EvaluationApple

By Jack Parfitt

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

When coming up with the idea for our short film we stuck to the traditional generic conventions of short films, these being the idea that there is one single topic that is simple. This is no different with apple as the story line is; How do peoples everyday actions effect other people? We did this by focusing these actions on the apple. The apple ends up saving a mans life, the film shows the apples journey and explains how peoples actions have saved this mans life with out them even knowing. We stuck to the creative feel that short films have by using some different types of shots and techniques, examples of this are the slow motion shots of the apple falling and POV shots from the apple. This as well as the face on the apple helps the audience to relate to the apple. From the out-set we wanted to develop on an existing media product, we chose to use a character from witness our AS piece, we used the photographer and turned him into a tramp, this challenges the audience to think what has happened to him.

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

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tetxs?

When we were creating our ancillary pieces we wanted them to complement the main product I think we have achieved this very well. We achieved this in a few different ways, We chose to use the same colour scheme and front for each product.

We decide to use 3 colours black, green and white, we did this as it will create an identity and will be easily recognizable with our audience.When it came to creating the ancillary tasks we wanted to make them look very authentic to help with the credibility to the film.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tetxs?

Our poster has been made using a very simple yet effective design, which is in keeping with the short film genre, we have one image that is the focus of the poster, this I s the apple. Next to that I the title with a tag line (how far does an apple fall from the tree?) we have also added small authentic touches. We have put a real film festivale down , and the credits as seen on main stream films.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tetxs?

Our second piece is a magazine review article, again we followed the same colour and font scheme and kept it simple. Although we have added a few more elements, a pull quote, production photos. The review backs up the work of the poster aswell. The article is quite classy and up market it would feature in a main stream publication and not a small independent mag. The page also looks very authentic as we have added page numbers and the name of the mag.

How did you utilise audience feedback?

During filming and production of our film we were creating basics edits as we went, we would show these to our teacher and mates and they would tell us what they thought. This also helped us as it gave us constant feedback allowing us to improve our film.Because we did this from start it ment we could change some scenes in advance, for example we had storyboarded a different change of events but with our teachers feedback be changed it for the better.

Our first couple of drafts looking back werent very good, but with the feedback from classmates we made a few changes, one of these was the sound track, it didn’t really go and you could her us talking of shot, so again we changed it and recored are own sound track.

How did you utilise audience feedback?

One piece of feedback that every body told us was to change the face of the apple for example when the drunk guys pick it up change the face to one of worry , but we chose to ignore this as we wanted to keep the apple as an inanimate object. We thought it was something we really didn’t want to do as the whole idea is that the apple saves the mans life because of other people and giving it emotions would some what take away from this idea.

What technology did you utilise when creating your media product?

Firstly I’ll start with the obvious, the camera we used a song handy cam that films in HD straight onto a harddrive, it also can record in real time slow motion which we used. Using this camera was a lot easier than using the lower quality DV cameras, the main advantage is recording onto the hard drive as it ment we didn’t have to mess around with tapes, and it was easy to review footage on the camera. We used some great accessories with the camera, we had a zoom mic that really shows as the sound is great, we also used a wide angle lenses without it some shots wouldn’t have been possible. We used another camera to capture the production photos and location hunting this was digital SLR and gaves us some great high quality pictures.

What technology did you utilise when creating your media product?

The technology we used to great affect is Web 2.0 it has allowed us to upload all of our work to the internet. Our blogs have properly been the biggest help as it has allowed us to upload loads of user generated content. We created a group on facebook that has been a great hit. The internet has also allowed us to upload video clips and podcast to youtube, photos to photobucket and slide shows to slideshare, these have been critical to creating our blogs.

What technology did you utilise when creating your media product?

Apple Macbooks have also been key to creating all of our work, we edited on final cut and imovie, created our ancillary products on pages, keynote to create slide shows, icalender to creat shooting schedules and garage band to record our sound track. The Macs have been at the heart of our production allowing us to do thing that couldn’t be done on PC.