Question 3

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

The audience feedback before filming was also very helpful as it made us aware before filming what the audience wanted to see. For example when asking oscar he said he was worried that it could come across cringe and that made us pay close attention to the difference between cringe comedy and successful comedy, which is one of the main reasons why the comedy in our film was successful. 

Our audience feedback was very helpful as it allowed us to precisely narrow down what was going well and not well throughout post production.
without which the film's comedy wouldn't have been as successful as it was as the pauses and script which created the comedy and those are personal to our target audience and so in order to ensure that the film achieved what we wanted it to we needed them to keep reviewing it throughout the making of it. 

The audience feedback throughout post production also allowed us to play around with shot placement and cropping as the audience would tell us when a shot or scene was unclear giving us time to amend it making it as perfectly suited for our audience as possible.

Our four main sections of audience feedback were all at different stages, we had three throughout post production, and one during pre production. All four of these were pivitiol to our films success.

First Audience Feedback (Oscar)

This audience feedback from Oscar during Pre-production was pivotol in allowing us to see what the poetential positives, and possibly more importantly what negatives we could face. 

During the video he higlights his fears that the piece could be cringe, or too silly rather than funny. he also showed concerns for the acting and spoke about how if the acting was off it could ruin the believeability of the entire piece as well as ruin the comedic effect.

He also expressed his enthusiasm for the idea of the film and the poetential it had, this taught us that if we followed his feedback and didnt make it cringe, and all of his other concerns than the film would be a good success with our target audience. 

In order to combat his fears we mades sure to pay very close attention to the: script, framing, acting, and mise en scene whilst filming, this entailed:

Script

• Check to see what could be more comical and less silly
• showed multiple people from our target demographic to gauge there opinions 
• Re-wrote sections of meaningful script to emphasise emotion to create empathy between viewer and character   
• researched other scripts of successful films to analyse where there success came from

Framing

•  We payed close attention to the storyboard to see if the framing matched the scene's tone 
• Whilst filming we experimented with a lot of angles and different pans to see what compositions best suited the different scenes to maximise there emotional effect on the viewer

Acting

• We payed close attention when shooting to the details of the acting within each scene
• We reviewed footage after each shot to ensure that we were all happy with its effectiveness  
• I spent a long time before each scene rehearshing it with the actors 
• We also spent a lont time bouncing off each other to see what we all felt suited the characters best, and what felt natural

Mise En Scene

• We reviewed the costumes of each character after the feedback, to ensure each was perfect for the situation and the character
• Also we reviewed the character body and facial expressions within each scene to ensure they suited the character we had created
• We spent a long time trying to find the perfect location to suit our films needs 
• And we spent a long time using a portable lighting studio to perfectly light specific scenes as if we had lit it in a noir style then the films tone and comedy would have been lost on the audience  

Second Audience Feedback (Tony)

This is Tony's feedback on our film during the editing stages, we thought becuase of his proficient abillity in media and editing that he would be a good person to ask about what could be improved on within our film. 

He said that we could have improved the sound editing, and said that we could have used more transitions. He also thought that some of the backing tracks could have suited the film better. 

However he did say that he liked the compliation of Ted failing to get jobs and thought it added a lot of comedy to the film. 

Sound Editing

• After this feedback we payed close attention to the noise level of our non diegetic sound
• We used fade at the intro and outro's of all Non Diegetic sound to allow it to flow better
• We gradually reduced the volume of tracks over a long period to ensure that they were smooth and didnt distract from the scene 
• We also raised the volume of certain sections within the film as we felt that they needed to be emphasised to grab the viewers attention

Transitions

• We had only used straight cuts at this point and so to give more vairety we used cross dissolve for some scene chnages 
• We also used panning shots meaning we didnt have to cut to a location it panned to it instead  

Backing Tracks

• We found a new track after this feedback 
• It suited the short much more than the original track 
• We also felt that we needed more than one track as the tone and tempo of our film changes towards the end

Third Audience Feedback (Tony)

 

      

Question 1

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

Research became vital when it came to making big decisions about our own film, it allowed us to fully understand the conventions of short films and gave us the opportunity to understand what worked well when trying to convey certain emotions and atmospheres in such a short period of time.  

My research taught me that every short film has a hidden meaning in it, because 5-10 mins (average length of short films) isn't enough time to thoroughly explore a story and come to a penultimate conclusion, and so instead what they do is quickly set the scene, show the pressing issue, and then come to a quick and precise climax which normally has some form of pragmatic meaning. the most prominent examples of this are in the films: 2+2=5, and Doll face. 

Doll Face is an animated short film showing a robot apply make up on its face trying to mimic a model on the tv in front of it but each time it applies the make up the model changes and the tv gets further away, this has  pragmatic meanings of the un reachable beauty standards of today's media and is trying to reassure the viewer of the film that they should not spend there lives trying to mimic what the media shows them.

As well as this the research taught us the many different techniques that are used to make a successful short film.
For example Doll face is an animated short but taught us a lot about the flow of a short film and the use of cuts, for example it didn't linger on shots for a long time each shot was held for a fitting amount of time, which is massively important if you want your film to have an impact on the audience as it is very easy to cut your shots too quickly or hold them for too long losing all impact of the film, doll face did an amazing job of this as it manages to keep the audience engaged but yet the story and whats happening is so simple and almost boring but by cutting between long medium and close up's at the right moments it manages to hold the audience's attention for long enough  to convey the narravtive properly.

It also taught us the importance of angles and shot distances, for example the film opens with a pivatol panning establishing shot of the box before the robot comes out but that shot gives the audience time to get used to the setting, props lighting etc which allowed them to focus fully on the actions, and emotions of the robot once it came out of the box, which allowed the audience to make sense of the narrative and made a potentially obscure and abstract meaning (dont follow media's beauty standards) very clear and prominent.

The research i did on Doll Face helped me during both post production and production, whilst making the film i was sure to think about the camera angles i had shot and making sure i had shot enough, when shooting i would get about 5 different angles of one scene to ensure that we would have enough angles to play around with and cut if and when necessary. This has helped our final product as the audience never gets bored of the scene in hand as the visuals change as soon as the effect they initially have wears off.

 For example, a close up shot is supposed to convey the emotion and or intensity of a character depending on the narrative and context of the film he/she is in, but after that intensity and emotion has sunk in the viewer becomes distracted and the power the shot initially has worn off over time, we however spent a long time editing to make sure the cuts were timed perfectly, we did that by analyzing how long it would take before we ourselves got bored of a certain scene and then made adjustments accordingly, we would then test it on our classmates to ensure they didn't get bored of the shots either, i would not have focused on shot duration so much if it wasn't for my short film research of Doll Face. 
Our short film's genre is comedy and so it was important that we looked at lots of clips from films and short films that have success as comedy's. comedy is such a hard genre to get right as there is a fine line between funny and cringe, knowing where the lines is comes from the research.

The two main sources for this information that i used were "One minute time machine" and a clip from the film "Step Brothers" They both successfully create comedy and are not cringe, and research showed me that it was down to three main things:well timed and placed pauses, good scripting, and camera work. 

The main component's of comedy is timing and script, so we spent a long time before each scene:

• Talking about the script and how we could improve it in the moment 
• Pauses between each transaction of conversation and jokes
• the facial expressions after the delivery of the jokes 
• body placement of characters 
• voice intonations

Both step brothers and One minute time machine had long pauses after the delivery of certain jokes which help to create incongruous comedy, as well as this they both have very silly scripts and plots which match our films plot perfectly,  which allows us the freedom to make the script as silly as we want in order to make it incongruously funny for the viewer, it works because the viewer is laughing at the characters stupidity and inability to follow the normal politeness conventions of everyday life. 

We are shown this incongruous comedy in the following image:

 Both characters are in the interview and one is sitting directly behind the other, which is very odd and doesn't follow the conventions and expectations of everyday life, and so the viewer finds it funny, there is also some relief theory in there as the viewer is laughing at the characters stupidity and laughing because it isn't them making the mistake of "interviewing as a pair", this comedy is also reinforced by the script and how the characters expressions show no sign of embarrassment as they progress through the interview they begin to become hostile towards the interviewer as if she is the silly one which once again creates incongruous comedy using script body language and tone. 

One minute time machine is another great example of incongruous comedy, using script pauses, and tone, a lot of the comedy in this short is created just by the script and facial expressions as the protagonist tries to hit on the lady on our left (his right), but keeps failing and watching him fail repeatedly creates a lot of incongruous and relief comedy. 

When making our film we tried our best to tap into this use of script, tone, and body language to create incongruous comedy, this is clear to see in our first interview, when he goes to get the sweets, and he drags them across the table and there is no dialogue making it extremely incongruous in its context. We also decided to try to use a funny non diegetic soundtrack in the background to help build another layer to the comedy. 

In conclusion we used the research of those two shorts to ensure we payed attention to:

• Tone 
• Body Language
• Facial Expressions
• Script 
• And Pauses

All of which are features of Mise en Scene revealing that the most important feature of a comedy is the Mise en Scene and how the directors push the continuity of the characters personality's to create incongruous comedy.

Poster Design And Research

I spent a long time looking for ideal posters to analyze to ensure that my design followed the correct conventions for its mise en scene and target audience. 

The Main Features that make this poster so good at portraying the comedic aspects and success of this film are the facial expressions of the characters, and the text's colour and reviews, they really give a sense of incongruous comedy without being so silly that its cringe. The colours of this poster are also a massive aspect of its success it they all match and are aesthetic showing the professionalism of the design as well as portraying the comedic genre again with incongruous colours. Its also portrayed by the tagline "killers have never been this close knit" it relates the the clothes they wearing again to create a sense of comedy.

Graffiti has a more serious feel to it, i chose to research it because unlike the other films ours isn't all comedy it has a lot of life issue and serious scenes in and so i needed to research how other successful films had made posters that gave connotations of being a little more serious, Graffiti does it perfectly as the image on its own is quite ominous but that paired with the lack of text really emphasis's the  serious tone that it is clearly going for as it has none of the bubbly text we usually expect from film posters and so by going against the connotations and expectations of a typical film poster it has made the viewer feel un easy and so creates a much more serious ominous feel.

I have followed all the key aspects that the poster research had shown me to create the right tone for the film I have made.

For Example:

• The title and text follow the conventions of Graffiti
• The images and cuts follow the subtle style of sightseer's
• And the rest of the poster follows the conventions of typical short films posters 
• production company logo
• website address
• billings
• review
• And mark of sundance film festival 

I chose those three specific images because they foreshadow the film and its underlying plot as well as help to create a very subtle humor in the expressions of the characters, as well as that they help to entice the target audience as there is an enigma around why the main characters look the way they look which would draw the viewer of the poster in and entice them to want to watch it. The layout also has some flare to show sense of professionalism.

Little White Lies

We looked at many little white lies magazines in order to get an idea as to the conventions of one of there reviews e.g.

• Font size 
• Font used 
• Image size
• Writing style 
• Review system
• Writing layout 
• And word count (500)

All this information was obtained through our research and allowed us to make an accurate copy of the magazine review. 

Question 4

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

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