Media Project Term 3 Final Post

After ten weeks, I have finally completed my Major Project. This was much more difficult than last term as I was outside of my fiction-writing element and tried to do something new. The project was much more difficult than my one in my previous term, as there is the inclusion of outside factors such as the COVID-19 Crisis that caused students to attend classes from home, as an example. This post will reflect on my actions relating to my project throughout this term.

For my strengths, the first that I will mention is my writing ability. Because I write as a hobby I know how to phrase certain sentences together. While What I usually write is fiction, writing about another story is very similar, with the inclusion of writing about characters. I also have a good grasp at online tools that I was using, and I am able to learn very quickly how the tools work. I even figured out how to embed a Yumpu flipbook into my Wix website with minimal outside help and just testing things.

As stated in my previous Final Post for Term 2, I tend to be distracted very frequently, but because I tend to be distracted on my computer and the classes I take are on my computer, I focused more on a distraction that turned into what I needed to focus on. I also now read comments left by Miss Zoe on my blog posts and act on the feedback or suggestions that she stated, making posts in accordance or editing a post to add or delete something. In this term around, I have not had anything that emotionally troubled me as much as last term, but it did help that my parents are around to help support me emotionally if it ever happened.

For my weaknesses, I notice I have a lot of new ones this term. Most notably, because of the time difference between Brunei (my current residence) and the U.K., so classes are actually very late into the day, so I am more tired and sometimes struggle to focus. Because of this lateness, I tend to forget some important details or misunderstand instructions when I wake up the next day. Additionally, my internet connections cuts out very late at night so I miss certain parts of online classes, and one time the internet failed and caused me to miss the end of an EAP class. Because classes are online and I am very much far away from the U.K., let alone Europe, I cannot ask questions to my teachers very frequently for help. In regards to my project specifically, I am not very used to writing non-fiction writings, especially articles as I have not written in that style for a very long time.

https://danialshamshuddin.wixsite.com/redactedstudio

I have updated my Wix website to add my film review of "Isn't it Romantic" and also re-done the flipbooks of my previous projects using Yumpu and embedding them. This term was very different to what I am used to and was very difficult to get used to, but I managed to get through. I very much overall enjoyed my foundation year in De Montfort University International College, but I am very nervous moving on to my first year at University proper. I want to thank my teachers and classmates who helped me get this far

Audience Research

This post is to state what kind of people I think will be the reader of my film review. I envisioned my review to be able to be seen on a popular publication such as The Guardian, or perhaps Entertainment Weekly, as I drew inspirations from reviews from both of them. There are several reasoning for this by the content of my writing.

Firstly, there is the vocabulary that was used. The review uses as simple words as possible so that the general audience could understand while describing the movie as best as possible. The vocabulary used is simple, and I would consider it to be understandable by someone at least with secondary-level education. In short, I expect my audience to be between the ages 15-40+ as they could both understand the vocabulary and have the knowledge to access an online platform where my review could be seen.

(1) Isn't it Romantic Poster

However, I also considered what kind film I am writing about, which is "Isn't it Romantic"; a romance-comedy film, which is a very widespread genre that can have different contents depending on the age rating. However, this film is also a satirical film of a romance-comedy film, which is typically enjoyed by older audiences despite having a self-stated rating of PG-13. To support this, I looked at the average readership of The Guardian from a report dated to 2010. Although it was from almost 10 years ago, this was the best source I could find, but it should give a good idea of the viewership.

(2) Average readership Statistics for The Guardian (2010)

As it can be observed in the table above, my projected age group totals to 45% of the average The Guardian readers. This is almost half of the total average viewership of The Guardian, and is evidence that my review would be suitable for their online platform.

Knowing your audience is important in writing anything, from scripts to reviews, as you need to write in the way that your audience can understand and relate to. Knowing this has benefited me in the past, and I know it will benefit me into future if I make a career out of writing.

References

The Guardian (2010) The Guardian, our readers & circulation. [Online] The Guardian. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/advertising/guardian-circulation-readership-statistics [Accessed 02/06/20].

Image References

(1) IMDb (2019) Isn’t It Romantic?. [Online] Internet Movie Database. Available at: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2452244/ [Accessed 02/06/20].

(2) The Guardian (2010) The Guardian, our readers & circulation. [Online] The Guardian. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/advertising/guardian-circulation-readership-statistics [Accessed 02/06/20].

Film Review Writing Style

This post will discuss my development of the writing structure of film reviews. I have previously discussed my research in previous posts regarding my initial and further research, and I will re-iterate those discussions as well as add new ones that I have researched further.

Firstly is part of my initial research, I looked at many film reviews from different authors and different outlets. The many reviews differed in what points they talked about and how they arranged those they presented. From what I observed, the reviews tend to discuss more about individual characters and the cinematography of the film. Some also summarized the reviewed film as they discuss the elements, such as one about "Seven" written by Owen Gleiberman (1995), while some focus more on what the film shows like Mark Kermode's review of "First Man" (2018), but rarely do they spoil the plot for the reader. Looking at these helped to gain a basic understanding, but I needed to learn more.

As part of further research, I found a book on writing about films, but not explicitly about a review titled "A Short Guide To Writing About Film" written by Timothy Corrigan (2014). It was at this stage that I decided to write about the characters in the film specifically, so I focused more on the section detailing how to write about characters. It said to consider the appearance and behaviour of the characters, as well as evaluating the performance of the actor and the actor themselves, alongside considering if the character is supposed to be portrayed to be realistic or unrealistic based on the previous factors. This book was helpful when writing about the many aspects of a film, and was not too complicated.

I also looked at an article detailing Owen Gleiberman's writing technique on Roger Ebert, written by Matt Seitz after Gleiberman was fired from Entertainment Weekly (2014). Seitz evaluated Gleiberman's writing style, which can be described as someone writing in the way of someone who cares about what they write, and also writing about the "style" and "worldview" of the film and how it creates a mood fitting for its genre. I observed many of these when I read Gleiberman's review, and took some of these techniques to help write my first draft, but unfortunately I tried to copy his style too closely that I didn't even find my own voice. It was only after reading the next piece of research that I really gained traction, alongside help from my tutor.

Also as part of further research that was not covered previously in a blog post, I looked at some more accessible online guides on the internet on how to write a film review. One such guide is written for the New York Film Academy titled "9 Tips for Writing a Film Review" by an anonymous author for the website (2017). It had nine short, but informative tips to writing film reviews. There were some tips that were obvious such as watching the film and expressing an opinion, but there were more that was useful. Some notable tips is to consider the audience, which is what kind of people it is being written for and adjusting what highlights of the movie are covered and the language used in the review.

Another important tip was to talk about the actors in the film and their performance of their character, independent from the writing of the film. I used this tip very much for my review as I talked about some of the characters in their film, as when I discussed one actor's brilliant performance playing essentially two different people, but I also stated my disappointment that they weren't given the spotlight enough. The last tip was to find my "voice", which is the personality that brushes off on my writing. This was also suggested by my tutor Miss Zoe, so when I re-wrote my review I did my best to write from my heart, write as if I'm talking about the film myself with my own words.

After looking back at this, I realized I have come a long way at learning how to write a review. I thought at first that writing a film review would be very simple, but I soon learned there is a lot that goes into a film than just talking about what it has. It needs close analysis of the characters, writing, and the reputation of everyone involved in the making of the film, among other things. I slowly gained more appreciation at reviews and reviewers as I looked into the process of writing a film review, and soon came to enjoy what I was writing as if I was watching the film all over again.

References

CORRIGAN, T. (2014) A Short Guide To Writing About Film. 9th ed. Harlow: Pearson Education.

GLEIBERMAN, O. (1995) Seven. [Online] Entertainment Weekly. Available at: https://ew.com/article/1995/09/29/seven-3/ [Accessed 01/06/20].

KERMODE, M. (2018) First Man review – an inner space odyssey. [Online] The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/oct/14/first-man-review-damien-chazelle-ryan-gosling-claire-foy-apollo-11-neil-armstrong [Accessed 01/06/20].

New York Film Academy (2017) 9 Tips for Writing a Film Review. [Online] Available from: https://www.nyfa.edu/student-resources/9-tips-for-writing-a-film-review/ [Accessed 01/06/20].

SEITZ, M. (2014) For The Love Of It: Notes On The Decline Of Entertainment Weekly, The Firing Of Owen Gleiberman, And The Ongoing End Of An Era | MZS | Roger Ebert. [Online] Roger Ebert. Available from: https://www.rogerebert.com/mzs/for-the-love-of-it-notes-on-the-decline-of-entertainment-weekly-the-firing-of-owen-gleiberman-and-the-ongoing-end-of-an-era [Accessed 01/06/20].

Storytelling

This blog post will discuss one of the processes that I have undertaken for my film review, in this case it is "Storytelling". According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the noun "storytelling" is defined as "The action or activity of telling stories, or a particular story; an instance of this." (2015). 

There is much more to storytelling than this simple definition as there are many processes that precede telling the story. One such process is the creation of a story, which can be either fictional or a recount of real-life events. Both need creativity when creating them as, for fictional stories, you need to base your story from various things the creator has seen, and for real-life events the storyteller needs to find the right words to tell the story. Then there is the method of telling the story, which can range from direct accounts from other people from simply talking with a storyteller or listening from electronic sources such as radios, television, and films, or even written works such as novels, comics, and magazines.

Present in most stories are three main features; a setting, characters, and a plot (McADAMS, 1993, cited by CHAITIN, 2003). A setting is the location of where the story takes place, and without the setting the reader will be unable to visualise what the story should look like and may need locational context for what happens in the story. The second thing a story needs are is a character or more, which helps the audience to focus on someone and to act as a focus point for the storyteller. Thirdly and most importantly a story needs a plot, which is a reason for the existence of a story that can be told in many different ways.

Storytelling is important in my project because I am telling part of the film's own story to the reader to help them understand the context of what I am discussing in the film. A film have these three basic features present in it, and to a degree, my own review. My review partly recounts the plot of the movie as it discusses the characters in the setting of both a real-life and rom-com New York. Storytelling is a widespread art, an art that can be found everywhere, some people may gloss over them, and some take the time to listen and appreciate what is being told to them.

References

CHAITIN, J. (2003) Narratives and Story-telling. [Online] Beyond Intractability. Available from: https://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/narratives [Accessed 26/05/20]

OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY (2015) Storytelling, n. [Online] Oxford English Dictionary. Available from: http://www.oed.com [Accessed 26/05/20].

Draft Feedback

Recently I have sent a draft of my film review of "Isn't it Romantic?" to my teacher Miss Zoe for feedback. Instead of a written feedback she chose to speak to me via Blackboard Collaborate. She had some problems with my review that I sent in that she wanted to discuss with me about personally.

Miss Zoe did not find a clear argument in the review; the thing I'm talking about to get the reader interested into the movie.

In my original draft, the structure was comparing the set design and characters as I summarized the first act of the film, but after a second viewing it did not look very good when there are an assortment of analysis scattered across the paragraphs. I tried to cram talking about the world design and characters together, but it ended up as a mess. This was the result of trying to imitate Owen Gleiberman's work, but I then realized after getting feedback that I had to make this work an original piece, a piece that is written with my own words.

I deleted the entire main body paragraphs and conclusions to start over, but kept and modified most of the introduction as it has a synopsis that explains the film in short. I decided that I should cover the characters in the film, both their "real-life" versions and the rom-com versions that are seen mainly on screen. For this, I consulted a book about writing titled "A Short Guide to Writing About Film" written by Timothy Corrigan (2014). I looked up how to write about the characters in the film, which I discussed in a  previous post about my further research. Instead of trying to cover multiple elements to the movie, I am focusing solely on the characters, how they are different to their respective counterparts, and what role they play in the film.

The book discusses the process of analyzing a character, notably deducing whether or not a character is supposed to be seen as realistic or not. This was noted as the characters are both realistic and non-realistic, so I can look at their characters from both angles in my review. The way that a character can be analysed is through their appearance, their behavior, how they speak, and how they fit among their setting. This way of thinking will help me to break down the characters of the film and write about them in my review.

One of the pieces of feedback that I received is that I did not add a reference list to the end of the review. Despite film reviews being informal pieces, I was advised to create a reference list at the end to support whatever points or quotations that were presented in the review. To start off, I began by putting references to IMDb for the film itself as well as the actors' pages when I cite their previous well-known roles. I will also use in-text citations in the document, but I feel like the references should be removed when I transfer them to a flipbook to present on my Wix website.

My first draft can be found here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1heb-tKrcswnOk62ffAfLBzEACQVN23ic/view?usp=sharing

References

CORRIGAN, T. (2014) A Short Guide to Writing About Film. 9^th ed. Harlow: Pearson Education.

Further Project Research

(1) Isn't it Romantic Poster

This blog post will outline the further research I have undertaken for my Major Project. I have looked at more film reviews of the film in question, "Isn't it Romantic?", research into the writer of a one of the film reviews that was initially research, and a guide into how to write a film.

The film review of "Isn't it Romantic" that I have looked into is written by Benjamin Lee and published by The Guardian, as with the film review of "First Man" that I initially researched (2019). The film review has a similar structure of writing to the "First Man" review as it outlines the likeable elements of the film rather than going through the plot like Owen Gleiberman's review of "Seven". I looked at this review to get a better understanding at how I should write my review by looking at how others have written theirs. It covers good and basic points such as the set design of both scenes in "real life" and in the rom-com world, the role of Natalie in this film being a normal person thrust into a rom-com setting, and Rebel Wilson's acting as her character. The film review also provides a glance into the film that is spoiler-free as it avoids going through the plot and instead has a short synopsis in the beginning.

This piece of research is to help to gain more insight into writing about the film, and how others have written it. It also gave me insight of how a film review should be formatted in terms of its design, with pictures to help support and decorate the article.

(2) Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman is the writer of the "Seven" film review and an inspiration for my first draft of my own film review. I looked at an article from 2014 written by Matt Seitz about Gleiberman's departure from Entertainment Weekly in the same year. Owen Gleiberman had been one of the first writers for Entertainment Weekly and was one of the more liked writers as well. Seitz described him writing as a "weekly critic rather than a daily critic: which is to say, he wrote like somebody had been told he didn't have to appeal to every person who ever walked, only people who really cared about his subject", which means that he writes as someone who likes the thing he's writing about. His structure was also discussed in the article, stating that he writes about the "style, the mood, the worldview" on top of characters and the plot of a film, which means he writes about the film's, as Seitz puts it; "essence" and writes in a way that makes the reader excited for the film.

His style of writing is seen to be very simple to understand, and he knows how to write so that his readers can be engaged into what he watched. His structure was the basis of my first draft, but I seemed to have tried to copy the structure too heavily that I failed to capture his style. I will take notes of how he broke down the individual elements, but I will try to use it in a style that is my own.

(3) A short guide to writing about film

I then looked for several e-books in the DMU library website about writing about film and criticism, one being "A Short Guide to Writing About Film" written by Timothy Corrigan, focusing on Chapter 3: Terms and Topics for Analyzing and Writing About Films because I wanted to focus on what things should be covered in a film review. I will discuss the "Character" section of the chapter as it describes how to analyse the character and their role in a film. One part that I looked at is that one should see if a character in a film is supposed to be "realistic" or a not, and how are they defined in the way they are presented by looking at their appearance, behavior, and their role in the film or media they appear in. Because my review will cover the comparisons of characters and their rom-com counterparts in my film review of "Isn't it Romantic?" this section is a useful tool to see the different features of characters and how they fit into the story.

This further research is much more insightful than my initial research and helped me to properly, especially the guide written by Corrigan.

References

CORRIGAN, T. (2014) A short guide to writing about film. 9th ed. Harlow: Pearson Education.

LEE, B. (2019) Isn't It Romantic review – romcom parody mostly hits its target. [Online] The Guardian. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/feb/12/isnt-it-romantic-review-romcom-parody-mostly-hits-its-target [Accessed 07/05/20].

SEITZ, M. (2014) For The Love Of It: Notes On The Decline Of Entertainment Weekly, The Firing Of Owen Gleiberman, And The Ongoing End Of An Era | MZS | Roger Ebert. [Online] Roger Ebert. Available from: https://www.rogerebert.com/mzs/for-the-love-of-it-notes-on-the-decline-of-entertainment-weekly-the-firing-of-owen-gleiberman-and-the-ongoing-end-of-an-era [Accessed 14/05/20].

Image References

(1) IMDb (2019) Isn’t It Romantic?. [Online] Internet Movie Database. Available from: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2452244/ [Accessed 22/05/20].

(2) Owen Gleiberman (n.d) Owen Gleiberman. [Online] Twitter. Available from: https://twitter.com/owengleiberman [Accessed 22/05/20].

(3) Pearson (n.d) A Short Guide to Writing About Film. [Online] Pearson Education. Available from: https://www.pearson-studium.de/short-guide-to-writing-about-film-global-edition.html [Accessed 22/05/20]

Online Tool Testing

This blog post will detail the online tool testing that I did as part of my Major Project.

One of the tools that I will be using is Lucidpress, which is an online program that can create all sorts of prints such as magazines, brochures, flyers, etc., and can even make them in a digital format. I used Lucidpress to create an online magazine article for my film review of "Isn't it Romantic?"

The above image is a test sample of an online magazine format that I used labelled "Afficionado" using a draft of my film review. When I started I had a hard time choosing what to use as many of the templates are available to premium users. I picked "Afficionado" because it looked more convenient that the other two available online magazine choices. The layout of the editing tools in Lucidpress was very extensive and reminded me of the advanced tools of Photoshop, but with text. Because of its extensiveness, I had a hard time understanding the basics and their placement on the drop-down menus.

Another snag that I caught while making this was that when I copied and pasted my review onto the text boxes, some words would stick together and I had to separate them. This can be resolved by simply searching for the stuck words. The experience creating this was alright and not as frustrating as using Photoshop for the first time.

The second tool I tested out is Yumpu, which is used to make PDFs into a flipbook format. I have tested this before two terms ago when I initially looked for flipbook apps, and I enjoyed how quick the process is.

I converted the test PDF of my review pages and successfully turned it into a flipbook.

Above is the review's 2nd and 3rd pages in the Yumpu flipbook. The format of Yumpu is much better then other free flipbook tools as it can display two pages at one time and there are no ads between pages. The tricky thing was that I did not know how to embed a Yumpu flipbook into my website, but I will try to do so for my review and my previous projects if successful.