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.