Protagonists future in the beginning.

Our movie ties in with this as it contains a twist at the end of which we hope the audience does not expect at the end. However, unlike Spider, we do give some subtle hints throughout the film such as subliminal shots of events going to happen in the future. This idea was taken from Sunshine by Danny Boyle, where on entering a space craft, subliminal shots are shown of a picture later found. These subliminal shots give Narrative Enigma to the audience as they do not know what they mean but they are sure it has importance to the story and therefore stays on their mind.
Most short films are generally very low budget and stay away from the usage of massive special effects such as huge explosions and CGI. This is generally because they try to stay away from the realm of the massive block busters made by the Conglomerates of todays Hollywood. They stick to being more of an art form, using tricky camera shots and cracking on issues which Hollywood generally wouldn't. Narratives also ending up being much more powerful and not the stereotypical generic, repeatedly used ones seen in today's films e.g. Good guy joins the bad team, infiltrates good side, falls in love, fights for good side. We stick to this being an art form by not including massive special effects, and trying to use framing to our advantage. An example of this is when our Main protagonist walks by benches, with the Blue Man in the distance. When the protagonist walks past the blue man, the blue man vanishes, all done in one take. We also do not take a repeated story line and reformat it to fit todays age, we just try think of something as original as we can, taking references from certain places.
The main intertexual reference in our film is the Blue Man. He were heavily influenced by Half Life. The 'G-Man' character. In half life, he is a master of time, and is invisible to everyone except for very special people. This is what our Blue Man is. He is a master of time, and is only noticed by out main protagonist Gordon Locke. We have dressed him in a suit, like The G-Man, however to give him more of a mysterious feel we made him all blue. This relates to the colour of the G-Mans suit, however also signifies that his life isnt the most pleasant and can be lonely ie Depression/Sad=Feeling Blue. Another intertextual reference from half life in our film was the main Protagonists name. We named him Gordon Locke. Gordon after the main character Gordon Freeman. Locke was taken from the TV show Lost 'John Locke'. We felt this character was most appropriate because he is a very spiritual man in the fact he believes in destiny and fate, and also the story of Lost is a very confusing one.

For the parts that were using the rewind, we watched Red Dwarf to get ideas of how we could use going backwards to get a good effect. The episode of which this happens(referenced earlier) it is all set in a world which is similar to ours, and contains similar reactions from the main protagonists of what it is happening. We also looked into Twin Peaks. This had some elements of the world being backwards as well, however we decided that the parts that were used we would not take for our final cut, as we felt the Blue Man would be better mute, even if it does add a bit more of a weirdness to our film if he spoke backwards.

The protagonist is aimed to be relative to our audience (Mid teens). He is 17/18 just coming out of college and is distant from his parents (as seen by the leaving note). He is also doing what teenagers tend to do of that, being lazy and not really caring about his look as he just throws on a jumper from the banister, and jeans left hanging over his bed. However we decided we would give him a bit of something special which the audience might not get which can fit into Propps narrative arch types. We made it so that he has a little obsession over planes, shown at the beginning and also he carries an RAF medal around with him. This acts as the magical object. This is what the main twist/centre of the story is based around, as well as the Villain, the Blue man. However, we decided that he can also act as the magical helper/doner as he actually sets out Hero down the right path, setting everything straight which is what makes our narrative special. Todorovs Narrative Theory can come into our movie as well. It is mainly an equilibrium with a short dis-equilibrium and then a new equilibrium is solved when he is sent back to his childhood. However, the equilibrium at the beginning is a very distorted equilibrium as it is not all normal so it does not fit perfectly to his theory.

Like all the short films I watched, I do not think a teaser campaign would happen. This is because most short films, and British Films will go straight to DVD as they are not generally cinematic value for a nation wide audience unless they have tie-ins with big british companies such as Working Title.. However, if the creator is well loved and a great contributor to the Independent film industry then there may be a teaser campaign as their following will be very interested. All short films though are generally distributed Via the internet, especially of todays age of Social Networking where sharing anything is very simple. A distributor of which our film would probably go into would be future shorts. this is because they have a popular website of their own, but also a youtube channel. They also organise cinema events around the nation from time to time.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wVlE-ZkHW4&feature=related

Screenplay 2

One Step Back Screenplay

Revised Schedule

Production Schdule Changes:- Filming around town will be done on Saturday 13th