Essay - AUDIENCE (NOT FINISHED)

Our production was a short story about road safety awareness, with the intent to inform about how dangerous using mobile phones whilst driving is. The audience played a huge part in our production becuase it was these people who we were trying to inform.

PLAN:
dont describe - explain and evaluate

conventions - audience like spotting conventions and get confused when conventions are challenged but can be interesting

how does production relate to audience

audience like waiting for obvious features (the crash)

Essay - GENRE

For my advanced portfolio my group decided to produce a short film within the genre of road safety awareness. When doing research, which was very important as it was a genre I was quite unfamiliar with, we looked into road safety awareness adverts like the TH!NK adverts. Because our production would be a short film and not an advert, we realised the narrative structure would be very different and would link more to Todorov’s theory of equilibrium. This means simply that everything would be as normal, then an event happens (the crash) and then there would be repercussions of this. This was a challenge as it was something that the group was unfamiliar with due to it being a style within the genre that had not yet been explored. However we wanted to go ahead with it because we believed it would be very effective and striking to the audience, which was the impression we wanted to create on the audience. We could have chosen a more simple, linear style or narrative but thought this would be more effective.

We chose to use no dialogue which is a very simplistic approach but we believe it is very effect because words may have taken away from the action and the message being portrayed. However maybe it was too simple and some dialogue may have added a level of interest and tension. If we had the chance to produce our short film again I would of liked to have used dialogue because I think that even though it was effective without any speech, it did seem a bit too similar to the TH!NK adverts without.

The editing we used was very well suited to the genre of our short film and I was very pleased with the outcome. From doing research we learned that we would need some special effects or editing in order to make our product eye catching and effective. We realised that we would have to explore different technologies that we had not used before in order to do this, including a slow-motion HD camera and using a rewind in editing. This worked very well, making the crash scene very effective, realistic and fitted in well with the genre. However, if I had the chance again I would have liked to use other methods of editing, like shot transitions to help the shots run smoothly which would make the overall look of the film more professional.

Our production definitely challenged conventions of the genre. Before we had made our production, the majority of road safety awareness were mainly in TV adverts, our version was a much longer short film. By making our film longer than the average adverts I believe it made more effective and made it seem more like a real life situation, putting the audience in the shoes of the people involved with the tragedies involved, ultimately making the audience feel sympathetic and hopefully more careful. To challenge to conventional form of the genre further we could of added dialogue to make the story even more realistic and would  make the audience feel more involved.

To help make our audience relate to and understand our genre, we used main characters which are of the same age as our targetted audience. Making it easy for our audience to relate to the genre and theme of the film was extremely important becuase our production was intended to make people aware about the importance of road safety. I think that using a dramatic crash and showing the mum's pain when being told her son had died helped a lot to make the audience relate to the genre and really helped to get the message accross. However, to make the audience relate to the genre even more we could of used dialogue with a lot of specific slang that is associated with our audience (young adults/teenagers). But overall I think we did a good job in making our audience relate to the genre of our film as it is a theme that strongly affects the age group.

Overall I think we did a good job of applying a genre to our production and think that the audience is aware of what the genre is due to using characters, a narative structure and editing that relate to the genre. We also took that even further and challenged conventions of the genre by taking what other people have done in adverts, like the TH!NK adverts, and made it longer, making the overall outcome more effective. However, if we had used dialogue, I think it would of challenged conventions of the genre even further and would of also made it easier for the audience to relate to the genre and the polt.

Representation Essay feedback

First paragraph – you need to discuss what macro element you are discussing so the examiner has this clear in their mind as well as the c/w production

You are far too descriptive – you need to evaluate and be more critical of your own work – step back from it...

Questions we would ask when analysing representations:

• WHO or WHAT is being represented?
• HOW is the representation created?
• WHO has created the representation?
• WHY is the representation created in that way? What is the
• intention?
• WHAT is the effect of the representation?

Consider the representations in your c/w and answer the above questions in detail.

• To maintain a representation of reality, media language elements such as lighting, music, editing, camera work and mise en scene are used. How did you use these micro aspects to create representations?
• Sometimes, representations are seen to be a deliberate attempt to create associations and ideas for the audience – did you represent any characters in a certain way so as to remind your audience or someone/something else?

Essay - REPRESENTATION

For my advanced portfolio, as a group we produced a short film aimed to raise awareness about using mobile phones whilst driving. The short film is targeted at teenagers and young adults because from doing research we found out that this was the age group that was involved with road accidents when using mobile phones. We decided this would be a good idea for a short film as similar products like the Th!nk adverts have been very successful, but creating a short film about the topic was a little bit more in-depth and hadn’t been done before.

Because our target audience was teenagers and young adults we knew that we needed to make our product relate to them, so the characters we used were in the same age group. We also knew that to keep the target audience interested we needed to include some shocking action; which was a young child being run over. We used different types of technology to make this effective including a special HD camera that allowed us to use slow-motion. Similar to the Th!nk adverts, we showed two different version of a story to show the horrible effects of what can happen if you text whilst you drive, and the alternative being that this doesn’t happen if you just pull over to read the text. In-order to represent the youth in our film, helping to relate to our target audience, we dressed our characters in clothes that a lot of the youth are seen in (jeans and a hoody). We also made our teenage character that drives into the child drive a small hatchback car, which are very popular styles of car with the youth. We also made our Mum character wear more sophisticated clothes and an apron to help represent her character. However we could of used an older actor to help represent the Mum, as the only actor we could get was very young. By having a young mother we do think that it made the audience feel more sympathetic towards her when the police have to tell her that her son has been killed as the audience can relate to her more and feel her pain more. In order to represent the police well we dressed them in police uniform and use angled shots and lighting to give them power and authority. To represent the child we dressed him in a school uniform and made him bounce a ball along the road. Getting a good representation of the child was extremely important as we needed the audience to feel sympathy when he gets ran over.

Overall we used a range of characters and dressed them and used camera angles to help represent them. Doing this helped to tell our story and to also get the audience feel emotionally involved and related to the short film. However we could of used an older actor for the mother, but overall we think we did well to represent each character well to help show our story and connotations.

(I didnt really understand what to do because I didnt actually have a question to answer)

Question A: 1B REPRESENTATION

Representation

Location (suburban) - How does it help to create mise en scene, link to genre to help audience understanding

Characters - How do the characters rep the roles shown and link to the story line and genre, how are the repped - angles lighting sound shots clothing dailogue body language

Camera angles and movement to help represent certain parts of your production

Question A: 1B GENRE

Genre

Narrative structure - genre specific? what is the impact of the research and how did it effect decision to choose narative structure

Lack of dialogue - simplisitic approach? (no dialogue)

Editing - how does editing effect genre? (Slow mo to show crash)

Challenge conventions of genre ( longer version of Think! adverts?)

Challenge Representation? (not really - clothes similar, role of police, mum, kid)

How did you make audience relate to and understand the genre?

10 Commandments For Reflective Writing

10 Commandments For Reflective Writing:

1. Focus on creative decisions informed by institutional knowledge
2. Focus on creative decisions informed by theoretical understanding
3. Evaluate the process - Dont just describe it
4. Relate your media to real life media at the micro level (shots, mise en scene, etc.)
5. Try to deconstruct yourself (this is hard!)
6. Choose clearly relevant micro examples to relate to marco (genre, rep, etc.) reflective themes
7. Aviod binary oppositions
8. Try to write about your broader media culture
9. Adapt a metadiscource (sum up)
10. Quote, Paraphrase, Reference

Exam Section A

Question 1A:

Requires you to describe and evaluate your technical skills over the course of your production work, from foundation portfolio to advanced portfolio. The focus is for you to reflect and evaluate the way your skills have developed. You will be required to adapt your responses to one or two or the practical production practices:

• Digital technology
• Creativity
• Research and planning
• Post-production
•  Using conventions from real media texts

Example Question (January 2010):
Descibe how you developed research and planning skills for media produciton and evaluate how these skills contributed to creative decision making. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how these skills have developed over time. (25 marks)


Question 1B:

You are required to select one production and evaluate it in relation to a media concept. The list of concepts are:

• Genre
• Narrative
• Representation
• Audience
• Media Language

Example Question:
Analyse media representation in one of your coursework productions. (25 Marks)



CREATIVITY
Compare, analyze, reflect, evaluate. For a thorough response dicuss the various stges of production focusing on decisions and revisions and their impact on the finished productions. Ensure that you also comment on the various technical skills you devloped and resources from HD cameras to the blog you used.