AppleEvaluation

A2 Media Studies

By Joe Sullivan

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

Having done some research we tried to stick to the generic conventions of a short film when coming up with an idea and overall I think we did that. Short films are usually very simple and occasionally have an underlying message and that is what we wanted to do with Apple, the message from our film is “How do peoples everyday actions effect others?” We showed this by focusing peoples actions around this one apple that goes on a journey from being bought in a supermarket to eventually saving a mans life. The people who help to move the apple along to its final destination are unaware of their actions so have no idea they contributed towards saving a life, this is what helps give a creative feel to Apple – another convention of a short film. We followed the creative feel of short films by using various shot types and different techniques, these included point of view shots from the apple and the use of slow motion when the apple falls from the bridge, we also had a night vision scene which just added to the variation of shot types and techniques we could use. We came up with the idea of having a smiley face on the apple so the audience could relate to it a bit more, it gives it a bit of personality and isn’t as boring as just a plain apple. In relation to our previous media product – Witness, we decided to have an intertextual reference, this was of the photographer from Witness appearing as the tramp in Apple. We thought it was a good idea as it get the audience thinking about what has happened to the photographer..

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

The main thing we wanted to achieve across all 3 products was a brand identity so that each becomes recognizable straight away and we did this various ways..

We decided to keep a similar colour scheme to our magazine article and poster using just 3 simple colours – green, white and black, we used a white background, black font and green for the apple pictures. This is very basic but became synonymous with our film and helped it gain recognition.

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

Our poster was created using a very simple but effective design which goes hand in hand with the short film genre. It contains one image of the apple, the title of the film and a tag line we came up with “How far does the apple fall from the tree?”. We added numerous more small touches for authenticity such as advertising it to be premiered at a real film festival and having real credits at the bottom of the poster. Overall it looks very similar to a poster or billboard that could be seen for a main stream film.

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

Our second ancillary task was the magazine article and it is almost exactly the same design as the poster with regards to the colour scheme and font. We used a pull quote in the centre of the page to make it look more realistic as a magazine article and gave it a score out of 10 at the bottom of the review. We also added production photos to the page and say where the film can be viewed (Belfast cinematic film festival) which backs up what is on our poster.. The article would appear in a main stream magazine rather than a small independent one.

How did you utilise audience feedback?

Throughout the production of Apple we were constantly making drafts each time we gained some more footage and kept reporting back to our teacher with what we had. This was a great help as anything that was there to be improved or changed was spotted early and gave us enough time to sort out any mistakes. Our classmates also saw our early drafts and picked up on mistakes we hadn’t spotted or gave us some ideas in how we could improve our final film. With this feedback we came to the conclusion that at the end of our first draft we lost sight of the apple and it was no longer the focus of the film, this enabled to add in many shots in the second half of our film that regained the focus on the apple so having this constant feedback was good. The soundtrack was also being criticised for its repetitiveness but this was only a temporary soundtrack to go with our drafts until we had a final one complete. There was one bit of feedback we didn’t act on and this was to change the apples facial expression to adapt to what particular situation its in, for example we were told to put a worried cold face on the apple when it is left on the park bench overnight. We were told it would personalise the apple a lot more but due to time constraints it became almost impossible for us to gain all the shots needed in a short space of time, however if we were to do this again it is definitely something we would think about.

What technology did you utilise when creating your media product?

The internet was vital when creating our media product as it enabled us to upload work to our blogs and post our progress, we have added video clips, slideshows, photos and podcasts to our blogs which is great as it makes them look a lot more interesting than just text entries. We advertised our product via the internet as well, through facebook where we already had a group created from our previous production Witness. Facebook was also where our film premiered, hundreds of people watched it in the first couple of days and we got lots of positive feedback. The camera was obviously vitally important as well, it shoots in high definition and in real time slow motion – we could then watch our footage back within seconds of it being shot and correct it if we needed to. We used a Digital SLR camera to take photos of locations and production which helped give us plenty of material for our blogs. We used various software on Apple Mac computers which included:

- Pages to create our 2 Ancillary tasks- iMovie to create our film and drafts- iCalendar to organise our time, decide when and where we were going to shoot etc.- Keynote to create slideshows, these slideshows could then be put on our blogs- Garageband for our Podcasts

What technology did you utilise when creating your media product?

One final bit of technology we used was a white backdrop and high lighting for a photo of the apple to go on our poster. Sam asked a friend who does photography and we were able to gain access to the photography studio in the art room at school. It was a great help and gave us the pure shot that suits our poster.