Sizing your film review for Little White Lies

As you are using In Design, you cna measure the dimensions of the magazine in order to accurately reflect the dimensions of the actual magazine. This will ensure that your font size accurately reflects the magazine. Ask Andy or Richard to help you. The dimensions of the magazine are 24.5 cm by 20 cm.

The final draft of your film poster

I can only feedback if the poster is uploaded on your blog.

Thus, I can't comment (Danny and Chris) at all if there is no poster on your blog. The rest of you, I have posted comments, although with some of you, you actually had older versions than I saw last week. Do ensure that you all have your completed version posted by the deadline. There is a time and date after which work cannot be accepted. We also want you to submit a Black and White version only (absolutely not colour - do not waste valuable resources). Do this as an A3 if possible. We will then be able to go to your blog for the colour version. Listen out for final instructions this week.

Feedback on the evaluations

having now marked these, a number of common factors are coming through about how you can improove these :-

1. Use your media language where appropriate - the terms associated with camerawork (angles and movement as well as shot distance), editing (how has continuity been achieved) , mise en scene (all 11 aspects) and sound. For instance, i don't think I came across the use of the word "Parallel" once to describe music matching events on screen. This distinguishes you from non media studies students, which is what you are. It also demonstrates high level skills of application.

2, Make comparisons to existing media products (seen on the film side of your course - Leigh, Loach etc)- "similar to particular scenes in films you have viewed" -this will be something to explore when you discuss your film poster. This is good practice becuase it makes links with your planning and research.

3. Refer to media theory and concepts where appropriate - for instance, some of you made references to issues about the representation of gender, audience demographics etc

4. Continually illustrate with particular scenes from your own work.

5. Be honest. Far too often, you have avoided discussing problems you had, or problems with your finished product. Don't bury your head in the sand! By admitting to these problems and, more importantly, by discussing how you overcame them or how you could have overcome them, you are demonstrating that you understand what a good product should look like and demonstrate.

6. In the section "on how successfully you have used digital technology" - be reflective and discuss what you have been able to do - How has final cut been an improvement, What have the blogs allowed you do this time round, what has garageband allowed you do?

Little White Lies Film Review

Your lessons this week have established :-

Target Audience
Layout
Language

as regards Little White Lies and Film Reviews written in this.

I would recommend that you blog selective elements of what we have done in class this week, embed links to the Magazine and Church of London, scan some reviews to illustrate layout and language.

You can then start on the exercise of writing your own review.

Stage one is to upload the basic design and the image that you intend to use.

Stage two is to start to write the article in the style of the magazine. This will require research and time!

In the meantime I will start to look at your poster's and leave comments on them for you to act on.

Evaluative Essay - Deadline 1 week from issue

The following brief will be issued to you during your second lesson this week. This is a conventional essay, and should be handed to your supervisor by the one week deadline.

TASK: TO WRITE AN ESSAY EVALUATION OF YOUR SHORT FILM, INCORPORATING TARGET AUDIENCE FEEDBACKLENGTH: about 1500 WORDS
Context

For your A2 qualification, you need to evaluate your production work in 2 contexts:

1. The Evaluation stage of the Advanced Portfolio (worth 25% of the Portfolio, or 20 marks)
2. Section A of the exam (Theoretical Evaluation of Production, worth 50 marks: part 1a, describing and evaluating skills development over the course of the production work, and part 1b, evaluating the production in relation to one of 5 media concepts).

Even though the evaluation you write for the blog will not be an essay, the evaluation for the exam will be, and this exercise should give you some practice at doing it.

In your essay, answer the following questions:

• How successfully have you used digital technology in your Advanced Portfolio work? Have you developed skills in this area since the Foundation Portfolio? Have you learned any new skills, such as final cut pro or green screen, or the blog itself? (Main task only at this stage – cameras, vision and sound editing, special effects).

• How creative is your work? (Consider your use of film language in camera work, mise en scene, sound, editing, themes, issues, narrative). Have you experimented at all with any film techniques? Have you attempted to be original in your work? Have you adapted or been inspired by the work of any other director/s? Give precise examples as evidence.

• How effective do you think your role was in research and planning? Explain what you did in these areas, and evaluate your success and input. Give precise examples of your role.

• Describe what you were trying to achieve as a group in post-production (editing), and what techniques you used. For example, did you aim for continuity, did you achieve it, and how? If you have any more to discuss and evaluate related to sound or vision post production work that you haven’t discussed above in digital technology, discuss it here. Use examples to support the points you make.

• How did you use, develop or adapt the conventions for real media products of this type (consider the short film narrative, genre and style)? Provide detail from your film as evidence.

• What have you learned from your audience feedback? (This must follow research with several representatives of your target audience, and can be conducted via social networking sites such as Facebook, email, the blog itself, phone, or in person. The results can be gathered by all of you together and shared)

DEADLINE: 1 WEEK FROM TODAY – AND TO BE SUBMITTED ON PAPER AS A WORD DOCUMENT.

Logos for Film Funding companies and competitions

Any logos you wish to include in your poster design can be copied from the k drive (under visual arts and media, media studies, a2 media, logos).

Heading - please add a heading "Poster ideas and draft"

I want to comment on each of your contributions to the Poster design process and give feedback on your first draft. One title is enough and I can add a post underneath for each member of the group commenting on contributions and the first draft.

Thanks

Example of Independent Company marketing of short film

Look at the link to Cowboy Film on the right as an example of an award winning short film which was more conventionally sold to its audience.

Deadline Friday 12th March - what you need to have done!

1 Final edit of short film, including sound and titling
2 First photoshop and indesign draft of poster design chosen from the sketched drafts for each of you that should have been uploaded last week. It is important that each of you demonstrates having contributed to the design of the poster through the initial sketched design (last week's deadline).

Poster Research

You should have already analysed existing relevant poster designs as part of a previous deadline. Now that you have had lessons on this, you may think it's a good idea to edit those posts to add more detail and relevance to your own design ideas. If you didn't make that part of the previous deadline, you need to do that research asap. Each person in the group should have contributed to the research on poster designs and posts need to be headed with names to appear on the archive. See examples on this blog for ideas.

Film Poster work to blog

We have looked at film posters for "Fish Tank", "This is England" and "Le Donk and Scor-Zay-Zee". You should blog comments on atleast two of these film posters. In particular, using Film language (Textual Analysis), expalin how meaning is communicated about :-


Representation - Who, How, What sort of female/male is she/he/they?

Genre - What sort of film is this, how do we know?

Narrative - What will this film be about? How do we know?


In addition, consider who the Target Audience for the film is. (consider clues such as mention of Awards? Print Media? Assumptions?)


Once you have completed this, you should do some of your own research and blog along similar lines other indepenedent, low budget social realism films (or Thriller or Horror).