Evaluation Question 2

In this post, I answer the second evaluation question which is "How effective is the combination of your main product and your ancillary texts?"

After completing this post, I now feel that I have managed to justify why my ancillary tasks, combined with my main task, are effective and also realise that I am very happy with how all three of my tasks have turned out. Each of them are how I had imagined they would be and I feel that all three of my tasks were an overall success, upon reflection. 

Evaluation Question 1

In this post I answer the first evaluation question which was "In what ways does your media product us, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media texts?"

After completing this post, I am now confident that I have made the right decisions about what conventions to follow and what conventions to challenge. I think that by following and breaking the conventions that I have, I have ended up with a more unique media product. 

Audience Feedback

In this post I created a survey for people who have watched my short film. This was important because I needed to know what was good about my film and how my film could be improved so that I could make a more enjoyable film next time. To get this information, I gave my survey to a number of people who have watched my film as well as some professionals who know a lot about film making.

Audience Feedback

Please take the film to complete my survey if you have watched my short film "Room". This will give me the information that I need to produce a much better film next time:

The results of my survey, as of, are as follows:

Professional Feedback

I also made sure that I made a version of the survey that I could get professionals to complete.The results of my professional Feedback survey are as follows:

There are many things that I have learned from this survey. One of the main things that I know that I should change is how the film ends. This piece of feedback really stuck out to me because I agree with this strongly. Although I am happy with my film overall, I do agree that the ending of my film is abrupt and this has been troubling me ever since I finished my film. I think that a way that I could improve this is by having some sort of philosophical ending where a moral of the story is obvious. Also, the feedback that states that I should include more comedic techniques was helpful because they suggested that I could use the rule of three to make the film more humorous. I think that, although I believe my film is funny, my film could have been funnier so this piece of feedback give me a good place to start to do that.    

My short film - "Room"

This is my final cut of my short film "Room"

Overall I am happy with how my film turned out and I am relieved that the editing went exactly how I wanted it to. I am impressed with myself that I was able to produce a film that was so similar to what I had imagined in my head.

Ancillary Task: Radio Advert

In this post, I had to produce a radio advert for my short film "Room". The first thing that I decided to do was to think up a script for the advert in the form of a rough timeline so that I can easily decided what part should go where. The following picture is that first initial script:

After I finished the script, I decided to get straight on and have a go at recording it. I decided to get the same person who voiced the narrator in my short film to play narrator in my advert. I also knew that I wanted to include some clips from my actual film so I made sure that i included them. 

After the completion of this post, I am very happy how my advert turned out and it is exactly how I had imagined it when I was writing the script despite some changes that I made whilst editing the advert which I think simply add to the comedy factor of the advert which I knew was important to ensure that listeners knew what kind of film "Room" is.

Radio Advert Textual Analysis

In this post I will be looking at some radio commercials that advertise movies. This is beneficial thing to do because one of my ancillary tasks is to produce a radio trailer that promotes my short film. Researching radio commercials should give me a good idea of how a decent radio commercial sounds.

The following radio commercial is for the 2013 film "Gravity".

I think that this is a good radio advert because it promotes the movie well by doing a number of things. It uses positive quotes from critics as well as using clips from the actual film. It correctly uses the director's and the cast member's names to use their good reputation to promote the film. There are a number of the sounds used that,whilst being accompanied by the score, portray a feelings of isolation whilst also giving us a feeling of amazement and appreciation which are all feeling that we assume we would feel if we were in space. It is for these reasons that I think that most important thing that makes this radio commercial a good one is the dramatic music that is played in the background that gives the listener a small sample of the suspense that is included in the movie. At the beginning of the advert there is the soft sound of a piano which portrays a peaceful feeling and then, as the advert continues, the music builds up into a crescendo which implies that something big will happen in the movie like it does in the advert, such as a disruption of equilibrium.  

The following radio commercial is for the 1980 film "The Empire Strikes Back"

   

I think that this radio commercial is good because it promotes the film well and it also informs the listener on the certificate for the film as well as where and when the listeners can watch the new movie. Once again I think that the most important thing about this radio advert is the music used in the background. The music in the background is "The Imperial March" from the original soundtrack of the movie composed by John Williams. John Williams is very famous for producing the soundtracks for movies and the narrator does not hesitate to also promote his "magnificent score". The score starts immediately with brass instruments playing in forte and this grabs the listeners attention straight away. The music is intimidating and it makes the listeners want to hurry to the cinema to watch the new film and I think this is the biggest reason why this radio advert is a successful one.    


To conclude, I think that both radio adverts are good at doing what they are supposed to do and I strongly believe that the music used for the advert is the key to this. What I have learned from completing this post is that the music used in the adverts are either used to reflect the mood that the listener gets from hearing the advert, like Gravity, or to grab the listeners attention, like in the Star Wars advert. For my radio advert, I need to carefully select the music to do one of these two things and I know that this will now be my number one priority when making my own radio commercial.     

Ancillary Task: Developing My Movie Poster

In this post, I designed a very basic idea of I could use as a poster for my short film as part of my ancillary task. I had the idea of using school photographs of the characters in the film to create the poster. Also I had the idea of getting a photo of a silhouette to represent the mystery behind the narrator in the short film. For a background, I quite liked the idea of having these picture look like they were pinned on a cork board, however I also liked i idea of having the pictures look like they were randomly scattered across the floor. This is a detail that I can make a decision on in the later stages of developing my poster.   

After completing this post, I have now got a very rough idea of what my poster could look like. This is a good first stage because I can now develop the poster as much as I want but I will always have this first draft to refer back too.


After this, I decided to have a go at logging onto Photoshop and recreating this design using the real photographs of my actors to produce my final movie poster. There were many alterations made throughout the process, such as the title and the layout of the photographs, but I am very happy with the final poster.

In reflection, I am extremely happy with my final movie poster. There were many things that I decided to add and change from my original design however I feel that all of the changes I made make the poster even more effective. I decided to change the layout of the photographs, to begin with, because I thought that my previous layout was a little bit too random and it was quite difficult for the reader to analyse properly. Also I decided to add the writing on the bottom of the Polaroids to add a sense of mystery to each of the characters on the poster. Finally I decided to add pins on each of the Polaroids to give the poster an overall more authentic look which I think is extremely successful.