Olivia Farren Evaluation

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

a) The Main Task - Short Film 

i) During the research of other short films, I noticed a number of conventions that are commonly used in short films. However, with short films you can't list every convention that is used consistently in every short film because they have become a creative platform for new and up and coming directors/producers to show case what they can do, and so short films are constantly unconventional and showing inventive and innovative ideas that are always changing common features. 

An obviously noticeable feature of short films is the length; the reason they're 'short' films is because they are quite obviously shorter than the length of a motion picture film. This means that the director has to fit the beginning middle and end of the plot into the film in the short time it has; although this means that the plot moves on quickly in the film, it also has meant that directors and producers have showed their story in different and innovative ways such as the plot not starting at the beginning of the story therefore leaving the audience to guess what has happened, or the narrative is non-linear to show certain features of the story and many more other way of presenting the plot has been used in a number of short films. 

When researching into other short films, I analysed four different short films; all different due to their genre; a romantic-comedy, action, a mickey-take documentary and a thriller; I decided that looking at short films with different genres would mean that I could notice the conventions of each short film genre, notice the conventions used overall in these short films as well as realising what I did or didn't want to use in my own short film.

(virgin shorts, vimeo, youtube, future shorts logos)

After creating the opening to a thriller film in my foundation portfolio, I understood the typical convention of the thriller genre; dark/dim lighting, pathetic fallacy, action and enigma codes that make the audience think that something bad is going to happen for example a knife, the soundtrack is often slow and represents a creepiness; even though these were the features of a thriller film, looking at 'Exposure', I noticed these features as well as some others that seemed to be included in this thriller. As it's a short film, there's less time for the director to show a complete story but also build tension and ensure the audience recognise the film as being a thriller; and so the complete lack of dialogue in 'Exposure' meant that it acted as an enigma code that made the audience think and wander about what was going to happen, it also means that the audience focuses on other features of the film to figure out what's going to happen. I do like the idea of no dialogue at all in the film, however, it doesn't work for all genres and so harder to use to create a social realism or comedy film.
This same technique of no dialogue did however work again in the rom-com 'Post-It Love'; it seems this is a fairly popular technique with short films if I have seen it be used twice with two random short films that I found; this could be a sound convention used in short films due to the narrative having to fit in the short amount of time the directors have to complete the story in; and so without dialogue they use other areas to present the story they need to. 
When it comes to sound; the non-deigetic soundtrack is an important part any film; motion length or short; it conveys a mood and aids with representations. 

When in came to aspects of mise en scene in other short films that I watched, I learned to know that each convention used depended on the genre of the film; even in short films where they're usually much more creative and innovative.
With the lighting of shots in short films that I watched, I actually didn't notice anything out of the ordinary that i wouldn't find in any other motion length film; but I did notice lighting decisions that matched the genres;

'Post-It Love', a romantic-comedy hybrid - very bright and colourful lighting; reflecting the colours of Post-It notes and happiness.

'Exposure', a thriller - very dark, dull, dim lighting; a common enigma code used in thrillers 

'Sundays', documentary-comedy hybrid - natural lighting is used to present the social realism genre

ii) Own short film 

We developed on this new convention through joining in on this narrative innovation but using restricted narration at the end of our short film and hiding what news the characters got and cutting before the audience can find out what happened, leaving suspense but also leaving a sort of resolution to the end of the film where they seemed to get their happy ending.

 However, this also challenges forms by not having a complete end but all short films are now challenging conventions and so I feel like we used, developed and challenged on the convention of short films that is to be creative and innovative; all together, not just with the narrative.

b) Ancillary Task One - Film Poster

c) Ancillary Task Two - LWL Review

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and your ancillary tasks?

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

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