Media Showcase Feedback

We had our media showcase on March 20th to present our finished film openings to a wide audience. We then collected data and feedback to assist us with our evaluation. Looking back at the evaluations helped us see in hindsight what we could have adjusted to make our opening better.

Evaluation Questions

1. In what ways does your media use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
7. Looking back at your preliminary task, how do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Title

We spent a lot of time deciding what our title should be and where it should be placed in our opening. We changed the placement and adjusted the colouring to make the title perfect, it took some time but I think we got there in the end. Our initial idea was to have it on the first establishing shot as that was our idea when we were storyboarding, plus the title would fit nicely layered on the whitespace over a line of trees. As seen in our opening, that shot was first and we thought it came slightly abruptly.
After agreeing this was not a good place to put the title, we didn't have another suitable establishing shot so because we already had to film a couple more shots, we went out with the intent to find a nice establishing shot to overlay the title on top of. It didn't take us long until we found the perfect shot but next in our process was to select which title we would like and the font and colour of it. We came up with the name "Framed" because the older sister, played by me, was framed for a crime she did not commit. Our credits were in the font "Birch STD" so to stay consistent, we changed the title into that font and made it white to contrast the green in the establishing shot, as white made it too indistinguishable.

Makeup

The night before we filmed our opening, Zoe and I had a conversation about how she should look for the shoot. The main topic of conversation was makeup. We discussed many ideas, some including:

• Dark eye makeup and light natural face
• Neutral eyes, face and lips
• Just simple dark eyeliner

After contemplating all of these, I told her to wear none and she agreed with my choice. I told her that if she felt uncomfortable with no makeup, the least objectionable option was neutral eyes, face and lips but she said she would go with whatever we chose as a group. So I consulted with my group and we all decided upon no makeup at all. We wanted her to seem tired, yet young. We thought that realistically, someone in her position would not have the time to apply makeup so having none at all creates the most realistic atmosphere. 

Costume Choices

For Zoe's costume we decided to keep it very casual and dark to connote her characters corruption. She is a young teenager whose childhood has been corrupted due to the graphic truth of the crime her sisters been blamed for so we decided to dress her solely in black clothing. We had her hair braided so it wouldn't get in the way of her face as she moved about and ensured her clothing and shoes where adequate for the running shots.
On the other hand, my character was going into hiding/running away and was trying to become "invisible" - she didn't want to stick out. So we decided to dress me in something very casual and plain.

Production Companies

To ensure our film opening replicates real film media products, we decided to add production companies to the beginning of our opening. Although we know that it will not give us extra marks, we still wanted it to be as similar to real products as possible. We selected some photos that River had previously taken and added text on top. These are the company titles we decided on:

'Sunset Productions'

'In Association with Needle Films'

'Castle Productions'

Film Synopsis

After brainstorming a couple of ideas, we decided that our film should be an action/thriller as we came to conclusion that the figure seen in the Polaroid photos would find out about Zoe's character trying to relieve her sister, so ergo attempts to perpetrate another crime and gather evidence to blame her this time. When the protagonist finds this out, she begins to track the man down using the camera evidence ergo resulting in an attack to conclusively prove both the protagonist and her sister as innocent. 

Final Film Opening: Framed

We have finally finished our film opening and after watching it a million times and reshooting scenes so many times, we are so proud of the outcome. From the prelim to now, we have changed and developed our technological skills so much. So here is the finished product: