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
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.