Kathryn's A2 Blog

Dear Moderator, My name is Kathryn Thornton, Candidate 1620, and welcome to my OCR A2 Media Studies blog. This is a record of the work undertaken as part of the G325 A2 Advanced Portfolio within the OCR GCS course in Media Studies. I worked independently to produce a short film in the Drama genre. The project lasted six months, commencing in September 2017 and finishing in March 2018. I hope you enjoy my work and find it both successful and interesting. Please use the navigation bar to access my work as organised into labels; Ancillary Tasks, Audience Research, Evaluation, Filming, Preliminary Task, Research and Planing, Short Film, Storyboarding and Trips. There is also a link to the School's blog hub and my other classmates' blogs. Thank you Kathryn Thornton 

Here is the Final Cut of my Short Film 'Hope":

Here is my Final Film poster for my Ancillary Task:

Here is my Final Magazine Review Page for my Ancillary Tasks:

For Evaluation 1, I used a green screen, iMovie and Youtube: 

For Evaluation 2, I used Powerpoint and Slideshare: 

For Evaluation 3, I have written a blog post: Audience Feedback had been essential to the overall effectiveness of the Short Film I have created. Throughout the stages of Pre-Production, Production, Post-Production and my Ancillary Tasks, gaining audience feedback has allowed me develop my Short Film further and meet the requirements of the films target audience. My target audience, was males and female between the ages of 15 - 40 years old.  PRE - PRODUCTION Throughout the planning stages of my Short Film, the most crucial audience feedback came here. Throughout planning my Short Film, I struggled to think of a storyline, I knew I wanted my film to be in the thriller or drama genre, so I drafted several different storylines. These storylines included; one on mental health, one where the character was struggling to pay the rent of his council house and ended up being evicted and one where the character was homeless. After going through these ideas with my Media Teacher...

For Evaluation 4, I used Prezi:

Yesterday afternoon I showed my short film to a small focus group and asked them to fill in feedback forms with ratings out of five and comments. Here is an overview of all the marks I got for my feedback. One of the main criticisms of my Short Film was that the music was too repetitive. After receiving this feedback I went back to my short film and listened closely to the music. However, I have decided to keep the music as it does reflect the repetitiveness of my characters life and does effectively contrast to the atmosphere of the short film as a whole. Also, most audience members also said how the little amount of colour grading was effective as it made it more realistic and reflected the mood of the short film. They said that lots of colour grading would have ruined the message of the short film as a whole. Overall, I am very pleased with the feedback I got for my film, and the feedback of what I could do better was very useful: 

Initially, my short film was going to be a Thriller/Drama, however, after drafting and filming it, I realised it settled more into the Drama genre than in the Thriller Genre. Therefore, my short film is in the Drama genre.  

I have had trouble editing the size of the credits for my poster to promote my short film. The credits at the moment are too big and the gap between the titles and the credits is too big. This I what I have done so far: 

Here is a rough cut for my Film Opening

Here is the font I am going to use for the credits on my poster:  Overall, I found it very difficult to initially download to font 'Universal Accreditation' as I had to complete many steps in order for the font to be used of Microsoft Word. Once downloaded, it took a while to work out how to use the font on Microsoft Word. I eventually realised to write the credits such as; 'Edited by' and 'Music by' I had to click on one letter for the whole credit to come up. In order to type normally I had to select the key 'Caps lock' to write the names of the 'crew' who participated in the making of my short film. 

I wanted guitar music to go over the top of my short film. I looked on the website bensound.com and found a piece of guitar music called - A Day To Remember. It is upbeat as well as sad which fits the atmosphere of my short film. The music is not entirely uplifting, but contrasts greatly to the atmosphere of the film. It does reflect the positive ending as well.

I used photoshop and Word in order to practice how to cut the person out of my picture. Firstly, I used  the photo cutting tool in photoshop around my photo. This was very precise, but it took a long time to work out how to use the tool. Here is a screenshot of the process I went through to cut out the photo: I then tried to cut out the photo on Microsoft Word. I found this easier to use than photoshop as all I had to do was colour what parts I wanted to cut out and what parts I wanted to keep. This tools was not as precise as Photoshop as it was very difficult to colour between his fingers and between the guitar. However, if I take more time doing it I could make the photo cut out more precisely.  Here is the final result of cutting the photo out on Word. I still think the result on Word is good even though the cut out needs to be more precise.

I have created two rough outlines for posters, to promote my short film: Here is the first one:  Second idea:  I like to second one more, because the background picture is very effective and the filter reflects the atmosphere of the film. Moreover, the design is quite simple but effective. Whereas in the first poster, the photo is less effective and the quality is not as good as the second poster. Therefore, I am more inclined to use the second poster to promote my short film.

Here is what I have done on my Magazine Review page so far:  I initially wrote and designed my Magazine review page on Microsoft word, however, I updated what I had done to the website canvassing, which was more useful and allowed me to create different designs for my Magazine review page. However, I did experience some difficulty creating the conventional black lines to go above and below the film information, I eventually worked out how to create them and they worked really well with the rest of my Magazine review page. 

Here is my rough Outline of my Magazine review page for the film 'Hope':

The Empire Magazine Reader states that its target audience and the readers are '3/4 male between the ages 18 and 40, employed, university educated, time-poor and in a relationship'. Therefore most of the articles and advertisements for various films found in the magazine would be catered for this type of audience. For example; films such as 'X-Men' can be advertised in the magazine, therefore conforming to the needs of the magazines target audience.  Furthermore, Empire Magazine shows the importance of advertising films that are going to persuade its target audience to go and watch it. The magazine uses colour schemes as well as different pictures from the film itself in order to advertise effectively. Therefore providing the audience with information, news and entertainment of their favourite genres of films.  Here are examples of the types of advertisements that the Empire Magazine produce:  In these two advertisements, the colour scheme is mainly dark bl...

Whilst watching the shots I have filmed for my short film, I decided to possibly title it "Hope" as this title resembles many things. The character of 'Hope Redsell' gives Thomas her wages after she finishes work, this symbolises how random acts of kindness can change someones life. This money allows Thomas to buy himself a drink to keep himself warm in the cold winter. The name 'Hope' also portrays the fact that there is hope for everyone to have some luck in their lives. In Thomas' case he comes across a poster, advertising for an audition for a talent show, where he can show off his talent as a guitarist. He eventually goes on to win the Talent Show and the cash prize, which will open up doors for a career as a guitarist.

On imovie I have been editing my short film, on one shot of Thomas walking in and out of a cafe, it was too long, so I decided to cut it down. However, the shots did not flow together very well, so I decided to add a cross blur between the shots, which I found worked better and showed the passing of time well. Here is the result: Before: After:

I have decided to add a voiceover to my film. This would make the storyline clearer and also make the audience have more of a connection to the character of Thomas. Here is my script for the voiceover:  No one knows truly who someone is, or where they have come from. They just judge people based on their front cover. Hardships come in every life and you cannot escape from it, unless you get lucky, I suppose. For me, the hardship, is being homeless, living day after day with no money or food. People glaring at you every single day, bullying you, so much you don’t want to exist. I have never had the easiest life, being abused when I was young, being moved from different care homes in my teenage years, I have never had much hope in my life. I am a guitarist, that’s what I have always wanted to do, but I never had any opportunity to show off my talent, to anyone. Even though some people are sympathetic and drop a few coins in my pot, I am grateful, but I wish I was like th...

I added a voiceover to "Thomas Waters, would you like to come this way please" to improve the quality of the speech. I first recorded straight onto iMovie from my Laptop, the syncing was good, but the overall quality of the speech was poor.  I then used this microphone, which was really good as the quality of the sound was good, therefore I will use this microphone for future voiceovers:

In Media Class today we annotated magazine review pages from 'The Empire' magazine, for inspiration for our ancillary tasks. We reviewed pages from X men mainly and assessed what colour schemes they used, their font sizes, quotes from critics or the film and how they would attract their target audiences as a whole. Here are some of the magazine review pages we annotated: 

For my Ancillary Tasks, I have decided to do a poster and a magazine review page for my short film. I researched some posters promoting films, which usually have the main actors and actresses on and how they targeted their audiences. Also, the posters were bright and had lots of different colours on. Here are some I found:   I also researched some magazine review pages for films, here are some I found: