Digital technology s1.a

Over the two years of doing Media Studies, I produced a foundation portfolio – an opening sequence to a film, and an advanced portfolio – a short film, magazine article, and promotional poster.

Before we began our coursework, we did a practice project where we were taught different camera techniques which would benefit us in our upcoming portfolio projects, these included handheld and tripod use, camera shots and movements, i.e. point of view shots and panning movement. We were given a list of things to include such as shot-reverse-shot and establishing shots, all of which would prove very useful in our portfolio projects.

In the first year for our foundation portfolio, we researched many opening sequences to all different genres of film. This was to enable us to gather a sound understanding of the aims and conventions of an opening sequence, for example we had to understand how to grip our audience in the 5 minutes but at the same time, not give too much away about the rest of the film and how the story develops. We then started planning our own opening sequence using programmes such as Microsoft Office Word to help us keep our work organised and clearly presented. We used email to share our work amongst our group and keep in contact, as well as mobile phones. This made it so much easier to keep on top of what we had done as a group and what still needed to be done.

These are things that we regularly did before the course, however in the production process we started to learn and develop many skills using digital technology. We were able to practice and develop the camera techniques we had previously learnt and filmed our opening sequence using shots such as close up shots, tilts, tracking shots, zooms, etc. We used a range of these techniques in our foundation portfolio in completing the filming and then we moved on to editing. To do this we used Adobe Premiere Pro to fit our scenes together, cut between different camera angles and add credits and a title sequence. I had never used this software before so all the skills used in the editing process I had learnt and developed by practicing and experimenting with the software. The quality of the software allowed us to finish with a smooth outcome with a range of different techniques as well as giving us the option of many different fonts and styles to come up with a title sequence and credits relevant to the genre of our film, i.e. eerie and creepy. We then burnt our finished film onto a blank DVD using this software.

The skills I learnt in my foundation portfolio were then further developed and added to in the advanced portfolio. Instead of printing our work off and putting it into a folder, we uploaded our work onto a blog using www.blogger.com via www.slideshare.net. This allowed us to clearly present our work and was an easier way of making sure everything was uploaded where it should be, it also made it very easy to share work amongst the group and see what each member has done, via the internet. We used a camera to film our short film along with the addition of a Phantom HD slow motion camera that allowed us to get an extremely high quality, smooth slow motion action. We documented behind-the-scenes by taking pictures with a digital camera that enabled us to explain and demonstrate how and what we did in order to get the shots we had. Again we used email through www.hotmail.com and mobile phones to contact each other and the cast to arrange shoot times, costumes, etc. After we had finished the filming, we went on to editing, for this we used a different software, we used Final Cut Pro which is a more professional software and allowed us to be even more precise and inventive with our post production. It allowed us to really clearly emphasise the parallel worlds and also to build up tension with the slow motion collision. We had never used this software before and therefore had to learn all the controls and techniques to achieve the finish we wanted to.

Without the use of digital technology, this project would have been impossible. We depended on the quality of the software available and the internet for research, without it we would have really struggled to organise everything and present it clearly. The outcome of our foundation and advanced portfolio would never have been as successful without the opportunity to learn to operate and use digital technology.

Creativity

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Digital technology

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Analyse media genre in one of your coursework productions - s1b

The media product I am going to write about in relation to genre is the piece of coursework I am most proud of – my Advanced Portfolio “Forever Young”. It is a short film warning its audience about the dangers of using a mobile phone whilst driving, and also not concentrating whilst crossing the road.

Genre covers every aspect of a media text, i.e. characters, narrative, representations, mise-en-scene, etc. All of these fit together to create the genre of that text. If any of these aspects are not necessarily fitting to the generic conventions, it will be harder for the audience to understand the intended genre of the text and therefore it will not quite have achieved its purpose. Attention to genre is very important for an audience to understand and follow the film easily and the way the creators intended.

The genre of my short film is documentary/drama – this allowed us to be very creative with our narrative and the way in which we shot it. We followed the basic conventions of a documentary as our story was based on situations that happen in real life, we thought this would allow us to attract our audience even more as it makes them thing about their own life and engages them in our story through emotion. We based our film on the ‘Think!’ adverts which have a narrative aiming to make the audience think about their actions, sending out a strong message. This is what we tried to achieve but developed it more into a documentary by delving further into the character’s lives and showing the consequences, as well as making it longer in length. We entered it into the drama genre by building up the tension by showing two different outcomes to the decisions the driver could have made. This made it more intriguing for the audience as they are able to see both consequences, but also because it leaves them with a kind of ‘cliffhanger’ as to which choice the driver did chose, which adds to the drama, and it also will make them think about themselves in that situation and realise how much harm it could actually do.

We didn’t really challenge the conventions of the two genres, as we wanted it to be obvious which genre the film would fit in to. We weren’t trying to challenge the audience or confuse them, our aim was to instil a strong message and for them to think about their actions next time they may be faced by such a decision. Our characters were average, normal people, as this would enable our target audience to relate to them and imagine themselves in the same position, therefore achieving the aim of our film. We didn’t necessarily challenge or change the generic conventions, as this would make it less believable. Our research showed us that young males have the highest rate of road traffic accidents in the UK, therefore we cast a young male to fit perfectly into this role and represent the UK statistic. Steve Neal said that ‘genre is a repetition with an underlying pattern of variations’ which means certain generic features have to be included and repeated throughout the film. This theory was applied to my film with the use of the same location in both parallel worlds to give the sense of how very different the outcome could have been, yet affecting the same people in the same place. The music was repeated in both outcomes, and also were the scenes; in one outcome the little boy was walking home and the camera was focused on his feet, this was then swapped with the police officers feet, again to emphasise how it is the same place and the same actions, but with different people.

We gave the film more of a documentary feel to appeal more to the audience’s feelings and emotions by showing how real the storyline is. This genre was emphasised at the end of the film with the inclusion of statistics relevant to the storyline showing how it does happen in real life and it is not a rare occurrence. We aimed to emphasise the documentary style of it through the font, making it very factual and serious and iconic to documentaries.

Overall, as our film was very particular to a genre, we had to follow the general conventions of that genre to achieve our very important role of informing, educating, and warning our target audience. I think we achieved this through attention to detail in representations, mise-en-scene, narrative, etc. all enabling us to successfully convey our message within the genre.

Exemplar answer s1.a

Yellow = Explanation, analysis, argument
Blue = Example
Pink = Terminology


1a) Over the two year media course we had to produce both a foundation portfolio of a school magazine and music magazine as well as an advance portfolio of a horror teaser trailer, film magazine – developing foundation skills further and a poster to advertise our trailer.

In the first year we researched existing music magazines and analysed each one so that we could gain knowledge of particular layouts, fonts and key elements that need to be contained in our production to make it successful. Research and planning allowed us to recognise ‘mastheads’ on magazines as being the most important and therefore the need to focus on a font more detailed to keep continuity with the contents page and double page spread which we also had to create.

Personally I researched ‘Rock’ magazines such as Kerrang, NME and others because I had chosen after carrying out a questionnaire to use Rock music as my theme. The real life media texts allowed me to visualise my favourite parts from each magazine – ripped sticker graphics and broken font on my own work which I then attempted to recreate within Photoshop CS4. In year 1 we were limited to what we could research because magazines were the only theme however, in the second year I was able to develop my ability to research real life media texts much further because we had a range of products we needed to create all under the ‘horror’ genre this time. I was able to research teaser trailers analysing my favourite and least favourite parts allowing me to plan with a mood board which I produced from a range of stills from previous horror films my ideas for my own trailer which helped me to develop my production of my products in relation to real life media texts and techniques such as restricted narration and handheld camera found in the ‘Blair Witch Project’ trailer which inspired my trailer ‘Laquem’ which is also set in the woods. Research into film documentaries like the ‘American Nightmare’ inspired me to create a product which reinforced fear and went against usual horror conventions to make it more interesting. Over the second year research became so important to achieving a product which was realistic and is now like my own distributed on YouTube as a real life media text of its own.

Real life media texts like advertising film posters were able to help me develop my Photoshop skills further because I was able to push myself with the ‘colour burn’ filters and want to create the scary atmosphere of my trailer from just an image and text which I found really fun.

Research into film magazines allowed me to develop my work from AS level so much further because I was able to produce a high standard piece of work in two weeks this year when the magazines took over 3 months last year which shows how much my skills have improves just by being able to constantly refer back to real life media texts for inspiration and even colour schemes that work well together such as black and red which in the first year I just found experimenting with. Research into horror trailers allowed me to recognise different styles of film and how we like Alfred Hitchcock could be an auteur creating new angles and ideas using generic conventions as well as unconventional representations that I have picked upon when watching films and analysing certain techniques which I have then attempted to do in Final Cut Pro when editing certain shots together to create collision cutting and changes in pace which my trailer does extremely well. I was inspired initially by the hand held camera in the trailer REC and the fact I want as an auteur to change the stereotyped representations to be able use a female psycho killer.

Research also allowed me to produce text and inter-titles that shook in order to capture my audience but narrating the story slightly so the shots when together made sense. Research into types of camera movements needed were really helpful and allowed me to completely change the pace with tracking shots and handheld camera which I noticed was used in Silent Hill and American Werewolf in London which I analysed and placed on my blog for reference as some pieces of footage I wanted to recreate including the final girl representations.

Analyse media representation in one of your coursework productions - s1b

The media product I am going to write about in relation to representation is the piece of coursework that I am most proud of; my Advanced Portfolio “Forever Young”. It is a short film warning its audience about the dangers of using a mobile phone whilst driving, and also not concentrating whilst crossing the road.

Raynor describes representation as “The process by which the media present the ‘real world’” which means that everything in the media is a representation; everything we see is being represented and this is to portray the stereotypical view of the world.

Due to the fact that our short film had a strong message we wanted to put over to our audience, we thought it would be best if the characters and the storyline were easy for the audience to relate to. To achieve this, we made sure that the characters were quite ‘real’ and stereotypical to the everyday person, however not so extreme that our target audience would feel they couldn’t relate to them. We chose a storyline that is becoming more and more common in the UK to highlight the need for awareness of danger. We did lots of research of statistics for driving accidents and discovered that young males are the most dominant factor in these accidents. This is due to issues such as; driving too fast, the feeling of being invincible, and concentrating on other things i.e. mobile phones, stereos, iPods, etc. Therefore, we decided that we could successfully portray this issue by showing the audience the consequence of choosing option 1) looking at the phone whilst driving, and option 2) pulling over at the side of the road to read the text. From analysing the statistics, we felt that the most effective representation would be to have a young male as the driver who has to make the choice; this is to fit with the actual real life happenings and therefore make it easier for the audience to relate to. If we had, for example, changed the main character to a middle-aged woman, then the outcome and purpose of our film wouldn’t have been the same. The representations alone help attract the target audience and allow them to put themselves in the position of the character, therefore if they cannot relate to them due to lack of similarity, they will find it difficult to do this and the purpose of our film would not have been fulfilled. We have paid great attention to the portrayal and representation of the teenage boy, it was important to us that he did not necessarily appear in a negative light. Although what he did was bad and the purpose of the film was to stop the audience doing the same, we needed it to be clear that this boy wasn’t necessarily a terrible person, he just made the wrong choice – it could have been anyone! Therefore we made him appear as normal as possible, as appose to an extreme stereotype of the current portrayal of youth today. To achieve this representation, we paid extra attention to clothing, props, and location, i.e. normal casual clothing and a car that is popular amongst young men. The audience reacts to this representation and this depends on their own interpretation of the text, strong representations within a text make it more likely for the creators to achieve a preferred reading.

The young boy, the victim, was also represented in the same way. We needed to give the impression that it could have been anyone that fell victim to the accident; we felt that his clothing was going to be the most important and effective representation of a normal, innocent, little boy and that is why we decided to have him in a school uniform. This representation alone would attract a whole new audience – parents – it would make them understand that it could have been their child and encourage them to educate their children to concentrate and be careful when crossing a road.

Representation in our Advanced Portfolio is vital, without attention to representations of the characters and storyline, the message and purpose of the short film would be far less forceful and clear and it would be increasingly difficult for the audience to relate to the goings-on in the film. This is such a hugely important factor of our film as we are trying to convey such a strong message about danger and safety and without strong representations; we would struggle to achieve this. 

Representations

• Location - importance of a location recce in choosing correct representations for the audience's understanding.
• Class - consider the audience understanding.
• Camera angles and movement and editing - reflected the correct representation. 
• Mise-en-scene - affects audience engagement with the characters.
• Character representations - clothing. lighting, camera angle, dialogue, sound.
• Influence of research - real/existing media texts.
• Levi Strauss - Binary oppositions.
• Vladimir Propp - Character's roles.