2. In what ways does your media product
use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
Before filming our film, we had to consider codes and conventions including:
โข Narrative
โข Genre
โข Mise-en-scene
โข Voice overs
โข Music sound track
Narrative:
I have found while watching short films that there is usually only one or two
characters in the film who are the main characters. Most of the short films I have
watched only had two main characters, for example How they get there, where
the main characters are walking down the street together all the way through the
film.
Our film, Social Enemy, contains one main character who is the victim and a
second who is the enemy and only appears in the last minute of the film.
3. There is nearly always very little dialogue in short films, this is to hold the suspense. Our
film is very similar to this because we have used as little dialogue as possible, even to the
point where the characters are nameless throughout. There is an occasional voice over to
help the audience understand the storyline.
Genre is used in all films to identify them, this is because audiences will only watch a film
if it is from a genre that they recognise and enjoy. Most short films are thrillers or
comedies because of the lack of time on screen and because you cant have a very detailed
storyline. Our film is a thriller, we chose this as a logical choice because of our brief, which
was to create a short film containing both time and technology.
Mise-en-scene is the visual theme within a film. Short films usually donโt follow a specific
style of mise-en-scene with everyone being different. Our short film uses standard
modern clothes, normal cafรฉ scenes and woodland scenes all of with set in present day.
Voice overs are used to help make the narrative more clear by describing parts of the film
or reading out letters etc. short films often use voice overs because they tend to have
little characters and speech. Our film uses voice overs to help the audience to read the
letters and messages used within the film because when making the film, we found it hard
to focus on the text.
4. Music soundtracks are used in most short films to help the audience get into the
film and discover emotions of characters etc. Because of the lack of speech in our
film, music soundtracks are needed to help the audience understand the film.
5. How effective is the combination of
your main product and ancillary texts?
I have tried to use the same house style throughout my three publications, this
is so that they can be identified as been made by the same producer and so
that when the film, poster and article are viewed together they do not appear
to be tacky and miss-matched. The target audience for my poster and article
should be exactly the same target audience for my film. For this reason I have
kept the same style through my publications and adding details to the poster
and the article from the film.
I think my poster and article could be improved if they contained more detailed
information about the film and its actors. I also think my film could be improved
by helping the audience to understand it better with voice overs etc. Better
filming and editing would also help to make it appear more professional.
The poster and article are used to help market the film and to attract the target
audience.
6. What have you learned from your
audience feedback?
When we did our initial research for short film audiences, we found that the
people who watched them the most were in the age group 16 โ 25. with this
in mind we decided that we would use this group as our target audience.
Because thrillers are very popular with people of this age group, we decided
that it would be the best genre for our film. We have conducted some
audience research to discover how well we have met our original target
audience. Most people were happy with the film and documents and said they
were obviously produced by the same person using the same house styles,
they said the film was interesting with tension throughout and a good cliff-
hanger at the end. Some points they also mentioned were, the filming was
often not very well focused and that a small section was of a lesser quality
than the rest, this is because of problems we had with a certain camera and a
piece of file converter software. The audience feedback has been helpful and
will be considered if I ever make a film of this nature again.
7. How did you use media technologies in the
construction and research, planning and
evaluation stages?
During the construction, research, planning and evaluation of my products, I used
digital media to help me. When creating the film we used digital camcorders to
film in high definition and uploaded them to Apple Macs so that they could be
edited in final cut pro. All the clips for the film were arranged in final cut pro and
had transitions and effects added before music from Garage Band was included.
The poster and the article were created using Adobe Photoshop and its tools and
functions. Most research came from the internet and the college portal and some
planning stages were noted in word. For the evaluation our Short film was
uploaded to Facebook and was sent to friends for them to evaluate.
