An evaluation of our media film called The Pop-Up. Throughout this powerpoint our group breaks down the steps we took to creating our main media text and the two ancillary texts.

1. Will, joe, tom and finns A2 Coursework Production

2. CHOOSING OUR BRIEF We chose brief 10, which was: A short film in its entirety, lasting approximately five minutes, which may be live action or animated or a combination of both, together with two of the following ancillary texts a poster for the film a film magazine review page featuring the film. Out of all the briefs we felt most confident doing this one, however we were perfectly aware of the challenges that lay ahead. After a week or so we had come up with the plot to our film. It was called the pop up and it was going to be about a young man who is bored at work one day when suddenly a pop up appears on his computer screen advertising that he can stop time with one click. He clicks it, not expecting anything to happen and suddenly time freezes. The rest of the film is about him having fun in the office and enjoying his new found power, however there is a dramatic twist at the end!

3. Main Media Text The Pop Up Short Film Magazine Review Film Poster Ancillary Texts

4. PLANNING The plot to our film was quite complicated. Although it was all going to be filmed inside an office with one exterior shot, the main character is constantly walking around and exploring the office while five other cast members have to keep the continuity and stay where they were when he froze time. We had to make sure we were following basic rules like not crossing the line and one of the hardest things to work out was when and how we would be applying the effect of time stopping. To carry this out in the short amount of time we had (1 day) we devised a treatment for the film which had everything in it that we felt we would need on the day. This treatment was key to the speed of filming and the level of organisation. The next couple of slides will take you through what we created as well as giving you an insight into how we made the film.

5. This page enables the viewer to quickly see what is inside the pop-up treatment and roughly where it is located within the booklet.

6. The proposal was what we wrote up when we did the initial planning for the film. It gave us an idea of the general plot and layout of the film

7. The proposal goes into depth about research done on the main texts and ancillary texts.

10. The script was essential on the day of filming. It is one of the things that aloud us to film the movie so quickly.

11. Everyone knew where to be and what to say at the right time. It really helps put the whole film into perspective

12. As well as speech and scenes, the script contains stage directions and in some places the type of shots that were required within that scene.

14. A production schedule that covered the space of three months meant that we were aware of how long we had to complete certain aspects of the film. This was key to organisation

15. The shot list proved very useful on the day of filming. It meant that when we knew what scene we were filming we could quickly check what shots would be within that scene

17. The day layout was helpful for monitoring our progress to check we were on time with everything we were doing. We could see which scenes needed to be filmed first and in what order the shots come

19. This was created so that there were no confusions on the day. This page enabled people to see the job or role or both that they would be doing on the day of filming.

20. When preparing for filming the day before this sheet was really good for making sure we had everything we would need.

21. STORYBOARD One of the best ways to plan a film and really work out all the technicalities of it is to create a story board. The next five slides show the 10 page story board that we created before filming the film. This helped us know what angles to shoot and in what positions. It really cuts filming time on the day if you have a rough idea of where your going to put the camera. This was all only possible because we had scouted the office a week before the shoot

27. Target Market A target market is a smaller segment of a mass market which your specific product or service is aimed at. In our case, ‘The Pop Up’ is a short film. As a group we attempted to specify our short film to fit our chosen age for the short film to appeal to. Our chosen target market was between the ages of 13 and 30. We felt this was the right viewing age for our film because, as a group we believed ‘The Pop Up’ would appeal to this specific age group the most. When choosing our target market, we had many things to consider. Firstly, the content and genre of ‘The Pop Up.’ The genre is sci-fi therefore the short film will apply to viewers who like the sci-fi genre. We had to consider things such as explicit language for example as these types of things would mean the short film wouldn’t apply to people as young as 13. I feel ‘The Pop Up’ mainly appeals to the younger generation. This is partly due to websites such as YouTube and Vimeo. Short films are becoming more and more popular with younger people due to their inability to maintain interest in a longer narrative. Due to short films being quick and snappy, younger people seem to be able to remain concentrated on the narrative and don’t lose interest.

28. Research Links Short Films The Black Hole - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5_Msrdg3Hk Who’s Gonna Save My Sole - http://www.youtube.com/user/futureshorts#p/c/AA848728072276E2/0/mhxK2IOywVE Lovefield - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4meeZifCVro When Time Stands Still - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftAUJS3ML5I Philips Carousel - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5yhxqkJiAQ Virus Short Film - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItnNFEKiMt4 Click - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=448jZuA5Y1I Posters One Man Band - http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_mES7YIequyY/TInsx_PZEaI/AAAAAAAAABo/v4SaI-v0hao/s1600/one-man-band-poster-02.jpg Logorama - http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_mES7YIequyY/TInq3HTGapI/AAAAAAAAABg/OsCUWyHHsKw/s1600/logorama-poster.jpg Little Terrorist - http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_mES7YIequyY/TIZbZjZ5j2I/AAAAAAAAABY/ql9SRCR72wE/s1600/little-terrorist.jpg

29. Final Cut Express These are two screen shots from a film editing software called Final Cut Express. This is what we edited the majority of our film on. On the left you can see the timeline and how the film has been constructed On the right is a screen shot showing how you can use final cut to manipulate audio. We used these features to put in sound effects, songs and other audio.

30. Final Cut Express On the right is a screen shot of us creating the credits for the film. We ended up using more advanced software to create the credits but this was a great mock-up This is color correction. After finishing the film we subtlety color corrected it using these tools. By doing this it gives the film a more professional finish.

31. Effects Visual effects are a big aspect in our film. We knew we were setting our selves a challenge when we came up with the plot. Along the way we had many problems with the effects. Although we managed to sort most of them out, a few still remain. The software we used to create these effects is called Adobe After Effects and on the next couple of slides you will get a preview of how it works.

32. After Effects After effects is a powerful video effects tool. We used it to create the pop up that comes up on the computer, here is the start of the background Each button has to be individually created and then it has to look like they are being clicked at the right time

33. After Effects The moving clock was a challenge but we finally worked out how to get everything going at the same time Here you can see the nearly finished pop up with all the graphics and eye catching colours that you might expect a normal pop-up to have.

34. The Pop-up Poster

35. Photoshop I took a screenshot from the film, and then added them into photoshop. I then used the stamp tool, to fill in the rest of the poster. The stamp tool bascilly takes the surrounding textures of the image, and allows you to brush excess textures on, effectively making a image bigger, or in our case filling the rest of the poster.

36. Photoshop I then added additional things like clocks and stars, to relate to our film. I also added a black border. To finish it I put the title and the credits in a block at the bottom

38. Magazine Review

39. Photoshop The first thing I did when I started on the magazine review, was to write the article. Before I started designing the actual magazine, I wrote the review. The next step was to add my written review and to put it into a magazine format Once wrote the article in Microsoft word, I transferred it into Adobe Illustrator, and graphically made it look like a film magazine review. By adding a luminous colour palette this made it look more professional

40. Photoshop After adding the article, it was integral to put a photo from the short film in the magazine. We chose an important scene of the film as it clearly depicts what genre it is. This is critical, as it gives the magazines consumers an idea of what genre the short film fits into. This is the final magazine design. It has continuity in the colour scheme , the graphic element (the stars and the borders) and the typography. We felt adding a Question and Answer to the review was a good idea, as it gave the magazines audience a strong background of the actual film and the production team.

43. Questionnaires We found designing a questionnaire extremely helpful, as it questioned the rationale of The Pop-Up. It also enabled us to collect useful information on potential target markets as we asked questions relating to the respondents age, favourite movie genre and what influenced their choice of film entertainment. This information could help us manage our marketing campaigns cost effectively as we will know what media too target. and inform us of any simple changes that could be made to enhance the audience experience. We chose to show the black hole to our respondents as it resembled the genre (sic-fi-drama) that we were hoping to create. We understood the importance of gauging the reaction of different age groups as we wanted to attract as wide an audience as possible.

44. Questionnaire

45. Questionnaire

46. Questionnaire

47. Questionnaire

48. Q1- In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? The short film ‘The Popup’ challenges and sticks to real media conventions. Short films have a strict set of conventions such as ending in disequilibrium or having a complex narrative and although The Popup sticks to these ideas, it also rebels against it by maintaining a linear, circular narrative for a long duration of the plot. A convention of short film is to stick a genre and expand on it, but our media product challenges this convention as it has a mixture of different conventions. For example our film is a scifi, but at times can be humorous. We see a small relationship between two characters in the film, and therefore the film could be interpreted as a romance. Another convention of short film is to have a complex narrative or to end the film in disequilibrium. Our film sticks to this convention and challenges it, as our film ends in disequilibrium but has a very straightforward plot and only starts to develop into something else in the last minute. Having this variation allows less confusion, and ends with a interesting surprise. Throughout film, representation is extremely important. We see a variation of female and male gaze. The idea of ‘gaze’ is to show the audience the directors or characters point of view. For example in the popup we wanted our main male character to ‘check out’ the woman, and we communicated this by having a shot of a woman making tea, and a man peeking over his desk to take a look. This is a example of male gaze, and gives the audience primarily a sense of who is directing the film. Since there was no variation of male and female gaze, we did stick to this convention. Although the film has multiple genres within it, the film is primarily for a young adult age. Recently, there has been big interest in the Internet and the ‘modern age’ and so featuring this idea in our film, would appeal to a younger audience. We stuck to this convention of a target audience rather than making something, which would appeal to every age.

50. We felt as a group that the combination of our main product and ancillary texts was effective because they felt like a realistic magazine review and film poster. We created this realism by doing thorough research into other film posters and magazine reviews of short films like the little terrorist. We carefully analysed the techniques used and applied them to our project.

51. For the poster we used certain elements from the film to illustrate the basic story line, which we hoped would entice the correct demographic audience. We were careful to put in elements like clocks and a guy at a computer to show the overall theme of the film. For the magazine review we found ‘main stream’ magazines like Empire included a variety of content within their reviews like questionnaires and film information. We applied this technique to our own magazine review by putting in a questionnaire from the director.

53. We soon learnt gaining audience feedback was an integral part of research and resulted in successfully producing our short film. Before we started constructing our short film, we produced a questionnaire.

54. The questions helped us gain an understanding and an idea of what our specific audience expected from our short film. For example, one of the questions was; what is your favourite short film? The reoccurring answer was a short film called ‘The Black Hole.’ This helped us adopt similar styles from ‘The Black Hole’ including editing techniques, cinematography and sound. This Primary research enabled us to reach our audiences expectations. Not only did the feedback help us with initial planning and production, but also it later pointed out errors within the short film we needed to adjust.

55. The audience feedback pointed out the weaknesses of our film that helped us know what to change to suit our audience. For example; initially, we had a weak ending to the film that didn’t have a clear narrative. Through our audience feedback, we learnt we needed to adjust the ending in order to satisfy our viewers and our own needs.

57. We found web 2.0 a fantastic source for finding real media texts to research. We found short films on Youtube, Vimeo and metacafe such as ‘The Little Terrorist’, ‘The Black Hole’ and ‘Love Field’’ these research material we found on the internet helped us adopt similar styles from ‘The Black Hole’ including editing techniques, cinematography and sound. We also used simple software to help organize each other, for instance ‘edexel’ spreadsheet, gave us a time table of when we could start the production process.

58. We created a blog, so when the team wasn’t together, individually we could upload our own work. Final Cut Express, iMovie and After Effects were the three programmes we used in the creation of ‘The Pop Up.’ This programme was used to edit the original footage. We spent an long time editing our work at the short film was heavily reliant of special effects, most notably when we used a freeze frame to show that time was at a standstill. We used more Adobe software for print designs (magazine review and the film poster). Photoshop was used for the poster design, as we manipulated and original photograph and turned it into a poster. Adobe Illustrator was used for the magazine review, It helped us add graphic elements, and a colour scheme to make the final review look more professional.