Callum Ruane

:8103

Centre number: 20299

Centre name: Bishop Walsh Catholic school

Short Film - Lucky Dip

Article Page 

Film Poster

Evaluation - Question Four

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

Research

When it came to the research side of my coursework one of the main forms of technology that I used was the Internet to learn and find out about different conventions of short films and trailers and how they are both aimed at a particular target audience. I mostly used the website 'YouTube' when it came to viewing different short films and trailers as I am familiar with this video site so I knew that it would be reliable when helping me find what I was looking for. 

The Internet also came in great use for my research as it allowed me to read about different films and why they have been classified to  a particular age rating whether that be a PG or an 18. This is important to know when making a film as I need to make sure that I classified my film to the right rating for public viewing so that my audience knew what to expect. I learn through reading on the BBFC (British Board Of Film Classification) that a 12A ratings are suitable for children aged 12 and over. However, people younger than 12 may see a 12A so long as the are accompanied by an adult. My short film features money and the lottery which can be seen by some people are a form of gambling. Due to the Internet helping me research into age ratings I agreed that my film should be classified as a 12A due to this. 

Another form of technology that helped me with my research into this course was the use of Microsoft Word. With word I was able to lay out, for example, a photograph of a film poster and then begin to analyse what I could see made it so professional. This was good as I could save this document and refer back to it when creating my own film poster carefully looking at the conventions that i annotated that makes a successful film poster. 

Surprisingly Netflix was also a great way to research into different genres of films and their conventions. Netflix is a provider of on- demand Internet streaming media available to viewers all around the world and by having access to my own account I was able to frequently watch films of different genres to get an idea of the sort of film I was going to create. 

Planning

For Planning i again mainly used different Microsoft software's to note down and experiment with different ideas when planning my products. For example when it came to planning out the layout for my article I used publisher to create different templates that I could possibly use and where I could place things like my main image or the title of my film 'Lucky Dip' 

Construction

The software I used for the construction of my short film was 'IMovie'. I filmed my whole short film from an iPhone 6 plus camera so because of this I wanted to continue working with Apple products so that the quality of my recording matched the quality of the tool that I created my film on. Using an iPhone to film all of my film was brilliant. I was lucky enough to get an iPhone 6 plus back in September when I started the A2 course. The video camera on the iPhone 6 plus is crystal clear and has many new features such as image stabilisation  so I thought it would be silly to not experiment with it and create my film on.

In all fairness I actually really enjoyed working with iMovie along the process of creating my film due to the fact that it was stationed on an Apple Mac computer which I had never really had a chance to work on before in the past. iMovie is a fantastic tool for creating a short film on as you can see both your event (the location of all your recorded clips) and the project (your film that you are putting together) both at the same time on the screen allowing you to drag in, edit and play around with different clips that might feature in your film. The tools also gives you many editing choices such as fade in and outs and various sound FX that are provided already.

This is the layout of my iMovie page where i created my film. as you can see the film is up in the top right hand corner with all of the different clips that i recorded next to it on the left hand side ready to be taken down to the bottom timeline and edited. at the start i thought that iMovie would be very difficult and confusing to use and that it would take me a while to get used to it, however i managed to familiarise myself with iMovie very quickly and my film did not take that long to construct.

Another thing that i enjoyed about iMovie was the fact that you did not have to save every single time you were done using the computer due to the fact that it automatically saved your work for you. this was beneficial as when i logged back on i could carry on without having to find my saved work. If i had used the computers down in my media classroom then the tool that i would have used to create my film on would of been 'Adobe elements' i had a play around on this at the very beginning but i did not enjoy it one bit. Adobe is very slow to use and the quality of effects and video definition was not to the standard that i wanted for my film. overall i am very pleased with the construction of my film on iMovie and hope to use this again some time in the future.

Q3) Audience feedback video

Evaluation - Question Three 

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

The Apple Mac computer that I used to edit and create my film on are all up in the music technology department on the other side of the school from where my media classroom is. This was good as It enabled me to regularly ask people from the drama and music department what they thought of my film so far and give me feedback on what to include and change. it was also good having people from a different department give me feedback on my films progression because I felt that they were totally honest with me whereas if I was to of asked someone in my media class their opinion on my film I feel that they would of been much more soft on giving me criticism as they are friends with me. 

I originally started filming back at the start in November with a male main character rather than a female one. The storyline was the same concept but a little different in some scenes although I was told by a few people that they thought that it would be more believable using a female as they come across as more vulnerable than a male and would face a day of bad events much more harshly. At first I was stubborn and ignored this criticism that I got from people and continued using a male main character although after long thought and consideration I decided to start again and use a female as my main character instead which I feel from watching my finished product is really effective. 

I asked people after they watched my whole short film what scenes were their favourite and why. a majority of people said that they enjoyed the scene where my character is walking along and her bag of shopping splits and spills out everywhere resulting in her having to put it all into the bin. This scene was one of the hardest to film during the creation of my short film as I did not realise how hard it would be to cause a bag to split, I had to cut a hole in the bottom of a plastic bag and gently tape the hole up balancing the milk and eggs on top. it took a number of attempts of my character walking towards the camera before we actually managed to get the bag to split and the eggs and milk to come pouring out across the path.

When I finished my short film and gave it to my teacher to watch and allowed her to show it to her English class to see their reactions. Along with my teacher everyone thought that the film was interesting with good editing and unexpected twist at the end. It was pleasurable to hear a whole class of people say good things about my work after I spent so long on it, but however I still felt that they were being bias due to the fact that both me and my teacher were present in the room as they gave me feedback. From this I decided to go and ask one of my school technicians to watch my short film up in the music Technology classroom and give me his honest opinion to what he liked best about my film and things I could maybe do to improve it.