The candidate discusses their A2 media studies final project of creating a short film along with ancillary tasks of a film review page and poster. They explain how the different elements were linked together through consistent branding, fonts, colors, and inclusion of stills from the film. Feedback was gathered from audiences on websites like Facebook, YouTube, and through a survey to improve the work. A variety of new media technologies were used in the research, planning, construction, and evaluation stages including online databases to research other films, online project planning tools, digital cameras and editing software to create the film, and social media to share and get feedback on the work.

1. The Waiting Room
Evaluation
Matt Duval
Candidate number 4468

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

3. In what ways does your media product
use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
 For our A2 Level Media studies final project we decided
to create a short film. For the ancillary tasks we chose to
create a film review page and a poster for our film. Both
of the ancillary tasks and the main film needed to be
closely linked so that the audience could see that they
are all related to each other.
 I believe that all of our pieces go together very well. We
have used forms and conventions of real media
reviews, posters and short films. In some cases we have
challenged the conventions of films and media texts.

4. How we used conventions of real media
products
 Our film also has a clear message which is reoccurring
throughout the entire film. The message is that there will
always be someone bigger and better than you. While
researching other short films we have found that lots of
other shorts contain a similar message. For example “the
bulling effect” contains the message “you never know
what your bulling might lead to”. This is one of the
examples of our film using the conventions of real media
products (short films).

5. How we challenged conventions of real
media products
 Our short film has some funny parts in it which is
uncommon in short films that show bulling. This is one of
the ways that we chose to change/challenge the
conventions of real media products.
 The main focus in our short film are the two characters
that sitting on the small black leather sofa. These two
characters change one at a time throughout our film. The
shorter of the two is always replaced with a noticeably
taller person. This happens 3 times during our short film.
It is uncommon that the actors will change so regularly
during a 3-5 minute short film. We have chosen to
challenge this convention to put emphasis on our
message.

6. How effective is the combination of
your main product and ancillary
texts?
Question 2

7. How effective is the combination of your
main product and ancillary texts?
 I think that my ancillary tasks look good together
because they use some of the same elements in all 3
tasks.
 One of the ways we managed to tie all of our projects
together was to include the logo at the start of the film
and on the poster.

8. How effective is the combination of your
main product and ancillary texts?(continued)
 We also used a house style consisting of fonts colours
and symbols. We used the same fonts and colours for
our logo, blog, film, review and poster. This helps us with
continuity between the film and the ancillary tasks.
 The stars in the review are also the same as the ones on
the poster.
Stars

9. How effective is the combination of your
main product and ancillary texts?(continued)
 The Poster and Review page both contain a still image
that was taken from the actual film. It is of a large black
clock on the wall. This clock is there for two reasons, to
link the two media texts together and to represent the
title “The Waiting Room”.
Clock

10. How effective is the combination of your
main product and ancillary texts?(continued)
 My poster (left) is a simple design that was inspired by
another short film poster (right). We decided to use a still
from the film. We used the coloured corner from the
professional poster in our own poster.

11. What have you learned from your
audience feedback?
Question 3

12. What have you learned from your
audience feedback?
 At every major stage of my project I have been gathering
audience feedback in order to improve my work.
 I have used a variety of web 2.0 such as Facebook,
YouTube and Twitter.

13. and
 Throughout my entire A2 project I have been gathering
feedback from a my target audience using a variety of
methods.
 I used Survey Monkey to create an online survey.
 I then shared the link to it on:
The Front Room Films Facebook
and Twitter page
 To get the most amount of
feedback.

14.  For example one of our comment on YouTube said that
“the opening scene was too long”. When we showed this
to our classmates in school they said the same thing.
We then reviewed the footage and agreed with the
comments. To resolve this problem we speed up the
shot and cut part of it out.

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

16. How did you use new media technologies in
the construction and research, planning and
evaluation stages?
 Throughout our research, planning, and evaluation
stages we used a variety of new media technologies.
 For example during our research we used lots of web 2.0
based websites. To research current short films from
professional and amateur film producers we used a
variety of different sites. Some of the websites we used
include:
 http://www.youtube.com
 http://www.futureshorts.com/
 http://www.indiemoviesonline.com/free-movies

17. New Media Technologies – Research
 Being able to look at real short films over the internet
gave us a good idea of the codes and conventions of
short films. Because of the internet we were able to view
thousands of short films online for free online for free
saved us lots of time and allowed us to view a larger
range of videos from all types of producers.

18. New Media Technologies – Planning
 To plan my work I used a website called Toms Planner
(http://www.tomsplanner.com)
 This website is a great tool that lets you make and share
a Gantt chart. Using this online software allowed me to
share the chart with my media partner.
 It helped me to keep on to make sure that all of my work
was completed and that I hadn’t missed anything out.
 I could of made a Gantt chart in excel or on paper this
would of been harder to share and edit.
 This planning tool is a great use of new media
technology.

19. New Media Technologies – Construction
 We used new media technology in the construction of
our film. To film our short film we chose to use Canon
MD 205 digital video cameras. To edit the video we used
Apple iMovie software.
 Digital videos can be edited and transferred much
easier than traditional film cameras. They are also much
less costly and simpler to operate.
 The videos are already in a digital form so can be easily
uploaded to YouTube

20. New Media Technologies – Construction
(continued)
 We also used Compact digital stills cameras to take
pictures for our poster and magazine review. To edit the
pictures and media texts we used adobe Photoshop CS3
 Because the photos are digital they can be edited and
transferred easier than traditional 35mm cameras.
 Another benefit of digital photos is that they can be
uploaded to photo sharing websites like
http://www.photobucket.com – this means that the
images can be embedded on to our
blogs.

21. New Media Technologies – Evaluation
 For my evaluation piece I decided to use Microsoft Office
PowerPoint 2007. I used this because it is easy to split
the document up into slides, add pictures and make
internal and external hyperlinks.
 I then used SlideShare to embed the presentation onto
my blog.

22. Ancillary Tasks

23. Film Poster
 This is our Film Poster.

24. Magazine Review Page
 This is our Magazine
Review Page.