1.

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

VOICEOVER to video best moments reel/appropriate to the part I am talking about with titles popping out of video. Our mock documentary on social group Ghosters, based in a small town College takes its influence from several media sources, making it a post-modern media product, with irony and intertextual referencing. We understand the conventions of film and short films, as they must be short, at 5 and a half minutes, it follows those audience expectations and generally make sense to an audience in a media related context. We understand ghosts, and spiritualism through word of mouth and media representations, for example Most Haunted. This gave us inspiration for our titles and credits, as they are thematic and the program is a supernatural documentary where they act out live ghost scenes. Our mockumentary is a parody that takes the form of a news report, with a presenter who introduces the situation and asks the questions, like a Louis Theroux Documentary, for example his Weird Weekends series, where he dominated the topic, aiming to give a wide perspective on the small social groups of America. Weird Weekends is a series of factual documentaries which are very inclusive as Theroux involves himself within the group and participates in activities, but also interacts with the camera-man and people around him, making no attempt at eluding the behind the screen barrier for an audience. Our film rejects the inclusion of the presenter within the social group, but not because he is not trying, because the social group rejects him, as well as mainstream society. Our short narrative is linear and follows the groups hobbies th roughout a regular week. Like a documentary/news report, we aimed to gather a varied opinion on the main character, by taking the influences of his life, for example his Dad. This was a method of giving a new dimension to the character. We decided to do a youth culture documentary as it was something we had experienced and understood but also it is common in the shows we watch, for example, The Inbetweeners is a programme about a group of 4 outcasts that struggle through college. In some parts our film includes amateur filming techniques, for example the boom microphone is included. We also see this in films like Black Dynamite, a recent parody of a blacksploitation film which was a popular genre in the 70s. As a post-modern medium it not only challenges the genre by ridiculing it, but it also makes you consider your own ideals and sense of humour. Black Screen 2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Within the media industry it is important for a balance of advertising coverage to stimulate interest in your short film and possible directors and employers. We were asked to complete ancillary texts, a radio trailer and magazine review. Play radio trailer with sound clip insert me. It is more common to see a film trailer now with visuals from the film, for example in Spinal Tap, all the following was drawn from the trailer. Our radio trailer was ultimately a sequence of narrative hooks and gossiping girls, designed to intrigue people using word of mouth. We chose a school bell sound effect, found online, which indicates the age of the characters within our film but also signifies to the right age bracket to an audience. We took influence from the quote is it a bird? Is it a plane? and also used a recognisable advert

voice. To improve we could have recorded some background noise, for example in the Canteen, of people nattering which would act as music. Booklet of all magazine reviews like opening pages Due to our 40 budget and lack of contacts in the media industry it was impossible to book famous actors for our short film, having a recognisable actor creates excitement and will bring you a following. When working with student films where the actors arent available it would be beneficial to have a good review in a magazine. Without spoiling the plot, which is quite difficult to do when talking about a 5minute short film, you try and argue an opinion on your film, while referencing your influences, like Most Haunted. However my opinion on the film was very mixed and this was reflected in my film review. We looked at Empire magazine layouts and scanned into Photoshop certain aspects like the page footer. However I created the A3 spread using Microsoft Publisher as it was available at home. It is common to have a large picture of the main character/characters and a bold title, and columns of text. The language used involves creative neologisms and metaphors to make it entertaining in itself and set a tone for the film. To further the realism of a magazine page I chose to include a couple stories of ghosts I had gathered from my personal research, this adds a new depth to the article and also inspires interest in the topic of spiritualists that we chose to film. I could have written more about the acting skills of the cast and mentioned the mise-en-scene however I decided to focus mainly on the emotional response. Also pictured are my groups magazine pages. 3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

INSERT AUDIENCE FEEDBACK split screen Was it believable? Yes as part of our target audience, Sophia is also a filmmaker and can analyse our media product with a critical approach, by saying parts of it were believable then our mock social group has worked. The titles we perfect cheers then Poorly made documentary this was entirely intentional, we felt the rustic view was appropriate for our mockumentary style, and it appears the audience liked and accepted it, instead of criticised. The sound due to the final mix of the screening our film was a lot quieter than the others and people at the back struggled to hear, we were not aware of this problem prior to the event, however in subsequent screenings we have not had this problem. Contradicting shots we ignored this comment as many viewers would overlook that aspect, but if we were to do it again we would omit these shots. Monty python image of course we know. No music heavy script detract, other students we considered music as it was a common convention in documentaries, especially around the titles however we chose to agree with this statement as it would distract the listener. A woman from the crowd perceived the sadness of the story and saw beyond its humorous skin, have several depths to our narrative which means you might have to watch if a couple times to perhaps sympathise with our main character. This was very positive feedback as it meant the story actually could be understood with the correct intentions, by our audience.

The audience at our screening were family members and other class members, but also actors and people from many different socioeconomic backgrounds, it is fair to say we had a varied audience but also relatively positive feedback from the audience. I also emailed a few of my friends and family the video however this received only positive feedback, with very little criticism and knowledge on improvements. 4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Pop up images of devices used. Research Mac wordpress, internet, youtube, tumblr, publisher, slide rocket, voki, and many more webapps formed the basis of our research and planning on the blog. The best research I found was on other blogs and by watching lots and lots of short films and documentaries. It didnt matter what the genr e was because it was a short film, its an experimental concept and that lead to a variety of short documentaries on my blog, as they take many different forms especially when youre playing around with genre yourself. I visited vimeo, short of the week and future shorts more times than Id like to think and as soon as you start looking you discover how many shorts there are out there. From the famous Big Shave by Scorsese to your friends email of a film his brother did by tying a GoPro camera to his dogs collar. But I also found social networking was a great way of finding new videos especially trending viral videos which were popular with my friends and could generate an audience. Another major part of our research was a first-hand experience of spirit guide Derek Acorah from Most Haunted who did a performance in Bridgwater Town Hall, we chose to sit on the balcony and did not get questioned however witnessed some spooky coincidences and we wanted to capture that atmosphere within our film. Planning We created a calendar of events on a mac to help us reach our deadline, throughout the process we had to make a few changes and documented this along the way by updating posts on our blog. Further planning we used StarNow to find our actor Boyd Rogers Thanks Boyd. A large part of planning was our locations, Glastonbury Tor, College, a House and a Graveyard. It was important to know our area and as there were 4 members in our group we came from different places and decided these were most appropriate to our characters as they have spiritual connotations. Filming dvx100, sound mics, mobile phone, the kettle. Post production Final Cut Pro was the program we used to edit our film, we took the titles from a website code and inserted them into our final edit. We also used final cut pro for our radio trailer as we found it easier than using other software, also we downloaded sound effects for the trailer from youtube, using an online converter. The radio trailer we published on Soundcloud as its a popular website for music, podcasts, bloggers and radio. I used publisher for my magazine review as I had experience with it and it readily available at home. When it came to evaluating we had uploaded our finished video to YouTube and could watch the feedback and videos from the same place. This made it easier to evaluate and analyse.