the critical analysis of my A2 final media coursework.

1. Critical Analysis
Samra Awan
Nairobi International School
Course: Media and
communications A2

2. Questions.
• How does your product use or challenge conventions and how
does it represent social groups or issues?
• How do the elements of your production work together to
create a sense of branding.
• How does your product engage with audiences and how would
it be distributed as a real media text?
• How did your production skills develop throughout this
project?
• How did you intergrade technologies-software, hardware and
online- in this project?

3. Introduction
As part of my final A2 level coursework includes a 5
minute video. To be specific it is a stop motion love
story. The Title of the short film is Another Love
Story. It is aimed at teenagers, both boys and girls
between the ages of 13 to 19. It is about a
boy and a girl who fall in love
but face obstacles along the way

4. • Stop motion (also known as stop frame) is an
animation technique to make a physically manipulated
object or persona appear to move on its own. The
object is moved in small increments between
individually photographed frames, creating the
illusion of movement when the series of frames is
played as a continuous sequence.

5. 1. How does your product use or challenge
conventions and how does it represent social
groups or issues?
• In this stop motion short film, the
representation here is fixated at teenagers. It
shows them to be young and in love. This film in
some ways shows a stereotype of teenagers as
they are portrayed to be naïve.
• Another area in which representation is shown
here is by using interracial characters. This
allows people to see equality in race and
eliminate the idea of the stereotypes of different
races.

6. The conventions shown and displayed in my short
film include;
• A color scheme- The color scheme used in this
moving image is red, green, blue and black.
These are colors represent the color of the
female character’s dress. Red in this case
emphasizes the feminism and delicacy of the
color.
• As for the male character I used the color green
to show the masculinity and emphasize the
gender difference.

7. The use of the color red to
show feminism and to
bring brightness and color
to the film

8. The use of the color green to
express and emphasize on
masculinity and differentiate
between gender. As well as add a
pop of color to the film

9. • Title- The title/name of my short film is
‘ANOTHER LOVE STORY’. The title on its own
gives the audience and slight idea of what the
film is about. It may also leave them with the
idea of what the word “Another” could mean.

10. • Credits-the credits of a film make the movie
and introduces the produces, directors, actors,
songs and even locations of where the film took
place.
• The reason as to why I decided to place my
credits at the very end of the film is to portray
the skills shown during the movie and give the
producers and directors and everybody credit at
the end of the film.

11. • Costumes- As part of my costumes I used
colors(red and green) to emphasize the
difference in gender by wearing making the girl
wear a dress and the boy wearing shorts.
• As part of my real life stop motion, I made the
characters wear close to what the drawn
characters wore to show that these are the same
actors.

14. • Lighting- As part of the lighting in the film, I
used two settings in my stop motion, I used a
drawn whiteboard scene and a real life natural
scene. In both settings the lighting is different.
It contains natural lighting and artificial
lighting.
• There are also challenges I came across with the
lighting. For example, the balancing of different
lighting. From dull to bright and bright to
natural.

15. This is where by dull
lighting is shown. But is
artificial
Bright lighting. But
is also artificial
The change in Lighting

16. The change in lighting
between the dull and
artificial and the bright and
artificial
The use of natural
lighting is bright
without even being
adjusted.

17. • Sound- In this short film, there is no form
narration or any other sound apart from the
instrumental guitar solo audio. which was an
audio gotten from a website known as Free
Music Archive. This allows handlers to use the
audio from the site because it is copyright free.
This allowed me to chose a song and use it
without the worry of having to ask for consent.

19. • Scene- the scenes shown and portrayed in the film
include,
• The camera shots- in this film there are very few
types of camera angles and shots. Most of the film
includes the long shot. This is where by the
character is shown from head to toe to show full
body reaction and movement.
• In this case we don’t use shots such as over the
shoulder or panning because there is no need for
these shots in stop motion. These shots are basically
to emphasize on that specific scene, but in this
situation we must keep the shots at a minimal to
allow focus to go towards the setting and story of the
film

20. • pastoral setting- another example of setting is
the location at which the two main characters
fall in love. This is In the forest which could be
related to pastoral setting where by the
environment setting or weather reflects the
characters mood. In this case calm, soothing and
relaxed.

21. Here we see the
example of
pastoral setting

22. • Where- Where and when the product will
be sold will be at all music stores, book
stores and even online for purposes of
more viewers and to engage with the
intended and unintended audiences. This
is also to allow those who prefer watching
movies as a software rather than buying
hardcopy films.

23. • I challenged a convention by creating a
stop motion film on its own. Most short
films are in normal video footage. I
decided to go against the norm by doing
this.

24. 2. How do the elements of your production
work together to create a sense of branding
• The way in which I used several elements
combines to create a sense of branding. For
example in my poster, I used the maid
characters to show a type of relation between the
short film and the poster as well. I also used my
website to link in with the short film, this is that
the three elements, the film, the website, the
postcard and the blog to be all linked up and not
sparsely placed.

25. 3. How does your product engage with audiences and
how would it be distributed as a real media text?
• As a final product, I feel that my product will
allow the audience to relate to it, in terms of
relationships.
• Another way in which the product engages with
the audience is by appealing to them with a
different format of making a film(stop motion)
and even using different colors so as to appeal to
the audience. By using different production
skills, this will allow the audience to know more
about it so as to buy the product.

26. • As part of the distribution, Another Love Story
will be show cased at several film festivals and
this will also be a method of advertising for the
product itself. This will allow the viewers to want
to later buy the product and advertise it to their
peers about it

27. • Another way of advertising and engaging with
my audiences is by using the social media to
attract my audience (which are within 13-19
years of age). I created an online page on
Instagram as well as Facebook. And short
trailers and teasers will be posted to keep the
viewers and audiences in their feet.

28. 4. How did your production skills develop
throughout this project?
• In the making of this product, a lot of hard work
and skills went onto putting this final outcome
together. In a stop motion film, there are several
different skills to perfect on. For example
movement on frames and knowing of camera
angles and shots to combine a moving images
with simple pictures

29. • Using movie maker- Another way in which I
developed my production skills during this
project is by using and facing difficulties with
the editing software Windows Movie-maker.
• This allowed me to learn my skills ‘On the job’.
Where by all my skills developed throughout the
production of the media text. For example
adding pictures to synchronize with the audio
when played together.

30. • By using Movie maker as a software, it helped
me not only edit my work but also bring it
together as one. This Is one of the main and only
software's I used to create my product.

31. By using the software premier pro. Here is how I slowly
brought my work together into a final product.

32. Postcard- Another way in which I can say my production
skills have developed is by making and creating my very own
film festival postcard. This not only allowed me to
familiarize myself with word and photoshop as well as paint
but also get to know and develop my understanding of what
film postcards are meant to look like.
The reason as to why I used the characters on the front of
my postcard, is to give the audience a brief introduction of
the characters and show them what the movie may be about.

34. • The reason as to why I chose to place symbols
such as the Oscar winning awards etc. is because
this will differentiate a postcard for a film
festival and an actual postcard and a poster.
These are three different things and one way in
which the audience can or my know the
difference may be through the commonly known
Oscar symbols

35. • I also got inspiration from online resources to
provide me ideas of how I would like my final
postcard to look like.

36. How did you intergrade technologies-software,
hardware and online- in this project?
• I did so by looking at some of the most famous
stop motion made to get inspiration, for example
the movie Coraline and Boxtrolls. I used a
software known as Movie Maker to create and
bring together more than 1000 frames to make a
moving image with a total of 5 minutes.
• I also got the help of using online resources by
using YouTube for inspiration and tutorial for
the software I used.

37. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYLa
jMqw8bI

38. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKSnt
_xxSmQ

39. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DluTYpa97k

40. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGAa4MEYkJk

41. • Blog- One way in which I used online help is by creating a
blog and website to show step by step stages of how my
product came to be one final and finished text. I used the blog
to write about what the is film is about and the website to
showcase a part of the film online and to show a portfolio of
images I used to combine together to make a shirt film
• Blog link
http://ccherrywonderland.blogspot.com/search?updated-
max=2015-02-25T22:03:00-08:00&max-results=7
• Website link; for A2
http://editor.wix.com/html/editor/web/renderer/edit/308ca
d09-d5d0-4295-a48c-739a4499751b?metaSiteId=93906883-
4ed7-48ea-ac0b-a57e7cc9d502&editorSessionId=55C5DD32-
37FC-4702-82F8-
FB8DD3CCD0D6&uaToken=NYvzXsA9YxdTd-
UT62VkMDtjOI4V8atA6FO111iBEZqebIGE8_csG_4auRXJlz
4YYUVmT0NYy5x_19rSPBgPrD7DMc97SKX7aOD713jhoiw7
ptY6jrLQN2z3_WjEhvOyXWFFDF38iTdp-_pmhH0pPg

42. The hardware products I used in the making of
this film are
My laptop(HP invent) – This is how I imported
all the pictures taken on the camera and edited
them by bringing them together and combining
it to create a movie.
A professional camera(Nikon D3000) – This is
what I used to capture all the pictures that
combine to create my film, Another Love Story.
 A tripod – This is what I used to hold the
camera in place and keep it stagnant without
having to constantly hold the camera.

43. • One of the main difficulties I faced when using
the software is exporting and saving the file as a
movie and not as a project. This costed a lot of
time and effort put into saving the finalized work
as a final mp3 video

44. • Overall I faced several problems when doing this
project, for example the shakiness of some of the
shots and pictures taken as I made a mistake by
placing my tripod on my bed.
• Another problem was balancing the lighting of my
scenes.
• I overcame some of these issues for example my
tripod placement, and I placed it on a stable stool
whereby it will not be moved.
• I could not delete some of the pictures as this would
send me backwards in my production and video
making.

45. Thank you for
watching…