Media Film Evaluation

Liam Boulton
In what ways does your film challenge, use or develop forms and
conventions of real media products?
• The research that I undertook showed that typical superhero films have many other sub-
genres. Our film was mainly a drama sub-genre and focused little on the superhero genre.
This gave our film a more unique, creative side to it. It doesn’t follow the regular superhero
film forms and conventions.
• In most superhero films the superhero usually saves someone at the start, then a villain of
some sort comes along and the film focuses on the hero defeating the villain. Our film
takes on a completely different take of this genre because rather than a film where you see
the character as the hero, you see what it is actually like to live as a superhero behind the
mask. This was influenced by the film ‘WATCHMEN’ as they are all retired heroes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4blSrZvPhU
• Unlike your typical superhero film there was no action in our film. This is because the film
is about the life of a superhero when he is not in action. Also our character was injured so
he did not boast any of his special powers which made him the superhero that he was.
Instead we see how weak he has become. This is shown when David is leaving the
supermarket with his shopping and he is struggling to cope with the heavy bags.
Eventually the bags split and he has to go home with nothing. On meeting his long term
girlfriend she breaks up with him because he is not the guy she used to love. David has
not settled into real life.
• But like many films there is a turnaround when David leaves to start a new life as normal
person and leave his past of a superhero behind him. We felt that the best way to do this
scene was by David physically putting his past behind him so in this shot we had David
leaving his home and as he walks out of the house he puts all of his superhero
memorabilia in the bin.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary
texts?
 Poster –

• In order to complete a good poster I researched into many

Hollywood film posters on the internet. Whilst doing this I
could decide what layouts, pictures and fonts etc. could
work best for our poster. Eventually we settled on an image
of a burning building with Adam (David) in the foreground
with just his mask on and in normal clothes. This portrayed
the fact that he is now ‘Powerless’ which works well
because that is the title of our film. We used the typical
forms and conventions of film posters by having the credits
at the bottom, the title at the top with a tagline and then a
quotation and review stars from a newspaper. We used a
font called ‘Comic book’ for the main title and other writing.
We used this because it is a similar font you see when
reading superhero comics or watching superhero films,
therefore I thought it would be suitable for the poster as it
related to the genre.
• The tagline was “sometimes its hard to walk away”. This
shows the point that David is struggling to get into the reality
of the everyday life. We can see this on the front cover of
the poster because he is in normal clothes but he is still
wearing the mask, giving the impression that he still wants
to be the hero.
 Film Article
• For researching film magazine reviews I looked at copies of empire
magazine and total film magazine articles. Empire magazine gave me
inspiration for my article with its colours and layout design.
• Rather than do a review of the film like most people I decided to do an
interview with the director of the film because this would be easier as I
was the director. The interview was laid out by each question and the
an answer.
• I needed some suitable pictures for my article so we took a close up of
Adam’s face and then used Photoshop to change the colours and then
used it to form a mask on to Adam’s face. Then I edited the mask so
that it was opaque. This was because I wanted to show that he was
slowly entering reality and the superhero part of him was fading. I
placed the picture on the left page of the article and it filled the entire
side. I then placed a quote from the director on the picture and a
review score.
• For the titles and font I used bright reds and yellows. I decided to use
this colour scheme because I felt that it was vital that my article stood
out. From looking at empire magazine with their colours of red, black
and white I felt that it was good colour scheme but needed some
livening up. This is why I felt the yellow worked well.
• My interview talked about the experience of the film from the directors
point of view. I made all of the answers positive towards the film so
that it kept the whole article simple and following the typical magazine
forms and conventions.
• In a whole I feel that my magazine article worked well because it
followed the forms and conventions and it would appeal to all types of
audience. However if I would change something about it, it would be to
spend more time considering different types of picture.
What have you learned from your audience feedback??
• Once everyone had finished producing and editing their films we
had a class showing of all the films. Everybody filled out audience
feedback sheets so we could use them to change something in the
film or just see general feedback for the film. I also got feedback
from different ages and genders. On collecting our results it was
clear that everyone of all ages and genders enjoyed our film.
However there were some issues concerning some of the editing.
For example there is the shot when Adam (David) is leaving his
house and there is the cat next to him, but when he walks out the
cat suddenly is cut out of shot. The reason for this is that we had
some issues with the camera on both of the shots so we merged
them together. One shot had the cat in the mise en scene and the
other didn’t so the cat disappeared.
• In order to gain a more accurate picture of what people felt about
the film Adam created a small questionnaire for some people to fill
out.
http://sheldonschooladamthorn.wordpress.com/2011/03/04/copy-of-
our-audience-feedback-questionaire/
• However overall most people enjoyed the film. They liked the fact
that we had flipped the genre of a superhero and that we came up
with something that was a lot more inventive than many other ideas.
How did you use media technologies in the construction and

research, planning and evaluation stages?

• To learn about the forms and conventions of the superhero genre we did a lot of
research into existing films. We looked films like Forrest Gump on Youtube to see
how characters like ours was scripted and acted on screen. This gave us ideas on
how Adam should play David. Adam showed us a clip of a film called Numb which
gave us an idea on mise en scene for the film. It helped us decide that we wanted a
naturalistic feel to the film. This would give a more life like appeal. It also made the
feel a connection to the character because it was a natural performance. The
character lived a normal, mundane life which the audience could relate to.
• To record all of our process we used a blog website called Wordpress. This was
helpful because it made it easier to compile our work onto one format. We could
upload all our research like Youtube video clips and images that could all be seen on
our blog pages.
• In the filming process of the production we used many media technologies like HD
video cameras and boom poles. This helped us capture the best images and sound
we could so that the mise en scene was realistic. Using a tripod gave the shots a
smoother finish to them and also let us experiment with new camera angles and
positions.
• Post production work was done using software like IMovie and Garageband. They
were used to edit the film and introduce music to it. We used Garageband to create a
basic sound that wouldn’t interfere with the naturalistic mise en scene.
• We used Youtube to post our film and gain some audience feedback via comments
on the site. It gave the film a wider audience.
• When creating our poster and article we used adobe software such as Photoshop and
Indesign. This software allowed us to use such tools as the cropping tool and the
magnetic lasso. With these tools we could manipulate images and writing to create a
more appealing design.