How I improved the visual

I wanted to develop the paper lens caps I made,  so that I could create a stronger/clearer image.  I created black circles on a word document at 3.6cm and then put white symbols or words in the middle.  They looked liked this....

I then printed the circles onto acetate....

Whereas the images inside the circle on the lens cap weren't clear, now the image was much clear and this created a better image and visual for the audience.  I was also able to create a new effect whereby I shot through the lens cap.  This was possible because the acetate was more transparent than the card.  

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

Cinematography - Inspiration/Development/Challenge

Below are screenshots from films that have inspired us when planning the style of our cinematography.

Our main inspiration was experimental film project, 'The Words of Bokeh'.  This film inspired me to learn the technique and have this as the main theme.  The Words of Bokeh spells out a phrase throughout the film to the audience.  This was the inspiration of our narrative, and we decided to spell out Harry Potter quote, "Not All Those That Wander Are Lost".  As you can see above, this film also inspired me to use brighter lights within my cinematography.  The brighter the light, the clearer the image.  Because the audience need to be able to read the words, a clear image is needed to maintain the focus of the audience.  Brighter colours are also more visually captivating to the audience.

The reason why The Words of Bokeh is original compared to other films that use the technique, is because it blurs natural sunlight into words.  This was difficult because the sun needs to be a certain brightness in order to blur a symbol.  Ultimately, I was able to blur a symbol from sunlight reflecting on the waves crashing against the shore.  I wanted to show a broad visual for our audience.  I didn't want all of the lights to be in darkness, so the importance of the day times shots was high, and I loved the overall balance of night and day in our final film and thought that it was visually effective.  

In a youtube tutorial that I found, I was inspired to merge the colours of the blurs together.  I loved how all the different colours that would usually clash were visually pleasing in the footage.  Because we do not have a conventional linear narrative, we needed to engage our audience visually.  The mergence of colours certainly engaged our audience, and the feedback on this was outstanding, and audience members commented on how they loved the gradient blurs.  

The final shot of our film was inspired by Bokeh Beautiful, which is an experiment on creating original bokeh blurs, without manipulating the shape of the light.  Once again I was captivated by the mergence of colours and how the opacity of the lights change when moving the camera.  These shots were intriguing to our audience because of the changing opacity and the merging colours an how colours spread out over the screen.

The opening of Love Bokeh show a wet vehicle with bokeh lights shining through.  I wanted to develop this idea and show a single drip traveling down the window.  Our main theme is travel, so I wanted to show different types of travel, whether it be common or whether it be something small like a drop of water traveling down a window pane.

Our film challenged the conventions of experimental bokeh films is through cinematography.  We decided that we liked the effect of using the lens caps as a vignette.  This was visually engaging, especially when a seagull flew through the bird lens cap.  It would have been better if the black background were darker, and less transparent.  We would have also work better if the shape in the centre had been cut out.  This would have created a less smoky image in the centre of the screen.

Poster - Inspiration/Development/Challenge

When researching film posters, I came across this poster for the film Martha Marcy May Marlene.  I liked how the character image was shielded by the Letter "M".  I thought this was very visually engaging and quirky, so I tried developing this technique and having four separate images behind our title, "BLUR".  Our audience liked the use of colours and the quirky idea of having four separate images that show the genre of our film.

However, Marth Marcy May Marlene was a more saturated release compared to our art house film.  We started looking at experimental film posters to see what information they put on them.

We found that most posters have who the film director/production team is, with no distribution or release information.  This is why we put little information on our poster.  If audience wanted to find our more about the project, they could look on our youtube/vimeo/twitter and facebook pages.

If we were to improve our final poster we could put social networking and online distribution links at the bottom in smaller print.  This is so our audience knows exactly what website to go to instead of going through search engines like google or yahoo.

Review Page - Inspiration/Following conventions

We didn't feel the need to challenge or develop the conventions of a review page.  Most magazines keep the same template because readers are used to and expect the same quality from every issue they purchase.  

Daze of Wonder was the inspiration when creating our review page.  When researching the different types of review pages we needed to focus our search to magazines that would promote experimental films.  We found that the magazine Sight and Sound promoted saturated and niche films.  We deconstructed the design of the magazines initially and found what we liked and didn't like.  We liked the simple layout, and our audience felt that a simple layout made the magazine more engaging and easier to read.  The language used is for students/professionals, and we liked that this magazine targeted a maturer audience.  When promoting our film we wanted to target students and professionals that have a broad/deep interest and knowledge of the field.  The font we used was a font that is used in other products that our target audience are interested in.  When asking our audience members they said that they relate to this font because they have purchased, seen or watched this font on other reliable products.  We wanted audiences to relate our font to a reliable product so that they were intrigued in our film.  

If we were to improve our review, we could put a page number and date at the bottom to make it feel more like a professional magazine.  

Below is the final film that myself and Jess annotated showing the conventions and how we challenged these.

Evaluation Question

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

When making our ancillary texts, we felt that we needed to maintain the same theme and style as in our film.  Our film is very slick, stylish and very original.  The colours, for instance, are very captivating.  Our poster and review page both needed to show the originality and quirkiness of the piece.  

Bokeh is the main feature within our film, and for our audience to understand, or be intrigued by our poster I needed to introduce the uniqueness of our film.  I selected both "untouched" bokeh (lights just blurred with no word/symbol) and two of our most eye-catching shapes (the stars and the people).  I chose the stars, because it is our brightest image, and will capture the audiences eye, and I chose the people because it is our most intriguing and thought-provoking image.  The main aim of the film is to intrigue people, and make them want to find out about the technique.  These particular images will certainly intrigue audience members to watch our film, and captivate them from the beginning.  

I used a dark grey background to introduce the surrounding dark area around the blurred lights.  Most of our shots are filmed at night, so I also wanted to introduce the way we present the bokeh lights in our film.  The grey background was also used to bring out the colours from the images further.  All the colours that are in the pictures are very appealing and attractive colours.  By contrasting them with a dark background they will become even more attractive.  

Although I was inspired by a current film poster (Martha Marcy May Marlene), I used the stencil of the title because it is like the lens covers we have been using.  Shown below...

I wanted to suggest to the audience how they could achieve this technique themselves through our poster image, a couple of shots within the film, i.e. the bicycle and the "wander" shots.  Because we did not invent this technique, and it has been done before, we felt that we wanted to make a film that used our own ideas, and at the same time promoted the almost unknown bokeh effect.  

What we wanted to maintain in our poster, we also wanted to promote in our review page.  When looking at the film magazine "Sight & Sound" we saw that the majority of the space filled was with text, and the lesser part of the space contained an image.  Most pages only have one image.  I chose to listen to the audience feedback and use the image of the blurred people as the image on our review page.  I wanted to link both my poster and review together, and this image was the most captivating image for our audience.  The image also links to our poster because of the vibrant colours used on a contrasting dark background.

When making our ancillary texts, we kept the same font as the title in our short film.  Most media companies, such as Apple, use the same font on all advertisements for their products.  This is a subliminal  reminder of the brand.  We decided to follow this principle, and make the title font our brand font.   It could be argued that we subconsciously chose this font because we are surrounded by Apple advertisements which target my age group.  We researched the font and discovered that "helvetica" has been used by Apple in promoting their iPod and iPhone products.  

"50% of iPhone users are under the age of 30, 15% are students. "  (Rubicon - Apple iPhone Successes and challenges for the mobile industry - focused on US users).  We share the same demographic as Apple, so using a similar font will guarantee visual interest from our audience.  

Using the same font maintains the same house-style throughout so that audiences would instantly associate the article and poster with the film through the same, recognisable font.  This promotes our products as a brand.  The images used are very quirky and rebellious in film techniques.  Because of this originality, our products promote our production company as an experimental, art house film company. 

Because of the originality of the technique, all products could easily stand alone.  However, they work strongly together because of the connection in colour, font and strong, captivating images.  All grab the audiences attention with bold statements, and intriguing design.  I think they combine very well and work effectively as a collection.

Evaluation Question

What have you learned from your audience feedback? 

When gaining feedback from our teacher on "The story of an Hour" she felt that many of the shots were clumsy and not well placed.  She wasn't getting the right feel from the piece.  We therefore knew we needed to be inspired by our work.  We were not initially inspired by our film idea, and this was visible to the audience.  We therefore learnt that our audience will be inspired and captivated if we are when creating it.  

During the duration of the Blur project we have continually asked our target audience their opinions on all of our products through social networking sites, including Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.  Gaining audience feedback has been very important in the improvement and development of our products constantly throughout the duration of research and planning.

Facebook:

This has been our main communication with our audience, and the social-networking site where we gained most of our feedback.  Facebook has allowed us to embed videos from youtube, post screenshots from the film and pictures of our review page and poster to gain audience comments, whether good or bad.  Not all of my friends on facebook/people who commented and gave opinions are passionate about film.  Some had a general interest, others more passionate.  This gave us a wider scope of opinions on our products so that we could really develop our film.  

Above is an example of one of my posts on facebook, showing our target audience our film poster, and asking for more feedback, and one of the comments from our target audience.  This comment suggests that we change the background to a different colour.  Although we felt that this background colour is the perfect colour for the background, we did agree that the font colour was too close to the background.  We therefore went away and changed the font colour to improve our image.   This feedback was very important to us.  From making the poster myself, sometimes it is hard to judge your own work, and to quickly think that other people will like it.  From gaining feedback, we can make sure we keep following audiences likes.  

We also gained feedback on our first draft of our film on facebook.  

Although our first draft had pieces missing, our audience reacted well.  They loved the calming effect of the footage and how the editing flows smoothly.  However, they found the music repetitive, and gradually boring.  When re-drafting we therefore focused on getting the extra footage and also in developing and changing the music, making it less repetitive.  This feedback, like before enabled us to improve our product, giving us focus points to work on.  From this feedback we learnt that our audience wants more shots using bokeh, and to maintain the "professionally" captured theme. 

Although we did not gain any feedback from youtube, twitter or tumblr, we did post regularly on these sites to gain interest and promote our film and products.  After the first couple of months, we saw that we were gaining lots of interest on facebook, so began to focus more on promoting out film on facebook.  

While it is important to gain a wide range of opinions from people with different passions and backgrounds, I also asked my teachers and class colleagues.  I was gaining some general statements of "I like this", which are non-detailed responses.  From my teachers and colleagues, I could get detailed criticisms which focused on "what worked" well and "even better ifs".  This helped us to keep on track, and to continually develop our products.  

From our first draft we have made the following changes to our products due to audience feedback:

• Soundtrack - we have made the music less repetitive, and more uplifting, yet maintaining the flow and rhythm of the piece.  
• We made sure that the theme and style of our film was maintained throughout our piece, and that all the shots were at the same level as each other
• We also posted screenshots from our film onto facebook, and asked them to vote which image would be perfect for a poster.  We then used the images that the audience picked and used them on our final poster. 
• Changed shots that did not fit in with the rest of the film - e.g. close up shot of bee hive - was said to be too by by an audience member, and that it didn't fit in with the rest of the dark background shots.  - We replaced this shot with a mid shot of a Ferry.  It is a darker shot and fits in with the theme of travel/journey throughout
• We changed the font colour on the poster so that the audience can read the text. 

Below are a serious of images of the changes made.

Image one is a screenshot of a close up we removed due to audience feedback.  The audience member said that she liked the shot, yet didn't feel that it fitted in with the theme and style of the film.  She said that unlike the other shots, this shot was very bright, and contrasted too extremely to fit in.  After attempting to manipulate the saturation of the shot on premiere and not being successful we decided to replace it with a shot of a passing ferry (shown in image 2, top line on the right).  The audience member felt this shot fitted perfectly, and maintained the style and theme of the film.  However, initially the ship moved in a diagonal line.  Our teacher felt that this didn't work with the ship traveling at this angle.  Jess decided to try leveling the ship.  After the change, our teacher felt that this worked perfectly.  

Audience members felt that the shot shown in image 4 did not fit in with the other words and symbols.  However, they liked the effect it create.  To create this, instead of zooming in, passed the lens hood, I did the opposite and zoomed out to show the lens cover.  The lights shown through the cover and created a different type of bokeh.  This is our own original experimentation with the technique, so I felt it was important to experiment further and use more titles like this one.  Image 3 is a screenshot of my further experimentation.  Audience members liked the "wander" shot, and felt it added to the feel of quirkiness and the originality of our film.  

Our music starts off quite gently, and then gradually speeds up.  Most of our footage is slow or has been slowed down during the editing process.  Audience members liked the calming feeling, but felt that the rhythm of the film could be slightly quicker in places.  I went and filmed more traffic scenes, which Jess suggested to speed it up in her edit.  To maintain the theme of blurred footage, we then put a directional blur which created even more pace.  After adding it to our film, audience members loved the mix of slow and quick paced, and said that it really covered and explored all types of travel, whether it be rushed or whether it be slow and graceful.

Evaluation Question

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

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

From my overall experience with blogger, I would have prefered a site that would enable me to set the layout of my blog, rather than ordered it in order of date posted.  Instead of creating new posts I found myself adding sections to older posts so as not to throw the order of my work.  I would have liked to ordered my posts in sections, Research, Planning and evaluation.  

Final Review Page/Feedback

Review Page - First Draft

This review is based on the Sight and Sound article I analysed earlier.  Like Sight and Sound I have chosen to used three colours for the fonts.  This makes the review easier for the audience to read, and puts focus on the main text and image used.

I have used one of the strongest images we've gained from the research and production stage.  This is our strongest image because of the eye-catching, bright colours and how they artistically, and naturally merge together.

I wanted to get more feedback for our review page....

"I like the image you've chosen to use as its very interesting and sums up the content of your film well, however, it doesn't show that you will change the light into a shape.  To improve it you could put the text into collumns, like they do in real magazine reviews, and put an image of a shaped bokeh." - Hannah Emery, 17




"The font used looks quite boring.  I know its more sophisticated than other film magazines, but I think it needs to look more fun.  I wanna look at the page and be interest, not put off by office fonts.  Maybe change the font to the same font used in the poster and film?"  - Abi Jones, 17




From this feedback I think I need to make slight changes to the review page.  Hannah felt that the image used shows the technique, but not as fully as it could be if we use a different image.  I will try using the close-up of the people instead of a simple bokeh.  This will show the complexity of our film and the skill involved.  Abi felt that the font used was very formal.  Our film is very fun and quirky, so I I will change the font back to our original font used in our film and poster.  This will link our ancillary products more closely together, because they will have the same house-style.