Saturday 11 April 2009

My Evaluation

Evaluation


The product which I made is an opening to a film called “The Perfect Disaster”. This name was chosen as the character connotes perfection and the car accident is the disaster. The title is also appealing as it uses juxtaposition. The group consisted of myself and Vicky Brankin. Therefore my contribution was evenly shared as it is more effective working in a pair.


The genre of our film is a romantic comedy. The conventions we have used to create this portray a girly approach to the opening as the main character is getting ready for a date. This has been made using typical camera angles such as close ups and medium shots to focus on the actress. The close up shots used, particularly work well with the use of makeup and mirror reflections to show the common actions of a stereotypical girly girl, inspired by similar characters such as Elle Woods in Legally Blonde. As it is a romantic comedy it is suspected to be all happy and positive. However to make our film different we decided to do a shock ending to the opening, resulting in a dramatic accident. The results in this make the audience feel surprised as we found out in our questionnaires, as 100% of people asked proved this to be an essential part of the excitement of the clip . Therefore this choice in ending proved to be effective for our audience. As our feedback included “I didn’t expect that ending to happen”, “it was a big shock that worked well with the camera angle”. We decided to use up beat non digetic music to go with our film as it is very appropriate for the target audience as it falls into the pop genre. However we didn’t want it to be too cheesy, therefore we didn’t use the stereotypical love ballad songs.


Our media product portrays stereotypical “girly girls” in the category of young people. This has been achieved through typical girly clothing such as lots of feminine dresses and shoes. Make-up is also a common prop throughout the opening titles as she is getting ready for her date. The bedroom location also portrays this stereotype as it is clearly very pink and extremely girly. Social groups are represented as she represents women in a traditional feminine role. We decided to use natural lighting as the chosen genre generally uses natural lighting to make it more realistic. We decided to represent the character as a stereotypical girly girl because this fits with the generic conventions of a romantic comedy and feel the audience will relate to the actions and characteristics of the actress as she is getting ready. Our feedback proved that our aim to represent characters worked as 95% of them correctly guessed the stereotypes portrayed. 


I think that a film company such as paramount pictures would produce our film. This is because they have previously produced films such as mean girls which relates to our film through the romantic comedy and teen genre. As this is a very popular genre I feel that it would be appropriate for both English and American audiences, fitting in with Hollywood. Therefore it would be a big budget film as there is already a wide audience around. “Working Title” could also produce our film as they are also a popular big company producing similar romantic comedies such as “Bridget Jones Diary” and “Notting Hill”.


The target audience for our film would consist of people aged 16-25 as it is focussing on teens which are the main characters in the film. However the film would be suitable for all ages. The film will also be more appealing to females as statistically they are more likely to go and see a girly romantic comedy also referred to as a “chick flick”. I also think that this film is suitable for all ethnicities, and nationalities as the stereotypes portrayed apply to all different people. Relating to films such as “The devil wears Prada”, “the sex and the city movie” and the recent “confessions of a shopaholic” I think that the target audience will enjoy typical girly activities such as shopping and having a rich lifestyle.


We attracted the targeted audience through stereotypical girly actions of getting ready for a date and used props such as clothing and make-up. We also achieved this through a location of a girls pink bedroom. The music we used is mainly non digetic and very catchy as it uses a lot of repetition to be more memorable. We also used digetic sounds of the accident at the end involving the character being ran over. This forms shock and surprise to the audience as it is much unexpected. We also edited the opening to be very dynamic and a little faster than normal. This was because it relates to the excitement of getting ready to go out and then contrasts with the disaster of getting ran over.


Technologies I have use when making my media product involve the use of the internet to research similar movies, Youtube to see the generic conventions of film openings and blogger to updated and display our research. We also used imovie to do our editing to make it more professional and realistic as we could place our footage in a linear sequence. We also found our music on youtube which has been made by an unsigned act and relates to the chosen genre as it provides a pop sound. We also used the filming equipment providing a camera and tripod to smoothly film our opening sequence. Where we then used angles such as close ups to enhance the emotion, long shots to show the location and medium shots to clearly show the actions of the character.


I feel that I have learnt a lot of skills from editing and filming out opening sequence to our film. This proves evident from the preliminary task as the final piece uses many more camera angles fitting into the linear structure so it is more natural to the genre, music providing a beat adding to the excitement of getting ready and transitions to open the film and finish it making it more professional. The actions portrayed in the sequence are relevant and easy to understand in the final out come in contrast to the preliminary task. Here we have used a close up where the audience is the mirror as the character is putting on her make-up.


In conclusion I think that our chosen genre has been achieved and it is suitable for the target audience. This has been achieved through the mise en scene, camera angles, and editing as it follows the linear structure that we set out to achieve. As the questionnaire feedback shows the most effective part of the opening sequence to our film is the shock ending which is emphasised with digetic sounds from the car. The close up shots on the actress while doing her make-up is also effective as the audience acts as the mirror as are the spinning shots. This is because it is very dynamic and relates to the common actions when getting ready showing the indecisiveness of the stereotypical girl character.

Thursday 9 April 2009

My full evaluation

Media: evaluation of my clip.     Vicky Brankin
The project that I choose to do in media was to shoot and edit the opening sequence of a romantic comedy. I worked with my partner steph to make and edit our film. We both equally contributed to the filming and editing ideas so this made it easy to decide what was going to be in the film.

The choosen genre that we decided to use was girly chick flick/romantic comedy we decided this by asking a random selection of people on their preferred genre for a film. The ideas that we used were to use lots of pink and this would really help portray the girly theme throughout the clip. Also we used really catchy pop/R&B music which most girly films tend to have such as mean girls or maid in Manhattan. We found our music on you tube, Lucy was an unsigned artist with a great voice and a fast rhythm. I think it was very vital to use this idea because without portraying the pink theme people would never pick up on the genre as easily. In the end we did end up slightly changing the plot line for our film. At the very start we intended on showing a girl and a boy getting ready to go out on a date and to show both sides of the preparation to show the contrast in gender, however we decided to change this as we got further into our filming process and to change it to just showing the girl side and to make that more effective rather than sharing it out and maybe causing confusion. We also added a dramatic ending which we thought would be quite surprising and give a great twist.    

I think that the idea of our film would be successful because it is easy tp follow and pick up on the genre and it stuck to that genre to save confusion even though there was a slight twist. After finishing our film we handed out some questionnaires to get some feedback about our film from the public. We found out that 100% all picked up on the choosen genre and 100% really liked the ending and it separated itself from other girly films. In our film we did use a lot of representation of teenage girls getting ready to go out. I think it was a truthful representation but it was very stereotypical of the average teenage girl but I also think the representation of teenage girls seemed a little vein and dopey as we only showed the beauty side of her and not the academic side. As we were filming we decided to make it very over the top and pink to really get the point across and also to make it more affectful and dramatic. I think that all of our choosen actions in the film fit to the genre. We used quite a range of lighting to suite the mood like at the beginning we used dimmed and progressed as we worked further through. We used many different types of filming techniques such as panning and hand held and many different angles high, low, canted.
The audience for our film would mainly be girls aged 12- 40 this is a good age range as they all know how it feels and can relate to the film when they get ready for a date. Also this gives us a large target audience.

We looked at many different films to get inspiration and different ideas. We looked at films such as Bridget Jones diary and legally blonde because both of these films all carry the stereotypical female role that we wanted to use and portray into our film such as using the main colour thee as pink to portray the girly stereotype and the ditsy blonde characteristics where they are never taken seriously. We researched a few directors such as Sharon Maguire who directed Bridget Jones diary and also others such as Robert Luketic who directed legally blonde. These directors’ use and show the girly stereotype so well they have really portrayed across the blonde female stereotype. Most of these directors where American and used American actors except Bridget Jones which was an English film but they used some of the techniques that an American film maker would such as the over the top acting. I am not sure if we pitched our film idea to either of these directors that they would be interested in using our idea.

When looking at my preliminary task I think that I have learnt a lot since then in terms of filming and also in my editing technique. Also in my preliminary task I can see that my filming was a little shaky and wobbly and I hadn’t got the hang of zooming in and out. Also the editing to start with was very jumpy and did not link together. However as we moved on our technique improved and our editing and cutting improved and we managed to make al the clips link together smoothly. As we improved we decided to add more difficult angles into our film to make it more interesting. We also played with the speed of clips in certain parts to make it seem more lively and to give a greater effect.

In our film I wouldn’t say we set a feeling of certain time of day as we filmed inside for most of it but when we filmed out side we came across a limitation as it was quite light and we wanted to portray it as a night feeling but this was a problem as we where only free for filming during day time hours.
To create our film we used lots of different technology such as the camera filming equipment and the editing suite to perfect our clip. I also got the chance to use the music burning system to put the music onto our film. We did have to use pen drives to add certain things to our clip such as music. We also used many different internet sites to help us such as Blogger to post our thoughts and ideas and you tube to find inspiration and music and other film sites. We used imovie to edit our clips from the camcorder. During all of these processed we were shown how to use all of the technology correctly. We did have to re-do a few parts of our film to make it better such as the music as the length of the film kept changing due to editing so we had to either add or remove a little of the music so they ended at the same time. Originally the music lasted for 5 minutes and we only had 2 minutes of footage to use so we had to cut the music half way through and add the chorus back in as it as the catchy part which was preferred by the majority of our feedback.

Overall I think that our film came out quite well and a lot better than I thought it would have turned out. I think that my filming and editing techniques have both made a large improvement. I have got a basic skill level and would like to build upon those to make it even better. 90% of our feedback really liked the overall film and said they would like to watch more.

Monday 16 March 2009

Evaluation

Our final clip turned out different to how we had planned in our story board. We made a few changes such as taking out the male character. In the end we feel this was for the best and has made a positive impact to our film, as the girl is the main character. We have also positively used media language such as close ups on the makeup and mirrors to show the typical stereotype we wanted to achieve. we also achieved this by using the colour pink. Overall we are happy with the out come of our clip and feel it fits into the genre that we originally planned and set it to be. If we could have changed anything we would have choosen the ending to have been filmed at night to make it more dramatic. 

Friday 13 March 2009

Final Clip

Changes

We have decided to make a few changes to the script of our film. We have taken out the boy character as it took up to much footage and it seemed more effective without.

Monday 9 February 2009

Risk assessment


This is our risk assessment sheet. This tells people how dangerous our film will be. As you can see we will have little dangerous or harmful stunts in our film as it will not fit into our choosen genre.