Hamza Butt's short film aimed to challenge conventions of typical short films by not including a resolution and showing the perspective of a boy from Yorkshire on 9/11 instead of an American view. To promote the film, Butt created a film poster and magazine page that used effective combinations seen in other real media products. Audience feedback was gathered through a questionnaire to ensure the film appealed to the target audience. Butt learned that audiences prefer receiving media through internet platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. A variety of media technologies were used in the research, planning, and construction stages, including the internet, Google, YouTube, word processors, and film/photography equipment.
2. In what ways does your media product
use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real
media products?
Me and my partner both realised that for our short film to work we would have
to add similar aspects to certain projects that have already been attempted.
The reason why we decided that we would do this is because for our film to
work and also attract the similar type of audience we would have to attempt to
use aspects that have previously been used. However My film was very
different and also challenged the convention of short films, the way that it
challenged the conventions of short films was that my story did not have the
typical ending with a resolution it had an ending which showed both
protagonist being attacked, other ways that it challenged conventions was
that it didn’t show the view of an American about the 9/11 but of a boy from
Yorkshire, which showed that the 9/11 wasn’t an American disaster but a
global disaster which affected people from different races and religions.
3. How effective is the combination of your
main product and ancillary texts?
• My film production also required me and my partner to produce a film poster
which helps to promote my film with audiences and a magazine page which
talks about my film. I think that that our film poster and magazine both work in
effective ways, why I believe that they do is because we have used effective
combinations and aspects that are shown in posters that people see for films
day in day out. On the next page I have displayed the poster for my film
TheWarWithin as you can see its quite a simple poster however it is effective
as you can see the bold title stands out like it would for any other film, also
you can see that the main characters are all displayed on the front cover
which helps to attract audiences attention and also helps to create a sense of
interest to find out what the film is about.
• The magazine talks about and reviews the film, this is a very effective
technique to have if you are wanting to gain audience attention, on the
magazine page we have many pictures which have been taken from behind
the scenes. This is one conventions which is used by people in film, I have
used this convection because I know it is effective and also that it works hand
in hand when trying to gain audience attention for your film.
4. What have you learned from your
audience feedback?
To find out about audience feedback we decided to carry a questionnaire
which helped us to make sure that the genre of film that we chose will
appeal to a certain audience. After doing the questionnaire we displayed
the results in tables to show that the genre that we had chosen was liked
by the audience which we wanted to target. Doing this questionnaire
helped as from this we discovered our target audience and it also gave us
a root of way for who we should be producing this film for. I have also
learned that audiences like to receive media products from different media
platforms, the most popular form that I have seen being used and also
have used myself is the internet.
People tend use the internet for everything this is why everything that I did
regarding the film I displayed on the internet using websites such as
YouTube, Facebook and twitter. By doing this I learned that in todays day
and age to receive a good response from audiences the best way to
display your work is on the internet as everyone uses this one media
platform.
5. How did you use media technologies in the
construction and research, planning and evaluation
stages?
To research for my film production I used many different media technologies, the
most important one that I used was the internet to research for my film production
and also for the type of genre that my film fell into. I also used Google as one of my
research points, Google was a research pillar for me as from Google I found stories
and pictures relating my film and the information regarding the background of my
films genre.
Another media technology which I used to research for my film and watch different
short films that are on the same level as my own was YouTube this was a good media
platform to use as it helped to give me an insight and ideas to what I should be doing
to make my short film work with the type of audience that I wanted to target.
I used word processor to create questionnaires and PowerPoint to create research
power points for my film as time was passing by.
6. • During the research and planning stages of our media product we also used a blog
as a way to display all our work to people, this is a good way to display work as a lot
of people can see it and also comment on what they think about the work. It also
helps as you can display all the progress that you make overtime and embed
pictures and videos to show where you get ideas and inspiration for your chosen
genre from.
• Using blogger helped as I used as way to update and show my audience where I was
getting with my film and it was good as I saw myself the progress that I was making
day by day.
7. • In the construction stage of our media product we used high end window
operated computers which had software’s such as Edidus which helped us
to edit our footage which we had taken and title maker which helped us to
create titles for our film. We used a Panasonic camcorder to film our
footage this was a high quality camcorder, this was good as it gave us high
quality footage, the same type of cameras are also used to film short films.
During the construction of our media product we also used an SLR camera
to take high quality pictures of when went out to film certain scenes.
