In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
We began by looking at social realism films such as Happy Go Lucky -Mike Leigh (2008)
Happy go lucky is a social realism film because it contains the conventions used in British social realism films,
such as:
Real British locations (these are recognisable to the audience)
unknown actors
- Natural lighting
- Naturalistic body language and fasical expression
- Low budget
Representation of character, (in this case Poppy is the main character and the film is about her life)
And her representation of social class.
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We also watched other short social realism films such as Grian's Lou-Lou Lives here (2003)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7h6mc1H-t5Q&feature=related
- As you can see from this Youtube clip, the footage is black and white, this add's some mystery to the sequence.
- Hand-held camera makes it more difficult to focus on the character
- Natural lighting is used (however a spotlight is focused on the girl)
- Diegetic and non diegetic sound is used
Themes/issues seem to be confusing
Costume and hair is kept simple to convey a message..what that message is with 'Lou Lou Lives here I'm not too sure.
The use of black and white throughout the short film was very inspiring, and this is one reason for our own use of black and white.
- As further research into social realism we also looked at other short films such as:
(Eight - Daldry1998)
(Joyride - Gillespie1995)
Wasp - Andrea Arnold 2003)
Conversational piece Tunmer 2009)
- Unfortunately i wasn't able to find clips of these to show you, as these short films were all on one DVD shown in class.
However a definite pattern was clear to see after making notes on each film, some common conventions used were:
Diegetic sound
- A wide variety of shots used such as, extreme close ups, tracking shots, low angled shots, establishing shots, birds eye view, long shots, and pov shots
I also noticed that a lot of the close ups and extreme close ups, were of specific props that aided the narrative.
For further research we also watched shorter films, also showing social realism films and these can be found at http://www.virginmediashorts.co.uk/
One that I found inspiring was "Mixtape"
And you can watch this here:
www.virginmediashorts.co.uk/films/past_entrants/mixtape
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I thought the idea was simple, yet really creative at the same time. It uses real locations, with natural lighting and a simple script. This short film was the perfect way to begin the research for our own media product.
- Our media product uses the style of social realism, this means the following conventions are used: (however this is also challenged with our use of green-screen)
Our theme is Romance/Fantasy
• Our film is set in a real location (British locations) these are used for realism
• Natural lighting is used
• Cast (actors used)- are not well known
• Mise en scene – (costume) is kept simple we’ve kept both characters in black and white
• Non Diegetic sound – the characters voices are recorded using the camera
• Desaturated colour (but in the case of our film black and white)
• The themes/issues are real (and audiences can relate to the themes and issues represented)
• Narrative is presented like a story
• Naturalistic body language and facial expression and body language ( our film uses this to show emotion, and guilt)
• Costume and hair is kept appropriate for the time (we’ve kept our characters in black and white clothing, and simple hair and makeup to maintain realism)
• Dialogue is sometimes improvised
• Continuity is maintained throughout
• Although we have used the style of social realism we have also used a fantasy element to it too, as Rich is a ghost. This was portrayed with our use of green screen which proved to be very challenging, (I'll discuss this more in depth later on) But he has stayed around so that he can tell his girlfriend Amie that he’s sorry.
We kept the camera work mostly handheld, but used a variety of shots such as extreme close ups so the audience got the full impact of Amie and Rich's facial expressions as these help to convey the story, and the emotion felt by the characters. We also used long shots so the audience can establish were the characters are. this is true of actual media products too and so for that reason we have used forms and conventions of actual media products.
When it came to editing we wanted to create the feeling of how desperate Rich's character was too make Amie believe how sorry he was for leaving her, we portrayed this through editing, because we showed Rich's character looking and speaking straight at Amie, and then cut to Amie, so the audience could see her blank facial expression to his words.
This gave the audience a clue that she couldn't see him.
• The aims of a social realism film is to represent certain themes and issues, such as:
• Realistic issues
• Class
• Relationships
• Professional issues
• Political issues
• Crime
• Real life – (Hard hitting)
• Ethnicity issues – (depending on the time/related to time)
• Moral questions/issues
• These are all forms of representation found in social realism films such as in Wasp (Andrea Arnold 2003) deals with issues such as relationships, morals, and social class these issues are represented to us, the audience by the characters used, mise en scene, British locations, and dialogue.
- Another example is 'This is England (2006) Shane Meadows'
- Themes/issues used:
- Social class
- Crime/violence
- Hard hitting
- Relationships
- Ethnicity issues (related to time)
- Moral questions and issues
Mise en scene
Costume represents: working class Doc martins- seen as 'the thing' for the time. set in: 1983
Hair/Make-up : popular style for the time/trends/working class
props- cigarettes, beer (drinking)
British locations
- Graffiti
- Having watched these films, and made notes on how the themes and issues are represented in social realism, this helped us to define the themes and issues within our own film such as
- Romance
- Relationships
- Real life/hard hitting issue (suicide)
- A strong female role (characterisation)
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• Social realism films are created to show the audience the illusion of reality this allows the viewer to engage with the on – screen subject as being ‘real’
• Realism can be found in fiction and nonfiction and therefore it result in the distinction between the two being blurred, as some fiction can appear to be very real. - • When using props in social realism, they need to be real things that you use on a day to day basis. These are usually handbags, wallets, mobile phones, and keys, anything that can aid the audience expectations for it being real such as in our product, we kept props to a minimum because this helps to make the narrative seem more real, as Amie wouldn't have a lot of things with her, as she's in the park, all she has is the letter (this is our main prop)
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• Social realism films tend to represent real people, with real life issues because that is the audience that they are trying to target.
• And our issue is the same, our film is about real issues that some members of our audience may of gone through (without the boyfriend being a ghost) and so we are addressing themes and issues that relate to them.
• Our media product fits into the style of social realism as we have used most of the common conventions noted above that social realism films include.
- Because our main demographic is girls aged 16-24 (the blockbuster audience) we wanted to include the themes and issues that would target them, and so we new we wanted our film to include romance and also an element of fantasy as this genre is becoming very popular with a teenage audience, such as with the Twilight saga, its become popular with not only teenagers, but also grown up in there 20's because of the element of the super natural boyfriend that would do anything to keep his girlfriend safe. This use of the male character attracts a female audience so without even trying to target an older audience use of the fantasy/romance/male character can open up a whole new audience without it even being directly targeted for them. Such the "Twilight Mom's"
www.edition.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movies/11/16/older.twilght.fans/index.html - This link shows that even mum's are interested in the Twilight saga, even though the films are not targeted at them.
- This link shows that the Romance/fantasy genre doesn't stop being appealing to women over 24 years old.
- An older female audience such as girls in there 20's would also be more likely to be targeted by our film in the Little White Lies magazine, as earlier research showed a slightly older demographic reads the magazine.
To watch our film, and see the social realism conventions used just click the link below:
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zF3H4fLGmko&feature=player
- We also did a lot of research into actual film posters before we began to even think about creating our own.
- As a class we researched and looked at the conventions used in posters such as 'Fish Tank' by Andrea Arnold (2008) evidence of this research is shown on the blog here: http://advancedportfolionelms.blogspot.com/2010/03/poster-research-fish-tank-jo-white.html
- and also here: http://advancedportfolionelms.blogspot.com/2010/03/poster-research-fish-tank-2nd-poster-jo.html
Looking at real media products such as these posters made me really notice the content on each of the posters viewed.
- I noticed that all posters have these conventions:
- A big bold title
- The actors clearly visible
- Directors name
- Tag line near the title
- A main focus image of main characters relevant to the narrative
- A certificate rating such as 12 A
- Star's rating the filmReviews from Magazines or Awards from festivals
- Logo's of funding such as British film council or National Lottery
- Credits there are always slightly squashed up and directors, actors names are in bold
and also a website address (this can sometimes include more about the film) info etc..
After noticing all of these conventions on actual posters i realised these were what we needed to include in our own poster.
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As you can see from our poster i have included all the content that is on real media posters. I also added a realise date for our film, as i noticed that most film posters include this information somewhere on the poster. For this reason our poster uses common forms and conventions of a real media product.
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we have used:
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A bold title which connects 'My and love' this had technical difficulties which i hadn't thought of when i came up with the idea to connect them, this was to do with the use of transparent lettering, but was overcome with the use of the 'Move tool' in Photo shop
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A bright main image with Amie's character looking directly at the camera, this suggests to the audience she's a strong character
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Rich's character looking down on Amie, this could suggest he's looking down on her because he's not around anymore (heaven reference maybe)
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Also suggests he's caring
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There body language suggests romance
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Transparent title suggests fantasy element, and raises questions
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star rating from magazines that our target audience would read 'Glamour' and 'Cosmopolitan' magazine.
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Certificate rating showing 12A shows that its not going to contain violence/inappropriate language
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Tag line suggests mystery, "the boy the girl the letter" creates suspense.
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Representation of characters:caring/loving/in a relationship
- It took a long time to decide on a main image for the poster and i even made a few different versions with titles and different fonts to see which ones worked and which ones didn't, the ones that didn't work, were the ones that didn't meet the conventions of real media products, for example when using fonts, an example of this is:
- As you can see the font i used was 'Lucinda Handwriting' which isn't used in real media products as the font is too curly, which means it doesn't stand out, and also it cannot be read easily from a distance.
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There are many other things wrong with with this first draft image.
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Firstly the size of the title is far too small
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Also the characters names are too small and they dont look eye catching
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Also making Rich's character transparnet gives the plot away too much.
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Next we started research into Little White Lie's Magazine, and how there reviews were presented on the page, we started out by looking at handouts for the magazine, something i learnt from that lesson was that Little White Lies Magazine featured one particular film throughout there whole issue, so for example with the issue we were looking at the film 'Kick- Ass' was featured throught the copy, this meant little pictures/drawings of characters from Kick-Ass were presented throughout each page.
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The first review we looked at was for '44 inch chest' it was written by: limara Salt
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the layout was very presis in the number of paragraphs, and on further research i noticed that on the online version of the magazine, seven paragraphs are used on each review.
- Amie created the layout of the review so that it incoraparted the style of little white lies magazine, she used three different fonts to keep the copy looking exactly like it was from the actual magazine.
- As mentioned earlier, Little white lies magazine had a recuring theme throughout the magazine, and so we decided to choose 'An Education' as our theme. This was because Amie and Emma had decided that this would be the perfect theme to target our audience.
Little White Lies is mainly targeted at a male audience, and also an older audience, however a lot of girls read it too. also i found out that the Little White Lies website has a section that is deadicated to friends of the magazine, and it even has the function to 'like' the magazine on the social networking site Facebook. The site has over 2,572 fans/friends on facebook and a lot of them are our target audience 16-24 year old females.
Because Amie made every little detail of the layout look incredibly like an actual review from the magazine, i think our review uses the conventions of an actual media product.
We started looking at distribution and how it's the distributors job to design film posters, and market them appropriately to there specific target audience, it is also the distributors to make sure film reviews are widely available within the media.
A useful website that explains distribution and other aspects of marketing is http://www.launchingfilm.com/
I used this website for research at the begging of the task.
• The poster for our film ‘All My Love’ is effective because it doesn’t give too much away by the images used, however it includes the elements necessary in order for the props and characters used to attract the audience’s attention.
As you can see from the finished poster, the characters intrigue the audience because there pose makes the audience want to know more about the storyline because the characters positions in the frame suggest mystery, and allows them to ask questions.
Our target audience is females aged between 12-24 the certificate we chose to make our film was a '12' because we didn't want to totally dismiss a large proportion of our audience by making it a 15. I think this was a good decission, becuase it allows our target audience to a lot wider.
When coming up with the title for our film, we realised that at the end of the suicide letter that i wrote, (see earlier post)
Rich ends the letter with "All My Love" this seemed a good title for the film because it allows the audience to be intrigued by the title without giving too much away.
This is the original photograph that i took. As you can see the photo itself has changed on the actual poster.
• The location that we used for the poster is very minimal and the viewer can only see the characters and the letter, and also the grass on which the characters are lying on this suggests to the audience that the characters pose is romantic, and with the title "All My Love" the audience can tell it's going to be about love, and the two characters.
• From the way in which the characters are lying down, it’s clear to see that they are romantically connected, and the viewer can also see that the male character Rich is holding a letter. – This will generate questions by the target audience.
• For the poster we kept it in colour, even though our film is in black and white.
• The use of colour makes the poster stand out a lot more, and I think our target audience is a lot more likely to want to go and see our film, by the use of colour used within the poster.
• Another visual decision that was made was not to make Rich look ghostly like in the film, this is because we didn’t want to make it too obvious what the narrative was about. Also making Rich look transparent, posed some very challenging consequences, because it didnt make the poster look like a real media product.
• I think the poster would work as part of a marketing package because it includes all the right information, that a real poster would have, such as the poster for ' The edge of Love' it use's all of the same content, such as listed above in the first question, and it also intrigues the viewer, because it invites the target audience to ask questions, such as:
• Who are those characters?
• Are they boyfriend and girlfriend?
• Why isn’t the boy looking at the camera?
• Why is he holding that bit of paper/letter?
Allowing our target audience to ask these questions creates enigma within our products.
• And it’s not until you looking closer at the poster that some key information about the style and genre of the film is given away.
• Such as the reviews that have the star ratings, and quotes from magazines that our target audience would enjoy reading. The quotes read: “Ultimate summer romance” and “A must see tear jerk er” these give a little information away, without the viewer being able to guess the plot.
Although i didn't personally produce the review, i think this would also work really well in a real commercial context becuase Emma and Amie did a really good job in producing the review.
As a group we decided to split the tasks up into what of our own strengths were.
Emma is an English student, and so she wanted to create the main body text for the review. Amie wanted to focus on the design and the copy of little white lies, and so she created this in Indesign.
And as I mention above I wanted to create the film poster using Photo shop.
As you can see, this is the review that Emma and Amie created for Little White Lies Magazine. The Image used was taken as a still from our film in Final Cut Pro.
From this i believe that our target audience would want to read the review, and then want to find out more about the film. Because our specific target audience would probably be intruiged by our use of the male character and so they would take a look at our review, and thats when they would notice that our film, is infact for them, through the narrative.
The layout has been re created to look exactly like a review from Little White Lies, and i think any fan's of the magazine would be intersted in reading it too, not just our target audience.
Our use of layout invites our target audience in, as the big picture along the top of the page allows them to ask questions, and want to know who he is, and what film he is in. After this use of image has drawn our target audience in, the style of writing and film literate language used will also draw our target audience in, and at this stage the audience will make up there mind if the film is for them or not, and hopefully it is because we have incorporated themes and issues that our audience can realte to, and identify with. For these reasons i believe that our review appeals to a potential audience, through these factors, and also from looking at Little White Lies magazines facebook fan page. The magazine has a lot of young male fans but also a lot of women too, and so our review would hopefully catch there eye through our imagery used, and then through use of lanuage, and decription from our film.
To see other reviews from Little White Lies check out there website:
What have you learnt from you audience feedback?
- From the website http://www.launchingfilm.tv/ i found out some very vaulable information about how actual distributors target their audience when they have a new film out, and how they gather their target audience information, having watched this interview with Hugo Gumbar
www.launchingfilms.tv/planning.php?video=2&autostart=1
I realised that it is very difficult to target a specific target auidence as you never know if your product is 100% going to target the audience you want.
• Our audience demographic is: females aged 16-24 - Our media products are targeting a film literate audience, but that's mainly for the review, as its for little white lies magazine, and there target audience targets individuals that are interested in films.
Our audience feedback was made easier by the social networking site Facebook.
Emma had the idea of creating our own facebook page in which people could see our film, the review and even the poster and tell us what they thought,
• From the audience feedback that I received I think that overall our storyline was a success and females from our specific target audience liked that our storyline covers the theme of romance, loss, and the role model of a stronger female character as Amie moves on at the end of the film, instead of giving up on herself and letting her grief stop her from living her life.
• However one thing that I have learnt from reading our responses is that a lot of females didn’t understand that Rich is a dead boyfriend from the start.
• A good response to our film was that to make it more obvious to the audience that Rich has committed suicide would be to of made his voice echoed when he spoke.
• Another issue, that slightly linked to the one above was that a few of the girls I had asked was that they didn’t understand that Rich had gone because he’d left Amie, or that he was dead. And so again, we would need to make it obvious to the audience that he was dead, and that his spirit was just hanging around waiting for Amie, because he felt guilty for leaving her.
• Many of our target audience have expressed a great deal of positive comments which has been really good.
• Such as quite a few have commented saying that they enjoyed the film and thought the storyline was creative.
• However nearly everyone I had asked (of our target audience) had said that they either didn’t understand the green screen or that it was a bit ‘fuzzy’ around the edges of Rich’s character.
• And this was a main problem within the film, and sadly there wasn’t much that we could do about it, given the time we had, and locations used.
• Some positive comments that I received from the social networking site, face book was: “Overall I think it’s really good! Well framed and you used a variety of camera angles that were really effective”
• “All My Love is a really touching film” 
(A screen grab of our target audience from the site Facebook)
This is some of the audience feedback that we recieved on our Facebook page, that allows people to comment on our film, poster and review. The page is open to everyone however the comments selected are only from our specific target audience.
Film Comments:
"Really liked it - made me want to find out more and see what had happened to lead up to this point. The only suggestion I would make is when Amy is walking towards the bench in the beginning, you hear some of the traffic in the background. I would try to drown that out by maybe using some parts of your theme music to keep up the atmosphere you ... See morehave created quite well in the beginning of the video. And while Richard is talking, adding some of the music, very very softly in the back, to give it a more surreal feel.
Anyway that is my opinion, but loved the video and the music too. Well done to everyone who participated in the making."
"Really Really Cool. Simple but effective. Glad to see yours has people actually talking in it
I agree with some of the points in previous comments but apart from that, i cant think of any negatives"
"i think it was really good, i like the feel of it being very distant, but close at the same time. i think maybe at the start- you could have focussed on amy a bit more- rather than him- and introduced him with just his voice, then with him as a person"
"I like the opening shot, it's very well framed and how you bring the credits together with that shot to show that time has passed worked really well. I liked the way you experimented with the camera using different shots and different camera techniques, though at some points it was a bit 'bumpy' where it would have been better for a straight zoom and tilt of camera. The camera behind the female character as she walked towards the bench. I liked the reverese shot between both the characters as the letter was read, and that she was mouthing the words along, however i think it would have been best when the guy spoke to make it slightly echo-y to show that he isn't really there - giving it maybe a more emotional effect.
The green screen was good, though it was a bit fuzzy round the characters. The scene when they are lying together in the field is really good, it's really sweet as you show there pov of the sky and then we get a birds eye view of them which I really liked! I liked the bit when he was hugging her too, but felt like that scene was dragged out a little too long. When he disappears reading the last bit of the letter is emotional! I liked as she walked away you went from black and white to colour, this was a really good effect as it showed her moving on.
The music was really good, it made it different to other films as it was unique and suited the film, though it may have been an idea to have it playing when they were both lying in the field.
Overall I think it's really good! Well framed and you used a variety of camera angles that were really effective! Only cons or things you could of improved on was when he was speaking making it a bit echo-y and shorten some of the scenes!
Well done!!!"
Key points on reflection:
- This audience feedback is only that, from our film and our target audience have made some really good key points that would definatly improve our film.
- One key element noticed, was that our film title font doesnt match the font used on the title on our poster, this was because we wanted to make the font within our film, seem almost like handwriting, to fit into the theme of the letter.
- However when trying to create this within our poster, we realised that that particular font is rarely used within actual media product posters, and also it was very difficult to read, and so this is why we did not have matching titles with the poster and the film. Although this is justified, its a very vauled point because nearly every actual media product has matching titles in the fim, and on the poster.
- Another key element mentioned was that we could have focused on Amie a lot more in the beggining, so that the audience could instantly relate to her, and then bring Rich in to show he was a ghost.
- This would of worked really well, and if we could do the task again, i think this would be a very vaulable scene.
- Another scene that was mentioned by our target audience was to make Rich's voice echo at the start when he says "Hi Amie" to give the audience a clue that he is a ghost. This would also of worked really well, and on reflection i think would of made our film a lot more creative.
Poster Comments:
- For some reason our target audience hasnt commented on our poster or review directly onto our facebook page. However after showing our target audience the poster a lot of people commented on it, and also whilst i was working on the poster, peers mentioned what they thought of it.
- One creative critisism was that with the main image Amie is smiling directly at the camera, and they thought that she was meant to be upset, however the image on our poster reflects that Amie has moved on (as she says in the film) and this is also symbolished by the use of colour, as it shows that she is now happier, and in colour.
- This also shows that Rich hasnt moved on...and he is still there with Amie even though she doesnt know it.
- Apart from that our targert audience seemed to like our poster, specific things being:
- Use of title 'linking' symbolising together ness.
- Main Image clear and in the center of the frame
- Tagline: The boy The Girl The Letter...meaningful (tells the story)
These useful comments helped us to realise that we were probably targeting our audience with the use of image and title.
Review comments:
- Overall the comments recieved for the review have been good, our target audience have enjoyed reading the review and thought it gave a good indercation of what our film was actually like.
- Content mentioned: Good use of film langauage/terms
- intruiging insight into what the films about
- Main image creates enigma towards the film
- Layout seemed to be just like the actual little white lies magazine
- Good theme from the magazine to choose 'An Education' appropriate to target audience.
Overall i think all aspects of our media products target our demographic well.
Previous poster ideas
Previously when we were first putting our idea's together about how we wanted the poster to look, we all draw some rough sketches of the ideas we had. By the end of this task we had decided to go with a totally new idea.
However this is one of the ideas that i had sketched:
http://advancedportfolionelms.blogspot.com/2010_03_01_archive.html
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
• I use
d a new digital camera to take the photographs for the blog. I used a Samsung L313 digital camera. I used this particular camera because it had 13.6 mega pixels, and this was an improvement to the digital camera I used in the previous task.
(This is the camera i used)
• I also used this camera for the photos of green-screening that are also uploaded to the blog.
• The camera provided a nice clear picture of the day filming, and also the image used for our poster. It’s clear and sharp without looking too ‘photo shopped’.
• By using this new camera I learnt that the photographs produced make a much better image because of the amount of pixels the camera has. This also helped to improve the overall look of our blog. 
- Another new technology that i used was the Sony HD camera and a Samsung video camera.
I used the Sony HD camera to film two scenes within our film, as it was Emma's job really. I used this camera in the sequence when the camera is behind Rich sitting on the bench, and we see Amie walking towards the bench in a Long shot. The only problem with this scene was because i filmed it hand-held, the spare tripod was in the corner of the shot. Luckily with the help of editing we were able to expand the footage so that the tripod got cut out of the film.
Using the Sony HD camera meant that the quality of our footage was clearer, it also has a mic so that sound can be recorded a lot clearer than a normal camera. This is really important for us, as the dialogue is the most important convention used within our film.
- I also used a Samsung video camera that i hadnt used before to film the footage of the sky used when Amie and Rich are laying down. these shots were "worms eye view" and i layed on the ground and held the camera towards the sky to get the right perspective.
• Another new technology that we used was Final cut pro on the Apple Macs. In the previous task to edit our film, I used iMovie. Using Final cut pro instead made the editing a lot quicker, and after a few lessons in figuring out how it worked, a lot quicker than iMovie too this was because when you first begin uploading the footage to final cut pro, instead of it creating its own little windows like it does it iMovie, Final cut pro names each sequence of footage sequence 1, and so on... it also keeps the footage in the order of which you filmed it, this is a lot easier if you have filmed all the footage you want in the order that you want it to appear in your actual film.
• We used Final cut pro because of the benefits it has over iMovie, such as the ease of use, being able to split one clip is a lot easier in Final cut than iMovie because it is just one button in final cut.
• Also another advantage with Final cut pro is it doesn’t load each sequence on the right hand side, Final cut pro loads all the footage onto the left hand side, and automatically calls each scene ‘sequence 1’ ‘sequence 2’ and so on.. This made it a lot easier to find the footage we wanted and the footage we didn’t.
• One other benefit we found by using Final cut pro was that you edit the sequence in the ‘play’ menu that plays the final version for you. This made it a lot easier to cut the exact sequence we wanted instead of having to play the sequence and then stop it, and then cut it.
- Later on into the task, we were also told that by using Final Cut Pro instead of iMovie we had made it easier to work with the green screen footage than if we had used iMovie because we were having problems with the green screen footage anyway, as were we had added the footage of Amie and Rich, the outline around them was all 'fuzzy' the technician refered to this as being "ants" and unfortuntly we were unable to do anything about this.
A useful video i found on youtube shows some basic information that was useful at the start of the project.
• I used Photo shop to create our poster. Before the finished product, i played around with a few idea's in the drafting stage
(this was one idea for the film poster)
This was one idea that we had. Again i used the Samsung L313 digital camera to take this photo. This specific photo was inspired by the actual film poster "Edge of Love"
In the end we decided that this was a good idea, but it was too similar to the edge of love movie poster.
Although I had used Photoshop before, I think that my skills have developed within this task, because I realised that I couldn’t just upload a photo and change 
just a few things to that image and it would be done.
(This is the edge of love film poster)
With the help of this website www.tutorialized.com/tutorials/Photoshop/1 and previous knowledge i was able to create our poster.
• I had to really think about the image that I wanted to create and more importantly an image that would appeal to our target audience.
• And for that reason, the images that I had taken originally for the poster changed many times until I got the right one this is shown in prevous posts on the blog.
• The final image was inspired by an actual film poster, for a real film product “The edge of love” and also The time travelers wife.
• Another aspect of the film poster that I think really made me think about what our poster needed to communicate to its audience was the font, not only the style of font by the size too. I spent quite a long time looking through different fonts until i found the perfect one, and i even looked up different fonts at:
http://www.dafonts.com/ This site allows you to download different types and styles of fonts that other people have made. If you want to use a font for commercial use you need to contact the person who made it. The name of the font i ended up choosing after a long time of trying out different one's was ' Britannic Bold ' and as this particular font wasnt very interesting i decided to join the 'Y' with the 'L' so that the title "All My Love" linked together, which created a together ness approach to the title which i thought was appropiate for the film.
• As shown previously on the blog, I uploaded a first draft that I thought was okay at first, but then having spoken to teachers, and really researched actual film posters, I realised that it just didn’t work because the font wasnt clear to read from a distance, and after researching actual media products hardly any actual posters use this style of font.
• The font matched the font of our film titles; however the style of it matched that of handwriting. I think it was called Lucinda.
• And as you can see, this on a film poster wouldn’t work, for two reasons. One even if the size of the font was big, from a distance this would be near enough impossible to read.
• And two hardly any real film posters would use this style of font. And as our film fits into social realism this font wouldn’t work with the tone of the rest of the film.
• Another tool that was new to me, that I used in Photo shop was the ‘clone tool’ I used this to create the white background behind the characters, as before you could see house’s, as the angel in which I took the photo meant no matter how long the shot was, you could still see houses in the background.
• I used the ‘Ctrl’ and ‘Alt’ and the clone buttons on Photo shop to select the colour I wanted as the background. And then I used the ‘brush tool’ to conceal the houses in the background, I learnt that in order not to clone the wrong part of the image, the cross that appears on the screen must not move from the colour or image that you selected you clone. This video from YouTube shows the 'Clone Tool' being used: www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhokPypW6Oo
Another new technology that we used was green-screen. This technique was totally new to us, and we needed to be shown how to use it.
With the help of the media technians we were able to create the effect we were hoping for. Rich does appear to look ghostly within our film
, however it didnt work quite as well as we'd hoped. As it flickers around the edges. We spent quite a few lessons trying to fix this problem, however it the end there wasnt much that we could do to stop it from flickering.
