How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
This year theres been a lot of changes to the way we produce our work. During the summer holidays the Mac's and all the software we use had a complete overhaul leaving us to re-learn how to do certain things that we had only used the old software.
Now more than ever, social media was a big thing for our production process, keeping a blog up to date using Google's blogger software, facebook to communicate with each other and organise the cast members. Social media is being integrated into everyday life more and more, film companies now using things like twitter and tumblr to promote the films and gaining an audience even before the film is released.
The technology that we've previously used to create our product last year, for all parts of the production haven't changed, but that doesn't mean we didn't run into any problems with them!
Over the entirety of creating our final products, we received a lot of feedback about the products and what the next steps are in creating, implementing and finalising things to make sure they are as good as can. And like the products we created, I need as much help getting through this as I can. Even right from the word 'Go' we were receiving feedback, even on our practice 'Litter Documentary' task.
The feedback was generally very positive other than maybe so focusing issues but all in all it's constructive to help us create our film. We then decided we would start to look at how to use the focusing on the camera to our advantage rather than adding focus pulls in for the fun of it.
We then had to do individual film pitch ideas we had come up with over the summer and give ideas and how we would eventually create the film. We also had time for people to ask questions about it and give feedback into what had been pitched to them:
The next piece of feedback we received was with our film pitch and what we needed to change about our entail film idea to suit a film better, this was to add the Theory of Equilibrium:
The next lot of film based feedback we received was for the rough cut of the film, where the class could give us feedback and then we would have enough time to go back and re-do certain things if the audience felt like it needed to be changed. And here is the feedback we received from the rough cut:
We then took this feedback and then re-developed our film based on what the audience had said. The differences between the two films side by side may be minor but to make sure that it's suitable for an audience viewing we re-did some things.
We also had the opportunity to get some feedback for our ancillary tasks too, to make sure they were a high standard to get us the marks that we needed to improve our final grades. These are the two original products we made:
Film Poster
Magazine Review
And here is the feedback that we received about them too:
We then took this feedback for these two products and changed them, the poster more so than the review based upon the feedback given. We changed the image of the poster and re-coloured them to look less photoshopped and revised the back ground to blend with the images more. The film review was mainly just alinement issues that had to be fixed. And here are the final version of theses.
How effective is the combination of your main product and your ancillary texts?
I believe that to truly measure how well the three parts fit well together we wanted to ask an audience would be a good way of judging it, So we showed them our three products and asked for their opinions on them.
The Effectiveness of the Combination of Products
Overall the reaction for our products was highly positive and everyone agreed that they link in together. But as the film makers ourselves our opinions still hold some weight. So here's our version of our thoughts on the three products.
Overall I'm very happy with the film poster and the message it comes across to an audience about the film and what it's about. Here's what we thought about the film and our reasoning about what we did and why we did things a certain way in the film to get the point across.
The Effectiveness of our Main Product
The film review is professional looking and fits in with the house style of Empire magazines style. The actual content of the review it's self reflects the film with it's outline of the plot and an honest review that would potentially promote the film to an audience.
The Effectiveness of our Ancillary Products
Film Poster
Whats is the audience and the purpose for this poster?
The audience for our our film poster would be the same broad range target audience as the film of being a wide range of ages and both genders represented in the demographic due to the genre of the film some people for the supernatural element and some for the romance. The poster does focus more on the romance aspect though however. The purpose of the poster is to advertise the film for the audience to come and see it, but still not give too much away about the actual plot of the film.
Was the poster effective?
From the video with the audience, the poster seems effective as they understand what sort of film it will be and the plot of the film. They seem to understand all the elements of the poster and how they work in the film giving away elements which are needed to be viewed by an audience and after watching the film again the see the twist with the films title and how it link to the story.
Magazine Review
What is the audience and the purpose for this review?
The audience as it is not so much of a marketing tool as the poster, the audience would be different and that being the audience for the Empire Magazine, as that is who would read it unless they were a following fan of the film itself. The purpose of a magazine review is to inform and give a secondary opinion about our film thats not connected to ours.
Was the review effective?
The review does it's job as it looks professional and uses the house style of Empire Magazine's 'In Cinema' section making it approachable to readers of the magazine. The positive review will hopefully create a good impression on the readers to come and see the film in cinema's.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our film does match up to a few real media products, but the big one as everyone keeps saying is of course the film Twilight due to the genre of our film being a Supernatural Romance. The films story line to its basic point is very similar to ours, and some of the minor details as you will see in this key frame video:
Even if this is a very close comparison to our film, this is a feature film. So we had a look at some short films that fit similar to the story of The Illusion Of Existence. One film I found that conveys a similar plot line to ours, is Bertie Gilbert's Short Film 'Stray Dog'.
If you can't be bothered to sit and watch 13 minuets of indie film with pretty lighting here's a basic summary of the plotline:
A young man called Miles, is madly in love with his girlfriend finds her cheating on him at a party. Miles then becomes as he puts it 'depressed' when in-fact he's just 'really, really sad'. He wants to seek revenge on whoever took his love from him and so he dons a wolf mask, and then, goes back in time.
This film creates tension in the same way as we do, by having lots of close up camera work with long shots to show a characters emotion clearly to the audience. Sound wise, we had music play through the film and created tension by a change in music, in this music is only used in key moments of the film otherwise the sound would be digetic to the scene. The ending of the film is similar to ours in the way that it's open to an audience's interpretation. In this Milo can be seen to yet again, be using his 'Time Machine' even when he'd promised not to, and then cutting back to a reaction shot of him smirking over the situation. Depending on how the film is viewed as a whole, in my opinion he has used it again as he can't keep away from it and might actually attempt to change the past once more for the kick of it. It's really up to you how you interpret these types of endings, like in The Illusion, as Mallory and Alex walk off, it leaves you hanging on what this new person will be like.
Conventions We Challenge/Develop of The Genre
There is no obvious romantic link, you don't actually see any romantic connection with the characters. Where as in Twilight there is often romantic scenes between the two.
When the female character finds out about the male's supernatural ability but ends up with someone else at the end of the film. In Twilight, Bella and Edward are still in a relationship unlike Mallory and Peter in our film.
We develop the use of a second male more than other films, due to the nature of the equlibrium of the film. In a number of films like Twilight, P.S I Love You the second male character seen just remains a friend to the female lead where as we take it further and see a possible love interest in this respect.
What are some conventions of Short Films? I here you cry, well I made this one earlier:
Conventions We Challenge/Develop of Short Films
Short films are known for having a low budget for their productions, we develop this by having no budget at all and having to rely on our own funds to create this (in which we had non too because were poor students) having the actors give up their time to do this for us and not really get anything out of it themselves.
We develop the use of everyday situations with a plot twist in our film as you can clearly see Mallory going through her everyday life with no question about it and performing normal activities like going to work, relaxing and even falling in love like a normal 20 something year old, until she finds out Peter's secret.
