Evaluation Question 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction, planning and evaluation stages?

When we started to think about the music we wanted for our film, we thought that we would experiment with the piano, to try and compose a sound of our own, we had an idea of what kind of music we wanted and so we thought that with all the different tones and voices available on the keyboard, that we would be able to come up with music that we like and could use. however this didn't work as we first thought so we turned to a website called 'freeplay music'

We went through and made a list of the music that we thought would be appropriate for the effect that we wanted for our film. i then downloaded the music onto the music player 'itunes' which is what we used to then listen to the songs and decide which one we wanted. we decided on the song 'everlasting sadness' which in sound and in title is appropriate for what we were looking for. 

These were our selections for the music we were potentially going to have for our film. as you can see we went for 'Everlasting sadness' none of the others were suitable for what we wanted and so this became the one we chose and in the end i think it worked very well with the emotions that we wanted to evoke in the audience. 

we used the macs in our college for the editing of our film. we had never used it before but after a little while we picked it up quite easily and was able to edit our film without too much complication. at first we had no idea and we were getting quite anxious when we hadn't started the editing when we were planning to, but after we got the hang of it we were able to successfully edit the film and then add the music thanks to a friend who was kind enough to help us out. using the macs was useful because we learnt how to use them and they were easily accessible as they are in college and we could go there in our free time and do more editing. 

Youtube was also very very helpful in that me and my partner got to watch a lot of short films before making our own, we got ideas from them and a better knowledge of the conventions of short films and social realism films. the internet in general was very helpful for research into social realism and finding images that relate to the issues we came up with. 

Evaluation Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

As a combination of media products, i think that our short film, poster and review are very effective together in conveying the message that we wanted to achieve with them. the poster in my opinion is very clear in explaining one aspect of the film, the self harm issue is seen on the poster, with the picture of an arm that has been cut, i also think that the bold 'LONELY' written on the arm is good at catching the attention of an audience, this also reflects the reason for the person to self harm, that they feel that they don't have anyone to turn to, which is also shown in the film as the girl parents are arguing about her and her father wants her to leave. they turn their back on her because of who she is, therefore she feels like she is so lonely and doesn't have anyone to support her. our review also explains in more detail about the film, from the point of view of somebody that has seen it, we made up a magazine and a film columnist who would have watched the film and then given their own personal opinion about it and the genre and cinema going in general. i think all of them combined makes for a good overall expression for what we wanted to achieve with them.

Evaluation Question 3: what have you learnt from your audience feedback?

after our first showing to an audience, we had some people saying that they had a tear in their eye whilst watching the scene with the self harm when that particular scene was showing i remember the whole room being silent as they all watched, waiting to see what happened, to see what the girl did. before the main showing, i showed the film to a friend just after the editing had been completed. they said that they felt they didn't at first understand what was happening, but they still thought that it was a good film overall.

Evaluation Question 1: In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our media product is a short film in the genre of social realism. social realism films  tend to focus on real life issues that people might face in their society/community, family, friendships or just their everyday life. social realism lets the viewer into the personal lives of the characters and reveals inner feelings and views that the character has towards the world around them. after watching quite a few short films (as mentioned in a previous post) we decided that we would take the convention of personal issues being explored in greater depth and create a few characters who were all struggling or dealing with a serious issue. we focused on younger characters, ranging from 10 to an 18 year old. in the final product, we didn't have the young boy, but in planning we had considered a character of that young age. the target audience for our media product is 16-18 as a main audience, as these are the ages of the people who are in college, and they made up the majority of the audience when our film was shown. 20 year old and older would also enjoy the short film. but the actors within the film itself are the same age as the intended target audience. the end product was edited to be entirely in black and white. this isn't generally a convention of social realism. but it is sometimes used in order to achieve the desired effect. we both thought that having our film in black and white would be more suitable with the filming we had as our end product. we thought that the scenes would appear more emotional if all of the colour was drained out of them. having colour almost made it seem 'too positive', even though the contend was sad, black and white just gives the audience a clear indication of what they should be feeling when they are watching. black and white  film is more commonly used in the genre of film noir, so although our genre is social realism, we decided to use a convention from another genre and apply it to ours and we found that this worked effectively on our film.

In terms of the filming of our short film we thought about the conventions of different ways to film a shot using different techniques

-having the camera on a stand
-hand held camera
-shaky camera
-positioning the camera close to the action

we had the hand held effect when filming the self harm scene, when the girl runs up the stairs, we are seeing the action from her point of view to give the audience a sense of how she is feeling, they are essentially put in her position by having the camera being held like this. when we got to the part with the blade being lowered to her wrist, we placed the camera on my waist and this gave the added effect of having my breathing being louder on the film, having the camera here also showed a close up of what was happening so that the audience could clearly see what she was doing with the blade.

during our film we had blacked out screens with messages on that had two functions: to give the audience a better idea of what was happening or what was about to happen, and to convey a message. to show the situations from another perspective and this might make the audience think about their own lives and relate it to what they are watching. this is a convention of social realism films as me and my partner have found by watching various different short films. they always have a message or show awareness about an issue, in our case, self harm and teen pregnancy.