EVALUATION 4

Q4)How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Through the whole process of creating our film we used various technologies to help develop and achieve our aims in creating our final media products.

                                                    

First of all the blog itself was the first technology we were introduced to, researching into other blogs and the use of blog widgets I created a space to present my work that’s easy to access and I’ve found the style of my blogging has developed throughout my film making process. For my research and planning I found it effective at organizing and presenting what I had done and allowed me to experiment with showing my work and findings. Especially the use of videos, images and audio clips in my research, they played a big part in presenting my inspirations behind ideas and examples of techniques that made a large impact on the development of our film.

The use of comments and posting on my blog had also been a good use of gaining and showing feedback from the audience about my blogging, film and ancillary tasks. I found there were few limits as to how I could present my work on my blog and enjoyed the freedom it brings to research tasks and pitching. This is linked to my use of the internet as a technology. The internet arguably played the biggest part in research planning and construction stages, by given a wide knowledge of themes, stories, filming techniques, filming styles and helping me to show my work in various ways, such as my use of Kizoa image slideshows and Muzicon audio widgets.

Internet is a mass media that’s played a large role in my participation in all stages. The internet was also were we obtained our music from London grid, a copyright free music site ( www.lgfl.net/pages/index.aspx ) . This allowed us to explore many different types of music which was suitable for use in our film.
Our use of camera when filming ranges from the use of a canon still camera and the canon XHA1. The still cameras were a useful technology in our research stage in which we carried out our cinematography tasks. The use of camera was essential during filming, we listed a variety of different shots and angles and made sure we stuck by it. For example we performed extreme close up (ECU) in a variety of shots firstly when Kieran staggers slowly down the stairs-we zoom into the banister ledge and can clearly see his hand gripping tightly for his own safety(this was to exemplify his lack of confidence and physical barriers .

We then move on to show a low angle shot from the bottom of the stairs positioned at the base of the stair case looking upwards (we see Kieran’s whole body coming down the stairs along with his movements-we wanted to let the audience see how hard simple everyday things are for him to do).

I found I learned a lot of how to present visually with it being the focus of our silent film. Also used in the photo storyboard

.  and log while filming it gave us an idea of how our shots are planned and will look in our final product, we also chose to log our filming days to show the filming process and what we did to create your Mise en scene and sets. The Canon XHA1 was our camera used to film and we practiced with the model before our filming days. Developing on from AS with our basic use of panning and tracking movements we aimed to use the camera more creatively in our A2 production. The camera was easy to use when we experimented with using action, reaction shots and lower angles, it allowed us to take steady shots from otherwise difficult positions. We were surprised at the success of this use while filming. The images we had from both cameras were also used in the ancillary tasks at a later date, which we found very useful in creating professional posters and a review.

Adobe Premier Pro was the editing software we used and after researched into styling we wanted we found we were very limited as to what we could do. We originally wanted the use a filter or hueto replicate a black, white colouring style such as in films like Sin City however we found his wasn’t available to use and also had issues with the use of an ‘Echo’ effect in the daydream/flashback as seen in the scene where Kieran sits on the wall with his friend just before he saves the girl at the car scene.  As a result of this it affects other parts of the film, causing them to turn black which was something we unfortunately could only solve by removing the effect (we found an alternative which was a grey wash to show through the seatbelt and wall scenes). Although the use of transitions such as cross fades, dip to whites were used effectively and now at A2 level I felt far more confident in editing music into our film and using tools to change volume levels to create transitions between music. For example you’ll notice meeting visual transitions of scenes the music falls quieter and fades out smoothly and then into the next piece.

Overall technologies were a big influence on how I’ve developed and created my products, and I’ve used a wide range to create my work and present it virally. Photoshop was one of the last technologies I used to create my media products, using knowledge I gained from online tutorials I was able to use the program well and created my review and poster using screen grabs and images from both the film and photo shoots I carried out with the cast. The software allowed me to edit the colourings and sharpen the picture, which gave the poster a much more professional look, tools such as hue and saturation, focused on the black, grey and white colour washing. In addition the use of the magic wand tool enabled me to use my actor images against a clean background, creating a poster I felt gave a more movie poster style to it, as well as it fitting to conventions I found in my research. Creating my film review I also used Photoshop to crop, cut and paste images onto a clean A4 spread, the software

enables me to add the realistic factor; the aim was to use a real magazine film review to publish my own film spread-i feel i managed to this because my audience feed back said ‘it looks so realistic, the way i added pictures alongside texts and reviews’.

EVALUATION 3

Q3)  what have you learned from your audience feedback?

Feedback has always been important part of film process, it allows us as film creators to understand what our audiences expect, want and perceive in our film. In ‘Light Through Darkness’ the audience expectations of the genre and visual attention fits to the dramatic and emotional genre, something I feel we met and carried on further with our use of abstract scenes. Feedback at pre-production helped us learn these expectations and had a large influence on shaping our story and film planning, when presenting out different treatments we asked for feedback from the audience-on all three pitches we took many notes to add to our film. All points were absolutely crucial as it helped us recognize what we need to do in order to answer questions that wasn’t made clear at first. In our early stages we had initial ideas of stories based on serious topics such as family problems, then we based our ideas on a ‘Ray’ it had numerous good points which we wanted to use in our film.

From this, our first feedback evolved around a story ‘less repetitive’ while retaining our moral to the story, it needed to be shortened and more the point for our audience. Considering this as a group we created the idea of similar plots conveyed in less time, were we all decided to come up with better storylines and ways it could be shown quicker and more to the point , we brainstormed from there. One of the Ideas I brought forward was ‘Having a normal teenage boy, in a car accident which results in his loss of sight’. Although still a sad subject we looked further into the idea of a ‘disabilities’ and felt we found a balance of a serious message and a  brighter story in our two initial treatments.

We felt the sentiment of the film can apply to any one.  A complete accident that can have a devastating effect on someone’s life.3 Liking both stories we used group assessment to decide on pitch and after realising the issue we may face in finding a suitable actor to act as a blind person, such as the difficulty in acting as realistic as possible to a real blind person. Also our time limit to film would restrain us being able to film in a house off the set and created a risk of us not filming the shots we wanted. Even finding ways to represent blindness with minimal dialogue was something we felt we wouldn’t be able to do well and focused on the acting to be top notch.

Looking back on our first treatments our feedback from our teacher and peers steered our story in a very different direction. We were advised that our film needs to avoid repetition as it will eat up allot of the maximum 5minute time limit given. Our prospect audience felt ‘there’s no closure if he doesn’t overcome some sort of barrier which stands in his way’ and ‘it losses the lesson of the story, how difficult blindness is to deal with’. With further development into our presentation of the film and story we created our final treatment and gained positive feedback about our now stronger storyline (our audience response from out treatments resulted in cutting out the bathroom scene because it eats up too much time and space, we agreed it would be more productive to incorporate black fades to show time passing and more straight to the point). We tightened up visual ideas and story pace by doing so. Our vision was to show the world from a blind person’s point of view representing Kieran’s relationships and how we match the beginning scene to the end scene, but show how his life has changed. We were told this was a good idea to give closure to the film after letting our audience feedback determine some suggestions which they would like to see from the ending we collaborated these ideas and came to a final decision as a group. In the end we decided to have some sort of confidence boost (saving the girl from getting run over).

From our script feedback I learned the need to use clues and foreboding techniques throughout the film to communicate with our audience, before we had a story in place but the storytelling was ‘long’ than it could be.  We needed focus on small visual clues that could help show our narrative to the audience. From this we developed ideas such as diegetic sounds (of a car crash, wheels skidding, sealt belt clicking and slow emotional music).  Similar to our storyboard feedback, that when we experimented more with our shot planning (treatments, presentations, scripts, photo story board, storyboard and blindness research. Mise en scene arrangements it made the film much more appealing by sticking to themes of blindness, blind props such as a walking stick and special sunglasses all relate with the setting the mood of a drama and deep emotional touching film.  Also the example of our series of shots using the car in motion was something we created after learning our original shots was ‘too static’-we incorporated the ‘ghosting effect’.

The post production stage was a vital part in hearing various feedback at different stages while editing our film, allowing us to adapt it to suit the audience. In our films construction we asked media peers and other students there opinion of the film to gain wider criticism. Our original feedback was to firstly shortened or cut down the size of shots that were too long or unnecessary, we learnt this as an important factor of a silent film, that most shots should aim to be ‘too the point’. After cutting down on our rushes and organising our timeline our feedback was mostly positive with 2 main suggests or needs for improvement. Firstly we had feedback from many viewers that the music pieces didn’t flow very well. From this we reviewed our music choices and researched a different piece of music for the beginning scene(different from the final scene), we felt the original fast beat to the beginning music didn’t fit the pace of the rest of the film as it did not help convey the sadness of our main protagonist. We found viewers agreed that the new music we used fitted the pace and the genre of the film much better, they said ‘the music made them even more emotional and affectionate towards them’. Also the transition between music pieces needed improvement being ‘unsynchronised’ and ‘sudden’. To rectify this we had the idea of sectioning the long music piece into smaller pieces and changing volume levels to create a gradual fade out of the music into the next piece. In addition we had the idea of cross fading the music in to the last song, to fit with the story and pace of the film, how it begins and ends in slightly a different way-this was to rectify how much he is progressing and slowly dealing with his disability in a better way. We supported this with the soundtrack and found using the music in this pattern suited the story and helped to create the foreboding atmosphere of something bad getting better which we wanted our audience to feel from the start.

The second piece of feedback we learnt from was our opening scenes and their pace. We were told our beginning pace would do better to match that at the end. The shots of Kieran getting dressed and making his way down the stairs to the kitchen was ‘effective and suited well’. Initially we were sceptical as to whether we agreed with this and if we knew hope to repeat the same pace at the beginning of the film. However we tried to do so immediately, using a variety of shots we had throughout the film and cutting them in a similar style to the ending. We then used these shots together as an introduction to the film and found it worked much better for the audience and to our idea of the opening music being repeat at the ending to create the cycle effect. This feedback I feel was the most altering to our film, but also the best as it created something far better and closer to what we wanted to achieve in our film.

The Ancillary task was more interactive when using feedback as we had the opportunity to receive comments on the blog for both our review and posters. My posters were based on research into different poster layouts and posters of my desired genre (blindness/heartbreak). I attempted to create poster similar to both an older, more classic design, to fit to the idea of old silent films, and a Morden design to appeal to mainstream audiences. My feedback however was mainly of praise and constructive criticism, and I also learned the difference interpretations people gathered from looking at my poster, this helped me use the comments as if they were really the target audience in the real world and how they perceived the poster.

                                                                              
 PICTURE OF PEERS COMMENTS (on poster)
http://babbeyalex12.blogspot.com/2011/11/film-poster.html#comment-form

I was raised on the use of main title font and positioning of ratings and two film shot image on the page. However my main negative feedback was ‘the fonts work but there should not be too many different sizes of fonts as it confuses the look and subverts the professional look’

My review feedback was mostly positive, with little suggestion of change. Again asking both media students and a member of the audience I was told ‘You have really kept to the conventions of the empire magazine, making it believable and easy on the eye. The use of text is plain and simple yet elegant’. This was a convention of Empires reviews I wanted to achieve. The audience review was similar, “I like the contrast or the stages of his life, from the flashback to after the accident , it gives the audience a sense of the mood and theme of the film. I also think that the idea of the light coming through the poster links in with the title of your film "light through darkness". This was the most important to know that my peers could understand what I tried to convey and what they can imagine the story to be about.

EVALUATION 2

Q2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

 

A marketing campaign is vital to our film; it is to attract an audience to the media product we created. The ancillary tasks were created purposely to gain some form of interest from audiences in order to create more recognition and higher sale volumes. The methods we chose to take were film posters and review. 

A poster and review are important parts of a campaign. They all share a relationship with each other to entice the audience. The posters are used to raise questions about the film, capturing the audience’s attention. The review then answers some of those questions and then the audience use the film to see the whole picture.

When creating my ancillary texts it was important I kept to a house style that matched my film, which also communicates the genres to a clear target audience. I believe our film reaches out to audiences who like emotional films, similar to Kieran’s character age who I found from research into genre’s audience’s are most likely to be drawn to our film. Also the moral of the story applies mostly to audiences which might have undergone some form of problem within their lives. This made my ancillary tasks an effective combination with ‘Light through Darkness’. 

 My posters are part of a series of three. During there creation I considered the colour scheme, in which I used grey, whites and blacks. This was to emphasise the key genres of the film (of a tragedy which he later recovers from). From my poster research I saw common conventions of drama and emotional films, such as the faded black bold text I used similar to ‘Acolytes’ and ‘The Blind Side’ and general colour scheme I chose to take two screen shots from the film instead of creating a false background, to me this stands out because the audience can gain a very detailed insight just from two shots blended together. The font I went with was very simple and straight forward, the film has nothing fancy about it-disability is a touchy subject to focus on so we thought the more simple the better. We intended to make the font big in order to be clear on the poster because of all the distracting film screen shots-this was mainly to be clear about what we wanted the audience to know and see; it is an absolute must to ensure the audience know the release date, title of the film and what the film may be about just from looking at the poster. This is a common feature when looking at most other film posters. Not only emotional drams.

One audience feedback said... “Another good aspect on this poster is the use of font which blends in with the theme because it’s simple and doesn’t have any curly or swishing fonts to it. The tag line "Some journeys go further then you could have ever imagined" is very powerful because it links in with the theme.

Overall this poster doesn’t really fall into the theme of the film and it could have been pretty much more effective to show that its about a blind boy however the work effort behind it is great”

Every film company doesn’t want to waste money presenting something which might be hard to work out by audiences and film goers, as a result of this we thought we’d stick to the common conventions and go along with the importance of clarity. The layout of text was intentionally positioned not to block the screen shots from the film, we overlapped the tagline and title but in places which had nothing to show behind it, this was to also cleverly use spare space around the poster but at the same time not clog the A4 posters.

Although my feedback from my posters was that my more modern poster (poster three) would be more appealing to the audience as because of the others being based on older film poster layouts and colour schemes they matched the current conventions of an emotional heartbreak. The audience said “I also think that the idea of the light coming through the poster links in with the title of your film "light through darkness". On reflection using too many different fonts and the use of plain grey made my poster a less effective combination to my film. Although I also feel I effectively portrayed Kieran in the campaign.

By using Kieran’s image in every poster I can convey that he is the main character and of the most importance in the film this cleverly highlights that the film is surrounded around this young male. I went against using images of the Kieran and his mother or friends as I think it would leave the viewer slightly confused as to who is the main character, I wanted to make it clear who the film evolves around leaving no confusion about who to look out for during the film.

 The use of his original images connotes the message going through his head as being depressed and confused which put6s a firm stamp on what the films about. Films such as the blind side, Buried and Ray are all different forms of a emotional film and use this convention to reach out and touch people who watch the film. However from seeing this I believe it was more suitable to the film to only show Kieran’s character, as the other characters don’t represent being mentally or physically touched by a tragedy, and the audience can understand the film’s plot is about who Kieran is, and what happens to him, rather than his relationship with friends and family.

I wanted to combine the abstract element of the film, with the drama. For this I used images of Kieran positioned on the bed slightly looking upwards, this links in with his odd flashbacks shown in the film. The positioning appeals to the audience because it shows some form of memory-this will urge the viewer to question ‘what else he is thinking about?’ The tagline ‘some journeys go further than you could have ever imagined’ also highlighted the journey our main protagonist will venture on.

My review is also important to the distribution of my film, it needed to sell my film to my target audience of young men, women and film enthusiasts. My use of language reflected this as I wrote in a similar tone to my Empire magazine examples, however I used less film ‘Ray’ and references as to be accessible to an average audience too. Building a relationship with my audience and the film. My review can also help me advertise to the industry as well, but highlight it as an independent film, suggesting its strengths and weaknesses as a product and helping the film maker become known in the industry. As a whole my ancillary tasks and review needed to be presented as a brand image. By using a house style throughout and presenting the themes of the film to both the industry and my target audience, my campaign has a highly effective combination with the main product, my only weakness was using elements of an older poster in my own series. Commenting on my review I choose to re-create Empire magazines mainly because of their well known reputation reviewing many A class films from all over the world. Empire has a huge fan base who follow their reviews and buy their magazines. I believe having a feature in the magazine we could compete with the likes of sold cinema films and some how is able to promote our filming alongside the biggest and the best.

Whilst planning out my film review I had to keep the layout as realistic as possible and to look closely at the original spread from Empire magazine, this meant I had to make sure the right pictures were chosen to place within the review in order to capture the reader’s eyes. My review looks realistic and a lot like the real Empire article, I believe I blended the text and sizes together well and also deeply thought about the text to include within the review, another strength was my idea to use a review which included other film reviews, this added to the realism effect.

EVALUATION 1

Q1) In what ways does your media product USE, DEVELOP or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The typical conventions of a short film consist of having a small crew and running of bare minimal/little funds for the movie. Short films are normally filmed in very small spaces of time and rely upon actors and story idea to generate recognition.

Light through Darkness is a film that’s classed under a drama/ emotional genre. After creating the story of Kieran, the film was based on the theme of blindness and disability.

I developed the idea into someone who loses his eye sight due to a car accident-my intention was to show the repercussion of losing the ability to see and the effect it will have on ones life.  Because of this story line, I knew the conventions I needed to successfully portray from other films of the same genre and story. Studying films/documentries of the same genre I understood the narrative conventions that seemed to follow in most films about blindness and disability such as ‘Ray and Blindness’ both films are about sight disabilities and the life these people face-we followed the conventions of both films to re create the same understanding and narrative progressions. The change in his life was easy to show; the hard part was coming up with an effective way to show movie goers how and what he has overcome, which was something I didn’t originally have in the idea for the story. In my first treatments Kieran did not find a way to overcome his disability. However I changed his plot point after feedback and further research into the genre, feeling we needed an event that would have a larger impact on both the character and th audience. A film we referred to for this idea was ‘The blind side’.

Following the conventions of a short film, my film group knew it was essential to keep all characteristics as realistic and as close to the real thing as possible. We did this by ensuring our film was very compact, smooth and straight to the point; given the max time period of 5minutes it was a struggle at first to squeeze 72 shots into the time bracket. We operated within a small group of 3 and split the job roles evenly and thought about whose personal strengths best matched their jobs.

We researched numerous disability/emotional films to help gain a deeper insight into what and how we intend to create a similar film. There were many Aspects from other films which we wanted to use such as incorporating a terrible tragedy which shows some sort of positive ending- throughout the short the team aimed to keep audiences on the edge of their seats by not revealing too much in scene; we wanted to build up a lot of tension in order to keep the audiences locked into what the moral of the film was. We achieved creating some form of tragedy, but with a twist. We showed Kieran (main actor) saving someone else from a car accident; here we challenge other blindness films by showing our main character being positive by saving someone who could of ended up like him or worst (on the road, near miss scene saving the girl).

 Similar to ‘Ray’ we aimed to keep our film based around one character, this was to ensure no confusion could come up about who to focus on, during pre-production peers told me my film incorporated too many characters which lead off course. ‘Ray’ has the spotlight constantly on the main actor; we gathered at the end of the film that we never felt confused as to what’s going on or who the main focus was on. Within ‘Light through Darkness’ Kieran is always the focus-we made sure every shot he was in was clear and well shown on screen. We had to make certain continuity ran smoothly in terms of (costume and props). Kieran can clearly be portrayed to the likes of ‘Ray’, we mimicked props such as sunglasses and a walking stick/body language to show the difficulties he will face on a day to day basis due to lack of confidence and low self trust/facial expressions on camera show struggle and disbelief and lastly the positioning of the camera-we made certain a high angle shot was used to show us looking down on Kieran as people in the real world look down as also demonstrated within ‘Ray’.

For sound we followed the stereotypical conventions of an emotional drama, slow compelling music to help sway the audience’s feelings towards our main characters situation. Our film closely mimics ‘The Blind Side’ as 17-year-old Michael Oher has been in foster care with different families throughout Memphis, Tennessee. Every time he is placed in a new home, he runs away. the coach of Wingate Christian school,. Impressed by Mike's size and athleticism, Cotton gets him admitted despite his abysmal academic record. We tried to portray kieran as the same sort of character as Michael; anyone who watches ‘The Blind Side’ will almost take pitty for him simplyt because of his poor speech along with the background music. The slow starting compelling music begins as Kieran gets angry at his mum about the fact he doesn’t feel he has to be mothered all the time because of his disability. After the music ends it soon fades back in where his mum urges him to go out with his friends-the cycle is now progression as we highlight his confidence is back.

Leading me onto my next point sound, we challenged the convention of slow compelling music to fit the situation. Instead I used the soundtrack in a cycle affect, as the film draws near the end we see similar shots and scenes to show the comparison between before (the progression of his confidence), and now that Kieran is more independent. Using the mise en scene to show the clean, plain bedroom before, and the slightly more filled room after, reflecting his sense of self-belief. We see the difference between the beginning and the end. This music cycle emphasizes that-we begin the film with really slowly slow poignant and compelling music. We gained great inspiration from heartbreak films for the mise en scene, films like ‘The Pursuit of Happiness’ really influenced our music choices, the music within this film was so very arousing it could bring tears to your eyes along with the onscreen acting; this is exactly what we wanted to happen, we wanted to touch people about the Kieran’s disabilities the same as Will Smiths struggle to make ends meet. 

 

The of use warm lighting, typical of the blunt lighting helped match the mood of dark, grey and cloudy; it linked well with the heartbreak genre. Also the links of grey and black emphasize the lack of clarity, which highlights Kieran’s blindness and difficulties- we wanted to involve the audience as much as possible to keep them engaged, the idea was to let them witness what the lack of sight would feel like-this again helps them make links with what Kieran is really thinking and the can put themselves in Kieran’s shoes and view the world. Again ‘Ray’ incorporates warm lighting as he performs on stage to show his regeneration of confidence and ina-spirit, we did this where Kieran speaks to his mum in the bedroom; the idea was to show the new life/mentality after hearing how proud of him she was.

Blind interview

We found out about a radio interview on BBC Radio 4, this way we found out more about what blind people feel and face in everyday life. The radio programme was very informative and showed us exacltly what blind people have to say about their lives.

 The radio progrmme explores:News, views and information for people who are blind or visually impaired. Presented by Peter White every Tuesday evening from 20:40 on BBC Radio 4.

Blindness Poetry

Whatever it was that happened back then,
I do not wish upon any men.
For as a result I am now blind,
My own reflection I cannot find.
Though initially it became all a mess,
Realizing I'd live in eternal darkness,
With time I found the light,
That I could have happiness,
Even without my sight.
It is a challenge I must admit,
Though I am no longer bothered,
Not even a little bit.
Now with every journey that I take,
Cautious with each step I make,
Each becomes a quest of discovery,
Every movement teaching me.
The colors of our world escape all sight,
As I exist in my eternal night,
I rely on nature to come alive,
Via the other four of the five (senses).
The smell of roses and emanating sound,
The feel of grass and my guidedog hound,
I do not fear the unknown, I have to say,
I just 'see' things a different way.
I'll never have sight, not even half,
But I have enough to light a path.
I am aware through my heightened senses,
These tools which have become my new defenses,
From the obstacles that are rife,
The things you encounter in everyday life.
So I tackle the world with all my might,
Having lost all my sight.
I hope I have given you some insight.

The End.

By michelle zaine

The poem really helps gain a deeper insight into how blind people feel, the poem is so descriptive and detailed analysis of internal emotions and deep thoughts; also the poem helps convey how the blind person views life and what obstacles the face in life.

storyboard

This is our last draft hand drawn storyboard we did during pre production, the storyboard was purposely done to make sure we knew all the shots which had to be taken and what they was meant to show-with careful feedback from peers and different audiences we began grouping together peoples different interpritations of the shots. This was a neccesitie because we needed to ensure the audience knew exactly what we wanted them to see; if we did not it would result in the film being unclear. The storyboard also helped us stay strict to time and professional.