Critical Evaluation

Question One;

Whilst we was editing our film together we was wary of trying to find any continuity errors that we hadn't seen and tried to cut our film together so it was able to flow without errors.
When our final film was fully edited, there was very little continuity and other errors that was left in the film. At the beginning of the film the sky changes colour as Connor walks towards the door is an example but whilst we was editing our film together, we encoutered problems with people being caught in camera that are suppose to be out of shot, and where people are caught in shot when there not suppose to.
I think that our final film cut is cut together well showing good continuity matches. The shots where there are matches on action between the two boys and their sister in the front room shows the audience who the people are talking to, which avoids confusion and the shot where Connor walks into his room and the door shuts with him in a towel and then reopens straight away with him fully clothed is good continuity and shows fantasy in that he has changed very quickly.

Our film was suppose to be a Drama/Fantasy which I think that we have captured fantastically, as a drama is suppose to be highly emotional and contains some action which I feel we have captured the emotion side of it by the boy feeling lonely and then disappears and the other boy as to get real emotional to bring back his brother in which can effect the audience, being if the audience is sensative that they could cry at the film. We also captured the Fantasy genre well with the boy becoming invisible and things happening in the house that could be unexplained with their being no one there.

With our film, we all felt that our films storyline compared with the storyline of the film “Freaky Friday” in which we got the idea for our film from. The shots where writing on the mirror whilst Connor is in the shower and the shot where Connor shuts the door in a towel and re opens it straight away wearing clothes, is taken from the film “Freaky Friday“ also as we fealt they were ideal and good shots for us to be able to include into our film and make it a great film that is good for our target audience and entertain the audience.



The kinds of Audience Pleasure that we feel we have accomplished from this film when the audience watches the films are Social interaction as there will be people that can relate and interact with the characters in the film. Also I think we have accomplished the Intensity of Eutopeia in Richard Dyres Therory, as our film is a drama so it has to hit every emotion we can, and also I think there is a bit of Energy as we have some quick cuts involved in the film. I think the main one we hit as a film is Community, I think that it is a family film so it is about brothers and a sister which can give only childs ideas to fantasize about and also for current families to relate to how they feel and act to each other. Also our film includes a voyeuristic element as the audience is viewing the film without the involved actors reacting to the audience viewing.

Question 2;

What we was trying to achieve in our film was a film that the whole family could sit down and watch. Also we was aiming for the film to be relatable to siblings, and to bring a moral of bringing families closer together, which brings Lewis closer to Ryan after they where drifting apart as brothers. In our film, there is both enjoyable and sad themes throughout, which would allow the audience to enjoy the film more as they are feeling things towards the charachters.

We was trying to achieve this enjoyment level and to portray morals in our film, because people watching the film will relate to either by experience, emotional feelings or just by wanting to immatate the actors on screen.

For our film poster and radio trailer we produced portrays the main movie well, and that it will attract people to come view our film.

To the film I analysed, I found similarities and differences between our poster and the poster for the film 'Hancock'.

The similarities between the two posters are that there is one main image to capture the focus of the audience, however on ours there is a few other images as well, one as a background for the title to pull focus to that, and another to show the characters in our film as the main image does not show that. As well as the image both posters have reletively the same size font for the title, which you can easily read on both. Both film posters have a tagline on them, with the 'Hancock' posters tagline reflecting the main charachter in the film, and our tagline is on our poster to capture the audience and make them think about the film, and what will happen in the film.

The main difference from the two posters is that you can tell the genre's of the films by the posters, with looking at the 'Hancock' poster you can assume that there will be action in the film, whereas our film poster has the element of fantasy incorparated within it, and also would make the reader wonder what the pocketwatch in the main photo meant to the film, which would intice them to go view the film.

On the radio trailer, we have lines from the film involved which allows the audience to get a sneak of some dialogue and also we have a voice over that tells information and the snipet line of our film, which its intent is to attract the audience to watch the film to find out what “The fate of one, rests with the other” means.

Question 3;

When we carried out our audience research on our original film idea we got some responses from different people, and we found out that people do tend to watch similar films to ours in the Drama/Family genre's but also it can depend on what moods people are in, and that we found that not many people view short films but was open to the possibility of watching them. The responses we got to our original pitch to the audience was that they thought it was a good, original and unique idea that would be a good film if we could pull off what we was trying to achieve. From these responses, we have only changed our film minimally from filming circumstances that we were able to shoot, but our idea from the pitch we sold to the audience virtually remained the same throughout the filming and editing process.

Whilst we was filming, we always had the audience in mind in which we would always open up what we was planning to film to in which whether the audience would be able to understand it, and I think that all of our shots that we filmed are easily able to be understood by the audience because of the editing and storyline. We changed very little in the film from the original idea, however we made slight changes in the film due to circumstances like actors not being able to film on certain days in which made us decide to change the film, in which I feel those changes have made the film a lot more clearer for the audience to view.
Once we had put a draft copy of our film together we got some more feedback from the audience which focused on thoughts on the film, editing and music but also improvements we could make to make our final piece the best standard it can be.

We found that the audience enjoyed watching our film and found it entertaining, and we had a response that said the film was good to say it was shot in one location. And that we was able to fit a lot of information into the film in the five minutes we was allocated. People really enjoyed the special effects in our film and they felt that the effects made the film better.
Improvements that was suggested was that someone felt that the conversation between the two brothers when one of the brothers reappears, they felt that it was such a normal conversation and it could have been a more high tempo to the conversation. More often than not it was slight errors in our editing that was suggested for our improvements but we was already aware of those problems in which I think we have erased well.
From these responses, we was able to make improvements to the film and make it into a what I think is to be a very good film. And all round the responses where all similar in that the film was very good and suggested similar improvements.We fealt that the audience's feedback aloud us to focus on the slight errors in our editing as the responses was that we had created a very good film.

Question 4;

Whilst doing this media project, as an individual I have used a lot of media technology to complete the project.

Throughout the film, we used an HDV1000 video camera, which allowed us to shoot footage of our film, feedback or the tour of the location which we shot at in high quality, which would give the audience a better viewing experiance and enhance to speech of the actors.

The HDV1000 camera was relatively easy to use, and I picked up how it worked very quickly whilst filming the footage we needed, as I'd never used any sort of video camera in the past. Using the camera was an enjoyable time with it being so easy to use and with the laughs the footage produced too.

The HDV1000 camera was a real pain to carry places though, in which was the only major fault with the camera. We had to walk about 10 minutes to get to our filming destination for our film and the camera was a bit on the heavy side to carry.

For the editing of any footage that we got, we used Final Cut Xpress as a group, but as an individual I used Final Cut Xpress to edit together the final Audience Research we did to gain feedback on the draft version of our film and to help edit give ideas on how to edit bits of the film together. Again I'm not too experianced in using this software, so it was a new experiance for me and Final Cut Xpress is easy to use with exeption to the few times I had to either ask peers or tutors for help with what I was doing. The features of Final Cut Xpress allowed me to edit the different shots we got from the feedback with being able to view the shots, have a list of the shots and to edit the shots all in one window. I thourghly enjoyed using this software in editing that piece of work together and if I ever had to use the software again, I'd be glad to oblige.

With our radio trailer, we edited it as a group on GarageBand on the Mac's which I found hard to understand fully, only knowing the basic's. When we edited the trailer together, I wasn't really getting hands on with the software and took a back seat role, giving advice and sharing idea's with how I thought it could be edited.

Finally, I used Blogger to be able to store my work on and make it easier to pick up anywhere. Blogger has many advantages which are that you could store all your work in one place, and then to be able to access it easily at home. Also an advantage of Blogger was that you was able to add images, embed videos easily, apart from in the Learning Resource Centre at college which made it hard to embed videos. On Blogger you are also able to tag the work you have produced in which then gives you the option on the side to be able to view everybodys work individually that has worked on the blog.

The only problem that I really had with Blogger was that the ordering of the posts where hard to put in place and we often had work all over the place which was eventually sorted out.

After completing all of the work, I am happy with the involvement I have partaicen in the processes of completing the work, and also happy with the software I have used individually and as part of our group. If I could I would do it all again.

Critical Evaluation - Connor Asquith

Question 1

While filming our project we had to do many different techniques to keep the film running smoothly and continuous. Firstly we tried to obey the 180 degree rule so that it didn’t confuse our audience as it will have made the characters on screen look like they have jolted from one position to another. We also put in eye line matches, so that the camera would cut to something significant that our characters were either reaching for or looking at, this helped the film run seamlessly, although in most cases we did have to re film some bits. We also had to comply with the 30 degree rule, this is where if you are doing a close up of something from a long shot/medium shot, you must move the camera 30 degrees left or right, so that when it is edited together it doesn’t look like it jumps together. Finally we used a few Matches on Action to help make it continuous, we used this for going through doors, so we would use shoot the door from one side and as it is slightly opened, use a shot from the other side of the door and edit them together to make it run smoothly.

I don’t think our film breaks the genre in many ways as it is a Family / Fantasy, however it sticks to the genre it is in well I believe. Firstly seen as it is a family film, the ending needs to be a happy one so it doesn’t leave our audience disappointed, also there needs to be a hidden message somewhere within a family film so that the younger audience members can take something away from it, and our hidden message was that you should love your family, and not fight one another. Furthermore being a hybrid genre with the twist of fantasy involved, our film follows in the footsteps of many fantasy films by having some over the top plot twists thrown in. For our film it is the invisibility of one of the brothers. The only thing that I think sets our film apart to the other films in its genre s the slight darkness to its story line, that because of one brother the other has disappeared and can’t be found, it is rare that you see something as traumatic in a family film.

During our film we do use shots from other films, and also use some ideas. The major one that appears in our film is a shot we used that we found in another family film called “Freaky Friday” which was the quick change of costume, we use it after the shower sequence where the character “Lewis” gets out the shower and goes to get changed, but the camera stays outside his door as it shuts, and then immediately opens to show “Lewis” completely dressed differently.

Throughout the film we are trying to show our audience that family is a key part in anyone’s life, and not to take it for granted as you may miss it once it is gone. I believe we met this goal as once we had finished the film; we showed it to a few people and recorded their response. The majority said it was a good story line and was powerful. We also wanted the audience to also just enjoy the films fantasy twist, and I also believe we met that because the response from the people we recorded said it was a clever and entertaining idea.

Overall our film fits in its genre well because every member of our group researched about the genre and what makes it what it is. An example is “The Sixth Sense” this helped us with the idea for the invisibility, as in the sixth sense there are people only the main character sees, but in that case they are ghosts. Also the children’s classic “Casper” gave us some ideas, the idea we got from this film is the jokes the ghost’s pull on humans while they are invisible. We tried to incorporate this in our film when “Ryan” is trying to let his brother and sister know that he is still there in the house.
While analysing the film "The Fall" I noticed some similarities between both our films, firstly the main point that joins our films together is the fact that both of them are based around two brothers. In "The Fall" the two brothers get along fine, while "Jason" looks after his brother who has mental issues "Darren". Whereas in our film the two twins "Lewis" and "Ryan" no longer see eye to eye since their Grandfathers death. The character "Jason" is similar to our character "Lewis", "Jason" being the protector of his younger brother and showing his compassionate side when he still says goodbye to his father despite what he has done. Whereas "Lewis" doesn't show that side of himself until he starts to realise that his brother may never come back because of what he did, it is in the final scene that we see his true feelings towards his brother.

Another way that our films are similar is that they both have a fantasy twist to them, "The Fall" has its strange Graffiti that helps the two brothers reunite, but in our film "Ryan" hasn't ran away he is invisible and the only way for "Lewis" to bring him back is to show his true feelings. The way the Graffiti is shown in "The Fall" was really clever and I have never seen anything as unique done before. That is what gave us as a group the idea to come up with plans for our invisibility shots, like the writing on the mirror while no one is there and appliances turning on.

Question 2 I believe with the combination of our film and our ancillary texts, the poster(s) and our radio trailer would do an effective job on selling our film to the audience. What we were trying to achieve from creating our film was mainly to entertain the audience and get them wrapped within the story, but also the little hidden message that you should treasure your family. I think with our hidden message thrown into the film, I think it will help our audience connect with the film and the characters within it, making them enjoy it more because they may be able to relate with something during the film. I believe that our posters do a good job of advertising the film to our audience as it gives away subtle hints of what will happen in the story from the slogan ‘The Fate of One...... Rests with the other’ this arouses the audience’s attention and makes them want to see what one of the characters ‘Fate’ is. I believe that our radio trailer would help sell our production as it has the deep voice advertising the film in the background giving hints about the storyline, we decided on this because all the big blockbusters do the same. Furthermore we have cut some sound from our actual film, which again we used because when I did my radio trailer analysis I noticed that they all have sound clips cut from their films that are key points in the story. By doing this it makes the audience what to know what is happening in the film and that is why we did that in our radio trailer. Also we decided upon putting some music over the top of our radio trailer, we used the song we use on the big emotional scene at the end of our film. The song really emphasises what is happening in the film, and we thought it would make the radio trailer stick in the minds of our audience thus making them watch our film. Finally one idea I got from the ‘Batman’ radio trailer was to use a sound effect at the end of the radio trailer that is from the film, and make it echo at the end of the trailer as it really builds up the tension and sticks with the audience.

I believe our film poster would do a good job of catching the audiences attention and pulling them into watching our film. It is similar to the Batman poster I analysed, as both are very simple and not too much going on. Both have very subtle hints within them, for example on our poster the first thing you see is a hand slightly blurred out holding the Grandfathers pocket watch. This is to show the audience that the pocket watch is an important part of the story. The fact that the hand is blurred out is to hint towards the invisibility of the holder during the film. The second thing that catches the audiences eye is the photo of the twins "Lewis & Ryan" this is to show that this photo is also relevant to the story and to let the audience know who the main characters are and to keep their eyes on them. Finally behind the actors names, there are some photos of the Grandfather of the twins. This is a very subtle hint as people will know why they are there once they watch the film, the reason they are there is to show that even thought the Grandfather isn't actually on the film who plays a key part in the storyline.

We tried to base our poster on the other film poster we analysed, I choose to do Batman The Dark Knight as I believe simple poster with hidden messages and hints about the film are most effective. Examples on this poster are the destroyed city in the background, the main character stood in the middle, the weapon in his hand etc. I believe our poster would do just a good a job as this poster would as it is also simple but effective.

Question 3

We learnt a lot from doing research into our audience and getting feedback from them, during the planning stage we had wrote up a basic story line and decided to get some feedback from our potential audience. We wrote a series of questions and then got some of our peers to answer the questions as we filmed their responses. This was a big help as we took their opinions and made changes to our film’s script, an example would be to take out the Priest character as people thought it would be a bit far fetched for a priest to be coming to the twins house and attempt to get rid of the ghost which is actually the invisible "Ryan".

Whilst filming and editing our film we tried to ensure our films meaning was apparent by making sure the film was continuous and flowed nicely, we also tried to make sure the audience could see what was actually happening when one of the characters is invisible. We used close ups on the kitchen scene to allow the audience see that there is something important happening. We also used special effects and sound effects on important scenes to make sure the audience didn’t miss them, the main ones were the flash effect on when "Ryan" disappears and reappears along side a loud wind like noise to emphasise the fact that something strange is happening. We used a variety of creative decisions during the creation of our film, in planning we listened to our audience feedback and tweaked our script and plot to make it more appealing to our audience, an example of this was to tone down the special effect of the flash and the sound of "Ryan" disappearing as our audiences thought it was a bit over the top. During rehearsing and the actual filming of our film we decided not to use too much bad language as we wanted a relatively young audience, and we didn’t want the film to be all about bad language to tell the story.

We also decided on trying to make the characters more relatable so that our audience can easily get lost in our story and maybe even see a part of themselves in the characters, "Lewis" for example is the typical big brother he will pick and poke at his younger brother 24/7. But if anyone else threatens him or if something happens to his younger brother the true side of him will come out to show his true feelings. Whilst editing we decided to put in a few special effects into our film as in our audience research, someone said if the special effect look good I will be excited to watch the film. So we made the decision to put in a few special effects on the key plot points to make them more memorable, but not to overdo it as it can be too much to take in for the audience. An example of this is the mirror scene where "Ryan" is writing on the mirror but we cant actually see him as he is invisible.

Once the film was practically done, we showed our peers a rough edit of our film to get some final feedback on any changes they could suggest, or any bit they thought were particularly memorable. We got mainly positive feedback, ranging from it being a very good film with a nice twist thrown in, to compliments on our effects and music choices during the film. People really liked the last scene where the music's lyrics matched up almost perfectly with what was happening on screen, and after all the fine tuning of our disappearance effects people said that it fitted in nicely with the film and was no longer over the top. But we also got some people noticing little mistakes during the film, like the shot not being framed properly, or there was an incident where you could see the character "Ryan" while he is supposed to be invisible, but overall we had a positive response from our audience.

Question 4

In the process of making the film I used many different media technologies in the several stages, firstly in the research stage I used the Internet to aid me finding out about the genre that our group decided on to make our film, this was very useful as it helped us stick to what makes that genre. Also once we had our film ideas ready, we made a questionnaire and then filmed the responses of our peers on what they thought of our pitch by using an HDV1000 camera, and then edited the best answers to the questions using ‘Final Cut express’ and put them onto ‘Blogger’.

In the planning stage of creating our film we used the HDV1000 camera again to plan out some of the trickier camera shots that appear in our film, the quick change where to door shuts, or the invisible person writing on the mirror for example. We also used ‘Blogger’ to make a shot-list so we knew where the camera needs to be in each scene, this was a huge help as last year we did also make a shot list, but didn’t really use it to the degree we have this year, also we did multiple back up shots in case the first wasn’t to the standard we wanted. Also during the planning stage, we did a video tour of my house where the film was going to take place. This was to show the audience what is going to happen where, but also to help us plan out our shots as we could re watch this video over and over again. We also used a normal camera to take still shot photos of the key areas within my house so we could have a more in depth look on where the camera is going to be.

In construction, we used a vast range of media technologies; firstly we used the HDV1000 camera to shoot the entire film, although I didn't use the camera as much as I did in our AS project because I was generally the one being filmed I still helped out when I wasn't on screen. We then used a Capture device to transfer our film from the tape onto the computer. Once the un-edited film was on the computer we used ‘Final Cut express’ to edit our shots together to make the film also to add in titles and effects. Afterwards we used some CD’s to find some copyright free music, but we couldn’t find anything we thought fitted the tone of our film, so we used the Internet to find some music, and luckily we found some for the final scene in the film and also the opening and credits. Once the film was done, I used Adobe Photoshop to create a film poster to advertise our film using screen shots from our film and also some photos we had taken, each member of the group made their own individual poster, and then we put all our ideas together to make a joint, final poster. We also needed to make a radio trailer to advertise our film, so we used a Zoom Recorder to film a speech on the film that we had written and put on ‘Blogger’, we used ‘Garage Band’ to edit the radio trailer together and also used one of the songs we used in our film alongside some sound effects we downloaded off the internet. Also we needed to edit some scenes with a colour corrector, mainly the first scene where "Lewis" is walking towards the house, because there was too much blue of shot, making it look really cold which it actually wasnt.

Finally in the evaluation stages, we used ‘Blogger, Facebook and Youtube’ to get some feedback from the public by posting the final edit of our film on each of them and asking for feedback, by putting a questionnaire alongside the video, using media technologies for this stage really helped as we got a much wider range of feedback. We also used a HDV1000 camera to film some response of our peers after they have watched the film, then it is edited on ‘Final Cut express’ and posted on ‘Blogger’.

Critical Evaluation

1. In what way does the media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
One thing that I always seem to struggle with each year is the breaking of the 180-degree rule. Without even realising we had done it, in the first scene we only had one shot that was suitable for this part of the script, but it was the other side of the conversation, breaking the rule. Luckily, we were able to work around this by cutting the audio of the good shot that we had, and have a shot of me and Laura flicking through the photos, while the audio of Connor talking was playing over this shot. It wasn't how we planned this scene to work, but covered our backs by doing that extra shot that luckily saved us in the end.

In our film, we have hinted at one other film; Ghost starring Patrick Swayze. Our reference to this film would be the writing on the mirror, which we use in our film. In the film ghost, the character played by Patrick Swayze writes 'Boo' on the mirror to scare his assosciate. We contrast this in our film by writing 'Help' on the mirror. Not a massive reference to another film, yet, this is as close at it gets.

Audience pleasure was something that we tried to achieve in our film. The moral to our story was that despite how horrible you can be to someone, or vice versa you can still miss them when they are gone. In our film, despite being nasty towards his brother, Lewis learned that he missed Ryan when he was gone. One thing that we hope people take away from our film would be to start treating others better, because you will miss them once they are gone. Luckily, Lewis had a second chance to put things right. The way we portrayed Lewis' grief was essential to audience relation. In the shot below, we see Lewis crying as he looks at a picture of him and his brother, by using a close up shot of Lewis which we do not use very often in the film, we can see the emotion in his face and hopefully the audience can relate to him. We weren't trying to provoke a reaction out of the audience in which they cried at our film but we were hoping that the audience would feel a bit sorry for Lewis despite how badly he treat his brother.

One shot that we used in our film, was the shot of Lewis shutting the door and then opening it again to be fully clothed. I originally got the idea for this off the trailer of Freaky Friday where Lindsay Lohan closes the door and opens it again, clothes changed. Since this was not a hard shot to do, as it was just a case of keeping the camera in the same poisition and cutting the time in between where it's just a recording of the door closed, it was something I incorporated into our film. It was a nice little shot, which required minimal effort. As well as the door shot, we also have the afore mentioned mirror shot.

We tried to achieve audience pleasure from our film by showing a sense of social interaction and the interaction of a family. By showing a somewhat dysfunctional family come together at the end, and get along with each other gives the audience some pleasure. The family on screen could be easy to relate to and allowed us to create a family film that hopefully the whole family would sit down and watch. Children would enjoy our film through the element of fantasy and we should see an element of remorse, if they were to have a younger or elder sibling who they weren't too nice to. We also covered Richard Dyers theory of Intensity of Eutopia as we tried to get the audiences emotions running high by including a scene where the elder brother is upset over losing his younger brother.

One element that we tried to achieve in our film was a bi-polar effect where we have moments a moment of severe sadness where they are looking over the pictures of the granddad, where the elder brother seems to get some sort of enjoyment off of the younger brother missing their Granddad and relishes in his discomfort. This role is changed when the younger sibling disappears where the elder sibling gets into a severe state of depression because he misses his brother, whereas the disappeared sibling is having fun playing with his brothers mind. Finally, at the end we see that both brothers are back to be in each others company, and seems to have changed their view of each other for the forseeable future.

In the film that I analyzed off the BBC Film Network, a noticeable comparison can be drawn between the younger sibling of Ryan in our film and the character of Darren in The Fall. Although Darren has a mental problem and his older brother Jason looks after him, the main comparison that can be drawn between the two would be the independence of the two of them, and the fact that they both go missing. The Fall was a great insight into something that we were wanting to achieve with our film and actually gave us some ideas that we could use in our final film, such as dialogue and highlighting the feeling of being alone which we applied to Lewis.

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and the ancillary texts?
The main moral to our story is the idea of losing somebody is close to you. Despite, the two bothers not getting along very well, and one actually being very nasty to the other, he still missed him when he had gone. The main thing that we want the audience of our film to see is that make use of the time that you have with someone, because before you know it, they could be cruelly snatched away from you. Luckily, Lewis was able to change and got Ryan back. But others obviously won't be as lucky to acquire a second chance.

When it came to creating our radio trailer, we obviously didn't want to give too much of the storyline away. In the trailer, we tried to highlight how nasty Lewis was to Ryan by including the line 'Would you cry if i died?' Honestly, no. Then later on, Jayne in a state of panic by saying 'fine i'll go look for him by myself, clearly showing that she cared that he had gone missing By doing this, there is no way to know that Ryan disappears through something enchanting, the audience just thinks that Ryan has run away.

We also used the element of voice over, using the voice of Luke in which he told the audience certain elements of the story which could not be put across using sound clips from our film. The voiceover tells us of 'two brothers who never got along, until one of them goes missing', which helps the audience to understand more what the film is about. Voice overs are used often in radio trailers to highlight parts of the story that would otherwise be difficult to tell. Through the radio trailer, we were also able to tell the audience that there is some history between the brothers, and have not been getting on very well for quite a significant period of time.

The film poster that I chose to analyse was the one by the film Freaky Friday. I chose to analyze this film simply because it was so close to ours int what we were trying to achieve in terms of characters and relative plot. Some ideas that we took from this film idea was the use of both main characters been used in the poster in a similar position. We then obviously included the usual things you would expect to see in film posters, such as the title, the actors names etc.

Despite having a fairly complex storyline in the planning stages, we tried to make the story as easy to follow as possible, so only used a linear narrative so as the audience weren't confused. An advantage of this was that editing was a lot easier as we just had to make sure it happened in the right order, and other advantage would be that the story was easy to follow and you weren't having to think about earlier flashbacks or have to sort out in your head what order everything was happening in.

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

With our original audience research, conducted on the HDV Sony Camera, are main question that we wanted to find out would be the use of swearing in a 12A film. We also asked many other questions, which included giving us some ideas on what they would do if they were invisible for a day. We already had an idea what we were going to do, we just wanted people to be creative and suggest some ideas.

From the question about swearing we discovered that they would expect mild swearing but no use of strong words such as the 'F' word or the 'C' word. This helped us in our final film as we ended up using the word 'pissed'. Not a swearword to most, but it is quite a strong word, but it would pass for a 12A certificate. Other things we found out from our original audience research was if people regularly watched films, espsescially short films and what they though to our particular genre. It was also interesting to see what people though of our original pitch and we got a unanimous answer that it was good pitch, if we pulled it off.

Editing took us a long time this year, since it was a 5 minute film we obviously had more shots to shoot, meaning more shots to edit. When originally creating our story on Final Cut Xpress, we ended up having the film touching on 9 minutes long. This was obviously not acceptable and through extensive cutting we got it down to 5:35. So that the audience followed the linear narrative of our film, we added titles saying 'The next day..' to a few shots so that the audience definitely new that a day had passed. Despite only being on for a few seconds, it just gives the audience a push in the right direction.

One positive accolade that a lot of people was saying that they were impressed the enjoyment that they got from watching our film seen as we only filmed in one location. Other groups were travelling up and down the country, or going to different places around Barnsley to complete their films, yet we had a simple walk down the street to our location and no more was needed to be done as everything that we wanted to achieve could be achieved in the house. When conducting audience research, I asked the question where did any of the characters reminded them of anyone and were they relatable. One interesting one that I got back was that the character of Lewis was likened to David Platt off Coronation Street, in the general moody behaviour that he displayed. Although this was not something that we were wanting to achieve, it is an excellent comparison of two young outlaws who were generally not very nice people. We also received numerous praises for our film saying how we were able to create such a good film without spending any money and just using resources that we already had available. No money was spent on props or anything for our film, and this was advantagious due to us setting our film in the present day, meaning no money was needed to be spent on costumes or props, like we had to do last year.

Using the social networking site, facebook, I sent the some review questions to a lot of people and received some feedback. Of the feedback are two friends of mine below who provided us with some useful insights on how to amend our film and what they thought were good. We generally received positive reviews and any constructive feedback was taken into account and we then set about improving our film.

Above is a video that we created after conducting a question and answer survey on what people though of our short film. This was a great use of resources and allowed us to get in some last minute work using the camera. It also made our reviewing a lot more professional and gave us a more visual outlook on what people though of our film.

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

For our media project I have successfully used an HDV Sony Camera, as well as Final Cut Xpress when it came to editing our project. As well as this, I also used Blogger to record all of our posts on an online blog. An advantage of using the HDV Sony Camera is that it is able to shoot in very good quality and it is a very professional piece of equipment, and I enjoyed using and operating this piece of technology. The only minor problem I had with the HDV camera would be carrying it to our destination became a real pain seeing as how heavy it is, but this was not a major problem.

Final Cut Xpress really enabled to me be creative. I am one of those people who will try every single effect to see which one is the best one, no stone is left unturned. After searching through all the effects on Final Cut, I eventually found the ‘Flash-Frame’ video transition which became an important part of our film and I ended up using this transition 3 times in our film. An advantage of this particular transition is that the shots didn’t have to be identical, and in the 3 shots that I used them, the character in the shot moved, but this is not noticeable seen as a flash takes up the entire shot. One problem that I had with Final Cut Xpress would be the computer itself that it was actually on were generally quite fast, but one time our computer completely crashed and refused to eject a disc I had in the tray, meaning no editing could be done for a lesson until the computer would be fixed next lesson.

Finally, Blogger is a very useful way of uploading our work as this meant that any person in our group can access our work, if needs be. This also meant that none of our work could be distorted or lost and people could apply tags to particular posts that they have contributed to, showing us who has done which pieces of work. One problem that I encountered with blogger was the ordering of your posts. By adding pictures to a post, it automatically added the picture at the beginning of the blog and this was irritating if you wanted the picture at the bottom of the post and you had to try and drag it to the bottom of the post, in a relatively small box.

Apart from a few minor problems, I have been able to let my creative nature go into full flow and maximise my potential and overall, I am really satisfied with the end product. The equipment I used was very simple to use and if I didn’t know how to do something, I would somehow figure out how to do it.

Blogger, became a royal pain in the arse, and really annoyed me this year, compared to last year. After deciding I had some time to type up some evaluation, I wrote 3 lengthy paragraphs. I then decided to try and embed a video and blogger crashed, wiping my work that I had done previously. General log in issues also became quite frequent in that we couldn't actually log in and edit work due to an error code saying that I had signed in but then said that I hadn't signed in. Also the uploading and dragging of photos to the place where you wanted to be on your post became quite tedious and the embedding of videos would often be quite irritating if it was bigger than the actual blog post and was too big for the blog itself and made it generally unmessy. However, one major advantage of using Blogger would be anybody could update their work at any time and see what other work other people in the group, as apposed to if we had done all our work in a workbook, we could have all done a similar piece of work and only one could have been submitted. Also, being a faster typer than I am a writer, I was able to get work done a lot faster.

Entwined, Radio Trailer

This is our radio trailer for our film, the trailer in itself is a total of 32 seconds long. We feel that this is ideal for getting across our film, and includes audio snippets from our film, without revealing any of the story-line.