Q1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?Q2 - How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tests?Q3 - What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Q4 - How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
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The Hunt Film PosterFor part of our ancillary task we were instructed to create a film poster to go alongside our short film in order for our film to be marketed. We therefore wanted this to look as professional as possible and to link in with our film as much as we could. We used the picture of the main character Amy holding the necklace in front of her face, to show the importance the necklace plays within the film. As you can see by the images we edited the necklace on Photoshop to make the colours really stand out. This will catch peoples attention which will also emphasise the importance of the necklace in our piece. We are happy with how our film poster turned out, and we think it looks as professional as we could possibly look. Below is the final poster for our short film. The Hunt Film Magazine ReviewWhen thinking of magazine review ideas we thought of one which we all liked the idea of, however we quickly realised that it was quite complex, especially having an image that took up the whole page, with the text over the image. We decided to use one half of the double page spread for the only image on our piece, which has the necklace and flowers that are very important to our piece. We then put all the text and information on the other side. The layout is quite simple, however we think this makes it quite professional looking. We also particularly like the bright colours in the review as they link to the film poster also. We created the magazine review on Photoshop so we have also created a 9 frame visual to show how it was made and what we included. Also below is our final magazine review.
After analysing film reviews in magazines, we have found what is essential to include in a magazine review of our own. We've decided on including one large still across the page of the 1940s scene and therefore showing two of the characters and the necklace. Below are other pictures of the character of Amy, reading the letter (a confused face tells the audience she is discovering something) and the ring, a primary object to our film. We will include ratings, quotes of reviewers, the names of the actors, the production company name, information of the film, our production logo, age rating, bold title and its tagline.
During the production process, my primary role was to organise the music to appropriately match our piece. I included a mixture of music from Garageband, the software I used to produce the music as well as an excerpt from a song popular in the 1940s where we had based the dream/flashback sequence.
This is our rough first edit for our short film. We have gathered some feedback in order to help us with the final edit. We have not put the music that we will be using in the film as of yet.
In our lesson, we presented a pitch to the class and our teacher which showed our ideas and plot for our short film. We then received feedback and ideas from our class which gave us opinions from people outside of our group. This was very useful for us and developed our initial ideas more. Our class asked questions such as how would we avoid the members of the public when filming and asked how we would represent our film as the 1940s. These questions helped us think about how we would solve these problems so they will not be an issue for us when filming. They also said how we would need to stick to the codes and conventions of adventure films and not to drift off too much to another sub genre. Presenting our pitch to the class gave us some valuable market research and helped us improve our ideas for our short film.
1940s Music-
Original Music-
Mise en scene means "whats in the scene." It can cover many things, including costumes, props and scenery.
Depending on the type of adventure film, the costumes will vary. If it is a typical quest, the characters may be depicted wearing something like armour. But if it is a more everyday quest, like the one in our film, the characters may be wearing very standard clothing. This is the case in our film, with the characters in standard clothing, however we have to make the costumes typical of the two times the piece is set in. This is particularly important for the flashback scenes, which are set during World War Two , as we need to make sure that the costumes are realistic of that time. Props also vary from film to film. We have watched some films that use an object, which has significance. In our film, this will be the necklace. This is the object that Amy finds, which sends her on her journey to find out how her Grandmother got the necklace. Necklaces have connotations of romance, as they are usually a gift given to someone by their lover. Scenery will also vary from film to film, with some Adventure films being set in fictional lands, and others in the real world. We will be filming a scene set in Amy's bedroom and we will have to look at Amy's character and reflect this in the decoration of the bedroom. It is important that the scenery in the flashback scenes looks like it is World War Two. We are filming these scenes outside, in Alexandra Gardens which means this will be easier than if we were filming in a house, where we would have to make the decor look like the 1940s. This is the initial script for our piece. There are quite a few scenes without any dialogue, but this is the script for those scenes that do have dialogue.
In the beginning: Mother: Amy, can you bring down the box of your Grandmas stuff? Amy: Sure, i just want to look through it first. Letter (to be read in a voiceover) Anna: how could you do this to me? You knew that necklace was from Fred, and now he's gone and I have nothing. If i can't have him back I will get the necklace, and I don't care how long it takes me. In the first flashback Harriet: did you hear that Agnes is working at the munitions factory. I think i'll join her next week. Anna: I might do the same, but I can't bear those ghastly uniforms. I don't want to damage this (shows necklace) Harriet: How did you get the money to pay for that with your ration cards? Anna: Fred bought it for me before he was called up. Harriet: He left already? Anna: A couple of weeks ago. Harriet: Oh right... In the second flashback Anna: Give it back Harriet: No. It was supposed to be mine. You don't deserve it. Anna: How could you say that. I loved him. Harriet: I loved him long before you were here. Anna: I can't believe you would do this. Clearly our friendship means nothing to you. I will be mainly focusing on the music and sound effects for our piece. After looking at conventional adventure themed music, I found that the majority of it focuses on more of a fantasy storyline. Knowing this, I intend to use various elements of this music such as dramatic parts when its needed but I'll mostly be using the music more suited to the sub-genre of mystery. As our piece also takes place in the 1940s, I'll be investigating the music of the era which can strongly tell the audience this is where the narrative is taking place.
Music and sound effects are essential to create the right amount of tension as it accompanies the visuals on screen. This will have to be timed perfectly to match what we have filmed to be fully effective. This is our storyboard with our preliminary piece of music. This piece of music has not been finalized as we want to wait until our final piece is edited to merge all the different tracks together. We may also change a couple of bits of music, which may be too dramatic for the final piece. This is our initial idea for our plot. We have left room for changes, are aware that this may change, but so far, we are happy with this.
Our character (Amy) is arriving home from her Grandmothers funeral. As she goes upstairs to the attic, we can hear her mother, telling her to bring down the box of her Grandma's stuff. While Amy is looking through the box, she finds a necklace, and some old photos, including one of her grandmother wearing the necklace. Amy then puts the necklace on. That night, she has a dream of her Grandmother's hand holding the necklace. The next day, she continues looking through the box, and finds a letter. A non-diegetic voice over tells the audience that it is from the original owner of the necklace, who wants it back, saying that one day she will have it back. That night, she has a dream of when her Grandmother was young. We see snapshots of her Grandma's friend, and her boyfriend. The boyfriend gives her Grandma's friend a necklace, while telling her that he has been called up to fight in the war. The Grandmother is looking on jealous. We then see the Grandmother and her friend arguing about her taking the necklace. The final snapshot is of her Grandma, walking through a park and feeling guilty about what she did. Amy goes to the park that she saw in the dream, and comes across a carving in the tree, from the soldier, and the friend. That night, she dreams again of her Grandma taking the necklace. While she is asleep, we see a hand try to take the necklace from around her neck. She wakes suddenly, and looks in the mirror, where somebody has written "I want it back." We believe that this film fits the adventure genre, because it shows the character on a quest to solve a mystery. We found in our research that an adventure film often has other sub-genres and we feel that there is an element of Thriller in our piece, because of the hand at the end, and also an element of mystery. As our short film will be mostly split between two time periods, the music and sound will have to reflect this to emphasise the differences.
In the present day scenes, we could include modern bands (e.g Fall Out Boy, Panic! At The Disco) for background music which the main character, Amy, would listen to. The short film opens with Amy going through her grandmother's things after her funeral so there would be sombre, melancholy music to show the situation they're in. In contrast to this, the older scenes will include wartime tunes such as Vera Lynn's 'We'll Meet Again' and more time appropriate music to reflect the 1940s. There will be similar music to that of the grandmother's funeral when Anna's boyfriend is killed in action and Anna is visiting his memorial. As Harriet appears in the background, the music will change slightly, growing more intense or possibly more eerie to show Harriet's grief in addition to Anna's. During certain scenes that include arguments and sinister elements, the music would be central to the parts with no dialogue. The music would be more fast paced and if we chose an orchestral track, would include percussion that would make the audience jump, especially when something is happening on screen to frighten them. When you're only given a short amount of time to tell a story, it is important to accurately portray your characters in that same amount of time. Usually in short films, the characters are given stereotypical traits as there is not enough time to show character development as there would be in a full feature length film. In this Sci-Fi/Adventure short film, the characters are fairly generic in the way they are portrayed. The young boy (Kyle) is curious of the thing in the field whereas his elder brother (Jason) is generally disinterested, an archetype of an American teenage boy, especially with his choice of clothing. After the mechanical being appears, the young boy seems much more accepting of the impossible than his brother who's first reaction is to film it on his phone. These two characters are easily identifiable with other American boys their age. Bishop, the interrogator, is another archetype of an American soldier in high command. His clothing immediately tells the audience of his occupation and his placement, in front of the boy and looming over him in the shadows, presents him as someone in control and a threatening presence.
In our piece, our characters will be fairly stereotypical in regard to their era. The modern day teenage girl will generally be the quiet, inquisitive sort so that our target audience can identify with her. The 40s girl will have to represent young women of the period and so audiences will not identify with her as much but will still be able to see clear similarities and differences between the modern day girl and herself. In relation to our production, we will use various micro-elements shown above which are commonly used in the adventure genre. Like the radio seen here, our character will find a number of items such as a letter and a photograph that will help her piece the story together and progress on her search. Mystery is a common sub-genre, used in CONTACT as well as our production, so we are considering making one of the characters quite elusive in their intentions to keep the audience in suspense. This will be done by numerous close-ups to show the main character's confusion or fear but not revealing what they are confused or afraid of.
In relation to our piece, we will be addressing the Male Gaze theory subtly. The 1940s female characters are fighting over the male character and so showing how their friendship and the bond between young women is less important than the affections of the male character. Although he will not feature on screen, the storyline is partly structured around him but because of this, we will not need to make the characters into 'an erotic object for characters within the narrative'. The modern day character is just a teenager searching for information and so will not be made into a 'desirable' figure.
However, the narrative is pushed forward by the female characters and it is essentially the absent male character which takes the passive role in the narrative. When researching our audience for our short film, it became quickly apparent we could not gain an accurate collection of data from a diverse range of audiences. Secondary research from the hugely popular film website IMDB proved to be very helpful when looking into results of favourite films. From a large number of people voting, these results are very reliable and show an accurate response to preferred genre in films. At the top is Batman and the Godfather, crime films, followed by the final film to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, an adventure film. This is then in turn followed by sci-fi (Star Wars), western (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) and animation/anime (Spirited Away).
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