What have you learned from your audience feedback?

I learnt a reasonable amount from the audience feedback I received from friends, family and classmates. It was a mix of constructive criticism and positive feedback. Sadly I didn't receive as much feedback as I would have liked, but for the purpose of evaluation, I will pick the most useful to me for the purpose of learning.

In terms of my Ancillary pieces, on-going advice was given during the editing and finalization of both my products. An expert in Adobe software was brought in to help us achieve what we wanted, he gave some good advice to what should be included on my film review and advised me to look at other examples such as "Empire"  "Rotten Tomatoes" and many other. He also advised me to look at many exemplar film posters with just one centered object acting as a teaser. For this I know I needed a strong picture, I used the the chair and made it black and white. He refereed to my poster as being "Effective with a powerful centered picture" And he liked the way I used the writing on the joints of the chair. In terms of my Film Review, after being advised to look at exemplars, I integrated the rating system and the use of a picture from the film. I did however just have a bulk of text, and with my audience feedback I was advised to split up my text in a professional, effective manner, and that is how I came up with the idea to use straight black lines to split up my text.

However there was still a lot of improvements that could have been made to both my ancillary tasks. If I had time I would have used my audience feedback to improve, but this being my first attempt to make both a poster and film review, mistakes were inevitable. Advise such as "Crediting main stars in the film poster" or " Lack of information about the film" to me, was very important in the learning curve of developing an effective poster. But some positive feedback such as "Very strong picture" and "I like the way the text is integrated to the chair" made me feel like something I was doing was successful. In terms of my Film Review, I had many comments saying it was rather bland, in fact I did think it was a problem, but I wanted a professional look and I couldn't find any color combination that suited what I wanted. So admittedly that is an area of improvement, and I have learnt to spend more time sorting, and selecting an appropriate color scheme for my work. I also got some comments about the lack of information about the movie itself "Where is the casting list, duration etc" I deliberately didn't include this, I felt it was too feature film like. I wanted to create a new styled film review for short films, not just conform the the conventions of feature film reviews. I did get some positive feedback such as "Looks very professional" and "Well split up but columns wouldn't go a miss". Once again I felt the need to steer away from columns as every single review I looked at had them. If I am trying to create something new that was defiantly the place to start.

In terms of my short film, I did not actually get any feedback on my rough cut from my classmates, I received feedback from friends, family and teachers but not from my class mates. And once again the quantity of feedback was limited but it did suffice. During my rough cut most of my family made some positive comments that helped me during the editing of my final piece. Such as "The opening is a bit shaky but I like the way it starts from the sky" And yes the opening was shaky at points, even though a tripod was used, it seemed to jolt every time I filmed it, so after five separate attempts I decided that I will have to pick the best one. This is also an area of improvement and something I have learned a lot from. Other comments such as "Suitcase scene drags out a little". Now as I had problems with the file type, I could not import my rough cut, but compared to the final cut, the scene were he walks into his room and puts the suitcase down was considerably longer in the rough cut. This helped quite a lot as it enabled me to cut a lot of unnecessary footage out of my work, also allowing the film to flow a lot smoother. I had other comments complimenting my work, " I really like the authenticity of the hanging scene" and "The children noise ending at a high was very effective" Making me feel like something was going right during the editing process. The project overall was a bit short, the limit was 5 minutes and I only just reached 3. In terms of that I have learnt to film a lot more shots, maybe more cutaway shots to split up the piece. Either way I have got to get more footage to reach a higher standard. To make me feel better I will revert to what my family said "quality over quantity" even if that is questionable.

Overall my audience feedback made me aware of many problems in both my editing and filming of my projects. And the planning should be a lot more in depth, I did plan but not to an A2 standard as I soon found out when the project became overwhelming. But with the help of my peers and teachers, I edited and created some (what I consider) strong pieces of work. And as life is just one big learning curve, I hope to remember and put what I have learnt in to practice next time around.

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

Well to start off with my media product was "Breaking Point", the movie title first of all screams out blockbuster action movie, and I used this deliberately, to challenge this idea of short snappy titles being present in mainstream action films. This is my first and quite subtle challenge to the forms of titling in the mainstream movie world. It is also a short film, and that in itself is challenging the forms of feature films, one could even argue that every short film develops or challenges loosely built conventions on which short films are made around. I could argue that my A2 work challenges forms of media products. This is because I drift away from force feeding the audience the information; I use images with the combination of narration to reinforce my idea. But never will it be meaningless, a lot of short films and feature films are there just to entertain, I wanted to challenge this need to just entertain or take them into this surreal reality where no one can touch them and all their problems go away. It is relatively common that people use movies to create this false sense of reality, as escapism to get away from their busy and "stressful" lives. I however did not want to conform to this ideology. Instead I wanted the audience to be made aware of real life problems that occur in our everyday lives that get very little notice, from both the film industry, and many other media distributions. This in itself leads me to believe that I did in fact challenge forms and conventions of real media products, as I steered away from the mainstream conventions and created my own that involved real problems being addressed in the art form of a short film. However I did conform to such conventions of the "Drama" genre in my short. With the slow build up accompanied with slow music leading to a big scene or sense of Drama that makes the film what it is. This is a segment of normal conventions used in the Drama genre. Used well, it can intrigue the audience and create tension as the narrative builds up to that key scene. I tried to use some common conventions, such as the slow music and the build-up to create tension for my key scene (hanging scene). However instead of using dialog with two or more characters to build this sense of tension and Drama, I used the combination of images and narration, this I feel is an example of me challenging the normal conventions of the Drama genre, as that specific form of combination is rarely seen in the genre. I did also conform to conventions of real life products, for example, movies such as The Shawshank Redemption, Big Fish and many others, narration is used as a key story telling device. So in this particular aspect I did use already existing conventions of real media products to tell my story. But overall, I believe, a mixture of challenging, developing and using the conventions of real products to create my project “Breaking Point” was done successfully. 

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary task?

In terms of the effectiveness of the combination of my main product and ancillary task, I would regard the combination as being effective. I used the poster (ancillary task) as a teaser for the main product, it was a picture of the key scene to give an indication and hopefully intrigue the audience for my main product. I decided to conform to some already existing conventions of film poster designs (Insert picture), I used a simple but important picture as a sort of teaser and insight to really connect with my audience and create a sense of curiosity. I also conformed in the sense of having descriptive writing on the poster, in my case I put “Every man has one…” this was done to both increase curiosity to what the man’s breaking point is, and also to relate to the audience by saying “Every man”. Even simple combinations like using the main protagonist as a male lead and combining this is the poster by referring him to as a man is still an example of an effective combination (however simple it is).

I also used the poster to reinforce the feel of challenging the conventions of titling for movies. I asked many people what movie genre they thought "Breaking point" would be, nearly everyone said action. This made me feel that the poster reinforced my idea of challenging the normal conventions of titling a film, the common stereotype of short snappy action titles being turned on its head to challenge the conventions. I used my other ancillary task (Film review) to evaluate and provide positives for the movie for people to watch. This is often the case for many films; the critics they receive could make or break a movie, so it is very important to get an overall good review. Including both positive and negative feedback in my review, it made my overall project seem more professional and overall more effective. With the combination of my two ancillary tasks and my main project I believe the poster acting as a teaser, and the film review adding an element of professionalism. The combination of my two ancillary tasks in relation to my main product, I consider the overall outcome to be effective in both empathising key themes and providing that feel of professionalism throughout my work. 

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

Draft for answering this question.
Well to start off with my media product was "Breaking Point", the movie title first of all screams out blockbuster action movie, and I used this deliberately, to challenge this idea of short snappy titles being mainstream action films. This is my first and quite subtle challenge to the forms of titling in the mainstream movie world. It is also a short film, and that in itself is challenging the forms of feature films, one could even argue that every short film develops or challenges loosely built conforms on which short films are made around. I could argue that both my As and A2 were challenging forms of media products. This is because I drift away from force feeding the audience the information, I use images with the combination of narration to reinforce my idea. But never will it be meaningless, a lot of short films and feature films are there just to entertain, I wanted to challenge this need to just entertain or take them into this surreal reality where no one can touch them and all their problems go away. It is relatively common that people use movies to create this false sense of reality as an escapism to their busy and "stressful" lives. I however did not want to conform to this ideology. Instead I wanted the audience to be made aware of real life problems that occur in our every day lives that get very little notice from both the film industry and many other media distributions. This in itself leads me to believe that I did in fact challenge forms and conventions of real media products, as I steered away from the mainstream conventions and created my own that involved real problems being addressed in the art form of a short film. However I did conform to such conventions of the "Drama" genre in my short. With the slow build up accompanied with slow music leading to a big scene or sense of Drama that makes the film what it is. This is a segment of normal conventions used in the Drama genre. Used well, it can intrigue the audience and create tension as the narrative builds up to that key scene. I tried to use some common conventions, such as the slow music and the build up to create tension for my key scene (hanging scene). However instead of using dialog with two or more characters to build this sense of tension and Drama, I used the combination of images and narration, this I feel is an example of me challenging the normal conventions of the Drama genre, as that specific form of combination is rarely seen in the genre.

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

In terms of media technologies used during my construction, research, planning and evaluation stages it is important to note one of the most important technologies first of all. This being the internet, more specifically Blogger. Blogger allowed me to create posts, save and store in a quick, easy and professional manner. Without blogger the research would never have been so easily accessible to resources such as textual examples, pictures, exemplars and many more aids and tools to combat my research and planning. In particular blogger helped my research in all different kinds of ways, it allowed me to find pictures and examples for the ancillary tasks, it allowed me to refresh and even learn some new camera techniques including a wide variety of shots. This new knowledge of shots then allowed me research and planning to be a lot more thorough with specific details for my shot to shot list. Another positive of Blogger, it allows peer varied feedback which allows constructive criticism to be absorbed and utilized for the benefit of my work. Other such technologies such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube also enable a very diverse peer feedback system also enhancing my work. 

You Tube became a very special media technology in the research and the planning. It enabled me to research into so many examples of short films, people discussing what they believe makes a good short film and so much more. I must have spent countless hours just watching short after short looking at how it differs as kind of its own genre. Not only did it help in that sense, but it also came very handy when in the construction of my piece. You Tube tutorials on how to use After Effects, Premiere Pro and Photoshop. This helped to boost my knowledge of these (never encountered before) tools. 

The Cannon HD camcorder was required once again for my short film. Admittedly it is not a top of the range camera like the big production company's use, but it does get the job done, and done very well may I say. The quality was once again sublime, no real problems with the usage and it imported straight from its SD file into the computer ready to edit on Premiere Pro. I did however have initial problems with the format of the files, it didn't seem to get accepted on some software so some conversion was necessary for it to work properly. This once again took the guidance of You Tube. 

Evaluation Questions

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary task? 
3. What have you learned from your audience feedback? 
4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Finished Work