Like all good texts I feel that my completed media product both follows and challenges the conventions of real media products within this genre. As is commonplace in film making in this time, the majority of successful films follow all of the right conventions, so as to please and stimulate the audience's imagination to what they associate expect of that specific genre, but also challenges them so to slightly reinvent and surpass expectations of the audience each time and to prevent the genre falling into too much of a platitudinous pattern.
With regards to my text it principally follows the 'bigger' conventions not only within its primary genre of
found footage but also within those of its secondary genres of
thriller,
horror, and
short film. Some of these include: The inclusion of a 'token' female who is portrayed as weak and defenceless which is more commonly linked to
thrillers /
horrors. Perhaps the two biggest conventions followed were pushing the boundaries of 'suspension of disbelief' and the fact that there is no definitive dénouement, the two of which are strongly linked to the
found footage genre and without them the genre would not be the same.
Of course, some of the lesser conventions were also challenged, which was to be expected even before the narrative had been thought of as the
found footage genre and short films happen to be two of the most 'stubborn' areas of film as their conventions so often contradict each other. Possibly the biggest convention of the short film that was challenged was the area of sound. Sound is generally used much more copiously as there is only a fraction of the time available compared to that in feature films and sound, especially non-diagetic, can goad an audience into thinking / feeling a certain way towards a character / event much quicker and smoother format than lines of dialogue can. Challenging this, my text contained an absence of non-diagetic sound as, following the conventions of the
found footage genre, everything within the narrative is presented as real and outside of the film world, the addition of non-diagetic sound shatter the intended realism of the film and the suspension of disbelief becomes no longer intact.
After I had completed the editing of my text to the required five minutes in length I showed it to various friends and acquaintances in the hope of merely gaining an unbiased opinion of the overall product and narrative rather than anything else. However, the feedback from the majority of the people seemed to continuously point to the same small areas that they considered could be changed for the better. I took note of this and re-watched my text and discovered that their suggestions may actually change my film in a positive manner, I therefore made edits to my text for the final time. One of the two things changed was the small matter of changing a few words upon the opening title card as it was originally deemed to be rather ambiguous in meaning. The second being the bigger matter of shortening the ''electrical interference'' effect in the penultimate scene as it originally occurred continuously throughout the scene which made it difficult to see what was happening. Below are some screen shots of before and after the edit of this scene, in the after shot you can see how much clearer the scene becomes with the decrease in the effect.
The audience feedback enabled me to see slight errors and amend certain aspects that would have undoubtedly gone unnoticed without a third party involvement. I feel that this shows the importance of audience feedback as even if I hadn't have been able to go back and revise my text I would receive invaluable information to assist me in the making of my next production.
It is more than fair to suggest that without media technologies the execution and completion of this project would not have been at all possible. Below are examples of the most prominent of the technologies I happened to use.
Adobe Premier Elements & Video Camera
This is the editing software that enabled me to gather together all of my raw footage, which I first collected with the video camera, and construct it into a fully functional linear and comprehensible text during post-production.
Youtube
This website proved to be an invaluable tool that accompanied me throughout the research process. Here, I was able to gain access to various short films of all genres and analyse them which provided a great insight and knowledge into the conventions of these films and their genres as well as the pattern of audience feedback associated with each, both of which proved to be of extensive help as I embarked upon the making of my own text.
My Blog
Throughout the planning and evaluation stages my blog, and of course the internet, has shown to be one of the most useful outlets in terms of digital technologies.
Through this I was able to accumulate all of my work for my short film into one place which added simplicity and organisation to each of these stages as all information was made quickly and easily accessible. I feel that this had a positive effect upon all of my written work surrounding this project overall as previous works were easily referable which meant that all successive works were more coherent and detailed.
