Evaluation by Mathew Cassidy

In what ways does your media product use,
develop or challenge forms and conventions of
real media products?My media product is a documentary that consists of an interview of a girl talking about happiness
intercut with facts and figures as well as some flashes of what a day for her would involve. This
uses conventions of the genre, whilst at the same time developing them in some areas. The
interview style is very traditional for a documentary, although my main inspiration was from the
Netflix mockumentary series “American Vandal”. My film takes elements from traditional
documentaries whilst at the same time combining it with components from DocuDramas through
the reenactments and stagings of the types of events that take place in her life. This gives the film
some Post-Modern elements as it is almost a remix (linking to theorist ‘Kirby Ferguson’) of other
media products, taking direct influence from American Vandal and other documentaries that I
have seen in preparation for creating my own, such as Tickled and Long Shot. These films helped
build the foundation of my understanding of the genre and continued to influence me all the way
through to my final piece.

real media products? (Cont’d)
My documentary falls into the subgenres of biographical and advocacy. This is because it focuses
on one person and their experiences, as well as their thoughts on the topic of depression.
Biographical documentaries (which are documentaries focused on certain people) often consist
of interviews accompanied with footage of their life. This is seen within my short film in the first
half when footage of her life is cut in between the interview that was conducted with her.
Advocacy documentaries (which are documentaries focused on important issues and topics)
often use statistics to put their points across for the issues that they are discussing. I developed
this by using statistics to make the audience relate to the film rather than to back up the opinions
given. The statistics relate to the subject matter, but are used to give more point of views.

My inspirations include feature films such as The Fear of
13 and Tickled as well as Louis Theroux’s “My scientology
movie”. Each of these films I think are incredibly unique
within their genres, whether it be because of their subject
matter, presentation or visual style. These 3 films
influenced me a lot when making my short film. The TV
show ‘American Vandal’ influenced my shooting style for
the interviews specifically. Other influences include the
short film “3000 miles” as well as “Following” for its
aesthetic. I found the research very useful when
developing the style that I would go with for my short

My target audience research also helped me when learning the forms and conventions, as well as
the audience expectations for documentaries. My target audience research told me that people
wanted to see interviews, as well as primary and secondary research with a voice over included in
most of the film. I have managed to combine the interview and the voice over, having the subjects
interview play over statistics and the other elements of the film. It is important to meet the
expectations of the audience when it comes to the conventions of the genre as they will be able to
better identify where the product fits. Within the film I also challenged things such as stereotypes.
Statistically, men have a higher suicide rate than women, but I chose to focus my film on a woman
as it subverts the expectations of the audience and shows them that this can affect anyone, even
people you wouldn’t expect. This is an important concept within the film as it links to the main
subject of the film and how her problems were often not taken seriously by the people around her.

The mise-en-scene is quite traditional. For the interviews I chose to go with a plain
black background so that the focus was on the subjects words rather than who they
were or where they were. The black is also representative of the dark themes within
the movie and goes well with the subject matter. When it cuts to the shots of the
bedroom, it is what would be expected from a film about depression and fits well
within the movie. The room is messy with clothes and objects scattered around to
show the environment that someone with depression lives in. However, I shot it with
high key lighting as I wanted a sense of optimism to be present within the movie.

The music used in my short film is also quite subversive. With the title being happiness, the
audience would think that the music would be upbeat, but it is slow and sad. However, the
subject matter is about depression, so again the audience would expect the music to be sad, but
when working with the artist ‘Goodbye Gravity’ I asked for the music to be sad yet optimistic,
giving the sense of hope within a short film that appears to be focused on negatives. My
inspiration to have music play a key role came from the short film “Billy Star” directed by Kevin
Abstract who used his bands music as a key focus of the short film to aid the story telling.
Another film that uses sound well is “The Fear of 13” which uses sound effects and somber music
to have a strong impact on the audience.

The poster for my film involved an image of a dying flower with a white background.
This poster conformed to a lot of the codes and conventions expected, although it
could be considered subversive due to the title of the documentary being put below a
dying flower. As the title is Happiness, the audience would not expect to see
something with the connotations of a dying pink rose, however I think this plays well
into the themes of the movie. Another convention that I followed was the layout of the
poster. At the top of the poster it says “A short film by Matthew Cassidy” and at the
bottom there is the title, tagline and the credits in that order. This follows the layout of
most real movie posters and is what the audience expects to see.

My film review magazine article is where I took a few more risks. I tried to encorporate the actual
film into the article as much as I could. I did this by putting the rose from the poster as the
background and changed the opacity so it blended in better. I think this worked well for me as
well as providing a more interesting background than it would have been if it was just a plain
colour. This is subversive to what I saw when researching, as they would usually just have one
single colour as the background. Other than that I mainly stuck to what I saw when conducting
my research. This included using drop caps, a score out of ten and including the directors name
in the information at the top. I also used pictures of the short film, which usually took up up to
half the page in some magazines. This helped me as it created a professional style for my
magazine article.

How effective is the combination of your main
and ancillary texts?
Overall, I think my short film has more positives than negatives. I believe that the
camera work makes the film visually pleasing, as well as looking professional and
aiding the storytelling. Techniques such as using handheld cam when filming the side
profile shots and the shots of the subjects everyday life was used to put the audience in
her perspective. This offers a look into the mind of this girl as she is talking about her
thoughts and it really makes the audience feel included and connect with what she is
saying. I also think that the subject of the documentary was amazing. She offered
unique perspectives and was very engaging to watch and listen to. This, accompanied
with the other footage and statistics collected make an all around immersive short film.

and ancillary texts? (Cont’d)
Although I think the film has more positives, it is not without its flaws. For example I think that
to improve it I could have used a wider range of people. I tested this initially, filming 3 people and
then 3 more, however there was no way for me to fit them all into 5 minutes whilst keeping in
depth thoughts from them, so I decided to focus on just 1 instead. If I had gone with a wider
range of people it would have allowed me to show unique perspectives and opinions of more
people and could mean that more people would relate. Another negative are the statistics. I only
included two lots of statistics within the short film. This was because I did not feel there was an
organic place for me to put them whilst ensuring it flowed with the film. Next time I would ask
the interviewee to show me what they had prepared and perhaps include statistics with what they
were going to say. If I were to include more statistics I would have been able to create a more
professional and informative documentary, meaning it would hold more weight. I also think that
the audio could have been better quality. If I were to have used a better microphone everything
would sound much clearer and more professional.

I faced a lot of challenges when creating my short film. It proved difficult to create
an effective, aesthetically pleasing and professional short film. Some challenges I
faced where issues with lighting and scheduling. I relied heavily on the availability
of a few people that I had to interview. I had to film them all together in the same
location, so it was challenging to organise a group of people to all come to film at
a specific time. Initially I filmed with a group of people rather than just one, so I
ended up asking 5 or 6 people to come and be interviewed and ended up with just
3 turning up. However, I overcame this challenge when I decided to focus on just
one subject instead, meaning the film was more focused and made the behind the
scenes stuff more manageable. Another challenge I faced was lighting. The lights
from the rooms I filmed in were not good enough to use, so I needed to find
another way. I did this by borrowing some lighting equipment from my schools
art department and set it up in front of the subject. This made everything look 10
times better than the initial footage and improved my movie.

I am very happy with the way that my poster turned out. I think that the final design
for my poster fits perfectly with my film. My initial idea was to include a crowd of
people, which would pose the question ‘Are you happy?’ to the audience (Hence the
tagline). This would allow them to perhaps see themselves in the crowd and question
their own happiness. However, I decided I would like to do a more personal film so I
changed the design of the poster to match the new angle that I was coming from. The
poster changed from a blurry crowd of people to a close up of a dying pink rose.
Flowers are meant to represent nature and purity, and roses specifically symbolize
love, beauty and joy. Pink as a colour also represents romance and freedom. But, the
flower is dead. This is powerful imagery for my poster and links perfectly to the
themes of the short film. I also think that it fits really well as it strongly represents the

What have you learned from your audience
feedback?During the pre-production phase of the creation of my short film, I conducted some target
audience research. This research included 10 questions aimed to give me a better understanding
of who my audience are and what they were looking for within my documentary. This helped me
get a better understanding of what I needed to produce as I moved towards the production stage.
First of all, my research helped me discover that the people who would be viewing my
documentary were 52.54% female and 83% were aged 14-18. This gave me a solid understanding
of who I need to aim the film at in order to achieve the greatest response. This helped me decide
to aim it at teenagers and cast a female as it would mean my audience may be able to connect
with it better. However, a large chunk of my audience was male so I ensured that no gender
specific issues were discussed so that the males could also connect with what she was saying. I
think I did this well as it meant that more people could find enjoyment in my media text and it
could impact different people in their own way.

feedback? (Cont’d)
The survey also allowed me to get a strong idea of what was expected initially. I
learned that a voice over was expected by 62% of people. This helped me decide that I
should include a voice over. This idea developed over time. It started as a voice over
from me talking about the answers to the interview, but this changed into having more
of a monologue from the interview over other relevant footage. The idea of having
interviews also came from the fact that 84% of people said it is what they would
expect. The results of my audience feedback influenced so many decisions made in the
creative process of making this short film. Sometimes I went against it, for example the
audience expected happy music, but I chose to use slow, emotional music to get my
point across. The survey was a great help.

Another form of audience feedback I gathered was getting together a focus group of 5 people. I
showed them my initial footage that I gathered and asked for their feedback. This helped me to
get a better understanding of what is important to people and what I could do to improve. One
thing that was a consistent issue was the camera quality. All 5 of them agreed that the camera
work needed improving in the shots that were directly in front of the subject. This came with a
similar complaint which was about the lighting. The lighting in my initial footage was very poor,
making everyone’s head look shiny. This gave it an unprofessional look, so in later attempts I
made sure to use a better lighting set up in order to maintain a higher quality aesthetic. Another
issue they had was the way it was presented. In the first draft I only put together the footage of
three people answering one question. The focus group thought it would be better to have it just
be from one person's point of view and be more pure thoughts rather than them answering
questions. These issues were all improved in the final draft of the video.

One aspect that they took issue with that was unchanged in the final draft was the
audio being low quality. They said that it sometimes sounded muffled and had a lot of
background noise. This was because I used the microphone that was built into the
camera, so it was not the best audio quality. However, in later attempts I was still
unable to access a new microphone, so I had to stick with the built in microphone.
This was my least favourite aspect of my short film, as at AS in the preliminary task I
was in charge of audio and had access to a handheld audio recorder that produced the
most clear and perfect sound when recording. Unfortunately, this year I was not able
to get it back and because of this my audio quality suffered.

I also received feedback through asking my peers their opinion on my film. This
helped me get a more technical view, as a lot of them were working on projects of their
own. This allowed me to tweak my short film even more to make it better without
changing large portions. This feedback included aspects with my cinematography,
leading me to make changes such as using handheld cam for the second camera, rather
than having both static. Also aspects such as making a few editing choices to cut out
imperfections such as camera shakes and fading out audio. Having other people look
at your work also allows you to get fresh eyes on your work so they can point out
obvious mistakes. For example, I missed out the T in “Director” in the credits of my
short film initially, but luckily I had someone to point this out so I could correct it.

Overall, the different types of audience feedback have benefited me greatly. It has really
highlighted the importance of feedback. The feedback before I started production allowed
me to understand what was expected by the audience that would see the product, allowing
me to tailor my film to their needs. The focus group allowed me to further this by
highlighting improvements that need to be made in order for the audience to connect with
the film. Finally, the feedback from my peers allowed me to receive a more professional and
technical point of view of my short film and therefore allowed me to focus on more media
related aspects of my film. I think by having all of these three forms of audience feedback, I
was able to continuously improve my short film and have created a very professional short
film that audiences will be able to connect with.

How did you use new media technologies in the
construction and research, planning and
evaluation stages?An advancement in modern technology has allowed the production of media to become infinitely
easier and accessible. From research stage all the way to this evaluation, advancements in
technology have been an incredible helping hand. During the research stage I had to look at
different magazine reviews, short films and film posters to get an idea of the inspirations for my
short film. When looking for film reviews, Google was a massive help. Rather than having to go
out and buy magazines, I found plenty that were available from just a quick Google search. This
meant that with just a few clicks I was able to pull up a review to analyse, and could even copy it
over onto my blog with ease. This was the same with the posters. I was able to type in the name
of the poster I wanted to analyse and there would be thousands of HD images of that poster that I
could use and put on my blog. Another way that this was useful was the availability of
information. I could search what a good lighting set up is for an interview and I would get a huge
number of results in seconds. This made planning very efficient.

evaluation stages? (Cont’d)Also in the research stage, websites such as YouTube and ShortOfTheWeek.com where very
helpful aids to finding short films that I could look at. The first few films I looked at were all from
YouTube. I found some short films from people that I already knew of and so was able to know
what to expect before going in. However, once I had a better vision of what I was going to create,
I moved to ShortOfTheWeek.com in order to branch out and find new peoples films. This was an
especially helpful website as it categorised them by genre, and they all had been selected to
appear on the website due to their critical acclaim, so a certain degree is quality was always
expected. The final website I used for research was Netflix.com which is where I found only one
of the films from my research. I had heard of this short film before, and was able to locate it due
to Netflix’s extremely large catalogue of films. This was a very useful website as if I was not able
to find this film there my short film may have come out very different, as I would not have had
the inspiration from ‘Long Shot’.

evaluation stages? (Cont’d)During the planning stage, different types of technologies were used. As I didn’t have a script or
storyboard (because I was making a documentary that relied entirely on what someone else was
going to say) I instead planned my shots through pictures and talking about influences. These
were compiled on my media blog. This is another piece of technology that was very helpful.
Websites such as ‘Wordpress’ make it so much easier to create your own website such as a blog or
portfolio. This is what I did with my media, as it allowed me to have all my coursework in one
place. This meant that I could access it from any computer just by typing in the URL. This was
similar to another technology that helped me. When planning things such as my film review, I
used Google Docs. With Google Docs, you can type up and create documents that are stored in
the Cloud (another useful piece of technology). This means that it is saved automatically to an
external source, so it can be accessed from elsewhere. This meant that I could work on my film
review from home, at school or anywhere else just by logging into Google.

evaluation stages? (Cont’d)Also in planning, I had to create a mock-up of what would become my poster. Again,
utilising Google I was able to find a background image for my poster mock-up. I then
opened this in a Photoshop document and used different layers and texts to create the
poster. Things such as the Magic wand tool helped me make different images fit better
with the poster as it allowed me to remove certain parts of images. I also had to get
creative when creating the title, as photoshop did not recognise one of the characters
in my title. To solve this I took a screengrab of the title in a Microsoft Word document,
copied it over to my photoshop page, used the magic wand to remove the background
and used that as the title of my film. I had to get creative and combine multiple
different technologies in order to create a poster that was to the best of my abilities.

evaluation stages? (Cont’d)Photoshop was also important to my film review and final poster. With the film review, I
had to set everything up in the format of a magazine. This included having to divide the
page into columns and creating text boxes to write those columns. I also had to include
some images from my film, which involved screenshotting frames from my short film and
copying them over to photoshop where I would put them on the page where I thought it
would look good. Similarly, a lot of integration between different technologies were used for
my final poster. As with the previous draft, I had to screen grab the title from a word
document in order for Photoshop to recognise the text. I also had to use email in order to
get the photo I took from my iPhone on to the computer that I used to create my poster. I
then had to copy this over from one Photoshop document to another as I used the same
image in my magazine review.

evaluation stages? (Cont’d)During the production of my short film, advancements in camera technologies are very helpful.
Now that digital cameras are popular and better than ever, it is so much less convoluted to
produce a piece of media. Rather than being shot on film, digital cameras record straight onto the
camera. These cameras have huge storage capacities, meaning more can be recorded without any
worry, whereas with film cameras you would have to keep buying rolls of film. This means that it
is cheaper and more efficient to use digital cameras. Also, having the footage be stored on the
actual camera, you are able to copy it over to a computer much easier. This means that you don’t
even need to use a memory card anymore, you can just plug the camera straight into the
computer and drag the footage into a folder. This links with the streamlining of computer
technology. Advancements in computers have meant that the process has been sped up and
streamlined to the point where it only takes a few seconds to carry out a number of tasks.

evaluation stages? (Cont’d)One new media technological advancement that I didn’t utilise was microphones.
Microphones have gotten a lot smaller and are still able to record very clear audio. I
could have purchased a small microphone that can clip on to the interviewee and it
would have improved the audio quality and the overall production value of the short
film. Unfortunately, I only used in the microphone that was built in to the camera
(Which in itself is an advancement in media technology). There are some benefits to
this, for example having the audio already synced with the video, rather than having to
sync it manually, however I think that using a different microphone would have been a
benefit overall. If I were to re-do this project I would use this experience and choose to
use a better quality microphone to improve my work.

evaluation stages? (Cont’d)After filming, I had to edit. To do this I used Adobe Premiere Pro. I initially started doing a rough
edit on iMovie (because I only had access to Premiere at school) but I did not like the way it was
set out and I found it restricting due to the lack of advanced features and tools. I found Premiere
very useful as everything was quite easy to use. There were a few struggles, such as when I
transfered my footage from one mac to another, I lost the music file in the process. However,
there is a very easy way to link media through just a few clicks with Premiere, So I was quickly
able to import the music again and have it sync to where it was previously. Also, if I ever had any
trouble, I could use YouTube again to my advantage. There are thousands of Premiere tutorials
available from just one search on YouTube, that take you step by step through a number of
options on Premiere. This helped me get tips on how to do things such as make the title grow
over time or what tools fix background noise the best. I found Premiere to be the best option for
editing as I had experience from last year, and I found it suited me the most.

evaluation stages? (Cont’d)After I completed my short film and ancillary texts, I had to use the internet again to
upload them. I uploaded my short film to YouTube. Wi-Fi has improved meaning that
I was able to upload it in around two minutes. Computers have also improved meaning
that I was able to export it from Premiere into any file type that I wanted. This made it
easier to upload to YouTube as some file types work better for YouTube. After I
uploaded it, YouTube automatically provides a link that you can use to embed the
video. I used this link to upload it to my WordPress blog. This is also where I uploaded
my ancillary texts. This website allowed me to keep everything in one place. It allows
you to scroll from my final video down to my initial plans, inspiration and research. It
was an incredibly useful tool during each stage of production.

evaluation stages? (Cont’d)Overall, I think the advancement in technology has been very useful to the
construction of media products. New media technologies have been able to streamline
the production process and create a much more efficient process. Whether it be online
technology such as websites, or equipment used to film. All of it has been beneficial as
I don’t have much experience, yet everything is much easier to get the hang of now. It
was also useful to be able to keep everything in one place thanks to the blog.
Everything worked together and it made the process not only more efficient, but also
allowed me to learn practically.

Evaluation by Mathew Cassidy

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