Jonah - Evaluation

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

• Short films by their nature are unique, with no two short films same, forms and standard conventions and hard to pin down apart from one convention that each film tackles differently, of being individualistic. Our short film does follow that one form by being quirky and inventive. 

• The narrative of our film follows a short but entertaining journey of a much loved and famous video character Mario, from "Super Mario Bro.", the narrative is chronological follows a traditional short film plot. 

• My short film follows Todorovs narrative theory by starting with the Equilibrium (Gamer comes home after normal day of college and sits down to watch tv as normal) Mario coming out of the tv is the Disruption, the gamer Recognizes the disruption by finding Mario when reentering the room. Together Mario and the gamer Attempt to repair the damage by trying to get mario back into the game. Mario returns to the game and the gamer reaches a New equilibrium because he has experienced something new that has changed him as a person and thus changing is normality/equilibrium. 

• Because short films are so unique not just one single film gave me inspiration for my short film, but a selection of short films such as "Dream Girl" - "Sprokett" - "Table 7" (Pictured above)

• I liked Dream Girl because there was no dialogue, because it wasn't needed, you understand and can get the full impact of the short but sweet narrative. This gave me inspiration to make a short film without dialogue, but because I focused on a video game character coming to life this would have been near impossible to show and enable the audience to understand what is happening. 

• Camerawork was important when creating this film as I had to convey what was happening in the first 1m30secs without any dialogue, and just let the pictures talk for themselves. By using POV camera angles before Mario enters the real world gives a foreshadowing effect of whats to come, as if Mario can already see the Gamer through the game console.

• Because there was a small amount of dialogue I chose not to have a non-diegetic soundtrack playing throughout the film as it would detract away from the importance of the dialogue.

• Costumes were very important in the film as the main character is so famous that having a poor quality costume or no costume at all would confuse and put off the viewer. I brought adult sized Mario outfit to solve this problem. The gamers costume consisted of what I felt a gamer/student would wear on a day to day basis to help the audience understand and relate too.
• From the tiles below starting from the top left moving to the right and then starting the new row.

• The first image is taken from when both character meet for the first time, the disruption in the narrative. The next image shows Mario exploring this new 3D world he now lives in. The third image shows both characters contemplating on what to do about this "problem" of Mario being in the real world. Image number 4 shows Mario being "teleported" back into the gaming world. The fifth image shows what is left after Mario is transported back were he belongs. The next image shows the opening title of the film, which is the same font used on the poster for one of my ancillary tasks which I have done to build up this idea of a brand. The last three images on the bottom row show the Gamer sitting down getting ready to play his game, and then the phone rings so he looks away and when he leaves the room Mario (in the last image) is escaping through the TV.

• During editing I created a few different versions of the end product, as well as cutting some scenes out to overcome problems that I couldn't solve on "Final Cut Pro" and "Motion", such as the game cartridge being a different colour to what I wanted, so I cut out the BCU of the cartridge. 

Ancillary Tasks

Poster:

• Poster are unique in advertising because it relies on one image alone to catch your attention and appeal to you enough to go out, pay money, and watch their film by giving you lots of information which is contained within a couple of pictures and a bit of text. This is done by revealing to the audience where the film is set, e.g. time period, what characters are going to be in the film, by displaying the main character largely on the poster. Most poster follow simple conventions such as a large title and the main characters printed behind it. 

• The text on our poster as well as the character enlarged behind the big title gives communicates to the viewer this film is about "Games" and more importantly "Mario". All poster follow boarders and use guidelines to keep everything on the poster as pleasing to the eye as possible to draw even more attention to the poster. We did this in creating our poster and getting the title completely centre it gives the poster an easy to look at appeal. 

Review:

• Our review was based on the layout and design of Little White Lies, a small but popular and success film magazine company based in london. The layout of the reviews in the Little White Lies magazine followed the same format for every one, and includes small details such as a word limit of 550 words a review, and centering the text in the columns which all come together to create a neat and sophisticated piece of writing. 

• The layout conventions for my review follows the same as Little White Lies layout. The basic layout of the review is a large wide picture above 550 words of text, with details about the crew in between. The text is Centuary Gothic which is much more aesthetically pleasing than Times New Roman. A dropped cap is used at the beginning of the first paragraph which adds a little touch of creativity and looks more professional 
• The language conventions of of Little White Lies is quite unique with puns littered in the text with references to previous films and reviews that only fans of the magazine may understand. A lot of the puns require at least a moderate level of knowledge in the filming world to actors, directors, and quotes from classic films. This little hearted writing style makes it fun to read. 

Evaluation Question 2

How effective is the combination of your main product and your ancillary tasks?

Video illustrating the text below 

Script/cues -

Poster

• Taking into consideration this is a student project with low/minimal budget, i feel the whole portfolio would work in a real commercial context because of a selection of different factors.
• Film appeals to younger and older audiences, because the average age of a gamer is now 43, and Mario was in its prime when the older gamers were teenagers.
• The poster works well to capture your attention quickly, by using very high contrast, bright, colours as well as a large vibrant title. This works well to communicate the appeal of our film as our film is reflected in that.
• By looking at the poster, the way Mario is positioned gives the audience an idea of what the story is about, without saying anything, it just subtly suggest he is escaping from his game.

Review 

• Written about film, without giving away the story
• Used Indesign
• Little white Lies is appropriate as they review short films 
• Same age bracket 

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Because our target demographic were teenagers and young adults that are middle class, social networking was the obvious choice to get audience feedback.

• We  used Facebook to ask our audience to choice what film name they preferred.
• The most popular was 'Game Over' followed by 'Mushroom Kingdom'. This is interesting as Game Over would seem to be the most cheesy out of all three, which does reflect what the film is.
• This suggests we have achieved our aim, slightly, by appealing to the light hearted young people. Although under 10 responses is not enough to back up that claim.

• We then used Twitter to ask what film poster they preferred. Again they preferred the more "Cheesy" little hearted poster, further suggesting it appeals to the younger audience. We have learned by getting audience feedback we have achieved to appeal to the younger and more middle class audience.

• Coming to the end of editing we decided to get some last audience feedback, we created to versions of the film, one with no game footage two introduce the film, the other with the footage. Game footage obviously won, this could be because our younger audience want that feeling of nostalgia, thus wanting to see real game footage of a classic video game. 

How did you use media technologies in the construction, and research, planning and evaluation stages?

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