A2 Media

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

I created a short film, which intended to be an entertaining motivational video. I wanted to create something different and challenge myself into creating some spectacular. I used ‘Alan Watts - Money was no object’ speech as it is very powerful if you actually listen to the words. I got the inspiration from many other videos such as ‘HBDYWI´ and ‘Motivation for Success’ . These give me the drive and motivation to create my very own video; I didn’t want my video to focus on one person, I thought in doing so my short film having no characters has created a wider image for people to imagine instead of thinking it is only for certain people. I wanted to be so everyone could relate to the video. I made the video a very slow tempo video which gradually picks up towards the end. I wanted this to target the teenage era as nearly 20 percent of the Youtube viewers of which are teenage watch this genre of video.

Youtube would be my main use to share this film, Youtube is mainly dominated by music but entertainment is not far behind. So this still means my video would still attract a large base of viewers.

My selected brief was a short film. In a short film, characters are key factor. They tend to stick to 2 or 3 main characters, as it is a short film they tend to not go deep in to their backgrounds or story. This then allows the audience to relate to the characters in such short of time. They tend to get an everyday situation and just flip it on its head. Short films have a lot smaller and niche audience than mainstream due to the creative nature, length and simple storyline.

In a short film, there is normally always a ‘twist’, this is done to make the short film so much more interesting as it in such short of time. For example in the short film ‘Tick Tock’ we think he is about to die when in fact we see how he is pranked and actually is going to survive.

Budget of a short film tends to be very low; this is due to the film directors been independent. They do this by sticking to 1 or 2 locations and using 1 or 2 actors, some actor mean even act for free. In the short film ‘within temptation’ we see only 3 actors which is pretty high for short but still very minimalistic.

Length of short film can be to the maximum of 15 minutes, but are normally around to 5-10 minutes in length, if they were any longer they would be classified as a feature length. An example is ‘within temptation – triplets’ that short film is 6 minutes and 24 seconds long.

Short films is that quite a lot use the steadi-cam technology to create a point of view shot, this is because short films are mainly a story in a particular characters life, and the best way to betray this story is to see it how the character would see it.

Voice overs are a very popular method of sound in short films, and it is often found in short films that a voice over would be used instead of dialogue, there could be many reasons for this, for one it is cheaper to record a voice over than use a high tech boom, but also if the story is about someones life, the voice over would normally be that of the central protagonist.

I decided to not stick to the normal codes and conventions, in this way the audience don’t know what to expect and also it’s a change to the main stream short films you would normally see. I wanted to send out a message not blag the audiences head with a twist. I used many different locations in my short film; this was meant to show that you can do anything you want where ever you want no matter where you are or what situation you’re in. I decided to go with the voice over though as this can be portrayed as a voice from above is trying to send this message and make a really big impact on the viewer.
Locations where very varied, I want to create this sort of abstract of different locations, I went up to Hessle foreshore, Hull city centre, Marina in hull and many other locations, these all set the scene and tone of the video in a way of aided the short films message.

When I first started this project I intended to create a short film with the genre of thriller in which there conventions were they use a lot of quick cuts and camera angles changes to create this tension. Its normal a handheld camera would be used for movement for a more quicker and exciting scene. They tend to keep the main character centre of frame, to make them the main priority. Mise en scene of a thriller is normal to with its lighting, especially the use of shadows. Mirrors and stairs are also very convention of a thriller genre movie. Editing in a short film is very elliptical, which shows this fast pacing movement. It excites the audience. The music is non-diegetic in a trailer for thrillers genre movie's and it isn't normally pop chart music as in the short film 'Within Temptation' we hear the non-diegetic voice over with a piano playing. I had too many problems with this short film due to timetables of my characters, it was impossible to get everyone together at the same time leading me to go on to create this new short film.

I think the backing track really converges well with the whole short film. The editing of the music and speech really fit hand in hand with each other, as the songs tempo speeds up and becomes more compelling so does the speech. I had two tracks in mind to use, the other track was 'avril 14 - Aphex Twin'. The script I used, needed to have a transcript. Just so I could time everything perfectly.

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

I started with many drafts. From really plain to quite detailed.
This was going to be how I set out my double page review but I changed my layout drastically once I finally started creating the piece in Photoshop. I did this also with my poster, to have a rough idea how to set it all out.

I then went to create my pieces and experimented with many styles. These where what I finally ended up creating and then every time I went back to it I just knew I needed to tweak something to just make it that tiny bit better.

Draft 1

Draft 2

Finished

With my double page spread I went through drastic changes in doing so finally came across with an idea I really liked.

Draft

They're many codes and conventions of film posters and double page review pages.
I researched quite a lot and found such things as the main objective of a film poster is to be eye catching.To have an image which is intriguing. The title is normal displayed largely across the top. From the poster you may be able to understand the genre. It has to be appealing to my target audience.I need to use such key factors as a tagline and always got to include an age certificate. I think including the directors and producers give it this more professional look to it as well as it collides with the codes and conventions.

I even looked at magazine front cover pages, the added value allows you to get everything right. The codes and conventions of them are quite similar as I believe a front cover of a magazine has the same codes and conventions as a music magazine. Film magazine still needs to include such things as the Masthead of the magazine and no doubt an upcoming film with an image connected to it on the front cover. They only use up to the maximum of 3 fonts so it looks continious throughout. Other conventions such as 'buzz words', 'banners' and 'Anchorage text'. The use of coverlines are still used on film front cover magazines as well to make it look a lot more jam packed full of interesting stories.

Codes and conventions of a double page spread are factors such as the name of the film.
Maybe with the films tagline including important details such as the release date, age rating, director,cast,running and plot. They would be a dominant main image from the film then around this image the main article(review). The magazine would give its own overall view and its own rating.

Draft

Finished

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

I used a wide range of technology throughout the course from Photoshop to Youtube.

I started out with using google and youtube to help me research my codes and conventions, my ideas of a short film.
I used Microsoft word to type a lot of information up etc.

Then went on to use cameras to film my piece then moved on to the editing suite to put everything together, then eventually blogger to put everything up.

What do you desire? (2)

What makes you itch? (3)

What sort of a situation (1) would you like? (4)

Let’s suppose, I do this often in vocational guidance of students(.) they come to me and say,erhhh well, we’re getting out of college and we have the faintest idea what we want to do.(3)

So I always ask the question (1) what would you like to do if money were no object?(3)

WHA… How would you really enjoy spending your life? (3)

Well, it’s so amazing as a result of our kind of educational system, crowds of students say well, we’d like to be painters, we’d like to be poets, we’d like to be writers, but as everybody knows you can’t earn any money that way.(1)

Or another person says well, I’d like to live an out-of-doors life and ride horses. (1)

I said you want to teach in a riding school? (2) ERHH Let’s go through with it.(1)

What do you want to do? (1)

When we finally got down to something, which the individual says he really wants to do, I will say to him, you do that (2)

And erhh forget the money (2)

erhh because,(1) if you say that getting the money is the most important thing,(1) you will spend your life (1) completely wasting your time.

You’ll be doing things you don’t like doing in order to go on living, that is to go on doing things you don’t like doing (1) which is stupid.

Better to have a short life (1) that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way.

And after all, if you do really like what you’re doing, it doesn’t matter what it is (2) you can eventually turn it – you could eventually become a master of it. It’s the only way to become a master of something, to be really with it.

And then you’ll be able to get a good fee for whatever it is.

So do do don’t worry too much. That’s everybody is – somebody is interested in everything, anything you can be interested in, you will find others will.

But it’s absolutely stupid to spend your time doing things you don’t like, in order to go on spending things you don’t like, doing things you don’t like and to teach our children to follow in the same track.
See what we are doing, is we’re bringing up children and educating to live the same sort of life’s we are living. In order that they may justify themselves and find satisfaction in life by bringing up their children to bring up their children to do the same thing, so it’s all retch, and no vomit it never gets there. (3)

And so, therefore, it’s so important to consider this question,
What do I desire?