As our genre is drama, I feel we filled this genre successfully with our film. Our plot and character ideas were easily understood - a misunderstanding female lead, made to sound jealous yet make you feel sympathetic towards her, feels insecure in her relationship when her partner has been spending less time with her as of recent. Ben, the male lead is made to be seen as secretive towards the audience, but little does everyone know, he is not doing what they think he is, and he just didn't see what it could look like to everyone else. Then comes the private investigator, Leanne, who has a kind confidence at first yet similar outlook on Rachael's situation. However once the characters meet up again and chat, Leanne's real character unfolds and she is quite manipulative of what Rachael does, behaving quite un-professional in the situation. With our genre not being out of the ordinary, yet still quite thrilling, we tried to make our surroundings and costumes etc. as realistic as possible.
Our target audience was young girls, as they may be able to relate to the storyline and feelings of insecurity and paranoia better than anyone else. They may be pleased by certain parts in the film, like the way Leanne and Rachael team up against Ben, this shows strong females, especially in the last scene when Rachael and Ben come to blows. The way in which Ben proves the audience wrong may also please them, giving them hope against what the earlier parts of the film may have made them feel.
As with all films, editing and continuity are main features of them. Continuity is really important so the film runs smoothly. We experienced some problems in getting this right. For example, the scene in which Leanne and Rachael are spying on Savannah and Ben had to be shot twice, because of snow. The second time was a good street, as the cars were parked up and close enough together to get a good shot from the back seat of the cars. However, the pub scene followed closely after that was a little more tricky. With the pub being on a main road, traffic flow was unavoidable. Also, the ground on which the camera was on was uneven, and outside a busy fish shop! It didn't take us many takes of the scene though, and we managed to work around and with our surroundings. Also, inside the actual pub was difficult, which is the reason the scene is so short, and there's not a lot of dialogue. It was a busy Friday afternoon, and the music, talking and playing of pool don't add to the quality of sound.
In our film, we want the audience to relate to and feel for the main female lead, Rachael, and depending on the way you use the editing, we can make this happen. In the opening scene, a medium shot in which Ben turns his back on Rachael while they're in bed, making him seem like he's withdrawing himself, with Rachael looking rejected. In the next couple of shots, they have a small argument and Ben opens the curtains and Rachael stays in bed. The new lighting shows more emotion on Rachael's face, however she still looks rejected and hurt. Also in these shots, you don't see Ben's face much, and only for a glimpse when he seems angry at Rachael, meaning the attention is on her and you feel sorry for her.
2: How effective is the combination of your main product and the ancillary texts?
In this years production, we have portrayed a story in which the audience is made to side with the main character, Rachael, the main female character who is more than convinced her partner Ben is being adulterous - sympathetic towards her and feeling bad towards him. We thought it was important to also portray this within both our film poster and radio trailer, as then not to give the surprise twist away before a person sees the film, as Ben is actually planning to propose, and Rachael seems crazed. The film poster tagline is 'there's a fine line between love and obsession'. I think this is good, as it doesn't give too much away yet there is also a glimpse that there's something further to the story than a paranoid girlfriend and her cheating man. The pictures chosen show Ben walking towards his car with Savannah, a work colleague, which sparks the female fear. However there is also a photo of Rachael in the car with her private investigator, in the same setting and a little *rec in the corner, to show the boyfriend is being spied on. The way the words 'love' and 'obsession' join together shows the 'fine line' there is supposed to be, intertwined as they are in the film. The spying element is also shown, in the way there is no photo of the couple together, but separately and in separate situations, as if they are against each other.
We also did a radio trailer in the same way, so the audience feel sorry for the female. It works well as when Ben does speak, he sounds as though he's being harsh towards Rachael, who sounds in despair when she speaks. The mixture of voiceover and lines from the film is a perfect blend, as it doesn't give too much of the film away, yet the lines we chose give you an idea of the plot itself. It is short and simple, including the tagline, 'at which point does suspicion become paranoia'. I think this gives the audience an idea that everything is not what it seems, as does the writing on the poster. Here is a link to our radio trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aLaQt6njZo. As it was hard to find radio trailers online, we looked for inspiration towards actual movie trailers. Here is a link to 'Obsessed' Film Trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXk6H17Ecjw. This is a similiar film to ours, yet is more thriller than drama, because of the sexual content and violence in this. The cuts in the trailer are effective, yet at times confusing to the audience if the events aren't understood. However, I think it sells the film well.
3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?
With the original brief that was given, we came up with many ideas and eventually we decided to do a short film based on romance, somewhere with the use of a private investigator storyline. We rounded up people to fill out our audience research questionnaire, the link to which is www.welovea2media.blogspot.com/2010/10/audience-research-questionairre.html. This would help us understand what kinds of things people wanted to see from a film, how they felt about topics such as swearing and violence, making us more successful in the creation of our film.
As you can see, this person answered the question on swearing with 'when it is overused' giving us the idea not to use too much, but maybe once or twice for dramatic effect where the swearing would be acceptable. We decided to use 'bastard', the only swear word that appears during our film, as it is an appropriate time and situation in our film, to just suitably shock the audience. We also recorded people speaking about our film, but these weren't as successful and open as the questionnaires were, as maybe these people felt pressured into saying good things.
For the actual audience feedback once the film was complete, we all used different ways of collecting it, to find out which was the best method. Sophie A recorded people speaking, but once again this proved to bring a similar outcome as the people were nervous and may have felt under pressure so as not to offend. Laura used a social networking site, Facebook, to gather hers and I feel this was the most effective.
People really went into detail about what they thought, and lots of people replied. With you not being there when they are watching the film, they were able to form true unaltered opinions, without feeling pressured to spare your feelings. The same with Rhiannon's questions, she used e-mail. Although she emailed friends and family, not being able to see Rhiannon herself will have meant they put what they truly thought. I however, sat family and friends at a computer, and then asked them to fill questions in on paper.
Because I was sat at the side of them, this probably added to the lack of detail into what was wrong and what could be improved with our film. However, people closest are the most likely to give constructive criticism and not just criticism! For example, quite a few people commented on the music not fitting well in the final cut, so we changed it just in time. Most of my feedback was positive, with the odd comment on how the lighting could have been improved, and a little continuity problem at the beginning. As we chose an open ending, people commented on how they wanted the film to be longer so they saw what happened next. This is great as it proves we captured our audience exactly how we wanted to.
4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Throughout the creation of our film and blog, I have used many media technologies. As a start, I used the Internet for the research and development of our film. At home I use Opera and Internet Explorer, however at college I use Mozilla Firefox. Google is the main search engine I use. 
I used all these things to research similar films, posters and radio trailers. We also used it to find information on private investigators, as this was a completely new topic to us, this was the best idea so we didn't go into it with no knowledge whatsoever.
Another reason for the Internet was posting our work on Blogger. This is to upload the things we would normally write using pens and paper. The advantages of this are; once you have created work, you can edit it whenever you want to, it keeps work safe and all in one place and with order such as dates and who did what. The disadvantages are, if you don't have a connection to the Internet, you can't work on Blogger. Here is a screen shot of the Blogger dashboard. You can also upload photos, videos and links. 
Here is a link to our blog http://welovea2media.blogspot.com/
To capture and shoot our film we used a Sony HDV (which stands for high definition video) camera, which records onto HDV tapes.
This meant our filming was very good quality and much clearer than a normal video camera. The camera allowed us to make adjustments to lighting and balance, meaning we could make it look even more professional. The camera isn't too big, however trying to get it to and from places on public transport, it seems bigger! Thankfully, most of the time we had cars. The microphone was attached to the camera, therefore the further away the people, the quieter the sound etc., so sound continuity was hard to get right.
Editing our film we used the Apple Mac computers in college, uploading our film onto the computer using a DV recorder and a tape was difficult because of the wires and connection getting lost. The editing software we used was Final Cut Express. This was a normally easy and clear software to use, as everything is clearly labelled, although some of the font is too small. We were able to do zoom, cut, fade and cross, making for a more professional finish.
To record our radio trailer, we used a zoom recorder to get the voice over, as we didn't want to use all clips from the film. The zoom recorder was difficult to use at first as the buttons weren't labeled, and it wasn't understandable what each one did. It was also hard to judge how close the person should talk into the zoom recorder, without it being too loud or quiet, and without feedback. The recorder also ran out of charge. Once we had our recording, we used Garage Band to tune and edit the recording, creating our radio trailer.
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