Evaluation - Josh Brown

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

9 Frame Analysis

                  Little Larry                                    Love Sick                PJ The Tiny Planet Explorer

In this 9 frame analysis, i have chose to take screenshots of 3 different short films that inspired my short film. These short films are Little Larry, Love Sick and PJ,Tiny Planet Explorer.

The first column of frames, we see is a screen shot taken from the short film called Little Larry. This particular shot shows the main character, who we see to be called Larry, putting on his suit ready to go to work in front of the mirror. The film is about a boy who goes to work like every other person. But short films are always peculiar and different which is why they have a boy playing an adult man's role. This screen shot reflects what an average adult mans life is like. Working the 9-5 unexciting job. This shot could be seen in many other feature length films because this action is very realistic and is performed by millions everyday. Which is why this shot is interesting because everybody else doing it are all adults and mostly men. We view the boy from a slight high angle still shot, to give emphasize the fact that he is a small boy going to work. This film inspired my short film because it shows a character going to do his normal day at work with a slight twist and everything has been shot in black and white. I chose this particular shot because it raises questions of why a small boy would be putting on a suit.

Little Larry

Narrative organisation and short film format

• The short film 'Little Larry' closely follows the format of short films because it is unusual or twisted in an intriguing way. Little Larry is a small boy who goes to work in the city, like he is actually an adult in a child's body. This twist in the story is what makes the audience recognize this film to be a short film because of the syntactic codes theory by Rick Altman. If we watch a short film, we expect a weird twist or an unusual event to take place. 
• Another way we can see that this film has stuck to the short film format is simply the number of characters used. Feature length films use many characters in movies, especially famous actors and actresses to improve the publicity of the film. Short films hardly ever use somebody famous and hardly ever use more than two characters. Little Larry has tuck to this format as we only focus on one character for the entire movie.
• If we look at the first frame in the table, we can see Little Larry putting on his suit ready for work. This is usually an action performed by an adult of a similar occupation. However, in this film, we see a small buy in the same position. So if we were to watch a feature length film, this would have most likely been an adult.

Characterization

• The reason why this short film is so intriguing is because they have used a small boy to play the role of an adult. However, the world around him seems legit and nonreactive to the fact that is just a boy working in an adult workplace.
• Little Larry's character has been built well because we only gather the fact that he is a small boy only by his physical appearance such as facial features and height. However, his character in the film seems to ignore this by shaving when he has no facial hair and driving when he is clearly not tall or old enough. So if we ignored his natural appearance, we would be fooled into thinking he was just an average adult man having a normal day.
• So Little Larry dressing up for work breaks Rick Altman's theories because it is not iconography and does not follow a typical plot development. Which is another reason why we can recognize this as a short film.

Camerawork

• Every shot in Little Larry is still and either handheld or on a tripod. There are no tracking shots or pans at all. There is one focus pull shot towards the beginning when Larry looks at his dog, but apart from this, there is no camera movement. Which gives a sense of imprisonment, no movement, like Larry feels he is a in a dead end job.
• If we look at the first frame in the table, we view Larry from an eye level still shot. However, the previous and next shot from this one are shown from a much higher angle. These two shots emphasize the fact that Larry is a small boy going to work. So the shot shown is a small glance at reality because millions of people put their jackets on in front of the mirror everyday. So this shot is meant to contrast what we really see and what we think we should see. It slides in that feeling of realism that Larry is going to work, despite the fact that he is just a small boy.

Sound

• During the whole short film, we never hear anybody speak. We only hear a soundtrack that sounds similar to African music because of the drums and soft flowing rhythm. This soundtrack, I feel, inspired my short film's soundtrack because it makes the characters life sound steady and uneventful as a result of the consistent tempo of the drums.

Mise en scene

• The mise en scene in the first screenshot is extremely important as it helps to build Little Larry's life and character. Larry stands in front of the mirror putting on a suit. The fact that it was a suit really emphasizes the point that he is just a small boy going to an adult workplace. If Larry had put on a cartoony shirt. Then this would have then followed the semantic code theory by Rick Altman. A small boy wearing a small boys shirt is nothing interesting and would not have made the audience question his choice of clothes and follows what we see in everyday life and most feature length films. But Larry is wearing a suit which breaks this theory.
• One shot that I thought the mise en scene ws very important in was the shot where Little Larry is shaving in the mirror. Whilst doing so, he appears to be wearing a vest. This again supports the theme that he appears to be an adult trapped in a small boys body as this action is also only performed by adult males. 

Use of genre conventions

• It is hard to pin point what genre Little Larry could be. From the ending, the audience can guess that it was a build up to a romantic short film because of the methods used to communicate his happiness when he meets this girl. He finally smiles for the first time in the movie and the colour levels rise dramatically which must insist that he feels something towards this girl.

Themes and issues

• One theme that the audience can identify easily is the theme of the dull 9-5 everyday job that most people these days hate. We see this because of the de-saturated colour filter used on his journey to work and for the rest of the day until he meets the girl.

Editing and Post-production

• Little Larry really inspired us to make our movie because almost the entire short film is de-saturated (in black and white). This makes the audience think that although he is a small boy, he finds his life dull and uneventful. Which is why it inspired our film because the majority of our film is de-saturated as well. So when we see Larry standing in front of the mirror putting on his suit whilst in black and white, we begin to put the idea together that his days are dull and unexciting.
• Another feature of this short film that really inspired our film is the colour improvement at the end when he sits on the bench next to a small girl. The colour is completely restored and actually looks more saturated that normal light. Which gives the audience the impression of relief, delight and happiness for Little Larry who has now transformed into an adult. Which also gives the audience another impression that maybe he felt like a boy trapped in this body until he found the perfect love.

Love Sick

In the second column of frames shown, we see a man from behind sitting on a park bench. This screen shot has been taken from the short film called Love Sick. This short film is about a man who continually keeps finding love in different women that he sees through out his day. We see three encounters with women he immediately falls in love with. The first who we see at the very beginning arguing, the second follows shortly after when he sees a woman at a tram station. The third right at the end when he sits on a park bench and a woman jogs past him. This film inspired my short film because I liked the theme of chasing love and running around a city to pursue it.

Narrative organisation and short film format

• This film follows short film format because of its quirky short lived love stories. If this were to be a feature length film, the events with the women would have taken place over much greater distances of time. But in this film, all the events take place in one day. Which not only adds to the characterization of the man we see, but also makes the film quirky as a result of his weird desperation. 
• The narrative is very clever because the audience can sense that the story repeats itself over and over because after we see the love loss of the first woman. Although we never see what really happened for that to end. However, the second woman is who we mostly follow which gives us the understanding of what most of his love chases are like. So from experiencing the first two, the audience could guess that when he sees the third and final woman, he chases around after her and ends up the same way as the first two. However we do not know this to be true. 
• The  first screenshot we see in the table shows the man sitting on a park bench. We cannot guess where this may appear in the film because we cannot see any facial expression due to it being a shot from behind. 
• For this short film, we can apply Todorov's theory of equilibriums. The equilibrium is that we see him breaking up or getting rejected by this unknown girl. The disruption is the finding of the new girl. The recognition is the chasing of the new girl. The attempt to repair is the rejection by the second girl and the re-equilibrium is our protagonist being single yet again. However, at the end we see another disruption which could then lead on to a repeat of the theory. But we do not know because the film ends. 

Characterization

• There is much we can extract about this character. We can sense his desperation for love as he chases woman after woman around the city, to just be rejected again. However, the film does not make him out to be a creep or stalker because of what we hear in his monologue.
• Looking at the first screenshot, we could extract the possibility that this man is a bit lonely because he is by himself in the park. But he could be waiting for another character, we do not know from this shot as it is a shot from behind the character. However, from watching the film and seeing this shot, the audience would know he is there because he is lonely.

Camerawork

• A tracking movement is used for this shot. The camera moves on one axis, left to right and ending up viewing the main character from behind on the bench. This shot, in my opinion, represents a reoccurring result for this character. It pans along like a timeline and he ends up finally alone again after every short love event.

Sound

• Like my short film, there is no speech in this film, only a monologue that voices over. The dialogue said in this shot is "Maybe Justin Bieber was right. Maybe there was no Juliet for this Romeo". This dialogue is important because it helps the audience understand how he is feeling at that present time. The Justin Bieber sentence has just been added in for a quirky feeling, but the Romeo and Juliet reference is important because this was one of the greatest love storied of all time and he compares what his love it like to that. So we can gather that despite him not even knowing this woman, he appeared to be deeply in love with her.

Mise en scene

• The mise en scene in this film is hard to analyse because there could be so many variations of props and costumes and lighting that would not have changed the atmosphere of the film. However, in the scene at the end , we spot the character sitting on a park bench, This is like a semantic code in love/romantic films where a break up occurs. So the bench is quite an important prop because it can relate back to feature length films.

PJ, Tiny Planet Explorer

Pj, tiny planet explorer is a short film about a man who suddenly decides to travel to other planets. So he takes the audience on his preparations and his journey on other tiny planets. Seen in the third column of my 9 frame analysis.

Narrative organisation and short film format

• Again, this film very closely follows the short film format. One way i thought it followed it was the obvious small sized production crew and budget for this film. However, that is not to say it is bad. In fact this really works as a short film because of these. Any way it works as a short film is the inventiveness and creativity of camerawork and story.
•  The audience can gather that the first half of the film has a linear narrative because first we see his decision to move to another planet, next is his preparation to do so and finally is his journey to other planets. However when we see him on the tiny planets, we the audience, do not know which order they could be in as we return to some planets multiple times. On the other hand, it is not vital to the audience which order they are because no major events take place on a specific planet.

Characterization

• It is challenging to collect parts of this person's character because he never interacts with any other human being and there are few shots where we see facial expressions close up. Despite this, we can easily gather the fact that he is an adventurous character from the way he travels.
• We could guess that he is also a very creative person if this were to be a dream or his imagination.

 Camerawork

• The camerawork for this short film is the most inventive I have ever seen. He uses a wide angle camera and then stitches either end together to make a circular shot, which then makes his tiny planets. This method is genius and very unique as I have never seen it done before. This effect then gives the audience the impression he is on tiny planets. As this was a low production cost film, it makes it even better as they have used the resources and methods available to a great advantage and to get around thr problem of needing money to crate great effects.

 Sound

• This short film uses diegetic and non-diegetic sound as we see the main character firstly talking about his decision to move planets and him talking over the phone to friends and then we hear him describing and explaining his decision for objects to take with him on his journeys. The change to non-diegetic sound allows the character to continue with his story and allows us to see where he is whilst excluding close-up shots to see him talk. So the audience are able to see the use of camerawork to make the planets without having to switch between close up of him then back to extreme long shot of the planet.

Mise en scene

• The mise en scene in PJ tiny planet explorer is not what we would expect it to be if we had been told that this character had just decided to go to space. If we were told this without seeing the film, we would expect space suits, large rocket ships and more because again pr Rick Altman's semantic codes theory. However, when we watch the film, we see tat he travels to other planets in his everyday clothes with a rucksack he uses as a jet pack. The audience then really get this impression of pure genius imagination. That he made a plot like this and managed it with the low production costs that the film had.

Use of genre conventions

• From watching this film, I could class it as sci-fi due to common plot developments. If PJ (protagonist) is going to travel to other planets with a jet pack rucksack, then this is clearly the genre it would be classed as because it could never be real. It would only ever exist in somebody's imagination. 
• Sci-fi films almost always use outer space as a plot development, which is why PJ tiny planet explorer would fall into this genre.

Themes and issues

• One easy theme that I spotted in this short film would be the theme of using imagination. The audience know that PJ would never be able to travel to different tiny planets with a rucksack jet pack full of useless items. So we begin to raise this idea that this is all a dream to him. 

Editing and post production

• One editing technique that i like a lot in this short film is the small time lapse or jumps when he is preparing for his journey. We see him on the phone talking to what we can guess is a range of different people and every time we see him talking to somebody else, we use a cross fade to give the impression of passing time.

Our short film - In Perspective

Narrative organisation and short film format

• Our film has definitively followed the short film format. One way we have done this is keeping the amount of characters to a minimum. Short films usually have very small casts due to low production costs and to keep the complexity of studying each and every character to a minimum. We have done this because we have only used two characters.
• Another way in which we have followed the short film format is in the sound of the film. The majority or short films make use of silence because it sometimes helps to build tension and sometimes it helps the audience to focus on the video if there should be something significant that the viewer should see. In our film, there is no diegetic sound at all. Even in the office scene when we hear our protagonist's superiors dump paper work on his desk. The only other voice to be heard is our main character's monologue, which has been voiced over the top. This is very similar to the short film Love Sick.

Characterization

• Our protagonist only ever seems to smile when he finally meets the girl he has been chasing around the city. In other scenes, we do not see him smile, which therefore insists that he is not happy with his nine till five job and his everyday life. 
• On the other hand, we do get the glimpse that our character is trying to make his own life more eventful when he views the world in a more vibrant exciting way when he visualizes the land through his hands. When he does this, we get the feeling that he tries to find some good points in the world, because he continues to do it throughout the film.

Camerawork 

• In our film, we have made use of a wide range of shots. Our opening shot is a pan across the sea shore whilst we see the title being displayed. We used this because we wanted to give a sense of taking in the landscape for the audience. 
• We also use close up shots too to let the viewer see the protagonists face more clearly, to find out what he may be feeling, through the translation of facial expressions. We can see in these two screen shots that we have used close ups to show his expression.

Above we can see that the character is smiling whilst we approaches the sea shore

The above screen shot is a close up so the audience can see the unhappiness in his face when he is at work.

I feel that the camerawork in 'In Perspective' is similar to the camerawork in Little Larry. Little Larry is always using close ups to show the character's face. However, it always seems emotionless and empty.

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and your ancillary tasks?

Below is a video I had edited together evaluating how I thought our entire portfolio worked as a real commercial product.

During the filming of this video, I attempted to video my computer screen to show similarities between my group's and a real Little White Lies review. However, I was unsuccessful in videoing the whole screen and only managed to video a part of the review. Also the screen had black striped across it. So to fix this, I have posted the same Little White Lies review below.

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

For our audience feedback, we asked one of our media studies classmates to tell us what he thought or our portfolio. Below is the recorded interview.

Did you understand the film? Was it clear?

Charlie agreed that the film was clear. He understood that the protagonist was 'stuck in a dead end job'. Therefore, this evidence tells my group that our film's theme was understandable and it was not hard to follow.

What did you think that of the de-saturation and what did it add to the film?

Charlie understood that the black and white was used to represent the main character's unhappiness. This means that our audience was able to recognize that we used de-saturation as a way of communicating sadness.

Can you comment of any editing techniques used?

Charlie's opinion was that the editing was very good. He liked the way that the world in the frame made by our protagonist's hands was more vibrant and colourful compared to the world around him.

Can you comment on the monologue and the soundtrack?

Charlie identified that towards the end of our short film, the pace of our soundtrack picked up. This was used to feel like the film was building up to a climax.

Any particular points and why?

Charlie liked the cross fading during the time lapse on the seafront. This proves to us that this editing technique was successful and grabbed the audiences attention.

Any points that you did not like or thought could be improved and why?

Charlie was slightly confused about the woman. He felt we should have introduced the woman in some way because it was unclear of what she was meant to be. For example a friend that he already knew or just a stranger. Despite this, Charlie thought the editing for In Perspective was flawless.

So to conclude the short film feedback. Our audience was able to recognize that our protagonist was not happy in his current life as a result of the de-saturated filter on those scenes. This was because our audience had subconsciously related to Rick Altman's theories of semantic and syntactic codes.  o we have learned that they could spot that this technique was usually used to represent a dull atmosphere. Our audience was very happy with the editing techniques used, especially during the time lapse on the sea front and the world seen through the frame made by the hands. From this, we have learned that visual effects such as cross fading and clever colour techniques, are a great way to catch the audiences mind and really fascinate them. This could be because the modern film audience has seen too many films where plain cuts are made and no extreme visual effects are used to grab the viewers attention.

Does the poster do a good enough job about representing the film?

Charlie thought the poster represented the film very well, he liked the colour difference effect we used on each half of the poster. He thought it directly reflected on to the film and meets its purpose as a short film poster. 

Would the poster interest you and why?

Charlie said it does interest him because the layout of object on the poster was well laid out, the title was not confusing or difficult to read. He liked the way we had included reviews and incorporated production company logos that matched the poster appropriately.

Do you understand what the film would be about from looking at the poster? Would a tag line have been necessary?

Charlie thought the poster did not essentially need a tag line. However, Charlie saw the film before he saw the poster, so therefore he already knew what the film was about. Despite this, he thought the title gave away a clue of what it would be about. He thought that if he had saw the poster first, he would have an idea of genre, but maybe not of plot developments. But he stated that he knew it obviously would not be a horror. 

What do you think could be improved about the poster?

Charlie could not think of any major improvements to the poster. I proposed the idea of making the colour side more vibrant but he disagreed and said it would look fake. 

So to conclude the short film poster feedback, our audience was easily able to tell what genre our short film would fall into. However, they would not have been able to predict any plot developments. This is neither a positive or negative result as giving too much plot development in a film could ruin it. On the other hand, sometimes some audiences would like to know. Our audience could understand that our protagonist somehow felt lonely and separated from this real colourful world. This means that our poster makes sense, meets its purpose and therefore is not misleading to any viewers who then go on to watch the film. Charlie thought the layout of our film poster was well organized. This meant that we had included all the necessary objects that should be included on a film poster and that it was not messy or over crowded.

Does the article about 'In Perspective' in the style of Little White Lies interest you?

Our reviewer compared our review to a real one completed by Little White Lies and said that it was spot on. He said it really looked like it was from the magazine itself because all the conventions where there such as the large photo header and the title fonts . He commented on the terminology we had used to be extremely similar to those used in the real reviews.

Are there any imperfections or anything else that you would change?

Our reviewer stated that there was nothing her would do to change our Little White Lies review. He commented "It looks like it came straight out of the magazine".

So to conclude the Little White Lies review, our reviewer thought that our version was unmistakably similar to the real magazine. This tells us that we were able to imitate a real film magazine and make audiences think that this was a real review as a result of aesthetic and text similarities. 

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

Here is how i used new media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages. This has been made using the presentation website, prezi.com. Below is my prezi formatted answer.