Evaluation Question 4

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

Evaluation Question 3

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Evaluation Question 2

How does your media product use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real life products?

Evaluation Question 1

How effective is the combination of your main and ancillary tasks?

Approaching the Evaluation

Last year I structured my evaluation into a narrative form, using each question in a different scenario but containing it within the context of an ongoing storyline. I found this to be a really fun and creative way to engage in this part of the coursework. Ideally I would like to do the same thing this year, but I want to broaden my creativity rather than just repeat what I made last year. Since we are marked on both the quality of our answers and the creative ways in which we convey them, I want to do something equally entertaining but with a fresh spin on it. 

I still want to make a narrative because this way it integrates all of the questions into a continuous scenario and makes all of the questions seem interrelated. Like last year, I also want to find ways to incorporate all of my family members into the questions, because this makes it less boring for the viewer since they don't have to sit through four questions of the same person talking.

The way I am going to change it this year is by using a different visual form to present each question. It is still going to be video based, but the visual style in which they are presented will differ with each question. Having deliberated this for a while, here is the order of the questions in relation to my narrative, along with each narrative scenario and the form in which I am going to portray it:

1. How effective is the combination of your main and ancillary tasks? I have decided that I am going to pretend that I am an actor who has just made his debut film. To answer this question, I am going to adopt the form of an interactive, digital interview. These have become more and more common, especially for highly anticipated films. Live, digital interviews are where actors take to social media platforms for a live session, giving fans the opportunity to send in any questions for them to answer. It is a very contemporary form of promotion that utilises social media as a bridge for interaction between producers and consumers. This way my first question will be directly addressed to the camera as I answer the evaluation question (hypothetically to my social media audience) that will be sent in by a fan. 
2. How does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real life products? To continue the narrative from the first question, my live interview session is going to be interrupted by a news reporter at my door. As a way to introduce the question, the news reporter wants my response to claims that my film is fraudulent and unoriginal, so this way I need to talk about the similarities (conventions) that it shares with other products as well as the way that I have conformed or subverted these traits. So although it is another interview, it is depicted from the reporter's perspective this time, and will allow me to use my mum as the news reporter. So narratively the first two questions are taking place around the release date of my film Shades of Reason, so the stylistic visual forms I am using are relatable to the scenarios because it is all about promotion and attention in the press. 
3. What have you learned from your audience feedback? Due to how the Oscars have recently passed (February 27th) I thought that it would be an interesting narrative arc to have me preparing to attend the Oscars ceremony. I wanted this question to be filmed in a documentary style, like a camera crew who have been given exclusive access to my lifestyle. So I will be filmed getting ready for the Oscars and then driving on my way to the awards with my co-star from the film (my dad), so this question will include my dad. Because this is also around the time when I set the release date for my film, it will make sense to talk about the audience feedback simply because it coincides with the theoretical release of my short film. 
4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction, research and planning and evaluation stages? For my last question, I want to make a parody film situation that completely undermines the realistic approach to my other three questions. This time I want to create a very exaggerated and unrealistic scenario to emphasise the parody and comedy element to it. I am going to open the scene as a follow on to my journey to the Oscars. We find out my car was hijacked en route and I have been taken hostage by an aspiring filmmaker who interrogates me about my use of technology at each stage. I will use my brother as the kidnapper and this way it creates a dramatic contrast to the other scenarios I have used. 

I think tonally the best way to approach the task is to incorporate a light hearted and humorous tone to each scenario. Although they will be visually different, I am hoping to intersperse each answer with clips from the film and other images that will act like a commentary to make it easier for those watching to visualise what I am talking about in response to each question. 

Now that I have a plan my next stage is to write out my answers like an essay before I then start to film and edit my questions together. 

Film Posters: Final Designs

Film Poster: Extra Character Posters

As I mentioned before in one of my first posts for this task, the majority of films are promoted through multiple posters which vary slightly but maintain a coherent visual style. Even though this task only required me to produce one, I thought that I could make a couple more to show the distributional advertising that I hypothetically envisage my short film to have. 

The one that I have produced in earlier posts is the one that I would use as the central poster, since it features both of the characters and successfully teases the story whilst remaining ambiguous. 

An example of character posters is evident in the promotion of the film Triple 9 (above), where films with no singular protagonist tend to promote the individual characters as equally important by giving them their own poster.  

The ones I have made below are my interpretations of this, using the same dark threshold over each photo to add a sinister intensity. The details of the pictures are very obscure, but the facial features become very defined and ghostly. Despite this coming across as dark and atmospheric, I think that it adds a new dynamic to the film by revealing little about the characters. The words on each poster, 'Grief' to describe Dylan and 'Guilt' to describe the Father, are a callback to my original poster where the tagline refers to the 'Line between grief and guilt', thus creating a synonymous effect across the posters by using the characters as a way of personifying these emotions. These build on my main poster by establishing the characters as equally important as well as establishing them on an individual basis. Because the background is black I couldn't write the second part of the title in black, so I opted for a grey colour instead.