evaluation

For our advanced production we were required to produce a short film of approximately five minutes, and produce relevant research and planning to support this. A short film can only last up to 59 minutes to be classified as a short film. They are becoming increasingly popular with film makers as you can produce unique ideas and use different techniques that have proved to be just as effective as a full length film.


After completing the Foundation Portfolio, we have transferred and developed the skills learnt to our Advanced Portfolio. Specifically on creativity and digital technology; as in our Foundation Portfolio which was shown in a folder, just using mainly images and text we found that this wasn’t as effective as it would have been on a blog for instance. As we have access to internet sources we decided to utilise these and present our work in this form. This has encouraged us to use different digital techniques such as slideshare, youtube, photography to make our work more engaging. Although still using high standard text in our ancillary texts to promote of Short Film, ‘Weightless’ this has proven our intellectual abilities as a group.


In our research and planning, we learnt from the Foundation Portfolio that this section of the coursework is crucial to go into as much detail as possible, this then gives you enough background to produce a successful film. This may have lacked in the Foundation portfolio but in the Advanced portfolio we were sure, to use our time well, and do as much research and planning possible. Specifically looking into the analysis of successful short films to give us a good idea about what the audience enjoys and idea/conventions that we needed to include. This then relates to real media texts, which we needed to research and provide knowledge of on our blog. These then guided and influenced our choices and techniques, for example analysing documentaries, or short films that tries to convey and achieve a specific meanings. We decided that the best way to connect with our audience was looking into serious subjects and content that may prompt emotions. This would make our film memorable by also we would make the audience more aware and more educated in the content. We finally chose to produce our Short film about the relevant subject Eating disorders. After analysing Short films like ‘Offside’ and ’10 minutes’ which also produce emotions for the audience, we decided that these were the most successful and memorable. They also gave us ideas for narrative, lighting, sound, mise en scene, film style, genre, character representations, and editing ect. Specifically sound, we used slow, emotional non diagetic sound; we also wanted to make our documentary personal and intimate. To achieve this, the narrator talked to the camera in a casual style, and also to the interviewees in this style. They sat quite close to each other also, as this is a personal subject we thought this would make the subject feel more comfortable talking about their experiences. Our target audience are young and educated. Therefore the people we interviewed were also young and intellectual. This achieved audience inclusivity and made them relatable. After looking on the website ‘find your tribe’ this gave us further incite into what our audience enjoys and is interested in. such as fashion and technology, which we tried to convey within our film. Conventions such as various shot types, to keep our audience interested, also we found music very important, we used typical conventions such as music relating to the mood and emotion of the film. Our media product challenges previous documentaries about eating disorders, mainly by acknowledging male and female sufferers. In the past there have been very few documentaries on male eating disorders despite the well known fact that 1 in 10 eating disorder patients are male, recent figures have even shown it could be closer to 1 in 7. In previous years there has only been one real documentary highlighting male anorexia and that was BBC3’s “I’m A Boy Anorexic”. Other than that in documentaries males are barely ever mentioned. Although it was not our main focus we still wanted to aim at highlighting the issue and help appeal to a broader audience. Unfortunately we were not able to find a willing male participant to take part in the interviews; however we did include statistics of male eating disorders. We also carried out interviews with male participants on their views and opinions on eating disorders. We have used the typical media convention of on the street interviews intertwined with set up interviews. After watching other documentaries it showed that having a variety of different people gave a much wider range of responses.

We researched many different short films to decide what forms and conventions were for the most part successful. We chose the Genre ‘documentary’ as they commonly give you different outlooks and opinions into different media subjects. We decided to include, interviews with patients that have suffered or are suffering with an eating disorder, to give incite and detail into the subject. To give the audience perspective we included stats conveyed through a voiceover to increase audience inclusivity. Also using group opinions with people not suffering with an eating disorder this would give a non bias opinion and different intellectual responses. As this was a difficult genre to relate to a narrative theory, but we structured it, so it could be followed, at the start introducing it, then gradually introducing it through opinions, then at the ending credits we showed how the patients are doing now to give the audience closure and understanding. We represented our subjects as ‘normal’ people to reduce stigmas and stereotypes, this could possibility also make the audience sympathetic.

Our ancillary tasks, we feel had a successful and effective relation to our main feature. The title ‘Weightless’ is catchy, memorable and relevant. Then the poster is a picture of someone standing ona scale, which expresses the theme of being weight conscious, and being the main image on our poster this then expresses the importance of weight and image that our patients feel is high, this then passes on this particular message to our audience. It also gives our audience an idea of what our film and whether it interests them as of course everyone has their own opinions. Our magazine review for Empire Magazine then gives further incite into the plot of our film and what it is about. We also put a still frame of our film into this review, to make it more pleasing to the eye and more attention ‘grabbing’. The ancillary are proved most effective together as they both have different effects on the viewer, and together, we think promote our film most effectively, which is important so people view our film.

For our group getting audience feedback was really interesting and it made us aware of what we did well and what we achieved compared with what they thought we could have improved on or what they thought wasn’t particularly effective. Looking through the comments, we found out that people did become more aware of eating disorders, which was one of our more important aims; to increase awareness. They also thought the personal style of it also created further meaning and effectiveness. It also showed that they formed a bond and could identify with them. Our criticism was taken as constructive as our audience main concern was some camera movements were shaky and in particular parts of the film sound was in issue; which we found hard to avoid.

We used many different media technologies, as mentioned before, but during our filming process, we thought the best way to produce a successful film was to use a good quality hand-held camera and attaching to a tri-pod to avoid unnecessary movements, and also incorporating a podcast in our film. For editing we used Adobe Premiere CS4, as this was available and convenient for our group, and we also have experience with it from our Foundation Portfolio. For our ancillary tasks Photoshop was used on the poster, and Microsoft word for the magazine review. Using this range of different technologies it produced a variety of media texts to present on our blog.

On the whole, we are happy as a group with our production and ancillary tasks as the majority of our feedback was positive and we seemed to achieve what we set out to. There are, of course improvements that could be made especially in our production such as sound and camera movements. Overall we are pleased with what we achieved and learnt throughout working on our Foundation and Advanced Portfolios.