Evaulation

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 texts?



3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

To get a final better focused opinion on my film I asked some people from my target audience to give their opinion on the film, I focused on teenage girls as they were more prone to romance and open to the homosexual elements of the film and I asked them do it online so that I could get opinions from a range of people on an international level including:
Katy, 15, England
Florencia, 16, Argentina
Jordyn, 17, US
Claudia, 19, Spain
Nicole, 14, US
Frances, 16, US

What are your instant thoughts having watched the film?

The response was pretty much the same here ranging from Katy’s ‘really sweet, cute’ to Florencia’s stronger response ‘love can be possible, no matter if you’re a boy or girl’ I was really flattered she felt she connected so strongly with the issue and that made me feel that alone made me feel I must have done something right. And incredibly Frances said ‘I really really loved the film actually I showed it to some of my friends’

Are you satisfied with the ending?

Again the general response was yes. Jordyn and Nicole both said they saw it coming although they sort of like that, both felt it was ‘heart-warming’. Claudia said she was delighted because ‘to [her] it was unexpected’ although afterwards she felt she should have expected it.

Throughout the production people have said they could see the ending coming, it is one of the films weaknesses as it’s supposed to be a twist really. I think by cutting out the middle scene that helped put a bit more pace in it making it harder to predict but it was never going to be perfect. I also cut off the lenghy slightly anti-climatic scene on the end in which Joe and Michael work out their relationship and almost everyone was happier with this. People liked the idea of them staying together or being able to invent their own version of what happened next. Although Jordan said she would have liked more of a definite conclusion.

What genre would say it fits into?

Everyone instantly responded ‘romance’ whilst two added that it could have also been drama. I was surprised that they were able to be so definite as I’d steered away from any obviousn genre conventions but I was also pleased they saw the film as a love story and a connection between Joe and Michael.

How do you think it could have been improved?

A mixed response here. Katy noticed a couple of shakey camera shots but she said these were barely noticeable, I’m personally happy with the camerawork. Florencia and Nicole said the sound was difficult to understand in places and this has been a worry throughout my production. I’ve responded to past feedback by tweaking the sound levels but the low guitar notes still resonate uncomfortably in places and this seems to be unfixable. If I was doing it again I’d experiment with the distance of the microphone from the guitar.

What are your feelings towards the characters?

The characters for me are the most important part of the film. A couple of people, in particular Jordyn, felt the acting wasn’t up to standard and I was aware of this. Matt and Bobby were both unexpirienced and had to be pushed a lot when filming. Especially since Matt had difficulty learning lines.

Some of the feedback here however was fantastic. I learned that my target audience were mostly introvert and socially awkward and so related very well to Matt. Claudia ‘[felt] sorry for’ Joe and Frances was ‘able to identify with’ the characters ‘right off the bat’. From their apparent response to the ending it seems they grew to care for the charectors which was of course very flattering and I was quite honoured.

Do you feel this poster and film review are in keeping with the spirit of the film?

I initially forgot to link my test audience to the poster and review so many of them did not answer this one, however Nicole, Claudia and Frances all said they felt the poster had a very professional look and reflected the film well. Nicole in particular said she liked the original look of it. Although Frances said if she’d seen it in isolation she would have thought the boys would be fighting over a girl, I didn’t mind this, I preferred that the poster didn’t give everything away but the feel of the film and aroused curiosity.

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

Final Ancillery Tasks

1. A film poster:

2. A review in a magazine:

Analysis of a Film Review Page

For ancillary task 2 I will be putting together a page from a film magazine reviewing my film. After investigating I'm drawn to the double page spreads as they allow for a more interesting layout. Sight&Sound is the film magazine most likely to review a more independant film like mine so I've taken the example of 'Nowhere Boy' which I used as one of the inspirations for my poster in ancillery task one. I like the neat simple layout they've created:

Feedback on 'Final Draft'

The primary feedback I got was:

• The billing block should be at the top or around the edges


• Add a film tagline


• Add reviews from magazines

When the class went on and added their own feedback:

• Told the pictures needed to be of a better quality three times


• And the font of the billing block didn't look quite right

Now it was printed out I could see that the billing block did look wrogn so I will try it around the edges as suggested. I can't picture it working at the top. I will try a tagline although as a rule I think they're tacky but I'm sure I could come up with a couple of naff fish based puns. I may also see about adding bubbles or something to make it more visually interesting. I really don't want to have magazine reviews because they just seem to clutter the poster but again I will experiment.

Final Draft

In the end I've gone with something very like what I started with. Through my experimentation I've managed to address most of the things brought up in my original feedback but I was really happy with Joe and Michael being trapped amonst the black and white figures which were really neither here nor there to them. They were just people they shared absolutely nothing in common with and Michael is the only person who should be of relevance in Joe's life.

Further Experimentation

I wanted to get an idea for how my poster would look in context so one thing I did (partly for my own personal satisfaction) was mock up a DVD case and see how it looked then. From this I decided to take the feedback on the title seriously as I felt it looked a bit simplistic as it was with the dark blue all the way through. It just wasn't strong enough it looked thin and as if I was making do. Also seeing the billing block on the back cover decided for me that I wanted it on the blue background where it would stand out much better.


Next I tried stripping back the poster and getting the main title and so forth up to scratch. I tried a few fonts and ended up sticking with the original but bolder and in white with a navy blue outline. This seems to me a drastic improvment. I also tried putting the billing block (now in dark blue) under the title and felt it fitted in much better there although I had to get rid of the 'a film by Xanthe Z. Young' to keep it looking neat.

I still liked the other charectors in threshhold but I decided to experiment having them around the edge. The 'Eagle Vs. Shark' poster made use of positioning the charectors upsidedown to give the film a more quirky feel so I tried this with some of the charectors here. I think it worked well but I didn't like that Michael was no longer a major part of the poster as the film is really about his relationship with Joe.

Second Draft

Not much has really changed here. I've just made a few adjustments. I've added a billing block but I'm not completely satisfyied with it in that position at all. I may try it around the edge as suggested like on the 'Nowhere Boy' poster.

The other noticable difference is the addition of reviews. In my research I found for films like this is was common to have a couple of star ratings than an actual phrase and I wanted to keep it simple so I ran with that. I felt kind of uncomfortable about rating my own film so instead of using actual newspapers I invented a couple 'The Daily Hypothetical' and 'Invention' which I thought sounded like a trendy magazine.

First Draft Feedback

• Title needs to be bolder and stronger.
• Billing block needs adding (perhaps to top or round the edges)
• Crop whole image to size of A4
• Match colour tones of flesh on both images

Plan of action:

• Experiment with the title with different fonts and different colours. It's been suggested I use yellow as a near complimentary colour to blue and as this was used on both 'Nowhere Boy' and 'Eagle Vs. Shark' in my reseach but I think it gets over used and won't go with the soft watery look I want my poster to have. White with a border is another possibility.
• I will play around with the layout but at the moment I see the billing block in the bottom right hand corner.
• I'm unsure how to crop to A4, I will seek help from my more photoshop fluent friend James.
• Play about with brightness and contrast to get a better skin tone match.

First Draft

The basic first draft I put together.

Putting together the first draft

I used a combination of powerpoint and the second rate online photoshop 'sumopaint' to put together the first draft. I first off used sumopaint to cut out charectors from a whole bunch of screenshots. At the time I has something in mind with the charectors all gathered around with Joe caught in the middle perhaps with Michael just behind him as the film is really about his inability to socialise and be comfortable around anyone but Michael.

Once I'd cut everything out though and brought it into powerpoint with the background that idea didn't seem to be working. What was working was using a couple of Matt's more extreme expressions from the montage either side of him with his head in his hands. I liked this because it drew distinct attention to Joe as the protagonist and the obvious struggle he'd be expiriencing throughout the film:

After adding some place-holder text for the title and 'a film by Xanthe Z. Young' which seemed standard for most of these lesser known independant films (they very rarely advertise the actors) I was left with the remaining cut-out charactors to fill the gaping gap at the bottom of the page. I tried a couple of things but one thing I really liked was use of the 'threshold' tool on the minor charectors. When I put them next to the picture of Joe and Michael on the sofa it gave a distinct impression of Joe being caught amongst strangers that he was obviously uncomfortable and him and Michael standing out as a pair. It's an idea I've been trying to enforce throughout the film so I went with it.

Background

I put together a basic background on photoshop with the gradiant tool so as the make the light blue softer with the addition of of the white circles. They were supposed to be bubble-like in refference to the word 'fishing' in the title and as a reoccuring theme in the film. I wanted a link to this in the poster without heavy emphasis on it.


The use of the soft blue was also a common feature I'd come accross in the reseach so I was fairly happy with the blue background as the premis to work from.

Context

As a guideline for size and the like I decided to do a portrait poster that you might expect to find in:

• busstops
• magazines
• newspapers
• inside cinemas

It's just a vague list but it gives me some idea of where to envisage the final project as well as where to look for any further research.

Film Research

Film Poster Research

View more presentations from Tania Alterego.

A few posters which compared with what I was trying to acheive.

Ancillary Task 1 - a film poster

Before I started to put together a film poster I needed to know the sort of thing I was aiming for. I needed to catorarise my film. This was difficult because I didn't make it with a specific genre in mind but it felt like one of those alternative happy-go-lucky independant films like '500 Days of Summer'. I looked at posters like this and picked out a choice few to analyse in preparation for putting together one of my own.

Audience Research

I asked five people from ages between 17-19 what they thought of my film, 3 were female and 2 were male.

Things people said they liked included:
The opening credits
The jokes between Joe and Michael- which they felt well captured their age group
The kissing scene- which unfortunately two enjoyed as they thought it was funny
The transitions between scenes
The use of Katie’s guitar for music throughout

Things people said they didn’t like as much:
One said they could see the ending coming several minutes before it did
One noticed some odd cuts in the kitchen scene which put them off slightly

All 5 said they enjoyed the film and felt it was appropriate for their age group. One even congratulated me on dealing with such a sensitive issue facing young people which found amusing.

Before and After

Before:

After:



Cutting Down

The first thing to go was the ending. It had already been suggested I lose the final joke but when I noticed that the people I showed it to often mistook the heart with J+M in it as the end I realised it would be simpler if I jsut ended it there I tried it and sure enough it worked much better and left the audience with a warm feeling it wasn't as realistic but it didn't have to be.

After that it was hard. I cut down the montage by about half including losing the girls reactions because they weren't nearly as strong as what Matt was doing and putting the dissappearing toblerones at the end because it made more sense there. After that though I still have a couple of minutes to cut and I was really at a loss as to what to do.

I tried cutting down the kitchen scene first- starting it from later on but there was ust no conviniant place to cut it even though its the weakest scene in the film it also seems to be the most important. I cut a few shots shorter here and there where I could afford to- especially near the beginging but after that I was stuck again.

I didn't want to resort to this because I really liked the little scene between Joe and Michael before Joe has his little exchange with Natalie. I liked how impossibly well it worked in that single shot but as I said in the end I had no other choice. I cut the whole section with Natalie and went straight from the scene with Sarah into the montage- it worked. Although we missed some nice moments I felt the scene with Natalie was pretty weak anyway as I really don't like not having complete control over what's happening behind the camera.

Still Image Analysis

This is a level two-shot which is typically in keeping with the rest of the film. As I've said before I always want to present Joe and Michael as a pair close enough to understand each others personal space and always confortable with one another.

Here I've positioned Michael so that he is kneeling while Joe sits in the chair, this, I hope, establishes that he is there to help and comfort Joe by bringing himself to Joe's level. He is offering him the bowl of nuts in a friendly gesture but at the begining of the scene it's also supposed to suggest his avoidence of the real issue as Joe at this point feels Michael is to blame for his repeated rejection throughout the night for not telling him who it is who likes him. Joe meanwhile has his head in his hand as if he has a headache coming on. It's a reasonably stark contrast to the optimism he showed on the sofa a couple of scenes earlier before he tried his chat-up line on Natalie.

The way they are dressed is also relevant. In the party scenes I wanted them to look uncomfortably smart like they, Joe is particular, were having to work to improve themselves for this unattainable new girlfriend and again create a contrast between the scene before where Joe could walk about in a lilac dressing gown and Michael wouldn't even question it.

Finally the scene takes place in a corner in an effort to signify Joe's retreat from the party which I also aim to compliment with the sound as the background party noise softens during Joe and Michael's chat and fades away as the music leading up to the kiss fades in.

Re-Reccording Music

We tried re-reccording the music to improve the sound quality and also because of a few mistakes here and there particuarly noticable on 'Something'. I was also dissatisfied with the 'Yes It Is' as the music in the climatic scene. It didn't really flow, it all happened a bit to suddenly and seem a bit last minute and messy. The tone would have been perfect if we'd been using the original with the highly applicable words our version just didn't work.

I asked Katie what else she could play and found out she could play 'Chasing Cars' by Snow Patrol. Neither of us liekd the song but when we put the film on mute and played it over the top it did fit perfectly and eased it's way into the scene beautifully with the correct fade in. So we reccorded it and I was right, it was a lot more effective than 'Yes It Is' despite not being nearly as good a song.

However everythign else we reccorded didn't go as well as we had hoped. It all came out muffled and pretty awful actually, I tried diffling about with the voume but that made it worse so in the end I only used 'Chasing Cars' and the sound effects we reccorded for the starfish, rainbow fish and squid joke and I had to put them through several sound filters before they were too standard.

Feedback on First Screening

After the first screening my feedback tending to be quite positive where I was ticking a lot of boxes. In fact on one the only box I didn’t tick was ‘images are lit and exposed correctly’ and I was encouraged to play about with colouring in post-production.

Some of the other points people made included:

• Length needs to be reduced to five minutes
• Sound levels could be tweaked
• The shot at the end of the montage is blurred
• Consider loosing the ending or joke as it could be taken as an anti-climax
• Titles at the end could be faded out
• Food sequence looks out of place
• Background noise too loud

My plan of action therefore is as follows:

• I always intended to cut down the length and with that I can cut out some of the bits that people felt didn’t work.
• I shall adjust the volume levels relative to each other then lower the level as a whole to ensure there is no crackling.
• I intend to cut the montage down considerably to save time and the girls shots are amongst those that may be cut
• I will try ending the film in several different places and ask opinions from the cast before making a decision
• I will save the titles separately then cut them up and fade them neatly into one another and re-apply the music
• I will cutting the food sequence differently to make it less clunky
• I will turn down the background noise in any scenes it seems to be intruding in particular the climax

Visual Explantation of Montage

Putting Together a First Cut

I already knew the film was going to be too long but for the first cut I figured I’d just put everything together as if I wasn’t making it to be under five minutes and take things out later.

The opening scenes were simple enough. Without worrying if they flowed into each other too well I put together the door exchange, the gaming scene and the one in the kitchen. With the constant movement in the kitchen and the positioning of the door it could only be done in shot reverse shot so with this in mind I kept the video games scene in a two shot to uphold the idea that Michael and Joe had a close, comfortable relationship.

 

I used ‘Norwegian Wood’ as planned to cover the transition between the kitchen scene and the party whilst playing about with the speed Michael writes at. This worked very well to convey the idea of jumping forward in time.

With Sarah’s scene already put together I merely slotted it in between the kitchen scene and the bedroom scene that followed which was very simple and just linked into the exchange with Natalie. The editing on Natalie’s scene I was particularly pleased with. I decided to use a simple two-shot for the first part of the scene rather than cutting between Joe and Michael as it kept with the idea of the two of them as a pair and the strength of their acting in that scene carried it as it was. The exchange with Natalie herself was harder because playing Natalie had prevented me from having complete control over the camera although every shot had been run by me before we pressed record. I went for a snappy shot-reverse-shot structure and then faded into the rejection montage- the expression on Joe’s face was perfect.

The montage was very tricky. I first picked out the best selection of Joe’s reactions and the girls then experimented mixing them together but it didn’t seem like another. I referred back to my original influence (the credits sequence in ‘A Hard Day’s Night’) and then picked out the best expressions to use as stills which I then mixed in alternating between black-and-white and colour. This effectively conveyed the passing of time but sound was still a problem. When I put Katie’s ukulele rendition of ‘Something’ to the images it quickly came apparent that it looked odd if it didn’t cut to the beat. This was very difficult. I had to listen to the track few a couple of times before putting markers on the timeline at appropriate steady intervals then I cut the shots in time with the marks. It worked as well as it could have. I was also adamant to use the shot of people taking Toblerone in time with the refrain in ‘Something’ this was trickier yet. I experimented with using clips of people taking them sped up and just stills of them gradually disappearing before settling on something.

The final scenes by contrast were quite simple. With the stairs scene it was simply a case of putting together the best actors performances and cutting out the parts where Matt forgot his lines (of which there were many) with the climax I wanted to really accentuate the feeling of unity and I think the steady sound of chatter in the background fading away worked really well with that. The shots of the different girls being compared to fish was a nice moment of comic relief from the tension building between the two characters. I cut between two shots and close-ups to also accentuate the feeling of division growing between them just before Michael initiates the twist ending.

The kiss was difficult. Although we had plenty of footage from many different angles the duration of the actual moment was far too short and ultimately anti-climatic. The music I had was not ideal- the chords from ‘Yes It Is’ the words would have worked well as it’s both romantic, melancholy and misunderstood but without them it just sounds odd. I put the footage all in slow-motion to semi-ironically mimic the classic romance film. In black and white and frozen it amuses me that the two appear to mimic the cover to ‘Double Fantasy’ but this is pretty irrelevant. It then fades to black with an animated drawing of a heart with ‘J+M’ written in it to bring the film full circle and sustain the visual style established in the opening scene.

The final shot it of Joe taking Michael’s hand which should leave the film on a high note and the ending satisfyingly ambiguous. It then fades to white which I hope will confirm the positive feel I’ve intended and I’ve put ‘Blackbird’ to the credits.