Evaluation Question 4

Website - M

As one of the secondary tasks of our Advanced Portfolio, creating a website was a careful and methodical process to ensure an effective sense of branding across our productions and to create a natural synergy with the other products.  We had to match the website to the postcard and documentary on all levels, including font types, font sizes, spacing, logo design, colour scheme, layout, and last but not least, the mood conveyed. This enlisted a lot of deliberation when it came to designing decisions between the group members, as we had to ensure that every decision, big or small, not only upheld the synergy between the film, website and postcard, but also conveyed the appropriate mood, more specifically a gloomy mood that conveys a sense of urgency and reflects the disapproving, critical tone of our documentary. Creating a website, however, required the consideration of more than just visual synergy as websites combine graphic visuals and information. Websites seek to provide both information and entertainment, a gap I found surprisingly difficult to bridge. This involved many trials and errors when it came to technologies used, drafts and plans, and audience feedback.

• Slide share and google docs are platforms for the public sharing of information and material, which is why they were so integral in the planning stage of the website process. Slideshare provided me with an abundance of secondary data and resources on short film website conventions, where I learned such websites often tend to have little to no writing and a minimalistic design which I replicated, allowing for easy navigation to other conventional components like an ‘About’ page or ‘Cast’ page. Google Docs remains as the primary form of online technology for me to gather the secondary data I find as it allows fast and easy collaboration with my peers, among other digital technologies.

• PowerPoint + blogger for detailing research on film website conventions and discussing how I planned to follow conventions, challenge conventions, deconstruct conventions and subvert conventions, etc. Powerpoint as a platform allowed me to input information quickly and efficiently in a clear effective manner. Powerpoint allowed me to do this while also providing features that encourage visual consumption, like font editing, background editing, inserting charts and so on. Furthermore, programmes like Microsoft Powerpoint are compatible with presentation websites like SlideShare where I can simply upload a Powerpoint and share it online with little effort. Blogger provides an opportunity to consistently update our coursework with specific, detailed blog posts in a variety of formats, allowing for easy visual immersion and orderly display of the progression of our project’s stages.

• Internet for analysing different short film websites in terms of layouts, navigation, interactiveness, colour scheme and design, a process of researching that indicated that most short film websites tend to display the full short film on the home page for easy access with very little writing to avoid distracting the viewer from the product. Originally, we were going to replicate this form, however after careful consideration we instead decided to only use the trailer on the website to build audience anticipation and hype, in turn encouraging them to view our full film on other platforms.

• For the actual implementation of the aforementioned conventions in the design stage, I used Emaze for two different interactive mini-website renditions/prototypes. Emaze featured easy designing tools and interactive features that allow inexperienced designers to create a product that engages with the audience on a visual level, which is why I tested the prototypes on this website. Emaze is a quintessential example of Web 2.0 as it encourages audience participation and engagement, at times even providing opportunities for user-generated content. This flowed well in terms of synergy as our other products also directly engage with the audience by a call to action, further emphasising the focus on active consumption of our products.

• I also Wix.com for more advanced and sophisticated interactive website design, browsing through different templates on the ‘Advanced Interactive’ mode before deciding the designs did not coordinate with our other products very well.

• I finally settled on Squarespace for final product, a service that provides different website templates for all purposes. I admired the minimalistic designs of the service as it forms a cohesive synergic bond with the documentary and postcard. Squarespace gave me a variety of options when it came to website design and editing, including the input of original social network links and favicons for our production company’s logo. The varied features also allowed for matching the font type of our documentary, as well as size, spacing and so on. The layout of our website is overall simplistic with an emphasis on panel-wide images that incorporate parallax scrolling. Squarespace provides features that allow our product to encourage user-generated content, as seen in the ‘Contact Us’ page where viewers can send us fanmail, fan art, collaboration requests and more. This includes a ‘news’ layout that provides audiences with an up-to-date recounting of events that led up to the product, as well as screening dates for the product, encouraging audience involvement. Moreover, Squarespace also provides ‘counter’ visuals that show audience statistics, whether monthly or daily or even yearly. Overall, technology allowed me to create a smooth, sleek product that supports the overall cohesiveness and synergy between our products, something I likely wouldn’t have achieved without online technology.  

Postcard - S

In the process of making the final postcard, heavy digital editing was incorporated as well as long and varied photoshoots at different times of the day. I used different props in a variety of viewpoints, angles and perspectives to master the composition and create an overall effective product that reflects the tone and mood of our short film documentary.

For the photoshoot, I used a variety of camera settings to create an ideal postcard. I finally narrowed the pictures down to the set of images taken at dusk, calling for high ISO and a high aperture. This created a moody atmosphere in the images that closely resembled the tone of the documentary.

The postcard is an ‘establishing product’ of sorts as it introduces first-time viewers to the concept of the film on a subliminal, personal level. We attempted to use this to our advantage to use subtle abstracted narrative devices, for example foreshadowing the documentary’s disapproving focal point on the effects of excessive wealth and overindulgence through the main prop which as seen is a luxurious, high-end 4x4.

This serves as a representative symbol of the dangerous mix of material wealth and a lack of stimulation, cited as the root cause of reckless driving in Qatar. The postcard focuses most of the attention on the expensive vehicle through composition in terms of the rule of thirds as well as through strong visual juxtaposition due to the pop of red colour contrasting with the dull, mute colours in the background sky.

I edited the background to have less saturated colouring in Photoshop to forcefully emphasise the car as much as possible. This draws the viewer’s eye to the vehicle, forcing them to think whether it serves as a symbolic component or not, which further entices them to watch the film. Moreover, the low-key lighting and cool-toned colouring matches that of the documentary, ensuring our products synergically complement each other and strengthening the branding across all media areas.

The reason mostly Photoshop was used for the editing stage was due to the variety of options for all skill levels. This included layering different images over each other and blending them with other frames, texts etc as well as ‘masking’ away inappropriate components like the number plate, and so on.

After several sessions of editing, 3 different prototypes were created in order for us to choose our final outcome. We decided on a postcard based on its accurate depiction of mood in relation to the documentary, how it reinforces branding, and how it follows conventions. The final prototype was uploaded to Google Drive for group collaboration and commenting on any needed refinements.

We realised the postcard didn’t follow certain positioning conventions, for example the awards and nominations being placed to the right of the title when it would be more appropriate below it for stronger textual alignment. I used the text tool to modify font sizes and placing, followed by the rubber tool to delete some unnecessary extra rays in the background.  

Overall this resulted in a postcard with visual integrity, strong positioning and appropriateness in form that accurately communicated to the viewer the nature of the main product.

Film - J

Being the main task of our Advanced Portfolio, most of the products used were incorporated in the actual film compared to the postcard and website. Firstly in terms of hardware, various DSLR cameras were used to shoot on different occasions for different shots based on the shot list we planned. GoPro Hero 4’s were used for the point-of-view shots of stunts being performed inside vehicles to provide the viewer with a connection to those who participate in Qatar’s stunt driving culture, allowing audiences to be more sympathetic and understanding as they can picture the thrill from another perspective without having to actually engage in the dangerous activity, effectively eliminating all the risk. Designated to different group members, Canon 70D’s and Canon 700D’s were also used to shoot individual interviews, due to the fairly high megapixel units that allowed for shooting of crisp, clear high-quality footage, providing sharp establishing shots and close-up interview sequences. This creates visual appeal to the viewer as high quality footage is more desirable in postmodern media, making audiences more likely to watch the entire product. Tripods were also used for stabilising purposes to aid in the smoothness and overall seamlessness of shot, in particular the pan shots seen in the beginning and tracking movements seen throughout the documentary. Varied camera settings were used depending on context, for example Ian Maund’s interview was shot in the daytime with plenty of flattering lighting, calling for a lower ISO and aperture. This resulted in a fairly bright, clean-looking interview with no grains or noise while dodging the risk of overexposure. The interview also contrasts with Torque’s dimly-lit nighttime interview which called for a high ISO and aperture as well as external light sources to provide ample lighting on the subject. As a result the low-key lighting of this directly contrasts with Ian Maund’s brighter high-key lit interview as a further emphasis on the binary opposition motif running throughout the documentary, with both interviewees serving as the other’s narrative foil.

With regards to software, mostly Photoshop and Adobe Premier Pro were used in the making of our final film product. With the help of Adobe Premier Pro I was able to manipulate footage into having lower saturation and a cooler colour palette to create a gloomy atmosphere that reflects the graveness of reckless driving. This consistency in depicting mood provides a strong foundation for the other products to base components off of, paving the way for refining the operational synergy between our products. I also had to deliberately time the soundtrack with the shots to create a more purposeful, nuanced product with an emphasis on the blending of different areas of media, whether it’s audio or postcards or websites. Photoshop was used for creating the production company’s logo and the fim’s title to which we were careful to synchronise font types and sizes, colour schemes, spacing to further maintain the branding between our products.

Finally, online technology was incorporated consistently throughout our research and planning stages, particularly using Youtube to search for documentaries similar in subject matter and tone to analyse, researching genre codes and conventions, documentary mode case studies, and searching for appropriate fonts for our logo and titles. Eventually this branched out to soundtrack research, through which we found the ideal background music after researching on Youtube and Soundcloud and various royalty-free websites. This resulted in a more fitting soundtrack for our product creating an effective, moving product that thoroughly invites the viewer to connect on a raw, emotional level thanks to appropriate digital technology.