Evaluation - How did you use media technologies in the construction and research planning and evaluation ?

How Did You Use Media Technologies in The

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

In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use

Evaluation -Creating synergy throughout the three products.

Creating Synergy Throughout the Three Products

My personal evaluation

My Personal Evaluation

Audience feedback

Audience Feedback

evalution

This is a link from a blog post that another member of my group ( Chantelle ) We worked together to create this post, as we feel that we need to concentrate a lot on creating a really interesting, and typical teenage girl to play our main character.

http://c

hantellemedia-a2.blogspot.com/2009/09/teenage-gir

ls.html

We are using Kirsty, another member of the group to play the main character Carly, this is because we feel she had the most confidence, and we felt she would be able to play Carly perfectly.

Carly's profile.

Carly is the main character in our film. She is a teenager who lives with her mother. Her mother has recently broken up with Carly's father and has started drinkin

g heavily.


Carly's appearance consists of quite scruffy clothes and messy hair. She isn't

very traditional in the sense that she doesn't take much in pride in her appearance. She has several problems including problems at school, problems with her peers and with her mother. She has also started to take drugs to 'escape' her everyday li

fe. She's very quiet and keeps herself very much to herself. The fact that she tries to attend school and carry on normally, wh

en she is having such big problems at home, we thought made her seem like she was still trying to progress with her life. This makes the character more relateab

le and it makes the audience want her to get away from her problems.

Kirsty as Carly.

Further research on Heroine.

In our film the main character has a drug addiction to heroin, we used black tea and brown sugar to look like heroine. We decided to find out the usual effects this drug has on the body and general information on it. This made sure we knew the proper effects of it and could properly show it in the film.

Effects: Heroin slows down body functioning and substantially reduces physical and psychological pain.
Most users get a rush or buzz a few minutes after taking it.
A small dose of heroin gives the user a feeling of warmth and well-being.
Bigger doses can make the user sleepy and very relaxed.
The first dose of heroin can bring about dizziness and vomiting.

Purity: A user has no way of knowing what their heroin is mixed with. Recent tests have shown it can contain nutmeg, brick dust, and ground-up gravel but it’s more commonly mixed with sugar, starch, powdered milk, or quinine.

Risks: Deaths from overdoses occur. But the risk increases after a period off the drug because the body's tolerance for the drug goes down.

If this drug is taken with alcohol or any other drugs it increases the chances of overdosing.

Injecting heroin can do nasty damage to your veins and has been known to lead to gangrene (death and decay of body tissue, usually a digit or a limb) and tissue infections.

We had a small bit of help from the Bristol drugs project,in reference to our film, the scene we have where it shows our main character Carly having a breakdown in the toilets with all the writing on the wall was a major hic-up we had at one point whilst filming our film.

A contact we had helping us throughout the film had a contact with a person working with the Bristol drugs project. The 'go crazy scene' set in the toilets was a major worry for us as usually the side effects of heroine is that the drug user feels spaced out, and our film showed the side effect being on a hype. However after getting in contact with the the contact from Bristol drugs project she told us that before taking their fix of heroine most users will take a different drug such as cocaine in order to balance out the hype from the cocaine which then gives them the energy and helps them to take the Heroine, making the comedown seem as less drastic but giving them more of a high.

However the 'crazy scene' also shows a good representation of the paranoia that come when you were taking drugs.

stuff i need to do

short film eval

character profile - get chan to send

evaluation

update of storyline

represenations of women - chantelle

Final Poster for Final Notice.

Here is our finished version of our film poster for Final Notice.

In order to keep the look of our poster realistic when filming we took a camera along with us and took a range of photos whilst filming.

We wanted the poster to have a in action style look rather than a look that shows and portrays the look that they have been taken for the film in a studio.

As Final notice has a documentary /day in the life style theme to it we wanted the poster to look like there was someone following her around and taking the pictures of he, but we wanted them to look natural rather than have the character pose for them.

Most independent film poster have a main convention of advertising good feedback and reviews they have received from out side organisations to the media company. This is done so that the idea of a respected organisation would encourage people to buy the film on DVD,download it or watch it at the cinema.

Therefore we have used this convention on our poster showing by using the five star rating scheme and then stating the company in our case The times, as the people who have given us the rating.

This usually works in the better or more popular the organisation who has rated you is more likely to be the one published on your poster thus attracting more and more people to consume the film, also this is a good way for attracting your target audience as you may like to use the this tactic as by publishing the poster/film review in their magazine and publish the company name on the poster.

We have also used the convention of advertising awards that have been won buy the film, this is a typical convention to do this for both independent and blockbuster film posters.

This is a brilliant way to increase advertising for free, it can also build up good reputations for the film,directors and film company's.

By building up a good reputation through winning awards,this will entice audience's.

The font we have used for the main tittle Final Notice, is written in capital letters and in a bold black font I think this reinforces the idea of finality that we are trying to portray through the message of our film. I think by using this type of font and in capital letters also has a to the sudden event our film shows and the speed of events. The memorable font is a parallel to the memorable event especially in the last couple of scene's I.E. The drug scene.

Drug scenes from other films

Our film includes a scene in which it shows explicit drug taking, this is a very significant event in our film in order for it to work as this is the main event in our film.

I have research into some other films which contain scenes of drug taking, I have done this as I want to make the film look as realistic as possible.

We have chosen to use the drug Heroine as we feel this is the drug that is recognisable to most people. People know that the drug heroine is a highly addicted drug and when portrayed in other media texts, this convention of the drug is always portrayed in this way.

However another thing we had to take in to consideration when showing explicit scenes of taking this drug is the rating of our film, as we feel that this is very necessary to our film and that we have to include it we have taken the decisions that the guidance rating for our film will now be rated 18.

Pulp Fiction

I have chosen to analysis the scene from pulp fiction where John Travolta's character takes heroine . I have chosen this scene as this is the drug our character Carly uses.

The screen shot above show the main part of the process john travoltas charter goes through to prepare himself and the drugs. I think that it is important that we include this process in the film, as it shows the lengths people go to in order to get there next fix.

I like the idea of showing the process of preparing the drugs as it will make the film seem more realistic rather than if we showed Carly just getting the drug's and injecting them straight away.

Therefore we have decided to use the process of preparing the drugs shown in pulp fiction in our short film too but through our interpretation.

The general sequences goes :

1. prepare the needle - 2. lighter -3. heat the drugs on the spoon. 4. inject

We have used this sequence in our film however we have added an extra stage in which after step 3 - heating the drugs on the spoon,we show the main character Carly flicking the syringe as this shows the transferal of the liquid form of the drug from the spoon to the syringe, which we wanted to highlight to the audience in order to educate them that the drug comes in different forms.

However I feel that Pulp Fiction Glamorizes taking Heroine and that this isn't a true representation of someone who would be addicted to this specific drug. I did not like that the scene kept switching from the scene showing him taking drugs to him driving a car.

This is not a good representation as if you had taking heroine and was on a high from it you would be unable to co-ordinate driving a car, therefore I don't feel that the makers of pulp fiction got this correct and it is not a true representation of a drug addict.

Therefore our film is going to focus on the more realistic darker side of the aftermath of taking Heroine.

And not show it as being as glamorous and desirable as it is shown in pulp fiction.

Real life stories of a heroine addict.

I have embedded this real life stories of heroine drug addicts that was shown on the document geographical channel, this shows the realistic side of what happens when you take heroine,unlike that shown in pulp fiction. This is the image of desperation that we want to show throughout our film in order to make it look more realistic.

Music choices

Our original plan was to include a track over the film in order to help portray the story more throughly in parts of the film.

The main tracks that we have considered was :

Florence and the machine - Dog Days

However in order to use this film we would have to have wrote a letter to the bands representatives and to their label to ask permission to use the film.

On all our videos we would have had to put a no copyright intended notice and have to show that we have have permission to use the track.

However after much consideration we have decided that in order to keep our film more realistic and to keep the hard hitting edge to our film, we feel that it would not be suitable to to put a background track, in order to keep the realistic-ness in our film. Therefore we have just left the diegetic sounds in our film, as these are very important to the story,for example the scratching of the arms when trying to prepare herself for taking the drugs, I think that this is a very significant sound throughout the film as it helps portrays the sense of desperation which is a reoccuring theme throughout our short film.

Therefore we are just using the diegetic sound in our film of :

*The argument between Carly and her mother at two point in the film.

*The discussion between Carly and her teacher.

*And just the general diegetic background noise.

Two Ending's.

Due to many many hours and much time spent contemplating over what to include in our short film, we have final finished our short film, but not following typical short independant film conventions, we have a double ending for our film.

So now it's down to you the audience to choose which ending you want for our short film.

Please watch both version and vote in the poll.

So here is Final Notice.

Hope you enjoy it !

Final notice version 1.

FInal Notice version 2 .

Audience Feedback

In order to get some feedback on our film we made two questionnaires and a number of poll's to get some audience feedback.

http://rubywalkera2media.blogspot.com/2010/05/audience-feedback.html

We then asked people to fill out the questionnaire online in order to get sufficient research.

The link above will take you to the audience feedback page

in which a number of people have watched and evaluated our film for us.

We also got our feedback through many different social networking site that we signed our company film secret up to and profiled our film on :

Codes and conventions

In our film we challenge and conform to many conventions of short films.

Codes & Conventions :

- there are usually only a few characters

- the plot tends to be based around one main character

- there is usually always a twist / unexpected happening

- short films are usually based around a true to life story

- a huge variation of interesting angles and shot types

- voice overs are a popular method of sounds in short films

- there doesn't tend to be much dialogue in short films

- short films usually last between 1- 10 minutes

- short films don't tend to use titles, and if they do, they're usually very simple

- short films tend to have a very low budget

How have we followed the codes and conventions?

We have created a short film that lasts about 5minutes, which is within the typical time. The plot is based round one main character, and the whole film only includes a few characters, Carly, her mum & some extras (teacher & girls ).

We decided against using powerful music, and went a long with the popular choice of using voice overs. We definitely feel like this was much more effective, and it was a great way to help the audience understand the short film a lot easier.

From the beginning of the film, the audience know that Carly is a troubled teenager, who is finding life difficult, the twist that short films usually have is the fact that Carly is a drug user, this should have come as a shock to the audience, and hopefully kept them interested.

We planned our story boards extremely well, it took us a long time to get it to where they were, and even then whilst we were filming we changed, and developed the shots and angles to make them even more interesting. And therefore we have definitely kept to the conventions of using a variation of shots & angles

The change to our storyline .

Rethink Time

Right, sorry about the amount of time that has passed since my last blog post. In the small break we have had to completely re-think our film. Well now the main girl now has problems at home as her parents have split up and her mum has sunk into depression. Her mum is starting to become an alcoholic and pays no attention to how Carley may be feeling about the whole situation. Carley is still trying to carry on with her day to day life as much as possible by attending school and things like that. Even though she is trying to still have a normal life, she has become depressed and goes down the wrong path.

We ended up having to rethink the narrative because it was becoming to hard to include the postcards and still have an effective storyline. The postcards are no longer included now because of this reason. Everything else still stands but she doesn't have a boyfriend or doesn't sell her body for drugs. It is however every apparent that she doesn't have any friends or anyone to turn to when she is having problems.

Also we have decided to not have any sound over the top but simple contain the diagetic sound and dialogue. We also have some non-diagetic sound in the form voiceovers at the start of the film. The voiceovers are used to make the audience aware of the fact that Carley's parents have broken up. The diagetic sound worked more effective than we thought the music would as it makes the audience feel as if they are part of the film more, especially as the diagetic sound is very subtle

The small change in our storyline

Right, sorry about the amount of time that has passed since my last blog post. In the small break we have had to completely re-think our film. Well now the main girl now has problems at home as her parents have split up and her mum has sunk into depression. Her mum is starting to become an alcoholic and pays no attention to how Carley may be feeling about the whole situation. Carley is still trying to carry on with her day to day life as much as possible by attending school and things like that. Even though she is trying to still have a normal life, she has become depressed and goes down the wrong path.

We ended up having to rethink the narrative because it was becoming to hard to include the postcards and still have an effective storyline. The postcards are no longer included now because of this reason. Everything else still stands but she doesn't have a boyfriend or doesn't sell her body for drugs. It is however every apparent that she doesn't have any friends or anyone to turn to when she is having problems.

Also we have decided to not have any sound over the top but simple contain the diagetic sound and dialogue. We also have some non-diagetic sound in the form voiceovers at the start of the film. The voiceovers are used to make the audience aware of the fact that Carley's parents have broken up. The diagetic sound worked more effective than we thought the music would as it makes the audience feel as if they are part of the film more, especially as the diagetic sound is very subtle

Target's for things to be done by 12.02.2010

thing's we need to do for our rough cut to be complete :

Choose Music - ideas: florence and the machiene - dog days, Mr postman dubstep remix.

filmimg that needs to be done :

scene 1:
balloon shot for at the start of the film
Ms of the me & the balloon
cu of the ballon with the post card on
ecu of the postcard/photo on the balloon

scene 2 :
ls stood in mirror getting ready
ls walking down a set of stairs open the front door.
ls opens front door and stands in porch
cu of envalope on the floor
ms of her picking it up
ls of her opening the envalope
cu of the letter : - "have you got a secret"
ms of her screwing it up
cu of putting it in her pocket
ls of her walking out the front door
ms side shot of her picking up her earphones
cu of her putting them in her ears
then music starts to play.



scene 3 :
ls of her walking down the street
ls of 3 boys stood loitering at he bottom of the street
ms of her paassing one ofthe boys closly
ls shows that at they pass by they actually hold hands
cu shows the drug exchange
cu of her head turns towards him smiling
before ms of of her turning away from him
(all this is doen in slow mo)
ls of her carrying on walking out of shot

scene four :
ls of her walking down a street
ls of me stood still and people walking past me hurridly
ms of her picking up the phone and walking off.
cu of her looking at mum and daughter
into flash backs wevealready filmed

scene five:
ls of me entering the public toilets






last scene :
ecu of postcard/photo
cu of postcard/photo
ls of me holding the balloon
els of me and the other ten people also holding balloons
els of everyone letting go of the balloons


end credits :
names appearing on black screen
as well as the still shots we took whilst filming like an out takes roll
before finally going to a black screen and the film name appears and music stops.


ideas:
at start photo on the still ballooon teh photo starts to move and goes into the film. the photo starts to turn so the white of what would be a polariod goes away.

ending:
pans out it turnsa and goes back into a still camera pans out and wse see loadsa people with balloons they lets go and the voice over speaks about setting herself free.

voice over ideas:

definition of words.

influenced: - the action or process of producing effects on the actions, behavior snd opinions, of another or others

addiction: - noun the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, as narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma.

escape - verb - to slip away from pursuit or peril; avoid capture, punishment, or any threatened evil.