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

We used new media technology in the sense that we used a much larger, more professional camera in this product, in order to receive better camera angles shots and movement, we could use more techniques for example pull focus which we enjoyed using. We also could zoom a lot further in and still zoom. Although facing some trouble with our tripod being quite squeaky, we overcame this by figuring out how to loosen it and fixing it using our own initiative. When editing our short film we used Premiere Pro which was a huge step up from Windows Movie Maker which I used on my last short film. Premier Pro is a lot more technical and we needed a lot of knowledge on the software to be able to understand how to use it, in order to do this we watched many teachings on YouTube and what to press to do particular techniques. We also used Photoshop to create our poster and Windows Excel to create our double page spread.

What have you learnt from the audience feedback?

Audience feedback was a thing that we took most pride in, we had to find out exactly what our target audience needed and wanted, to do this we produced 20 copies of a questionnaire which I handed out to people in my hometown, around college and in our Media class, I did it to different ages so therefore we could get all different types of feedback, enabling us to reach out to all different audiences and hopefully meeting their needs and wants. We got very good feedback and concluded that our target audience would be men and women aged 16-24 because they’re the ones who are most likely to watch short films due to the fact our short film would most likely be shown in an educational environment due to short films not having a major affect on the media unlike cinemas. We asked questions like “Do you think flashbacks are an effective way of showing the past?” this enabled us to discover what the audience want to see and how they would like us to portray the past, we used many questions like this so we could edit it in a way that they would expect and want. We thought this was the best way to do it because we would avoid many issues along the way if we stuck to the questionnaire results because their permanent proof of what the audience would like to see.


We asked a few people of the age 16+ to watch our short film and give us there feedback on what they think we did well on and what they think we could improve on. Below I have included a picture of the candidates aswell as their transcripts. (All candidates names are kept anonymous for security reasons)

CANDIDATE ONE



AGED 17.. FULL TIME STUDENT

"I think that this short film was very interesting and informative of subjects we don't really know alot about being students, usually when being shown educational films I get quite bored but this one really kept me engaged because it related directly to my own age group which means I can relate heavily to this, it reminds me of me and my friends who go out quite a lot, it really makes you think about what can really hapen to you. I think if you were going to do it over maybe introduce the main character with a bit more depth so we know more about her for example her family life, upbringing etc, but overall I really enjoyed it"

 

CANDIDATE 2

AGED 18... FULL TIME STUDENT AND PART TIME WORKER

"Coming from a males perspective I think this short film was a bit harsh on the male front although I think it's a good thing for girls to see, some girls don't realise the consequences of their actions and are naive to think it won't happen to them as there are some serious weirdos out there. I think that it's good that you chose people of our age because it meant we can relate to them, also the location was really good. If you redid it the only bit of advice I would give you is to not single out males as there not all bad, Oh and I also think it's good how you showed that there is help for people that do have disabilities and people shouldn't be ashamed"

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

Our ancillary tasks were a huge success, we planned out three different types of posters, while researching three before hand, We took many different aspects from each poster, for example the image that is on the front, the font of the text and the way the text lies across the image. The posters that we researched were from Deaf/Illness based films, we did this so we could find out exactly what a poster should look like in order to make the audience want to see it. We also drew out two poster ideas that we had and used one of them and it worked to our full advantage and we managed to create some good ideas on Photoshop. I was in charge of making the poster and I think I did a good job and the posters will entice the audience into watching the film. I think researched four different double page spread film reviews which I got off different websites such as www.totalfilm.com and www.empireonline.com, I printed them off and annotated them in my folder so I could see what was good and what was bad, therefore knowing exactly what we needed to put on our double page spread. We produced one which had screen shots of the film; big bold writing and one that we thought would really interest the audience. We included the rating, genre, running time and target audience age because we thought these were vital points to include so that the audience knew what to expect.

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

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In our short film we managed to challenge and develop forms and conventions by promoting awareness for people with hearing difficulties which you don’t see a lot of in the media. We also tried to emphasis the view on how careful you should be while drinking due to the fact you never know what could happen which backs up many drinking campaigns that we had researched for example “Think Safe Drink Safe” which was organised by the government and police force trying to attack students with facts and information on responsible drinking. Due to the fact mental illness’ are a very sensitive subjects we thought we would discuss it in a very fair manner but also make it so strong so that people were empowered by our messages.

New Double Page Spread

Research- Deaf Community

Deafness research

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Digital Technologies Used

Within our project we used many different digital technologies to expand our awareness for the technology around us and trying to see how much we can get out of each one, for example using emails to contact people from the deaf community and using Photoshop to create our poster.