Dear Moderator

My name is Isadora Spratling, Cadidate 1618, welcome to my OCR A2 Media Studies Blog. This is a record of the work undertaken as part of the G325 A2 Advanced Portfolio within OCR GCS course in Media Studies.
I worked independently to produce a short film in the drama genre. The project lasted six months, commencing in September 2017 and finishing in March 2018.
I hope you enjoy my work and find it both successful and interesting. Please use the navigation bar to access my work as organised into table of Audience Research, Editing, Evaluation, Filming, Magazine Task, Research, Poster, Preliminary Task, Rough Cuts, Story Board, Treatment, Voice over and other.
There is also a link to the school's blog hub and my other classmates blogs.

Thank you very much.

Isadora Spratling

My Finished Short Film

Finalised Poster

Here is my final poster that I have created for my short film. I took this picture in the dance studio after filming. I wanted to use the same location and costume so that my audience would identify my character and film. I wanted to edit the background of my poster, however, when I asked my audience what they thought of my poster they thought it was fine and said the the background didn't draw attention away from my actress/ dancer. They also said that it shows the location setting which looked good. I therefore took their advice and left it how it is. In cinemas march 20th 2018 by Isadora Spratling

Finalised Interview Magazine Page

Pink and White Teen Magazine Cover by Isadora

Evaluation 1- In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Evaluation 2- How effective is the combination of your media product and ancillary tasks?

Evaluation 2 from Isadora SPRATLING

Evaluation 3- What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback is vital for the creation of a new product. Through the stages of pre production, production, post production and my ancillary task I have referred back to my audience feedback, making sure that it is effective and what my audience wants.

Pre production 
Pre production was the most important stage whilst collecting audience feedback as this helped me base my narrative on their feedback. I struggled at the beginging as I was unsure whether to make a music video or a short film. I therefore decided to merge the two ideas together and create a short film but also include a dance at the end to a fitting soundtrack. Once I had made this decision I then had to come up with the narrative of the short film. This was when I listened to my audience feedback as it helped give me ideas and what they expected in my work. I did this by getting 5 people who were my target audience and interviewing them on what they expect to see in my short film and if they had any other ideas that they could give me. This was very helpful and I took all their advice on board.
I wanted to base my film on dancing as that is something I feel passionate about. Last year I made a film opening on the mental issue Schizophrenia. I really enjoyed learning about this illness and creating a product which would raise awareness. I therefore took the idea and thought about how I could merge the idea with dancing. I am aware that some dancers often struggle with their appearance and body confidence and therefore desicided I would create a short film about a dancer who has an eating disorder. I gained audience feedback on mental health when I created my treatment.
My audience thought that it would be a touching subject that is only just starting to be covered and  talked about in the media industry, making it relevant which could potentially be popular such as the recently released film "To the Bone".

Production 
Throughout of process of filming and producing my short film, my audience again was still important and useful. I filmed on two days and once filmed it, I spent time editing it. Once I had got together a rough cut I then showed my media class and teacher where they pointed out corrections which could be changed in order to make it better. For example, taking out clips that weren't relevant to make it shorter as it was too long already. I originally had a very last shot of my character getting out of bed and standing up with a positive attitude. However, my audience thought that it looked better finishing on with the last shot of my character walking to the camera and breaking the fourth wall as she finishes her dance.
This was my original ending for my short film.

An there is the shot I'm now finishing my short film with. 

Overall, I thought that the production stages were made better thanks to the audience research I collected which allowed me to fix the mistakes and create a successful product.

Post Production
Once I had finished editing and I was happy with it, I then showed it to my 15 people of my target audience, who were of the age of 16-18 years old. I did this so that I could collect some more audience feedback as they were the ideal target audience. I also got them to fill out a questionnaire so that I could get some constructive criticism and apply it to my work.

These were the questions were gave out to everyone to fill in. Overall, I am really happy with my feedback as they were very positive but also had some criticisms I could take into consideration.
Here are the results of each questions which I put into a take and pie chart.

Overall, I can see that the majority of the marks were 5/5 which I'm very pleased about, with 17 5/5 saying that my soundtrack was effective. Since then I have added my friend singing the song which I think will make it even more effective and original.
I am also pleased to see that 16 people put 5/5 for my short film being effective in entertainment.
If it wasn't for the audience feedback that I carried out, I wouldn't be getting such positive results from my questionarrie.

Ancillary Tasks
I finally created two ancillary tasks which included a film poster and a magazine review. I used my audience feedback even in this process, as I needed to make it age specific for audience when writing my magazine article and making the poster appeasing for my age group.

FILM POSTER

I decided to use this image as I think it is beautiful and captures what my short film is all about. I place the tile of the film "starved" about her mouth as if she is breathing it out and by looking up she is looking hopeful but also looking ta the title showing her starvation from food and dancing.
I got my audience to give me feedback on the text and where I positioned it. They all like it and thought it stood out where it was. I was sceptical about the black at the bottom of the poster but my audience feedback reassured me and said it looked professional and the text is able to stand out more with the black behind it.Im am pleased with the finish product and pleased I listened to my audience feedback.

MAGAZINE REVIEW

Here is my magazine review which once again I used my audience to give my corrections to make it better. I looked at the 'Empire Magazine' for ideas on how to lay it out and to make it as professional as possible. This was very useful as I got my inspiration from. Once I wrote all the text I then used Canva to present my work and make it look like a magazine review page. I played around with he texts and layout for a while but after asking my audience about the bold text they resumed me that it worked well. I also tried different fonts for the quote on the second page. I originally used the same font as the title as I wanted to keep consistency with all my fonts, however, my audience thought that it needed to stand out and thought that this font was good as it was almost dance font due to the fluidity of the words. 

Once I had made all these changes, I asked my audience again what they thought and it was very positive feedback, saying it looked neat and expressed my product well. 

Overall, audience feedback is essential for throughout the production of a product in pre production, production, post production and ancillary tasks. All the feedback I have received have been extremely useful and has allowed me to improve my work at all of the stages to make a better product and a successful short film.