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

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

FINAL FILM

Here is my final film, I released it on YouTube on February 3rd and since then it has received 186 views to date, a number of comments and 6 likes. I am incredibly happy with the response because it included a wide range of ages and a lot of people had something positive or constructive to say. :)
Facebook comments: 
such a good idea!
that's awesome!
too cute!! :D
this is great - all the hours have paid off!!!!
very well done! does he die at the end? lovely to see your mum, brother and house!
what can i say?!!! that is excellent, well done.
21 likes

YouTube comments:
very good, how long did it take to get the stop motion bit right?
wow! That must have taken hours of work and what a great end result! Your first attempt at film making was a success. The sound track was beautiful and I really enjoyed watching it.
THATS SOO COOOOL!
6 likes

finished film review (double page spread)

Here is my finished film review, I am really pleased with it! I made a number of changes during the production process because I found that having the background image fully visible made it difficult to both view the text and also to find a text colour that was visible on all areas. For this reason, I changed the hue and exposure to tone down the image and to give it more of a washed-out effect. This meant that I could use simple black text on top (I actually layered it twice to make it more visible) and the orange type was also clear. I decided to put my blog site on the bottom trimming because I found that a lot of magazines either had links to the magazine's site or the film's individual site. It also provides a nice 'link' (excuse the pun) to my production company - Juxtaposed Productions.
When creating my review, I found that a number of people asked me why I rated my film as '4 stars', not because they thought it was too high but because they thought it should be rated '5 stars'. The reasoning behind this was because I didn't want to come across as pretentious and also, '5 star' ratings are fairly 'rare' so to speak and for a film to be of such a good quality, I feel as though it should be perfect. 

finished dvd cover

Here is the DVD cover for my film, I am incredibly pleased with it, I decided to keep it fairly 'simple' because obviously my film is a short - the plotline isn't thaaaat extravagant and short films typically don't have DVDs unless they are made by Pixar etc.

dvd cover DATED24THFEBRUARY

A few weeks ago, I decided to send off my ancillary tasks and DVD cover to a professional printing firm in order to gain multiple hard-copies as this would be the case for real media texts. The three pieces arrived quickly and I was really happy with the quality, aside from my film poster being slightly under exposed. I was incredibly impressed with the quality of my review and DVD cover J yay.

When designing my DVD cover, I found that the most difficult part was finding images that I hadn’t already used for my ancillary tasks. This was difficult because being a short film, there weren’t many production photos or storylines that I could exploit.

I researched into a lot of DVD covers to find what elements were the most successful, examples that I looked at were the Toy Story trilogy, a number of Tim Burton films and other age appropriate films of similar genres.

I decided to include a trio of images and borders that I also went on to use in my film review, because the colours form a good colour scheme for my film. J

Certain factors that I spent a long time on were the duplication of sand, the font of the text on the back and text itself. I deliberated for a long time about the font because I wasn't particularly happy with it yet I discovered that the font used is commonly used on the back of DVD covers; this was also the case with my film review, however, upon receiving my hard-copies, I love the way that they look! 

new idea DATED 29THJANUARY

Seeing as I am very interested in the post-production side of making a film and particularly the aspects of media production involving design, I came up with the idea of designing a DVD cover for my short film. 
When researching the designs for films similar to my age range and genre, these were my favourite designs:

is oscar going further?

When creating the name for my film, I wanted to choose something that meant that there was a possibility to have more films in the future. Rather than just having 'Oscar & Quin' because I feel like having 'The Oscar Chronicles' adds depth and also the audience thinks, "Ooo, will there be a sequel/prequel?!" Or I hope they will ask that question anyway. :)

Creating a storyline which could be followed was a very important factor for me because I really feel like I believe in my characters and because I designed and created the puppet for Oscar myself, with help, I feel like I want to 'exploit' it/him as much as possible, so to speak.

In the summer of this year, I will be travelling to Costa Rica for a month and my intention is to take Oscar and Quin with me to either capture footage of them together, or Oscar prior to meeting her and how he comes to live in Norfolk, England. :)

designing a film magazine insert

Prior to designing, writing and creating my film magazine review, I researched into existing film magazines and the kind of articles that they include.

• Empire Magazine is a British film magazine published on a monthly basis by Bauer Consumer Mediam, first published in July 1989. It is the biggest selling film magazine in Britain and is also sold in America, Australia, Turkey, Russia and Portugal. In terms of coverage and approach, Empire is very popular and takes on a more 'irreverent' and less 'serious' approachre, like Sight & Sound. Empire caters for a wide audience as it reviews not only mainstream films, but also arthouse.
• Similar to Empire, Sight & Sound is published on a monthly basis in Britain by the British Film Institute (BFI). It was initially published quarterly when it began in 1932, until the early 1990s when it merged with the Monthly Film Bulletin, another BFI publication. Sight & Sound reviews all films released during the month - both arthouse and mainstrean feature films.
• Total Film is British film magazine published by Future Publishing every four weeks, 13 times a year. Its original launch was in 1997 and offers cinema, DVD and Blu-ray news, reviews and features. 'Each month, Total Film provides a range of features, from spotlight interviews with actors and directors, to making of and on-set pieces for new and future releases. Each issue always includes the Total Film Interview, which is a six-page in-depth chat with an actor or director, along with a critique of their body of work.'

When creating my film review, I constantly kept in the back of my mind that my film was a short and so if it were to be reviewed in a magazine then it would have to be a 'special occasion'. This was why I decided to make my insert a 'Spotlight' and so it was enabling the reader to witness, read about and potentially watch a short film. Empire Magazine don't really tend to do this kind of thing so initially this cast doubt in my mind, however, Total Film really encouraged me to do it because they often provide 'spotlight interviews' :).

updated poster

Upon making the initial design for my film review, I have come to think about when the release date of my short film. Originally I dated it as 'January 2013' however, my deadline for the project falls in February and I want my magazine to be in March and so I've reached the decision to change the date, otherwise the audience interprets that my film is slightly old. 

current review design

new flashback