1.In what way does the media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Within our media product , we made sure to keep continuity flowing and unbroken which I think we achieved very well, Also during the filming and editing of our product we also realised how much each of us had learned the year before in terms of learning media terms and names of camera shots etc. One problem we had this year which I also found was extremely easy to do if you weren't thinking hard about it was breaking the 180 degree rule , we did this on our first time filming and didn't notice until it was edited in and this caused a few problems , but a quick re-shoot and edit solved the problem without too much hassle.
In terms of content our film reflects a lot of of the conventions used within other family films and personally I think it does it very well , for instance the premise of a brother who has become invisible to other people could be used in a lot of light-hearted family films, although within our film I think It challenges the genre a little bit because instead of being light-hearted , it can be quite sad at parts but eventually returns to the happy and cheerful setting of family films at the end. We also used an ever so slight homage to the film Ghost starring Patrick Swayze in which the lead character wrote boo on a steamed up mirror to scare an associate , in our film we wrote help on a steamed up bathroom mirror , it wasn't an intentional homage but a homage nevertheless.
Our film hasn't used a whole lot of what could be known as pastiche or reference to other films except in the use of certain camera shots which can be used a lot within the family genre of film , for instance the shot of Connor entering his room undressed and the door opening back up instantly with him dressed is something which I have seen a few times in my days watching films for example it was used on the trailer for the film Freaky Friday starring Lindsay Lohan , personally it was my favourite shot in the entire film and I think the same went for the small audience who evaluated it.
I Think our film grips the audience and makes them want to watch further to see what happens to the brothers and see if everything turns out well, I am confident that we have achieved this because of our audience research where we showed our film to other people within the college , and almost 100% of the feedback was very positive about the plot and storyline , I Also think some of the more emotional scenes in the film could've achieved a goal of gripping the audience by making them relate to the pain of the characters and therefore make them feel for what happens to them.
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2. How effective is the combination of your main product and the ancillary texts?
Within our film , the main moral is the feeling of loss and how it can affect a family and people close to you, Both of the brothers throughout the start of the film seem to not get along at all , but Josh's character seems to want to make up with his brother because he's close to him , but Connor's character seems to feel nothing for him, but as the film goes on and after Josh's character disappears his true feelings are shown through his tears and Laura's character's sheer panic at what her parents are going to thing. The moral of that is the fact that family will always be close and will always be family , And some families wouldn't get a second chance if somebody ran away like the chance that Ryan got , and it could rip families apart.
Whilst creating our radio trailer the one point that we really wanted to hit home was that we wanted the audience to have a small idea what the plot would be without giving a whole lot away which I think we achieved rather well , we also managed to show Ryan's feelings towards Lewis “Would you cry if I died? Honestly.. no” and the state of sheer panic Jayne is in towards the end “Fine I’ll look for him by myself!”. We achieved our goal I think because we managed to lay down a brief overview of the plot for the audience without giving away any of the big moments like Ryan's disappearance.
One of the main ways in which we managed to get the plot of the film across was by using a voice-over in which I was the one reading the script , this made it so we could get some more of the plot out to the audience that we couldn't tell using sound bytes from the film , for instance when I said “Two brothers who never go along , until one of them goes missing” it told the audience a little bit more about the story , and the dramatic pause in the middle of the sentence might have drawn the audience in a little more.
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3. What have you learnt from your Audience feedback?
Our first feedback came from early audience research which was conducted using a the Sony HDV Camera , we asked questions that related to us trying to get a 12A rating and certain things that could've effected that , the feedback we got for that was that light swearing that wasn't very frequent could be used but nothing strong could be used for example the F or C words , or the rating could not be achieved. In the end the only real swear word we used was 'Pissed' which would not be found offensive by very many people and wouldn't effect the 12A rating.
We also asked a few light-hearted questions such as “what would you do if you were invisible for a day?” which could've drawn the audience in and wanted to see the finished product to see if there was any of that sort of humor , we also gave them a quick pitch of our film to see what they thought , and it ended up being a unanimous 'yes' to it being good.
Because of the amount of shots we had at our disposal this year because of the 5 minute length , we found that even after editing our film was at about 9 minutes in length which is colossally too long and obviously had to be cut down , but after we managed to get it down to just over 5 minutes we found a few problems when showing the audience, they found that sometimes the passage of time could not be seen very well , so we edited in titles such as “The Next Day” which the audience found to be much easier to follow.
Above are two videos , the latter is audience research from the start of the year, and the former is feedback for our finished film.
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4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
During this year of filming and editing , I have found numerous new pieces of technology which made things a lot easier , for instance the new camera we used which was the Sony HDV Camera , which due to it being a HD camera gave us a lot more options in filming because of the added definition , for instance last year when using the smaller hand-held cameras , certain things couldn't be seen such as writing on small signs etc. , I for one really enjoyed using this new piece of equipment and would love to use it again in the future. The weight of it meant a little bit of backache when carrying it long distances but this wasn't a massive problem really.
This year I also used the internet site Blogger to note down lots of the little things we had been doing such a filming schedules , shot lists etc. , which I found to be really interesting how we could show everybody near enough everything we'd done. Other than a few little problems with structuring of posts and images I found it to be a great help to the cause.
During the A2 year we used Final Cut Express to do our editing which even though I didn't do much editing wise this year , the little I did do was found to be much easier , the program was much smoother than the software we used last year and things were generally easier to find and use , effects were all together in a large list , as were transitions and text options , which I found to be very helpful , I also found it quite similar to more streamlined software such as Windows Movie Maker in certain ways , but the added options made it an excellent way to make our film look great , if I had to complain about one part of it though , it would be the fact that if you accidentally clicked the effects toolbar away , it was rather difficult to find again and we usually needed Simon to help us find it again , but other than this small quibble it was and excellent top notch piece of software.
Other than a few tiny problems this year with attendance due to family issues and illness , I think we managed to create a great film and get even closer to the people in my group as good friends , this shows another side to the media course. That even though I’ve learnt so much about creative media , film , Camera shots.. and even more things than I can even state , The biggest thing I think I gained was closeness and friendship with my classmates.
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