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.

How Do I Stay Creative?

How did I generate my idea/s for this project? Tell the story…
This project idea was chosen later than expected due to a misunderstanding, but I quickly decided from the few choices that I had, a film review in this case. I was told previously to exit my comfort zone of action, fantasy and sci-fi, and to focus on a different genre that I am not usually familiar with. I also tend to focus on writing fiction such as prose or scripts, so writing something non-fiction and analytical such as a review is alien to me. I had thought of horror and romance at first, so I decided romance because I cannot handle horrors due to their complexity. As for my choice in the film, I chose "Isn't it Romantic" because I had previously heard of it and briefly glanced its first act on the television, so I decided this to continue watching the film.

I also chose this among other romance films because of its comedy aspect, which I find more familiar but I am still weak at in therms of writing.

How did I begin to develop this idea? Did you draw sketches, take pictures, film clips, what experiments did you do?
I developed this idea by actually watching the film on Netflix, as it is readily available there. I also looked at film reviews to understand more on how to write one, as well as reviews of the film in question, even if they were very short and brief.

What research have you carried out and how has this assisted you with your ideas and helped you develop them?
As mentioned before, I have read long film reviews from newspaper and magazine articles I found online, and analysed how it was structured with what points are covered. Although I am doing this on a writing medium, I looked at video film reviews on YouTube by Danny Gonzales and Drew Gooden, who covered similar romance comedy films, but found the structure to be more comedic than as serious criticism. I also researched on the cast and crew of the film to understand their work and typecast.

What is your method of working? Explain how you create focus and space for your creative work?
To be honest, I do not have a schedule for what work I have to do on certain times. I just try to sit down and focus on what I have to do, but after doing other important work that needs to be done, depending on the urgency. As a matter of focus, I initially thought that putting music on would help, but it actually distracts me from doing the work because my focus would be on the song itself, so I avoid listening to music.

What does it matter? Who cares?  What universal meaning is there in your work?
This work matters to me so I can understand another genre that I am not typically exposed to, so I can expand any future work to relate to romance with further understanding of the genre. For my work as a whole, I hope to be recognized by someone who is willing to bring my ideas to life on television, or even on the big screen.

Project Plan

This post will be a timeline of my Project plan

• Week 3
• Decide what to do for project in terms of medium and subject.
• Week 4
• Start writing Short Essay for planning.
• Gather research by looking at reviews, both written and video form.
• Watch "Isn't it Romantic" to understand the movie.
• Research on the film's cast and their previous roles.
• Week 5
• Hand in Short Research Essay.
• Start writing film review.
• Week 6
• Research further on film reviews.
• Continue writing film review.
• Week 7
• Continue writing film review.
• Week 8
• Re-draft film review, check over points covered.
• Finalize film review for submission.

Project Sign Off: Isn't it Romantic Film Review

After gathering my research and understanding what I have to do, I have filled in my Project Sign-Off and Ethics Form, which can be found here.

For context, I am doing a film review of the 2019 romance comedy film "Isn't it Romantic". Below is a detail of what I will do for my project, extracted from my Sign-Off Sheet:

Project Aims and Objectives:

• To create a review of 1000 words on the film “Isn’t it Romantic?”
• To create a showcase on my website
• Draft my review and sent to tutor for feedback

Research to be carried out:

• Structure of film reviews
• People who have made film reviews

Software/Digital Tools to be used:

• Microsoft Word

As something that I am not familiar with, I am going to be doing this slower than writing a fiction piece, but I am confident that I will pass this successfully.

Initial Project Research

(1) Isn't it Romantic Poster

My initial research that I carried out for my Major Project; a review of the 2019 romance comedy film "Isn't it Romantic?", involves looking at how other film reviews are structured when being written, and what points are to be covered and analysed. I have looked at film reviews of other films from various sources such as a review of the 1995 film Seven by Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Gleiberman (1995). When I chose to look at spoken film reviews through videos, I looked at lesser-known film reviewers on YouTube, namely Drew Gooden and Danny Gonzales (YouTube, n.d.), but I thought that they were too casual with their assessment of the films they reviewed and they present their opinions too dramatically in the form of exaggerated re-enactions of criticised scenes, and tend to cherry-pick bad movies to review to present more negative opinions. For the written reviews I have read, the writers have not just described the actions on screen, but what elements in the film from sound and music to the set designs of the film and how it ties into and affects the mood and plot.  When they describe the mood set by the films’ elements, they speak from their own opinion of how they felt when they watched the film, and further expanding on this by using exciting and uncommon words to describe the film by using words that describes the feeling as accurately as possible.

The reviews that I have read also compare the film they are reviewing to other works of the same genre to the film to get the reader to understand the film more if they have watched a film similar to that. The reviewer also refers to other films that the reviewed film’s cast and crew have worked on to a similar effect, sometimes by comparing their character to another they have played, sometimes by poking at similarities or by showing appreciation for their range by recalling a character with a completely different personality, as when Observer’s Mark Kermode cited (2018) “La La Land” when he wrote about Ryan Gosling’s role in his review of First Man.

I will continue to update this blog on my further research on writing a film review.

References

GLEIBERMAN, O. (1995) Seven. [Online] Entertainment Weekly. Available at: https://ew.com/article/1995/09/29/seven-3/ [Accessed 05/05/20].

GONZALES, D. (n.d.) Danny Gonzales. [Online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSUf5_EPEfl4zlBKZHkZdmw [Accessed 05/05/20].

GOODEN, D. (n.d.) Drew Gooden. [Online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTSRIY3GLFYIpkR2QwyeklA [Accessed 05/05/20].

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 05/05/20].

Image References

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

Tutorial

In Week 4, I was supposed to be in a tutorial with my tutor, but I forgot and attended late. We had a brief tutorial before the next person who was supposed to attend. My tutor first pointed out my mistake with my Major Project Ethics Form, in which I entered information about a different activity from a different module and told me to replace it with a proper project aim, which was to write a film review. Afterwards, she pointed out that my recent two blog posts (now deleted) covered activities from a different module and told me to replace it with posts of the previous weeks, which I had also done. As for my short essay covering my project, I had not put very much into it before and I am rushing to get it done before the deadline.

For my film review, I will be reviewing the 2019 romantic comedy film "Isn't it Romantic?" directed by Todd Strauss-Schulson and starring Australian actress Rebel Wilson. I chose this film because I was suggested to write about a film in a genre unfamiliar to me; romance in this case, and that I have glanced at certain parts of the film when my mother watched it on television, and I wanted to see more of it. I have quickly filled in some basic information on my project into the short essay, and I will continue to add more as I research more into writing my actual project. 

Major Project

On Week 3, my tutor was not present to do an online class, but were left with an ethics form for our Major Project and a PowerPoint that was supposed to be presented. On that week, I had filled in the ethics form for the project but with the incorrect activity, which was brought up this week by my now-present tutor. She corrected me and advised that I write a film review of a film in a genre that I am not familiar with. This was encouraged by my tutor to challenge myself into doing something that I am not familiar with, which I can agree with. Initially, I plan to write a review on the 2019 romantic comedy film "Isn't it Romantic" starring Rebel Wilson, but this may change.

I was also tasked with doing an exercise from a PDF to help understand academic writing for my set essay. In that week, I have not done the exercise, but I hope to make up for it by doing it soon.

Set Essay

For Week 2 of Media II, we were presented with a brief for our Set Essay to be handed in on Week Six. Many of the choices presented in the brief appeared to fit various continuation routes, and as such there was one that correlated with my continuation route of Film Studies:

"Critically analyse the mise-en-scene in the David Fincher film Seven (1995) consider in-depth the setting, lighting, costume/make up, figure expression and movement and how this affects the narrative."

This is similar to my previous Set Essay from last term where I was to write about a scene from the Alfred Hitchcock film Vertigo, but this wants an analysis of the entire film's mise-en-scene rather than one. I will use my experience from the previous Essay to write this and learn from my previous mistakes. I have already watched the film on Netflix and currently am writing the essay.

This term, I am slightly more confident than last term on the approach of this, but still have some worries as this is due next week. Whatever the feedback will be, I hope it will be more successful than the previous essay.

Object Lesson

In today's Media Project II Online Class, we were told to find an object and write about it; how it makes us feel, what it makes us think of, things like that. Because I came back to my home country from the U.K., I was placed in a hotel room for a two-week quarantine period and I have limited possessions with me. One remarkable object that I have is an Optimus Prime-shaped Bluetooth speaker.

Taken from Tformers forum

It was a birthday present from my aunt, who gifted this to me to resolve a problem with my iPad's damaged speaker. This speaker reminds me of the character in question; Optimus Prime, and the kind of person he is.

Optimus Prime in the movies has a habit of protecting humanity, despite his frequent findings of humans being terrible people such as siding with his enemies to enslave the world, or even hunting down his own allies. I always see bad news from quick glances at articles on the internet that involve someone doing something terrible from someone vandalizing something precious to the community or ecosystem to terrible decisions made by politicians, but I always know that there are some people that are better than them, and I hold out hope for humanity a little more, just as Optimus Prime has. I much preferred something Bumblebee-related, but Optimus Prime also has some qualities that I like, such as his inspirational leader-like personality, his compassionate yet fierce voice, and he is also blue, which is my favourite colour. He can be considered a very good role model if you ignore his brutal fighting style in the films he appears in. With all this that I discussed, the ideas of faith in humanity do not really match with my previous blog saying I want to do something calmer for my project, but the plan has not been set in stone yet, so I shall see where this goes.

I very much enjoyed discussing this speaker on my blog and I look forward to whatever idea I come up with for my project.

Image References:
Tformers.com (2017) Transformers Bluetooth Speaker Heads For Optimus Prime, Megatron, Bumblebee & Sqweeks From Camino. [Online] Available at: https://tformers.com/transformers-bluetooth-speaker-heads-for-optimus-prime-megatron-bumblebee-sqweeks-from-camino/31541/news.html [Accessed 31 March 2020].

Welcome Back!

Today is the second day of the new term; Term Three.

As a result of the recent COVID-19 outbreak, all classes have been moved online to Blackboard Collaborate Ultra. Because of this, interactions with tutors will be difficult, but I will try my best to complete my projects. In this term, I will try to come up with new ideas different from my previous action-oriented projects and hope to write something more casual, fitting of the current mood with everyone in isolation currently. Funny enough, I came up with this before the outbreak happened and I wanted to try my hand at something calmer.

I hope for all the best this term.

Media Project Term 2 Final Post

After ten weeks, I have finally completed my Major Project. It had some ups and downs, but I am glad to have finally completed it. There were many difficulties to completing it, mostly personally problems preventing me from progress but I will not delve into that. In this post I will reflect on what I have done good, and what I need to improve on.

First, I will discuss my strengths of what I have done in my project. Because I write as a hobby as well, I already outlined my story from start to finish, so I have an idea of what to write. I also know when to output blog posts at the right time, but I often do not write enough, the matter of which I will discuss later. I also have a good idea of where to draw inspirations from and how to mould those inspirations into my own unique ideas for my script. I am also well-versed in the script writing format so I know how to write a script properly.

As for weaknesses that I need to improve on, there are many. I am often easily distracted to many things due to my ADHD and sometimes spend ten minutes just listening to music when I am supposed to be writing at home, so I will have to try to not listen to music at all in those times. Another major flaw is that I do not read my tutor feedback on my blogs that detail what I have done wrong, the reason being is that I am afraid of criticisms, but I will try to listen more next term to get better marks on my blogs. Because of my procrastination, I sometimes wait until the last minute to do my work, which sometimes leads to things being rushed and flawed. One dilemma that has been brought up this term is a very personal experience that left me depressed for a week and prevented me from doing my work, and while I will not detail it I will say that I will try my best not to let emotional problems get in the way of my work, and ask for emotional support from others when I do.

In addition to my strengths, I have also learned to keep my brainstorming mind-map smaller to what I am actually doing.

Pictured above is my Milanote mind map from the previous term where I planned out my script meticulously. Some of these ideas were planned for concepts later on of the script's series and were essentially unnecessary in the beginning, which led me to not put enough time in my script.

Pictured above is the mind-map from this term, which is considerably smaller. This is because I only planned for what I will actually write for my script, which meant that I worked quicker and spent more time on my script, so I will keep this in mind for next term's project.

https://danialshamshuddin.wixsite.com/redactedstudio

That said, I have updated my Wix website to add my new script, remove personal information, and update my About page, which can be found in the link above. I look forward for my next project next term, which I will try to do something different from my previous projects. I hope to learn to write more "chill" episodes, or even a horror setting for my script, as I am interested in writing a more broad array of settings.

Target Audience

This has been long due, but I am writing this post to identify my target audience for my script. My initial target demographic for the story depicted on the script would be for early teenage boys, otherwise currently known as Generation Z, for its superhero content. Because I took inspiration from other similar media such as Power Rangers, another children-oriented show, as the basis for my script, I thought of aiming it to that age demographic. To get a better understanding of demographics, I was given a document detailing target markets by my tutor Miss Zoe.

This document details data relating to demographics such as age, gender, race, etc.

To define Generation Z, according to the document, they are people born between 1995 and 2019, aged between infancy and 24 years currently, and are roughly 25% of the world's population. They are the most connected with technology and are more familiar with modern technology than their previous generations, which can be a factor in their interests that can attract them to sci-fi media. On average, one member of Generation Z spends 3 hours on their devices. Because of their exposure to compact technology, the older members may be uninterested in watching television and prefer a streaming service such as Netflix for entertainment. My script is aimed more on the younger side at 10-13, but may gain traction with older audiences.

I then searched for audience breakdowns of films and television shows similar to my script with sci-fi and superhero elements. I first searched for audience breakdowns of the Power Rangers television series to find some viewership data, but could not find anything other than an article from The Hollywood Reporter on the 2017 Power Rangers movie. They reported that 34% of viewers were aged 18-24 and 39% being 25-34 to total up to 73% (McClintock,2017), but the other 27% were not mentioned and unknown. I tried to search for the source of their statistics, that being PostTrak, a polling service for films, but the report appears to not be available for the public. To further my search, I broadened my sights to more popular superhero sci-fi film series such as Marvel, as suggested by Miss Zoe.

I found a Reddit post on r/marvelstudios that conducted an extensive survey last year on the audience data of recent Marvel films. It shows that 40% of viewers who took part in the survey were aged 16-20 and the male audience was at 87%. This fits in as I predicted, but I went to analyse the gender portion of the audience demographic. Earlier I also consulted with Miss Zoe for help and she showed some examples of sources to look for material for my research, one being another Reddit post with an attached article from that pointed out that 45% of Ant-Man and the Wasp's viewership was female; the highest the female viewership has ever been at the time (McClintock, 2018). I explored more into this and found another article by Film School Rejects that covered more viewership data for Marvel films that suggested that female viewers increase over time, with Ant-Man and the Wasp and Black Panther having the highest percentage of female viewers at 45% because of their increased focus on female lead roles (Campbell, 2018); the Wasp, and Nakia, Okoye, and Shuri, respectively.

With this information, I now know who my script can be targeted at. If I want to attract more viewers I should have a balance of male and female characters in my stories as well as engaging content to keep the audience interested. I will keep this information in mind next time I create a script with a certain target audience.

References:
CAMPBELL, C. (2018) 'Ant-Man and the Wasp' Draws a Bigger Crowd Than 'Ant-Man' (Especially With Women). [Online] Film School Rejects. Available at: https://filmschoolrejects.com/ant-man-and-the-wasp-box-office/ [Accessed 6 Mar. 2020].

Flamma_Man (2019) Demographic Survey Results - 2018 : marvelstudios. [Online] Reddit.com. Available at: https://www.reddit.com/r/marvelstudios/comments/aun51w/demographic_survey_results_2018/ [Accessed 6 Mar. 2020].

McCLINTOCK, P. (2017) 'Power Rangers' Gets a Surprise Box-Office Boost From Millennial-Age Fans. [Online] The Hollywood Reporter. Available at: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/power-rangers-gets-a-surprise-box-office-boost-millennial-age-fans-988830 [Accessed 6 Mar. 2020].

McCLINTOCK, P. (2018) Box Office: 'Ant-Man and the Wasp' Buzzes to $76M in U.S., $161M Globally. [Online] The Hollywood Reporter. Available at: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/box-office-ant-man-wasp-crushes-first-purge-76m-1125547#ampshare=https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/box-office-ant-man-wasp-crushes-first-purge-76m-1125547 [Accessed 6 Mar. 2020].