Critical Reflection

 1. How do your products represent social groups or issues?

 My product represents social groups and issues with the whole premise of the short film. In the short film, the main character is currently living without a mother, who passed away. Around the world, thousands of kids each day are left without a parent. As a result, Many without a parent are often disconnected and feel like they're missing an important part of their life. In this movie, my partner and I wanted to show what it's like to finally reconnect with a lost parent. It might not be what the main character would've wanted, but it allows them to see what his mother cared about. With this social issue being shown, it allows the audience to "live" in the main character's shoes. It's shown at some parts in the movie that the main character really misses his mother and he's trying to succeed for her. When the main character finally figures out his mother's lost treasure he is seen crying. This shows the struggle to move on from losing a loved one. Another social issue that was touched on was single parenting as a father. In most movies, it is usually shown that the father leaves or passes away but we wanted to show the other side of parenting. It represents all the single fathers around the world who are struck by tragedy.

2. How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’?

The elements of our short film's production work together to create a sense of branding because of the various amounts of marketing. In our marketing campaign, we wanted to create a new sense of branding. My partner and I did not want to make a basic type of advertisement, we wanted our marketing to be different and I feel like that created our branding. When creating our social media accounts we wanted to create a sense of formality, but at the same time, we wanted a sense of mystery. That fit our short film perfectly. With our website, we wanted to go with a minimalistic look. This created a sense of feel that this movie would be a calm one, (which it was) and it also created the branding of a calm movie. Another thing that enhanced our branding was the postcard. With a similar concept of the website, we wanted the postcard to complement the short film in branding. I feel like the postcard depicted the calm tone well too. The light colors and calm font allowed for a "chill" sense of feeling. Another thing that enhanced our branding was within the short film itself. I feel like the way my partner and I direct our films create a branding of our own. The way we take shots, use lighting to our advantage, and the storytelling our films do creates our own flavor; And I feel like in this short film our flavor and branding are the best represented. 

3. How do your products engage with the audience?

My short film engages with audiences very well. Since the film is fairly short it was easy to keep the audiences engaged in that short amount of time. The way we were able to keep the audience engaged throughout the movie is with the pacing. Pacing is the rate of movement in a film. Without proper pacing, any film can affect audiences negatively. In our short film we were able to use the length of the film and pacing to our advantage. We didn't want the pacing to be too fast because it was only a 5 minute film but, we didn't want the pacing to be too slow because it would drag out our short film and we would run out of time. My partner and I ended up finding the perfect pacing. One which the viewer wouldn't be bored at all and could follow the plot happily. Another way my short film is able to engage with the audience is because of the plot. Since my partner and I wanted the veiewrs to be engaged during the whole duration of the movie we also needed a good plot. With that being said, me and my partner spent hours trying to come up with the best screenplay we could've. We added suspense, mystery and adventure all in one short film. The plot we ended up choosing allowed us to perfectly pace our movie while having a fairly simple plot. With all of those aspects my groups short film can engage with auidences.

4. How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?

We used our research to create our short film and challenge conventions in many ways. To make our short film the best it can possibly be, my partner and I decided to do extensive research on other short films. We ended up using youtube to research and watch other short films. This allowed us to have a reference on how our short film should turn out. After focusing on short films as a whole my partner and I wanted to dive into our genre. The genre we chose was an adventure/mystery type and we really thought we can do a spin on those movies. My partner and I wanted to focus more on the old simple movies like the Goonies instead of going for a more action packed adventure movie like Jumanji. My partner and I wanted to challenge conventions by going away from the status quo. All the movies are fast paced and confusing and I wanted to do something different. So we created a calm version of an adnture movie with some aspects of a mystery in it. Challenging conventions allowed for my short film to stand out and I'm very satisfied with the way it was turned out.