Evaluation Questions

Question One
In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop, or Challenge Forms and Conventions of Real Media Products?

Question Two
How Effective is the Combination of your Main Product and Ancillary Texts?
Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Question Three
What Have You Learned From Your Audience Feedback?

Question Four
How Did You Use Media Technologies in the Construction and Research, Planning and Evaluation Stages?

Re-editing Film Poster

Audience feedback that we received revealed that the positioning of the text at the top of our poster was not conventional, and was a little difficult to read as it seemed random.
Therefore, I have decided to look at social realist film posters in order to discover where this information should be placed.

The first poster I looked at was the one for Shank. This has a central title, with the name of the actors placed just above, the director mention placed next to the title, and the tagline placed at the top of the screen. However, audience feedback implied that the positioning of our tagline - just below the title - was effective

I began my reedit on Photoshop by moving the name of the actors to the top of the poster, as I found that this was conventional of social realist films, as demonstrated below.

In order to do this, I had to select the T icon, which then allowed me to move the text onto one line, with spaces in the middle, and manipulate it to fit at the top of the page while being centralised.

After this, I edited the positioning of the text which stated "A Film by Caitlyn Watson". 

I began by selecting the lasso tool, found in the top left corner, second icon down. This then allowed me to create a box around the text I wanted to manipulate. 

After this, I selected the layer on which this text lies - titled after the text itself, and right clicked to choose 'transform selection'. This then meant that I could choose the first icon in the top left corner, allowing me to move the text.

The initial position I attempted was top and centre, just under the actors names, and staying on two levels. However, this looked clunky, and made it seem as though the director mention was the key part of the poster.

Hence, I moved the text onto one line, and placed it just above the title, while moving the tag line to lie just below the title towards the right, taking inspiration from the poster shown below. This made this section of the poster seem clunky and left a large empty space at the top.

Thus, I moved the text again, keeping it on a single line, but placing it centrally below the actors names, and moved the tag line back to its original position. This used up more of the space, but still left a rather large gap at the top, and so it is likely that we will go back as a group and see what we can change so as to fix this.

Evaluation

Although this re-editing of the poster did improve the overall layout, and we decided as a group that we preferred to have the actor names spread out across the top, we were still unsure on the positioning of the director mention. Therefore, Caitlyn will look at the poster to see if we can eliminate the empty space between the text at the top and the title.

Deconstruction of Typography

In this blog post, I will be deconstructing different typography fonts for preexisting social realist film posters in order to aid in our decision of the typography to use in our website and poster.

Evaluation

After deconstructing these typographies, we have decided that our own will resemble handwriting, using a sans serif font similar to Comic Sans. We will also have the title in bold, and the letters will be placed at alternating heights on the page to draw attention to the title. This will then be further anchored by the use of teal blue, which is the colour we will use as well as black for the typography on our poster, as although the faded and torn effects are interesting and conventional, they would not be appropriate for our plot, as we are not using an urban location.

Voiceover Recording Plan

For our teaser trailer, we have a scene in which the protagonist is standing in the middle of a busy street, and all around her is a time-lapse of people walking past. This was used to emphasise her state of mind, and to demonstrate her isolation.
However, in order to further emphasise her ostracising herself from society, we decided to include diegetic voiceover of voices insulting her, to represent how she believes society views her.

In order to create these voiceovers, we had a planned session.

Date: 30/01/2016

Attending: Ellie and Georgie

Voice Over Actor/s: Ellie and Georgie

Times: 13:00 - 14:00

Location: Ellie's recording studio

Equipment: A macbook, arode microphone, garage band, and classical voice (will be manipulated)

Costume: Not required

Permission: Not required

Editing: Splitscreen

After receiving audience feedback, one of the main concerns was that the Facebook scene was too fast and was difficult to read. The social media is an important aspect of our trailer, and so it was essential that this shot could be clearly read, and so I decided to edit it to make it readable for the audience. To do this, I created a split screen on Final Cut Pro.

In order to accomplish this, I firstly had to find the original clip of the Facebook scene, and drag it down above the trailer so that it was now seen over the other scenes.
From this, I was then able to crop the clip to the specific part I wanted; the scene where two comments appear. I chose this as it emulates realtime and is a major aspect of Facebook, and so will make the audience feel as though they are on Facebook, and so they will feel more involved in the film as the trolling will seem personal, evoking empathy.

I then selected the original clip and cropped the shot so that all that could be seen on the screen was the photograph of Ellie, which I manipulated using 'transformation' so that it fit half of the screen, therefore making up half of the split-screen.

After this was done, I selected the second clip, on top of the previous shot, and cropped this to show the comments. This was trickier, due to the new comments appearing, and so I had to ensure that I cropped it large enough for both of the comments to appear and for both to be able to be seen.

I then used 'transformation' to manipulate this to fit the second half of the screen, ensuring there were no gaps so that the two shots could be seen side by side in a larger image, and so the audience could now read the comments as they appeared.

Evaluation
To improve this, I could have possibly zoomed out more on the photograph of Ellie so as to make it seem less stretched. Transforming the shots proved slightly difficult, as trying to change the size of the shot often made it become flipped or upside down, and so it had to be changed back, and it was difficult to measure the exact dimensions to ensure that the entire screen was filled, and so I could have measured the dimensions using a scale to make both shots the same size.
However, further audience feedback revealed that this shot was now much easier to read and follow, and added an important aspect to the film as it highlighted the destructive role of social media.

Balloon Scene Reshoot Filming Plan

In this blog post, I will be planning the reshoot of the balloon scene. Audience feedback revealed that many of our viewers could not read what was written on the red balloon, and so we decided to reshoot this scene with just one word written on the balloon, which will hopefully be easier to read.

Date: 30/01/2016

Attending: Georgie, Ellie

Actor/s: Ellie

Times: 13:00 - 14:00

Shot: The long distance shot of Ellie holding a balloon to signify her anger as she grows older.

Location: Field in Tenterden

Equipment: we will need a tripod, acquired from school, Ellie's camera, a red balloon, and a black marker pen to write the negative word on said balloon.

Costume: Baggy blue jumper, black jeans, black coat

Permission for Filming: Not required

Final Scene Reshoot Filming Plan

In this blog post, I will document the filming plan for our reshoot of the very final shot, a close up of Ellie's eyes. We had previously attempted to film this shot, but soon discovered that one of her eyes was out of frame, and so decided to reshoot it.

Date: 25/01/2016

Attending: Georgie, Ellie

Actors: Ellie

Times: 16:00 - 17:00

Shots: The eye-line extreme close up of Ellie's eyes.

Locations: Sutton - Valence

Equipment: For this scene, we simply need the tripod, to ensure the shot is stable, and the camera to take the shot. No other equipment is needed.

Costume: as we only see Ellie's eyes in this shot, no set costume is required.

Permission for Filming: not required

Deconstruction of Film Titles in City of God

For our film trailer, I also researched the titles in the teaser trailer for City of God, a drama which is very similar to the social realist genre as it includes aspects of moral panics, such as the prevalence of violence within teenage groups, and so could be helpful in inspiring our own titles.

Evaluation

From this research, we have decided to include plot-based titles within our trailer so as to reveal more about the plot and to also create enigmas, which is conventional for teaser trailers. We will likely not include clips behind the titles, but will have a black background, and our typography will emulate the style of social media text, and so will link in to the trailer well.

Website Deconstruction

Evaluation
After this deconstruction, we have been able to fully research film posters within and without our chosen genre, and so are now aware of the conventions that we must/could follow so as to appeal to our target audience and to conform to conventions so as to make the website seem as professional as possible. As ours is a social realist film, it is difficult to discover existing film websites in this genre. However, I found the Broken Circle Breakdown, and so we will be able to take inspiration from this poster, such as the use of little content. however, as our film largely focuses on the influence of social media, these links will most definitely be included as they are an integral part of the plot for our film.

Review Creations

For our film poster, it was decided that I will be the one to create the film reviews. In order to do this, I looked at existing posters and websites and the reviews they have written on them.

 This poster uses one word reviews, consisting of adjectives that paint the film in a very positive light. This compliments their poster well as the large image takes up most of the screen, and the reviews are simple, but make large statements and are to the point. However, as there will be a large amount of blank space on our poster, I do not think we will take inspiration from this poster as such, though the adjectives themselves could be used a larger review option. The reviews for this poster were from Time Out, a free urban magazine with an intended male target audience, which suggests that their target audience is males, and so we could mimic this to appeal to a female audience.

I took a slight inspiration from this and created the review "Visually stunning, a cinematic masterpiece" - I manipulated the adjective 'stunning' to compliment the editing style and the cinematography used in the film, as cinematographies are an important aspect that can aid in the success of the film.

This poster uses star reviews, which we could take inspiration, as this is a simple stylistic techniques that immediately conveys the sense that the film is approved of. Also, it features short reviews, such as "funny, profound and moving" and "Jarvis and Fassbender are outstanding". I will take inspiration from both of these reviews, as the latter praises the actors in the film, and the forming suggests the genre as it reveals a complexity of plot.
Therefore, I have created the review "A tragically accurate portrayal of today's society, and what a gem Bartram is!" The use of "tragically" suggests the tone of the film, and the review reveals the genre. 























This poster only uses one review that reveals the genre, as it states that it is a coming-of-age film, which establishes the target audience as young adults. The use of the intensifier 'best' emphasises the quality at which they are rating the film, and would appeal to a wide audience range.
Taking inspiration from this, I have created the review "One of the most inspiring films I have ever seen - I will definitely be recommending this to everyone I know!" Rather than 'best', I used the intensifier 'most', and I coupled this with "one of" similar to the review in the above poster because although you wish to praise your film, you do not want to come across as arrogant, because this may not appeal to viewers. Also, I included the exclamative as this implies that the person liked the film so much that they believe others will enjoy it too. I chose 'inspiring' as that is the main aim of our film - to inspire others into actively seeking a way to combat eating disorders.

Kidulthood also uses a star rating as well as an actual review. In the review, rule of thirds is used to add emphasis, and the imagery in the metaphor is in the semantic field of violence, and so relates well to the plot and genre of the film. Therefore, for our own reviews, I will consider using language that connotes our topic and genre so as to appeal to the target audience.

In addition to those aforementioned, I have also created the following reviews:
"Heart achingly raw, this is one of those films that stay with you for the rest of your life"

"Powerful and moving, this tackles the prominent issues of society in a beautiful way."

"The depth of feeling manifested in Ellie Bartram's acting is truly amazing."

"An emotional rollercoaster - one I won't be forgetting any time soon! Watson has artfully portrayed the harsh reality of society today, and every young girl should watch this film"

In these reviews I have complimented the main actor and the director, and in each I have implied the genre of the film through my choice of language. Exclamatory sentences are used to created emphasis and to make the reviews more emotive, and the reviews also target the directed audience by referring to them directly.

Evaluation

This deconstruction aided in my creation of the reviews for the website and poster. We have decided that, similar to Fishtanks, we will include star ratings, but only on the reviews on our website, and, as convention generally dictates, we will only have one review on the poster, as the aim of the poster is to appeal to the target audience and provide information, and we believe that too many reviews will take up too much of our poster and could distract from the main image.

Deconstruction of Mise-en-Scene in Kidulthood

In this blog post, I will be looking at the mine-en-scene used in the opening title sequence of Kidulthood. Although we are creating a teaser trailer, we could still use aspects of the sequence as inspiration for mise-en-scene to use.

The opening credit sequence begins with a large amount of extreme close up, which are enigmatic and are conventional of the genre. The very first shot, as shown below, is an extreme close up shot of a football, with someone very clearly kicking it. This immediately implies the target audience, as this is an activity stereotypically expected of young males, approximately teenagers. This is then further anchored in the close up shots of teenagers in school uniform, talking with one another or on the phone.
Also, extreme close ups are shown of a mechanism being put together, which conveys a positive attitude towards the protagonist. However, this choice of shot also creates an enigma, as the audience are uncertain of what exactly is being constructed, and so when it is revealed that it is a gun, a negative tone is established. Also, the contrasting mise-en-scene of the gun with the school location is shocking to the audience, as it conveys a lack of innocence which is an unconventional representation of young people within the film industry, but is conventional for the social realist genre.

The use of guns in the mise -en-scene concerns a prominent issue in today's society - the increase of gun violence. However, as our film trailer will not be focusing on this particular issue, and from our target audience questionnaire we discovered that many did not appreciate the violent nature of films in this genre, we will not be including it.

Additionally, POV shots are interspersed during the opening scene, as seen below, and these further reinforce the realism of the narrative, hence making the audience feel more involved, and so for our teaser trailer we will aim to include these also.

Another aspect of the mise-en-scene in this film is drugs, which are a substance that are becoming an increasing concern in society. Through this, we can see how it is conventional for films in this genre to focus on topical issues, which allows the audience to reflect on society, and so this should be the main purpose of our own teaser trailer.

The location of this film is set on an estate, which is very conventional for social realist films as it portrays the discrimination and divide of the classes, a concern that is propagated by the media daily. Our target audience survey discovered that this is the location that our target audience would most like our teaser trailer to be set in. However, my location scouting of an estate found that it had more disadvantages to filming there than it did advantages, and so we ruled this out.

Evaluation
After deconstructing the mise-en-scene in this preexisting social realist film, we have discovered aspects we may attempt to include in our teaser trailer, such as the use of POV shots to reinforce the sense of realism. However, as this film focuses on gang violence, a lot of the mise-en-scene used is not helpful to us, as we aim to eliminate any violence from our teaser trailer.

Posters Prop Practical

For our film trailer, we originally planned on having the ending as a point of view shot of the protagonist looking over a bridge and down to train tracks, as this would suggest suicide but would not definitely suggest it, and so kept a sense of enigma. However, after taking the shot using a GoPro, we reviewed the footage we obtained and discovered that it was canted, and so would not be usable.

However, rather than reshooting the footage, we discussed the ending scene and unanimously decided that it had too much finality to its tone, and so we chose to change it.
After various discussions and searching other social realist film trailers for inspiration, we decided that the final scene should be more positive and suggest hope for the protagonist, and so chose to film a scene in a nurse's office, which has implications that the protagonist is looking for help from professionals.

For this scene, we needed posters which focused on eating disorders for the mise-en-sene so as to confirm that the protagonist is at a specialist clinic. I opted to create one such poster, which would be used along with preexisting posters from real companies which help people with eating disorders.

Firstly, I used a drawing I had previously completed which featured a shackled girl wearing rags, and took a photo of it using my phone.  Using my preexisting knowledge of poster conventions, I chose to use the Golden Rule, and so photographed the image so as the place the main drawing not in the centre of the post, but on the right hand side. Then, using the editing effects already available on my phone, I changed the filter of the image to Noir Black and White, as the photo was uncoloured and the lighting made the image purple. Therefore, by changing the image to black and white I parallel the tone of the film.

 Following this, I then chose to change the lighting of the piece, particularly darkening it so as to sharpen the image and erase some of the lighter pencil strokes.

Next, I used an app titled  Color Effects, a free app which allows the user to 'recolour' any image of their choosing. This app has a variable brush size, which consists of pixels, meaning that the smallest brush size is one pixel, whereas the largest is various pixels.
Also, the app offers a rainbow spectrum of colours, and so at a glance the user can choose a simple solid colour such as red, pink, blue, orange, green, etc, and then after choosing a colour a larger screen appears which allows the user to lighten or darken the colour, with black at one end and white on the other.

Firstly, I chose a colour between orange and pink, and lightened it by a significant amount so as to get a suitable 'fleshy' colour. The app offers the user the opportunity to adjust the opacity of the recolouring, and for this I chose zero opacity, meaning the colour was non transparent, and chose a 'hard edge' brush to ensure that the lines are sharp and clear rather than blurred.
The app allows the user to zoom in significantly in order to see the individual pixels, which makes colouring the image more precise, and I coloured the skin of the character portrayed in my drawing.
The drawing I had done included lines to signify where shadows and light patches should be seen, and so I used these for guidance and alternatively darkened and lightened the colour i was using ever so slightly to show blended colour, particularly using the lighter colour on the tops of my character's arm and legs.
I then chose a generic brunette colour to colour the character's hair and coloured the clothing of the character in a light blue colour as this connotes depression but also hope.

Once this was complete, I opened up an alternative app, which was also free to purchase, and is called Photo Editor. This app allowed me to add text to the image, with the option of choosing font type, font colour, and font size.

Hence, using a traditional Times New Roman font I chose the headline 'Don't be a Slave to Your Eating Disorder' in order to convey how people often feel constricted by their eating disorders.
Then, at the footer of the page I added smaller sans serif text in white which included a phone number which would lead to a help line. This shows how the sufferer is not alone and that there are options available to them. Also, by using a white text it contrasts the black header and the dark colours of the poster, drawing attention to it and implying a semantic field of hope and positivity.

Evaluation 
Using this same technique, I took three more of my own drawings and manipulated them into posters, each with a small amount of text which aimed to inspire the reader to get help, as well as a helpline attached. However, we decided that these posters were quite harsh as they used fairly brutally honest pictures, and so may not have been used in an eating disorder clinic as they may negate any helpfulness. Therefore, we will only be using the poster above, and will pair it with some pre-existing eating disorder help posters.

Final Scene Poster Inspiration

In this post, I am using pre existing photographs found on google to gain inspiration for the poster I had to create as a prop for our final scene.

I found a variety of images, all of which were hard hitting and clearly portrayed eating disorders. I found that the images all had common traits, such as the use of black and white which not only expresses a depressing and melancholic tone, but also creates a real life representation of how people with eating disorders feel.

One thing I found the pictures all had in common was that they were in black and white. This reflects the tone of the photograph and creates an atmosphere we might want to consider for our own. Also, a large majority of the photographs included measuring tape.

In this first image, the measuring tape is wrapped around the ankles which are standing on scales. The tape being wrapped around her ankles signifies how she is confined by her need to be skinny, and by society's perception of what it means to be 'pretty'. The use of an extreme close up shows anonymity that creates an enigma, and so is something we could also consider for the posters in the ending scene at the eating disorder clinic, as this anonymity emphasised the relatable tone of the poster, and shows that the depicted person to be representative of a group of people, rather than just his/herself.

The next image is a close up that again uses anonymity as it is positioned below the face. The mise-en-scene within the shot of a fork, knife and plate connotes eating disorders and is something we may want to consider within one of our own shots, and the use of the measuring tape as 'food' is symbolic of the hunger and need for these young girls to be skinny and to be accepted by society and its ideals. This mise-en-scene could also be useful in one of the posters for our final scene, as it subtly suggests the topic being discussed.

This last image shows a young girl standing in front of the mirror and looking at her reflection. This could be something we could consider for our own posters, as we could use Photoshop to manipulate the image in the reflection to inaccurately reflect the girl standing in front of it, so as to illustrate the protagonist's warped perceptions of herself. However, this could prove to be difficult as we would have to ensure that the shot was taken at such an angle that the camera would not also be seen in the mirror.

Evaluation
These images have aided us in the decision on the image for our poster. We liked the anonymity used in the images to show how the protagonist represents young girls everywhere, and so we have decided that we will manipulate it so that the majority of the posters used do not depict a face. Also, the posters may be in black and white to reflect the mood/tone of the film. However, upon reflection, we believe these images may not be entirely suitable for the location of our final scene, as it will be filmed in an 'eating disorder clinic', and so our posters should aim to be bright and positive and to suggest recovery. However, I will use these photos as inspiration for the poster I make, though I will manipulate it to be positive.