Social Realism - What Is It?
Social Realism is a genre used in visual arts that has, over the years, become a very interesting source of entertainment for all sorts of audience and people; an expressive way of showing a 'slice of life'. Click here to find out more and see various examples of the genre 'social realism' in use...
Film Promotional Poster
For the latter parts of the project, one of the additional tasks me had to complete included creating a film poster to promote our short film...
Research Into Setting
Go to Blogger edit html and find these sentences.Now replace these sentences with your own descriptions.
Creating A Production Company Logo
For this group project, we felt we needed an identity or logo to represent our 'short film company'. We had already had a production meeting organizing and deciding on a name (Makley Productions) but we also felt a visual presentation of this identity would have been appropriate to include as a credit in our final piece.
First Set of Footage!
Our first pieces of our short film to capture on film were the internal shots in the house. Click here to see the very first bits of footage we captured with our Canon 55oD camera and external microphone.
Friday 22 February 2013
Thursday 14 February 2013
Evaluation Q4: How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?
For this evaluation, I decided to use my graphic design and artistic skills to explore my response and present it. I decided on creating various mind maps/explanation diagrams to show my response.
I needed to create some plans on how I was going to set the mind maps out though, as walking into it blind would be a very messy and foolish method of approaching the question.
Here are my initial sketch plans for the diagrams:
And here are the final pieces to answer this evaluation question:
Research
By using the modern technologies I listed in the diagram in the research stages, we were able to gain data and research that was rich in quality and very accurate to the theme of social realism. It also saved us a lot of time to use technology rather than going out to find hard copies of research and spending ridiculous amounts of money on films and film viewing tickets.
The fact we could use YouTube and other video sources for researching films was also a great advantage for us, as it allowed us to access films easily, plentifully and appropriately as we could see from others feedback whether the film was a successful one or not.
Another factor that should be consider if that we could easily find different cultural or political based meanings through the internet easier rather than watching only physical DVD's and films, as we could simply search for exactly what we wanted and most of the time find it, enabling us to gather research and knowledge reasonably quickly.
Generally, the media we used in this section of the project was also technically research on presentation techniques, as we started to learn how we could record and nicely show our pieces of work in a nice, organized way. The more we created with these technologies, the better we got; meaning the better we will present in later stages of the project.
Generally, the media we used in this section of the project was also technically research on presentation techniques, as we started to learn how we could record and nicely show our pieces of work in a nice, organized way. The more we created with these technologies, the better we got; meaning the better we will present in later stages of the project.
Planning
The planning process was quite an interesting one for using modern technologies, as it was tempting to just write everything onto a piece of paper a lot of the time. However, we found that recording our ideas and planning development on digital media put us at much more of an advantage as it allowed us to stay organised and keep our plans tidy and easily accessible for later reference throughout the project (specifically production stages).
New digital technologies were also a brilliant way for us to store any information we needed or created. As well as being easy to upload and create online documents on websites such as Scribd and SlideShare, it allowed us to easily view and improve on our pieces, whether they be a written document or a video source. We could easily access them to see if we needed any improvements in either the actual planning content or the presentation of our ideas. It also helped us experiment with creating videos more as we could physically create our own videos containing plans and ideas rather than just embedding film files from other users like we had done in previous research stages. (E.g. Research into Environments of the Real World)
Production
New digital technologies were also a brilliant way for us to store any information we needed or created. As well as being easy to upload and create online documents on websites such as Scribd and SlideShare, it allowed us to easily view and improve on our pieces, whether they be a written document or a video source. We could easily access them to see if we needed any improvements in either the actual planning content or the presentation of our ideas. It also helped us experiment with creating videos more as we could physically create our own videos containing plans and ideas rather than just embedding film files from other users like we had done in previous research stages. (E.g. Research into Environments of the Real World)
Production
The production stages was easily the stage that required the most use of new media technologies. This ranged from hardware to software to websites and social networking, all of which created a, in my opinion, really well structured production process.
By using all of these modern pieces of technology, we were able to create a modern, easily accessible and great quality product that easily looks like it was built within a professionally industry standards. By this I mean that all technology that was used was similar, if not the same as, to what professional media or film production companies use with their own products. This made our project seem extremely authentic.
Also, by creating a good, realistic short film and production process it would allow us to create great quality evaluation points, as well as being able to sync our ancillary tasks with great accuracy. We would also be able to use any skills we had gained from technology used in this stage, as well as the previous, to create the future ancillary tasks and evaluation responses.
Evaluation & Ancillary Tasks
By using all of these modern pieces of technology, we were able to create a modern, easily accessible and great quality product that easily looks like it was built within a professionally industry standards. By this I mean that all technology that was used was similar, if not the same as, to what professional media or film production companies use with their own products. This made our project seem extremely authentic.
Also, by creating a good, realistic short film and production process it would allow us to create great quality evaluation points, as well as being able to sync our ancillary tasks with great accuracy. We would also be able to use any skills we had gained from technology used in this stage, as well as the previous, to create the future ancillary tasks and evaluation responses.
Evaluation & Ancillary Tasks
The ancillary tasks were primarily built from a program that is of industry standard; Adobe Photoshop. This program was used to create the poster and magazine review as it allowed us to use our artistic and creative skills as best suited to the products we had to create. When we were researching examples of these pieces, we would use other presentation techniques such as Powerpoint (uploaded to SlideShare) and Prezi presentations to present the research we had gained. Because we had previously used similar presentation methods for our very first stages of research, we created the ancillary task presentation pieces very quickly, as we had already developed a good knowledge on how to use the software and programming.
The evaluation tasks had to involve use of technology in order to stay interesting and informative to a reader. Media technology was especially great for presenting our pieces of work for this section. Once we had all the content we needed written down somewhere (such as on Word or paper), we could use our newly acquired skills from practising with the media technologies previously and easily copy and paste or import and apply the content we needed into these presentation techniques (such as YouTube videos or Prezi presentations), creating very interesting, and in some cases interactive, records and presentations.
Blogger and Wix were also pieces of technology that were used for this project; to present any content we created in a blog format. Katie and I used an advanced blog layout on Blogger, whereas Matt used Wix. These sites allowed us to create posts and pages, embed content (such as YouTube videos, SlideShare presentations and Behance portfolio pages) and create nicely set out pieces of text and presentation. We gradually learnt how to better control and use these blogging format sites as time went along; learning how to align text better and import and place images clearer for example.
So, on an overall view, I found the use of modern and new technology went hand in hand with our project and really enhanced the quality of any pieces of work we produced; whether it were research, editing or anything else the project involved.
Evaluation Q3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?
I created a Behance portfolio presentation to explore this question. You can view it on the link below:
Evaluation Q2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Here is a Prezi presentation, which was created by Matt, to explore and answer this evaluation question:
Overall, I think that we did a great job with creating the ancillary tasks to go alongside and work in synergy with our short film. If we were an industry, we would be using the film poster to advertise our films in various places such as cinemas and bus stops (as already researched before) and the magazine article to get our film and its contents out there for the public to read about. These pieces of media would aid our short films sales, promotion and overall excitement if it were an industry standard project, as advertising it needed to get anything promoted in this modern age.
I really love the fact that all of our pieces of media match and look right together; all fitting a certain style and theme that we ourselves have created. They all hold similar features, which make them instantly identifiable of being related to each other. It's also a lot more professional to keep to a theme/style. You want you're products to link together rather than lead their own single parts. I think they all link very well, making them a success!
Evaluation Q1: In which ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
In order to get my point across on how my project used and challenged typical conventions and themes in the social realism film idea, I decided to create a video to explain some big examples of how we used them.
Another note I would like to add is how we used people and directors as influence. We didn't directly copy anyone from the industry, as we felt this really limited our creativity and didn't allow us to challenge the ideas enough for our film. We wanted to create a piece that was no where near as dramatically led as most other social realism films. By this we mean that from our analysis's of already existing social realism based films, the stories and characters were still very dramatic in our eyes, involving themes like drugs, knife crime and gang culture. Although this IS seen in our reality, it's not exactly a prominent part of it and problems tend to be and end up being dealt with a lot less dramatically as these social realism films did.
Our topic in our film revolved around running away from home due to an abusive, neglected broken family lifestyle which is considered normal for a social realism genre based film. We made sure to constantly think of how Ken Loach would approach this issue throughout our production as he has a lot of experience in films with this topic. However, we approached the results and solutions to this problem a lot differently. Most social realism films would have presented the main character running away and getting involved with horrible situation such as muggings, fights, drugs and other anti-social behaviours, to express their emotions and frustration during their point of crisis. We, however, felt this to be far too dramatic, considering the fact that in reality, teenagers who run away, in a middle/working-class lifestyle, usually returns, quite quickly too, due to the fact they realise they cannot handle being homeless or miss their family, 'dealing with the cards they were dealt'.
I feel we created a much more realistic theme in the theme by doing this rather than going down the dramatic route.
Another note I would like to add is how we used people and directors as influence. We didn't directly copy anyone from the industry, as we felt this really limited our creativity and didn't allow us to challenge the ideas enough for our film. We wanted to create a piece that was no where near as dramatically led as most other social realism films. By this we mean that from our analysis's of already existing social realism based films, the stories and characters were still very dramatic in our eyes, involving themes like drugs, knife crime and gang culture. Although this IS seen in our reality, it's not exactly a prominent part of it and problems tend to be and end up being dealt with a lot less dramatically as these social realism films did.
Our topic in our film revolved around running away from home due to an abusive, neglected broken family lifestyle which is considered normal for a social realism genre based film. We made sure to constantly think of how Ken Loach would approach this issue throughout our production as he has a lot of experience in films with this topic. However, we approached the results and solutions to this problem a lot differently. Most social realism films would have presented the main character running away and getting involved with horrible situation such as muggings, fights, drugs and other anti-social behaviours, to express their emotions and frustration during their point of crisis. We, however, felt this to be far too dramatic, considering the fact that in reality, teenagers who run away, in a middle/working-class lifestyle, usually returns, quite quickly too, due to the fact they realise they cannot handle being homeless or miss their family, 'dealing with the cards they were dealt'.
I feel we created a much more realistic theme in the theme by doing this rather than going down the dramatic route.
Wednesday 13 February 2013
Final Piece: Anchored Renegade
Our video was then edited to the best quality it could be and a final cut was produced. The video below is our final short film product. It was uploaded to YouTube at full 1080p HD quality. Enjoy!
Using a website called Animoto, I created a 30 second long key frame compilation slideshow using the websites slideshow creation and hosting services. I would have made it longer, how to do so with the software I would have had to purchase a premium membership, which wasn't worth for the 10 pictures I had and on our student budget.
Using a website called Animoto, I created a 30 second long key frame compilation slideshow using the websites slideshow creation and hosting services. I would have made it longer, how to do so with the software I would have had to purchase a premium membership, which wasn't worth for the 10 pictures I had and on our student budget.
Wednesday 6 February 2013
Final Film Poster
This is our final promotional film poster.
I also printed this poster of in real life to envision what it would look like on a wall in reality. I didn't have access to any A2 paper, which is what film posters would usually be printed on, so we had to make do with A3. But, we think it still looked really legitimate and authentic, as well as felt proud of our product (although we know it would have looked a lot better at an A2 scale).
Here is my evaluation notes of the promotional poster product:
Overall, I feel that by creating this promotional poster, it would attract lots of potential viewers to our film and it would definitely benefit our films popularity and knowing amongst members of the public. Film companies and directors create these promotional posters to get their new films out in the world and have its name recognized, rather than letting it be released without anyone having prior knowledge of its existence. It's kind of like having a prior warning or announcement for the films release basically.
Also, if film posters and other similar advertisements didn't exist, people would find it extremely hard to have motivation or desire to go see films in cinemas or buy them on DVD or digital copy etc, as they would have no prior knowledge on what style or ideas are within the film at all, thus making it impossible to predict what the film will be about in any other way other than going straight to watch it. This would also cause quite a big risk review wise, as if people didn't know what it was about, made effort and paid to go see it, then hated it, they would display this dislike. This could be avoided by giving them a prior advertisement so they would know before whether they would like the film or not.
I think what I created was quite successful and looks very realistic as a social realism based poster. I think it would definitely boost the promotion of the film and give a very clear idea about the themes and styles in film, as we can clearly see from the poster that the film is set in quite grungy and negative tone. It's also, thanks to the bold lettering and colour contrasts between the text and image, stands out very bold and is easily noticeable catching lots of eye attention. I'm quite proud of this piece.
Monday 4 February 2013
Creating A Film Poster Advertisment
Using Behance, I created a small portfolio page to present the creation process of our groups film poster. You can see the progress shots of the posters' creation here, so click the link below to view:
Click On This Link Please!
Click On This Link Please!
