The document summarizes a student's creative critical reflection portfolio project. The student created a short horror film depicting a character facing threats from someone he killed in a past life. He used conventions from typical horror films. The film represents the teenage audience and does not contain any specific message. The student will distribute the film through social media platforms like YouTube and Vimeo to promote it and engage audiences. He integrated various technologies like a DSLR camera, editing software, and online platforms into creating and sharing the project.

1. Creative Critical Reflection
FOR ADVANCE PORTFOLIO
BY: AFZAL AMIN SHIVJI

2. How do your products use or challenge conventions
and how do they represent social groups or issues?
• The short film that I have made, depicts a flashback from the previous life of the
character and what happens with him in this one. My idea does not actually
challenge any conventions, rather it makes use of some conventions from typical
horror movies. In the video there is a scene where the lights have gone
malfunctioned which is often shown in horror movies as a symptom of a
supernatural presence. Then I’ve also shown a scene where the character in this
life sees the ghost of the guy he had seen being killed in the flashback and who
had threatened he would be back. Now talking about the camera work, here as
well I have actually used the conventions of horror films such as the scene where
the ghost is shown in the mirror etc.

3. • My video under the thriller, horror category is a representation of a character, who
had been a villain in his previous life and killed an innocent guy and his sister just
for the sake of fun and now in his current life, he faces the threats from the same
brother who had threatened to come back for his revenge. The viewership of this
video isn’t limited to a particular age group of people, however I am sure this is
going to be very popular amongst the teenagers as these days teenagers who
prefer horror movies also want a bit of a thrill in them. The video does not actually
contain any message for any particular age group, however when working on this
video, I knew that this video would mostly be liked by the teenagers.

4. Inspirations:
• As I mentioned earlier, that I had used some of the conventions
from the typical movies, I also had my story and some shots
particularly inspired by an award winning short film ‘ALONE’.
Some of the shorts are also inspired from this short film. I came
across this short film on YouTube while I was searching for some
short films.

5. How do the elements of your production work
together to create a sense of ‘branding’?
• These days young filmmakers such as myself have had clear advantage of having
distributed their products through the most virtually active places, known as social
media platforms, where a person can interact with millions of people across the globe
and exhibit their relative work and get it reviewed for free. Similarly my video being on
one of the social media video sharing website is soon going to get recognized and
reviewed by the critics and then get recognized by the young filmmakers or film-
enthusiasts. There are three elements that I have worked for, which collectively
contribute in getting my short film promoted. First one being the short film itself, that I
recently uploaded on a video sharing website named ‘Vimeo’. The second element is the
webpage and the third one being a movie poster. Throughout the elements of my
portfolio one thing that is similar are that the theme is not clearly understandable,
which is an advantage for me because this would attract more and more audience
towards me and my video would get more views and hits. This makes all of the elements
quite interlinked and hence makes a perfect combination to market the music video. As
well as the apparel worn by the artists are all same throughout all the three elements.

6. How do your products engage with the audience and
how would they be distributed as real media
products?
• As I had mentioned previously, when working on my project I had kept in mind
that it would be a major target towards the teenage audience,. Similarly when
the teenage watch this movie and when they would like it, they will
unconsciously be using the most powerful marketing tool, which is the word-of-
mouth to talk about my film which would then attract others towards it as well.
• Coming towards the distribution, I will be using the help of the modern tools of
distribution, the social media platforms. Social media these days has been a
great channel of distribution for young passionate filmmakers such as my self to
distribute our work online and that too for free, which would give me an
advantage as it would soon get viral all over the internet and I would get the
reviews from the audience as well as the critics for free.

7. • Following will be the social media platforms that I will be using to
distribute my video online using platforms such as YouTube,
Dailymotion etc.

8. Post Card Analysis:
This is the post card/ poster for my short film The Flashback. The
technology that I had used to make this poster are the following:
Lenovo B5400(laptop), Canon EOS 60D, 70-200mm lens,
www.canva.com (poster making website). The poster reflects a very
minor part of the short film I have made for my Advanced Portfolio.
This shows the two characters of the short film and also reflects
some connection between the two that viewers will get to know
when the watch the film. I made the poster deliberately like this so
that it catches the attention of the viewers who come across it for
the first time and are forced to think over what the film is all about.
This poster will be used all over the social media for the marketing of
my short film and will also be used for the posters on the movie
rating websites such as IMDB and Rottentomatoes. This poster has
also been used on the website I had made for my short film, using
the domain of www.weebly.com.

9. How did your integrate technologies – software,
hardware and online – in this project?
• Shooting the whole short film requires quite a few or more resources
without which shooting isn’t possible. Here in my case as well, I’ve used
a few resources to produce my video, edit it and upload it on the
internet. Firstly I’ve used a professional DSLR named Canon EOS 60D to
shoot my video on a 1080p full HD format on 5.3 frames per second.
Which I placed on two accessories during my whole shoot, namely a
basic tripod for a stable shot and a self made Steadicam and a shoulder
rig. After the whole process of shooting my video I used a single editing
software named Windows Movie Maker. I stitched all the videos together
added some filters and trimmed to make a final video of 4 minutes and
11 seconds. I’ve used an online poster making website named
www.canva.com and then the webpage making I have used
www.weebly.com

10. • Finally the second part had been completed, I proceeded to the
part where internet was required. I uploaded my video on the
website www.vimeo.com and added its hyperlink to my blog and
also linked the video on my webpage through an extension along
with a few evidences of my work on the blog. This is how I
managed to integrate different technologies – software, hardware,
online and learned the importance of the use of technology for
this purpose.