Candidate Number – 3118

Center Number – 17201

Here is the Assement Criteria for my media production -

Research and Planning must be presented in electronic format. Where candidates have worked as a group, the research may be presented collectively, but teachers are asked to differentiate the contributions of individuals within the group in arriving at a mark and justifying individual marks on the assessment sheet. As part of the moderation sample, the moderator will request some research/planning material.

Level 1 0–7 marks

•There is minimal research into similar products and a potential target audience.
•There is minimal organisation of actors, locations, costumes or props.
•There is minimal work on shotlists, layouts, drafting, scripting or storyboarding.
•Time management may be very poor.
•There is minimal care in the presentation of the research and planning.
•There is minimal skill in the use of digital technology or ICT in the presentation.
•There are minimal communication skills.
Level 2 8–11 marks

•There is basic research into similar products and a potential target audience.
•There is basic organisation of actors, locations, costumes or props.
•There is basic work on shotlists, layouts, drafting, scripting or storyboarding.
•Time management may not be good.
•There is a basic level of care in the presentation of the research and planning.
•There is basic skill in the use of digital technology or ICT in the presentation.
•There are basic communication skills.
Level 3 12–15 marks

•There is proficient research into similar products and a potential target audience.
•There is proficient organisation of actors, locations, costumes or props.
•There is proficient work on shotlists, layouts, drafting, scripting or storyboarding.
•Time management is good.
•There is a good level of care in the presentation of the research and planning.
•There is proficient skill in the use of digital technology or ICT in the presentation.
•There are proficient communication skills.
Level 4 16–20 marks

•There is excellent research into similar products and a potential target audience.
•There is excellent organisation of actors, locations, costumes or props.
•There is excellent work on shotlists, layouts, drafting, scripting or storyboarding.
•Time management is excellent.
•There is an excellent level of care in the presentation of the research and planning.
•There is excellent skill in the use of digital technology or ICT in the presentation.
•There are excellent communication skills.
Candidates will evaluate their work electronically. The format of the evaluation has some flexibility and its form can be negotiated between teacher and student: it may take place with individual candidates or with the production group as a whole, or each individual candidate or production group may make a formal or informal presentation to the whole class.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mpiyl517Kww

http://naya007.podbean.com/

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

During the construction of my media product, I looked into the codes and conventions of film trailers as a first angle to begin with as the importance of understanding them would allow me to follow or even challenge them constructively. The genre of my trailer would prove to be the most significant as it was key that I understood what differs from a romance film trailer to a horror one for example.

To gather the majority of my background research into film trailer conventions, I used You Tube as a main source of media as well as individual film websites and DVD extra’s. These resources contained vast amounts of film trailers for me to deconstruct across a range of genres. I was able to collect a variety of film trailer conventions by looking at regular techniques that occurred within various film trailers. Some of those looked at included Film trailer conventions include –

• Dialogue is used as a voiceover to introduce the film and the central characters
• Soundtrack that is appropriate
• Main characters are the focus of the footage
• Some form of conflict is shown
• Crosscutting and camera angles used to show points of view.
• Titles
• Credits
• Suggestive Editing (showing various sections of the film)
• Usually last between 1 and a half to 2 minutes

A majority of the main conventions that we discovered were taken from the film “The Notebook”. We focused on the idea of a serious romance film rather than a typical romantic comedy as we felt we could challenge particular stereotypes within the romance genre and portray them accurately; as well as taking the idea of ‘Noah’, a boy from the country and ‘Ally’ a girl from the city and representing these attributes within our film trailer. Within our group we looked at various other films within the romance genre that inspired us and have considered different ideas for intertextual. The Notebook for example, show’s a close up of the female character Ally through a car window, which is closely followed by a long distance shot of Noah running towards the camera in order to run after Ally. This jumps to a shot of the car driving off into the distance. We would include this series of shots to show a conflict within the characters’ romance, a crucial element to a film trailer. Also the idea of a voice over during the film trailer from the male character’s point of view we felt would emphasize the trailer much more. Another film that influenced our production greatly was Twilight. The idea of a really deep and unexpected romance that occurs in an unusual environment was attractive as we felt that this would assist us in challenging conventions of typical romance films.

2. How effective is the combination of your media products and ancillary texts?

To be able to complete a set of additional media products that are related to our production, I created a film poster and magazine front cover. These two ancillary texts were shaped to correlate with my film trailer and suit the genre as well as general tone that we had created and it clear that all three media texts link closely to each other.

I created my film poster around the basis of the two central characters in the film, “What Love’s Worth”. They are the main focus of the poster as this is to suggest the significance of these characters. My film poster’s main intention is to promote our film and attract our target audience to watch the production as well as highlighting the genre. This is vital as it means that my film target audience and poster target audience are the same. The softer sepia tones I used to edit the image as well as romantic style font would appeal to the audience as it is in the style that they are directly looking for.

Concerning my magazine front cover, this does not have a specific target audience, however I would expect the audience to be  a person who is passionate about films and the media and who takes an active interest in up and coming new films. The main aim of the magazine is to draw attention to a highly rated new release and provide some special previews or extra’s about the film that no-one else has. It has to captivate the audience into thinking that it is going to be very popular; especially if the main film is gracing the front cover. I was hoping to make my magazine front cover mirror the conventions such as “sight & sound” or “empire2 as a generically correct film magazine front cover. Both ancillary texts are aimed at slightly different audiences however I feel that they have been delivered well.

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback is a crucial part of the evaluating stage as I felt that as a group, our production pieces could be improved majorly given a viewing from a new set of eyes. As we gathered feedback at most stages of our production, it can be seen that our film production has been edited to the best of our ability. Here is how key feedback has affected our film

Target audience – my target audience would have been young female or couples who are fans of romantic films. We came to this conclusion due to the original audience profile survey that we sent out using survey monkey and the very insightful responses that came from this. It also came to light that a majority of the people surveys were between the 15 and 30 age range and were women. This lead us to believe that we should target our film to a larger group such as females who were going to be watching films with a group of same-sex friends for example. Also from this initial survey, it came to light that romantic films are the most frequently watched films by our audience for example, “The Time Traveler’s Wife” and “P.S I Love You” and therefore it was decided that this would be the genre that we would pursue. The main attraction that would also keep most of our target audience enjoying the film they are watching would be the storyline and if it was developed from a successful novel. All of these features would provide a basis for the film trailer that we would produce. Once it was decided that a romance film trailer would be our main production, we sent out an additional survey to acquire a response to the romance genre and film trailer conventions. Romantic films are in high demand and it was noticeable that a good film trailer will most definitely encourage an audience to go and see the film. Another trait that came to light was that generally people would go to see films within couples and therefore we should base our story around that idea.

Initial idea – Due to all of the previous audience research, it was decided that we would pursue a romance genre film trailer; this was also because we felt a trailer is different to any project we have done before. We also decided to create a trailer for a romantic film because horror is a common theme amongst teenage productions, which therefore means it becomes boring and repetitive. We aimed to challenge and resist themes of stereotypical characteristics as an angle to hit our target audience and confidently show the meaning of our film. To do this we wanted to show our lead female character in a dominating and more controlled environment as a person who is very career orientated as well as having the male lead in a more relaxed and bohemian type setting. These alternative character profiles would break down the stereotypes typically set within romantic films.

We have discussed the following ideas to use within our trailer as a starting point:

• Love triangle
• Suspense
• Disaster

Final Idea – Once the majority of our film production had been put together, we showed it to another random audience and gathered feedback for improvement. This meant that we could fine tune our film trailer pending any continuity errors or things that we may have missed whilst editing it. From our first screening and survey, some of the suggested ideas for editing were as follows.

• To add a soundtrack and voice over. These were not complete at the time of the screening.
• The narrative was unclear. More editing and extra clips are needed as it appears to story like.
• The stereotype break down is not very apparent. It wasn’t clear that the female was the character who was professional.
• The lack of credits and film titles as well as a font style that did not fit

I took into consideration all of the valuable points that the audience feedback had suggested and made changes to our film as we saw fit. After these changes were made, it was shown once again to an audience who once again gave us feedback in the form of a survey. An example of questions asked were, are there any obvious continuity errors? Or did you understand what was happening in the trailer? We felt that these questions summarized the final stages of audience feedback.

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

Throughout the construction of my production and planning stages, I have used a lot of new media products and found them to be very successful this year. It has led to my production time becoming much more efficient and less time-consuming.

WordPress – I used ‘ WordPress’ the most out of all of the other new media technologies because I used it throughout my production and research/planning stages. WordPress has become a very useful blogging site as I was able to create a free blog where I could store all of my work and have access to all the time. Its electronic and online and can be accessed from any computer anywhere. I was able to give my blog address out to suitable media experts such as teachers and critics who were able to check up on my production and provide comments where necessary. By having all of my work stored in one place, it decreased the risk of losing work and allowed me to upload pictures and videos or documents I wanted to show. For each task I completed, I edited my production log or would create a new post to show this work in detail.
Windows Movie Maker – Windows Movie Maker is where is did the majority of my film editing. I felt that this year my editing skills using this software was as far developed as it possibly could have been due to previous projects and editing experiences. I am very skilled in uploading and accurately sourcing the footage within Movie Maker and used my skills to assist others within my class. However Move Maker it didn’t prove to be as successful as other editing soft wear could be. For example the effects were not of very much quality; although we were forced to use this to achieve as much professionalism as we could.

Digital Camcorder and Tripod – To film our footage, I used an ‘INSERT CAMERA TYPE HERE’ which was provided by the school’s media department. It was a very basic camera and did not give us the best quality footage, however we found it to be very simple to use and it enabled us to capture our footage accurately. I was already skilled in how to operate the cameras as well as the tripods provided with them through previous filming projects.
Computers – I used basic computers that were accessible within school and I uploaded all of the footage onto the school account as it was then available to the rest of my group as well. However I often completed much of my production work at home on my Toshiba for example my blog or individual pre-production work.

Facebook and Survey Monkey – To attract a large and varied target audience, I created surveys on ‘Survey Monkey’ which were sent out to the entire sixth form for feedback as well as the social networking site ‘Facebook’. Facebook proved to be the more successful as I was able to reach a larger variety of age ranges as well as gender. I posted a poll to decide my film magazine front cover title for example and was able to reach a far more profitable response than survey monkey. Film poster and magazine  front cover feedback was also taken from Facebook as well as much of my planning and organizing with my team to set dates and organize meetings etc.
 
Scanner – SCAN IN STORYBORDS. AND TAKE THEM FROM WMM. 

Internet Explorer – The internet allowed me to conduct a majority of my research as I was able to use search engines such as ‘Google’ and ‘Bing’ to find out more about the genre I was pursuing as well as find useful websites. I was able to search for things like the best-selling romance films or use IMDB for actors and directors information. I also used ‘You Tube’ for a majority of my pre production to view film trailers and such things. I was also able to upload my video onto You Tube for public viewing and feedback.

Potable Digital Audio Recorder PUT MIC NAME IN HERE – used a digital audio recorder to record our voice over. This proved to be very successful as we were able to conduct this very quickly and upload and edit. We also used this soft wear to record and edit our sound track recorded using a guitar. Those files were easily uploaded and edited once they were viewable on Movie Maker.

We wanted to find out what others thought of our project by giving them the opportunity to constructively criticize our work and give further feedback on areas that that they feel we could improve.  Furthermore, from this we will hope to obtain helpful advice and notes on improving our work so as we can go back and make necessary adjustments to our trailer.

Attached is my film trailer audience survey – Film Trailer Survey

Although this survey proved to be sucessful in finding out what faults or errors we may have made, a second survey was created that we felt was more specific to the trailer and gained a better understanding of what we could improve.

Here is the link to my second audience survey – Final Cut Survey

Storyboards

Voice Over

It was a summer like no other… she was ambitious, smart and perfect in every way… And I was just a musician from the country… We were worlds apart… but had one thing in common.

Dialogue

Georgia: I can’t handle this any more

Calum: Well i’m obviously not good enough for you then am I?

Georgia: It’s not that, but you know how hard I’ve worked for this!

Voice Over

She had to decide… Was love really worth everything?… From the best-selling novel by Shaun Warwick… What Love’s Worth… Coming this spring!

The works of Shakespeare come into the postmodernist environment with much at stake. On the one hand, the Complete Works of Shakespeare (as it has been passed down through the centuries) represents perhaps the most highly valued text of all literature. For instance, on the BBC radio show, Desert Island Discs, guests choose the seven recordings and one book without which they could not live; but they get to take the complete Shakespeare and the Christian Bible as taken for granted necessities. As we have discovered, the value of Shakespeare is rigidly guarded as a kind of cultural treasure. Apparently this value remains intact even in the age of postmodern eclecticism, as film and TV directors try their hands at productions of the plays. Is the status of Shakespeare protected in these cultural productions or is it simulated? Perhaps we enjoy Shakespeare only on the basis of the as-if of the simulacrum of his greatness. Or perhaps the plays themselves, in their eclecticism and in their often violent abuse of the generic stabilities of Renaissance literature, can be regarded as postmodern before postmodernism. Many famous lines in the Shakespeare canon seem to refer to the theatricality (the as if nature) of life or to the fragility and emptiness of language (“sound and fury signifying nothing”), or to what a postmodernist might easily refer to as the ambiguity of what it means to be (the “ontological ambiguity” of Hamlet’s “To be or not to be? That is the question”). When discussing postmodernism and Shakespeare it is a good idea to make sure that you have an idea about what is genuinely novel in the world we currently inhabit and what is not.

Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet seems like a good example of the postmodernist practice of eclecticism and pastiche in the deliberate mixing of different genres. Does this practice destabilize the previously unshakeable stability of Shakespeare’s authority as the icon of literary value? Or does Shakespeare’s iconicity give its strength to Luhrmann’s postmodernism? Perhaps Luhrmann’s film is a more straightforward adaptation for cinema than we might have thought, though, and not merely an eclectic pastiche after all. There’s eclecticism there, but the play remains more or less intact and thus remains the dominant and guiding force of the film. Here is an example of an undergraduate student who has commented on the post-modernist aspect of Romeo + Juliet – http://my.opera.com/corny/blog/2009/03/03/considering-baz-luhrmann-s-romeo-and-juliet-is-a-postmodernist-film-which

Moulin Rouge is also another example of Luhrmann’s post-modernist texts that demonstrate vibrant and exciting genre blurring with the clashing of Hollywood and Bollywood elements as well as the intertextual musical and dance sequence references. Here is a review of Moulin Rouge – http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/review/2000/

The Levi 501  advert also poses as a prime example of post-modern advertising. It managed to draw together the announcement of the engagement of Prince Charles to Camilla Parker Bowles, Shakespeare, the rough streets of LA, gang and peer approval, sexual allure and all within a blue collar, working class environment. ‘A story of Love’ as the advertisement was billed is an example of the paradoxical meanings that jeans can carry within them. The hero of the ad breaks through a group of hard-faced men outside a factory, wearing bandannas and gang paraphernalia. He is cast as Bottom from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, (an original populist text according to Storey, Shakespeare was not ‘gentrified’ until the 19^th century). He is a mechanical, Bottom, who is going to perform to the aristocrats at their wedding. Bottom has been transformed, by another toff, Oberon, into an ass, to amuse him, and to punish his partner. In this version Bottom gets the girl, she is drawn to him by his voice, his vulnerability,’ I shall walk up and down, and I shall sing…that they shall see I am not afraid,’ his bravery, and his jeans. This text, and the interplay of meanings created by the play’s text, and the timing of its transmission is full of multi layered meanings, all available to the audience to select from at different levels of high and popular culture. He represents Everyman, a normal blue collar working man; he is an original, has elected to be different, to have personal freedom; he is brave, is making a strong life, living the pun of a ‘dream’ of personal freedom, a struggle against subordination; all of these elements are replicated in the play. Fiske suggests that rather than place popular culture in a model of power in which the forces of domination overwhelmed a passive and powerless people, or to see popular culture as a consensual model, as a form of ‘elite humanism…which resituates the cultural life of the nation in the popular rather than the highbrow.’ He feels that third way is emerging, focusing on the way such forces are evaded, resisted, or I would argue, reshaped and recreated, ‘This approach sees popular culture as potentially, and actually progressive, and is essentially optimistic’ – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPyD4jyiObo

We successfully found both our main characters and were able to use friends and other students to play background roles within our trailer. 

It tells the story of a young British poet/writer, Christian (Ewan McGregor), who falls in love with the star of the Moulin Rouge, cabaret actress and courtesan Satine (Nicole Kidman). It uses the musical setting of the Montmartre Quarter of Paris, France.

It demonstrates a combination of genres including film and music for example the film is based on the orphean myth and on Giuseppe Verdi’s opera La Traviata. It also shows a range of film genres for example it is first and foremost a musical however it shows examples of romance and comedy. Most of the soundtrack within the film was created by the cast itself however a large majority of the medleys included consist of songs such as “Your Song” by Elton John, “Lady Marmalade” by Pink, Christina Aguleria, Mya and Lil Kim and “Roxanne” by The Police.

You are able to make self references to the title and the songs that throughout the film as you have prior knowledge of the caberet theater show Moulin Rouge in Paris. There is a mix between the high and popular cultures as such highly appreciated actresses and actors are involved in the film. The dance sequences are extremely over exaggerated with glitzy costumes and complex choreography that could be considered popular culture instead of high.

When asked about his inspiration for Moulin Rouge, Luhrmann remarked:
“Catherine Martin (production designer and Luhrmann’s wife) and I went to India to work on Midsummer Night’s Dream. We went out one night and there was a big poster up for a Bollywood movie. I said, “Let’s go see that.” We did – 2,000 audience members, high comedy, high tragedy, brother kills brother, [they] break out in some musical numbers, all jumbled up together in 4 hours of Hindi. We thought that was amazing. So our question was, ‘Could we create a cinematic form like that? Could a musical work?’ A musical must be able to work in western culture again, and could it be comic-tragic? So then began this commitment of moving toward ‘Moulin Rouge.’ I decided I’d do Romeo + Juliet and then a musical film.”

• What are the different versions of post-modernism? (historical period, style, theoretical approach)
• arguments for and against understanding some forms of media as post-modernism?
• How do post-modernism media texts challenge traditional text-reader relations and the concept of representation
• In what ways do media audiences and institutes operate differently in a post-modern world?

“its what’s left when you take out high culture”

-well liked definition

+where do you draw the line

“mass culture produced for an undiscriminating audience”

-okay

+is consumation a totally bad thing? (passive)

“popular culture originates from the people for the people”+romanticises and patronizes working class culture

Post-Modernism says…

“distinctions are no longer possible”

“a reason to celebrate an end to elitism”

“a reason to dispar, victory of commerce over culture”

“state of flux and change between audience resistance and audience change (encorporation)”

Examples of Post-Modern texts may include:

Pulp Fiction

-film noir elements

-actors out of context (reference actors to previous rolls)

-drugs and gang theme that is popular culture

Mamma Mia

-abba songs that are popular culture

-actors who are associated with high culture such as Meryl Streep

-songs that are popular culture

T-Mobile Dance

-active audience who are getting involved

-you tube phenomenon on the internet

-popular culture songs such as lulu, 60′s pop icon

-playful/intertextual