Friday 7 May 2010
Evaluation
I had tried to get it embedded, however according to prezi 'This prezi does not exists'(great spelling by prezi.com) ...hmmm. Anyways! The link works and within my prezzi I have evaluated my production and post production. Enjoy!
Reaping what Lauren Showed
Sunday 25 April 2010
Audience feedback
Considering that we couldnt rely on youtube for comments and feedback lauren and I took seperate routes about how to gather feedback, so that we could combine the findings in the end. I asked several people on MSN, a social networking site about the film in an informal interview style approach. Heres the feedback I got:
For informal feedback, they raised some really credible points such as Problems with sound, Colours and the acting. I am planning to ask more people (Ive sent out similar requests on facebook but so far have no replies so will push the boat out on them).
Laurens Post production feedback work is also going really well. She sent out a request on yahoo answers for feedback and got a brilliant reply:
''I did find amusing if a bit disjointed. I loved the ambulance chasing lawyer skit, and was laughing at the 'gag reel'. A nice touch that.'' - Mr_ R_ Swipes
Additionally she is holding a focus group for media producers, around our age (the target age group) and will be posting the questionaires up soon. To do my part for it, I asked two people that were slightly outside the target audience age.
Questionnaire
Did you enjoy the film?
YES
Which areas influenced your decision?
. . . It was different
What improvements could be made?
. . . .acting skills and dialogue, (storyline maybe?)
Did you understand the plot?
NO
Could you tell that it was a parody?
Of what?
Where could you see this being shown?
On a laptop, you tube?
If this was a series, would you watch the next episode?
YES
Might help me understand it
Thanks for your time.
Your welcome.
(Age: 22)
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Questionnaire
Did you enjoy the film?
YES NO
Which areas influenced your decision?
The fact it was a comedy parody made it interesting and funny to watch.
What improvements could be made?
Clearer speaking from the actors
Did you understand the plot?
YES NO
Could you tell that it was a parody?
Yes
Where could you see this being shown?
In a film festival or on a television programme
If this was a series, would you watch the next episode?
YES NO Maybe
Depends on the quirky lines and plot story.
Thanks for your time.
(Age 15)
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With these two, there was a vast difference between the responses. The 15 year old had rather positive responses, saying that while it lacked 'clever lines' it was still enjoyable. The 22 year old was less positive. There was no understanding of the parody and the acting was highlighted as the key problem in the peice. The positive was that if it was a series, the next episode would be watched - but to help understand the storyline. All in all it was mixed when it came to the questionaires, which was interesting. It will be great to be able to look over Laurens findings and summerising it in my Exciting 'prezi' Evaluation. Will be posting the link very soon
Monday 8 March 2010
We've hit the tube ...no not literally!
I've got a handle on the review page after looking at some examples in the empire magazine. Using the template as the basis, I created the fictional 'Shorts review' section of an empire mag. Heres a screenshot of what it looks like
Obviously some of this is difficult to see because of the quality of picture but I took key elements of the empire layout (Look Closer - Using actual film facts from our film , Caption on the image that has a thinnly veiled joke, large quotation from the review, star rating, and some of the smaller graphics I attempted to recreate (red/ orange bar , small circle with arrow in it at the start and end of the review ). I put my own spin on the overview mast head (In Cinemas) and changed it to On Line as our film is intended to be a low budget internet based film. I also included the website and page numbers on the base of the page.
Initially my draft was critised due to the uneven textbox sizes and the fact the default size (A4) isnt actually the size of normal magazines as they are normally wider and slightly shorter. After a quick refresher of publishers features (my year 11 gcse ict teacher must be weeping!) i remembered most of the key tools at would rectify the criticism originally got. After all this it looked much improved. I would say that I learnt from my feedback and maybe next time i should do more research on magazines before making my first draft to adhere more to conventions.
Thursday 25 February 2010
Writing Block Appeared!
With Lost finally retiring into cult obscurity with the arrival of the final series, short film directors Lauren Edwards and Kyle Bamford have attempted to construct the same levels of confusion and obscure events— In 4 minutes. Waking up in the middle of nowhere, Jack (Jonny Ellis – Pirates, Ninjas and the Stone) soon finds 2 equally clueless teens in the form of the overly melodramatic John (Tom Bircham) and Matt (Darren Stapleton – Pirates, Ninjas and the Stone). Little known to them, while they stumble helplessly around looking for a way out, a much sinister evil has awakened…
Like its characters, the style of this film wanders aimlessly but bashfully through each scene. Happily this is a refreshing break from the oddly perfume advert smoothness of Lost, but in places the amateur nature is rudely thrust upon its audience with slightly off camera cuts slicing through that low budget charm. It might be that the directors have intended this to be a rebellion against the aesthetic focused cult television productions of today. Yet they have done so in such a vague way, to anyone looking for escapism, this will be taken at face value.
That would be a shame because Edwards and Bamford have made intelligent veiled jokes at the expense of various aspects in modern media that bloat our television screens. One such is the inclusion of the advert ‘Lawyersthatsueforgold’, which pokes fun at the plague of identikit daytime advertisements that circulate for months on end. But in the end the unfortunate thing is these jokes often are better than the more narrative driven parts of the film.
So far it isnt quite right so im going to think about it for a while
Its the Final Poster .. TBC
This is the roughly finished Poster. I looked at other posters including 300 to get a rough idea of the poster to credits ratio. Key ideas I picked up from the poster was the size difference between the Names of cast and crew with their job titles (Names are larger, meaning I made a seperate layer for some areas of text, halved the size and ran it on two lines to match the size of names.
Tuesday 23 February 2010
Freedom! and No we dont have to edit another 5 series!
All in all, there has been an obvious improvement through the editing phase of production. The adding of music and sound effects in particular really created tension , and in the case of the advert, a silly but dated feel. Some of the effects and transitions work well to highlight points that weren't so well pointed out in the film (such as Darrens 'talk to plushie' power). We used letterbox and QT margin subtitles to convey the mental conversation between Darren and the plushie. Other special effects we included were the circular highlighting around the hello Kitty after Jonny says 'Oh No!' (Much like a poor japanese dub - not to say this is a bad thing!) to add to the whole comic book feel . Personally i think the editing has been of big importance to the success of our film, however if i had one criticism it would be that perhaps changing the colour values and contrast might make larger playback screens really pixelated.