Final Final Film :)

Here is the final edit of our film, we have made some minor alterations to it.
Hope you enjoy it :D

The Running Man from Fuse Films on Vimeo.

Media Evaluation

This is our Evaluation of our short film. We decided to create it as a video, rather than all in a text format, as it would be more interesting and engaging for our audience. Throughout the video, we discuss the codes and conventions, genre, target audience etc. which we have also addressed on our blogs, frequently.

Enjoy :)
In our media evaluation video we have included discussion about:
-codes and conventions
-costume
-shot types
-brief planning and research
-filming
-editing
-song/sound
-what went well..
-even better if..
-audience feedback
-target audience
-genre

-storyboarding/animatic

Evaluation- Planning and Research

The role of new media in various stages of production is vitally important as it enabled us as a production company to research thoroughly into short film, analyse certain aspects of short films and understand familiar trends throughout short films. We decided to create a short film, lasting approximately 5 minutes. As a group, during our AS project we created a film opening and thought it would be a challenge to, this year, create a short film, as it would require different skills. We worked well as a group to achieve high grades and aimed to do this again with our short film. The influence of Web 2.0 on the pre-production stages of our project was extremely important as it enabled us to reach a wide variety of resources, and access an unlimited audience.
Using digital technology was an advantage throughout our project as it allowed us to research widely into various short films including 'Lift' and 'Le Cheval 2.1' . 'Le Cheval 2.1' was of particular interest to us as it was a hybrid genre which incorporated an interesting running sequence, featuring a blend of art-house and comedy. The use of digital technology was effective and useful during the story-boarding process. First, we did drawings of our storyboards and scanned them in using the computer, which we could then change into an Animatic. This showed us how the shots would flow together and if they looked right in a particular order. We then uploaded the Animatic to YouTube and Facebook, which were essential to reaching our intended target audience. We also allowed for our audience to comment on certain aspects of the story-line and the development process. We did this in order to incorporate our target audience and involvement them in the development and finishing of our film.

Storyboard Development





Story boarding ideas

In order to understand our target audience in depth we created a questionnaire, using Google Docs, and sent it out through our school email system. This enabled us to access our target audience, who were potentially our peers aged around 16-18. We incorporated ideas from our target audience as we felt it would be important to include what they want and like in a short film, their views also altered our initial ideas. We also felt that by incorporating our target audience into the planning and production process it would create a interactive feel to the overall project. The results from our questionnaire showed that our target audience was aged around 17-19, and wished to see an entertaining short film which featured some aspects of escapism. We incorporated these ideas into our short film. The escapism feedback allowed us to research wider into short films, and understand the aspects of escapism, we wanted to include a 'butterfly effect' theme in our short film. This appealed to the escapism elements our target audience wanted.

Our research into short film was aided by the Internet as it allowed to reach a wider variety of resources. Towards the start of my project I looked at a number of short films and short film festivals to get some inspiration, for a short film for example Independent Lens and DepicT. YouTube was essential as it hosts so many short films, also it provides an embed code which we can then use to post videos of interest on our blogs. I found this useful, especially when we were choosing what song to use for our film, as I could easily post three or four videos onto my blog and again ask for feedback from my audience, and teachers. As short film acts as a genre within itself, whilst researching and analyzing I did not see particular codes and conventions that we could adhere to. However, certain aspects, due to the short time span of a short film, are often used when creating a five minute film. For example, there is a moral high-ground, consequences, feel to a lot of the stories featured which is interesting to watch. For my research I found that many short films provide moral messages and perceptions on life, for example the short film 'Shelf Life' which showed a man being overly sensitive and cautious about his health and safety. However in the end his obsession caused his death, the message here is that wrapping yourself up in cotton wall can result in even worse consequence's. We felt that the role of a short film was to portray a certain message, therefore we decided to stick to these codes and conventions. Our main thought was to portray a karma/butterfly effect message, which implies that every action has a consequence. In order to achieve this we came up with a simple message which was equally thought provoking. In our short film, our main character wakes up late, which ultimately effects the overall outlook of the film, also he loses his hat which also alters the ending, as we use a split screen to distinguish between two characters. We believe our film's message is bold and in some ways true to life, as we related our story line to real life situations, for example missing the bus. Shelf Life

In general, our planning and pre-production went well as we managed to use the Internet and web 2.0 to our advantage and it enables us to reach a lot of resources. From all the short films, I watched and analysed I was able to create one myself.

Evaluation-Ancilliary Tasks

The combination of our short film, and ancillary tasks, (film review and poster), worked well together to generate important interest in our film. They were effective in working together as a set, rather than separate pieces. We felt it was important to do this as if the ancillary tasks didn’t relate to the film; it wouldn't persuade readers to watch the film.

We knew that the poster was an essential product which would endorse our film if done correctly; therefore we looked at a number of independent film posters, as this would ideally help us generate some ideas concerning what elements to include in our poster. For example, we viewed the poster for Paul Andrew Williams film ‘London to Brighton’ and analysised the ways in which the photos were used and where certain elements were placed. We found that, due to the films tense and ‘real life’ nature, the images used tended to be profound and frightening.


This was appropriate to the genre of film and the audience it was intended for; we took this into consideration whilst planning. The seriousness of the film influences the way the poster is advertised and marketed and the combination of the poster, along with the actual film, excellently portrays what the film will be like. This poster inspired us particularly because it was simple yet fitted directly with ‘London to Brighton’ effectively. Also, we felt it was bold which made us want to watch the film. This is how we intended our poster to be.
Ancilliary Review

We felt that to create an effective combination of ancillary tasks and our main product we needed to keep to the codes and conventions we had applied to our overall project. In other words, the ancillary tasks would need to incorporate our intended audience and engage them thoroughly, as well as in keeping with our genre. As we had thought in depth about our intended audience, we were aware of the materials they would read and view, and in turn, what they wouldn’t. We felt that a long-winded and boring poster would not engage our audience, or work well with our fast-paced and fun short film, so we created a simple yet interesting poster. Our film, named ‘the Running Man’ features a male student aged around 17 years old, wearing a checked shirt and jeans. Due to his costume and appearance we automatically interest a certain target audience, therefore we kept the layout simple to appeal to wide variety of people. We decided as the film is predominantly about running and where our character is heading, the silhouette would feature heavily on our poster. Also the bold title ‘the Running Man’ would be in the centre, in order to grab the audience’s attention and ensure that they remember the name of the film. We kept the fonts similar throughout our ancillary products and the film, to show their importance as a combination, rather than separate media texts.
Ancilliary Review Review

As we had a created a company name and logo, we liked the idea of incorporating a simple theme concerning the fonts, colours and layouts, so that our pieces worked well together as part of a set. Also, the idea that the film would be recognisable due to the poster was important as it would reach a wider audience and generate support quickly. This is why when it came to creating the film review we stuck to the same codes and conventions as the poster, although we were aware that the review needed to work well in the combination for different reasons. Unlike the poster and film, the review would feature in a magazine not created by us; therefore we needed to write it as if we hadn’t actually made the film ourselves. This was difficult as when we researched film reviews, it was limited to blockbuster films. Generally we found that short film reviews were featured on the internet rather than in magazines however in magazines like ‘Total Film’ we did find some short films. We intended to feature our review in ‘Total film’ as we felt it would reach the target audience we wanted, and fitted well with other aspects of our project including the poster. The combination of our three media products work well as a set as they tend to use the same frameworks and the ancillary tasks effectively target our intended audience through the types of media they are.

To create our magazine review and the poster we used Adobe Photoshop, a programme which is used a lot throughout the media industry. At first we found it difficult to grasp the program as it is complicated however after we had spent some time working out what tools were essential and how to do certain things we got the hang of it quickly. We created three different posters, some not finished, initially to run in a series however, we found from audience feedback that one was more popular so we decided to use this as our final poster. Also the final poster, worked well with the review as it featured similar images. Photoshop helped us to create professional looking projects which worked well with our main production piece; also we were able to maintain an overall project that we were extremely proud of. We felt, by creating an effective combination of ancillary and main tasks we would be able to reach a wide audience as well as interesting the one we had. We also liked the idea of maintaining the idea of a production company which effectively used posters and reviews to market their film.

Audience Feedback

Here we have posted a video featuring audience feedback from our target audience:



Thanks for watching :)

Audience Feedback

When we had completed are film we decided to gain some important audience feedback, which would allow us to ultimately change certain aspects of our film. We interviewed around 30 people, aged 16-18 and asked them a series of questions. After our audience completed the questionnaires we were able to understand how our audience felt about the film.

Here are the results of our questionnaires, we have published these using Scribd.com:


Audience Feedback

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK – THE RUNNING MAN