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?

Gemma Thomas- Evaluation

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

A- The Main Task
i) Short films that you have watched

The most obvious characteristic used in short films is that the length of the film is short, this means that the director must tell the story quickly so that there is a beginning middle and an end to the film otherwise it is more of just an opening rather than the entire film, also the director would not be able to use mystery and enigma in the film like you would in a full length film to build a sense of unknown due to the fact that there is not enough time. By the length being so limited in time it is common that few locations will be used throughout the film so that it is easy for the audience to stay interested in.  this is the same for the use of characters as in a short film if you had lots of characters making an appearance they would lose track of who was who as they wouldn’t have seen each character for a substantial amount of time to know them and also to like or dislike a character. In most films the audience will make an opinion on whether they like a character whereas if there are too many they wouldn’t be able to know the characters.

Another characteristic used is stereotypes, it’s easier with limited time to use stereotypes to allow the audience to understand who is who in the film, for example in the film ‘A Favour’ the director has used a Muslim man who is thought to be a terrorist but in actual fact a middle class white man was the one who implemented the terrorist attack. This plot twist challenges conventions of media as the white man is truly the antagonist and goes against stereotypical conventions of religion. In ‘Silent Things’ we see a man who is socially awkward and timid within himself, this supports stereotypical views of people with a disability and follows the conventions used in media products.

Actors used in short films are not often well known stars as I have found that most short film directors make their short films on low budgets so don’t have the funds to have large Hollywood stars in the film. The directors also tend to be new so are using their short films as a gateway into the larger film world.

ii) Your own short film

In my own short film I have used typical conventions. Firstly we used a small amount of locations for our piece which allowed our audience to understand and follow the story with ease.

We also followed a linear narrative structure which allowed us to start at the beginning of the story and progress to the middle and finishing at the end. This is the most common form of narrative structure although circular can be also be used.  Todorovs Theory 1977 is a simple classic form of narrative.

We only used 2 characters in our short film which again allowed the audience to follow the story simply and also build a small connection with the characters as they see the characters for a longer period of time than if we had used 6 characters, this may have become confusing and hard to follow.

In most short films there is a hybrid of genres. In our short film we do not have  a hybrid present as we have only used one genre of film which is comedy. This challenges typical conventions due to short films having at least 2 genres.

 B-Film Poster

i) Film Poster that you have analysed 

When looking at short film posters I noticed conventions which were on each poster in a similar way

• Text  justification on the left/right or bottom/top
•  Names of actors/ directors
• References to other films
• Website
• Age certification
• Credit Block – Legal Requirement
• Title size is larger than all other text
• Rating System
• Source of comment
• Main image- usually of characters
•  Release date often advertised.

Looking at the films I researched they all follow the majority of the conventions of a short film poster although they don’t follow them all.

 ii) Your own film Poster

When designing my own film poster we tried to incorporate every convention onto the poster so that it followed traditional aspects. The nature of our film made creating our short film poster difficult as it was overly colourful and due to the target audience looks childish in the finished product. Although this would normally be a negative for our piece it works well and creates a sense of naivety. We didn’t put an age certification on our short film poster although followed the other conventions which are expected.  

C- LWL Review

Little white lies is a high end magazine based on films and aimed at film junkies.  Little white lies includes film reviews of the latest film releases, interviews and adverts for similar styled films being released. For our task set we had to make a film review for our short film following the conventions of little white lies in both its layout and its language.

Firstly looking at the language of LWL I noticed that

•  The language is very in depth
•  It uses media language terms which the general public would not understand ( so focuses on a selective audience)
• Uses roughly 450 words in the review containing lots of adjectives and verbs
• Doesn’t give away much about the film which is good in case someone reads the reviews before watching the film.  

We then looked at the conventions of the layout of little white lies we then copied the style to make our own _ Click Here to see Conventions of LWL Layout

This is our final film review which follows the conventions of a Little White Lies film review. 

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

3. What have your learned from your audience feedback?

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

http://prezi.com/sw_u_rlquvtv/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

Final Short Film Poster

After some small changes to the poster that we created using features from all of our drafts, here is our final Short Film Poster.

Our Short Film Poster

OUR FINAL LITTLE WHITE LIES REVIEW

What are the Conventions of Little White Lies

Each page follows the same convention for each review this includes:

• One review on each page
• There are 3 columns for the review with approximately 450 words
• The last column finishes half way down the page with a rating system at the end the paragraph
• Between 5-7 Paragraphs
• The measurements, fonts, sizes and titles are all the same on each review
• An Image at the top of the page
• The title, and the credits are centred
• The page number is also centred and has three digits, i.e 058
• The main text is justified to the left and right
• The rating system is justified to the left
• The first letter of the review is a drop capital approximately 3 lines down
• The word ‘REVIEW’ is on 90◦ degree angle

When creating my review I will look at the conventions and make sure each is included to match the review style from little white lies as these conventions are repeated for each review.

Testing InDesign for LWL Review

I used InDesign to create a test document that would matches the same style, measurements and fonts of the Reviews in Little White Lies.

I just used a random picture from a random film to fill in the blanks and inserted test text to test the sizes and fonts.

We will use exactly the same style for our own film review as it matches the style conventions used in LWL, this is so that it fits with the rest of the magazine as if our review could actually be published.

I just haven't yet put in the lines inbetween the ratings; but these will be exactly central between each one, nor have I included 'REVIEWS' at the side of the page stating what section this page is from.

Here is the outcome of my test:

 

I think this looks very similar, if not exact to what the reviews look like that come directly from LWL.

Here's what a review from LWL looks like, that has been done by the magazine itself: