Critically Evaluating Video Production

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

At a technical level, we observed the conventions of real media products pretty well. The rules of continuity were observed and put into proper practise, we may have broke away from some conventions when we applied an orange filter to the film during the editing process, however this was to portray a different reality and things not seeming how they actually are to Sarah our main character.

We used various flashbacks in the film to show the emotions that Sarah is going through and how things have affected her mentally. Using a serious of certain camera shots and angles such as P.O.V's (Point of views) and long distance shots it shows how Sarah's world and reality are running parallel to one another.

The orange filter we used was generally to show Sarah's reality and what was actually real, this was a good idea because it shows how delusional she has become as to what is real and what isn't, however she cannot question reality when she doesn't know what she is doing is wrong.

In terms of content our film is non conventional as it doesn't fit into any particular but because of its incredibly delicate nature and possibility of it affecting people, it can be classed as a psychological drama. This is more of a sub genre than an actual genre. The film does fulfill the nature of the genre because of its sensitivity and it portrays Sarah's emotions of what is going through. It didn't need to be explicit because it gets the point across to the audience with flashbacks and filters.

There are no elements of pastiche or parody in our project. There are also no hints or references to other films.

The audience's emotions should be basically putting themselves in Sarah's shoes and feeling how she feels, this is supposed to create a strong reaction in the audience. The emotions we are trying to achieve are ones that play on the mind and actually make you think what it could be like for Sarah and actually feeling how she feels.

In comparison with other real media texts, there is only really one example and that is the 1988 film The Accused. Invaded shows more of a reality of rape and its aftermath. The reality being that violators are rarely prosecuted and theres very little that can usually be done and the rapist usually walks free. The Accused focuses on the court cases etc and the women fighting for the prosecution of the sex offender.

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

We wanted to advertise the production well, the poster reflects the trailer well. The advertisement of a film is very important to get publicity for the film. The film poster and the radio trailer do the main product some justice as it advertises it well, the poster for example shows that the film has a sensitive nature, this is portrayed by the effects on the photos in the poster, such as the fading edges and the fact that Sarah is curled up with her hands over her eyes. Neither the poster or the radio trailer give the entire story away tho just snippets of it to keep the audience asking questions.

Our poster and the poster for the accused are similar in the way that they don't give much away, the two figures in the accused poster are ghostly white and one of the little photos in our poster is completely white and has an feel of innocence to it. The poster could connect with the audience in regards to this and wondering what it could be about as there is a range of moods in the poster linking to the colours.

The radio trailer we created was non conventional as most radio trailers have a deep male voice over the top to make the impact deeper, however as far as out production goes we felt the need to use a much softer female voice to convey the nature of the film.

Examples of Radio Trailers

To be effective to the audience there has to be some manner of impact through the posters and radio trailers.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Before we started our project, we did a questionnaire and asked people if they would watch a film about rape or had ever seen something touching on the subject of rape, the result was that most people had touched upon this subject at some point while watching a film or television such as in soaps like Eastenders or Hollyoaks.

Our audience was people aged 18 and above considering we rated our production an 18 this was a sensible idea.

We had to make it clear to our audience what was happening and to do this we used different shots when filming such as close ups, P.O.V's to get the point across and get a reaction from the audience. The speeds of the editing varied as to what was going on in a particular scene, for example the flashbacks (See film from 1.28 to 1.36) the editing was slightly faster to show how frightened she was and that her memory is scarred for life.

After we completed the trailer, we posted in on Youtube to see if there would be any comments, so far there are only two which can be found at this link: Invaded just underneath the film. I have also asked friends to watch it and tell me what they think, most of them said they did like the film yet there were a couple that said they didn't know why. This is an example of Richard Dyers theory of entertainment, because it suggests that when people have watched the film it made them think about things and possibly put something in their lives that they could think about, because it plays on the mind. Invaded may possibly have given them feelings of sensitivity yet intensity because it plays on the feelings and emotions of the characters in the trailer and the audience also.

The audience questionnaire which we created before the start of the production is here with all the questions and results.

This was the answer to the question:

Do you think a short film about rape would be useful in reducing the amount of incidents in rape?

Half of the people answered yes, the other half either disagreed or weren't entirely sure.

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

During the construction process i constantly used the internet for my research and planning, using it to research other films similar to the one we were making. Youtube was used to look for short films made by other people and also Blogger was obviously used to link everything together and create our digital portfolio.

Everything throughout the process such as other films, photos, sounds, links etc have all been posted onto the blog.

During the filming process we used HVR- HD1000 cameras in the filming process (An image of which can be seen below)

With this equipment we were able to record high quality video footage on 16:9 widescreen. We recorded the footage onto a MiniDV tape which we then used a DV-1000 to transfer the film onto the computer for editing. We used Final Cut Pro to edit the footage with. As for the ancillary task to create a poster we used Photoshop Elements to create this.

This is a screen shot of Photoshop Elements taken from Google images.

I found during all of the planning, research right through to the filming and the evaluation afterwards there were no problems, although we could have actually used an orange filter when filming rather than adding one in the editing process but we didn't think of this at the time. There were no obstructions to creativity and everything went as well as planned.

I used blogger to write up my evaluation and uploaded and pasted images in where i needed them.