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].