Evaluation Question#1

Evaluation Question#3

Q) What have you learned from your audience feedback?

As mentioned earlier, the response we got from the audience was quite positive. We were acknowledged for our attempt however we were given few suggestions/criticism. We valued our audience’s opinion and got to learn from our mistakes.

We used three different mediums to gather audience's feedback. These included social websites like Face book, taking interviews and lastly by circulating questionnaires.

The non linear narrative structure was appreciated by many along with the music that had been used in the background. Shots were also acknowledged however the main critics that we received were as follows:

1.       Majority believed that the subtitles were hard to read. Either they passed at very quick speed or they were not illegible due to the font size and colour.

2.       The flashback scenes seemed very confusing to some. They believed that slow dissolve effect should have been added

3.       Some believed that the flashback scenes were not strong enough in the sense that they did not have much impact.

4.       The last scene was too long.

5.       The film seemed very dull maybe because you didn’t use many colors.

Similarly, we received several suggestions as well. Most of which were regarding the flashback scenes. Some of the responses from those to whom the questionnaires were given:

1. 1.       I liked the overall idea of the film. It’s just that you guys have used more of point of view shots that seemed quite boring to me at one point. Instead you guys could have shown scenes where the protagonist had been shown in the scene. I hope you get what I mean. Apart from that brilliant job guys
2. 2.       If I would have been at your place I would definitely have shown more scenes where the guy is shown tortured.
3. 3.       The character was introduced very abruptly. His introduction should have been slow and gradual. Otherwise impressive work
4. 4.       Though the music is good but I believe using eastern music would have been more effective. Like you used tabla towards the end. That seemed more appropriate
5. 5.       A good film, nice concept and everything but maybe the actor could have had more scenes to do.
6. 6.       The narration should have had been throughout the film.
7. 
   

From the audience feedback we have made reached at the conclusion that we should have had used a different and bright colour for the subtitles that could be easily read. Many people had issues with reading the subtitles. Secondly, maybe we could have used more dramatic scenes for the flashback that could have aroused the sentiments of the audience. Similarly, more scenes showing the protagonist being tortured should have been added to spice up the film.

The feedback from the audience was really helpful. We got to learn from our mistakes and decided not to commit them again. 

Evaluation question#2

Q2)Q) How effective is the combination of your main product and the ancillary task?

Evaluation Question #4

Q) How did you use new media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

Ans) “Technology” had a major role to play in the short film that we made. The software’s as well as the hardware’s that we used were of great help to us in all the stages of our coursework.

Computer:

Computer is nothing new and we all are well aware of how to operate it. We had either the option of using our own laptops or the school’s computer systems. My partner Zainab and I decided that we would use the school systems as we believed that with such heavy files that we were suppose to work with, our laptop’s windows would crash.

In the very beginning we were taught to keep our work either in the D drive or the E drive as saving data on the desktop would corrupt the windows.

Similarly, computer was very important in all the three stages of our coursework. We used the computer systems to surf the internet, plan our projects and once done with shooting edit it.

DSLR cameras:

We used three different camera’s throughout our project. We learned how to adjust the iso, the shutter speed the aperture etc.

Web 2.0:

Internet in today’s society plays a very pivotal role. It is the cause that has enabled the 2 ends to meet. Internet or web 2.0 enabled me to go through the work of former media students. Going through their blogs and work gave me a guideline to follow throughout my project.

Also when in the research stage of my project I went through several websites such as YouTube, Google, Wikipedia, vimeo, weebly etc that all helped me with my research and this would not have been possible if I did not have a connection to the internet.

Similarly, access to blogger would not have been possible without the internet. I can support my statement with the fact that during the cyber attack our work was halted as we could not access the internet which caused a basic delay in our project.

Blogging:

Last year we worked on power point but this year we decided to switch to using blogger instead. Blogger was a very friendly site to use. Being a first time user, it took me no time to get my hands on it.

We were taught how to upload pictures, add videos, make new posts, add label to them and how to add other blogs to your blog list. I found it quite similar to Microsoft word or I would rather say it is a much fancier form of Microsoft word where we can have unique designs for the layout of the page and where we can have a lot more features than we have in Microsoft word or for that matter even in Microsoft power point.

The biggest issue, while using blogger, I faced was with uploading videos. The videos would not upload and as a solution we were taught to first embed the videos that we wanted to upload on some other side and then embed the link to blogger.

Prezi:
This on line presentation tool was very helpful for me. I was able to use different innovative styles for presentation.

Facebook:
Facebook for me always had been a site where i could interact with friends, play games, follow people i like/ i never knew it could be such a helpful platform from which i could reach out to a large audience for my film. I used facebook as a medium through which i got feedback from my audience. My film was able to reach out to a large audience as people kept on sharing my video.

Adobe premier:

This was one software that was of great help. We made the rough cut and the final project using this software. The first look was very scary. Everything seemed so confusing in the start but luckily I managed and the end result was way better than what I had expected.

One basic rule of premier that we were taught was to save our project at location with the most memory. For example, in my system disc drive D had the most memory and I therefore decided to save the project there.

Next we were taught to make a mother folder with the name of our project and in that folder make sub folders of the clips that were to be used, the audio and the stills.

Once we started using adobe premier we were faced with several crashing issues and through this we learned that we should save 3-4 copies of our project at different locations as a backup in case our project was corrupted.

In premier we were taught how to import files, drag them to the time line, use the cut tool, import audio and drag it to the time line. How to add effects and transitions to the audio as well as to the clips.

Exporting the project caused a lot of trouble. As we had shot the whole film using 3 different camera’s, the file would corrupt every time we exported it. As a solution to this our sir recommended us that we shift to adobe premier cs5 as it was a much more advanced form of cs3 and could solve our problem. He was right and we took an export of our film successfully.

Adobe Photoshop:

The movie review page and the poster was made using Photoshop. Using different adjustment tools was really helpful in the construction of these two ancillary task. The use of lasso tool, text tool, crop tool, rectangular tool all proved to be of immense help in making the two.

Proxy sites:

Access to sites like YouTube and daily motion had been denied in Pakistan since the past few months due to some Religious issues. This had put a stop to our work for some time as we could not continue without taking references from YouTube. In this way we discovered some proxies like hotspot shield and spot flux.

Smart phones:

At times when there was a power cut, I used my HTC smart phone to access the internet and blog my recent activities, even at places where I did not have access to my computer system, my mobile phone was of great help.

Similarly, it was also used for recording audio clips. Its quality was really good and it eliminated our need to use a collar mic.

Audience Feedback

Audience feedback- Mera Lahore from Riffah Munir on Vimeo.

Facebook Reviews:

QUESTIONNAIRE:

Result:

Final Cut

MERA LAHORE from Riffah Munir on Vimeo.

Editing

Rough Cut

So finally came the stage of editing. The first and most important part of editing is the rough cut. We just had to arrange our selected clips in an order they were supposed to appear.

When starting our project in premier we were taught that we should save the project in the location with the most space. In my computer system disc drive D had the most memory and we saved our project in it.

We made a mother folder with the name of our project and then made sub folders in it with the selected audios, videos and pictures that were later on used in our film.

After saving the project began the real task. The first step in premier was to import the selected videos and then arrange them on the timeline in the correct sequence. This was a bit troublesome as we didn't rename the files. once we imported them to premier we didn't know which video had to come first just because we didn't label them. However we looked into each video one by one and managed to put them in the right sequence in the timeline.

Importing files to premier. (shortcut to importing files is CTRL+I)

Dragging videos to timeline and arranging them in the sequence

After arranging videos on the timeline, our rough cut was complete. We were ready to go onto the next stage which was adding effects, adding audio and other titles etc.

Movie review page

Our plan for the movie review page was simple. We wanted to give it a very professional look. We also decided that we would design our review page as if it had to be published in the local sunday times magazine.

As per the conventions of these pages, it is very usual to have a full image on one half of the page and the review on the other half. Apart from this there has to be a quote/highlighted text. We paid special attention to this when designing our page.

The size of the page was 16 by 10 inches and the steps involved in making the page were as follows:

In the first step we added the margins to the page. It was important to add margins so that the pages could be divided equally and the rest of the layout of the page could be designed accordingly.

We then changed the background colour to black and started with adding on the other conventions.

 we then added the images and added a box on the main image where the quote had to appear.

added the movie review

added the quote.

Poster planing

As part of the ancillary task we were given the option of designing a poster and a movie review page for our film.

Through our poster we wanted to show the whole ideology behind our film. As our film is based on Lahore so we wanted to focus on minar-e-Pakistan for our poster.
Our initial plan was to feature,both the actor and the minar-e-pakistan on our poster. Our first attempt was inspired by the poster of the famous film 'Shutter speed'

This was our first attempt at making the poster for 'Mera Lahore'

We were not really happy with what we made. It didnot come out as we had expected. The poster looked very untidy and confusing and there was no professional feel to it so we decided to go with our second plan which was to feature just the mina-e-pakistan on our poster.

We took several pictures of the minar such as the follows:

We selected the second picture for our poster.

We adjusted the brightness of the picture in Photoshop to add dark shadows to it. The dark shadows and the different shades of grey colour in the image represent the days of suppression. The days when dictatorship had been imposed on a democratic nation like Pakistan. Whereas the lighter shades and the minar itself represent hope and the belief that things will get better one day.

Construction:

In the first step we imported the picture into photoshop and adjusted the shadows and contrast of the picture using the adjustment option in the tool bar.

The second step involved adding the title to the poster. We added a rectangular shape in black colour using the rectangular shape tool (shortcut U) and lowered down its opacity so that the picture underneath it could be visible. Then we added the title using the text tool. the font that we used was 'shonar bangla'

We then added the selling line, tag line,date and details of the cast and directors.

The last stage was adding the other conventions that are found in any poster. These include the logo's of the production and distribution house.

Day 3

Today was the final day for our shoot. We had to finish up our shoot today because it was getting to late and our final date of submission had arrived.
It took us a whole day to do our shoot at anarkali and minar-e-Pakistan.
Managing crowd at such public places was the biggest problem that we faced. Whenever we started shooting, everybody started to gather around us. However we exploited the situation and took shots that showed events that have been part of the history of this place.

For the shoot at badshahi mosque and minar-e-Pakistan we set the ISO at 160, the shutter speed was 1/30 and aperture was 3.5.
The main problem was framing the minar-e-Pakistan. We had to take several shots in order to get to the perfect shot where we used the best framing we could.

For the night scenes the ISO was 800, the shutter speed was 1/30 and the aperture was 3.5.

Day 2

It has been raining since the past 2 days; our shoot needs to be re-scheduled. We have decided that we would first finish up our indoor shots and maybe by then the weather conditions might improve.

Today we shot the first scene of our film in which the protagonist is show writing and after this point he goes into flashbacks of the Lahore he remembers. The shoot was quite easy. We just had to take a shot of Hamza (protagonist) bent and writing something. We took this shot from two-three perspectives showing his side view, his front view and the back view.

The main problem we faced today was that we got late for the shoot. Due to some unforeseen circumstances our actor got late for shoot. By the time he arrived there was not sufficient sunlight and we could not delay our shoot so we decided to take this shot using a lamp light. 

Zainab doing makeup touchups before the shoot:

Before the shoot.

(Before the shoot) Discussing the next few scenes with Hamza.

Zainab and I with the camera. Checking the lights and setting the ISO and shutter speed according to the setting.

Day 1

Due to weather conditions we had to reschedule our outdoor shoot today. As previously planned, we had to postpone our plan to shoot at Anarkali. Instead we carried our indoor shoot which was actually scheduled for the next day.

Though we didn’t have any preparations but thankfully we were able to arrange for an auditorium at such a short notice. The next issue was to get the perfect lights that we wanted. Was a tough job but we still managed. We covered the white lights with yellow tinted paper. Rest we adjusted the aperture and iso accordingly to get the desired effect.

We then made up a set i.e. a solitary confinement using Styrofoam sheets. Luckily it did create the effect that we wanted.

The result was good and we were successful in shooting what we wanted.

Shot Listing

                 Shot listing

Scene #	Shot distance	Camera angle	Camera movement	Description	Location
#1	Establishing Long shot	Normal angle	Panning towards the left	The camera pans as we shoot the minar-e-pakistan and the surrounding area	minar-e-Pakistan
#2	mid shot	normal angle	Static camera. Zooms in to record special movements	Intro of the protagonist- camera is static and at a normal angle. Zooms in where important activity needs to be recorded.	House
#3	long shot	Subjective angle	Camera is static at the start and then pans and then zooms where necessary.	Starts with the minar-e-pakistan shoot, then badshahi mosque and other scenes form the flashback	Anarkali, Badshahi mosque, gawalmandi
#4	closeup and then long shot	Normal angle	zoom in and zoom out	the man being shown tortured.	solitary confinment

Schedule

DAY/DATE	SCENE #	LOCATION	TIME
3rd March, Sunday	Scene #3(flashback scenes 2,3)	Anarkali	Around 3
4th March, Monday	Scene# 8 (solitary confinement)	Auditorium	Around 1
5th March, Tuesday	Scene # 1 (establishing and flashback 1)	Minar-e-Pakisatn and Badshahi mosque	After noon
6th March, Wednesday	Scene # 2	My house	After 4
7th March, Thursday	Scene #4 (flashback scene 4,5,6,7)	Food street, metro bus, and gawalmandi	Around 7:30 pm/8

Cast

Since day 1 we knew who we had to take in our short film. Our choice is Hamza Khan who is an event manager at our school. He has done various plays during his school days and we are quite confident that we won’t have any regrets on our decision.

Poster Analysis

•The first poster that I am analysing is of the film ‘Les Miserable’ released in December 2012

•The poster is a theatrical poster but it does not have all the details. Basic information such as the cast , title of the film, tag line, time of release and the production and distribution house are mentioned.

• The film is a musical film. This means that music/songs is a major part of the narrative. We can evaluate this as it is stated on the poster ‘the musical phenomenon’

•Apart from this the colour palette, the main image and the title of the film suggest that the film is  based on social drama.

•The girl in the image looks disturbed and it seems as if she has suffered a lot.

•The four words on the poster i.e. Fight, Dream, Hope and love further draws our attention to the narrative of the film which suggest that the movie must be about betrayal .

•Shades of black, blues and greys have been prominently used in the poster. This denotes gloominess and sadness.

•Also the title/masthead of the poster looks distorted which further suggests the narrative of the movie.

•The image is very appealing and easily draws one’s attention which I believe is its biggest USP.

The poster is of a Bollywood film ‘Yeh Faasley’. The poster is a teaser poster with very minimal details such as the title of the film, the cast and the tag line. No data is present about the production/distribution house, the date of release etc.  The color palette suggests that the film is based on a psychotic theme.  The main image is a long shot of the main protagonist who is sitting in a jail. Whereas the other image which is the close up of the same man shows the emotions of the man which shows that he is in a state of fear or regret.

This poster is a theatrical poster of the film "Shutter Island". The release date and the selling line are given in a different colour so as to differentiate it from the rest of the poster.  From the very first look at this poster we can judge that the film is based on a psychotic theme. The color palette used further enhances this fact. Shades of blues, greys and black give it a very gloomy effect.
Unlike many other posters, no information is given in the top section of the magazine. Instead it just has the image of the main protagonist 'Leonardo D'Caprio' showing the level of importance he has in the film.

this is a theatrical poster and is again based on a psychotic theme. This is evident through the colour palette used. The main image is a close-up of the main character. Information is given about the cast and crew as well as the production house and the distribution house.
The font used is simple and goes with the overall theme of the poster.

This is a teaser poster this means that basic information such as the star line, title of the film, image of the main character and the director is given. 
The poster is simple yet different from many. 

Research on movie review page

Our second ancillary task involves making a movie review page. After research we found out that a movie review page could either be a double fold spread page or it could also be featured in a newspaper.My partner and i decided that we would work on making a double fold spread page movie review.

Some of the conventions common for a movie review page:-

Budget

 The budget for our short film was as follows:-

Category                                                               Amount
Travelling Expenses – Petrol                                2000
Food & beverages                                                 1000
Camera:                                                        1000(per day 4) Lens                                                                             - Tripod                                                                      1000 Lighting: Led Lights                                                                500
Props: thermapol sheet                                                    150(x 3) Chart papers                                                         15(x 3) Other expenses: Butter Paper                                                           50 Internet                                                                     - Communication                                                       500 Editing                                                                       -
Total                                                                     9,545/-

Mise-en-Scene

Scene 1:
Location: House
Props:

1. · Paper
2. pencil
3. chair
4. table     

Costumes:the protagonist would be  wearing a black-greyish coloured  shalwar kameez.
Lighting: low key lighting creating shadows.

Scene 2:Location:old Lahore and minar-e-Pakistan

Lighting: Natural day light and street lights for the night scenes.

Scene 3:Location: A solitary confinement
Costume: dirty shalwar and kammez
Lighting: Low key lighting to achieve a dramatic effect.

script-mera lahore

Script

Title: Mera Lahore

Scene1:

INT. day time

Character: The writer

Costume: shalwar kameez

Light: natural sun light as well as secondary source of light- yellow sun light

Sound: Background music emerges slowly

The protagonist is seen bent and working on something. All of a sudden he stops and leans back on his chair and gazes out of the window.

Scene 2:

EXT-

The next few scenes show the flashback of the old city of Lahore. These individual shots include high angle shots of the city, few close-ups of the positive activities happening around the city, birds flying (which would symbolize freedom and purity) as well as few scenes of the historical monuments of Lahore.

Scene 3:

EXT- Night time

This scene would be at a traffic signal. The camera would be static and the first shot would be of the green signal which then changes to yellow and eventually to red. The screen starts fading out slowly and gradually. The screen is black and it says

“AND THEN CAME THE MILITARY REGIME”

Scene 4:

A clip downloaded from Youtube. The clip would show Zia ul Haq (Military Dictator of Pakistan) imposing marshal law (military regime) on Pakistan.

Scene 5:

INT- day time

Character: the writer

Light: secondary source of light {(yellow led lights) to create an effect of natural sunlight}

Location: Solitary confinement

A close up shot of the protagonist trying to look out of the solitary confinement. The protagonist feels helpless as he looks out of the window of the confinement as if he searches for help and answer to the question as to what has happened.

Scene 6:

Character: the writer

This scene would show the different phases the protagonist goes through each day. At one time he seems clueless where as in the nest minute he is happy and then all of a sudden he is sad, gets furious and eventually is frustrated that he tries getting it out and in the next he tries to calm down. As he is relaxing the screen also slowly fades out and so does the background music.

Scene 7:

The last scene is a montage. With a very patriotic poem along with pictures that show the good times of Lahore. Pictures that have those positive vibes. Pictures showing love and freedom.