Evaluation

Media A2 Evaluation

The advanced stage of the media production was a big step up from the foundation stage; it included me using and challenging all the media skills and techniques that I have learnt from the past year, but to a much higher level.  Throughout this particular project I thought that I would do more research linked directly to my project which I failed to do last year, I also did more theorist research in order to give my project a direct link to a theory and reflect on how I managed to accomplish this. During the advanced stage I took Audience into much more consideration than I did in the foundation stage, I managed to figure out what the audience would want, I did this by creating a questionnaire, I also researched the top 10 best selling films, and by looking at the genre and representation used in them films, I was able to discover what audiences preferred which films and why. This then lead me to decide which genre I would like to focus on and base my film around, therefore by doing this research I would meet all the target audiences wants and needs.  I also did a lot of research on different aspects of the camera, for example depth of field research and natural lighting research, due to the fact this is the type of lighting we mainly used in our short film.

Our production team consisted of four females from the same Media Class, myself, Charlotte Elson, Rebecca Cobb and Alice Fenwick. We chose this group because we knew we would work together very well, We knew this because me and Alice and worked together in the foundation stage and created a high standard introduction to a short film, we also get along very well as a four and knew we would all co operate equally and create a short film which is of a very high standard. We all created a treatment for an individual idea for a short film that we had thought of over the summer holiday. We then brought them back to the class and pitched our ideas to the rest of the group, by using different aspects of each of our ideas we managed to come up with an idea we all agreed on.

The idea for our short film was of an accident that would affect a young woman for the rest of her life, preventing her from hearing. To get to this we had many group meetings to decide on a final idea, while changing it as we went along to make it the best it could possibly be. We came up with the name of “Once Heard” which reflects it being an emotional journey throughout her life and what she’s come to now and how she is dealing with her loss.  We researched many different short films to see what lighting, levels, narrative, camera angles, shots and movements we would need to use to be able to portray the best messages. We thought we would email the leader of the Royal Association for Deaf people Sue Mountford to get more information on the Deaf community and find out exactly what it’s like and what they think of the media in relation to the help they give to Deaf people. We asked her a lot of questions and she answered them to full detail including an answer which read “There is a complete lack of understanding of Deafness in society and most of the barrier Deaf people face are societal” this encouraged us a lot more to portray the strong message that deaf people are still people and shouldn’t be blocked out by society.

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.

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.

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 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.

In conclusion I think that this task was a huge success, the time management went well and I got everything sorted out in time and when I needed it. I produced a lot of research that is based and linked on my main project and I feel that I used media techniques and expanded language to my advantage. I feel that I have stepped up a lot since the foundation stage. Although I found it difficult at times because we had some issues with the camera where we had put it on the tripod wrong, but we dealt with it like adults and managed to overcome the problems we faced. I also feel that I have learnt a lot from this foundation stage, I know that there needs to be a lot of research done into your main project to actually figure out what youre trying to portray and how you can do that. My audience research really helped me do this and the people we contacted to try and figure this out. I am very happy with this project and feel that it has been a huge accomplishment.