In what ways does your product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
(sound recorder of question 1)
This is penny from the sitcom Big Bang Theory. We based her character on Lilly in our film. 
And this is both Rajesh and Lenard, the two characters we based Nabil on.
The poster we think really connects with the film really well. This is because we’ve included many aspects in the poster that help emphasize both the characters and the comic genre in the film. For example we have included:
· A chalkboard as the background. This helps reflect on Nabil’s academic side, where he is currently doing his A2 in sixth form. To help emphasize this effect we have also decided to include chalk on each side of the board. White chalk to represent chalk itself that is used in schools and the yellow chalk to represent the title being written on the board.
· The pictures are rotated in order to give that funky, ‘cool’ side to the comic genre. It also highlights the idea that the pictures have been stuck on the board for display (i.e. making fun of Nabil).
· The font on the poster is the same font as the one on the film and is both the same colour; therefore the audience can see the connection between the two.
· The picture shows Nabil in a very uncomfortable position carrying a lot of books in his hands, showing his hurry to read as many books as possible and how he always has his ‘social’ life dedicated to his work. Additionally, the pictures background is full of books, emphasizing his stereotypical image even more. His facial expression implies he is very uncomfortable with the idea of a picture being taken of him. This helps to underline his unpopularity, where he is not used to people taking pictures of him because he spends most of his time alone in the library; working.
· The picture of the kids are also shown on the poster and they are wearing the same school uniform as they were in the actual film, therefore making it easier for the audience to connect the characters from the poster to the film. Also the fact that the kids pictures is placed just above Nabil’s reflect on the film, where the kids have control and authority over Nabil, getting him to follow their rules instead of the other way round.
The combination of the main product compared with my film review is very effect in showing the genre of the short film very clearly. At the process of making the film review it was vital that i made the film review very clear for the audience to understand, for instance capturing a image from the actual film itself was powerful. This makes it look realistic, the characters being in role and their dress codes is also another aspect which worked very well in showing what the film could be about just by a glance of the images. For example, immediately the use of the glasses and tie help replect on the protagonists character and personality . The main image of our protagonist; which is presented in the centre of the double spread is very effective as it represents his importance in our film. In the main product the audience are introduced to the protagonist instantly so therefore it made sense if the film review was essentially focused on him. The two images beside the larger image also introduces other main characters who are connected to our protagonist.
The film review itself tries to explain the plot of the film, I have used the colour's yellow and blue as a main colour scheme to indicate the connection with the main product. It was very important to use the same scheme to represent our film. The quotation which was taken from a particular scene from the product defiantly works well as it creates a connection with the images above which show's when Nabil approaches the girl.
As it has been stated the review contains many features which work really well with the combination of the film. However, it also shares slight aspects which do not connect very well. One particular feature which is different from the main product is the font style and colour which is used for the title. The issue i came across whilst making the review was that i used a different program to make it so therefore i had limited access to the techniques i was able to use compared to the program adobe which we used to edit our film. I tried to use a font which was as similar as the one used on the film, but did not use the same colour of the font purposely. This was becuase i thought that the use of the colour black really enhanced the effect of the title as it makes it stand out more.
What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
We interviewed a few people who were willing to watch our product and give us feedback. Overall, they commented that our film definatly filled the genre and would watch it again. So, therefore the short film successfully attracts our target audience and fulfils their needs.
Here are two videos of two people who would be willing to let us interview them and tell us why they enjoyed the film.
http://s1197.photobucket.com/albums/aa427/silvabeshi/?action=view¤t=P1030020.mp4
http://s1197.photobucket.com/albums/aa427/silvabeshi/?action=view¤t=P1030028.mp4
In order for us to stretch our research further and not be fully reliant on our interviews, we decided that we would use a particular online media product which is very popular with our target audience to find out what their interests are regarding the type of films they like.We choose Facebook as our main focus, we chose facebook for the reason that it reflects on our audiences very well as many people over sixteen and above have access to facebook.
The first Facebook page we looked into was a young girl aged sixteen, we wanted to see what her favourite movies were andwe wanted to use her page as it suited well with our target audience. As we expected, it seemed that the younger generation tend to favour the action and comedy movies.
( click to enlarge photo)
To conclude, with the support of our thorough research we believe that our product to an extent successfully attracts our target audience.
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
New forms of technology were used in order to keep up with the 21st century. For example instead of just writing out everything we used new forms of websites such as Scribd, Photo bucket and Prezi. For example when it came to do PowerPoint’s of a particular research i.e. Misé-en-scene, we used Prezi. Prezi is a new way of making PowerPoint less dull and conventional and make them more edgy and fun to look at. It is a new way of keeping you entertained while still informing you of information. Once we got the hang of how to use the website, we used Prezi for ‘ideas of A Loser Like You Poster’, ‘Misé-en-scene of a loser like you’, Snapshots of how to make a loser like you film review’ and more.
Scribd- Scribd is a very popular website that helps people search for new information and become informed by others through searching this one website. You can either post or read and is very easy to use and it’s free, so anyone can use it. We used this when showing our script and shooting list because both files were written in Microsoft and Scribd and therefore allowed the files to be displayed in this format. It was very easy to use and so everyone could get the hang of it.
Paint and taking pictures through camera- In order to get away from just using the blog to create our research and planning, we instead used a camera to take pictures of our storyboard and uploaded them to the blog. We also used Paint, where we would copy a file or image from word and transfer it to paint and then upload it to the blog. Subsequently we also added borders around on some of the files i.e. Resources and equipment and production schedule to brighten up the file and give it a bit more colour. Then we had to copy and paste this into paint and save it in order to upload in the blog. The reason we had to copy it into paint first then upload it to the blog was because the file could not be copied from word into the blog, so we then had to paste it to paint first. Here is an example of the borders:
The use of the shirt also reflected on his personality as we wanted to create this view that he tries to wear modern clothes in order to fit in with the other popular people but does not create the correct image.
Sterotypicllay society assumes that geeks wear big glasses so therefore it was really important that our actor must have very big glasses in order to reflect on his character and allow the audience to understand his character.
