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EVALUATION: What have you learned from your audience feedback?
We filmed our classmate Jakiya to hear her thoughts on 'A Day in the Life' - she was asked what she enjoyed and what she would have changed. Her honest opinion has helped us to understand the audiences perception of our short film.
EVALUATION: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
BLOG
I believe I used my blog on Tumblr effectively to document the planning, research and progress of my A2 Media Coursework over the course of the year.
Hyperlinks
My use of hyperlinks within posts has made it simple to investigate the source of a text, and gives the text more credibility. Some hyperlinks I have used include the link to my coursework partner's Blogspot consistently; links through to magazine websites if mentioned, as well as the IMDB's of films I wrote about. See below:
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I think the design of the blog is attractive and simple to read - I chose a black and white masthead background photograph of Liverpool Street station during the 1930's to tie in with the ongoing theme and so the red, white and blue imagery in the posts would stand out even more. An 'Archive' link lets you jump to months quickly to avoid scrolling backwards in time (see second image).
Image
I believe my use of graphics and imagery has been consistent on the blog. It supports the text and makes the blog more interesting and attractive to read. Whether it be to help demonstrate an opinion or to document influences and ideas, the use of image has been significant to the blog.
A look at some images used to demonstrate our interest in the Realism genre.
My blog icon - it is consistent with the London theme of the production.
It also was useful in demonstrating myself and Georgia's work progress, to give an insight into production and design.
Tagging
The ability to tag posts with relevant keywords made it easy to search for different post topics and label them with simple information. Tagging is something that in present day social media is the norm, and makes the search process within websites more efficient.
Tumblr's dashboard is helpful in that it gives you the opportunity to easily post anything from links, to video to images. The only limitation I found with Tumblr was that I couldn't include videos within text posts like I was able to include images.
CAMERA
Construction: Filming
We used a Sony Handycam to capture our short film. This meant it was small, light and efficient and meant that because we were travelling around London and had a lot of moving around it was easy to work with, but after beginning to edit the footage we realised just how much we had compromised on video and audio quality. We encountered a lot of background noise from traffic that the lower quality microphone in this camera had trouble with. Although the video quality isn't terrible, it is quite average. In my next production I would want to upgrade on the camera quality.
The Tripod we used helped us keep a steadier picture in longer or more awkward shots such as 'Nan writing out the birthday card'.
We didn't use the tripod excessively as a feature of the realism genre is a 'handheld camera' feel to the filming. This is seen in 'Love, Honour and Obey', a film we were very much influenced by, and seen clearly in this particular scene.
SOFTWARE
Adobe Photoshop CS6
We used Adobe Photoshop to design and create the promotional poster for 'A Day in the Life'. Photoshop was great because we knew we could create almost anything we wanted. Due to the fact that we wanted a minimal design, we did not use a lot of 'effects', and instead concentrated on alignment, layout and fonts. We used around 30 layers in the design and used standard tools like 'crop' and 'eyedropper' to erase the real station names.
Adobe InDesign CS6
We used Adobe InDesign to create our magazine article, which was great as the program is simple to use and gives you at lot of freedom to be creative with your design. The 'place' tool was used to arrange our header and columns, and the text tool for our text boxes. The preview option was helpful in giving us an idea of the finished product. The review was first written out on Microsoft Word and copied onto the article at a later date for clarity. Difficulties with the design included text placement and sizing, but we achieved the design we wanted in the end.
Final Cut Pro 7
To edit our film 'A Day in the Life' we used Final Cut Pro 7 on an iMac. Tools we used included 'pen' to manipulate the sound levels, 'razor' to cut our clips to their desired length and 'text' to create our titles and credits. With effects we used video filters called 'fish-eye', 'radial blur' and 'refraction' for the drug montage. I enjoyed using Final Cut Pro as is allowed us to edit our short film in considerable detail, and we could use really effective filters and colour manipulations that wouldn't have been possible without this specific program. The only limitation I found to have with FCP7 was the need to render every minute or so, but this couldn't be helped.
EVALUATION: What have you learned from your audience feedback?
The first feedback we had was sent to us via Facebook after viewing the film on YouTube. I like that it was a critical response to the film so we have a real idea of the audience member's thoughts and opinions. No specific questions were asked here, so she had more freedom to say whatever came into her head at the time. Facebook was a simple, modern and effective way of retrieving audience feedback.
EVALUATION: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
MAGAZINE ARTICLE:
Our magazine article was created on InDesign CS6 and gives information about our short film 'A Day in The Life' as well as a review and overall verdict with a star rating.
We continued our colour theme of red, white and blue for continuity purposes and featured an image of the Trafalgar Square station sign to help marry it together.
We researched not only the design and graphic side of film review magazine but the literature and writing style used in them too. Sight and Sound and Empire were our main sources of inspiration and the review pages influenced our layout and writing style considerably.
We named our magazine 'IN SHORT' to give the impression it is a specialised short film magazine, but the play on words with 'in short' suggests to the reader that they will be able to get the knowledge in concise and easy bites.
Features used in our magazine article include a pull quote - we decided that the quote itself should be a rhetorical question from the review as it intrigues the reader even more; the word "tenner" is slang and therefore keeps the reading experience casual and fun.
The verdict is something that, like a pull quote, showed up time and time again in the film reviews. If a reader is short on time and wants a concise overview and recommendation of the film, they can glance at the verdict and star rating. Our film has been given four stars as it is "simple yet effective".
The logo for our magazine 'IN SHORT' was influenced by Empire's 'In Film' logo. It's in the red white and blue colour theme and is simple with an arrow, and placed in the top left corner of the page.
A black double border keeps the design looking clean and easy to read, as does the standard column layout. Little details such as the month issue and page number means that our magazine article has used many forms and conventions of a real media product.
The film review itself discusses everything from the narrative, to the characters to the setting so the reader gets a well rounded idea of what to expect from 'A Day in the Life'.
EVALUATION: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
FILM:
Our short film production 'A Day in the Life' both used, developed and challenged the forms and conventions of a real media product. In regards to genre, we found that British Realism was abundant in short film and I believe this is down to factors such as; the budget doesn't need to be huge, and there are endless possibilities for narrative. We were influenced by feature films like 'Nil by Mouth' and 'Trainspotting', and shorts such as 'This is Vanity' and 'Winter'. They all showed very real lifestyles and the contrasts you come across within one area - 'rich and poor', 'young and old' etc.
Young/Old in our short film
Our narrative was one neither myself or Georgia had come across in short film, so agreed it would be a new and original feeling short film.
'A Day in the Life' is 5:42 minutes long and composed of around 55 clips. We used a mixture of longer shots and cutaways throughout - we have short clips of our London buildings and landscape to establish location at the start of the film. We could have used a million of these shots as there are so many interesting and relevant sights in London, however we felt that St. Pauls, the Tower of London and the shallow focus on the traffic gave a real idea of London in a nutshell with it's historic architecture and transport, we thought these were an visually appealing set of shots to intrigue the audience.
We used traditional cross dissolves to begin, end and break up scenes. The conventions of transitions in this genre were generally simple cross dissolves and fade out to blacks, to not take away from the narrative.
This point is consistent to the effects and graphics in our short film and also in the realism genre. Our title is black with white Arial font - as basic as we could keep it (see below). I think that often in film, less is more. The same goes for our credits, with medium paced scrolling text and a mention of the small group of people involved in the making of 'A Day in the Life' - further using the conventions and forms of a real media product in that short film productions have a small production team and cast due to budget, resources and length of film to work with.
An important part of 'A Day in the Life' is the 'drug scene' - it sees a teenage girl using her birthday money to snort cocaine (implied) and after her fragmented and distorted mind is adapted by the audience and we see London through her eyes.
The main three effects we used on the video were in this particular scene and were:
Fisheye filter
Radial blur
Refraction blur
Colour in the short film was not edited excessively due to the same reasons the titles, credits and transitions were kept simple. The main reason colour was tampered with during any clip was to quite simply enhance the red, white and blue in the shot. As documented in both our planning and research and evaluation on the blog, colour theme is crucial in delivering a well thought out, consistent trio of media products. It was the basis of the film's cinematography and this was reflected onto the promotional poster and the magazine review article.
With some difficulty, we made sure that there was something red in at least 80% of the shots. Colour continuity is a concept used time and time again in film; it not only creates a more aesthetically pleasing film, but solidifies the connotations of patriotism, danger and identity. I was inspired majorly by Wes Anderson and the strict colour themes in his films that create such interesting and attractive cinematography.
With the soundtrack in our short film, we used three different tracks throughout that both suited and enhanced the clip in was used for. After listening to countless songs on freemusicarchive.com and freestockmusic.com, the tracks we thought were perfect were;
Young Romantic - Rose Tint
Berlin After Hours
Lasers - Amsterdam
We used those websites instead of film-specific soundtrack websites as the films we took influence from all had popular music soundtracks as a significant feature - a mixture of genres but all sounds that would transfer easily out of the film world and onto your iPod. An obvious example of this is Trainspotting starting with Iggy Pop's 'Lust For Life', and ending with Underworld's 'Born Slippy' - an upbeat pop/rock sound at the start to excite the audience and a pulsing, darker electronic track at the end to reflect the more serious subject matter, in our film's instance the use of drugs and their effect - resonated in 'Berlin After Hours', a track that could be played in a club and fits that culture. For the above reasons, I feel like we have used the forms and conventions of sound in real media products.
In regards to distribution 'A Day in the Life' was intended to be shown in independent cinemas known for showing shorts (BFI South Bank, Barbican Theatre, Clapham Picturehouse); film festivals based in London and at a push all of the UK (we decided that because the film-making industry is concentrated into London so much, that we would have a significant enough audience here, where the target audience live); as well as onto media sharing platforms like Vimeo, Short of the Week and YouTube which is just a standard expectation for short films in the present day as this is where they get the most recognition and opportunity to travel through the web.
I think we were successful in keeping to the original idea and concept that we started out with for the film. Our wishes would be that the editing process could have been smoother with less unexpected problems, and that the video and audio were of a higher quality. I think we used the forms of conventions of a real media product in our soundtrack, range of shot types, standard transitions and the title at the start and scrolling credits at the end. I think we challenged the forms and conventions of a real media product in that we did not have a regular narrative with a beginning, middle and end. The start of the ten pound note's journey (dispensed out of the ATM) is a conventional start, but the rest of the film sees no set narrative, it just moves from place to place, character to character with no solid outcome or consequence.
FINAL VERSION: SHORT FILM "A DAY IN THE LIFE"
This is the final version of our short film that was edited on Final Cut Pro 7. It has been uploaded to YouTube for viewing and sharing.
FINAL VERSION: MAGAZINE ARTICLE
This is our final version of the magazine article giving a review of our short film 'A Day in the Life'. It was designed on InDesign CS6.
FINAL VERSION: POSTER
This is the final version of the poster for our short film. It was made on Adobe Photoshop CS6.
An interesting and detailed look at the history of short cinema.
A cinema in North London specialising in showing short film.
EVALUATION: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
I feel like Georgia and myself have an effective combination of media products; our short film as the main product with our film poster and magazine article as supporting texts.
Colour theme
Colour has played a major part in creating a group of media products that all correspond with each other - we knew from early planning stages in the production that we wanted British iconography to drive the designs; this meant an obvious red, white and blue colour theme throughout.
In terms of imagery, there is a definite correlation between the London Underground font and London Underground Tube Map graphics on the film's poster and the photograph of the station sign in the magazine article. Audiences would be able to make this connection, as Londoners, and/or Brits.
Target Audience of our Media Products
In terms of target audience for our three media products, I believe they are all similar - the intended target audience for our media product was this: Londoner; aged 16-30; with an interest in film and film making therefore would happily watch a short film; more male than female (as wealth and success particularly in the city is something associated with men)
The certificate for our film is a '15', due to some hard drug use.
In turn our magazine article is intended to come from a magazine similar to TotalFilm, and after researching it's target audience found the following information from OCR web page:
As you can see, it fits considerably with our intended target audience for the short film. As I previously touched on, any Londoner would be familiar with the London Underground font used on maps, stations, bus stops and advertising - a business man would see it on a daily basis on their commute to work, or a teenager would see it walking around London past stations and on Buses. TFL uses adverts targeted to every kind of Londoner, seen below:
Through our clear idea of theme I believe we have created a unified promotional campaign with our three media products that can be easily recognised as related to the 'A Day in the Life' production.
Warning: Residents include werewolves, Droogs and Satan..
A look at London based films and why they were so popular.
EVALUATION: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
POSTER:
Myself and Georgia developed the conventions of our poster design by first analysing the differences between the layout of a standard film poster and short film poster, also what we could do to make ours original and not just a copy of an existing poster.
Short film posters often use graphic-based images as opposed to photographed images in feature film posters. They do not push the names of the cast on the poster, in contrast to feature film posters. Feature film posters also often include real images that imply the film was made on a large budget (an explosion, a stunt, special effects etc). Short films have much more modest budgets in comparison therefore won't include this type of imagery on their posters as it is rarely in the narrative. As we researched more of both short and feature posters the contrasts became more and more distinct and we knew what conventions would look at home and those that would look false and out of place.
V.S
The poster was designed first by sketch and looking at physical prints of London Underground Tube maps. We knew that we wanted a minimal design, with the focus of the poster being the colourful, interweaving tube lines - a universally recognised tube map; we cropped the middle of the map in order to include the most popular and iconic stations including Bond Street, Oxford Circus, Covent Garden, Leicester Square and Victoria.
Originally we wanted a larger range of stations spanning further East and West, but thought the more concise cropped area of the map looked simpler and more attractive on the minimal poster design. The first, basic idea for the poster design was to play with the connection between specific areas in London and the wealth that it is stereotypically associated with. For example, Bond Street is known as an affluent area therefore there are three pound signs at Bond Street Station on the map. It would have been a more well-rounded design concept if we could have had stations like Whitechapel and Stratford to have our "one pound sign" stations.
As two girls that have grown up in Canning Town and Greater London, we wanted to address the stereotypes about the 'poor East' and the 'rich West'. We thought the most easily translatable way of doing this was by using a tube map to demonstrate it. Further, that London is a city driven by wealth and financial status - the diverse population use their wealth in a million different ways and we believe that your environment and surrounding culture as a Londoner impacts these decisions significantly.
An article on yougov.co.uk included a graphic that we found to share this particular idea, and most importantly, it is a graphic made up of actual Londoner's opinions about their own neighborhoods and each others.
The Sun recently ran an article talking about poverty in London, and Bethnal Green, Bow and Tower Hamlets were found to be worst affected - all in the East.
Tower Hamlets block of flats, the poorest area in London
The richest street in London, Kensington Park Gardens in South West London
We chose the most current Tube Map design (2014) as we wanted to reflect the current opinions and stereotypes held by Londoners. We looked through old editions of Tube Maps from websites like this and thought they looked really interesting but for the reason previously stated we stuck to the newest map. The older ones would have been more difficult to manipulate and work with on Photoshop also, as the images are intricate and hand drawn.
Our poster took a look of influence from minimal reworks of existing posters, as they used simple graphics as a clue or key to the narrative of the film it was for. We looked at a lot on sites like this and this. You can clearly see influence from posters such as Ben Affleck's 'Argo' with it's maze/map like concept:
We used star ratings from The Guardian and Empire - both relevant possible critics. We didn't want to put any of the actors names outside the billing block as we noticed that it wasn't something that recurred on short film posters as the actors are normally up-and-coming and made through the creative concept of film rather than a Star profile of mainstream, feature length cinema.
We've included a release date which notes the film is in 'selected' cinemas, again, because through planning and research noticed that the distribution of short film was much more particular and low-key than feature length film. Our film is intended to be shown in independent cinemas and smaller chain cinemas, specifically London or city based cinemas due to the narrative theme of the short film.
Through using Adobe Photoshop CS6 for our poster design we achieved a professional poster design and were able to materialise all of the ideas and concepts we had planned for it. Some conventions within the poster were influenced by more mainstream and familiar poster design; star rating, as well as a lower mid central title, and billing block right the the bottom - seen on the poster for 'Starred Up'
Above: star ratings on our film poster
Below: star ratings on 'Starred Up' poster
Overall I am extremely satisfied with the outcome and design of our short film poster. I think it's aesthetically pleasing with simple black font, white background and iconic imagery, but still with meaning and concept behind it. I believe we achieved the minimal yet intriguing design we set out to create.
Georgia is currently working on the magazine article/review for our short film. We're following through with a red, white and blue colour theme, and a simple page layout with an image of the subway in Trafalgar Square at the top half of the page and four columns with text underneath. We've taken inspiration from entertainment magazines like Empire and TotalFilm. We've used InDesign CS6 to produce the magazine article.
London Tube font by James Patterson created in 1997 based on Edward Johnson's London Underground type designed for London Transport in 1915.
This font has been used on our film's poster to continue the London iconography theme; it is easily recognisable to any Londoner and a simple font which creates a good balance with the busy, colourful map image above it on the poster layout.
More alterations to the film poster; layout, size of billing block and text changes.
The most current design of our short film poster.