A2 Media Evaluation

Joseph Griffith

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

• In our film, we (Joseph and I) believe we have followed some of the conventions that are seen in many of this kind of film. The narrative structure of the film follows the tropes that seem consistent within the subgenre of films that deal with those who have lost a love. In “GHOST” (1990) the character of the woman is left behind and her life falls apart until the man signifies his presence. Ours, however challenges this convention by having the protagonist be the person who is left behind, rather than those who are lost.

• We also challenged the trope of using Todorov’s Narrative Theory by not beginning with equilibrium, but rather with disarray, introducing the previous equilibrium where the complication would normally arise. Films that are told out of the narrative sequence is usually saved for mystery thrillers, something that has become a trope of the director M. Night Shyamalan similarly to The Sixth Sense (1999), and utilised by the director Christopher Nolan in the films Memento (2002) and Inception (2010).

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

• In terms of camera angles and shots we utilised a POV shot from which we drew inspiration from Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator” (2000), as it was fitting to homage as it was dealing with a similar theme, of a man who had lost his family. The film began with an establishing shot as that is a shot used in every film to convey vital information to the audience of the setting. We also had some very unassuming shots, specifically of the sky and of a carpet, in which we tried to make them more dynamic a shot type we were inspired by Terrence Malik who often tries to make dynamic shots of the mundane.

A shot from Terrence Malik’s “Tree of Life”

Ridley Scott’s scene from “Gladiator”

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72uwmHsFSAg

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

• We have also developed a mis en scene motif in which we created an atmosphere by altering the colours in post production similar to the styles used by Zack Snyder who relies heavily on cinematography in the construction of the setting. In this area, for the scenes in which Joseph appears alone we had a destaturated look with grey skies in order to denote darkness in the world, and connote to the fact that colour and energy has left his life.

Zack Snyder’s “Sucker Punch”.

How effective is combination of products?

• Our combination of products is, in my opinion, very effective. We have designed both a teaser poster (usually reserved for summer blockbuster, in order to give our film a sense of magnitude) as well as theatrical poster and two reviews. Before we even had a chance to show our film, we had been informed by some of our teachers, that other pupils, who were lower in the school and had no knowledge of the A2 Level films and coursework, had seen our poster and said that they’d like to see the film too. We consider this to be a clear demonstration of the effectiveness of our product combination.

How effective is combination of products?

• I tried to tie all of the products together also in a conciliatory manner to the point that is seen with true blockbusters. For example:

What have I learned from feedback?

• As mentioned previously, before we could show the film we had been told that other pupils had been enquiring about seeing our film, so we gained some considerable positive feedback in the area of our posters.

• Aside from that, before we showed it to any audience, we had unforeseen technical difficulties with exportation of our film, as we are not administrators on the school system. To this end, we had to show our film to two of our teachers before its “official” unveiling, but Joe and I did not wish to be present in order to see what their reactions were, or influence them. When we returned, they said that it had beautiful shots and moved them to tears.

• We then showed our film to the Year 12 Media class, and they had filled out our questionnaire. The results were overwhelmingly positive, as was the results from our select screening that we performed.

What have I learned from feedback?- Questionnaire results

Would you give this film a positive or negative review?

1st Qtr2nd Qtr

What have I learned from feedback?- Questionnaire results

Would you watch this film?

1st Qtr2nd Qtr

What have I learned from feedback?- Questionnaire results

Was the poster, in your opinion, effective?

yesno

What have I learned from feedback?- Questionnaire results

How would you rate this film out of 10?

10987 or below

What have I learned from feedback?

• As mentioned previously, before we could show the film we had been told that other pupils had been enquiring about seeing our film, so we gained some considerable positive feedback in the area of our posters.

• Aside from that, before we showed it to any audience, we had unforeseen technical difficulties with exportation of our film, as we are not administrators on the school system. To this end, we had to show our film to two of our teachers before its “official” unveiling, but Joe and I did not wish to be present in order to see what their reactions were, or influence them. When we returned, they said that it had beautiful shots and moved them to tears.

• We then showed our film to the Year 12 Media class, and they had filled out our questionnaire. The results were overwhelmingly positive, as was the results from our select screening that we performed.

Technologies used

• Throughout the task we, of course, had to make significant use of the digital camera for recording the film, as well as use of another digital camera designed for image capture rather than video capture which we used for our posters, in this area we have seen an evolution in our skills from AS Levels and a clear improvement in our skills in framing and composition of an image, as we have been told by our teachers.

Technologies used

We have also improved in the area of image editing and in particularly our use of Adobe Photoshop. This can be exemplified with our posters, in which we managed to create a “ghostly” image of Nicola through reducing her opacity and making her translucent.

Technologies used

We also remained in constant use of our blogger accounts from our AS portfolio, in this capacity obviously it would be difficult to make any marked improvements, but over the course we did figure out how attach youtube video files to posts.

Technologies used

• We also developed our use of logicpro9, a music editing/recording software, which we used to develop our score for the film, through the use of this software, we added reverb, compression, EQ, delay and a stereospread.

Technologies used

• Throughout the course we developed our understanding of searching the internet, with the search engine Google for example, for relevant and pertinent topics, a skill that became vital when searching for film posters, trailers and reviews.