Media product analysis

Media Blog Analysis

In my third media class, we were asked to research an inspirational blog and to study it critically in terms of what it lacks and how it is benefitting us. Me and my partner, Abira, looked around for short film blogs and finally found one which looked good in terms of organisation and a well-researched media product. We selected this media blog because it looked very neat and organised plus the whole research, planning, construction and evaluation have been done in a chronological order which signifies that the student, Richard, knew what he was doing.             http://rjdgwpahsa2media.blogspot.com/

Richard, the student, has gone about the blog in a very orderly manner. His blog is in a chronological order with research and planning leading to construction leading to evaluation. In this blog, I was very impressed by the blogger's research. He started off with introducing his tasks and his team members and what they each were good at.

He has then researched the concept behind short films and how they work. He has been deconstructing short films in order to get to the bottom line of it. Then the whole team has contributed in the ideas for the short film to be based on. These ideas have been analyzed in detail to the extent of the drawbacks or the limitations of each idea.

Once an idea by a team member was finalized, he has worked on the topic in itself, basing his research on the genre of their topic to come up with an idea of his own.

Basing his idea on the topic, he has come up with an idea and briefly described the story line, again going in a very systematic way about the blog.

Having done so, he has used conventions to elaborate the story line further. 

With this done, he has researched the target audience for his media product and has also suggested how the short film has been rated according to its content.

    

  

Every short film requires titles for the credits. Now, what I liked about Richard's blog was that he has even worked on his titles with his own idea in mind. Thus, again stressing on the importance of researching extensively for your media product.

With a rough draft in his mind, he has asked for feedback from his fellow students and tutor ensuring qualitative work. I like the fact that he has asked for feedback here in the very beginning of his research and planning and also, in the future during production.

He has gone about iconography for his idea, i.e. the location, setting, mood and the lighting he'll require for the production of his short film. Richard has then gone about his equipment list and the software he'll be needing for post-production and acquired them through his tutor day-by-day as something else was needed.

Then he went by his team members and divided the production process between each of them according to their own expertise, so that they could go by their scripts and shot divisions and camera movements accordingly. 

Now, he produced rough scripts and prop lists so that everyone has a brief overview of their job. 

Richard has made an animatic to make his storyboard look more understandable. For this animatic, too, he has researched various types of animatics and which one is the best one for his genre.

His costumes, locations and the tasks of each member are fully researched and well-planned for pre-production. I love the fact that he knows everything that he is doing and is acting out as he is thinking in a well-planned form. By his research and planning, I can ensure myself that his construction and evaluation would go just as well as the effort put  in the pre-production.
Richard’s construction, i.e. the post production is in a very orderly fashion. He has described each one of his editing, feedbacks and changes made in detail. The fact that he has made a log of all his days of shooting has inspired me into following his example as it indicates how thoroughly he was working on each of the littlest details of his media product.

When doing his ancillary tasks, he went by the procedure very systematically by, first, explaining the tasks to his readers and then going about researching the conventions of posters, identities and review pages. Having done so, he went about researching various works to come to terms with something close to what he wanted to make. Again, he has gone through extensive research just to come up with an inspirational poster, identity and a review page. The secret to his organisation is his systematic thought process due to which he has been able to work so efficiently and this is what I like most about this blog. Also, his time management is pretty much obvious by the neatness of his blog.

Even this product, when completed, was asked for feedback on to check for any improvisations which needed to be made. As you can see, Richard has been able to gain feedback throughout his media production to check for improvisations.Now, I have pointed out what I found very interesting about this blog. The organization, the research and the planning, how the construction developed into the final product and how feedback has been recorded for improvements in the product. One of the major problems I had with Richard's blog is that it lacked the date and timing of his posts. So, I still don't know how he went about his blog in a timeline manner or was his media product made in a random order. Now, Richard's evaluation is in the form of videos, hence, there were statements I couldn't get proper hold of due to the language barrier. 

Selected ideas

The next step was to format our ideas and come up with a detailed synopsis of the ideas which were selected by our teacher. My group partner Abira and I discussed our ideas and this is what we came up with:

Possibility Pakistan
Media Brief: Short film
Target Audience: Age 13 onwards
Media Institution: Internet, Television
Promotion: Through social sites, magazines, newspapers

This idea is based on a short film on Pakistan and its various possibilities. It is about how Pakistan is under the dark cloud of poverty, illiteracy, energy crisis, corruption, terrorism, international interference, unemployment, inflation, overpopulation and health issues. Possibility Pakistan is based on how these issues are combated and how through all these affairs, people are surviving, working and enjoying the same. Possibility Pakistan focuses on how people are managing lifestyles in this situation. For example we can shoot students studying in parks at 5am under the low lantern light to overcome the load shedding issue which might affect their studies. Similar aspects of our society will be shown, signifying positivity and the excitement of not letting anything get in the way.  In this idea, we can show the positive side of Pakistan and we’ll have vast ideas to shoot in the whole 5 minutes. Different scenes will be shot, patriotic music could be used as the background score and through those 5 minutes we can show how people are struggling against the hard times they face in their life. We can show how vendors are carrying on life with happiness and a smile on their faces. How at dusk people start up early and stay busy throughout the day with the load shedding and the energy crisis choking them, and return home eagerly waiting to meet his kids again. We can show how poor students study and work to pay for their education and finally succeed with distinctions and positions to their name.
Our idea will be tackling various aspects of our own country of origin and will be very versatile as Pakistan is facing many problems and is tackling them with never-ending positivity. Unity during matches and hard times for example the floods and earthquake, positivity during career making, working hard without electricity and machinery to earn money are only some ideas on what we can work on.

Branding Thyself
Media Brief: Documentary
Target Audience: Students of any course
Media Institutions: Internet, Social sites, Newspapers, Local and International Magazines
Promotion: Magazines, Newspapers, Internet


In life, branding is more effective, powerful, and sustainable than marketing and sales and an effective way to eliminate your competitors. It’s about influencing others, by creating a brand identity that associates certain perceptions and feelings with that identity.  There is a new trend called Personal Branding. Successful Personal Branding entails managing the perceptions effectively and controlling and influencing how others perceive you and think of you. Having a strong Personal Brand seems to be a very important asset in today’s online, virtual, and individual age. It is the positioning strategy behind the world's most successful people, like Oprah Winfrey, Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Donald Trump, Richard Branson and Bill Gates. This idea is based on this very topic and deals with how one’s Personal Branding can contradict with another one’s perceptions. For example:
A reserved girl who is just shy might be perceived by the others as having an attitude problem. One’s persona is her outlook and a piece of their personality which they want to show to others, hence, it is imperative that this outlook be maintained effectively. For example a brand conscious girl checking in on Facebook at every expensive place she visits just to ensure her status remains upright would not look good in the eyes of other people who find this activity not only intimidating but rude.

Our documentary would be focused on the study of these people who have their own Personal Brand and how this identity affects the people around them. A person’s identity can be judged by their presentation, their eating habits, their talking style, their participation in various activities, etc. For example a regular participant in school events might strike out to others as being unambitious while the girl is only trying to put something productive in her application letters. Branding Thyself is a very people oriented documentary focusing on their lifestyles, their personalities and their auras.


Cambridge Results

Media Brief:


Media Brief: Documentary
Target Audience: All ages above 13
Media Institutions: Television, Internet, Magazines.
Promotion: Social Networking Sites, Television.

This idea is based on the recent A-level results which have gone down since last year and are recorded to be the lowest in history. I have researched this idea in much detail from surveys to graphs. The documentary would basically revolve around people, their experiences, their university admissions and their efforts. It would be based on how students got their university admissions cancelled and how their efforts of six years all went to waste as Cambridge upraised its policy.
In this documentary, we will be focusing on students; capturing their emotions, their reactions, their following actions and reactions. Parents and teachers, too, will be an integral part of this documentary as their views will also be accounted for and how they intend to help their children in fighting the catastrophe, for example students accepted into LUMS get their admissions cancelled due to their inability to produce the required result.  Now this is likely to hurt a student to no end, almost leading her to demotivation which would reflect in her future performance. Parents and professors are likely to feel concerned if this happens.
Similarly, our documentary will be focusing on such real-life catastrophes and showing them through the various perspectives of students, teachers, professors and any other ideal inspiration of the students in question.
This is the picture of the synopsis we got after the comments of our Media adviser :

Initial Synopsis

Synopsis Of My Initial Ideas: 

The Artist:

The one idea I came up with was to show how an artist gets frustrated about him being demotivated all the time over his work whereas initially he was appreciated. That’s because of the greed his teacher has for money, how at the end he starts hating colors, and turns every painting he has to black and starts running away from his hobby! Because if you’re not satisfied with what you’re doing, you’ll find a way to do it better, and through that, you’ll do something outside your comfort zone that you might not have tried before.

I had this idea because I’ve witnessed a real life incident exactly like this. 

And I want to portray the feeling and the amount of frustration going within him as a form of a film. 

This will basically target students mainly of age 12-19. Teenagers who have strong feelings for whatever they do.

The technologies used will be simply a camera. The sound and speakers. 

The movie makers’ software will be used to edit the movie and put the required effects to the movie. 

The movie can be published on websites and social networking websites which are commonly used amongst the teenagers on a regular basis and feedback could be easily attained by them from their comments.

Pros: 

1) the setup can be done in one room easily; can be shot without running to different places and having troubles with that

2) the materials and props that have to be used in the short film are already available.

3) The ambience can be easily created!

Cons:

1) A search of a model

2) will have to learn different camera point of views and ideas to make the short film look attractive. 

Possibility In Pakistan:

In this idea we can show the positive side of Pakistan and we’ll have vast ideas to combine in a 5 minutes movie, related to the education, hard work, pessimism etc.

Different scenes will be shot at different areas and a patriotic song can be used as back ground music. 

We can show how people are struggling against the bad times they have in their life. 

  How the vendors to an educated person is carrying on their life and hard times, yet they still smile and love their country. How helping they are to their fellow Pakistanis etc. 

http://tribune.com.pk/story/389694/positive-pakistani-wise-beyond-his-years/
 This is one article I read which really inspired me. It tells us about this boy who was keen to help all his fellow Pakistanis and was known in school, even outside school, among relatives for this. My story can be totally based on this article showing to which extreme a single boy is helping the community and making a change in others' life. 

This idea will be directly focusing on the population of Pakistan.

Pros:

1) We have to come up with new ideas, be specific and the scenarios can be available easily, also can be created easily.

Cons: 

1) Might be time consuming as many ideas have to be indulged in one short film.

2) Also we’ll have to search for different places and shoot our film there.

3) A group of different-aged people will be needed as our models.

Child Abuse:

This idea is to pass the message that child abuse is dangerous.

A boy cries to himself in a room. Flashback shot of drinking glass falling to the floor in slow motion shows previously what happened, hence, the reason why he is crying. Focus will be  back on the boy, he looks up at the lens of the camera shocked, as he has heard someone coming from outside. The boy knows he will be in trouble for breaking the glass. Then a pair of feet slowly walking towards the door of the house the boy lives in. Continuous cutting between the boy getting even more scared and these feet getting closer. Then the boy looks really scared by the time the feet are at the door. Hand shot of the person trying to unlock the door with keys will be shown. The person drops them. Picks them back up. The person then enters the door from the inside out (door swings open from inside, but only show the feet entering). Have a side angled shot of the boy sitting with his back to the door hopefully keeping it shut.

Still focusing on the boy, have the noise of the person in the other room walking on broken glass and yelling violently. Fade on the boy's face and leave the rest to the audience's imagination.

This idea will target high class people who have a number of feelings for the poor and are practicing child abuse in their daily lives.

The video can be showed on TV channels on a morning show or more informative channels.

Synopsis of Abira's Initial Ideas:

Idea 1

When I started off looking for ideas, I wanted to make a documentary as my media product. Once, deciding my media brief, I began looking for ideas which could be developed into a very realistic yet a very different documentary. Something unusual and attractive. I came up with an idea based on my own country of origin ‘Pakistan’. Now, I chose this topic not because I can easily work with something I can relate to but because, considering the situation in Pakistan, it is imminent that something rises up against all odds and gives us all a ray of hope, a beacon of light. Just the other day I saw two men fighting over a minor car accident while one of the two bled from his head to neck yet fighting away. Certain incidents in life can impact one’s life a lot and can force his/her to bring change. If not bring change, work towards a change. My documentary would be focused on Pakistan and its slow yet gradual steps towards success. It would focus on Pakistan’s beauty, its people, its cultures, its traditions. It would basically be an insight into a positive Pakistan.

 My documentary would be targeted towards the teenagers as I know they want to bring change, and witnessing the adults fight over a slight dent on the bumper demotivates me into believing that the adults in our society would ever work for a change when they can’t even stand united. Hence the age group I’ll be targeting could be anywhere from 11-24; as the need for change is not being  overlooked by any human being in our society, I’d like to include the experienced elders to feel motivated by the documentary, to know that we still can look up in the sky and hope for sunshine.

 My documentary would be distributed all across Pakistan. I want my media product to be shown to everyone. If possible, even abroad so as to erase the misconception people overseas have about my country. Through the internet, magazines, television and through the local and international newspapers everyone would be to able to look towards it. My audiences could send in their feedback through newspapers and internet.

 I would require Photoshop, Adobe Premium and some very effective desi fonts to focus on the culture of Pakistan. A professional camera might be needed to create the appropriate and the most effective imagery; however I could be able to do without. An upgraded system with internet facility is a must. Blending in correctly chosen effects is very important as we don’t want to overdo the documentary and make it glamorous, but, it should be more towards realm i.e. towards kachi abadis and brick houses and a village's feel. 

Documentaries too have proper codes and conventions. These codes and conventions include locations, lighting, costumes for the models, props. I would need locations such as historical venues and places such as the Badshahi Mosque in the night when it’s lit up in luminous lights. Instances where there is load shedding and people resort to older uses of pankhis and lanterns to overcome the situation signifying the spirits of Pakistanis of looking for the silver line in their clouds. Historical educational institutions gaining international recognition and development of infrastructure all across Punjab these days would indicate a step towards success, freedom and a literal version of independence. Therefore, I would require a wide range of locations. Costumes for my models would be very typical. Shalwar kameez basically but with different cultural designations.  Props such as pankhis and charpais and lights for the Badshahi Mosque, charkhas would be required. Cultural music would be another aspect of Pakistan’s success. Hence, collecting so many historical props might get difficult and shooting on more than one location such as going to Karachi to shoot the commercialization of the Arabian hub would be impossibility.  My media product would be very structured in terms of how to go about the documentary. When to shoot the locations, when to shoot the succession etc.

Places and people play a major role in my documentary as their daily lifestyles would be very much in focus. My documentary would be based on the whole of Pakistan to give it the sort of power it requires to be an effective heart wrenching story within itself.  My documentary would be promoted in such a way through various social networking sites and posters so that people know exactly what they might be able to see. My objective is to change that perception from a very stereotypical perception to one of hope, one of positivity.

My documentary is very powerful in terms of content, idea and in terms of media institutions, however I am very likely to face major issues with having to travel all across Pakistan to be able to shoot the most heavenly of places, the best of people and the busiest of lifestyles. I think the costumes would make the documentary much stronger, however, looking for charkhas and wells might be very tough i.e. finding the appropriate props can be very difficult.

Idea 2

Considering the immobility I’ll be facing, I needed to come up with another documentary idea. Hence, I reviewed the current affairs. Cambridge A-level results are out and considering the grading hardness this time around, a lot of students can’t do anything but sit back and try working something up with the transcripts they have received. The students, who want to study and who get affected by low grades, study very hard to gain a clean ticket into a good university but it hurts to not get in, having put in all the efforts. Focused and all, and the Cambridge suddenly announces the grading system being hardened this year around and the students start panicking and worrying. Transcripts are out and the results are unexpected, eye-widening and pretty shocking. I decided to work on this topic and with real-life examples of a few students and with the teachers' opinions about the grading system and the transcripts, I could really work my topic up to its level.  I want to work on this topic as this news has surprised everyone across the board and I wanted this subject to be considered of importance and I wanted feedback on how the results have affected the masses and their futures.

My target audience for this documentary would include the students, teachers and the parents. My documentary would focus on the students’ hard work, the teachers’ references and the parents’ expectations. I wanted to capture the hostilities of the affected students relative to their transcripts and university applications. My documentary would be shown through the internet, through YouTube, facebook, Twitter and MySpace and through the television. I will promote my media product through newspapers and social sites. Feedback on my documentary could be through the networking sites and the editorials of newspapers.

I would require a camera, not necessarily professional and Adobe Premium to work with in order to add effects to the imagery. I would be using transcripts, university applications, prospectuses, university sites to make my documentary effective.

I’d like to use Geo and Hum to show my documentary. These media institutions could design a proper show based on this documentary and the peoples’ feedbacks and how students could overcome this new change in the board.

My media product would require scripts as I need to give examples of the students who have gone through this situation. I don’t require many codes and conventions for this documentary as it is very basic, however I will require locations such as a school ground and university ground in order to shoot. I need daylight to work on this documentary as most of the shooting will be under the fluorescent lights. Props are not required as such nor are any costumes except for the normal wear.  My documentary would be very structured e.g. starting from the preparation for the papers till the result day to the university’s first day. I might face a problem in working with two methods of communication i.e. visual and verbal in one documentary.

People are widely related to this media product as the topic revolves around them and their experiences. Again, people might know exactly what to expect of this documentary; however some might be interested in how to work through this issue and produce a better result with more effort put in.  I might not be faced by any technical issues in this idea, however student life and its effect on results is actually a well-worn out topic and I want to dig deeper to come up with something completely new.

Idea 3

Just last week, I was attending a conference whereby an entrepreneur discussed the importance of human beings being their personal statement. I found this discussion to be very interesting and wanted to come up with a short film idea like such. We see, meet, like, relate to, criticize, hide and even stay away from many people in our everyday lives. Now why we have very different reactions to every different kind of person is only because we see something in them which forces us to believe so. For example somebody we stay away from is someone who probably has attitude and doesn’t want to be friends with anyone out of their social circle. How we judge someone is through their outlook, through their style, through their personality, their way of talking, walking, sitting, studying and a lot more. Therefore, a person is him/herself a brand. A brand that provides a service, for example, contribution towards the economy, the society, classmates, friends, etc. Now it is the person him/herself who makes his/her identity, her personality, her outlook, etc. I wanted to make a short film on the various types of people we meet in our lives and how we judge them just by looking at them or by talking to them for even a minute. I wanted to do this short film because it would let me an insight into people and their ways of personalizing their identities.

My target audience would of course be the teenagers, school/university going students who meet people every day and who face this scenario regularly. I would address my target audience through the internet and the social sites basically as my target audience displays only one proportion of our wide population. This way I could gain feedback easily and would be able to make people aware of how they can overcome this complexity of dealing with different types of people and how to benefit from each brand of human being. My short film would basically be informational but a very casual everyday scenario, hence, not very formal.

For this short film, I will be requiring a professional camera which we might have to hire. I would need an upgraded system to work on and the specific editing softwares too. I’ll be making use of sounds for this film in order to enhance the spirits of my audience.

My short film will be promoted on the radio, through magazines, and through the internet. We still have a vast range of people listening to radios even today, every student today usually requires internet in this century and magazines allow links of interesting unique films to watch every now and then.  This alone would capture the interests of many students as this concept still needs tending to.

My product will be a silent film whereby visualizations would play a major role hence editing and technical knowledge is a must. I’ll require props such as hand bags, jewellery, laptops, etc. also, costumes would be needed according to the various human brands in question. My short film, since it will be silent, would not require a narrative.

People are related to my media product as I will be tackling a major issue being faced by students today. This concept is directly related to people and their reactions and actions. Again this idea will be perceived as stereotypical and might not attract much audience, however, once they go through the reviews and the poster, they might get a wider idea of my concept and how it will be developed.