Evaluation

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

Hard Cash uses, develops and challenges several forms and conventions of the real Film Noir media product! The following are all examples, however, there are more than I have not mentioned.

The movie uses the Film Noir conventions by being in black and white.

It also sticks to the conventions by being set in the 1950's.

Again, the movie uses conventions by having a money plot.

However, it also develops this convention because the motif for the death is not  money.

It is revenge

We have challenged the Venetian blinds convention by using bars instead.

This creates the same effect but in a completely different style.

It also suggests imprisonment! 

We have used and developed the theme of love and sex by including the cheating theme. 

We have used the mirrors and reflections convention.

 We have used it twice, and so I think this develops the convention.

We have also combined the deep shot and the mirror convention and so we develop the conventions.

 We have used the convention of urban areas but we have challenged it by having it in the day time.

I think this shows that corruption doesn't always happen at night, it can happen at any point!

I think we develop the corruption theme of Film Noirs even further by having, not only a corrupt police, but also a corrupt marriage, suggesting that everything in this world isn't as it seems.  

We tied to use the Film Noir conventions as much as possible as far as the costumes were concerned.

So we had Evelyn our Femme Fatal be in posh clothes like this big fur coat.

We used canted angles and close ups.

This again is a way of using the conventions of Film Noir.

We kept with the conventions of Film Noir by having alcohol in our plot.

We then developed this by adding poison.

And we challenged it by having no smoking in our movie! 

 Of course, we kept the main convention of Film Noirs - which is MURDER!

We developed the conventions by adding even more sins into our plot

We had our characters murder, cheat, and lie. 

Most of our movie is in black and white, which continues the Film Noir conventions.

To challenge it we made part of our movie into colour - to include Neo Noir conventions as well!

We used the typical The Red Dress for our Femme Fatal and made sure that she was always beautiful and seductive.

We kept with the Film Noir conventions by having guns in our movie.

We used lots of over the shoulder shots, to again, keep with the conventions.

I also think this shot is an example of a dark, deep shot!

We had a death by someone in control/power. In typical Film Noirs, this is usually by the Anti-Hero (which is what we had) however, we developed/challenged this by having our Anti-Hero a detective rather than a policeman. 

 We kept by the Film Noir conventions by having a Detective....

...and by having a Policeman.

However, we challenged it, because (apart fromt he end) our policeman was the most innocent character!

We also developed this theme, because the Detective and the Policeman are friends, but Detective Jack Chandler goes behind Policeman Harry White's back. So again, we develop the corruption theme!

Of course, we had to keep the seductive femme fatal. We used this convention by having her seduce our Anti-Hero. However, we challenged the convention by having her killed at the end!

We kept with the convention of someone getting wrongly accused, and we developed this by having the situation found out!

We kept with the conventions by having a corrupt policeman.

We developed the conventions by only having one police officer envolved, when usually it is the whole police force!

Lasty, we kept to the conventions with our ending. We had an ending that leaves the audience thinking

"It doesn't end the way I thought it would, is there going to be a sequal?" - Martin Cunnington

As well as the conventions with mise-en-scene and camera, we also kept to the conventions with our use of sound. We had eery music and a gun shot. We had diegetic and nondiegetic sounds. Howwever, we challenged the conventions by not having any rain and we ....

developed and challenged the conventions by only having Jazz music once in the actual movie!

We had synchronous music for most of our play, which I think added drama and created a greater affect.

We also used a range of camera angles, including the typical Film Noir canted angle, and extreme close ups of things such as hands, legs and faces. The canted shots created distortion and disorientation, intriguing the audince, while the deep shots had the opposite effects - clearing up mysteries and highlighting specific aspects to the audience.

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

To answer this question, I have interviewed three people as I do not believe it to be fair for my to judge my own work. I would probably be biased. Here is the video interview: (The video starts at 0.07 minutes.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9231wHgDgM&context=C48c52c5ADvjVQa1PpcFO77QS8awzDpGjUx6mmxYFTx_Sm1oLJDdE

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

I recieved audience feedback in three ways. First of all, I got a few of my friends and family to watch the movie and then I interviewed them on camera. Here is the clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlYQwJIdmhQ&feature=youtu.be

Secondly, the media team organised a viewing of all the Film Noirs created by this years Media A Level students. We then the audience members to write on post-it notes what they thought of the movies. Some of the audience members worked in groups to do this, and this is what we got:

In summary, the feedback from our audience was that it was a good plot and that they liked the flashbacks and how they were in black and white. However, there were a few comments about "jumpy editing" and that the time scale got a bit confusing at times.

Therefore, overall, from my audience feedback, I learned that we should have taken more care in making a more obvious time scale and we should have taken more care in keeping the camera still when filming.

I have also learned that it is incredibly difficult to write a conventional script that isn't 'cheesey' or overly obvious. The other thing that I have learned is that people really so care about the special effects, and that we really should have thought about that before the day of filming!

Overally, I think I agree with most of the comments made by our audience. I think that I was most proud of having ligned up the shot sound with the shot movement and the credits. The credits are my favourite part of the movie as in my opinion, they look the most professional and they have a wonderful effect, giving the audience time to reflect on what they have just watched, while still being entertained with the images we used.

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

Research: The technologies I used during my planning and research were mainly just websites. For example I used Google to research what Film Noir's were and what their conventions included. This was very useful as Google gives unbiased and accurate information.

I also used IMDb to search for specific Film Noir and Neo Noir examples, and then I used the same website to watch their trailers. I used this technology to then analyse the trailers in order to plan our own coursework.

Construction: I think that during the construction phase, I used the most new technology. I started off by collecting my camera from the Media department. A Panasonic HDC-SD40. This was a camera that I had never used before, but it was HD quality, and so I think that it was a very good idea to make our movie using it. This way it would be good enough quality for any modern Televisions or Computer screens. The camera was easy to use and it had enough memory to hold all of our raw material.

 I also used my own camera. A Canon PowerShot SX220 HS. I have only had this for a short period of time, but I have also found it easy to use. I used this camera to take pictures of our locations and characters. I also used this camera for the Film Review and Poster photos! Overall I think that its quality was perfect for the project.

 Throughout the entire process, I kept a blog (obviously). I used http://www.blogger.com/ because we used this blog last year, and so I already knew how to use it, and its limitations (for example, films and video clips are take ages to upload). This enabled me to create by blog with ease and it has meant that I have saved time, on several occasions.
I think that http://www.blogger.com/ is appropriate for this project because its easy to use, easy to access and it has a simple layout.

I used my blog to keep track of everything that I did during the project. Although I didn't upload any video's straight onto the blog this year, I uploaded a lot of pictures - which was useful in all areas of the project.

The simple layout of the blog meant that I could quickly analyse how much coursework was left to do and how well I was doing at any given point. I think this was very useful in keeping track of time and making sure that we kept to deadlines!

Once we had filmed our movie, we had to edit it. We used FinalCut on the Mac computers at school. Although I don't really like Mac's very much, I was surprised to find that after a bit of practise, they got a lot easier to handle and the editing software was very professional.

FinalCut had a layout that at first looks very complicated, but once you know what it all means and does, it is very easy to use. For example, the three boxes at the top each have their individual function - e.g. the right box has the final film ready to watch while the left box has the original raw clips!
The bottom sections are dedicated to the TimeLine which makes editing the movie so so much more simple and time effective! Overall, I think that FinalCut is a really good modern technology to use for this type of project.

Instead of waiting for ages for videos to upload like last year, I decided to use http://www.youtube.com/ instead. I created an account a while ago, but I never used it. This project has meant that I have become quiet adequate at using it and therefore I recommend using YouTube to any future media students!

Later, to create my Poster and Film Review page I used the editng programme Photoshop. I used this editing software last year to create my magazine. At first, it was difficult to remember how to use it, however, once I got back into it, it once again became really useful. I edited the backgrounds of the photos and made sure that they looked really professional.

Once I had finished on Photoshop, I went onto the website http://www.picnik.com/ - this is an editing website that I found a long time ago during personal research. Unfortunatley it is closing down at the end of April because of the recession. I think that it was really useful and that it made it possible for my poster to look so professional. It was loads of fonts and special effects which were very useful in the construction point of my project.

Evaluation: During the evaluation stage, I used the same camera again as during the construction stage. This time I used it to interview people about my product. It came in very useful as it was much easier to just film people rather than have to write their answers down. Using this camera also meant that you got to see the interviewee's initial reaction, which I think is very important in the evaluation process. (This is because people often don't seem as enthusiastic or similar the second time that they say something, and so the initial judgements can be lost on paper or on second recordings.)

 Again, I used my camera. This time to take pictures of what I was evaluating or of other things that would look silly written up, e.g. the post-it notes.

http://www.youtube.com/ was excessively useful in the evaluation stage! It shows you how many views you have, how many likes and comments by views. I also used http://www.facebook.com/ to share my movie with friends and family, this enabled me to get even more audience feedback.

Overall then, I used mutliple modern technologies throughout my project and for various reasons.