Our media product both followed and challenged conventions of real media products. One way in which we used our camera conventionally was to show entrapment in the character named Vicky. We used mainly medium shots and close ups. This showed the lack of space around her and as she was trapped alone mostly in the camera shot. We see she feels trapped within herself, and also in her house and her life. The framing also shows she is alone, as many close ups show just her emotions and the character herself.
We also use the camera unconventionally by taking the sound and the use of camera and marrying them together. We see a high angle medium shot of the wine pouring into a wine glass, and as the wine hits the bottom of the wine glass the music begins.
This has two possible meanings which leave the audience to create their own opinion of what this meaning could be. The music beginning as the wine hits the glass shows that the alcohol is the beginning to a good time. The wine hitting the glass shows the party has just begun and the music beginning at the same time shows happiness and good times for the character. However, the other possible meaning that could be created is the alcohol could be representing the depression the character is feeling and as if the alcohol is going take away all her problems. The music beginning at the same time as the wine hits the glass could show the process has began for the character to become happier as the alcohol takes over, and also to possibly make the character feel as if she is going to be having a good night yet we find out she is in fact not going anywhere.
Many films have the convention of a 5 part narrative structure, the exposition, development, complication, climax and resolution. We challenge this convention by having only a 4 narrative structure which we ended up ending without a resolution, leaving the climax on a question. We worked towards a climax giving the audience the impression the character was happy and was preparing for an evening out with friends. We challenged this convention by not ending our film. This is not expected and surprises the audience; this is because they can not see it coming. We wanted to create a subtle message to our female audience, that even if you are in the same situation as the character, the answer isn’t to give up and kill yourself. This ending is effective as it raises a question. The audience and creates a debate as to where the story will take the character and ends the story untold without patronising the viewers.
Quiet ambient sounds are used conventionally as they give the impression of home life and normal everyday life. These sounds consist of the character walking up and down the stairs and the showing noise. Also we hear the laptop slam showing anger and aggression which shows emotions of the character. However, we have no use of diegetic speech leaving only the actions and performance to tell the story. However yet we do use a non-diegetic soundtrack; Fingerprints by Katie Perry. We used as our soundtrack is an up tempo pop song yet has some relevance to the characters feelings and emotions. ‘I want you to remember me, I’m leaving my fingerprints behind’. This is giving a subtle message about the characters emotions and in a way she is trying to say when she is gone, she would like to be remembered. This shows us how the character is in fact depressed and is putting on a happy face.
Editing is used conventionally in our film by using many dissolves. For example, at the beginning we see her slam the laptop down with anger. As she does this the camera shots cut to get closer to her then close to the laptop. This shows how the emotions are getting deep within her and could possibly be the start to all the drama coming up in the film. Also there is a scene in the middle of our film when we use a series of dissolves to show time passing as Vicky is trying on different outfits. This shows the time it has taken Vicky to pick and outfit and shows then length of the process, and this also shows an undecided mind on her outfits, yet also on her life. We can tell she is confused and undecided with her life as at the end of the movie we see she is in fact not going any where. Also the editing is fixated on the shower gel as Vicky is showering, building up tension as the camera doesn’t move and then cuts to her in front of the mirror.
This leads us to how the conventions of mis-en-scene have been used effectively. There is a scene half way through the movie when the character is preparing to go out and is getting on dressed up in party clothes and has made a big effort to look her best. This however creates a question as she is not in fact going out yet we don’t see this at the end so we don’t know whether she actually does or not. The way our character acts and the facial expression we see she comes across to be quite happy. This smile is part of the act as she is in fact not happy and is depressed. The lighting is very realistic and the performance of the character and the actions she does throughout the movie is just normal activities any young female undertakes whilst getting ready to go on a night out. This movie shows realism and not a polished life style like some big movie that make life seem perfect.
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
How successful is the poster in creating identity for your film?
Our poster creates an identity for our film by the use of our image, the language and the design.
Our image is of the character Vicky looking into a mirror, so we see her back and her reflection in the mirror of her face. We see from this image that she is looking like she is trying to put a smile on her face. With this being a reflection, this is trying to present the reality and the reflection being a fake. The reflection of her face is almost like that is what she in herself wants her reflection to look like and seeing only her back in the real character shows she may be hiding from something, such as her emotions. The smile she has on her face is almost serious and although she looks a little happy she also looks very thoughtful. This indicates that our film is branded as a drama. Yet, we also see that she is a young girl, with a full face of make-up and glass of wine in front of her. This gives the audience a sense of our film being a chick flick, giving it an image of being a female targeted drama.
‘Tonight Is The Night’ is the title of our film and this being the main part of the language on our film poster shows that the film will be containing something happening that night. The tag line says ‘You will remember’, and this shows us that something is happening that night which must be important. When we relate this sentence to the image we begin to think that maybe something bad is going to happen as the characters face is serious and thoughtful, possibly meaning the character is thinking about what is going to happen and these actions will be something the character will remember and maybe us as an audience too. The review quotes give a rather similar message: ‘Opened my eyes to things I never thought of’ and ‘thought provoking and interesting’. This creates an immediate question to the audience. What could happen and what might happen, using their own imagination. This shows that our film gives you a lot to think about in sense of the story and shows we have used a story that is giving a message to our audience and opens their eyes to something new.
Our film being directed to young females is shown clearly in the design. In the image the walls in the background are pink, so is her lip-gloss, face make-up, top strap and also the wine. Pink is a very feminine colour and directs this image straight to females. By just looking at this image with the colouring and the character Vicky being a young female, shows the audience straight away, without reading the text or looking at the reviews, that this film is to be suited to girls. The tag line is however in red and the colour red symbolises emotions such as love, anger and danger. If we relate this back to the image of the characters emotions and the reviews being thought provoking and also the fact the tag line says ‘you will remember’ we see that this is possible that the red symbolises danger and the emotion of the facial expression in the image show maybe she is in fact in love but maybe heart broken and lastly maybe angry within herself or the rest of the world.
How does the content of your magazine feature enhance the audiences understanding of the film?
Our magazine article was a film review to give our audience the a little insight as to what our film is about and who the film is targeted to . The image on a film review is just picture of the character Vicky. In this picture we see just a medium shot of her focusing on her facial expression, which she looks confused and blank. It’s almost as if she doesn’t know what to do with herself or to herself even. This shows a lot about the character because by just looking at this image we can tell that the movie will be about this character and she will be confused about life and confused in herself. The review being similar to the poster in a way that the audience can tell from this picture in the review, that its going to be a feminine film as the background of the image is all pink and Vicky is also wearing a full face of make-up which is pink cheeks.
We have used language in our review that is assessable to young females such as 15 – 19 year old. Using a suitable English language for young readers, making it informal and more laid back, this causes our review to be mostly read by the target audience as it becomes more appealing. Sight and Sound for example is a magazine based on movies and contains film reviews that are so in-depth that it is too much information about the film that it can become boring to finish the article. However, our review being in Heat magazine will be read by the females of age 15 – 19, reaching our target audience, and also not containing to much information and being more to the point.
We read on to the information given in the review about the plot of the story which we read the film is about a young girl who is seventeen and getting ready for a night out. This aims towards young girls straight away then we get a definite opinion when we read that the director is really focusing on the effort she is putting into to making herself look good. We can decide who the audience is thinking of the lifestyle of the character, her doing her make-up and making a lot of effort into making herself look good to go on a night out. The review also contains the information that the ending climax is a shocking ending and was completely not expected. This shows the reader that the film is unpredictable and makes them think whether it’s a good or bad ending as the girls is getting ready for a night out, the reader can then begin to question what could be the possibilities. The review mentioning how it is thought provoking and says that it shows common problems and how hard things really are for girls. This on an overall gives us a definite view that our film is focused towards young females and what the film is going to be about, also that the film will have some kind of hidden meaning and message to young girls.
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Adobe Premiere
Negatives
We used media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages of our project. The negatives about using the adobe premiere editing software were the learning how to use the software. It took us some time to learn how to add transitions in as we used many fades throughout our film. It was a very complicated process and adding a transition such as a fade or dissolve would create a blank black screen that would appear for a second or two. This was so our film would run more smoothly and have more effective transitions. This was a problem as the editing process took longer as it took us some time to learn how to use the edits.
Adobe premier
Positives
Adobe Premiere was also positive as once we learnt how to use the transitions; we were able to add them to our film, causing our film to run more smoothly. We wanted to add fades into the scene of the character Vicky changing clothes. As she tried on many outfits we wanted the fades between outfits to show a pass in time and also by adding the fades and seeing just quick clips of Vicky in each outfit creates a photo album slide show effect. This developed our creativity in a way as we the more familiar with the software the more able we were to come up with more ideas and interesting edits. We managed to edit the shots in a more creative way and the photo album effect was a scene we were aiming towards before we were familiar with the software yet we were allowed to do once mastering it and becomes to look very interesting and creative once learning to add the fades and dissolves in which became very successful once completed.
These are still images of the clips we faded in an out to show the change of outfits and also ended to look like a photo album slide show.
We used blogger.com to create a blog to show our research and planning for our short films. This affected our ability to be creative with the blog as this programme was negative in a way that we couldn't’t edit the layout of the YouTube videos or pictures in the way we wanted to. Some of the YouTube videos we formatted to large for the blog and we were unable to change the blog size and make it wider which made it look untidy and less professional. Also, in some cases when explaining a certain task you undertook when creating our film or explaining a part of the research we had found, we were unable to explain this in full detail as a blog is not like an essay. This forced me to be more concise in my explanations and meant I had to give simple explanations and show the evidence such as using pictures and videos.
However this could be a good thing, because the blog is not essay based it is more interesting to read and it isn’t to long and boring. Being more of a diary format this gave a quicker speed of finding the information the reader wants to read as it contains links to certain pages, and also the reader doesn’t have to read the whole blog to find one part of information. For example, research into other short films. Also another positive thing about the blogger.com is any one can access your blog, giving your group the opportunity to share your ideas and read through your blog, and also for the public in general to read your blog as it may come to great use to them when they are finding our certain information. Giving us the opportunity to be able to look and read other blogs help us to become more creative. Lastly, the blog is more showing rather than telling, which is clearer to the reader and keeps them entertained. Also more suitable for a younger audience.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Once we had completed our short films we wanted some audience feedback to see how well our movie was portrayed as a real film. We decided to make a survey containing questions such as: What genre do you believe the film is? What do you think the film is about? What could be improved? And many more. Once collecting all of our feedback from the boys and girls aged 12 – 17 we were proud to find that our film was rather successful.
Here is a copy of our survey we gave to the audience to fill out whilst watching our short film.
Just under 80% of our audience understood the film and noticed although our film is very short and a hard story line to follow, they understood the story, and specifically said that it’s about a girl who is getting ready to go out then doesn’t go anywhere, and also that she may be suicidal. The rest of the audience said understood the story a little and thought it as about girl getting ready to go out and she got stood up. We understood that this could be a possible conclusion for the audience to conclude as our film is not very clear in a sense as we see the girl has problems and is troubled yet we are not curtained that the girl will not be going out all along but the fact she doesn’t leaves the audience no other choice but to guess.
This graph shows the percentages of what conclusions had been guessed for our film. 78% of the audience feedback stated 78% thought she was unhappy and going to kill herself which is the correct conclusion to our film, although it if left on a cliff-hanger, this is the conclusion we were hoping for. We were happy to see that the majority understood the story line to gather the correct conclusion.
We were also very pleased that we managed to portray to the correct audience as the feedback proved that the viewers could tell the film was a hybridge genre. We aimed for a drama, yet with added chick flick elements to widen our target audience and also to challenge the drama genre. We only had two or three members of our audience state that they weren’t sure on what the genre was. This, I believe is very good as we managed to reach our target audience as over 90% of viewers enjoyed our film.
It is easy for the audience to point out a chick flick, a drama, or a horror, but our film being a drama/chick flick. This work very well as 89% of our audience who viewed our film, correctly stated that our film is a drama/chick flick. Only 3% were undecided which could be due to the fact we used a hybridge, yet this still was enjoyed by the wider audience.
We gathered one or two improvements which we could make and we did go back to our film and make a few adjustments as we agreed with these change. This was another reason for our audience feedback as it gave us another opinion and helped us open our eyes to things we had not yet noticed.
We could see that the music wasn’t enjoyed by everyone yet the majority thought the music was effective and work very well. This we didn’t make any changes to as more people saw it as effective than those who didn’t think it was effective. 10% thought the music wasn’t appropriate. We couldn’t think of any solution to this, as the majority did enjoy the music and thought it worked, yet the only possible conclusion could be they didn’t listen to the lyrics or didn’t enjoy this style of music. Sometimes watching a movie you dislike, or of the wrong genre to you likings or even containing characters or music you dislike could possible lead to dislike of the whole film or maybe believing certain parts were not effective or didn’t work very well.
What would I change about the filming process after recieveing the audience feedback?
If I could change anything about the film process after receiving the audience feedback I would have done more research on similar films using a similar story. This is because although the majority of our audience understood the story line and knew exactly what Vicky was feeling, there was a slight majority that thought she had been stood up. This is because our story had the same aspects of a girl being stood up as it did a girl being depressed.
Looking at our audience feedback over all we can see that our film was very successful as it reached the target audience, was understandable and also the fact that the genre was portrayed well is very rewarding. Although our film was very well structured and was a great success, we see from the reviews comments that there was a slight percentage that didn’t guess the correct genre, meaning it hadn’t been portrayed 100% clear enough, however the other genres guessed were mysterious or three percent were undecided. This may be worrying for our films success yet our film does contain some sense of mystery as it contains no dialogue and we do not see the resolution at the end.
The comments made about the music were brilliant also however the slight ten percent didn’t think the song choice was appropriate. Although this percentage may think the song didn’t suit the film in some case, this could also be because them personally didn’t like the song or is not a fan of this type of music, meaning our song was suited to the film and played along well with the story however it may be the wrong genre of film for that individual.
