A2 Media 'Nobody' Final Evaluation

8/7/2019 A2 Media 'Nobody' Final Evaluation

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byAlex Allin


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Filming and EditingTechniques


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The typical conventions of establishing shots in films are slow pan shots to give an ideaof where the film is located, additionally they usually show scenery or somethingthat isnt particularly spectacular.

However in Thrillers, non-linear structures to films are used and establishing shots canbe important scenes from the film. A perfect example of this is in ChristopherNolans Inception, this film starts with waves crashing as the camera slowly pans.These shots link to the end of the film and are placed at the beginning in order toconfuse the audience, also when the film catches up with this scene the message

is made clear. Because the shot is placed at the beginning it causes theaudience to think straight from the beginning.The establishing shot in our piece was a scene from the end of our film, alike to

Inception. This shows paper flying down a street, we do not pan the camera, thusit subverts the conventions I have observed. However I believe the steady shotadds effect to the shot. There is the sound of rustling paper that gets louder untilthe scene fades into the opening titles, this sound builds tension, this is aconvention of establishing shots from our chosen genre.

So, our establishing shot subverts conventions of general films, however it does apply

the forms and conventions of our genre. There are many examples of this non-linear structure and we followed this convention in order to add effect.

The mise-n-scene of the shot is very bleak, we lowered the saturation a conventionwe applied due to the depressive theme of our film. This convention can also beseen in films such as The Book Of Eli.


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This scene was used to emphasise how excluded from society our main character is.The scene features two other actors who are talking to each other while the maincharacter walks around them. The shot is held still until the main character gets tothe edge when there is a series of jump cuts, while the camera pans, this followsthe main character to a seat at the back of the room. The use of jump cuts isheavily used in film to show time passing and thus this is a convention we haveapplied. However in our film we flash to black between our jump cuts and thissyncs to music playing. This therefore has more of a music video feel, we thereforeslightly subvert the typical conventions of films, we added the black flashes to addeffect and make the film more visually striking.

The mise-n-scene is once again bleak, the saturation is turned down again in order toemphasise the dark mood of the film. The shot is framed so that the maincharacter is at the other end of the shot to the other actors, this is once againused to represent his separation from society. This technique is used in many films,we have therefore applied another convention of the industry.

The music we have used is a dance track it has a mysterious tone to it, we used this asit creates a nice effect with the atmosphere. As I mentioned above we synced

jump cuts to the track playing we did this as it created a dramatic effect. The useof music like this and syncing it to jump cuts is primarily seen in music videos,however it is seen in films but not often. We therefore subvert the conventionslightly here as it is not a common occurrence in film.


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This is one of the most key shots in our film, the use of an over the shoulder shot tointroduce the other main character. Firstly we were going to use this shot and thenzoom it towards the dark character to emphasise the importance, but wedecided against this. Over the shoulder shots are used in films to make it seem likethe audience are more involved with the action, another way of doing this isthrough using a point of view shot. We decided against the use of a point of viewshot because we felt the over the shoulder shot was more dramatic. The way wehave used this over the shoulder shot applies the conventions that I havementioned above. Examples of shots like this can be seen in real media productsin most TV dramas. And additionally in films in order to give the audience thesense that they are being included in the action as mentioned above, this shottype would therefore be a key feature of our chosen genre Thrillers as it will helpbuild tension and keep the audience involved.

The mise-n-scene is once again bleak and how we have framed the shot the maincharacter is at one side with the dark figure at the other side. How we involve thisshot into our piece marks the moment, as you dont see that part of the roomuntil the main character leaves. This is an essential part of the film and I believe weput this across by applying the conventions of over the shoulder shots. The lightingis purposely above the dark figure so his face is obscured by the hood he iswearing, the fact his face is covered is played on through the whole film. Thelighting in the scene is similar to most of the lighting in the rest of our film, it isnaturalistic, coming from the lights inside the classroom. This is done in order torepresent where the film is being shot.

During this shot there is music playing in the background, this is the music featured inthe jump cut scene, however it is slowly fading out. We could have possiblyincorporated a voice over of the main characters thoughts during this shot inorder to explain the shot better.


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In this shot as there were just the two of us filming and acting clever camera work was involved. Thisscene sees the main character (front of shot) walking from the doors to where he is positionednow. In this shot the dark figure had to appear behind main character as he turned round thecorner, as there was just the two of us this was pretty difficult to carry out, but we managed it;through the placement of flashbacks to split up the scene.

This shot is once again held still on a tripod, following the conventions of film. The shot is framed sothe main character obscures the whole centre of the shot until he moves to the side, (which canbe seen right). The mise-en-scene as with the rest of the film is bleak, this is done to represent thedepressive nature of the film, the saturation is turned down to further emphasise this effect.

The music throughout this scene is in a minor key and used to add effect, there is no dialogue ordiegetic sound, through scenes like this our film uses conventions of music videos very strongly,we used a lack of diegetic sounds and dialogue to show how our main character was verydifferent to the rest of society. So, this scene is very similar to something out of music videos,additionally shots like this are used frequently in horror movies in order to build tension.

For the flashback we used a dip to white to represent the transfer into the flashback, this is aconvention of film. The original flashback that we had in our film was edited to have a gloweffect, we this is seen in many films to represent the idea of a flashback, this however is not seen

in films aimed at an older target audience, or films in our chosen genre. We therefore subvertedthe general convention and applied the one relevant to out film. In the flashback the camera isheld still on a tripod, the flashback is the show the main character receiving a reward for Englishcreative writing.

There is a sound effect of clapping to represent the fact he is at an awards evening, there is also asong going on in the background. This song is in a minor key to emphasise the depressive natureof the film. The use of flashbacks are also very common in psychological thrillers as they extendthe story and add to the psychotic feel of the film.


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This scene shows how the main character and dark figure start seeing more of eachother, I edited this scene so there are jump cuts with the main character wearingdifferent clothes after each cut. I originally intended the scene to be similar to thescene in the film Spiderman when Peter Parker is designing the suit, this howeverdid not happen. Jump cuts are widely used to show time passing, therefore theway I have used them applies the conventions of film. The use of shots throughoutthe scene are mainly close ups of the main character, however there is one closeup of the dark character and the long shot shown below. This shot is framed so theyare at different sides of the shot. Both characters are facing away from thecamera, this symbolises there distance from society, the dark characters face isonce again covered up by the hood.

Over the top of this scene there is music playing that my partner composed onGarageBand, this is piano music with a slow tempo and in a minor key, this is meantto emphasise the depressive mood of the scene and add dramatic effect whenyou see the dark character on shot. The way we shot it gives the viewer the ideathat the dark character had been there the whole time, he was just hidden. Thisgives the impression that the dark character is always present, thus adding to hisenigmatic character.

The mise-en-scene of the shots is very bleak, the colours are dim and the atmosphereof the shot is dark in order to represent the depressive theme of our film. The lightingis naturalistic, it is coming through the window, this casts a shadow on one half ofthe characters face adding to their enigmatic identities.


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This is the most key scene in our whole film, it is where the darkcharacter can be understood; throughout the whole film wepurposefully made him strange in order to keep the audienceguessing. The shots in the scene are a mixture of long shots(seen below) and medium close ups of both the characters.The shot below is framed so that the characters are

positioned on opposite sides of the screen. This paired withthe dialogue shows how the main character is distancinghimself as he is confused. Through the dialogue in this scenewe applied the principle of the 180 rule. I believe theexceedingly bleak mise-en-scene further emphasises themood of the film and as this scene is significantly darker thanany other adds an extra focus on this scenes importance.

Through the use of bleak mise-en-scene and the framing ofour shots I believe we have followed the conventions ofthrillers, shots like these are scene and the shadows in thescene add to the tension being created.


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This split shot has been remarked as the most key shot in our whole piece. This shothappens with the realisation that the dark figure is actually in the main charactersmind. We decided to do a split shot as seen below to represent the fact that hispersonality is split into another person. The audience does not know yet that thatdark character is in the main characters mind and would therefore be confused, itis in the shot after next that everything is made clear. The use of a split shot like this, Icannot say I have ever seen in a film. It is similar to what is seen in the televisionseries 24, but we used it in a different way. Therefore we have subverted typicalconventions of film, however I would say that through subverting the conventionswe have made our film much more individual and visually dramatic. Throughhaving two shots running at the same time it extends the story at a quicker pace, itmay be confusing as there is a lot to take in, but this is the idea of the film. Itherefore believe that this shot is one of the most key in our whole film.

The mise-en-scene is extremely bleak, we searched for a location that would bereasonable to shoot this as we needed a dark room, we then closed all the blindsbut one in order to cast shadows. The dark character has his face completelycovered for the first time in the film; he is completely in shadow. For the maincharacter we used an over the shoulder shot while he goes through his story to findthe dark characters message. This shot of the main character is similar to one ofEwan McGregor in The Ghost Writer. We therefore applied conventions of film.

Throughout the shots leading up to this one there was music playing in order to conveythe fact that this scene is a pivotal moment in the film. According to TodrovsEquilibrium theory it is the disruption.


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This shot took the most time to edit out of any in the film, it shows two main characters, and to carry this out I had to researchtutorials on the internet on how to do this. The shot, I believe is very effective. How the scene is structured this shot is shownbefore the information is shown to the audience, therefore the audience will be questioning what is going on only to be toldin the following shot. I believe how we structured this is clever, as it keeps the audience guessing for longer and thus holdstheir interest longer.

The shot is framed so the two characters are sat at opposite ends of the shot, a running theme in our whole film, the copy of themain character on the left is sat in the same position as the dark character is at the beginning of the scene. Prior to the shotabove you see the dark character take down his hood. There are only two times where the dark character is seen with hishood down and both times he looks like the main character. I believe this is extremely effective and shows the audiencewhat we intended. Additionally this shots mise-en-scene is very bleak, the saturation as with the rest of the film is turneddown and as the room is a blue colour it is very bland. The shot is messy with chairs and tables cluttered to show the schoollocation and this additionally represents how confusing the film is and the disruption of the scene.

I have not seen shots like this be used in any films, but I have seen it happen in music videos which are using issues such as this. Ibelieve this shot is very visually impressive because of the cloning technique as it is something that is not widely observed infilms. This scene had music running through it, as the music reaches a crescendo there is the diegetic sound of laughter fromthe dark character on the left had side of the shot. This laugh represents the dark characters mockery as the main characterfinally finds out who the dark character really is.

This is one of the last shots in our film. It shows the two characters stood face to face and a car between them driving up the road. Ibelieve this shot is very visually striking, we framed it using the running theme of the two characters at opposite ends of theshot, additionally there is the path between them, this almost acts as a divide showing how their companionship is over.

We had to reshoot this scene multiple times as we didnt get it right, that is why it is slightly brighter than the rest of the film. Themise-en-scene is therefore slightly brighter than other scenes which was partly unintentional and would have been better ifwe had shot the scene on an overcast day, however I think it is bleak enough and with the saturation turned down colour isdrained out and therefore the scene seems bleaker than it is. This desaturation is something we have applied all throughoutour film.

As the main character is walking into the road there is a song playing in the background in a minor key. The main character thenruns off shot to the right and the car follows him- this is paired with the diegetic sound of the car passing, the dark figure thenfades and the shot cuts to black. This cut to black is meant to convey the fact the main character got hit by the car. Whenediting this I thought it best to leave out the sound of breaks squeaking and a thud as this seemed very clich and ruined theeffect the music has. This therefore subverts conventions of film as there would normally be a thus to convey someone beinghit, I dont think our film needs it and it would spoil the effect it has on the audience.

The camera all throughout this scene is held still, there is one cut in this scene, and this is when the car goes past. We decided tokeep this as one flowing shot so that the full effect of the cloning technique came across to the audience. I believe this lackof cuts, while it doesnt show a wide variety it does show our skill with narrative as we manage to hold audience attentionthrough a long shot. I would say that this subverts typical shots in real media products, however my audience feedbacksuggests it works.


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Media Theory


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Narrative Theories are ideas, similar to conventions, that media texts apply in order to put a certainmessage across. A narrative theory that my film applies is Propps idea of there being certaincharacter types in every film. Our film has the classic hero, princess, donor and villain. Howeverour film subverts this narrative theory in a way, as the hero in our film is also the princess and thedonor is also the villain. Due to the nature of our film this was necessary and as we have thissubversion is adds to the effect and confusion of our film. This does not happen in many realmedia products, however a loose example comes from films when someone who is originallyviewed as an ally changes sides, this happens in many films a recent example of one of theseis the latest instalment in the Indiana Jones series The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Another narrative theory that we applied in our film is Levi-Strausss idea of Binary Opposites, this is

the idea that inside media texts there are always opposites, for instance earth and space orgood and evil. In our film it is primarily a representation of good and evil. The character thatalways looms in the shade and hides his face with his hood is the representation of evil,whereas the main character who nearly always dresses in lighter clothes and covers himself upless, is the good character. This representation is crucial to our films narrative.

So we have both applied and subverted classical narrative theories in our film. By doing this we willhave made our film more accessible to people as it has a general feel to it with the narrativetheories applied. However as we challenged and subverted one of the theories it allows for amore personal and confusing feel. This is what we aimed to do achieve with our film. This showsthat narrative is essential to films, all films have a narrative structure and thus this is one of the

most essential principles we had to include, all films have at least one theory and this isTodrovs Theory of Equilibrium, this is an essential idea which basically states that all media textshave a beginning, a middle and an end. The beginning of our film being the sense ofequilibrium where the main character is stuck in the monotony of spending every day alone,the middle being the introduction and development of the second, dark character and thedevelopment of the relationship between the two, and finally the ending being the surprisingand unexpected revelation that the second character is not in fact real, and the maincharacter is once again returned to being constantly alone. This was an essential narrativetheory to follow as most real media products do and I think that it was in fact easier to followthis through in a short film as there is less time available for variation in the scenes and a moredistinct beginning, middle and ending.


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Intertextuality is the idea that people bring in their own experiences with what ever media text they areviewing. So basically, people use other media texts in order to find meaning in the one that they arewatching at the time. This is also similar to Barthes idea of negotiating the meaning of media texts.

My film features intertextuality first of all in the sense that we have used teenage actors. These actors willenable the ability for people external to the film to relate to the action, by doing this we can play onthe empathy factor for the characters, this will also result in a better reaction at the end of the film. Thistechnique is used by many mainstream films in the film industry. For example the thriller The Prestige,directed by Christopher Nolan, used characters that could be related to very easily, and whilst theactors used in the film were all well known they were scripted and dressed in a way that was different

to their normal selves or characters that they had portrayed in other films and thus this technique waseffective. Our film doesnt do exactly this as we are using the actors in their typical everyday dresshowever the audience viewing the film will take from their past experiences and judge the charactersin accordance to these, and the fact that they are dressed like stereotypical modern teenagers willalso allow some of the younger members of the audience to relate more easily and more readilyaccept ideas put forth by the film.

However there is one problem with intertextuality, those people who know the actors in the film will see theactors behind these characters rather than that the characters themselves and use their experienceswith the actors to govern their ideas of their actions in the film rather than the character developedthroughout the film. This is a major flaw in using intertextuality in this particular film as an awful lot of the

initial audience will be our fellow classmates and students and thus they will be using a relationship thatis not actually with the character in the film and the representation we are trying to give may notcome across.

Because of this an audience that views the film without knowing the actors would be much more successfuland this is why big screen films maybe supply much more intertextuality. We do not know the actorspersonally and therefore find building relationships with the characters easy. Another example of thiscan be seen in the fact when we see actors in one film and then in a completely different film we findit hard to relate to that character, however in low budget films such as This Is England, directed byShane Meadows, most of the actors had not been seen before on the big screen; this allowed for theaudience to create brand new relationships with the characters.


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Ancillary Texts


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The dark character is in thebackground behind the tableand also smaller and thereforethis shows that he is not the maincharacter and is less directlyimportant.

The dark character is lookingdirectly at the camera andtherefore at the audience andengaging with them, giving hima sense of a stronger morepowerful character, despite the

fact that he is in the background.

The names of the actors in the film are shown at the top, this is a verycommon convention of film posters as it allows people to relate tothe film because they might recognise the actor from somethingelse or might be a fan of the actor and watch this film as a result.The surnames are also shown larger and in higher contrast as actors

are often recognised this way more commonly.

A possible release date for thefilm is mentioned at the bottomgiving the reader a sense ofanticipation and adding to thesuspense of wanting to find outmore about the story and explainthe mysterious charactersdepicted here and their equally

mysterious relationship.

Credits at the bottom of the poster are in very small print denoting thatthey are less immediately important than the images and larger text whichare placed further up such as the title, tagline and names of the actors, butis still included as it still may cause some audience members to go to see

the film based on recognising the name of a famous director etc.

The title of the film is in a bright redcolour as opposed to the more

plain black and white of the rest ofthe poster and is also in a muchlarger font size so that it stands outmore and sticks in the viewers mind.

As opposed to the dark characterwho is dressed all in dark inconspicuous colours the maincharacter is in a white t-shirt andhas very pale skin, which cause himto stand out from the backgroundand make the audience notice himfirst, this also creates a sense ofcontrast between the two

characters and the light colours ofthe main character lead us tobelieve that he is the good guywhereas the dark, shady, coveredup appearance of the dark personmakes him the bad guy.


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The five star ratinggiven to the film isshown here in a brightred colour and as aresult stands out froma distance. This isdone because the starrating system is very

widely recognisedand anyone who seesthe five stars here atthe end of the reviewwill instantly know thatthis means that thefilm has received avery high overall scoreand therefore must be

verygood.

The text for thearticle is arrangedinto two equallysized columns, onedown each side ofthe double page,this gives a goodbalance on thepage as a wholebetween theamount of thepage taken up bythe text and theamount coveredby the images,making sure thatthere is not too

much of either.

Three images of different sizes have been used to representthe film. The largest one shows the main character, connotingthat he is the most important figure in the film, and making surethis is seen first. The second largest then shows the second,more conspicuous dark character, who plays an equallyimportant part in the film, however is not focused on so much.The final image then shows some behind the scenes footagewhich is mentioned in the article text but does not take upmuch of the article and therefore this image is the smallest as itis the least important in relevance to the article itself.

The small header section at the top of thearticle summarises all of the most importantinformation that might be required bysomeone who is just skimming through themagazine and does not wish to read eachindividual article in depth. This includes suchimportant information as the director, actorsand other more mainstream, famous films of asimilar genre and with a similar style ofstoryline for fans of these particular titles.


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Film Poster


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The purpose of my film poster was to advertise the short film in the same style that a theatrical release poster would for amainstream film, through using the forms and conventions of these existing posters such as symbolism, I did this in a numberof ways to appeal directly to my specific target audience.

First of all I decided to start with a completely plain black A3 sized page and decided to work my way up from this. The colourscheme for the overall poster design was to be black and white with a bright red used for the title to create a sense of thedark nature of psychological thrillers, whilst the red was to represent the shocking hidden messages often found within thisgenre of film. I also then used images which had been purposely desaturated firstly as the images were taken and then inmore detail to match the lighting in the post production stage using the image editing software Photoshop. I did subvertsome of the forms and conventions of mainstream film posters significantly as well as I decided that instead of having onebackground image and building the poster from there upwards and adding further images and text/titles on top of this Iwould instead start with a plain black background and the text. I also completely removed the background from all of theimages which I decided to use individually before they were imported into this main poster design file, because first of allthis meant that there was not unnecessary mise-en-scne in the shot which would distract viewers from the impact of the

images of the characters, and also because this blank space also connotes the sense of emptiness and abandonmentpresent throughout the film, and which can be directly related to the films title of Nobody.With regards to the images which I decided to use I chose to keep it simple and stick to images of only the two main characters in

the film upon a plain black background. The image of the main character has been placed at the front to show hisimportance and this image is also generally slightly more central to the pages to show that he is the central character. He isdressed in a white top and has pale skin which in a way could represent that out of the two he is the good guy. He is alsositting at a plain white table which covers the bottom portion of the page and bleeds to both sides and allows for a subtlevariation in background colours with no defined edges. The second character however, who is not named at all during thefilm, and who my partner and I refer to simple as the dark character is standing as opposed to sitting which couldrepresent the fact that he is more powerful than the main character, although in a subtle and mysterious way as the waythat he is stood behind the table and behind the main character shows that he is not such a central focus. Because he is inthe background he also appears smaller which further backs up the idea that he is a less important figure. The character isdressed in all dark clothing and has nearly all of his skin covered which directly contrasts with the main character who is allin light colours and pale skinned and this dark feel to him is representative of the fact that he is more the bad guy andthe main characters opposite. This dark character is also looking directly at the camera, and therefore at the audienceand this combined with the dark and sinister expression on his face further leads leads the viewer to believe that he is darkand menacing and is warning you of something dangerous that he may be capable of. The main character however ispictured staring absent-mindedly off into the middle distance ahead of him, and this lack of eye contact with theaudience and the more peaceful blank expression on his face leads us to believe that he is not dangerous at all and is amuch more pacifistic and peaceful character overall. He is also looking directly in the direction of the dark character,although you can clearly see that he is looking forward and the dark character is behind him, giving the audience theimpression that he is maybe vaguely aware of this other persons presence although either not directly able to see him orchooses not to for some unknown reason, and this forms questions in the viewers mind about the relationship betweenthese two people. All of this together along with the catchy tagline and then mention of a possible release date causes asense of anticipation in the viewer about the film, as well as the list of actors which may further entice a the viewer to goand view the film create an overall image which quickly and effectively grabs the attention of anyone who sees it andinstantly forces them to begin to ask question about what is going on and when they can find the answers to these.


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This is the first draft of my film poster, this design simply shows apossible layout of the text for the title and the names of the actorsat the top of the page, as well as including a tag-line and thewords coming soon showing that this poster is for a film which isyet to be released. the background for this image is simply a solidplain black as I have not yet decided on the layout or design ofthe background, however I do know that it will be a dark colourand so I decided to use black so that the light coloured text would

stand out well. I also think that the plain black and white fits in wellwith the general style of the poster and the images which I willeventually use will be in a desaturated sort of style similar to thefilm and this will fit well with the black and white colour scheme.

In this second draft of my film poster I have decided roughly how I would like thebackground image to look for my poster and I have a couple of ideas for layouts andhow this will be arranged, however I have again decided to set the poster on a simple

plain black background here to show the rest of the elements of the poster such as thetext styles, sizes and position and layout. Here I have added a few more actors names tothe top of the poster and arranged these in a different way which I think is moreprofessional looking. The title text and size has been kept the same, but has beenrelocated to the centre of the page instead of being over to one side, as I am thinking ofusing a central image of the main character. I have also added a series of credits at thebottom of the page, as well as changing the coming soon to something much morespecific, as I think being able to give potential viewers a date to focus on will help tobuild anticipation for the film better. Finally I have resized and redesigned the tag-line forthe film, and whilst I prefer the new tag-line I think that the position and size of this on theprevious poster was better as here it looks too larger and so I will probably change thisagain. My second draft is unusual in the fact that it still contains no images at all and this

is because on my blog I decided to show the development of images separately.


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Overall I think that out of the film and the two ancillary texts the film poster isthe one that I am most happy with, and the one that I think has turnedout exactly as I wanted it to, if not even better than I had originallyenvisioned. Because of this, even if given the chance and more timeavailable to me I dont think that there would be much that I wouldchange and the new finished product would look very similar.

One thing which I would definitely like to at least experiment with changing

is the fact that I did in the end decide not to include a backgroundimage to the poster and all of the popular posters for existingpsychological thrillers which I have looked at during the research stagedid include this in some way. The reason we decided not to include thiswas not because we were unable to but because we wanted toexperiment with something different and the film itself already was andso we purposely decided to subvert this particular convention ofpsychological thriller film posters, and while I am very pleased with theend result and would most definitely consider this little experiment asuccess the traditional forms and conventions are there because theydo work and I would like to try and achieve just as good a result whilstfollowing this particular one.

The rest of the poster, the titles and other text is perfectly fine and I am verypleased with how professional looking this has turned out and so wouldnot change any of it apart from maybe the positioning of maybe thetagline to accommodate different images and backgrounds.


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Double Page Spread Article


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For the double page spread article I decided to design the page layout and write the article both in the style of a film review, thesort which would be found in a magazine which catered specifically for this kind of review. I decided to go for a moresincere professional looking feel to the article as well as opposed to the flamboyant and in-your-face kind of article which Ihad created for my AS music magazine production. For the article I hoped to try and create the sort of article that waswritten to a standard and in a style that it would be believable that had been written by a professional journalist and thepurpose of this particular article was to give the audience an insight into what the film was actually about and to makethem want to go see it for themselves, but also to give them an insight into what it was like for my partner and I being thedirectors as well as the actors whilst creating this film.

I chose to keep to the exact same colour scheme as the film poster, using the black and white with the very small amount of redas the base the entire piece as this helped to create a sense of unity between the two pieces, and also the bland andmostly dark colour scheme is representative of the dark nature of the psychological thriller genre and the emptiness andmonotony of the main characters life in the film and the sense of being alone which he feels. I also decided to use theexact same editing technique here for the images which were again taken with an initial picture style which increased the

sharpness of the images and reduced the colour tone and saturation, and the photos have all also been darkened andhad the saturation reduced during post production to give the same atmosphere as the poster and also to match thereduced saturation effect used in the film itself.

With the layout of the page I decided very early on that I was going to use a layout that had two solid columns of text andinstead of positioning these alongside each other I would place one on each side of the article. The rough layout fromwhich I got the inspiration was from an article I saw in the A3 magazine supplement of a daily newspaper rather than anactual film magazine (although I did also look at plenty of these for inspiration on other aspects) and was part of an articlewhich actually spanned four or five pages, the key, central double page spread containing two columns of text downeach side as imitated here, and then also with a series of smaller columns spanning the bottom of the page betweenthese. As I have produced this article as an A3 sheet in total, meaning that each side of the page is in A4 size, I was simplyunable to fir this many text columns onto the page and seeing as my article could only span the one double page spread Idecided to cut this down to the two basic columns of text. Each of these columns in exactly half the size of the side of A4which it is on and so this meant that there was an exact equal balance of text and images, a convention of moreprofessional looking magazines as opposed to the one-third text, two-thirds pictures approach to more colourful andvisually centred magazine articles.

For the images used here I chose the majority of them from the exact same shoot as I had done for the poster and edited them tofit with the faded, desaturated feel of the film which they were representing. I also again chose images which were almostidentical to the ones on the poster and I know that many of my fellow students actually used the poster itself for one half oftheir double page spread. The third image however is from an additional photoshoot which was planned especially for thisproduction piece and to make sure this this fit in with the rest and gave the desired look the exact same picture settingswere used when taking the image and I made sure that my partner, who was the model here, was wearing very plainshades of clothing which were different to when he was playing the main character in the film, so that this did not disruptthe overall colour balance of the page.

Again I have managed to create a piece of work here of which I am extremely proud and I think that I have successfullymanaged to create a very professional looking magazine article which clearly gives the audience an idea of what ourshort film is about as well as an insight into our lives as directors and actors of said film.


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This second draft of my film review doublepage spread now shows the final layout andpositioning of all of the elements of the pagewhich I will be using including the two columnsof text and all of the images. I have also nowadded the finished images which I haveedited and captions to go with two of theimages, as well as a quotation which I willinclude in the review when I write it. The only

things which I have now got left to do to thearticle are to write the text for the actualreview which will be pasted into the two blacktext columns along each side, and also createthe logo which I am going to add in the smallspace at the bottom between the images. Asyou can see this is still very lacking in colourand the images which I have used are all verydesaturated as this both fits with the film andalso gives the sense of the article being from amore serious, professional looking magazine.

I created this first draft of my double page spread filmreview in order to show the layout of page, including thetext boxes, titles, images and quotations. This is a very basicdraft and so does not actually show any of the imageswhich I will be using yet, simply the places where they willgo. It also shows a basic overall colour scheme of the pageand will be very helpful when I am selecting and editing myimages to make sure that the page stays balanced colourwise and that the images are the right sizes to fit onto thepage. I have chosen to use three images as this allows meto show a selection of both characters from the film as wellas previews from within the film and possible also exclusivebehind the scenes images.


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If I were to have the chance to do the double page spread article againwith the experience I have gained from doing it the first time round I donot actually think that there is anything which I would wish to change. Aswith the poster I am extremely pleased with how the finished producthas turned out and I have followed a lot of the forms and conventions ofthe existing film reviews which I have looked at in magazines to create avery professional looking review for my short film which I think give theaudience a perfect idea of what the film is about and reveals justenough about the storyline to get us interested enough to want to goand see the film for ourselves, without actually giving away any of thekey elements of the film which are designed to make the audiencethink, and are the most important elements of a psychological thriller.

If I did have to mention things which I thought could maybe be improved Ithink that if given the chance to redesign the page or possibly topresent it as either more pages or as a larger double page spread Iwould also include a wider variety of images of myself and my partneron set as we only used one of these from the shoot. I would also possiblyinclude another section separate to the article itself in the form of aninterview with the directors of the film, as I think that this would providemore variety of reading to the audience as well as a better insight intothe minds of my partner and I as directors as well as actors, as this is oneof the initial points which I wanted to address in the article but in the enddid not get quite as much coverage as the film itself.


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For the film itself we have been collecting audience feedback right from the start of the course before we even began thefilming of the initial mock up scenes. The first feedback which we received was when we had just decided on the genre ofour film and we decided to design a questionnaire to hand out to a large number of people who were in the age groupwhich we had specified for the film, those of a similar age to us. This first questionnaire was designed to collect basicinformation about the possible content for our film before we finalised the script. The first questions were about the age andgenres of film that the person in question watched so that we would easily be able to rule out any results from those peoplewho did not choose thriller or psychological thriller as one of the genres, and therefore the rest of the results would relatedirectly to our film. The questions included such things as whether or not elements such as gratuitous violence and sexualactivity were necessary in a good film and about whether or not things such as good music improved the viewingexperience, and if so what kind. The results from this were mostly positive in the sense that they only helped to support theides we already had for the basic story line and script of the film. The thing I personally think that this questionnaire helpedthe most with was deciding what kind of music to include in the soundtrack to our film and in the end we decided to go for

quite a mix of genres but to only use each track in short clips where appropriate.The next significant bit of audience feedback which we collected was when we showed the first, finished cut of our film to the

rest of our media class and asked them to fill out a sheet which asked questions about their own personal opinion on anumber of various different aspects of the film. This included such vital questions as to whether or not the plot of the film waseasy to grasp and how high the overall quality of the editing was. The final question then asked each of them whatchanges they would advise us to make to this rough version of the film to create a high quality finished short film. Some ofthe problems were simply to do with minor technical issues such as sound clips being missing and for example one of theactors being too quiet to be heard in relation to the rest of the film and so these were quickly sorted out and the film wasre-uploaded. Some more pressing issues however included the fact that the film was difficult to understand. While thiswould initially seem like a hugely undermining issue with the film it wasnt at all; our film is designed, not necessarily to behard to understand, but to get people thinking, and for the twist in the story not to be obvious until right at the end. As onlya small proportion of the overall feedback said it was hard to understand however I would assume that was from people

who are not overly interested in the genre of the film, as whilst asking the members of our media class did allow us to getmore technically accurate and useful feedback, not all of them were at all interested in the genre.

Another way in which we asked for audience feedback was through the use of the internet. The first way in which we did this wasthough the video sharing website YouTube which we uploaded the film to in order to embed it in the Wordpress blog. Thissite allows other users on the site (of which there are millions each day) to post comments about the video or more simplyvote the film either up or down to state whether or not they liked it. The other website which we used for getting audiencefeedback was the social networking site Facebook and we did this by both my partner and I posting a link to the video onYouTube on our wall on Facebook, which then allowed an of our friends to either watch and comment directly on the linkon Facebook or follow the hyperlink to YouTube and watch, rate and comment on it there. Again this feedback was for themost part positive although we did receive a reasonable amount of constructive criticism which allowed us to continueediting the film scene by scene and asking for feedback until it was at the stage it is now.


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In order to collect audience feedback for my film poster I decided to go with the moretraditional method of asking people face to face what they thought of it as this allowedme to have a two way discussion about the topic rather that simply reading statementsabout it as I would have done had I used the internet for my feedback in the same wayas the film, this also meant that nothing got lost in translation as it could have done andoften does on the internet and I could not accidentally take a piece of constructivecriticism the wrong way.

The first comment which I received from a number of people and which led me to try andexperiment with changing around the layout of the poster was that the tagline was in

the wrong place and did not look as effective as maybe it could be. This feedback alsofit in with the information which I had learned from looking at existing posters as one ofthe most common conventions which I noticed with regards to the tagline was that itwas nearly always in the very centre of the page at the top in order to be noticedquickly and to give the most impact. Because of this I decided to open my poster backup in Photoshop and spent a long time rearranging everything to tray and do this. In theend the only way which I was able to achieve the desired effect (the tagline in themiddle) was to significantly shrink the image of the dark character so that I was able tostretch the tagline out onto a single line across the page, but the only way I could dothis with enough space above and below the tagline left the image of the dark person

far too small and as a result left me with far too much dead space in the centre of theimage. In the end, and based on some further audience feedback it was agreed thatthis was not as effective as the original position and so the tagline was moved back tothe left, and as it is still also at the top this did still work very effectively.

Only one other point was continually brought up by people whom I asked about the poster,and that was to do with the fact that I had chosen not to include a background in theposter images and there were quite a few people, who thought that the poster wouldlook more professional if I did and that I should even if only to completely eliminate thedead space. I did however decided to leave the background as it is because as Imentioned before this was done on purpose to subvert that particular convention.


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The audience feedback which I received for my double page spread wasalso very positive as it had been for the film and the poster previously. Iagain collected the majority of the feedback by showing people thefinished product printed out onto A3 and then folded as it was designedto and as it would be seen if it were in an actual magazine, and thenasking them to look over the design and read through the article andgive their views on the piece as a whole.

I have to say that I think the feedback for this was more positive than boththe film and the poster as I did not actually get a single comment abouta problem or a significant change which they thought that I shouldmake to the layout of the page, and neither did I about any of theimages used or the quality of these. The only advice which I did receivefrom a couple of people who I asked about this was that they said thatthe quality of the article would possibly be improved if there was morevariation to the actual article text, and the most popular suggestion onhow to achieve this was to also include an interview with the directors,something which I would definitely have done if I had the chance tocreate the article over a larger area, as all of the best articles which Ilooked at covered a minimum of three or four pages and I was simplynot able to do this.

Overall I think that because of the amount of positive audience feedback(and also the lack of negative!) received, that the double page spreadhas been a huge success and in the end I have not changed anythingfrom the original design.


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The Internet


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We were required to use a blogging website called Wordpress forthe research and planning side of the coursework and also foruploading hyperlinks to videos of the various scenes of the film andalso images showing all of the various stages of the production of theancillary texts.

Before this I had never had any experience with any blogging websites of any kind and sothis entire process has been a learning experience for me.

The preliminary task of creating the short film Cookie was also very useful in regards to thisside of the coursework as it not only helped us to prepare for creating the actual final

film and ancillary texts, but also gave us some much needed time to grow accustomedto using the blog on a regular basis to record and document the progression of ourresearch and planning.

Overall I think that my experience in using this website has increased more than with any ofthe other programs or equipment used during this project, even if only because of thefact that I had no previous experience at all. I have learnt to keep my work up-to-datewith regular updates to the blog and also to make sure that I do all of my work in thecorrect order so that everything flows together better and is uploaded to the blog in thecorrect linear fashion.

Using this blog as opposed to a more traditional method such as a simple portfolioor coursework folder has also provided a great advantage because of the fact that it isaccessible from any computer I may be working on and which has an internetconnection, which prevents the risk of any forgotten or lost work. Finally it also meansthat I was able to include videos or other such influences which I would not have beenable to use at all otherwise, and seeing as the main task this year has been to create ashort film this has been the most important part of the blogging process.

Wordpress also allows each of its users to customise their blogs and this has been anotherthing which my partner and I have used extensively and we have adjusted the layout ofour blogs to conform to the genre of our short film.


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This Screenshot shows some of the behind-the-scenes workings of my Wordpress blog.Here you can see the clear well structured and organised layout of the sites user control

panel or dashboard as its known. It also shows an example of some of the HTMLcode used by the site to insert images and format text, and while some of the basics

are easy enough to learn, everything can be ful ly automated and done using the sitesmore friendly visual interface. It also shows how it is possible to edit the actual date apost was created on, a feature which can be extremely helpful in organising posts and

inserting things you maybe forgot or decided to include at a later date. Another very usefulfeature of theWordpress blog is the

ability to categoriseeach post into aseries of customcategories and sub-categories, whichcan then in turn beused by readers tofilter out informationwhen reading theblog. I decided to

divide my posts intoMusic Magazine,Student Magazineand Research andPlanning, with sub-categories withinthee for each of themagazine cover,contents and doublepage spread.

From this page youcan also access the

customisationoptions for the blog

through theappearance tab

in the left handcolumn. This allows

you to choose from

among hundreds oflayouts and also

choose which tabsand additional

features you want toinclude on your

blog, making it aspersonalised as

possible.


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YouTube is a well known video sharing website which is usedall over the world by millions of people every day. Itallows you to create a free account and then uploadvideos up to 10 minutes long and so was the perfectchoice for us to upload our short film. It then allowed us to embed these video clips intoblog posts on Wordpress by using simple preset HTML coding.

We also used the site to upload a video of every single one of the draft copies of each ofthe individual scenes as we filmed and edited each one, so that we would be able toembed these in individual posts on the Wordpress blog and then write about each one

and thus show how the short film was progressing.We decided to use YouTube over any other video sharing website as this is by far the mostfamous and has the highest amount of online user traffic meaning that the possibility forour video to be seen by a wider audience was much higher. For this project wedecided to create a new account which we would use to upload all of the video clipsto, instead of using already existing accounts, despite the fact the both my partner andI had one, as this new account would make it easier for us to organise the videos, andcould be specifically customised to advertise our media work.

We were also able to use this website in numerous different ways to collect audiencefeedback as other users are able to vote the videos either positively or negatively andalso leave comments. As this was all online we were also able to post a hyperlink of thevideo to the social networking website Facebook and receive audience feedback inthat way.

One issue which we did find with using YouTube however was the fact that the videos didtake a long time to upload, around four hours and this combined with the time taken toexport the videos from the editing program we were using brought the total time up toaround six hours, meaning that we had to devote a lot of our own time to this as we didnot have this much time during lessons at school.


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Another website which I have used extensivelyover the course of this project is the widelyfamous social networking site Facebook. Ithink that out of the key websites which Iveused during this project this is actually the only one with whichI have any previous experience, and this was of course veryuseful considering the way in which I used the site in relation tomy project.

I used this website mainly as an easy way to receive audiencefeedback in a relatively short space of time and withouthaving to actually go out and ask lot and lots of people inturn. Doing this also made the process of gathering my resultsto be able to analyse them a lot easier, as with a

questionnaire I found that a lot of time was spent collating theresults and manually typing them up to be able to use themon the blog or into tables to create graphs. However by usingan online social networking website such as Facebook I wasable to simply copy and paste the information into a MicrosoftWord or Excel document in a matter of minutes.


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One final additional website which we used during theprocess of creating the film was a website calledScribd. The site can be described as a web baseddocument-sharing site and the website is linked withWordpress in some way, allowing you to uploaddocuments to a personal Scribd account and then insert them directlyinto a post on the blog for viewing.

It is possible to upload any kind of document to Scribd for sharing, fromMicrosoft Word (or other word processing software) documents toPowerPoint Presentations and Graphs. As we are however of coursealready able to insert and format text directly using the blog itself therewas not need to use Scribd for this and I have only found the sitenecessary for slideshows (in fact you might even be reading this right nowthrough Scribd!), and also for uploading a blank copy of thequestionnaire used for my audience feedback.

Again, similarly to Wordpress this was a website which I had no previousexperience with at all and so every single time I have used this right fromcreating an account and uploading my first document, has been alearning experience and my knowledge and usage of the site hasinevitably increased.

Scribd can also be used to acquire basic audience feedback as other userscan view and rate your work and let you know what they thought of itthrough leaving likes and comments on each piece.


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Software


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The first program which we decided to use to edit together the clips which we hadfilmedinto scenes which could be comprised into a finished film was a programcreated by Apple Inc. Called iMovie. As this is an Apple program it was available tous only at school when we had access to the Apple Macs there. The school alsoowned a newer versionof the program called iMovie HD, which was able to workwith full HD video such as that which we were able to film using the video camera,however due to some technical difficulties in importing the first files and compatibility errors betweenthe software an the camera we were only able to use the older iMovie 9 and were not able toproduce clips in full HD

This program did still allow us to produce clips up to a resolution of 720p however and did still contain all ofthe necessary basic tools which we needed to cut down and adjust the clips to place them in the right

order, as well as other features such as adding titles and transition and fading in and out or cutting outsound completely which allowed us to make the film seem more professional, it was also linked toApples sound editing program GarageBand as well as a readily installed library of basic backgroundmusic tracks and sound effects.

Whereas my partner had quite a bit of previous experience in video editing using a very high end programcalled Final Cut Pro, I was far less experienced and the only knowledge I had was the very basics frompreviously messing around with a couple of programs which I owned or had access to in the past.Because of this, we decided that for the editing work during the film my partner would focus hisattention slightly more on the video editing side of things so that we could get things done quicker,and doing the actual work however we would both give equal input into what he actually did.

We were originally planning on making our whole film on iMovie as this was at the time the only program

available to us, however due to the fact that we became constantly frustrated with how well theprogram was running and constant errors we decided to discontinue use of it after we had producedthe initial first drafts of a few of the scenes. We also encountered other much more pressing issues suchas the fact that were only actually able to access the program for a few short hours each week as itwas installed only on very few Apple Macs which were located at school and we only had access tothese during lesson time. Furthermore the school is not well equipped enough in terms of hardware forediting large amounts of video footage, and so the computers which we were able to use always ranvery slowly and often lagged and crashed and this slowed production even further. The school alsodid not have anywhere near enough hard disk space for us to store all of the unedited footage andwe filled up our original disk quota after filming footage for only the first couple of scenes.


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The icons overto the right

hand side allowyou to easilyswitch thebottom half ofthe page to awindow whichallows you toinsert custom

titles as well asusing pre-installed soundsor importingyour owncustom tracksfromGarageBand

Please note:The screenshotshown here is notfrom my own versionof iMovie and thescenes shown arenot from our ownmedia film, theimage used wasfound on googleimages as I wasunable to access aMac with iMovie atthe time of makingthis presentation. Allthe video footageand images shownhere are copyrightof their respectiveowners.

The two columns to the left hand side of the page shownhere both allow you to very easily keep all of your video

footage organised. The topmost one is for organisingdifferent projects and allowed us to keep each scene

within its own project within the main file meaning we didnot have to have a lot of individual files, just the one. And

the bottom window allows you to easily browse throughvideo footage on the computers hard drive without

actually having to import the clips into the program itself,only onto the system.

The video window in the top cornerallows you to see exactly what youredoing by showing a reasonably sizedvideo of the selected cl ip allowingyou to edit footage visually bystopping it wherever you want ratherthan having to rely on knowing exacttimings, all part of Apples tradition ofmaking everything smooth and easyto use.


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After iMovie we decided that we were going to try and find a different,and a better program for editing our video clips and so we decidedto try out Adobe Premier Pro CS5. Both myself and my partner haveprevious experience with using programs published by Adobe Systemsand we have always found them to be of a very high standard.

I have briefly used a trial version Premier Pro CS4 before myself and found that theprofessional standard piece of software did not run very well on my own laptop due to itnot having the required system specs needed to perform properly. My partner howeverhas a far more up-to-date laptop and so we decided to download a trial version of the

latest version of the program.We instantly found that the program was of a much higher quality than iMovie and thatdespite only having the trial version of the program the time period for which it wasavailable to us, a total of two months between us using one trial each, was more thanenough to finish off all of the rest of the scenes and complete the film to a very highstandard.

There were initially a few problems in getting to grips with the program as while it is of a muchhigher standard, it does have a more complex professional looking user interface. Wedid however learn the basics very quickly through a combination of my partnersprevious experience in other professional programs such as Final Cut Pro, our joint

experience in using iMovie and my brief forage into using the previous version of PremierPro.

Because we were now also using my partners personal laptop as opposed to the schoolApple Macs we were able to access the program at all times and able to make themost of the two months of free usage we had. This also completely solved the issue withdisk space which we had previously encountered as the hard drive on the laptop aswell as my own external hard drive had over 1TB of hard disk space between them,thousands of times more than was available to us on the school network.


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This screenshot showing our film under production in Premier Pro highlights some of

the more important features of the program such as the easy access to the filesstored on the computers hard drive and the multiple channels available for editingmultiple video tracks simultaneously as well as the separate track for audio.


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The main piece of editing software which we used in theconstruction of our ancillary production pieces was an imageediting program called Adobe Photoshop. This program allowsyou to do an extremely wide range of things to multiple imagesat once and can even be configured to perform certain processes on a largeamount of images automatically without the user actually having to do anything.

I was already at quite a significant advantage when we started the project in thisrespect as I had already been teaching myself in the use of this program for thepast couple of years and I also had a lot of experience from my AS levelphotography the previous year.

I decided to use this particular program as opposed to others which were availableat the time for a number of reasons, first of all and the main reason why I chosePhotoshop was because I had a large amount of previous experience with thisparticular program and have not actually ever used any others. It was alsoextremely useful that the both Apple Macs which were available for us to use atschool during lesson time, and also my own personal laptop, had the exact sameversion installed and so I was able to quickly and easily transfer files between thetwo via my USB stick.

Since the beginning of the project my skills in using Photoshop have again improvedeven further and I enjoyed being able to use the program for a much wider varietyof processes, as I did in fact use the one program for the production of my entirefilm poster and double page spread, as opposed to using it for only the film posterand then using another program, Adobe InDesign, for the double page spread asmany other people have done.


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4. When using Ps Ialways like to keepall of my work as

organised aspossible, with eachdifferent part of thecomplete image onits own layer. Thisparticular piece hadaround seventylayers in total, farmore than I hadever previously

worked with onPhotography orpersonal projects,and so thisexperience hasreiterated theimportance oforganisational skillswhen working onsuch a large scaleproject.

1. As we were onlytaught the function ofthe most basic tools in

Ps (lasso, selection,marquee, crop etc.)

my previousknowledge allowed

me to easily and

professionally usemore advanced toolssuch as the dodge /

burn, clone stampand healing brush

right from the offsetwith no technical

difficulties at al l whichallowed me to get

everything done a lot

quicker in the end.

2. When using the computersavailable to us at school we were

unable to install and use custom fontsand so having the same version of

Photoshop installed on my own laptopwas invaluable in the creation of my

production pieces, as the fonts were acentral point of all of my work.

3. I used an extremely wide variety of editingtechniques in my production which were nottaught to us, for example the use of masking,custom brushes, filters and ready storedactions, all of which helped to greatly speedup a series of complex procedures and thisallowing me to spend far more time on theother less familiar aspects of the production.

1.

2.

3.4.


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Another additional program which we decided to use during theproduction of our short film was a piece of Audio softwareavailable to us on the Apple Macs which allowed us to create ourown music tracks by combining various different premade audioloops of varying lengths. We decided to use this to create a series ofbasic soundtracks to some of the scenes in our film.

In the end we only used the program to create two different audio tracks, one which wasused at the end of the film and another calmer, piano piece which was used at variousstages throughout the film, each version differing slightly in background sounds and

length.The program also allowed us to add in sound effects such as the ones which we had used iniMovie and the finished tracks were also able to be exported directly into iMovie. Whenwe did switch over to using Adobe Premier Pro instead this did make the process slightlymore complicated as it meant we now had to export the tracks to .mp3 or .wav formatand then transfer them to the laptop via a USB device but this could all still be done veryquickly and was merely a minor inconvenience.

I myself did have some minimal experience in using this particular program before wedecided to use it for this project, although I had only used it in the past for messingaround and creating experimental music tracks by trying out each of the different

instruments. Whilst this did not really give me much experience in creating technicallyprofessional sounding audio tracks even what little prior experience I had proved to bevery useful as I did indeed already know my way around all of the unique features ofthe program and its layout.

The tracks we decided to use in the end consisted only of loops from piano tracks and whilewe did have the possibility to connect a real electric piano to the computer and inputour own sounds we stuck to using the premade loops to create the tracks. We did alsoexperiment heavily with synthesiser loops and trying to create a track using these,however we decided in the end that it would not fit in with the overall feel of the film.


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Hardware


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For this project we were given the option of using video cameras available to us through the school bymeans of loaning them out whenever we needed to film scenes and a lot of the other groups did thisand still managed to do very well. My Canon DSLR also has the capability to shoot film in full HDhowever my partner and I decided that we would use our own purpose built video camerathroughout this project.

The camera which we decided to use was my partners Panasonic HDC-SD5 HD video camera. We decidedthat this would be the best choice because it was able to record film in full 1080p HD and it saved thevideo clips straight to an 8GB SD card which we could then either insert directly into a laptop or leavein the camera and transfer the data via a cable to one of the Apple Macs which we were also using.

As well as the extremely high quality the camera had a reasonably good built in microphone which wasmore than good enough for our film as only a few of the scenes required us to record sound. As well as

this it also had 10x optical zoom which allowed us to film the same scenes from a number of distances,whichever was practical for the location, as well as shooting a few shots which actually included thezoom within them, although we did try to limit the use of this. Thecamera did also have digital zoom although we decided not touse this at all as it reduced the quality of the video footage andwas not ever necessary.

This particular model of camera was also particularly useful becauseit was so small, light and compact and as it was only the two of usdoing both the filming and the acting we did not want to becarrying a large amount of equipment everywhere. The only otherequipment which we did make sure that we always used was a

basic tripod to hold the camera in place and to stop anymovement which would occur if the camera was hand heldduring filming, this was also a compulsory piece of equipment forwhen we were filming scenes which involved both us acting at thesame time as it was not actually possible there for one of us to holdthe camera. Another feature which helped with regards to thescenes where we were both on shot was the live view screen onthe camera which we were able to pop out and then rotate toface us, meaning it was easily possible for us to both be on shotand still able to see exactly what was going to be recorded, ratherthan having to get up and positionthe camera without us on shot.


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For the production I was also required to take still images which wouldbe used for the production of the film poster and the double pagespread article. We also took a series of photographs near thebeginning of the planning stages of the film in order to help us todecide on possible locations to use, and a couple of the finalscenes were actuallydeveloped from these images.

The video camera which we were using was able to take still images aswell as filming video clips, and we also had video camerasavailable to us at school, however both of these were only able totake pictures at around one or two megapixels and I knew that thiswould not be anywhere good enough to create a high quality,

professional looking, full sized poster and double page spread. Because ofthis I decided to use my own personal camera for all of the photographic workduring the project, a Canon EOS 550D DSLR, a camera which is able to take images at a resolution of18 megapixels, which was perfectly acceptable for editing and reproducing at a large resolution.

One of the other A-level subjects I am currently studying is Photography and I have taken a keen interest inthis for quite a few years now, and as a result I was already at a considerable advantage whenstarting this project in terms of actually taking photographs.

Overall my technical knowledge in terms of the use of cameras and the hardware itself has not improved asignificant amount as the photography was not a major part of this project and I already possessed allof the skills required for taking the photographs themselves. One thing which I have however improvedquite a bit on is the ability to work as a Photographer alongside the production of a video, as we often

took the photos at the same time as filming scenes for the film so that we would be able to produceimages which realistically documented the process of creating the film, which would then in turn beused in the double page spread. Both myself and my partner also significantly improved our skills insetting up planned photoshoots over the course of this project as all of the images had to be carefullyset up to fit in with the video footage. I also heavily relied on using certain settings for the picture stylesetting on my camera in order to take images with a certain colour balance and saturation to themrather than leaving all of this to the post production work. This is something which I do not usually try todo in Photography as you are unable to undo this once the photo has been taken without retaking thephoto with neutral settings, however I think that this really helped here as it allowed me to match theatmosphere of the images to the lowered-saturation effect of the film.


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A2 Media 'Nobody' Final Evaluation

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