Thursday, 3 May 2012
3) WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM YOUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?
From our audience feedback, we
have learnt that people found it hard at the beginning to understand
weather the mockumentary was supposed to be real or believable. They
didn’t necessarily understand what was going on and they found this a
little confusing. They said that the title cards helped with this, yet
these title cards were hard to see as the writing was quite small.
"I liked the way it changed in the middle." - Focus Group Member
None
of the focus group said they had witnessed this kind of situation
themselves and they didn’t realize that it was such an issue among
teenagers and they thought that this mockumentary helped them and would
help other people to realize the dangers. The majority of the focus
group were aged between 17 and 18 but we had one teacher, this pretty
much matcyhed our target audience.
"Not very realistic but it made sense within the given genre" - Focus Group Member
Charlotte’s
character reminded a lot of the focus group of an American teenager
which made them feel like our mockumentary was similar to an American
teen movie. The focus group didn’t say that they wanted to know what happened later on, as they didn’t feel that there was a later on.
"It was very informative." - Focus Group Member
The
last question, people had a mixed feeling about. Some said that if a
drug results in death then it isn’t for a good or legit reason and
therefore it is just as bad as other drugs. On
the whole people enjoyed our film and were impressed with it, they
thought that more time would have resulted in maybe a better production
but the enjoyed it. In general comments, people said that it looked like a real documentary and was very professional looking.
Wednesday, 2 May 2012
2) HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE COMBINATION OF YOUR MAIN PRODUCT AND ANCILlARY TEXTS?
PLEASE CLICK ON THE THUMBNAIL
Our movie poster targeted teenagers. We used an independent style that appealed to the niche audience that we tried to attract. We used a de-saturated image which connoted the nostalgic and independent style we wear aiming for. The poster revealed the main subject of our film, Ben Collins, the boy who died and the title of the movie, ‘Why did Ben Collins die?’ A name that catches your eye and summarizes what the mocumentary is all about. We made a double page spread for a magazine, featuring an interview with us, the directors, and a summary of the mocumentary. This was similar to the two art house magazines, ‘Little White Lies’ and ‘Sight and Sound’. Both magazines targeted a certain niche audience similar to the one that we wanted to attract to our mocumentary. We consciously decided not to use successful actors as we didn’t want the audience to be detracted from the films verisimilitude. Therefore the magazine article focuses more on us, the directors of the mocumentary and our motivations and reasons for the film.
1) IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCTS USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS
We consciously choose not to use Voice Over’s in our Mockumentary
as we felt like it would alter and influence the reading of our media text and
create a passive Media audiences rather than a active one. Therfore, instead of Voice Over, we used Title Cards to explain certain events that happened off-screen.
Two of our Title Cards; used instead of Voice Overs to explain off-screen plot points.
Our whole project as
a whole encourages a more active media reading. Our genre for example, a
mockumentary, usually “mocks” a certain topic, mockumentaries aren’t meant to
be taken serious mostly but ours is. That is due to us not specifically wanting
to do a mockumentary. Our main ambition was to create a hybrid of two media
genres. Teen Movies and Documentaries. The Mise-En Scene within our Mockumentary heavily references
the general conventions of Documentaries and the way they are shot. We used Talking
Heads for the individual interviews with the various characters and used
subtitles to annotate the shots, revealing the characters name and their
profession.
Example of Annotations and Subtitles used in Talking Heads of our characters.
In order for the interviews to not get visually boring, we decided to use reaction shots and noddies of the interviewer in order to make the on-screen happenings seem more alive and quick. This makes it easier for the audience not to lose interest and keep paying attention.
Example of Reaction Shots of the Interviewer during the Interviews
At several instances we used Handheld to create a feeling of
everything happening in the moment, making our mockumentary seem more real as
opposed to staged and scripted. For Example, the scene where we interview the
character “Charlotte” takes a surprising
twist when she receives a text and storms out the room. The camera switches to
handheld and follows her out the room for quite some time when finally, it is
shut down by the angry character. This makes everything seem more real and
believable.
Example of the camera switching from tripod to handheld, chasing one of the characters.
The American documentary “American Teen” features similar technical
aspects that are often present in this genre. The movie often uses a Handheld
camera following the various characters. Vox Pop and Talking Heads are also a
recurring technical stylistic device.
Example of Reaction Shots of the Interviewer during the Interviews
Tuesday, 1 May 2012
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