Ben's Evaluation

Question 1

In what way do your media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Short Film:

Short films are, by definition, short. One plot compressed into 30 minutes or less. They are typically by new filmmakers to showcase their new abilities and ideas on the likely small budget they'd have. This makes them very experimental as the creators attempt to get noticed. Like any other film or TV show, they can also utilise any genre or genres to tell their story. As Steve Neale's theory of Repetition and Variation says, each genre used is expanded upon to create something new and interesting. Because of this experimental nature, short films may be as creative and wild as possible. Either so the filmmaker can experiment with a technique, or to create something entirely new.

Mise en Scene:

Mise en Scène can be expressed and bent to fit the widest variety of possible moods and themes, to be then changed at a whim. Encompassing everything shown in the frame in 11 categories, Mise en Scène can often be nearly invisible. Those Categories are:

• Lighting
• Colour
• Hair
• Make up
• Costume
• Facial Expressions
• Body Language
• Setting
• Props
• Decor
• Composition

Lighting

Very useful to control what the audience does and does not see. The way the scene is lit can be one of the strongest conventions for a genre. For example, a romantic comedy would be very bright to reflect the happier tones in its plot, even in a night time setting. On the complete opposite side, a horror film would use light very sparingly to only show the monster or antagonist at the most opportune times. 

Love Actually - Actors nicely lit, and night time
background also illuminated

Sinister - Actors spotlighted but
surroundings hidden in blacks

A standard way to light a scene is to use the Three Point Lighting technique. This introduces three lights to light the actor(s) in whichever way is desired. 
First is the Key Light. Typically at full power, the Key Light provides the majority of the light on the subject. It would be placed behind the camera, at 45˚ to the actor(s) give the most light possible. Opposite the Key, is the Fill Light and this is here to remove shadows from the Key Light. Lastly, the Back Light, placed behind the actor(s) gives an edge to the actor(s) making them stand out from the background. To achieve different effects, lights can be removed or adjusted. For the horror look, use only the Key Light to cast strong shadows. This is called Low Key Lighting. For the romantic comedy, the full set to create even or bright lighting, called High Key Lighting.

Red: Key - White: Fill - Blue: Back

Red: Key

Short films generally won't have a large studio budget. Thus they may not be able to acquire any studio lights. Natural light (i.e. the Sun) is often used like in Get Off My Land. In this case it is providing a strong Back Light which is likely being bounced back towards the actors. This fits the setting but contradicts the Thriller-Comedy genre as it all High Key Lighting. This works for the conflict reveal (Todorov's Conflict) of the shotgun because up until then it appears like a simple argument between the farmer and the couple. The lighting contradicts what comes later in the plot and makes the English countryside look quite serene. Just mind the dead couple as you enjoy the sunshine.

Get Off My Land - lovely sunshine

Colour

Colour in a scene helps to connote certain feelings or times of day. The audience, consisting largely of humans, would tie certain colours to certain emotions. Red for anger and action, and blue for calmness and tranquility just as the most basic examples. Genres have colours that are used most commonly in their corresponding films. A western would use yellow and orange for the blaring sun and vast deserts. While science fiction may use dark blue for the vastness of space or green for aliens. Our short film is a thriller, which does not necessarily have any assigned colours. I find it relies heavily on high contrast or high dynamic range (the difference between the lightest and darkest parts of an image). It would really depend on what the scene demands. For example, in Luther, colours match the scene and not necessarily the entire show or episode. Instead the colours are often dark and saturated with a high dynamic range.

Luther - Natural, but darkened colours

In our short film, we came to this same conclusion. During the day scenes, there is an orange, dusty tint to give a warm summer, yet desolate and run down feel. While the night scenes are blue with a lot more black, to emphasise the darkness.

Second Self - Warmer colours

Second Self - Colder colours

This is similarly done in the short film Lovefield to highlight the darker tones of the narrative. The difference, comes when Lovefield is set in an afternoon sun. While staying relatively bright, contrast and saturation is high.

Lovefield - Contrasted and Saturated

Sound:

Sound in Thriller is often key to building suspense. A non-diegetic soundtrack can create an unrestricted narrative where the audience is expecting something to happen. As string instruments crescendo but nothing happens in the frame, the audience becomes anxious, looking or waiting for what is yet to happen to the characters in the setting. For example, the short Sci-Fi Thriller film, The Rush, uses a similar technique. The mother is playing with her child but looks away to the the side with a facial expression of simple shock and perhaps fear. A non-diegetic strings and metallic ambiance soundtrack crescendos like I said, but so does a diegetic rumbling. As the child turns the audience sees (restricted narrative) what has the mother frozen. A giant dust cloud. A shaking camera (handheld fast pans) with the still crescendoing soundtrack says there is more to this then a sandstorm. When diegetic air raid horns play it confirms it.

Mum looks away, soundtrack crescendos, suspense builds

Child turns, cloud revealed, diegetic and non-diegetic crescendo faster

This is the initial suspense build up in The Rush. Our short film has something similar, but it does not build the suspense for the whole film. The fight scene between Eve and Lucy quickly has crescendos a single note eerie soundtrack to reflect the challenge of fighting yourself, as is happening here. This soundtrack builds, sustains and when it diminuendos, releases suspense for that scene.

Poster:

Posters should serve to entice the audience to look further into a film to then hopefully spend their time and money on it.

Our posters work well together and independently, telling the audience about the film, without actually doing so. Like a free sample, it's there to spark an interest. Like the poster for Fibs. The cracked style reflects the turmoil the main character is in, giving a free sample. This follows the films drama conventions, reflecting the character's difficulty as possibly internal. Our poster does this too, only following our own split personality theme by showing both Eve and Lucy.

Question 2

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Transcript:

Our thriller short film, Second Self's target audience is the younger 18 to 24, male and female demographic. Right away, we began marketing to this audience by casting a younger actress to which they could relate to. Furthermore, the genre of Thriller attracts thrill seekers. There are moments of action and escalating situations, keeping the audience invested in the story, but not slouching in their seats.
To entice this audience to watch the film we have started with two posters. Both use similar elements but use different basic style that bring on their own conventions. For both poster, I took two still similar of Katy, our actress. Combining these images together with photoshop results in the base image of the posters. The images of Katy depict her in both characters, and directly reference the clone shots in the film. The idea is that showing both Eve and Lucy would reveal a small amount of information on the film, but not enough to break the mystery. That mystery being that Lucy is a hal-Lucy-nation created by Eve. The title font also hints at this, reflecting how Eve's mind is damaged or cracked.
The landscape poster uses a mirror to literally show the duality of Eve and Lucy. It gives a small look into both their characters with Katy's facial expressions. The films information is at the edges, staying clear of the central image. Included, is a website and a hashtag. This is give those interested and capable something more to do before watching the film. The 18 to 24 demographic is generally understood to be capable with modern technology, especially the internet. On the website, there would be further information on the film, perhaps a clever gimmick relating to the film. While the hashtag gives a simple incentive to share the film on twitter. This would spread awareness of the film through Word of Mouth, which is essentially free marketing done entirely by the target demographic. The BFI was chosen because of the young demographic they have. They show case many student short films and even have programs teaching filmmaking to young adults. This garners a large following of 18 to 24 males and females. Once they find Second Self to be accredited by an organisation they trust and follow, the likelihood they will enjoy and watch the film increase. As for the BAFTA award, I would replace it with a Sundance or Cannes Film Festival awards as they regularly receive student films, like the BFI. Whereas The BAFTA is targeted more at industry professionals and a wide demographic.
Much of the information is repeated on both the landscape and portrait posters. Same awards, same credit block, same fonts. Despite the composition and image, there is not a large difference. I still prefer the portrait style because of its compressed and linear composition. In the landscape poster, the eye goes around the edge, reading the title, then down to the review and extra info. The portrait is one straight path down, with information at the top, middle and bottom of the poster for viewers to understand in one or two quick glances. Furthermore, while the landscape displays the duality of Eve and Lucy in a creative way, the portrait clearly highlights their differences, without making it too obvious that they are the same person.
For the review, we followed the house style of Little White Lies. A bi-monthly film magazine made for cinema fans. Little White Lies' audience is a very particular one, made of 18 to 24, 25 to 34 and perhaps higher. The large majority are men in the creative industry. Despite being far above our original demographic, we feel that these more critical groups would still watch our film should the review provide reason to. Following the Little White Lies house style, the review includes a screenshot from the film, a small information block, the review itself and the Little White Lies film rating system. All in all, I think this was followed well with no errors that I can see. The three text columns are spaced accurately, and the information above it is a good distance away. All the different fonts used like Century Gothic and Aparajita are used in the same way as the official Little White Lies reviews.
The review itself is very complementary to our film, going into detail on the film and what is fresh and innovative about it. Perhaps at times revealing too much, telling the reader how they will feel at certain moments in the film. What it does do however is paint the film in a very positive manner, with the final rating being a strong 2, 4, 4. Ultimately it does come down to the final rating for Anticipation, Enjoyment and In Retrospect as this is the definitive final answer to Little White Lies opinion on the film as a whole. Like the BFI awards, the higher the rating, the more readers will be swayed to watch the film. A way to improve it would like reside in a slight rewording of the review, to avoid spoilers to the film, and then extending it to fill all the columns.

Question 3

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback gave us an insight into how our audience demographic of 18 to 24 male and females perceived our film and ancillary tasks at various stages of development. We've been able to do this in many different ways. Primarily, we found individuals or groups of our target audience and asked to view our products and review them.
Outside of this, we were based online, posing questions on Straw Poll as we became conflicted on what would be the best course of action.

Facebook was used to ask wide questions to the demographic. These questions were asked on my personal Facebook because I have the correct demographic of friends in numbers upwards of 300. This is likely where we reached the largest majority of our audience.

For more targeted comments we wen't to Skype. This time using Stephen's more extensive friends list. With Skype we were able to pose specific questions to specific members in our demographic and reply in real time to expand or explain questions further.

A few comments were left in other places too, generally we were not looking for these in these places, but we found them anyway and used them. For example, comments on our YouTube video and Blogger posts.

Short Film

Our initial story began with the extra character, baby brother Adam. He was meant to be the driving reason for Eve to head back home. Furthermore it was going to be much more obvious that an apocalyptic event occurred, leaving Eve alone. This was included in the synopsis, and was shown to a member of our demographic who said:
"The distant past is confusing and it all seems a bit cheesy"
This caused us to reflect on the plot further and how to both compress it and improve it. Because of this, we decided to remove Adam as a character on the grounds that needing to introduce both the dad, Luke, and Adam was unnecessary and would prove too complicated. If we could incorporate the purpose for Adam into Luke and avoid the audience being confused on which character is the important one, then it should be, and has been, done.



To show our progress in Post Production and what was yet to be done, we exported our film early with much of the sound and shots missing and text over many shots to remind ourselves what was yet to be done. It was not a finished product but it turned into the perfect opportunity for early preview screenings of Second Self with our demographic. They would then be able to provide us with direct feedback on whether we are heading in the right track, or need to rethink some things.

Beginning with a single person in our demographic again, Luke said:
"I like the premise. Couple of patchy parts still need some work"
This showed us that our general audience liked what we were going for. However, Luke cannot critically asses a film like the audience of Little White Lies can. To find someone like that, we wen't to the closest thing to them in our demographic, Film students. We brought in 4 students and asked them their thoughts after viewing the rough cut. Their trained eyes were understandably more scrutinous.
They pointed out how many of the 'Work to do text' was right and understandable for the rough cut of the film. Furthermore the POV shots in scene 5 and 6 were not clear. This is something we recognised, however we were not able to fix this due to no available times to reshoot these few shots. While they pointed out what needed work, they also pointed out what only needed minor tweaking. They heard this line (Link) after it was recorded asynchronously and placed into project timeline with several foley layers. I personally thought it needed more work to sound as if it is from the film setting. However the film students pointed out how it was fine and there wasn't a noticeable difference from the rest of the audio.
"Good performance. Takes time to figure out"
This point shows how the we were on the right track in terms of mystery in our restricted narrative. It is also nice to know we were able to cast the right actress. Overall though, they all pointed out good and bad sections, helping shape the movie in a better fashion.

Straw Poll:

We used Straw Poll when we wanted to make sure we were meeting our audience when we were planning on making changes to the film. It began with the theme of our film. We had original ideas for an apocalyptic film and asked whether this is something people are interested in.

This was quickly followed by our ideas for the apocalypse setting. Despite us choosing not to focus on the apocalyptic aspects of our story world, knowing what happened helped us shape the plot into what we wanted.

The audience having decided on a Bio Warfare scenario we constructed Eve's story.

"World tension was ramping as arguments between countries escalated. Out of nowhere, an unknown party release an airborne toxin in all the world's most powerful countries, quickly mass panic. However, everything is over before anyone can even respond. Everyone is dead. Everyone except for Eve. Somehow immune, she begins to travel across the country in hopes that her dad is also alive."

Having this helped us to understand how Eve, or any human being, would behave in such a scenario. Lucy was introduced through this to add dialogue and provide a conflict to the plot.

Following this, we experimented with the editing effects we wanted in our film. This Straw Poll was to find out how well received these edits would to then determine whether they would be worth our time to write, film and edit in this specific way to accommodate the specific style we were going for.

From the poll we understood that (from those who answered) our audience enjoyed the editing test. This gave us the go ahead to write many of our ideas onto the script, feeling that if this concept, the craziest one we have, is well received, then many of our follow up ideas would fair well under scrutiny.



For the last Straw Poll, we reached an impasse on our film title. Originally called "The Way Home", a title created on the spot with little thought process. We felt the title didn't say enough about the movie itself and only covered the over-arching narrative of Eve heading home. We put together a list of potential titles (below) that we thought might represent the film better.

The Way Home included in terms of fairness

Second Self won, with Gone a close second. I approve of this result as Second Self explains the central plot device of the film, Lucy, but not in a way where the audience learns too much. This has shown me that even before completing the film, our audience knew about it to some extent. This is likely from the genre conventions of a thriller (Steve Neale's theory of repetition) and they know enough from both past thrillers and what little we divulged to piece together a potential story.

Instant pass?

Question 4

How did I use Media Technology in the Construction, Research & Planning and Evaluation stages?