Evaluation - Megan

Question 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms & conventions of real media products?

1. Narrative Organization - In Back to Solitude, the narrative appears in reverse. The film starts with the two characters facing each other in a field at the end of their relationship, and works back to the moment they first meet. In our film, we use flashbacks to show the passing of the relationship between our characters meaning that we do not follow a conventional linear and chronological narrative. In this sense, I think Trapped conforms to the conventions of real media products, as both of these short films document the passing of time, though in different ways. Our film conforms a simple version of Todorov's theory of narrative, in that we start with an equilibrium, there is a disruption to this, and then this is resolved and a new equilibrium is formed. This theory can also be applied to Back to Solitude, further showing that our film conforms to common conventions.

2. Characterisation - In Tune for Two, the more vulnerable character is portrayed as weak through his facial expressions, and position in relation to the other character - he is on his knees, facing away from him.

In our film, we wanted to show a different side to our more vulnerable character. To do this, we have a scene with him hanging out with his friends, showing that he is on an equal footing to some of the people in his life. However, even this is ruined by Amy's calls, and demonstrates to the audience that he can't escape her. This prompts a reaction from his friends, who find the situation "weird", showing an element of isolation from Sam between the people we have seen him be most comfortable with. We challenge the conventions of showing vulnerability here, as we show a different side to Sam than his constant vulnerability when he is around Amy.

  This episiode of Coronation Street presents Tyrone as we tried to portray Sam, thereby conforming to the conventions used in the soap. Our film very much conforms to what we see in this particular episode between Kirsty and Tyrone, as it shows a build up of anger before a climactic ending, however there is no apology from Amy, or recognition that she has done wrong.  

3. Characterisation - Back to Solitude shows a quite stereotypical characterisation of its two characters. We see the male character drinking beer and sitting in a laid back manner, in contrast to the female character reading a magazine and appearing quite feminine. In Trapped, we also wanted to show a pretty stereotypical representation of our characters, to create more of an impact when we introduced the violence. In this flashback scene, Sam has his arm around Amy in a seemingly protective way, though her dominance comes through here as she does not reciprocate the gesture and instead is almost turned away from him.

This conforms to the characterisation of the characters in Back to Solitude as we have created the couple in much the same way, thinking about how we wanted to characterise them and trying to decide how best to portray this.

4. Camerawork - In Tune for Two, camerawork is essential to portraying the status of the two characters. A low angle is used to show the dominance of the murderer, reminding the audience that he still has power over the other character even though the tone of the film is more humorous at this point. Camerawork is also important when showing the dominance of the character of Amy throughout the film, as well as Sam's more vulnerable side. We wanted to use some more experimental camerawork in our film, as well as conforming to the use of somewhat standard camerawork in other short films. For this reason, we filmed shots such as this one where Sam drives to college.

 Instead of simply using the shot of him driving away, and trying to show shots of Amy ringing him once he arrived at college, we decided to film him actually driving which challenges the conventions of other short films I have looked at. However, this being said, short films are often renowned for their experimental nature so in this sense experimenting with camerawork could be seen as conforming to conventions.

5. Sound - Much of the narrative in Back to Solitude is communicated through voiceover. The voiceover helps to communicate the narrative as otherwise this could potentially be quite confusing for the viewer. In other short films that I looked at such as Tune for Two and The Black Hole, the dialogue was very minimal and they mostly just used ambiend sound. I think Trapped conforms to the sound used most commonly in short film, as we have pretty minimal dialogue and rely on diegetic sound throughout to communicate meaning. One particular bit of sound that we relied on was the sound of the mobile phone ringing, which signaled the violence and reiterated it to the audience throughout. Nothing hugely similar to this appeared in any of the short films I looked at, so this could be seen to challenge the conventions.

6. Mise en scene - As our film is supposed to be realistic, we tried to make the mise en scene reflect this. We used realistic settings that we thought Sam would be in, such as his house and at college. This conforms to the conventions used in other short films, such as The Black Hole where we see the character in a suit and tie in an office setting. This also shows the importance of having suitable costume in relation to setting, as the man in the office needs to be wearing the smart clothing for the audience to believe the setting. We tried to conform to this in Trapped, by keeping Sam and Amy in stereotypical clothing for their age which would be appropriate for whichever setting.

 Props were also important for us to consider as we filmed in Laura's house, so we needed to be wary of using props that would relate to her in any way as we needed to make the setting believable. Because of this, we ended up with very few key props, and only very few props in the background.

Sometimes this became more difficult to achieve, such as above, but we did our best to work around the fact that it appeared quite cluttered and made sure that we did not move anything in the background accidentally to ensure that we did not end up with any continuity errors. The Black Hole also only seems to use necessary props in the background, and the man does not hugely interact with his surroundings. For the most part, we conformed to the conventions of mise en scene in already existing short films. 

7. Themes & Issues - Our film showed a representation of a relationship containing domestic abuse. We wanted to challenge the conventions of stereotypical representations of domestic abuse - not only in short film but also in other aspects of the media, such as Coronation Street's current storyline with Kirsty and Tyrone. We felt that male domestic abuse was a topic that we could successfully portray as realistic, even though there is not a lot similar to this around at the moment. The relationship in Back to Solitude is also the issue, though does not deal with it in quite the same way as we chose to in Trapped. We used the iPhone throughout the film to reiterate the domestic abuse the whole way through, as Amy's 'clinginess' was one of the key factors, and issues, in their relationship.

 The key issue in our film challenged the stereotypical portrayals of domestic abuse in the media, though the relationship between the two characters was shown in a way that conforms to conventions of relationships, in that we see the couple doing stereotypical 'couple' things, such as having dinner together.

8. Post-production - Post-production effects are used widely in all types of media, including short films, and ours was no exception to this. With post-production, we were able to add in transitioning effects to create our flashbacks and alter the colours slightly to make it more obvious to the audience that they had moved to a different point in time. Without this, our film could have become very confusing to keep up with if the viewer had no prior knowledge of the film. Effects were also used in Tune for Two to show the audience that the person whose eyes we are seeing through is not quite conscious.

A blur effect was used to demonstrate this, as well as a blinking eye which added to the illusion. We conformed to the conventions of real media products here, as using effects in post-production is quite common. 

9. Editing - Most of our editing is quite slow paced throughout, particularly in the beginning as there is not a lot going on. It becomes more fast paced at the end, when we reach Sam's 'breakdown'. This adds tension and is quite common in film and television to show a build up of suspense. We also tried to do some more interesting things with editing, which involved filming scenes from inside a cupboard, an oven and a fridge and then editing these together later to show the passing of time without having to use fades or other editing techniques. Editing in The Black Hole is interesting as the special effects are quite clever. Obviously all of these had to be done in editing/post-production and show how much of a film is actually made afterwards. As the suspense builds towards the end of the film when we realise what he is going to do with his new-found power, the pace of the editing quickens much like ours does at the end of our film, meaning we have conformed to the conventions of editing. 

The Poster

Above are a selection of short film posters. The final four (6-9) are posters made through Virgin Media shorts, where they ask people to make posters for the short films on their shortlist. More information about this can be found here. Because of this, these posters are slightly different to other short film posters, (2 & 5) in that they only contain the title of the film and the name of the director, as opposed to having a credit block or references to festivals and awards. Posters 1, 3 and 4 are from full length feature films, that fall under the social realist genre and therefore link to our short film.

Conventions of Film Posters

• Title - larger than the rest of the text, usually stands out in terms of positioning/colour. Though our title is the same green as some of our other text, we still feel that it stands out due to it's positioning and the fact that it is on a plain background so there is nothing else to distract from it. The title also usually suggests something about the film itself, particularly in short film as this is often the only thing an audience will have to go by before seeing the film, as trailers are uncommon. Our title and the image above it work together to suggest that he is 'trapped' in some way.
• Tagline - most often found on feature length film posters, however we decided to include one as a quote on our poster as we felt that the poster needed something to indicate the nature of the storyline further.
• Director's name - this tends to appear separate from the credit block, Fish Tank, Ginger & Rosa and This is England all support this, with "a film by..." appearing above/below the title on all of them. 
• Actor's names - these appear somewhere on the poster, usually quite large, particularly if the actors are particularly well known as this would be used as a selling point of the film. The names above the title of the film have a dual purpose, as they not only show who acted in the film but who it was directed by. The way this is laid out though, fits more with the conventions of actor's names on a poster.
• Credit block - contains the names of people involved in the film making process, and usually appears at the bottom of the poster. This is true of The Lost Purse, Ginger & Rosa and This is England, though Fish Tank uses this slightly differently as it is actually more central. We decided that our credit block would look best on the screen of the phone, as not only did this give us more room on the poster, it also helped to integrate the phone more with the rest of the design and was more of an original design.
• Image of main characters - most film posters contain an image of the main character(s) in a setting from the film. In films with more well-known actors, this has a dual effect as doing this could also persuade fans of a particular actor/actress to go and see the film because of the 'star' in it. We chose to use an image of our main character on our poster, as we felt that it was important to convey some of our storyline and this was best done by showing Sam looking upset/distressed.
• Ratings - ratings are useful as a part of the selling point of a film. Where a rating is from is also important, as if the source is not interesting to the audience the poster is trying to reach, then they will seem less credible. Ratings tend to come from newspapers and film magazines, and we wanted to conform to these conventions and therefore have ratings from Empire magazine, and Little White Lies. 
• References to award wins/film festival entries - again, these are an important selling point for a film. If an audience can see that a film has been successful at festivals or has won many awards, they will probably be more tempted to go and see it. We decided just to put ratings on our poster, as it was easy for us to add them in to the design with the use of the iPhone. 

For the most part, our poster conforms to the conventions of both short film posters and feature film posters. We did not try to challenge the conventions we had looked at in any way, and only really tried to develop what we had seen by adding in the iPhone as another layer to the poster which would allow us to present the same information in a slightly different way.

The Review

This review layout is slightly different to what usually appears in Little White Lies, as the image that is usually along the top has its own page on the right. However, the rest of the review is much the same with three columns, and the ratings at the end. The review can be found online here. We looked at many reviews from the magazine to give us an idea of what ours should look like, as our aim was to conform to the conventions usually found in the reviews. 

We analysed what was found in each paragraph of the reviews, as well as learning that most reviews tended to have around 5-7 paragraphs. We aimed to make ours conform to this, and ended up with 7 of our own paragraphs.

To make sure that we were conforming to the conventions of the magazine, we not only focused on layout, but also analysed the type of language used in the Little White Lies magazine. Through looking at this example from a review of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo as well as other Little White Lies reviews, we found some common features of the language and were able to assume that the magazine and therefore the reviews are aimed at quite a sophisticated audience.   

Some of these language features that we found were:

• alliteration
• complex sentences
• restricted code
• adjectives
• adverbs
• rhetorical questions
• puns
• metaphors

We then tried to use these language features in our own review, for example: 

We intentionally analysed the language and the layout to conform to the conventions of a Little White Lies review, as well as analysing the layout in the same way.

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



Question 3 - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

 
Here are screen grabs of our Facebook feedback page (above) and our Twitter account (below). We received our feedback primarily through these two sources (particularly Facebook), though also received feedback verbally and via text in particular from friends and family. 

 
Here are a couple of our Vlogs where we discussed some of our ideas for audience feedback, and things that we changed because of this.
   

Question 4 - How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?