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

Stanley Pickle (2010):

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

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

updated film poster - complete

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! 

dvd design DATED 30THJANUARY

Regarding the design of my DVD cover, obviously it won't be a massively in-depth and heavily designed product because there is no budget for my film and it isn't a large scale film. Having said this however, I am going to design the product to the best of my ability to demonstrate the skills that I have learnt and acquired over the last two years. I am currently undecided on what image I would like on the cover and whether it will be a 'screenshot' (still image from my stop motion) or an external image taken during post-production. On the back of my cover I would like some kind of tagline (similar to the ones used in the images that I have attached in the blog posts below) and then to have a blurb fitted around an image. Below the blurb I intend to have three images from my film in framed boxes with the outer colour being the orange, blue and pink that I have used in my film title.



One problem with my film is the characters are not voiced and so there aren't any actors. I have however come across a poster for Rise of the Guardians which has the characters' names written across the top, rather than the actors. (Could be a solution) i.e. the sandman, tooth fairy, santa claus, jack frost, easter bunny.

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

 





 

added scene

Upon showing my film to the class, I received really helpful feedback and from this I made the enhancement of adding a flashback scene to mix up the narrative, rather than just being linear.

Rather than focusing on Oscar or Quin this time, I decided to make it more human so that the audience can have an even greater rapport with the characters, and so I filmed my brother opening a present, with Oscar inside. I filmed a variety of shots, closeup, mid-closeups, POV shots but I decided to simply use the one type of shot, rather than a mixture because I felt that within my film I had used a wide variety of shots and by using more than one for the one scene, it seemed to make it a bit disjointed. With regards to editing, I chose to add an effect that would give the clip an aged and vintage look because the rest of my film doesn't really have many effects because it is more driven by the narrative and storyline. I also sped it up slightly so that it didn't last for too long, (because my brother was a little bit slow at opening!!), and also changed the saturation/gamma.

audience feedback

I recently showed the rough cut of my film to the class so that I was able to gain an external perspective on it and to use the feedback to possibly adapt/enhance my film.
Audience feedback....
Comment No#1
Good ident. Nice use of music. Good range of shots. A film that brought a smile to my face. Nice variety of locations - I think the beach works really well. Good use of stop motion. Love it!!! :)
Comment No#2
I larvvve it! :) Love the dog camera. It must have taken a lot of time and effort. It is also an adorable plot! I really like the titling as well.
Comment No#3
Amazing titles! Really good variety of shots. Very well trained dog! Falling in bin shot is amazing. Interesting editing. Emotive music. Really charming. I love it!
Comment No#4
Love the incorporation of footage and stop motion. Such a quirky idea! However at the moment I feel like it's more of a film opening than a short.
Comment No#5
Effective titling sequence. Variety of shots. Nice POV from the bin's perspective. YAY stop motion. So cute when they get married. Very good! Made me smile. I like that you incorporated stop motion and footage. :)
Comment No#6
Stop motion can be very risky but you handled it incredibly well. Very good storyline and focus on shots. Worked extremely well. Very amazing film! Well done. :)
Comment No#7
I like how you've mixed stop motion together with normal footage and I like how the music you've chosen changes the atmosphere half way through.
Comment No#8
I actually love yours. The fact you've done stop motion as well as normal stuff is just amazing. I do think the stop motion stuff makes the acting in the start not so good though. The music also adds such a touching effect. WELL DONE!
Comment No#9
The sections filming the dog work really well - I love your use of tracking. The shots vary and work/flow together. I love the narrative - it's so cute and creative. 
Comment No#10
Shots were all framed well. The stop motion parts were cute and also brought a little playful side to the piece.

Upon receiving verbal feedback from my teachers, I learnt that to make my film even better I should insert one or more flashback scenes in the prolonged moments during the marriage and also before Oscar and Quin begin walking on the sand dunes. I am thinking of filming scenes in which Oscar is being unwrapped as a present whilst Quin looks on from a shelf to show how the two first 'met' and then possibly another, or making the flashback fragmented that I can insert it in both places. This was a great piece of feedback to receive at this time because I have enough time to film and insert the footage and if I had not received this feedback then I would have missed out on marks.

I was very pleased with the reception of my film; I was initially worried that the audience might not understand why the couple falls in love or lack an emotional attachment with the characters.

Another exercise we carried out was asking the audience to write in one to three sentences what they thought the message of the film was/what the film is about. This was, thankfully, very insightful and effective because as the sole director, producer, scriptwriter, cinematographer, editor, you assume that the message of the film is clear and that people will be able to understand it. This didn't prove to be a problem for myself because as the feedback demonstrates, people understood the plot of my film. Yay.

ROUGH CUT YAY

WATCH IN HD OR 480p! :))

update

Upon reviewing the opening of my short film, I came to realise that the changes that I made during production meant that the Photoshop images that I had created were no longer relevant and actually detracted from the effectiveness of my film. This was because the 'backstory' that I had created for Oscar no longer fitted and if anything, made the plotline less seamless and quite confusing. For this reason and because I didn't want to put my hard work to waste, I decided to draw out some new images which I hoped would be better. I thought that I would create just two images, rather than five or six, and the first I decided would show Oscar alone in the garden and then to fit with my dog Holly carrying Oscar out later in the film, my dog carrying Oscar in from outside. However, I felt that they didn't really work and I preferred my short film without them. 

Regarding my film title.....

Initially, I couldn't find a font that fitted either my genre, style, theme, colour scheme, target audience or anything of that sort so I turned to finding one to download from the Internet and then I came across a font which I layered on top of each other in two colours to make it stand out. :) I chose the colours because the orange matched Oscar's nose; blue for Oscar's fur and the pink was a good contrasting colour to match with. Regarding the actual words in my title... I wanted to create a title that suggested the possibility of it becoming a series of short films following the life of Oscar. To go with this, (similar to Harry Potter and the .....) I chose 'Oscar & Quin' because it is short enough to fit with the length of the full title and it is enough detail to just suggest the characters and plot. Also considering that my film is a silent film, it works well to have the character's names in the title otherwise these would be lost and less of a connection would be made between the characters and audience. 

Additional note, I really like the way the blue looks behind the title because it adds a drop shadow making it stand out more but there's actually a relevance behind the colour. (MISE EN SCENE IN ACTION...)

Snoooooooooopy. When preparing to edit my short film, I watched a few episodes of Snoopy to gain an idea of what music was used and how the lack of speech was approached. I then came across a clip on YouTube of Snoopy's wedding (which sadly goes wrong...) which was really helpful because I was worrying about what music to use and it showed me that I could just use a basic song (copyright free, of course) which fitted with my whole film, mixed up with a few others. 

Completed poster design...

Initial title idea

Final poster

it's officially over!

FILMING AND EDITING IS DONE.
So, filming took place over a total of two days (Wednesday 2nd January and Saturday 5th January) and editing took 6 hours on Saturday, the whole of yesterday, and the whole of today. The reason that it took so long was because of the stop motion images which not only needed resizing and adjusting the duration, but for a number of them I had to clone stamp using Photoshop to remove the fishing line that was used to raise the mannequin and Oscar. 

And so, THE RECREATION OF A SHORT FILM IS DONE!

[Although I do not quite like watching myself within the remake...]

Location video...

Alice and myself decided to film a video talking about our location and the problems that we encountered...