Evaluation of practice Fairy tale short film. By Hennie Cole

About Our fairy tale Our fairy tale is a remake of Cinderella. It is a modern twist on the film. For example, instead of Cinderella losing her shoe as she runs off, she leaves her phone and diary instead. Also, there is a girl bully rather than ugly step sisters. The bully reads her private diary to make her upset, unlike in Cinderella where the ugly step sisters ruin her dress meaning she cant go to the ball and it makes her upset. The short film is about 1 and a half minutes long as it was just a practice for filming and editing to help us become more confident when it comes to making our short film next year. It is a very simple remake on the fairy tale and it does not have a lot of detail, but we tried to make it as similar to Cinderella as we could within the length the short film had to be.

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? There are some techniques we used which have been used in other media products. For example, we used a lot of camera angles such as high and low angles, establishing shots, close ups, mid shots, long shots, etc. These are used in lots of media products to make the media effective and show superior and inferior people. I chose to add these camera angles into my product to make mine also effective and realistic. Other techniques we used was the mise-en-scene. For example, the makeup and clothes we used carefully to make sure the people in my fairy-tale suited their characters. Many other media products also do this to make sure the story is easily understood and as realistic as possible. Some of the editing styles we used in our media product are used other in media products to develop the quality of the product. For example, we faded out the scene at the end of the fairy-tale to make it obvious it is the end. Also at the start, we showed the name of the fairy-tale so people know it is about to start, and we even faded out the title to make it look effective to the audience. Lots of other media products also do this.

2. How does using this technology compare to using software last year? Using Adobe Premiere Pro Cs6 is much more complex and challenging to use than the other Adobe programmes such as photoshop and premier pro because I had to combine sound and narrative as well as making it look good. This made it harder as I had to make sure that all these aspects look good to make the short film more realistic and professional. The editing programme is also a lot more detailed compared to the other programmes I used last year so I find it harder to edit and it took me longer due to me trying to find the right tool to use. Although it is a lot harder to use than the other programmes last year, it is better to use as it makes everything a lot more accurate meaning the work I produced is of good quality, meaning the story is more realistic than if I was to use a different editing programme.

3. How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, and planning stages? For my research and planning of my fairy tale, I used WordPress to present my work and show the different stages of the work I have done throughout the making of the fairy tale. For example, I added in camera angles for one scene so I know the order. I also did a table showing each scene and what mise-en-scene needs to be in each scene, the camera angles, location, etc. I posted this as a picture onto my blog to show detail about every scene. For the construction of the fairy tale we used Adobe Premiere Pro Cs6 which was very difficult and complicated to work with to start with as I had never used it before. However, once I got used to it, I found it simpler to edit some parts of the film. I only know the basics and managed to use these to edit the film. There was no complex aspects needed to edit, however, I may need to learn more techniques when it comes to making my longer short film next year.

Conclusion Overall I believe the final fairy-tale product turned out very well considering I have never edited or done anything similar to this product before. I also have had no practice with editing and knowing the most effective way to film. I do think I still need a lot more practice for when it comes to making my final short film next year because, during this project, I had a lot of help during the editing stage of the short film, so I need to work on editing by myself without any help. The best aspect about this project was the ideas. I think that next year, I will not have any problems with ideas and thinking about what I am going to film. I think I am creative when it comes to ideas, I just need to work on the editing of my ideas and putting them together to create a realistic and good quality final product. This project really helped me think of ideas for next year and it has made me look at/research other media products which has helped me find inspiration for my short film next year. The practice editing has also been very helpful as I had no idea about editing before this project, so next year, I will not be filming then editing my final short film without any idea of how to edit.