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

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

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

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

Final draft of review page

This is my final draft for my magazine review page. I have added an interview with Milo O'halloran, changed the layout of my text, and edited the title format. I have also enlarged the page number and put a banner at the top "Big Picture" the name of my magazine. These last adjustments make the magazine follow a few conventions but the page still has a great aspect of creativity.

Second draft of review page

This is the second draft of my review page. I have changes the layout of my text, enlarged the title "Day By Day" and put in page numbers. I thought this would be my final design and draft but after further audience feedback i became aware of a few crucial design faults. I also realised that there was a lack of text.

First Draft Of Review Page

Here is my first Draft of my Review Page I used a photograph of a passing train as the background. I decided to make the photographs dominate the page, they were screen shots mostly taken on the tube to again emphasise the urban tube theme. However I am not 100% happy with the layout and how big the "Mind The Gap" title is. The text does not look professional and there are certain details that are missing for example page numbers and page banners. 

Research and planning - new style sheet plus audience feedback

After deciding to redesign my film review page, I constructed a new style sheet. I kept a lot of the same ideas. For example the main picture and the colour scheme.
I asked a Professional graphic designer called Mia Matson her thoughts about my new design. She gave me some constructive feedback. I she said the design was very original and the title would be eye catching. She also mentioned the fact that it is not a conventional layout for a review page with one of the biggest differences being the test will not appear in columns.
After her feedback i decided to keep the text out of columns as i thing it makes the design look smoother.

Research and planning - Inspiration for review page- Little White Lies.

 

After producing my style sheet i started to construct my own magazine review page. I was not satisfied with the level of creativity i had given myself with my initial design. I started doing more research into other film magazine. I found a bi-monthly magazine called Little White Lies. It cost around £4 and has film reviews within it. The reason i was interested in this magazine was their designs. Each page has a separate layout, it is altered according to its contents. I saw a lot of potential in their designs and was inspired to create my own completely original design which breaks the codes and conventions of normal magazine review pages.After producing my style sheet i started to construct my own magazine review page. I was not satisfied with the level of creativity i had given myself with my initial design. I started doing more research into other film magazine. I found a bi-monthly magazine called Little White Lies. It cost around £4 and has film reviews within it. The reason i was interested in this magazine was their designs. Each page has a separate layout, it is altered according to its contents. I saw a lot of potential in their designs and was inspired to create my own completely original design which breaks the codes and conventions of normal magazine review pages. Some of the things that inspired me and i will be using on my review page was the colours. There is no limit to your background design and colour in this magazine. As i am free to do as I please in this review page I will take the more creative root, i am thinking to do something with a picture of a passing train that i have taken.

research and planning - style sheet for review page

My stlye sheet is closely based and inspired from the layout of the movie magazine Empire. I am Planning on keeping my design basic but executed to look like a real media model. The colour scheme I chose was blue, red and white. I kept to the rule of three, i chose these three colours to continue the London Underground theme. 

After looking at my style sheet the altercations I will make will be to change one of the screen shots as they are all based in the same location. I will also concentrate on producing a design which will be more eye catching to the reader.

research and planning - Deconstruction of empire review page

After studying more magazines i decided to look at empire in closer detail. Their film review pages caught my eye and i liked the way they were set out. I chose this this spescific page because of the main image. In order to get an understanding of how this page grabs the readers attension i am going to deconstruct it.

I took down notes on the review page. There were many film reviews in the empire and they all followed a very similar format. The photograph of Danny Trejo is taking up 3/4 of the page and is clearly the main focus point of this article. All the review pages start off with the basic information about the film, this would include the date of it's release, the certificate, director, cast, running time and a short overview of the plot. The text in this article is easily read and is in a size 11 or 12 font. The text which stands out the most on this page would be the title of the film "Machete" and the pulled quote in the bottom right. The quote's purpose is mainly a teaser instead of an insight to the film. After establishing what looks interesting on a page, i started to look at the technical side of things. For instance the gutters in between the text in order for it to be easier to read, i also studied the header and footer, the base line and the side the text was raged on. I considered the purposes for all these elements and will take them into consideration when constructing my own review page.

Research and planning - deconstruction of film review pages

When starting research on film review pages i looked at magazines which are widely known, I took into account how much they cost, the frequency of their release, their audience and what coverage of films they give. As well as deconstructing these pages i tried to look at them as an ordinary reader of the magazine for example what does my eye draw to? Although reviews are not directly advertising, the critics responses are very closely linked to the films success. I looked at these magazines in order to get a better understanding of their conventions which would lead to ideas for my own review page.

  1.The first magazine i looked at was Time Out London, it cost £2.99 and an issue is released weekly. They do not really have a specific audience but from what i think it is mostly used by tourists. Time out is made up of reviews, from restaurants to film, because of this they only really cover the main movie releases so you would not find a film like ours in there. Despite this i found it interesting to study the film reviews and it gave me a better idea of layout ideas and what to expect when reading one of these.

2.The second magazine i looked at was Sight and Sound, it cost £3.95 and comes out monthly. I found it very different from Time Out, the most obvious reason being Sight and Sound only covers films. It is funded from the BFI (british film institute) and covers all films from blockbusters to independent short films, because of this their audience is very different and is aimed at film enthusiasts. After deconstructing and studying this magazine i found it to be a lot more relevant to my film. The layout was plain and pictures were minimal, i came to the conclusion that this is because the readers of the magazine did not need to be drawn to a certain page as they would already be interested in its contents just from buying the magazine. Although this magazine was a more suitable match for our review page and film it did not inspire me when it came to the layout.

3. The third poster i looked at was my school sixth form magazine, it cost around £1 and comes out roughly twice a year. Although this is the magazine which is most likely to print my film's review, the layout is not professional and due to costs the pages are all printed out in black and white. So whilest it being probably being the most relevant magazine i will not be following it's layout patterns or conventions.

Shooting evaluation

Audience feedback on poster

Link to my survey
I conducted an online survey about my poster to see if my poster appeals to the target audience of my film. The poster of a film is the films biggest advertising tool, so the need to get it right is crucial.

Final poster

When constructing our final poster I tried to stick to the codes and conventions of the real media models but  i also wanted to challenge them. The three main colours in the poster are red, blue and white. I turned up the contrast on the images and softened the colours to make them warmer in order to fit with the genre romance. The heart in the sky is a cheesy aspect to the poster but i think it works very well as it gives an uplifting feel to the movie. I photoshopped the two characters into the existing images we had taken used the shadow tool to make their appearances look more realistic. Since the mock poster i have added my own quote, billing block and certification. I made the billing block on Adobe Illustrator and later transferred it to photoshop. As ready made certification blocks are unavailable anywhere I had to make one, i also made it in adobe illustrator. The professional type face for billing blocks is very expensive so I used a different font and stretched it to try and make it look legitimate.

Research and planning - audience feedback from mock poster

We presented our first draft of the poster to Graphic designer Michael Leedham, he gave our poster back with notes on what he thought and what we need to do. He said we needed to add a quote in order to keep to the conventions of real media models. He also said that he liked the colour scheme and the heart in the sky as it clearly connotes a romance. He suggested that we make our tag line "life never waits" more bold in order for it to stand out, however we decided to not take his advise as we were worried it may look like the title. He also pointed out the absence of a certificate. We will take all of his notes into consideration when constructing our final poster.

research and planning - mock poster.

After drawing and thinking about ideas for our poster, Louise and I constructed this poster which is partly made up from imagery that we found on the internet. Although we had some of the production shots to work with we did not have the right pictures of the cast so we found similar looking models from the internet and put them in their place. This ended up working in our favour because when it came to taking our final photographs we knew the angles and positions we needed. After completing this poster i was worried that the title "Day By Day" did not stand out enough so we changed part of the poster into greyscale.
As it was only a mock poster the billing block was not ours and we got it from google. So when constructing the real poster we needed to create our own using Adobe Illustrator.
In conclusion I was happy with the final mock poster and after some essential adapting and editing i would use it for our real and final film poster.

Production shots

Me and louise took some production shots both before and during filming. We did this for a couple of reasons, when deciding where to shoot certain scenes it was very useful to have visual aids to help us decide for example what would work the best and look the best on camera.

For example this is a photograph taken at our school and it is where the "work place" scenes take place. This photo helped us to position our shot when it came to filming there, to make sure we did not capture anything school orientated within our shots.

This photograph was taken while on a shooting day and it is the cafe where the coffee scenes take place. 

This is the same location, the purpose of these photos was to get a better idea of the positioning of our shots. 

 This is a picture of me positioning one shot ready for us to start shooting.

A picture of louise setting up the tripod in the right position for our coffee scene.

Research and Planning -Filming permission for the London underground

For our short film we are using shots of the tube, to do this we had to contact TFL and find permission. Once on TFL website, we went to the LU film office where Leon Goswell from Commercial Operations got back to us. We applied for a student/low-budget filming permit which is £35 and emailed Leon our schools public liability insurance that we received from our school Bursar; Nigel. 

We had to work out which permit we were going to apply for, the category we fell under was "student/non-professional". 

This is a screen shot I took of the application form we had to complete in order to gain permission to film.

This is the information we received back from our application.

research and planning- shooting on location

When organising to shoot on location we need to think about the cast, the safety of equipment and our time management. to help us with this we constructed a table with the times we were going to shoot and what we need on location.
The safety of our camera equipment is one of our biggest concerns as it is borrowed. The location we are most worried about is on the tube, but we have come up with practical ways to ensure the cameras safety. For example we have a zip up bag that we can store the camera and tripod in when we're not filming, to protect the equipment from both weather and potential theft. We have to think about all the costume and props and make sure the camera battery is always fully charged in order to ensure that the days filming can run smoothly and not be interrupted by any unnecessary means.
Our biggest problem we had when first planning our locations is we needed to get special permission and insurance from TFL to film on the tube. We emailed the Media department for TFL and applied for filming permission.

Research and planning - shooting schedule

Shooting schedule

Shots	Date /time	Day/ night	Location	EXT/ INT	Crew	Cast	Costume/props
11,12 29	28/10/10 10:30	Day	Louise's House/ bedroom	INT	D.K L.A	L.A	Bed, alarm clock, pyjamas
3,12	28/10/ 10	Day	Louise's house/bathroom	INT	D.K L.A	L.A	Towel, pyjamas
4,5,6, 21	28/10/10	Day	Louise's house/ hallway	INT	D.K L.A	L.A	Work clothes/ warm coat, work bag
7,13, 14	28/10/10	Day	Louise's road	EXT	D.K L.A	L.A	Work clothes/ warm coat, work bag
30,31	28/10/10	Day	Louise's house/ bedroom	INT	D.K L.A	L.A	Summer dress, make up, mirror, work bag
32,2	28/10/10	Day	Louise's road	EXT	D.K L.A	L.A	Summer dress, work bag
22,23	28/10/10 14:30	Day	Deema's house/ bedroom	INT	L.A D.K	M.O	Work clothes, scarf, warm coat, umbrella, briefcase
15	28/10/10	Day	Deema's road	EXT	L.A D.K	M.O	Summer clothes, briefcase
26	05/11/ 10	Day	School	EXT	D.K L.A	L.A 4 e xtras	Work clothes,
27,28	05/11/ 10	Day	School/ lift	INT	D.K L.A	L.A M.O	Work clothes,
37,38	05/11/ 10	Day	School/ lift	INT	D.K L.A	L.A M.O	Summer clothes, white paper.
39,40	06/11/ 10	Day	Cafe	INT	D.K L.A	L.A	Purse, food, piece paper
25	06/11/10	Day	Coffee stall	EXT	D.K L.A	M.O D.K	Winter clothes, coffee cups
34,35	06/11/10	Day	Coffee stall	EXT	D.K LA.	L.A D.K	Coffee cups
41,42, 43	06/11/10	Day	Southbank	EXT	D.K L.A	L.A M.O	Wrist watch, summer clothes, piece of paper
1,24		Day	Tube platform	INT	D.K L.A	L.A
8,9		Day	Tube carriage	INT	D.K L.A	L.A	Work clothes
16,17, 18,19		Day	Tube carriage	INT	D.K L.A	L.A M.O	Make up, book, briefcase, newspaper, work clothes
33		Day	Tube carriage	INT	D.K L.A	M.O L.A	Work clothes

D.K - Deema Khafaji  
L.A – Louise Adams      
M.O – Milo O'halloran  
INT – internal  
EXT – external

Research and Planning- Locations

Click on the link below to view my Final shooting location and the advantages and disadvantages of using those sights.
Slide show showing our final shooting locations

storyboard

Shot list

http://www.scribd.com/doc/40875327/Short-Film-Shot-List

Final script

Click on the link below to view script.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/40537622/Final-Script

Our production company

Click on the link below to view our production company logo and ideas

http://www.slideshare.net/deemamk/our-production-company

research and planning - Our target audience.

After we conducted our online survey we got a good idea of what are target audience would be. 90% of females answered romance as a preferred genre and they were the most enthusiastic responders to the idea of our pitch. The age group was also made clear too with the most response coming from females, who were roughly 15 to 30. This information will be very useful to us as it will give us a clear idea of who we should be advertising to and a better insight to the kind of already established material we should be researching.

Research and planning- poster ideas

After deconstructing some posters i began to think of ideas for our film. I liked the format of the Bridget Jones's Diary poster and the chemistry between the two characters in the When Harry Met Sally poster. This drawing on the right was one of my original ideas. As part of the film will take place on the tube i liked the idea of bringing the London underground in to one of the main focus points in our poster. I drew our two characters sitting on what will be a platform with the tube behind it. I dressed the two main characters in work clothes and gave them both something to hold in order to symbolise everyday life, for example as our film is based around the idea of the daily cycle i chose for the man to be holding a newspaper and the woman a coffee cup. Another reason for the man to be holding a paper is i liked the idea of him peaking over it as i think it suits our story line and makes the picture more interesting. Although it is difficult to tell from this drawing i tried to show the facial expressions on the characters faces. The man is looking over his newspaper and eyes on the women he is smiling but ever so slightly as if to show he doesn't want her to notice. The women's expression is quite similar as in she is also looking at the man but her smile is more that she is pleased and flattered. From this i wanted to make it clear to the audience that both the characters like each other and that the man is the one to make his move. I then scanned my drawing on to the computer and added the font, i chose this font as it reminded me of the old vintage train station text and i thought it suit the theme well.

After completing my first idea i decided i didn't like how small the characters were in relation to the whole picture, so i cropped the same image on the computer. I decided i liked this more, it gave off the same ideas and it was clearer what the story was about. The only thing i didn't like about this idea was it lost its sense of location, which for this film is very important. I added a red shape and inserted swirly writing, i chose this font because in my eyes in symbolises romance.

Although i was more pleased with my second version of my poster idea i decided that the poster lost it meaning without the connotation of the London underground. So i researched to find another way to complete my idea. I found this image on google and it seemed very appropriate for my poster. I cleared the writing on the original photo and replaced it with 'Day By Day' the title of our movie.

This is another photo i found while researching ideas. It sticks with the theme of the tube but places the characters in different positions. I would place the characters sitting on either side of the carriage facing each other with the text in between them. I liked this idea as it would a clear indicator of what our film is about. The facial expressions would be the same as in the other poster idea.

This was another idea i had, the location would still be the tube but the two characters would be sitting on the seats inside the carriage and the camera straight on. There would be a stranger in the middle of them and they would be looking over the stranger at one and other. I found this picture on the right and drew arrows on it to demonstrate my idea. When presenting these ideas to my class, they told me i might be in danger of making the stranger the main focus. To prevent this from happening i could ask him to hold up a newspaper or book over his face so therefore unidentify him.

Research and planning- online survey

We decided to create a survey to get a better idea of our target audience and what we have to do to meet the demands of a short film romance. We made it on a website called zoomerang.com, they specialize in surveys. We made it online and electronic because it exposes us to a greater range of participants so therefore a wider variety of results which makes our findings more reliable. We are going to post our link on facebook and send out group emails etc.16-24 year olds are our target audience and the majority of cinema goers, statistics show that 52% of facebook users are between the ages of 18-25 which is roughly our target audience so it made sense to put our survey on facebook. The statistics also show that girls use facebook more than boys and as the genre romance is generally targeted at girls, it seems very valid to post our online survey on facebook.

A link to our survey below.
http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22B9P6E9H8P

When Harry Met Sally Poster Deconstruction

I looked at a couple of posters from the 1990's film "When Harry Met Sally".  I studied them mainly because i think that our storyline could be well represent through using similar techniques these film posters have used. Bellow I have written a few points on each poster to illustrate my initial feelings when looking at the posters.

Bridget Jones's Diary poster deconstruction

I first looked at the poster of Bridget Jones's Diary, although my film is only a short film and Bridget Jones's Diary is a full length film, i still looked at it because we share the same target audience. There is a medium close up of the three main character with the women (Renee Zellweger) the main focus, it is clear she is the main character as her body is positioned slightly in front of the two men. She is looking into the camera and has a  slight smile. The mise en scene shows a book presumably a diary coming from the title the book is red which is smartly chosen as red symbolises  love,  infatuation and strong emotions. The colour scheme carries on to the title with the word 'diary' in red along with her lipstick. The colour blue is also widely used for example her jumper, and both men's shirts. The rest of the title is also in blue. There faces are light warmly and yellow suggesting heat. These three colours are the three primary colour which might be cleverly symbolised from the three main characters, as a source for many things to come. The backdrop is made up of faint handwritten text which is made to look like a page from her diary.

The tag line to me suggest that Bridget Jones is different from most women and that if you watch it you can maybe learn something from her.

In conculsion i think this poster works and uses all the code and conventions of a romance leaving the audience with the  knowledge to know what to expect.

research and planning - Short films

Here i have watched some short films that i feel will benefit the making of my own film. I have specifically looked and studied the narrative, camera and editing techniques of the film as well as a complete overview.
Strangers
Strangers is not a romance but when i watched it i saw many similarities to our concept and deconstructed it to give us some good ideas. The story lines relate as  we witness two strangers meeting on public transport. I looked at the camera angles and the shots of the train for inspiration. I was mainly interested in the first half of the film when the Jewish and Arabic man are sitting alone. I studied the camera shots and found that the sequence was almost entirely made up of close ups of the two protagonist's faces, this gives a good idea of their emotions and i think it works very well. The tension of this sequence is broken up with a exterior medium shot if the train passing, this gives emphasises on the location of the two men. The establishing shot of the train pulling into the station is very low angle, i liked the effect it gave and will take it into consideration for when filming my own similar shots.
Link to strangers

Close encounter
link to close encounter plot, cast, crew etc
I was recommended to watch this short film by my teacher after she had seen my pitch and synopsis. I watched it in school on video. The short film's plot has several similarities to ours and so i was interested in this film. One similarity to our film is the two main protagonists are the only two characters who appear during the film, I was looking to see how the film used camera and editing to not let the film be boring. As the two characters in this film are complete strangers I studied the camera angles that were used to get an idea of how they show chemistry between the two protagonists. I found that the first few shots of them together are close ups of their faces, clearly showing emotion. There was also a direct line line match between the man and woman. As a result of these camera and editing techniques I was left feeling very clear how the two characters felt about each other. When filming my own film I will take into great account these techniques.  The first clear difference in my film is i do not plan on using any dialogue. Close Encounter not only has dialogue but voice overs of both characters telling us their thoughts. This is an aid in showing romance which i do not have. Instead i blocked out the voices and studied the music, the music could easily go unnoticed but it clearly sets out the mood and vibe of each scene. The music is all instrumental and starts off at a quite a fast pace but through out the movie the pace slows and it turns more romantic.
The last thing that i see as a similarity in our two films, would be they share the whole idea of 'the chance meeting' and in both films this happens through the demands of everyday life.
Daniel Powter - Bad Day
Line to Daniel Powter Bad Day
I was shown this music video in response to my synopsis, the storyline bears great resemblance to ours. I deconstructed it in order to define certain techniques used which will hopefully better our film. They have used a great editing technique how to represent the passing of time by repeating an action for a couple of seconds but slightly different every time. The split screens to show the two people lives in parallel has an effective result in showing you the characters bond in every day life which in our film is a strong theme. Obviously it being a music video it does not have any dialogue but even if it wasn't I don't think it would need it, as the characters actions represent their emotions very clearly. For example certain body language, the way the woman holds her head if she is facing the floor this might suggest her being sad. These are techniques we can use when directing.