Evaluation

In what way does the media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real products?
I think that our film uses some typical conventions of similar products, but also has some unique qualties that would be very different to another Vampire Film.Our film is stylisticly similar to convential vampire movies, With costume ideas similar to the recent Film Twilight.

The Film is set in a mainly urban environment, but with autumn leaves and trees visible in a lot of shots, This breaks the conventions of most vampire films which are set in Rural Landscapes (Van Helsing, Lesbian Vampire Killers) OR a city atmosphere like in Underworld.

One Way Our film Challenges the conventions of other products is that our Film uses a nonlinear narrative, meaning that the events are not shown in chronological order, such as flashbacks (similar to 500 Days of Summer and TV'S Lost). This helps us weave more depth into our story and create more background into the characters shown. (Below is a crucial flashback sequence from our film).

How Effective is The combination of your main project and the ancillary texts ?
For our film we created a radio trailer to promote it, which included audio from the film, music, and a voiceover saying the time and channel it wll be shown on.

We also created 4 seperate posters to advertise the film, and then we made a group poster, combining elements from (in our opinion) the two most eye catching and best posters (Luke Parker's and my own).

The Ancillary texts and out film work well together because the all have simialar stylistic features and as a collective represent our body of work very well.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

The original ending we had for our film didnt work very well, as the friend we showed it to found it confusing, and we had one major jump-cut that needed refilming, also practical problems such as the area being to small to film in, we changed the location of the alternate ending aswell as altering the dialogue from the script and adding a dramatic climax.

From our film feedback on youtube we decided to alter thigns about our film such as adding more music and sound effects. We also got approval for our use of a strong female lead character and didnt receive any critism about the film's production, rather the poor quality of the acting.

Our audience liked the 'Bite Me' pun and didnt comment on the mild language used. Either way we decided our film should be showed after the watershed. (9pm).

A sequence from the original ending >>>>

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

Throughout the duration of making this film we have used Youtube, we used the popular video hosting site to research into short films, we used it find videos to get inspiration and conventions. in the evaluation stage we uploaded our film onto it so that we could get audience feedback.

We used the website facebook to help promote our film. We used Blogger to record our progress. We used media equipment such as a Sony HD 1000 camera to film our film, along with a zoom recorder for voiceover work. We also used a DV100 to get our film onto the editing software from the camera which was IMOVIE HD
We used photoshop elements to create our film posters and we used garageband to create our radio trailer. All of theses technologies were crucial to the making our film.