Evaluation

Media studies a2 coursework the evaluation from D Banger




Here is the evaluation I completed for my coursework production regarding the short film Intrusion and all its ancillary tasks. 

'Intrusion' Final - Draft #4

This is the 4th, and final draft I have completed for Intrusion. Overall I am happy with this draft and took on board the improvements that were given to me for my 3rd draft.

I re-shot the opening scene with the characters talking and discussing the safe, because my teacher didn't allow me to upload the other cut because it contained sensitive material which was a consequence of me filming in a wrong location. Therefore I re-shot the whole scene to meet a new environment, but set the same back-story and context, and following the same script.

I also added in the credits for this draft, to make it look more professional and also more of a complete short film . I used very similar typography to the title sequence for my credits, to make Intrusion flow more and seem like more of a coherent piece with continuous themes and styles.

Another improvement I had was I needed some kind of thrilling, non-diegetic soundtrack when one of my characters woke up to a noise and was investigating. Therefore I did this and now the scene seems to me more thrilling. I used an eerie piece of soundtrack I found from the internet, which was royalty free, and thought it was very suitable for my short films tone and agenda.

Intrusion Poster Ancillary Task- Draft #4 - Final (Minor Changes)

This is the 4th, final draft of the poster ancillary task for Intrusion. It is essentially the same as the previous draft, however the text at the bottom of the poster is now in a more conventional, standardize font known as 'Trajan'.

I was told to make this change by my teacher, to make the poster look slightly more professional and conventional, since all conventional posters will feature text font somewhat exactly like this one.

I also made the tag lines and review sentences a tiny bit smaller, this was just to make the title of 'Intrusion' stand out just that bit more, so it is clearer and more visible to the audience.

Overall I am relatively satisfied with this poster, and think it is simple. but considerably effective in putting across the themes and mood of Intrusion across to the audience, through visual semiotics and text.

Film Review Ancillary Task- Draft No #3 - FINAL

This is the final draft of the Intrusion poster ancillary task. Some notable changes between this draft and the 2nd draft include changing all images on the review to black and white, to maintain and continue synergy between this review and the poster. changing the font to also match the other products same font, and also adding in 2 page numbers on both sides of the review.

The images are all now black and white, to create a continued theme and synergy between the other ancillary task, being the poster, and also the short film itself. Before, the images were in full colour, which didn't quite match the synergy among the other products, so I thought it would be better to change them to a black and white colour scheme, to get a continued sense and tone of bleakness and psychological-thriller esque emotions,

I also had to change the main title of 'Intrusion' to a different, 'Chiller' font, which is the same as the the one in the poster. This is once again for continuity and synergy reasons as different fonts wont make for as effective combinations of ancillary tasks. It also very much more suits the tone and atmosphere of the review, since the other main colours are red, and the black and white imagery make it very suitable.

The page numbers are also in the bottom corners of both sides of the film review, to create a more professional looking review, and to truly make it look like it belongs in a magazine, taking up one large A3 page.

Overall I am fairly happy with my final draft of film review and think it has made good, appropriate developments and changes over time, to create a respectable looking film review ancillary task.

Final Audience Feedback Survey

Here is the link to my survey I have created. Unfortunately I can't embed it into this blog post due to technical reasons that are out of my control.


https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/K3MZSW5



The questions are all related to my short film, and will give me understanding on some of the strengths and weaknesses with the short film. I've also asked them to rate their opinion of the film, from a scale of 1-10. This is just so I have an idea on how good people actually thought the short film was. Another thing I did was ask them about certain conventions and technical aspects of the film, regarding what they thought was the best and what they thought needed the most improving. For example editing, camerawork, mise-en-scene, direction, plot and so on. This was particularly helpful for me as it would later enable me to find out what was and wasn't so good about the short film, and if I were to return to it in the future, I would have the means to improve it.

NEW Script- Adapted for Draft 4

This is a new script I have made that is for draft 4. Given the fact that I had to change the opening scene, I wrote in a new sequence in a car somewhere mysterious, with the same 3 characters. The rest of the short film will play out the same as draft 3 overall.

[Scene 1]

(In a car, dark environment)  (Slow techno music in the background)

Man 1: Alex I heard you have a free house on Saturday is that true?

Alex: Uh yeah man

Man 1: Oh right can we do like a little gathering or something?

Alex: We could do but we’d have to keep it quite low key, because my dad put a safe upstairs, from all the jewellery from Sunny’s wedding

Man 1: Oh. We better be invited yeah (Looks slightly above the camera)

Alex: Yeah man off course, course

(End of scene 1, diegetic music slows down)

[Title sequence]

Atmospheric horror music begins to play, non diegetic

AB18 Studios Present

Intrusion

(Scene 2)

Two masked thieves are walking towards the camera and

they stand still and stare forward at something

Man two pulls out a corkscrew

Man two clenches his fist

Both of them walk across the road to the house, and walk to the gate

They begin to break into the gate and remove the lock from the door

They kick down the gate and pick the lock from the back door of the house

Man 1: We need to go upstairs to the safe

Man 2: Yeah let’s go

(Scene 3)

Non-diegetic moody, ambient music changes to similar music, but slower and darker

They begin to walk to the stairs, once reached they stare up into the darkness at the top of the stairs  

Once up the stairs, they open the door leading to the safe

They open an additional door in which the safe is presumed to be

[Scene 4]

Non-diegetic music stops playing

Straight cut to Alex in bed hears a loud bang 

Alex: What was that?

Thrilling-horror like score sounds

Alex walks over to the room, and peers round the corner

He then slowly walks over the to slightly open door

Man 1 pulls him into the door

Cut to a shot of man 1, holding the candle to his face (editing changes to a red threshold/added filters to change the colour) (It’s actually a nightmare of Alex’s)

Alex wakes up from the nightmare and breathes heavily from the nightmare; he then looks to his right

The two men are standing there, man one has a knife in his hand, and he then lunges forward and presumably kills Alex

Film cuts with midway action of man 1 stabbing Alex

Credits begin to play out

Directed by Ashley banger

Staring Aayush Joshi

Starring Ashley Banger

and Alex Patrick-Smith

Edited by Ashley Banger

Story by Ashley Banger

Director of photography Benoit Ganesan

Produced by Jamie Gerrish

Intrusion Draft #3 - Completion and Filming Issue- UNABLE TO UPLOAD

I have recently completed my third draft of Intrusion. I re-shot several things and made a new edit, tackling main previous issues such as the lighting and mise-en-scene being too dark upstairs, shots cutting to black unnecessarily etc. I also filmed a whole new sequence which takes place in school, and involves the 2 thieves talking to the victim about a new safe his dad acquired in his house. This new footage and new edit made my 3rd draft of Intrusion come to a total of 4 minutes. In addiiton to this, the new draft 3 was filmed using a new set of storyboards, which I completed a few weeks ago.

However, I had a considerable problem in this draft which is why my teacher didn't give me permission to upload the draft to this blog post. In a couple of my shots, there was confidential teacher/student data displayed on the walls and on some desks, and for this reason my teacher wouldn't allow me to upload the draft online due to data protection associated reasons. This was quite silly of me to do as I should of thoroughly checked the mise-en-scene and content of the room before filming, and then I could have prevented this mistake. Therefore, I will be re-shooting the opening scene in a different environment, but staying with the same script and overall direction of the scene. This is so that I can get the same purpose introduction, but just with different location and mise-en-scene.

Updated Animatic- Draft 3 and Above

NEW Full Storyboards for Intrusion- Draft 3 and Above

I recently learned that I wanted to change certain things about Intrusion, mainly regarding shots and content. I therefore re-did all of my storyboards, so that all drafts from 3 and so on will be updated and working around new story-boards. The new ones are as follows:

These are the 4 storyboards for ''Intrusion' draft 3 and so on, and bring the short film to a total run time of approximately 4 minutes and 30 seconds.

Intrusion Poster - Draft No.3 - Final draft

This is my third and final draft of the poster for Intrusion.

There were minor improvements with this draft, but I feel they had a good overall effect on the poster.

One of these improvements was that the captions were a bit too big, so in this draft I had them be a bit smaller. This is so that they are less eye catching and the audiences attention can be focused more on other things, such as the title itself, and the image in the poster.

I also made the text at the bottom of the poster smaller, because originally it was also a bit too big so it stood out in the poster more than it should.

I also changed the colour of 'A film by Ashley Banger' from red to black just to ensure all the text isn't the same colour, and just to add a bit more variety.


Characteristics of the poster? 


- The black and white background is used to connote the ominous theme I was going for in Intrusion. The colour scheme represents the darker mood and tone Intrusion was intended for, I felt that if I included colour in the poster it wouldn't quite pinpoint the tone and design I was going for.

- The 2 characters are facing away from the camera- this was used on purpose to create a mysterious relationship between the audience and the characters. The audience are left to interpret what the characters will be like, and what their intentions are. I thought this was good as it adds to the mystery behind Intrusion which is what the premise and poster is designed for .

Secondary Teacher Feedback- Short Film Draft #2

Recently I showed my second draft of 'Intrusion' to my other media teacher. He had certain, common improvements with my 2nd draft that were also found to be in my other feedback sessions from my other teacher and peers.

- One main improvement he told me that I definitely need to amend is the lighting in several shots that take place upstairs. He said some of the shots were just simply too dark and that this made the shots look noisy due to the lack of light, since I only sourced light from the candles. Next time, I will be using additional light sources when shooting however considerably dulling down the colours in editing, which will help me to achieve a similar effect of darkness in the shots. This is a good improvement I found and will make my next draft look higher quality.

- Another main  improvement/adjustment he found was that some of the sudden dips to black were considered to be unnecessary or lacking much point. Whilst I originally intended them to create suspense, and to help segment the story, my teacher didn't fully agree with this and would recommend I take them out. This is something I don't mind doing due to the fact that I partially agree in saying the sudden dips to back aren't fully necessary or structural.

- One other main improvement he commented on was the draft's length. The draft currently sits at 3.30mins approximately, whereas we should be aiming for a minimum of 4 minutes. This is something I definitely need to address in my next draft by shooting more footage.

- One last improvement was that I had several minor problems with continuity. However most of these were mistakes with things that I am going to be re-shooting so I'm not too worried about this for now.

Overall I'm happy with his feedback as I now have a clearer understanding of how to improve my product and will be carrying out these improvements as soon as possible.

'Intrusion' Draft #2

Here is my 2nd draft of Intrusion! I'm overall happy with this cut and think the vision has came together well.

'Intrusion' Draft #1- Initial Feedback and Responses from Peers and Teacher

After an initial screening of our first draft of our main texts to our peers, I have gotten some strengths and improvements for my first draft of my short film. I found this to be useful to me to quite an extent, as I now have a good idea of what people liked about my short film and also what needed changing or removing.

Some of the common strengths in my first draft were:

- Good use of ambient music. This is something I'm happy with and agree with due to the fact that I thought the piece of score was effective and appropriate for my short film. It was also something  I felt was a highlight in my video so far, so I'm pleased that people found it was good and well selected.

- Good editing. People liked the style of editing and thought the edits between the tripod footage and the handheld footage was good and served a real purpose. The purpose being the handheld footage was from the point of view of the thief's, making it look more gritty and realistic. This was why I used differing camera shot types and am glad people liked the different uses of them and thought it was effective.

- Several people liked the in and out focus of the first shot, as well as the fade in from black. They thought it was successful in achieving an ambient opening to the film; as well as swiftly establishing the setting.  They also thought it added to the suspense of the short film.

- Clever uses of lighting. I think people thought the way I was able to balance lighting with colour correction was well done and it achieves a suitable, respectable look. It makes my colour pallet look dark and low-key lighting but still has a fairly day-time esque colour pallet simultaneously.

- People also are beginning to like the narrative, despite it being only the first half of my short film. I am pleased with this as there is no dialogue in my short film as of yet, so it's good that people deciphering the narrative and plot just by the camera shots and the actions of the characters.

However they also had some weaknesses with my first draft.

- One significant, or more picked up than anything else weakness with my first draft short film is that the non-diegetic audio became repetitive, or made people lose slight interest in the film. This is something that surprised me and made me think twice about how I should go about audio in my product, so now I know in my 2nd draft when all shooting is complete, to have a range of audio types and be sure to change things up a bit, making a mixture of both diegetic audio and non-diegetic. This will keep things interesting for the audience and not have them be slightly put off by only hearing one piece and type of audio soundtrack like in my first draft currently.

- Some people found pacing to be an issue- whether shots went on for too long or some shots in general were't needed, which ultimately dragged out my short film or made it longer than it needed to be, also making it less effective. This is something I'll be sure to change in my 2nd draft round and will pay closer attention to shots that aren't 100% needed, and any ways I can speed up footage or takes.

- Some people found lighting to be an issue- whereas this is something I slightly disagree with. I most likely will just edit my colour correction more next time so that the colours are not as dark and low-key, and be sure to have slightly brighter and more colorful images.

Intrusion Poster Draft #2

This is the revised, 2nd draft of my poster for Intrusion. The first most notable improvement being that this one is now portrait, the standard convention for film posters. This was a fundamental improvement I had to utilise because my poster can't be landscape for significant, established reasons.

Another improvement is the text. I had to add all the necessary text at the bottom that my first draft didn't have. This is the text that will be found at the bottom of every film poster, all the information regarding the films production such as studios, directors, actors, producers and so on. This is also essential information that will be on most commercial film posters.

The image itself for the poster is now in black and white. I feel that this was a necessary improvement/adjustment as it suits the mood and tone of Intrusion much more than by using an image with lots of colour. This is because the black and white creates a bleaker, more sinister tone reflected in the darker, low-key lit colours. I also like how the house is now totally black in colour, creating a very mysterious tone and vibe towards Intrusion from the poster so far.

Overall I am happy with this draft, but I am looking to carry out more improvements for my next draft.

Film Review- Draft No. 2

Here is the 2nd draft of my second ancillary task, the film review. I produced and edited the film review using Photoshop CS5.

From my second draft, I have added all of the text, a secondary picture in the bottom right, the cast and film information on the right hand side, and the plot of the short film at the top right. These conventions are all things I have learned from my research into film reviews. The formatting is all up to speed in my opinion, and the picture and title 'Intrusion' is large and bold to attract the audiences attention. The film review would be for a double sided, A3 magazine page, which also a lot of my researched film reviews had the same structure.

Even though it is only draft 2 of my film review, I'm happy with it and don't think it'll need any more significant improvements or adjustments!

Feedback and Reviews from Peers and Teacher- Poster Draft 1

Recently our media class has undergone some feedback sessions for our ancillary tasks. I presented my first poster draft to the class and was relatively happy with the feedback and their responses to it. Some of the common strengths with my poster were:

- The choice of font, style and colour was effective to a fair extent. I am happy that my classmates and teacher thought this way, as I carefully selected and stylised the font to achieve a sinister, psychological-thriller effect to my poster, in which they also had similar feelings. They also liked the red, striking typography as it captured their attention and interest to the poster and the film. 

- They also liked the name for the short film itself, 'Intrusion'. They found it to be an appropriate, and effective word that represents the film and grabs the viewers attention and curiosity, despite the fact it's only 1 word.

- Another thing they picked out was the actual image from the poster, of my 2 main protagonists sinisterly standing outside of the house. They thought how it reinforced the title was good, and thought it was a good choice of primary imaging on the poster.

- Lastly, a few people thought how the primary colours used in the poster of red and black were successful in representing the moods and tones of the film, such as danger and crime which is what people deciphered from the colours used in the poster, which I'm pleased about as this is what I wanted.

Moving on, I also got given some disadvantages for my first draft of poster. These were things that people didn't like so much about the poster or things they saw as unnecessary or needed changing. Some of these disadvantages include:

- It needs to be portrait, not landscape. This is an essential adjustment I need to do for my poster as the main convention for posters is that they are done in portrait rather than landscape. This is something I will be changing as a result.

- Another thing they commented on was that my poster needed additional credits at the bottom, like how most conventional film posters do so including the production companies, directors, actors, camera and crew cast and so on.

- One person thought the poster would be better if the image was in black and white, as opposed to being in colour.  This is something I'm not fully sure I agree with, however I understand that if the image is in black and white, it may make the poster even more bleaker and explicit in the tone it's trying to create.

- Another person thought the depth and colour of the image on the poster could be improved, and will result in a better quality image. This is something I will do in order to get a better looking poster aesthetically.

These are all things I will be considering in order to improve my drafts of my poster.

Film Review - Draft No.1

This is the first draft of the film review for Intrusion. It is just the basic format and includes a picture and the logo of the magazine in the top left.

The picture is of a still from the film, which is used as a device to give the audience an insight into the film. Even though the image is very vague, the audience can draw some kind of interpretation based on the image, such as because they are hooded they can be considered as villanous or antagonists. And they are also both looking the same way, at the same thing, which can assume they are working together, but not for the best intentions.

I also used a 'Total Film' logo in the top left, this means that the film review I'm using would belong in a Total Film magazine if it were real. This is also used to remind the audience what magazine they are reading when they read the film review.

As an overall mockup and draft 1 of my film review I am happy with it so far and think when I add the text and additional images and titles to it it will look like a good film review, and a conventional film review.

Audience Theory

There are various different audience theories that we need to be addressing and thinking about when it comes to the coursework. These are theories that put across certain statements and understandings about what audiences do with, and what they gain from certain media products and texts. It also establishes how easily, or in what way they come to an agreement with the media and how susceptible they are to believing it, or being 'controlled' by it.

Hypodermic Needle theory: This is a theory that dictates audiences are passive in nature. Ideologies and opinions are passed on to, or injected into the audience through the many different mediums of the media. This 'injection' then shapes and alters the audiences state of mind; essentially controlling their thoughts and beliefs just through showing them things on the media explicitly.

The Agenda Setting theory: The Agenda Setting theory, or model represents a very powerful influence of the media. This theory suggests the media has the power to tell us what is and what isn't important. It can be justified in 2 main points. 1- The press and the media do not reflect reality; they filter and shape it. 2- Media concentration on a few issues and subjects leads the public to perceive those issues as more important than others. 

Two Step flow theory: This theory proposes that the key information from the media movies in two distinct stages. It can be described by a diagram, the Two Step Flow Model, developed by Katz & Lazarsfeld in 1955. It basically says that the 'opinion leaders', individuals that pay close attention to the media and the information presented, and then they pass it on to many people around them, or as the model describes 'individual in social contact with the opinion leader.' This is how this model suggests information and opinions presented from the media gets around. 

Uses and gratifications theory: This theory is the opposite to the Hypodermic Needle theory and it suggests that audiences are active. It is all about what people do with media rather than what the media does to people. People use the media and all of its products for individual needs and requirements. This can be for social needs, cognitive needs, affective needs and social integrative needs. 

Addressing the Evaluation Questions

The following are the 4 evaluations questions we need to address: 

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

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

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

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


1- My media product I am currently developing and working on production is my thriller short film, where I aim to bring in conventions of dark, psychological thrillers. One way my product uses forms and conventions of real psychological thriller films is through my use of dark, low-key lighting and darker colour pallets, and through the use of slowly built up and escalating camera shots and editing. Such as, modern darker thriller films can often build up tension and suspense that intrigue the audience, through the use of slow camera shots and pacing, that have an end goal of revealing something made to shock the audience. This slow build up is what gets the audience involved with the thriller film and is what creates the thrill value of the product. They also, often use very low-key lit scenes with dark colour pallets, that are suggestive of bleaker and more sinister moods that the audience can decipher, just based on the colours used in the shots. Additionally, one way my media product currently develops real forms and conventions of thriller films is by the way I have got a slow building, ambient piece of soundtrack over my video. In certain types of thriller films, fast, attention-grabbing pieces of non-diegetic audio will be used. This is different to the type of non-diegetic audio I have used in my short film. The reason for this is the different purposes the types of audio create, where my slow building, atmospheric non-diegetic music slowly draws in the audience to my films diegesis and premise, fast, action-based non-diegetic audio aims to get the audience attracted to the action on screen as quickly as possible. This is why I used a slow and more subtle piece of non-diegetic soundtrack as opposed to fast, uptempo thriller bases soundtracks; I was aiming to lure in the audience slowly rather than try and attract them in as quickly as possible, doing so creating a more tense short film.

2. I personally believe that my combination of main text, and both ancillary tasks is fairly effective. I am particularly happy with my poster and how it visually turned out; it replicates the dangerous, dark themes of my main text considerably well. This can be seen through the use of my black and white colour scheme, along with a contrasting, striking red font throughout my poster. This created themes of danger, since the colour red is a convention used in typography and posters that indicate danger or some kind of trouble. The black and white colour scheme also helped to explicitly add to my theme of crime and bleakness. So on the whole, I believe to a fair extent that my poster is a thorough, and effective visual representation of my short film text, and it hints at what the film will be like considerably well, through the uses of conventions and features I've explained. For my film review draft 1, I am happy with the way it turned out and think it represents my short film text to a fair extent, once again. Despite it's a film review, I tried to stick to the same colour scheme as my poster of blacks and reds, which is why my background colour in my film review is black and text colour is often red. I did this to try and replicate themes of Intrusion in my poster as well as film review, so the 3 products share synergy and an overall theme.

3. I think that my audience feedback survey served as an informative, anchoring piece of evidence that helped me establish features and conventions to use in my main text. Despite the fact that my audience survey was based off another short film idea I once had, both of them still incorporate thoroughly similar themes and visions so I still currently find my audience feedback survey useful. One useful thing I have currently learned from my audience survey is that the most common types of thriller sub genres people like to see are action and psychological. This is something beneficial for me as it is good to know that audiences like to see psychological-thriller films, and that I'm not making a product that people technically would be less willing to see. Additionally, I have learned from my results that thriller films can be made better through more effective uses of sound, lighting, direction and cinematography. These are the answers numerous people said when I asked them what they thought made thriller films better. As a result of this, some of these are elements I prioritized and paid additional attention too when it came to filming, story-boarding and post-production. Additionally, another key thing I learned from my audience feedback survey was that 90% of my interviewees thought that the gender of the lead character in a thriller film doesn't matter. This is definitely something that helped me out because once I received all of the data, I then was confident to cast a male in my short film due to the fact that the audience said they don't mind what gender is in the leading role.

4. One form of new technologies that has helped me with my construction and research stage of my project is through the likes of YouTube, Survey Monkey and Adobe After Effects. YouTube was a fundamental aspect of my research stage, I watched many previous short films from students and professionally made, that really gave me an insight on what was to come and how I can draw any ideas and inspirations from these past examples. Survey Monkey is a new technology in the form of a website, that allows anybody to create questionnaires and have them filled in by users on the internet. It was a great service and very much helped me create my survey, which in turn gave me the results that very much so helped my research. In terms of Adobe After Effects, it is a fantastic piece of video editing software developed by Adobe. It is fairly modern as well. This was the main piece of software I used to cut, select and edit footage together used to make my rough cuts. Without it I would of had to choose another editing software which I was more reluctant to do as I like the interface for After Effects and have used it in the past.